An interview with Stanislav Grof By Rick Archer (BATGAP)

www.scienceandnonduality.com/
Stan Grof is a psychiatrist with more than 50 years of experience researching the healing and transformative potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness. One of the founders and chief theoreticians of Transpersonal Psychology, he received an Honorary Award for major contributions to, and development of the field, from the Association for Transpersonal Psychology in 1993. Dr. Grof is the founder and president of the International Transpersonal Association. He continues to lecture and teach training programs in Holotropic Breathwork and Transpersonal Psychology. Dr. Grof is Professor of Psychology at CIIS and teaches at Pacifica Graduate Institute.
www.stanislavgrof.com

[@miraristic5322]

SUCH A BEAUTIFUL MAN.....SO MUCH KNOWLEDGE...PERFECT ENGLISH......OCEAN OF WISDOM......THANK YOU Mr.GROF FOR SHARING ALL OF THIS WITH US....GOD BLESS YOU......YOU DID NOT WASTE YOUR LIFE....YOU DID IT...!!!!!!!!!

[@varasuetamminga9519]

For me the change which comes after a mystical experience is the knowledge that anyone who promotes cruelty or violence or contempt towards others has not reached this level of oneness. Religious or political warfare or persecution is impossible after a mystical experience, no matter how long ago the experience has occurred. I had several mystical experiences as a teenager. Throughout my life, because of them I have always known when someone promotes violence or cruelty or arrogance or greed that they have not experienced the true oneness. So many religious fanatics promote war or persecution. By doing so, they proclaim their rejection or their ignorance of the infinite oneness of God. What they grip so fiercely is their limited concept of God, not a full mystical experience of his Grace and Glory. The oneness, as Jesus, and Buddha and Moses taught, brings an allegiance to compassion and non violence. Gandhi, Tolstoy, MLK , Schweitzer, and JFK resisted the efforts of the military or of popular uprisings to draw them into the violence war or revolution. Remember Gandhi fasting in order to end the revolution in India because it had become violent. His commitment to non violence grew out of his spiritual vision of transcendent oneness of all beings. Also Thomas Kelly, the 20th century Quaker philosopher and mystic has the best descriptions for me of continual prayer in his Testament of Devotion and The Eternal Promise. He describes working with the Eastern Orthodox Jesus Prayer so that it continually repeats in the psyche throughout waking activity.

[@jamesthomas1244]

If your "mystical experiences" resulted in you now feeling superior and more holy than others -- as it appears -- they caused you more harm than good.

[@kimlong-sf9ke]

He never said he felt superior.

[@kimlong-sf9ke]

I know exactly the " mystical experience " he's talking about.

[@claresaxonghauri1581]

Our collective grandad ❤

[@Daniel_TransformationCoach]

Does anyone know a talk of Stanislav where he adresses all the concerns about psychedelic usage?

[@pabloganimedes1]

In minute 33:29 I can´t understand what Grof mean by breathing practice, could someone who has knowledge of the topic explain what cultures he mention?

[@lucasvermot1553]

Pablo Rodriguez holotropic breath

[@angmarc7187]

Hi Pablo, a very long time ago Stan did LSD research. Sometimes at the end of the session, some people had not finished totally and asked Stan for some physical manoeuvres to facilitate the remaining energies to express. Also some people, quite naturally, told Stan that breathing faster and deeper came to them naturally and helped them express these unfinished energies expressions. Stan realized that these physical interventions and breathings were really good as secondary tools to LSD to finish the session. For example, if the therapist pushes you in a place you can vomit and is finished, you then feel OK. Or breathing comes out of your inner healing wisdom and help you go back a bit into deeper states of consciousness. When LSD was banned for research, Stan remembered these situations and used the secondary tool of breathing as his primary tool for his work with people. Stan realized people were having the same kind of experiences than with LSD. Breathing practices are being used for millennia in some spiritual cultures like the Hindu, they use as a powerful tool for awakening spiritually a breathing control technique or pranayama, called bashtrika, wich is practically what Stan does even though Stan and his clients discovered it indepently to Hindu culture. I practice Yoga and know what is bhastrika, which is the breathing that Stan referes in 33:29 and I also took several Stan practice breathwork called holotropic breathwork. Both breathings are the same.

[@PureBelovedParsley]

Ang MARC, commenting, here, three years later....

[@PureBelovedParsley]

Pablo Rodriguez...

[@PureBelovedParsley]

I’ve done Holotropic Breathwork, similar therapeutic Breathwork, and then did Sudarshan Kriya for years.... which involves pranayamas, bhastrika, and circular breathing in different speeds/rhythms... and lots of healings of the “mind” (collective or personal) can occur. I’ve not done LSD or Ayhausca (spelling?).

[@savedfaves]

37:59 an American actually said the correct phrase for this. Super!

[@zofiajutro7930]

Very bad interviewer

[@zofiajutro7930]

He looks like 65 years old, but he ask questions like he's 20.

[@otiliu]

Reminds me of people who.smoke weed a lot and think everything reflects around them and interrupt others mid sentence

[@PureBelovedParsley]

There is an awkwardness in this interviewing, but my sense is Rick Archer had a particular time limit for the interview, so he’s wanting more concise answers so as to cover a lot of ground, but Stanislof Groff is talking in a very meandering, slow and detailed way. I think Rick would have handled it a bit differently if he could have allotted 3 hours for the interview rather than 50 minutes or so. Rick interviews quite well on his regular batgap channel.

[@zofiajutro7930]

@@PureBelovedParsley ok thank you for you comment.

[@anthonydowling3356]

@@zofiajutro7930 Rick is now 72 .If that was 4 years ago as indicated ,he was 68 y there.Check his regular interviews called Buddha at the gas pump .He has done over 500 and each is 2 hours long .I like him as an interviewer but a lot also depends on whom he is interviewing .