PSYCHOLOGY OF THE FUTURE

In this book Stanislav Grof presents an accessible and comprehensive overview of his work that started over forty years ago, with a powerful experience of a nonordinary state of consciousness. As a young graduate from medical school Grof volunteered to participate in an experiment with LSD, a newly discovered drug at the Sandoz pharmaceutical laboratories in Switzerland. This experience would lead to a life-long interest in nonordinary states of consciousness, that Grof prefers to call holotropic and where holotropic stands for "moving towards wholeness". To begin with Grof worked with therapy based on psychedelic substances in his homeland Czechoslovakia and in USA. He later developed holotropic breathwork together with his wife Christina and have also worked with people undergoing psychospiritual crises, or spiritual emergency as they prefer to call it. His work in this area has made him one of the founders of the fairly new area of psychology called transpersonal psychology. In the book Grof presents the healing potential in nonordinary states of consciousness. He also draws a comprehensive cartography of the human psyche and of psychosomatic disorders. He relates this to his Basic Perinatal Matrices (BMP) that describe the various phases of childbirth and presents a details explanation of the impact our physical birth has on the rest of our lives. Having presented the basic insights from his work with nonordinary states of consciousness Grof moves on to explaining what may trigger a spiritual emergency and how understanding this may offer a much different and more positive way of treating this type of crisis. Throughout the book Grof is very open about his views on conventional psychology and psychiatry as well as consciousness research and does not hide that he thinks that it is high time for a change in these and related areas. One such area is spirituality and religion. Both in large parts of conventional psychotherapy and in most established religions the spiritual experience, that are so common in therapies that may trigger nonordinary states of consciousness, are regarded as signs of insanity that should be stopped rather than encouraged. Grof gives detailed explanations of why he thinks this has to be changed if we are to move to a higher understanding of consciousness. In the concluding chapters Grof describes what he calls the "Cosmic Game" - the exploration of the farthest reaches of human consciousness. He also looks at the consciousness evolution and links this with human survival in a transpersonal perspective on the global crisis. Grof's final words in this book is point out that the way forward for all of us is that we need to start to internalise more of what is happening in the world and take more personal responsibility. Or in his own words: .."if a sufficient number of people undergo a process of deep inner transformation, we might reach a level of consciousness evolution when we deserve the proud name we have given to our species: homo sapiens." Reading this book it becomes clear beyond any doubt how important Stanislav Grof has been to the development of transpersonal psychology in general and the understanding of breathwork in particular. Even if Grof speaks mainly about Holotropic Breathwork, he is by far the person who offers the best insights into the effects of a number of breathwork techniques. Still, this book is not just for breathwork practitioners, but for anyone interested in the very exciting research into human consciousness that Grof describes as "an extraordinary adventure of discovery and self-discovery".