Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research

This book is not only revolutionary for understanding the dynamics of LSD and psychedelics, it teaches the deepest human levels of consciousness and how everything we experience, small or large, has a profound impact on our subconscious mind. This book changed my world view about how to treat people, living life, death, trauma, and other crude but ultimately objective realities of our existence as humans. While I've never tried any psychedelics before, this book has opened the door for me regarding its usage in clinical and therapeutic atmospheres to help people overcome trauma or other illnesses. It's time to end the war on drugs and take physicians and scientists like Grof seriously.

Just finished reading this book. After reading several books on spirituality, quantum physics, etc. etc. I have to say that this book is nothing short of amazing. To have a glimpse of what the mind or consciousness is capable of is truly remarkable. Even if you question the validity of past experiences from the LSD subjects it is still remarkable what the mind is capable of.

Read this book in graduate school and never saw human consciousness the same way. Groff proved Jung's theory of collective unconscious was true clinically. Blew my mind. Have loaned my copies out and never gotten them back. This order was my third copy.

Very informative book, evidence based

...about a fascinating topic. I had the chance to "drop acid" when I was younger but declined. If it could happen in a controlled environment with a known quality product under prefessional supervision I'd go for it.

It's the third time I've bought this book- people borrow it but it doesn't return. Grof's experience and vast knowledge of ancient cultures add to the enjoyment of this introduction to his theory. His own experiences are quite interesting and thought provoking..

Good

Maybe we have to be born with an interest in the origin of consciousness, where it resides and how it operates, I'm one of those people. No explanation garnered by science, religion, mystics, or from indigenous wisdom has ever fully approximated what I've seen in the world. Transpersonal psychologist Stanislov Grof's first book, Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research (Dutton, 1976) reveals many fascinating accounts relayed from his personal experience while conducting hundreds of LSD sessions with patients. Grof offers his comments on what the trends of these experiences hint at, frankly admitting in the epilogue that such outlandish comments will draw harsh commentary from peers, but is wise in saying that omitting them will only continue the retardation of humanity's ability to understand the final frontier: the human mind.Grof discovered from working with patients suffering particular neuroses that a condensed experience brought about by ingesting a few hundred micrograms of lysergic acid diethylamide can induce profound healing experiences allowing people to transcend even lifelong problems. Many of the accounts are quite gruesome as Grof is working with some particularly psychotic people, he spares no details and I felt my gut wrench as descriptions of rapes, abuse, war scenes poured from the pages. However hard these accounts were to read, it was the very ability to relive these experiences (sometimes even from the perspective of others at the scene) that allowed the patients to ultimately improve.The description of the power and capabilities of this condensed experience (COEX) framework makes up a large portion of the book. Grof notes that these highly symbolic psychodynamic experiences consist of material originating in the human unconscious. However, time after time, Grof wondered about the accuracy of the scenes and situations described by his patients reliving these condensed experiences. In those cases where he could follow up, he did so and confirmed that sometimes the details were quite exact. For example, a patient named Dana described a traumatic event that occurred when she around 12 months of age. Dana drew elaborate images of the room she was in at that time, including the patterns of embroideries. Grof independently followed up with Dana's mother and learned that the mother found Dana's description bristling with accuracy. The room was described almost photographically by Dana and was, "unquestionable because of the very unusual character of the furniture and some of the objects involved." There was no way Dana could have known this because before Dana was two years old, the family moved and the house was condemned, torn down and the furniture and objects weren't retained. There were no photographs of the room and the mother didn't recall ever mentioning anything from that room to Dana.Another interesting observation Grof passes on is that repeated LSD sessions almost always led to the patient reliving his or her birth and various trauma associated with the birthing process. Patients would describe thoughts, feelings, and toxins that were passed to them by their mother while in the womb and in rare cases described exact scenarios their mother faced. Grof is highly skeptical (as I think we all should be) that the perinatal experience can pass on such a multitude of information to the eventual individual, forming the bases for neuroses and locking in patterns of life however there is a significant amount of evidence that (at the least) should amplify the significance of a birth.The transpersonal, mystical and multidimensional experiences patients faced with quite regularity after reliving a birth experience were highly interesting. Grof breaks these phenomena into multiple categories: ancestral experiences, collective and racial experiences, past incarnation experiences, procognition/time travel, out of body experiences, ego transcendence, space travels, telepathy, animal/plant/planetary/extraplanetary consciousness, encounters with extradimensional intelligences/entities, intuitive understandings of universal symbols and consciousness of the universal mind. He then proceeds by laying out accounts describing these particular scenarios. The final two chapters which include these accounts are sometimes shocking but thoroughly mind blowing. One example: the ability for a patient to assume specific advanced yogic poses despite not even knowing what yoga is. To summarize these experiences would be to completely strip them of any comprehension so its best to watch Grof's videos on YouTube. I was continually amazed by the ability of patients to describe complex mythological sequences from obscure religions (ex. ahura mazda v ahriman from Zoroastrianism) or when patients described traumatic experiences from their parent's early childhood they had no way of knowing (but that Grof could confirm through follow-up with parents). Reading over these accounts seems to point to some sort of collective mind, encoded in our DNA or accessible in altered states of consciousness, something like the morphic fields Dr. Rupert Sheldrake has been working on. Equally amazing were the detailed accounts of alternate universes and the beings within.Realms of the Human Unconscious indicates that the human mind is not only our most powerful asset but also our most underused asset as we rarely develop it. Perhaps consciousness is like a radio station we've tuned into for the time being, by modifying the receptors in our brains we can temporarily turn the dial on the radio hardware, allowing us to pick up a different signal. As Grof states early in the book, "It does not seem inappropriate and exaggerated to compare their [psychoactive drugs] potential significance for psychiatry and psychology to that of the microscope for medicine or the telescope for astronomy." I find it deplorable that society has been unable to build much on Grof's work in the last 33 years and this inability to accept responsibility for our unconscious is clearly leading to global complexity our current technology can no longer handle.