When the Impossible Happens (40 page)

As we saw earlier, the study of holotropic states has vastly expanded the cartography of the psyche by adding two new domains—perinatal and transpersonal. It has also shown that psychopathological symptoms and syndromes of psychogenic origin cannot be adequately explained by traumatic events in postnatal biography. Observations from deep experiential psychotherapy have revealed that these conditions have a multilevel dynamic structure, which regularly includes significant elements from the perinatal and transpersonal domains of the psyche.

This discovery explains why verbal, biographically oriented approaches have been generally very disappointing as tools for dealing with serious clinical problems. Because of their conceptual and technical limitations, these methods are unable to reach the deeper roots of the conditions they are at tempting to heal. In and of itself, the discovery of the depth of the problems psychiatry and psychotherapy have to deal with would be a very discouraging finding. Fortunately, the work with holotropic states does more than just reveal that emotional and psychosomatic disorders have significant perinatal and transpersonal components. It also provides access to new, highly effective therapeutic mechanisms operating on these deep levels of the psyche that often bring dramatic healing and positive personality transformation.

In this section, I will give a few examples of situations where remarkable therapeutic effects were achieved by mechanisms operating on the perinatal and transpersonal level of the psyche. We will see that sometimes healing might require reliving birth and powerful past-life memories, encounter with an archetypal being from a culture completely unknown to the client, or emergence and full manifestation of an archetypal figure, including a demonic one. It can even involve such highly improbable therapeutic mechanisms as experiential identification with a tree or chanting of a Sephardic prayer. The most interesting and theoretically, as well as practically, important observation from the work with holotropic states is that perinatal and transpersonal experiences have powerful healing potential even if they occur in the context of episodes that contemporary psychiatry sees as manifestations of serious mental diseases—psychoses.

On the basis of our experience with such conditions, Christina and I suggested that many spontaneous episodes of holotropic states, currently diagnosed as psychoses and treated by suppressive medication, are actually psychospiritual crises, or spiritual emergencies. There exists ample evidence that—correctly understood and properly supported—these episodes can result in healing, positive personality transformation, and spiritual opening (Grof and Grof 1989, 1991). Jungian psychologist John Weir Perry described many successfully treated cases of this kind in a series of his books (Perry 1974, 1976).

Included in this section are the stories of two women whose symptoms would be considered by a traditional psychiatrist to be indications of mental disease. And yet, putting such diagnostic labels on them would have been wrong. Another case history incorporated in this part of the book describes a therapeutic approach that is highly unconventional. It shows that using psychedelic therapy to accelerate the psychodynamic processes underlying psychotic symptoms can bring therapeutic results that are far superior to tranquilizing medication. This section of the book closes on a light note with a humorous story showing that, on occasion, a fortuitous synchronicity can bring unexpected therapeutic results.

THE PAIN THAT SURVIVED THREE CENTURIES: The Story of Norbert

The following story involves Norbert, a fifty-one-year-old psychologist and minister who participated in one of our five-day workshops at the Esalen Institute. His case can be used as a typical example of what I call a system of condensed experiences (COEX system), a multilayer constellation of traumatic memories from different levels of the unconscious—biographical, perinatal, and transpersonal—that underlies emotional and psychosomatic symptoms. Norbert’s story also illustrates the therapeutic potential associated with reliving and integration of the trauma of birth and of past-life memories.

During the group introduction preceding the first session of Holotropic Breathwork, Norbert complained about severe chronic pain in his left shoulder and pectoral muscle that caused him great suffering and made his life miserable. Repeated medical examinations, including x-rays, had not detected any organic basis for his problem, and all therapeutic attempts had remained unsuccessful. Serial Prokain injections had brought only brief, transient relief for the duration of the pharmacological effect of the drug.

At the beginning of the session of Holotropic Breathwork, Norbert made an impulsive attempt to leave the room because he could not tolerate the music, which he felt was “killing” him. It took great effort to persuade him to stay with the process and to explore the reasons for his discomfort. He finally agreed, and for almost three hours he experienced severe pains in his breast and shoulder that intensified to the point of becoming unbearable. He struggled violently as if his life were seriously threatened, choked and coughed, and let out a variety of loud screams. Following this stormy episode, he quieted down and was relaxed and peaceful. With great surprise, he realized that the experience had released the tension in his shoulder and muscles, and that he was completely free of pain.

Retrospectively, Norbert reported that there were three different layers in his experience, all of them related to the pain in his shoulder and associated with choking. On the most superficial level he relived a frightening situation from his childhood in which he almost lost his life. When he was about seven years old, he and his friends were digging a tunnel on a sandy ocean beach. When the tunnel was finished, Norbert crawled inside to explore it. As the other children jumped around, the tunnel collapsed and buried him alive. He almost choked to death before he was rescued by the adults who rushed to the scene responding to the children’s distress calls.

When the breathwork experience deepened, Norbert relived a violent and frightening episode that took him back to the memory of his biological birth. His delivery was very difficult because his shoulder had been stuck for an extended period of time behind the pubic bone of his mother. This episode shared with the previous one the combination of choking and severe pain in the shoulder.

In the last part of the session, the experience changed dramatically. Norbert started seeing military uniforms and horses and recognized that he was involved in a fierce battle. He was even able to identify it as one of the battles in Cromwell’s England. At one point, he felt a sharp pain and realized that his shoulder had been pierced by a lance. He fell off his horse and experienced himself as being trampled by the horses running over his body and crushing his chest. His broken rib cage caused him agonizing pain, and he was choking on blood, which was filling his lungs.

After a period of extreme suffering, Norbert’s consciousness separated from his dying body, soared high above the battlefield, and observed the scene from a bird’s eye view. Following the death of the severely wound ed soldier, whom he recognized as himself in a previous incarnation, his consciousness returned to the present and reconnected with his body, which was now pain-free for the first time after many years of agony. The relief from pain brought about by these experiences turned out to be permanent. Christina and I formed a friendship with Norbert and his wife, and continued seeing them after the workshop ended. It has now been over twenty years since this memorable session, and the symptoms have not returned.

THE MALEKULAN PIG GODDESS: The Story of Otto

Experiences of psychiatric patients labeled as psychotic often involve visions of deities and demonic presences and visits to mythological realms, such as heavens, paradises, and hells. The explanation of mainstream psychiatrists for such experiences is that they are products of these patients’ brains afflicted by a pathological process of unknown origin, one which would be identified and fully understood sometime in the future. Although this perspective is frequently presented by the academic circles as a scientific fact that is obvious and beyond any reasonable doubt, it is actually a highly implausible proposition. More than anything else, this view reflects the basic metaphysical assumption of monistic materialism about the priority of matter over consciousness that dominates scientific thinking in the industrial civilization. In reality, it is inconceivable that a pathological process could generate the rich panoply of aesthetically exquisite images and philosophically fascinating ideas that characterize the experiences of these patients.

I have shown in my book
The Cosmic Game
that the insights and revelations imparted by these experiences often strikingly resemble those described in the great spiritual traditions of the East and West, to which Aldous Huxley referred as perennial philosophy. There exists convincing scientific evidence that contradicts the official party line that sees these experiences as pathological artifacts produced by the diseased brain. C.G. Jung and his followers demonstrated that such experiences as a rule accurately portray elements from mythologies of various cultures of the world, including those of which the individuals involved have no intellectual knowledge.

The Jungian observations show unequivocally that these experiences, rather than being pathological products of the brain, have their origin in the collective unconscious that we all share. Psychedelic research and Holotropic Breathwork have generated ample support for the Jungian perspective. Holotropic states of consciousness, regardless of their specific triggers, can provide deep insights into the worldview of the cultures that believe the cosmos is populated by mythological beings and that it is governed by various blissful and wrathful deities. In these states, we can gain direct experiential access to the archetypal world of gods, demons, legendary heroes, suprahuman entities, and spirit guides in the collective unconscious. We can also visit fantastic landscapes and abodes of the Beyond that represent integral parts of this do main of the human psyche.

Deep personal experiences of these realms help us realize that the images of the cosmos found in preindustrial societies are not based on superstition or primitive “magical thinking,” but on direct experiences of alternate realities. A particularly convincing proof of the authenticity of these experiences is the fact that, like other transpersonal phenomena, such experiences can bring us new and accurate information about various archetypal beings and realms. The nature, scope, and quality of this information often by far surpass previous intellectual knowledge of the individuals involved concerning the respective mythologies.

One of the most interesting examples of this kind that I have experienced in my clinical practice involved Otto, one of my clients in Prague, whom I treated for depression and pathological fear of death (thanatophobia). In one of his psychedelic sessions, Otto experienced a powerful sequence of psychospiritual death and rebirth. As the experience was culminating, he had a vision of an ominous entrance into the underworld guarded by a terrifying pig goddess. At this point, he suddenly felt an urgent need to draw a specific geometrical design.

Although I generally asked my clients to stay during their sessions in a reclining position with their eyes closed and keep their experiences internalized, Otto opened his eyes, sat up, and asked me to bring him some sheets of paper and drawing utensils. He drew with great urgency and extraordinary speed an entire series of complex abstract patterns. Showing deep dissatisfaction and despair, he kept impulsively tearing and crumpling these intricate designs as soon as he finished them. He was very disappointed with his drawings and was getting increasingly frustrated, because he was not able to “get it right.” When I asked him what he was trying to do, he was not able to explain it to me. He said that he simply felt an irresistible compulsion to draw these geometrical patterns and was convinced that drawing the right kind of design was somehow a necessary condition for a successful completion of his session.

The theme clearly had an extraordinary emotional charge for Otto, and he struggled very hard to understand what it was about. At that time, I was still under a strong influence of my Freudian training, and I tried my best to identify the unconscious motives for this strange behavior by using the method of free association. We spent a considerable amount of time on this task, but without much success. The entire sequence simply did not make any sense in relation to Otto’s childhood or his present life. Eventually, the process moved to other areas, and I stopped thinking about this situation. The entire episode had remained for me completely mysterious until many years later, when I moved to the United States.

Shortly after my arrival in Baltimore, I was invited to give a lecture for a conference of the Society for Art, Religion, and Science in New York City, entitled “The Grotesque in Art.” My presentation explored the problem of the grotesque, drawing on my observations from psychedelic research, and included a slide show of my clients’ paintings. Among the participants was Joseph Campbell, considered by many to be the greatest mythologist of the twentieth century and possibly of all time. He was fascinated by my descriptions of the experiences of patients reliving their birth and by the paintings they had made. At his request, I sent him a manuscript summarizing the findings of my research in Prague. It was a thick volume entitled
Agony and Ecstasy in Psychiatric Treatment
that never got published and later became the source for five books discussing different aspects of my work.

After a few initial encounters, we became good friends, and Joseph played a very important role in my personal and professional life. Christina had developed an independent friendship with him when she was his student at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. Joseph’s intellect was remarkable and his knowledge of world mythology truly encyclopedic. He loved the material from psychedelic research, particularly my concept of basic perinatal matrices (BPMs), which helped him understand the ubiquity and universal nature of the motif of death and rebirth in mythology. After I moved to California, I saw Joseph regularly because he was a frequent guest at Esalen, participating as guest faculty in the monthlong seminars that Christina and I organized, and conducting his own workshops.