Science meets the super-normal in Stanislav Grof’s school of mental health study

In the 1980s transpersonal psychology staple and Way of the Psychonaut author Stanislav Grof found himself inventing holotropic breath work out of necessity after LSD faded from grace.

Reflecting courageously on the flaws of transpersonal psychology, where science meets the super-normal, he nonetheless pointed out that the approach showed enormous potential for a range of treatment resistant diseases. And that it could be applied to other fields: like ecology, business, social work, maybe even medicine itself again someday.

“The psychology of transformative experience” is how Dr Luke describes ‘transpersonal psychology’. Back in polite conversation thanks to Iain McGilchrist’s philosophy blockbuster The Matter with Things it’s the shrinks’ most progressive field, big in the 60s at Esalen and back with a vengeance thanks to everyone from ecologists to talk therapy refuseniks and engineers of the zero-point field, to pharma giants and governments with nationalised healthcare and their eyes on psychedelics’ potential to cure disease and reboot productivity. 

“The only revolution that can work is the inner transformation of every human being”

The transpersonal are “moments that evolve your current ego identity… by stepping outside normal consciousness to connection with a wider other,” explains Dr Luke. You’re in the realm of the transpersonal when you’re feeling warm and clear after meditating or making it to church: plus when acknowledging childhood trauma, or during a full revelatory, inner-visual spiritual experience… or being abducted by aliens, having a spontaneous DMT exprience, astral projecting, arguably dreaming and so on.

The discipline is “ethnogenic, cognicentric and pragmacentric” meaning entirely inclusive and accepting of other modes of consciousness. It evolved throughout the 20th century from William James’ ‘radical empiricism’ – scientific testing for the mysterious and hitherto unknown – to include Burke’s ‘cosmic consciousness’, Jung and Maslow’s pining for the mystic, and ‘post religious’ belief systems like Ken Wilbur’s integral.

You still have to do the graft though. “The only revolution that can work… is the inner transformation of every human being,” said Grof, and transpersonal psychology includes a faith in humanity’s ability to evolve not only physically but mentally, spiritually… and psionically. 

“The mycelium is the message” grins Dr Luke, “other societies have sanctioned altered states, while ours refuses their existence.”

Don’t confuse transpersonal psychology with quantum psychology.