The Way of the Psychonaut

-As a filmmaker, I try to remain a neutral observer,

but what caused me to tell Stan Grof's story

and what I learned in the process made that impossible.

My name is Susan, and for most of my life,

I felt like I really didn't belong here,

like I was born on the wrong planet.

All I could think of was how to go back.

The magic that filled my dreams

would evaporate with the daylight.

For a while, ballet seemed like the place where I belonged,

but even that eventually changed.

Then in my early 20s, I tried LSD.

For the first time, I felt lovable.

Finally, I believed in myself, and everything changed.

But without a structure to ground me,

I made bad choices that harmed my body

and others that took years to undo.

And then I discovered shamanism and learned how to journey.

Up I went, past the clouds,

beyond the Earth's atmosphere,

until I was surrounded by darkness.

I met my teachers and felt that I had known them forever.

They healed me, helped me make sense of the world,

and could explain anything.

Once I even asked for a story, and they showed me one.

I started to make changes that were difficult.

I traveled to France and fell in love.

But then we couldn't get pregnant,

and I learned that if I wanted a baby,

I'd have to tune back into Earth.

-We got a lot of candy, and we got a...

-When I thought my kids were old enough,

I tried to reconnect.

There were insights, but no upward journey

to meet my teachers.

In the search for another way to reconnect with them,

I learned about Stan Grof.

-Consciousness is not something that emerges

as an accident after billions of years of evolution,

something that requires a central nervous system.

And I had an experience that just sort of changed my life

both professionally and personally.

People get tranquilizers and get hospitalized for experiences

that in other cultures would be considered extremely valuable.

Stan Grof is known

as the pioneer of psychedelic psychotherapy.

Drawing from his own experiences

and from thousands of high-dose LSD sessions with is patients.

The insights he gained personally combined

with the experiences of his patients

expanded his understanding of the human psyche.

It stretched beyond the biographical information

that begins after we are born to memories

surrounding our time in the womb and during the birth process.

His expanded map even included the spiritual nature

of humanity,

recognizing past-life experiences

and dimensions of consciousness we share with all of creation.

Stan used these insights

to co-found Transpersonal Psychology

with Abraham Maslow,

and working with his wife, Christina,

organized international transpersonal conferences

around the world.

During much of this period,

Stan was also the scholar-in-residence

at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur.

Spiritual masters and groundbreaking pioneers

representing a broad spectrum of disciplines

were frequent guests at the workshops

and month-long retreats he offered

during his 14 years there.

It was there that Stan and Christina

developed Holotropic Breathwork,

a breathing technique that could induce

powerful non-ordinary states of consciousness

similar to an LSD session.

I had to meet Stan.

On some deep level I knew

he could help me find my way back in.

When I learned he would be teaching a course,

I signed up immediately.

I was so far talking about

non-ordinary states of consciousness,

but I have been all these 60 years now interested

in a very significant large subgroup

of these non-ordinary experiences

for which current psychology has no special name.

They're all put in the category

of altered states of consciousness.

What it suggests somehow is that there's a correct way

of experiencing ourselves in the world,

and that in these states, it's distorted.

We have to use this new psychology

if we want to use effectively Holotropic states.

You know, if you want to run psychedelic sessions

or do Holotropic Breathwork,

or if we want to work with people

who are in spiritual emergency.

-I had read about Stan's theories

on how our experiences in the womb

affected our unconscious,

but to hear him explain it gave me a whole new understanding.

-...that the experiences, if you regress to birth,

the experiences come in four patterns.

I call them perinatal matrices, basic perinatal matrices.

The first perinatal matrix relates to the situation

of the fetus still in the womb

before the onset of the delivery.

This could be pregnancy which is a result of planning,

of the parents' loving expectation.

The mother is physically healthy,

is in emotionally good condition.

Reliving of that kind of state

would be a very ecstatic experience.

Now, this doesn't necessarily happen.

There are pregnancy which are a result of rape,

of a one-night stand when both parents were drunk,

where the marriage was broken,

the mother is abused physically

and emotionally unhealthy.

The pregnancy could be so unwelcome

that there are attempts at abortion.

Another possibility, the mother is Rh negative,

the father is Rh positive,

so that from the beginning the fetus is being attacked,

immunologically treated as an invader.

Come nine months, plus/minus,

this is the onset of the delivery.

First hormonal changes which are then translated

into mechanical contractions of the uterus.

Each contraction compresses the arteries

and interrupts placentary circulation

between the mother and the child

which means no supply of oxygen, no nourishment coming in,

and there's no removal of metabolic products.

There's no resolution for it because the cervix is not open,

just contractions of the uterus in a closed system.

Now, with each contraction,

the cervix is being pulled over the head.

It's dilating.

When it reaches the necessary size,

then it's the transition to the third matrix.

The contractions continue with all the consequences,

but the cervix is now open,

so there is this laborious propulsions

through the birth canal.

Now there are tremendous pressures here.

Suffocation and the pain generate powerful energy

which has all the qualities of sexual energy.

Our first encounter with sexual energy,

we were inflicting pain on another organism.

Another organism was inflecting pain on us.

We couldn't breathe.

There were a lot of pressures and fear.

This kind of experience then can become

the basis of the development of various sexual dysfunctions,

deviations, aberrations, perversions.

Then we have the completion of the delivery,

headfirst or feetfirst, and then the umbilical cord is cut.

From then on the child exists

as an anatomically independent individual,

still biologically emotionally dependent, of course.

The matrices begin with unity,

transition to Hell with no escape,

then to purgatory with the end in sight

where you are the victim and the perpetrator and the observer,

and finally culminate in freedom

and a newfound sense of connection.

-Thank you very much for... -As Stan finished,

I remembered the rebirthing workshop

I'd taken at Rajneeshpuram back in the '80s.

I felt like I was dropping into a deep pit

that grew more painful as I descended.

Just when I thought I was going to die,

I burst through into an ocean of love and light.

Joseph Campbell is best known for his work

in comparing mythologies and religions

from cultures around the world.

He met Stan in the late '60s

at a conference in New York City.

When Campbell heard Stan's theory

on the four perinatal matrices, he instantly solved a mystery

that had intrigued him for years.

He couldn't understand how cultures

from diverse geographical locations

could share the same death-rebirth themes.

He called it a monomyth.

But when he saw Stan's presentation,

he understand that these cultures

were reliving the experience of their own births.

The perinatal matrices,

especially the third moving into the fourth,

served as the threshold for the "Hero's Journey."

The rites of passage that these cultures developed

allowed their initiates

to access unconscious birth memories,

face their fear of death and finally free themselves

from a deep maternal dependency.

-Birth itself is not only a rite of passage,