Stanislav Grof Quotes

Each of us can manifest the properties of a field of consciousness that transcends space, time, and linear causality.

Consciousness does not just passively reflect the objective material world; it plays an active role in creating reality itself.

Dying before dying has two important consequences: It liberates the individual from the fear of death and influences the actual experience of dying at the time of biological demise.

He suddenly understood the message of so many spiritual teachers that the only revolution that can work is the inner transformation of every human being.

In the kind of world we have today, transformation of humanity might well be our only real hope for survival.

I believe it is essential for our planetary future to develop tools that can change the consciousness which has created the crisis that we are in.

It is possible to spend one's entire lifetime without ever experiencing the mystical realms or even without being aware of their existence.

Whether or not we believe in survival of consciousness after death, reincarnation, and karma, it has very serious implications for our behavior.

A text of Tibetan Buddhism describes the time of death as a unique opportunity for spiritual liberation from the cycles of death and rebirth and a period that determines our next incarnation.

The new formula in physics describes humans as paradoxical beings who have two complementary aspects: They can show properties of Newtonian objects and also infinite fields of consciousness.

Dying people in pre-industrial cultures typically died in the context of an extended family, clan, or tribe.

According to materialistic science, any memory requires a material substrate, such as the neuronal network in the brain or the DNA molecules of the genes.

The human psyche shows that each individual is an extension of all of existence.

Ancient eschatological texts are actually maps of the inner territories of the psyche that seem to transcend race and culture and originate in the collective unconscious.

The elimination of the fear of death transforms the individual's way of being in the world.

Many of us who have experienced psychedelics feel very much that they are sacred tools. They open spiritual awareness.

Consciousness after death demonstrates the possibility of consciousness operating independently of the body.

There is no fundamental difference between the preparation for death and the practice of dying, and spiritual practice leading to enlightenment.

Coming to terms with the fear of death is conducive to healing, positive personality transformation, and consciousness evolution.

If consciousness can function independently of the body during one's lifetime, it could be able to do the same after death.

As long as I had easy access to psychedelics at the government-sponsored research project, most of my energy went into psychedelic sessions.

An important consequence of freeing oneself from the fear of death is a radical opening to spirituality of a universal and non-denominational type.

The study of consciousness that can extend beyond the body is extremely important for the issue of survival, since it is this part of human personality that would be likely to survive death.

LSD is a catalyst or amplifier of mental processes. If properly used it could become something like the microscope or telescope of psychiatry.

I have to say I regretted giving up animated movies.

In some instances, the accuracy of past-life memories can be objectively verified, sometimes with remarkable detail.

It became much more complicated politically to work with psychedelics because of the unsupervised experimentation with psychedelics, particularly among young people.

Unlike scientism, science in the true sense of the word is open to unbiased investigation of any existing phenomena.

The beliefs concerning reincarnation have great ethical impact on human life and our relationship to the world.

At a time when unbridled greed, malignant aggression, and existence of weapons of mass destruction threatens the survival of humanity, we should seriously consider any avenue that offers some hope.

I have taken part in ceremonies with North American and Mexican shamans, as well as Brazilian ceremonies.

I spent much of my later childhood and adolescence very, very involved and interested in art, and particularly in animated movies.

I read Freud's Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis in basically one sitting. I decided to enroll in medical school. It was almost like a conversion experience.

The experiences associated with death were seen as visits to important dimensions of reality that deserved to be experienced, studied, and carefully mapped.

The materialistic paradigm of Western science has been a major obstacle for any objective evaluation of the data describing the events occurring at the time of death.

When you read the psychedelic literature, there is a distinction between the so-called natural psychedelics and synthetic psychedelics that are artificially produced.

Research challenges the materialistic understanding of death, according to which biological death represents the final end of existence and of all conscious activity.

A number of cases have been reported in which a dying individual has a vision of a person about whose death he or she did not know.

The motif of death plays an important role the human psyche in connection with archetypal and karmic material.

Many cultures have independently developed a belief system in reincarnation that includes return of the unit of consciousness to another physical lifetime on Earth.

Patients reported that their psychedelic sessions were an invaluable experiential training for dying.

The knowledge of the realm of death makes it possible for the shaman to move freely back and forth and mediate these journeys for other people.

Freud said that we are born as a tabula rasa. This is a model that simply is too superficial and inadequate.

There is an urgent need for a radical revision of our current concepts of the nature of consciousness and its relationship to matter and the brain.

The psyche of the individual is commensurate with the totality of creative energy. This requires a most radical revision of Western psychology.

It is possible to transcend the usual limitations of the body, ego, space, and linear time.

The function of the brain is to reduce all the available information and lock us into a limited experience of the world. LSD frees us from this restriction and opens us to a much larger experience.

There are people who can start having very powerful experiences without taking psychedelics. It can happen against their will. This is a universal phenomenon.

Ritual use of psychedelic plants and substances has been a particularly effective technology for inducing holotropic states of consciousness.

It is possible to see the intermediate state between lives as being in a way more important than incarnate existence.