ological, and biochemical aspects of the processes involved. Similarly, ancestral, racial and collective memories and past incarnation experiences provide quite frequently very specific details about architecture, costumes, weapons, art forms, social structure, and religious and ritual practices of the culture and historical period involved, or even concrete historical events. People who have phylogenetic experiences or experience identification with existing life forms not only find them unusually authentic and convincing, but often acquire in the process extraordinary insights concerning animal psychology, ethology, specific habits, or unusual reproductive cycles. In some instances, this is accompanied by archaic muscular innervations not characteristic for humans, or even such complex behaviors as enactment of a courtship dance of a particular animal species. The philosophical and scientific challenge associated with the already described observations, as formidable as it is all by itself, is further augmented by the fact that transpersonal experiences correctly reflecting the material world often appear on the same continuum as and intimately interwoven with others that contain elements which the Western industrial world does not consider to be real. Here belong, for example, experiences involving deities and demons from various cultures, mythological realms such as heavens and paradises, and legendary or fairy-tale sequences. For example, one can have an experience of Shiva’s heaven, of the paradise of the Aztec rain god Tlaloc, of the Sumerian underworld, or of one of the Buddhist hot hells. It is also possible to communicate with Jesus, have a shattering encounter with the Hindu goddess Kali, or identify with the dancing Shiva. Even these episodes can impart accurate new information about religious symbolism and mythical motifs that were previously unknown to the person involved. Observations of this kind confirm C. G. Jung’s idea that beside the Freudian individual unconscious we can also gain access to the collective unconscious that contains the cultural heritage of all humanity. It is not an easy task to convey in a few sentences conclusions from daily observations from over fifty years of research of holotropic states of consciousness and make this statement believable. It is not realistic to expect that a few sentences would be able to override the deeply culturally ingrained world-view in those of the readers who are not familiar with the transpersonal dimension and who cannot relate what I say to their own personal experiences. Although I myself had many experiences of holotropic states and the opportunity to observe them closely in thousands of other people, it took me years to fully absorb the impact of this cognitive shock. Because of space considerations, I cannot present detailed case histories that could help to illustrate the nature of transpersonal experiences and the insights which they make available. I have to refer those readers who would like to explore this area further to my books The Adventure of Self-Discovery andPsychology of the Future (Grof 1978, 2000), where I discuss in detail various types of transpersonal experiences and give many illustrative examples of situations where they provided unusual new information about different aspects of the universe. The same books also describe Spirituality Studies 2 (1) Spring 2016 27
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