Book Reviewed: The Holotropic Mind: The Three Levels of Human Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives by Stanislav Grof.
If you are interested in the holographic model of the universe and consciousness, then you would like to read this book. The model is largely based on the work of physicist David Bohm and neurophysiologist Karl Pribram. The author, well known for his work in transpersonal psychology and many states of consciousness, describes many of his clinical cases in his investigation of various levels of consciousness to explain the physical reality. A brief summary is as follows: The author uses connected breathing, music, and artwork to alter consciousness and explore deep dimensions of the psyche called holotropic breathwork. He uses the non-ordinary states of consciousness and gain access to the unconscious and other super-conscious psyche with his psychoanalytical methods. The author argues that although the mental functions are linked to biological processes in the brain but consciousness does not originate in or produced by brain. The author gives an analogy; when a television repairman states that the TV set needs a spare part to fix it, we don’t make the conclusion that TV set it self is responsible for the program we see on TV. Yet this is the kind of conclusion we make in neurobiological experiments that consciousness is seated in the brain apparatus. Experiences available to us through non-ordinary states of consciousness, particularly those of transpersonal nature offer evidence that consciousness is not confined to brain.
Exploration of non-ordinary states of consciousness has provided convincing evidence for perinatal experiences in our psyches, and the author describes this occurs in four distinct experiential patterns called Basic Perinatal Matrices (BPM). Each of it is closely related to the four stages of birth just prior to labor and delivery; the amniotic universe, the cosmic engulfment and no exit, death and rebirth struggle and death and rebirth phase. Each of these stages has biological, psychological, archetypal, and spiritual aspects. Carl Jung calls this area of perinatal matrices an interface between our individual psyches called collective unconscious experience. The functions of these different matrices combine memories of various biological births with sequences of human history or mythology. These elements belong to transpersonal domain, which challenge the belief that human consciousness is limited by the range of our senses and environment. This paradigm states that consciousness exists outside, independently, in essence not bound by matter. It is infinite stretching beyond the limits of space and time. The consciousness may also permeate all of nature existing in most elemental and most complex forms. The experiences in transpersonal consciousness can include the entire spectrum of existence. It includes; near death experience, communicating with dead, contacting with aliens, encounter with primordial emptiness, etc.
The archetypes of collective unconsciousness termed psychoid are trans-individual in nature, and not created by an individual’s history or experience. Carl Jung proposed acausal connecting principle in which he tried to connect the inner world of visions and dreams with the outer world of objective reality. This principle broke the boundaries between; consciousness and matter; the objective-subjective; real-unreal; existent-nonexistent; and tangible-intangible states of reality.
Psychoid experiences are understood under three types: Synchronicities phenomenon, where an acausal link between inner experiences synchronous with external experiences exists. Secondly, events in the external world are linked to inner experiences, examples include, poltergeist phenomena, UFO encounters, etc. Thirdly, the psychoid experiences where mental activity manipulates conscious reality, example include; psychokinetic phenomenon, supernatural feats of yogis (called siddhies), etc.
The Jungian principle of acausal connecting principle stated that casualty is a statistical phenomenon, and in many instances the causal principle does not apply. For example, Swami Rama has shown incredible powers such as changing body temperature, blood flow and heart rate in matter of seconds without a rational medical explanation supporting the acausal principle, the control of mind over body.
The author concludes that human consciousness is an expression and reflections of cosmic intelligence that permeates the entire universe and all existence. We are fields of consciousness without limits transcending time, space, matter, and linear casualty.
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