Footnotes

*1 Grof describes LSD as a “powerful, unspecific amplifier of the biochemical and neuro-physical process in the brain. It seems to create a situation of general undifferentiated activation that facilitates the emergence of unconscious material” (1980, 52).

*2 My manual for conducting my psychedelic sessions was Grof ’s LSD Psychotherapy (1980). Three excellent recent books on psychedelic therapy, its history, and its renaissance are: Allies for Awakening by Ralph Metzner (2015), Sacred Knowledge by William Richards (2016), and How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan (2018).

*3 I describe this new philosophical method in Dark Night, Early Dawn (2000, chapter 1).

*4 See The Long Trip by Paul Devereau (1997), Sacred Vine of Spirits: Ayahuasca, edited by Ralph Metzner (1997), Seeking the Sacred with Psychoactive Substances, edited by J. Harold Ellens (2014), Entheogens and the Future of Religion by Robert Forte (1997), and Cleansing the Doors of Perception by Huston Smith (2000).

†5 When Aldous Huxley published his account of his first peyote experience in 1954, The Doors of Perception, it triggered a heated debate among theologians that lasted fifteen years. The deep similarity of psychedelic “highs” to mystical “highs” led some to celebrate the mind-openers as initiating a new era of spirituality, while others criticized what they saw as the sleight of hand of “instant mysticism.” Its critics claimed that “chemical mysticism” was a false shortcut to enlightenment, an attempt to make an end run around serious spiritual practice and get spirituality on the cheap. Huston Smith took a mediating position, recognizing the genuine mystical character of certain psychedelic experiences but questioning their relevance to long-term spiritual development because they did not seem to have the staying power of the experiences elicited by more traditional methods.
    This debate eventually ended in a standoff in the late 1960s for several reasons, the most important of which was that it became clear that we did not understand either psychedelics or mysticism well enough to decide the questions being asked. Then psychedelics were made illegal in 1970, rendering the entire issue moot. The echoes of this debate continue to surface in works like Zig Zag Zen, edited by Badiner and Grey (2002), a discussion between Buddhists and psychedelists on the spiritual merits and demerits of psychedelics.
    What is striking about this early debate from today’s perspective is that it addressed only experiences of tripping and not the therapeutic use of psychedelics. It therefore did not address the painful side of the psychedelic process, the confrontation with one’s psychological blocks that regularly occurs in therapeutic settings. As a result, it has largely been rendered obsolete by the work of psychedelic therapists. William Richards’s book Sacred Knowledge (2016) beautifully illustrates the deeply spiritual character of psychedelic experiences that sometimes emerge in therapeutic contexts.
    On this early debate see: Huxley (1954), Zaehner (1959), Clark (1964; 1969), Havens (1964), Pahnke and Richards (1966), and Smith (1964; 1967). For an assessment of this debate, see Bache (1991).

*6 Grof, Realms of the Human Unconscious (1976, 20–25). In LSD Psychotherapy, Grof lists the dose range for psychedelic therapy somewhat higher, at 300–1,500 mcg (1980, 31–38).

*7 Metzner (2015, 73–86). Shulgin and Shulgin (1991; 1997) and Trachsel (2011) concur with Metzner in giving the effective dose range of LSD as 20–200 mcg. Ott (1993) gives a higher dose range of 50–500 mcg. In the Handbook for the Therapeutic Use of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide-25: Individual and Group Procedures (1959), Blewett and Chwelos also give a higher dose range of 300–600 mcg.

†8 See Stolaroff ’s essay “Are Psychedelics Useful in the Practice of Buddhism?” (1999), where he discusses the advantages of integrating low doses of LSD (25–50 mcg) into one’s sitting practice.

*9 In my experience, working systematically with high doses of LSD does not lead to spiritual bypassing, that is, to bypassing or avoiding unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks. Though one may push through the psychodynamic layer of consciousness in the early stages, repeatedly entering the psychedelic state draws our unfinished business into our sessions sooner or later. This is a salient difference between psychedelic therapy, where the sessions are few in number, and psychedelic exploration, where the sessions are many. For more on this, see chapter 10.

†10 On screening criteria, see Grof 1980, 163–66; Johnson, Richards, and Griffiths, 2008, 608–9; and Car-hart-Harris et al. 2016, 1381. I don’t think this protocol would be appropriate, for example, for anyone with a history of trauma or abuse as its disruptive power may reactivate old wounds in ways that would be counterproductive.

*11 Alverga 1999, xxxi.

†12 Though I will sometimes speak of this reality as the Divine and use personal language for it, I am not in fact a theist. In my hands, “Divine” does not reduce to the God of our monotheistic traditions. My metaphysical commitments run in the direction of monism and panentheism. My God is the Cosmos. I see all reality, both physical and spiritual reality, as the manifestation of a single intelligence and power whose nature is beyond our capacity to fully fathom but not beyond our capacity to experience to some degree.

*13 Grof 2009; 2012.

*14 Stace 1960, 78–80.

*15 I have learned a great deal about the participatory dynamics of transpersonal experience from my friend and colleague at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Jorge Ferrer, who has argued persuasively in Revisioning Transpersonal Theory (2002) and a series of articles that all spiritual experience is participatory: “The participatory approach presents an enactive understanding of the sacred that conceives spiritual phenomena, experiences, and insights as cocreated events” (Ferrer 2011b, 2; see also Ferrer 2011a, Ferrer 2013, Ferrer and Sherman 2008).

†16 5-MeO-DMT is a psychedelic of the tryptamine class that is four to six times more powerful than DMT. It can be found in a wide variety of trees and shrubs in Central and South America and in the milky white venom of the Bufo alvarius toad native to the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico. When smoked, its effects are felt within 30 seconds, peak for 1–15 minutes, and last up to half an hour. When taken as a snuff, it has a longer acting window (Oroc 2009; St John 2015; Metzner, 2015).

*17 This echoes Rick Strassman’s observation that the intense but short-acting DMT experience did not in general produce a long-lasting impact on his subjects (2001, 266–77).

†18 In LSD Psychotherapy, Grof describes some of these variables: “In order to understand the nature of the LSD reaction in all its complexity, we have to discuss not only the actual pharmacological effect of the drug, but also the most important extra pharmacological factors—the role of the personality of the subject, his or her emotional condition and current life situation, the personality of the guide or therapist, the nature of the relationship between the subject and the guide, and an entire complex of additional factors usually referred to as set and setting” (1980, 48).

*19 See also Wilber 1995. Wilber’s model has enjoyed wide circulation, but it has also drawn criticism. In Revisioning Transpersonal Theory (2002), Ferrer presents a critique of perennialist accounts of spirituality and criticizes Wilber’s approach in particular as being rigid, hierarchical, and unduly privileging nondual spiritual realization as the ultimate summit of spiritual development.

†20 Grof discusses these levels of consciousness in many places, starting with Beyond the Brain (1985) but most fully in Psychology of the Future (2000).

‡21 I experienced nondual consciousness to be an inherent feature of causal consciousness and therefore do not address it as a separate state of consciousness.

*22 Aurobindo 1987, 211.

*23 The term Axial Age comes from the German philosopher Karl Jaspers to identify the period from the eighth to the third century BCE during which the major world religions of today emerged.

*24 Alverga 1999, 166–67.

*25 Huxley 1977, 188, footnote.

†26 Walsh and Grob 2005, 228.

*27 Realms of the Human Unconscious, 1976, 95–153; LSD Psychotherapy, 1980, 71–87; The Adventure of Self-Discovery, 1988, 98–127; Psychology of the Future, 2000, 29–56.

*28 Bache 2000, 52–58. On the emergence of the perinatal domain in nonpsychedelic contexts, see Bache 1981; 1985; 1991; 1994; 1996.

*29 In earlier publications, I gave a longer time frame for the ocean of suffering (2014; 2015). In writing this book, however, I have come to recognize certain structural differences in sessions that I had previously grouped together. I believe, therefore, that the narrower window given here is more accurate.

†30 By now I had shifted to using music from distant cultures for the cleansing portion of the sessions, especially indigenous chanting. I found that these intense ceremonial cadences and unfamiliar tonalities encouraged a deeper opening than Western classical music.

*31 Grof ’s interpretation assumes that the collective unconscious of our species preserves the memories of human beings throughout history. I share this belief, as do many transpersonal thinkers. Rupert Sheldrake has collected evidence for this hypothesis in his study of morphic resonance and formative causation (1981; 1988; 1991). Ervin Laszlo has gone further to propose that the entire universe consciously remembers its experience (2004; 2009; 2014; 2016).

*32 Grof has observed this paradoxical flip of extreme pain into ecstasy in sessions he has supervised (1985, 311–13). This was the only time it happened in my sessions.

*33 Bracketing (epoché) is the act of suspending all judgments about the natural world and focusing on the analysis of experience itself. It is a form of phenomenological reduction promoted by Edmund Husserl ([1931] 2013) and other phenomenologists to “see things as they are.”

*34 Stevenson 1974a; 1974b; 1975–1983; 1987; 1997. On Stevenson’s critics, see Edwards, 1986–1987; 1996. On the rebuttal of his critics, see Almeder 1992 and Tucker 2008.

†35 Cranston and Williams 1984; Fiore 1978; Lucas 1993; Netherton and Paul 1978; Ten Dam 1990; Wambach 1978; 1979; Weiss 1996; Whitton and Fisher 1986; Woolger 1988. For more cases, see Bowman 1997; 2001; Leininger, Leininger, and Gross 2009; Snow 1999.

*36 I address the limitations of Stevenson’s worldview and the constrictive nature of his data in Dark Night, Early Dawn (2000), chapter 2, “Beyond Reincarnation.”

*37 Ring 1980; 1984, and Ring and Valarino 1998.

*38 Ring 1984, 187–89.

†39 See the fascinating case of Belle in Ring 1984, 190–92.

*40 Newton 1995; 2000; 2009.

*41 There is a certain tension between Newton’s description of the afterlife and my description of the META-COEX systems of rage and suffering that I experienced operating in the species-mind. In general, META-COEX systems do not show up on Newton’s radar, or more precisely, on his clients’ radar. The world his clients report is a world of discrete Souls. In this respect, their description of the afterlife seems to reflect the pointillist perspective of lower transpersonal states of consciousness. The collective sinews that emerge in higher states of awareness represent a deeper pattern in the web of life. Soul consciousness and species consciousness operate at different levels of reality. These are not mutually exclusive truths but simultaneous truths. When we grasp this fact, the tension disappears.

*42 According to Newton and other past-life therapists, only a portion of the Soul’s energy and knowledge incarnates in any one lifetime. The larger share remains outside space-time, assisting the present incarnation.

*43 The theory of intelligent design, marred by its clunky theism, does not begin to describe the subtlety of the genius of our self-emergent universe. I have often wished that I had advanced training in physics and astronomy, for then I might have been able to retain more of what I was shown in this and other sessions. The content was not inherently ineffable, but it was extraordinarily sophisticated and technical.

*44 Bache 2000, 86–94.

*45 Bardo is a Tibetan term that refers to the “intermediate states” one enters between one’s incarnations on Earth. Buddhism divides the postmortem domain into six levels, ranging from the low hell realms to the high deity realms, each with many subdivisions. In Far Journeys, Robert Monroe describes the bardo as having hundreds of levels.

*46 In Mahayana Buddhism, dharmakaya is the source and essence of the universe, beyond existence and nonexistence. Nirmanakaya is the manifest physical universe; it is you and me and everything that exists. For more on this distinction, see chapter 10.

*47 I don’t know why Africa played such a prominent role in this session. I have used African music in my sessions before, but not in this particular session.

*48 Quoted in Underhill [1911] 1961, 61.

*49 1981; 1988; 1991.

*50 This loss of one’s session memory, which holds and integrates all one’s prior session experiences, represents a different and deeper form of death than ego-death. In appendix I, I refer to it as the death of the shamanic persona.

*51 By “our consciousness” I do not mean just our personal consciousness; I also mean the collective consciousness of our species, which defines the limits within which our personal consciousness operates.

*52 See Dark Night, Early Dawn, chapter 9, “The Fate of Individuality” (Bache 2000), and “Reincarnation and the Akashic-Field: A Dialogue with Ervin Laszlo” (Bache 2006).

*53 Klein 1995, 177.

*54 “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet” by Garvin Bryars.

*55 The sixteenth-century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross once expressed a similar sentiment: “Invested with an invincible courage, filled with an impassioned desire to suffer for its God, the soul then is seized with a strange torment—that of not being allowed to suffer enough” (Oeuvres, ii, quoted in James [1902] 2002, 320).

*56 For a short summary of the themes of The Living Classroom, see Bache 2011; 2012.

*57 The following sources are listed in the order in which the authors started publishing books in this field: Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, and Jorgen Randers 1972; 1992; 2004, Peter Russell [1983] 1995; [1992] 2009, Thomas Berry 1988; 1999, Joanna Macy 1991; 2014, Richard Tarnas 1991; 2006, Duane Elgin 1993; 2001, Paul Hawken 1993; 2007, Ervin Laszlo 1994; 2010, David Korten [1995] 2001; 2006, Barbara Marx Hubbard 1998; 2001, Jean Houston 2004, Jared Diamond 2005, Charles Eisenstein 2007, Paul Gilding 2011, Anne Baring 2013, David Wallace-Wells 2019.

*58 Though he does not address the collective unconscious, the strategic futurist Richard David Hames emphasizes the role that nonlinear change will play in this historic transition: “As climate change takes hold, altering major patterns of human activity in any number of predictable and unforeseen ways, the need to comprehend the non-linear nature of change in complex systems becomes crucial Non‐linear change, undisciplined and wildly unsettling, is disconcerting precisely because we cannot be certain of anything anymore. [T]he changes we are beginning to encounter are likely to be increasingly abrupt, erratic and massively disruptive” (Hames 2010).

*59 Elliot 2019.

*60 Mahayana Buddhism teaches that there are three kayas, or modes of existence—dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya. These terms carry different meanings in different contexts. In the context of cosmology, dharmakaya is the Clear Light of Absolute Reality, the essence and source of the universe, beyond existence and nonexistence. Sambhogakaya is the Body of Bliss, an intermediate domain sometimes associated with the highest deity realm. Nirmanakaya is the Manifest Body of existence; it is you and me and the entire physical universe.

*61 Badiner and Grey 2002; Osto 2016.

*62 For more on what hell is and isn’t, see Dark Night, Early Dawn, chapter 4, “Solving the Riddle of Heaven’s Fire” (Bache 2000).

*63 Chögyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche (1938–2018) was a Dzogchen master who is considered the mindstream emanation of Adzom Drugpa (1842–1924) and Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyel (1594–1651). Was Norbu Rinpoche actually present with me this day, or did some larger consciousness clothe itself in my history with Rinpoche in order to give me this transmission? I don’t know. Whatever the vehicle, the transmission was genuine. It was every grace I could have wished to receive from my teacher.

*64 The music was an intense track titled “Anger” from Ryuichi Sakamoto’s album Discord, which I had looped to repeat.

*65 These FORMS seemed to function something like Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic fields. They gathered the learning of generations into a living blueprint of the species, a blueprint that changes and grows as the species learns.

*66 Jung [1961] 1989, 293, 295.

*67 [1961] 1989, 282–83.

*68 Lommel 2010, 51.

†69 Waters 1970.

*70 Lipski 2007:118.

*71 Bache 2014; 2015.

*72 Sheldrake 1981; 1988; 1991, and Laszlo 1995; 2003; 2004; 2014.

†73 Ego-state psychology has demonstrated that this compartmentalizing of experience is a common feature of our psychological makeup. Many areas of our inner life have this encapsulated, semiautonomous quality. In drawing this parallel with ego states, however, I want to add one qualification. Ego-state psychology tends to see ego states as created in reaction to trauma. The shamanic persona, however, is born from a surplus of blessings, from the broadening of our experiential horizons in psychedelic states of consciousness. On ego-state psychology, see Emmerson (2007), Rowan (1990), Watkins (1987), and Zinser (2011).

*74 Grof 1998; Aurobindo 1987; Satprem 1993.

*75 The sessions listed here do not follow the linear sequence shown in the other chapters because in this chapter I am gathering together pieces of sessions distributed over a five year period. The actual chronological sequence of the sessions, therefore, moves from Chapter 8, “A Benediction of Blessings,” to Chapter 10, “Diamond Luminosity”