LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven
352LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven
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Overview
• Chronicles, with unprecedented rigor, the author’s systematic journey into a unified field of consciousness that underlies all physical existence
• Makes a powerful case for the value of psychedelically induced spiritual experience and discusses the challenge of integrating these experiences into everyday life
• Shows how psychedelic experience can take you beyond self-transformation into collective transformation and help birth the future of humanity
On November 24, 1979, Christopher M. Bache took the first step on what would become a life-changing journey. Drawing from his training as a philosopher of religion, Bache set out to explore his mind and the mind of the universe as deeply and systematically as possible--with the help of the psychedelic drug LSD. Following protocols established by Stanislav Grof, Bache’s 73 high-dose LSD sessions over the course of 20 years drew him into a deepening communion with cosmic consciousness.
Journey alongside professor Bache as he touches the living intelligence of our universe--an intelligence that both embraced and crushed him--and demonstrates how direct experience of the divine can change your perspective on core issues in philosophy and religion. Chronicling his 73 sessions, the author reveals the spiral of death and rebirth that took him through the collective unconscious into the creative intelligence of the universe. Making a powerful case for the value of psychedelically induced spiritual experience, Bache shares his immersion in the fierce love and creative intent of the unified field of consciousness that underlies all physical existence. He describes the incalculable value of embracing the pain and suffering he encountered in his sessions and the challenges he faced integrating his experiences into his everyday life. His journey documents a shift from individual consciousness to collective consciousness, from archetypal reality to Divine Oneness and the Diamond Luminosity that lies outside cyclic existence.
Pushing the boundaries of theory and practice, the author shows how psychedelic experience can take you beyond self-transformation into collective transformation, beyond the present into the future, revealing spirit and matter in perfect balance.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781620559710 |
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Publisher: | Inner Traditions/Bear & Company |
Publication date: | 11/26/2019 |
Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
Format: | eBook |
Pages: | 352 |
Sales rank: | 381,582 |
File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Ervin Laszlo is a philosopher and systems scientist. Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, he has published more than 75 books and over 400 articles and research papers. The subject of the one-hour PBS special Life of a Modern-Day Genius, Laszlo is the founder and president of the international think tank the Club of Budapest and of the prestigious Laszlo Institute of New Paradigm Research. The winner of the 2017 Luxembourg Peace Prize, he lives in Tuscany. In 2019, Ervin Laszlo was cited as one of the "100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People in the World" according to Watkins Mind Body Spirit magazine.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 6. Initiation into the Universe
Sessions 18-24
Expanding the Narrative--Who is the Patient?
I don’t think these six sessions are well served by further commentary. Every time I attempt it I find that my words dilute their message, so better to let them stand as they are. In the last section of this chapter I want to pivot from experience to theory. Theory pales before experience and can feel like a weak postscript, and it is, but in order for me to integrate my experiences, I had to understand them. This required that I expand my understanding of what is possible in these states and how the universe works in them.
Individual Model
When I began this work, I was thinking in terms of a model of transformation that held that the purpose of undergoing these exercises was to heal and enlighten the individual. When Grof discussed the therapeutic impact of psychedelic therapy, he always focused on how it affected the individual patient, and occasionally the patient’s significant partner. When he reflected on how this therapeutic movement might influence the emerging global crisis, he did so in terms of the cumulative impact of healing large numbers of people one person at a time. Accordingly, when the ocean of suffering opened after what had appeared to be a solid ego-death in sessions 9-10, I interpreted it to mean that some stubborn remnant of my ego must have slipped through the therapeutic net and that my ego-death was unfinished. I thought that this collective suffering would eventually lead to a more complete ego-death.
Eventually, however, this interpretation was overwhelmed by the sheer intensity and quantity of the suffering involved. These episodes went on for too many years and were too extreme in their content for me to continue seeing them as collective experiences drawn in through resonance to the core of my unfinished ego-death. This eventually forced me to reassess the boundaries of this entire enterprise. The conclusion I came to, both intellectually and experientially, was that these collective episodes were not aimed primarily at the transformation of my personal consciousness. Instead, they were aimed at nothing less than the transformation of the collective psyche as a whole.
Collective Model
I wrote Dark Night, Early Dawn in part to answer the question: Why did death become as large as it did in my psychedelic journey? What is driving the healing process when it opens to such collective tracts? In that book I abandoned the person-centered narrative I had been assuming and adopted an expanded narrative. By integrating Rupert Sheldrake’s concept of morphic fields into Grof’s paradigm, the way opened to viewing these collective ordeals as part of a larger transformational process aimed at healing wounds still carried in the collective psyche. I argued that in highly energized psychedelic states, the collective unconscious is sometimes activated to such a degree or in such a manner that it triggers a collective healing process. Through some fractal flip or quantum entanglement I had not anticipated or even thought possible at the time, the “patient” in my sessions had shifted from being me to being some portion of humanity itself.
This interpretation proposes that the working of the collective psyche parallels the working of the personal psyche in key respects. It proposes that just as painful experiences can accumulate and block the healthy functioning of the individual, similar blockages can occur at the collective level. It suggests that the unresolved anguish of human history might still be active in the collective memory of our species, burdening its life just as our personal unresolved anguish burdens ours.
Continuing the parallel, if the conscious engagement of unresolved pain can bring therapeutic relief at the personal level, the same may also occur at the species-level. Normally we would expect such healing to take the form of historical reform movements or cultural shifts in which large numbers of people confront and heal some painful legacy from our past. Within the context of LSD therapy, however, a new possibility seems to be emerging. In this setting an individual seems to be able to tap into and directly facilitate a healing of some portion of the collective psyche. The process of engaging and healing a collective META-COEX system in a psychedelic session is essentially the same as engaging and healing a personal COEX system, but enacted on a much larger scale and a different level of consciousness. Grof has embraced this expansion of his paradigm.
I came to this conclusion only after great struggle. For years I kept trying to fit my psychedelic experiences into the model of individual transformation. Opening to a narrative of collective transformation felt monstrously arrogant. How can a single person impact something as large as the collective unconscious of our species? It felt like I was inflating my ego even to suggest the possibility, and yet this shift was demanded by the experiences themselves. Not only did the quantity of suffering shatter the myth of individual therapy, but the quality of suffering was demonstrating that this was an inherently collective dynamic. Years later, I learned that Marie-Louise von Franz, a life-long collaborator with Carl Jung, had come to a similar conclusion about the collective import of deep transformative work.
Moving to a model of collective transformation represented an enormous transition for me because with this pivot we are no longer speaking of an individual “having transpersonal experiences.” Here the individual dissolves into pre-existing fields of collective consciousness. At this point it is these collective fields that become the “working unit” of experience in these sessions. This requires a new way of thinking about what is taking place in our sessions and a new therapeutic calculus. In letting go of the person-centered narrative, I was surrendering to a universe whose workings were stranger and more complex than I had previously imagined
Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsForeword by Ervin Laszlo
INTRODUCTION
73 Days
ONE
The Path of Temporary Immersion
TWO
Crossing the Boundary of Birth and Death
THREE
A Session Day
FOUR
The Ocean of Suffering
FIVE
Deep Time and the Soul
SIX
Initiation into the Universe
SEVEN
The Greater Real of Archetypal Reality
EIGHT
A Benediction of Blessings
NINE
The Birth of the Future Human
TEN
Diamond Luminosity
ELEVEN
Final Vision
TWELVE
Coming off the Mountain
APPENDIX I
What Dies and Is Reborn?
APPENDIX II
Pushing the Limits of Astrological
Correspondence
Reference List
Index