Stanislav Grof (Czech Stanislav Grof, July 1, 1931 Prague, Czechoslovakia) is an American psychologist and psychiatrist of Czech origin, Doctor of Philosophy in Medicine, one of the founders of transpersonal psychology and pioneers in the study of altered states of consciousness, an honorary member of the Russian Psychological Society. He made a significant contribution to the development of psychological science.
He graduated from Charles University in 1956 and defended his doctorate in medicine in 1965. From 1956 to 1967 S. Grof is a practicing clinical psychiatrist, actively studying psychoanalysis.
Since 1961, he led research in Czechoslovakia into the use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs for the treatment of mental disorders. In 1967-1969, having received a fellowship from the Psychiatric Research Foundation (USA), he completed a two-year internship at Johns Hopkins University, then continued his research at the Maryland Center for Psychiatric Research.
From 1973 to 1987 he worked at the Esalen Institute (California, USA). During this period, together with his wife Christina, he developed the technique of holotropic breathing, which became a unique method of psychotherapy, self-knowledge and personal growth.
Currently, S. Grof is a professor at the Department of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and also conducts training seminars for professionals. One of the founders of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA), its president in 1978-82.
Books (19)
Transpersonal vision. The healing powers of unusual states of consciousness
Are our emotional states and behaviors rooted solely in brain chemistry and life experiences, or can they also be expressions of much broader and more universal energies? What specific states of consciousness are most conducive to integration and healing, and how can we learn these states?
In this short book, summarizing the results of his life's work, Stanislav Grof answers these questions and touches on many others. You will learn about the worlds of the shaman and the mystic, how your peripartum experiences affect you now, what transpersonal experiences can teach you, and much more.
Furious search for yourself
Spiritual development is the innate ability of every human being to evolve. This is a movement towards wholeness, towards the revelation of the true potential of the individual.
It is as common and natural to everyone as birth, physical growth and death; it is an integral part of our existence
Stanislav Grof gained worldwide fame thanks to his research into the effects of LSD and altered states of human consciousness. Being one of the founders of transpersonal psychology, he is also its main theorist. Author of more than 20 books, which have been translated into 16 languages. He has numerous therapeutic sessions and training seminars on holotropic breathing, conducted in different countries.
"Mystical" direction of modern psychology
Transpersonal psychology began to take shape in the 60s in America. The focus of research in this area is altered states of consciousness, near-death experiences, as well as features of the experience of being in the mother’s womb and at the moment of birth, memories of which are stored in the depths of a person’s subconscious.
Psychotherapeutic work includes spiritual and religious practices. To solve intrapersonal problems, remove physical blocks and clamps, a person is offered techniques for experiencing transpersonal experience. It can be achieved through a special way of breathing, hypnosis and self-hypnosis, working with dreams, creativity, and meditation.
Participation in the experiment provoked a sustained interest in the study of expanded states of consciousness
Volunteering in 1956, while participating in a scientific experiment using psychedelic drugs, Stanislav Grof experienced an expanded state of consciousness. Being by that time already a practicing psychiatrist-clinician with a scientific doctorate, he was stunned by the experience.
It became obvious to the scientist that consciousness is much more than what is described in the literature on medicine and psychology. This determined the further course of his scientific activity. He became actively involved in the study of expanded states of consciousness. Beginning in 1960, Stanislav Grof was engaged in legal work with psychedelic drugs for several years. Until 1967, he studied their effects in Czechoslovakia, then in America until the moment when psychedelics were banned - until 1973.
During this time, the scientist conducted about 2,500 sessions using LSD, and collected more than 1,000 protocols for conducting similar studies under the guidance of his colleagues. Stanislav Grof devoted all his books to the results of these and subsequent studies in the field of altered states of consciousness.
"Esalen" - a center for humanistic alternative education
The Esalen Institute was founded in 1962 by Stanford graduates Michael Murphy and Dick Price. Their goal was to support alternative methods of studying human consciousness. This educational institution is located in the region where the Esalen Indians once lived - on the coast of Central California. This is a very picturesque place: on one side there is the Pacific Ocean, on the other there are mountains.
The Esalen Institute played a key role in the blossoming of the public “Movement for the Development of Human Potential,” the ideological basis of which was the concept of personal growth and the realization of extraordinary potential opportunities that are available to everyone, but not fully disclosed. Innovation, a focus on the connection between mind and body, and constant experimentation in terms of personal consciousness led to the emergence of many ideas that later became mainstream.
In 1973, Grof received an advance fee, which made it possible to write his first book. At the invitation of Michael Murphy to work on it, he moves to Essalen. He was offered to settle in a house on the ocean. From there there was a beautiful view with a panoramic view of 180 degrees. He came there for one year, and lived and worked there for 14 years, until 1987.
The year 1975 was marked for Stanislav by the fact that he met Christina, his future wife. From that moment on, their personal relationship began, closely intertwined with professional ones.
Holotropic Breathwork
From 1975 to 1976, through joint efforts, Stanislav and Christina Grof created an innovative method, which was given the name “holotropic breathing”. Thanks to this, it became possible to enter an expanded state of consciousness without the use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs.
At the same time, they began to use the new method in their seminars. Between 1987 and 1994, the couple conducted holotropic breathwork sessions for approximately 25,000 people. According to the authors, this is a unique way of self-knowledge and personal growth.
Subsequently, this method served as the basis for holotropic therapy, sessions of which the scientist actively practiced. He also taught training courses for practicing transpersonal psychologists.
Together with his wife, Grof traveled the world with his seminars and lectures, talking about transpersonal psychology and the results of consciousness research. Over the years, he has supported people who have experienced psychospiritual crises - episodes of expanded consciousness.
Books about the conscious and unconscious
Stanislav Grof in the book “Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death and Transcendence in Psychotherapy” summarizes the results of the author’s research conducted over 30 years of his scientific activity. It talks about expanded cartography of the psyche, the dynamics of perinatal matrices, psychotherapy and spiritual development.
Grof suggested that most of the mental conditions classified in psychiatry as diseases, for example, neuroses and psychoses, are crises of a person’s spiritual and personal growth, which almost everyone can face.
The reason may be a spontaneously experienced spiritual experience that one could not cope with on one’s own. The author proposes psychotherapeutic approaches based on the use of the human body’s ability to self-heal.
Stanislav Grof's book "Cosmic Game: Exploring the Boundaries of Human Consciousness" offers readers a synthesis of modern science and ancient wisdom, psychology and religion. The author's theoretical views are based on extensive clinical research.
In the book "Call of the Jaguar" the results of many years of research are presented by the author in the form work of art- science fiction novel. The plot is based on real transpersonal experiences both by the author himself and those observed in other people.
20th century: books by Stanislav Grof in chronological order
1975 "Areas of the Human Unconscious: Evidence from LSD Research."
1977 "Man Facing Death", co-authored with Joan Halifax.
1980 "LSD - Psychotherapy".
1981 "Beyond Death: The Gates of Consciousness", co-authored with Christina Grof.
1984 "Ancient wisdom and modern science", edited by Stanislav Grof. The book includes articles from many speakers who spoke at the 1982 conference of the International Association of Transpersonal Psychology in Bombay, India.
1985 "Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death and Transcendence in Psychotherapy."
1988 "Human Survival" and edited by Stanislav Grof and Marjorie L. Wahler. A total of 18 co-authors contributed to the creation of this book.
1988 "Journeys in Search of Self: Dimensions of Consciousness and New Perspectives in Psychotherapy."
1989 “Spiritual Crisis: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis,” co-authored with Christina Grof.
1990 "Frantic Self-Search: A Guide to Personal Growth through Transformational Crisis," co-authored with Christina Grof.
1992 "Holotropic Consciousness: The Three Levels of Human Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives," co-author Hal Zina Bennett.
1993 "Books of the Dead: Guides for Life and Death."
1998 "Transpersonal Vision: The Healing Potential of Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness."
1998 "Cosmic Game: Exploring the Frontiers of Human Consciousness."
1999 "The Consciousness Revolution: A Transatlantic Dialogue," co-authored with Erwin Laszlo and Peter Russell. Wrote the foreword to the book
21st century: books by Stanislav Grof in chronological order
year 2000. "Psychology of the future."
year 2001. "Call of the Jaguar"
2004 "Lilibit's Dreams" The book was written by Melody Sullivan, and the role of illustrator went to Stanislav Grof.
2006 "When the impossible is possible: adventures in unusual realities."
2006 "The Greatest Journey. Consciousness and the Mystery of Death."
2010 "Holotropic Breathwork: A New Approach to Self-Exploration and Therapy," co-authored with Christina Grof.
year 2012. "Healing Our Deepest Wounds: A Holotropic Paradigm Shift."
Most likely to be continued...
Achievements and contributions to the development of science
Known throughout the world as a modern reformer of psychiatry and the brightest representative of transpersonal psychology. His innovative ideas influenced the interpenetration of Western science and the spiritual dimension. The books he authored have been translated into several languages. His research into the healing and transformative potential of expanded states of consciousness has been ongoing since 1960.
In 1978, Stanislav Grof founded the International Association of Transpersonal Psychology. The goals for which it was created were to encourage education and research in this area, and sponsor global conferences.
On October 5, 2007 in Prague he was awarded the prestigious VISION-97 award. It was provided by the Dagmar and Vaclav Havel Foundation, created to support innovative projects of great importance for the future of humanity.
Stanislav Grof continues his professional activities at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, as well as at Wisdom University in Oakland. He lectures and teaches professional training programs in the fields of holotropic breathwork and transpersonal psychology. She also takes part in practical seminars while traveling around the world.
Stanislav Grof
PSYCHOLOGY OF THE FUTURE
Lessons from modern consciousness research
PSYCHOLOGY OF THE FUTURE
Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research
State University of New York Press
Translation from English by Stanislav Ofertas
Scientific editor Vladimir Maykov
Publishing house of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology
Publishing house K. Kravchuk
Publishing house AST
To my wife Christina
With much love and deep gratitude
for your contribution to ideas,
expressed in this book
Editor's Preface
Among the peaks of modern knowledge about man there are obvious, so to speak, “eight-thousanders”. This is how mountaineers call peaks that approach or exceed eight thousand meters in height. One of these peaks is Stanislav Grof, who, along with Freud and Jung, can be called a great innovator and master of modern psychology and psychotherapy.
I was lucky enough to meet Grof in 1989, when he came to Moscow for the third time to conduct a three-day seminar on holotropic breathwork and transpersonal psychology. Before this, my first correspondence meeting with Grof took place in 1980, when I became acquainted with the “samizdat” book "Areas of the Human Unconscious", which I was then destined to publish officially. A man who later became my close friend for many years, until his death, Vitaly Nikolaevich Mikheykin, one of the devotees of “samizdat” and underground psychology, gave me the manuscript of his translation of this book, after which I, like many, after reading Grof walked around as if stunned. It seemed to me that Grof had found the ends of many elusive mysteries of human existence and the mysteries of the cosmos, and tied together the threads of the worlds of science and the existential and mysterious worlds.
Grof really hit upon something extremely important: every person can have experiences of extraordinary intensity and richness, everyone is a cluster of myths, stories, legends, he is that “point aleph” of Borges, where everything converges in one, where the beginning and end of everything, where everyone can free themselves and there is a path to liberation, based on modern data. I then realized that Grof’s four perinatal matrices, described in his cartography of the psyche, are something like guards on the path to freedom.
We are born, and because of the pains of childbirth, we are destined to be human. Those of us who succeed in turning back time and finding a second birth, which in some sense inherits the first, dispel the spell cast by human birth, this life, this upbringing, these traumas, are freed from what made us closed, frozen, isolated from the world. All this can dissipate, and another world will appear before them, familiar from childhood memories, from heroic stories - a world of freedom and insight, a world of enlightenment, joy, happiness and exploration.
Grof charmed us with the possibility of freedom and awakening. And we began to study everything that was connected with transpersonal psychology, of which he became one of the most prominent founders. He began his medical career in 1956 as a psychiatrist, a classical psychoanalyst who believed that psychedelic substances, used in psychiatry under controlled conditions, could significantly speed up the process of psychoanalysis. However, the unprecedented richness and range of experiences during LSD psychotherapy sessions soon convinced him of the theoretical limitations of Freud's model of the psyche and its underlying mechanistic worldview. The new cartography of the psyche that emerged as a result of these studies consists of three areas: 1) the (Freudian) personal and biographical unconscious; 2) transpersonal (transpersonal) unconscious (which includes Jung’s narrower ideas about the archetypal or collective unconscious); 3) perinatal (perinatal) unconscious, which is a bridge between the personal and transpersonal unconscious and filled with symbolism and specific experiences of death and rebirth. This area of the unconscious contains the greatest potential for transformation.
In his latest works, Grof constantly emphasizes that the perinatal is not limited to intrauterine life and the process of childbirth, but forms an all-encompassing structure of psychospiritual transformation, valid for all stages of the development of consciousness. The vast clinical experience of Grof himself and his students, as well as the documented experience of world spiritual traditions, indicates that regression to the perinatal level is often a necessary condition for access to the transpersonal. Grof himself assisted during sessions of psychedelic psychotherapy, and there were about four thousand of them, and tens of thousands of people in many countries of the world and on different continents passed through his seminars on holotropic breathing.
Let us briefly formulate the results of Grof’s research, consistently presented in the chapters of this book.
Grof experimentally showed the possibility for any person to have experiences of extraordinary intensity and richness, which, as a rule, is characteristic of extreme situations human life associated with experiences of ecstasy, catastrophe, death, spiritual transformation. Non-ordinary states of consciousness were widely practiced in all traditional cultures and accompanied any significant change in the individual and society. Among these states, holotropic, or holistic, states of consciousness stand out (from holos - “whole” and trepein - “to move towards ...”), which have a particularly powerful therapeutic and renewing potential. They are defined in relation to ordinary, or hylotropic, states (hile - “earth”). European Cartesian science is based on the experience of hylotropic states, the emerging new scientific paradigm is based on the experience of holotropic states.
The expanded cartography of the psyche developed by Grof incorporates not only most of the cartographies of Western psychology, but also corresponds to almost all known Eastern, including mystical, cartographies. The universality of Grof's cartography lies in the fact that no matter which path of spiritual and philosophical development a person follows, he inevitably has to solve the same problems from the point of view of mastering a certain level of energy. In Grof’s “energy anthropology,” the degree of awareness is directly related to the level of available energy and the degree to which blocks have been worked through on the path to its development as a habitual level.