Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments:
An Entheogen Chrestomathy
Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D. and Paula Jo Hruby, Ed.D.
Author Index | Title Index
Beyond Death: The Gates of Consciousness.
Grof, Stanislav, and Grof, Christina.
(1980).
New York: Thames and Hudson.
ISBN: 0-500-81019-2
Description: First edition,
paperback, 96 pages. Art and the Imagination Series.
Contents: The gates of
consciousness, plates, themes, bibliography, and acknowledgments.
Note: 158 illustrations,
17 in color.
Excerpt(s): The concepts
of the afterlife in different cultures display striking parallels;
their images of Heaven, Paradise, Hell and Purgatory
and of the posthumous journey of the soul would appear to be archetypal,
arising not from the particular cultural context but from a "death
and rebirth" process inbuilt in human nature. Stanislav and
Christina Grof have assembled vivid documentation from many religions
and cultures: Christian, Jewish, Moslem, ancient Greek, Persian,
Egyptian, East Indian, Tibetan, Pre-Columbian and
various preliterate societ ies. They draw illuminating
parallels with the accounts of those who have survived clinical
death, and the death and rebirth episodes experienced by schizophrenic
patients and by those who have passed through psychedelic states
induced under controlled conditions and explored in experimental
psychiatry.
The traditional depictions of the afterlife can
act as guides to assist the dying, while confrontation with death
during life can lead not just to loss of the fear of death but
to a more satisfying way of living-an ancient wisdom that modern
psychiatry is only now rediscovering. (back cover)
The most interesting aspect of psychedelic substances,
from this point of view, is the fact that they can induce, without
any specific programming and guidance, profound death-rebirth
experiences, and facilitate spiritual opening. The human unconscious,
activated chemically, actually tends to enact spontaneously a
powerful confrontation with death that can result in transcendence.
(page 25)
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