episode was just a wishful fabrication of her own mind, Walter appeared once more for a brief period of time and asked Eva to return a book that he had borrowed from a friend of his. He then proceeded to give her the name of the friend, the roomwhere it was, the name of the book, the shelf, and the sequential order of the book on this shelf. Following the instructions, Eva was actually able to find and return the book, about the existence of which she had had no previous knowledge. One of the psychologists participating in our three year professional training had witnessed a wide variety of transpersonal experiences during the Holotropic Breathwork sessions of his colleagues, and he had a few of them himself. However, he continued to be very skeptical about the authenticity of these phenomena, constantly questioning whether or not they deserved any special attention. Then, in one of his holotropic sessions, he experienced an unusual synchronicity that convinced him that he might have been too conservative in his approach to human consciousness. Toward the end of the session, he had a vivid experience of encountering his grandmother, who had been dead for many years. He had been very close to her in his childhood and he was deeply moved by the possibility that he might be really communicating with her again. In spite of a deep emotional involvement in the experience, he continued to maintain an attitude of professional skepticism about the encounter. Naturally, he had had many real interactions with his grandmother while she was alive and theorized that his mind could have easily created an imaginary encounter from these old memories. However, this meeting with his dead grandmother was so emotionally profound and convincing that he simply could not dismiss it as a wishful fantasy. He decided to seek proof that the experience was real, not just his imagination. He asked his grandmother for some form of confirmation and received the following message: “Go to aunt Anna and look for cut roses.” Still skeptical, he decided on the following weekend to visit his aunt Anna’s home and see what would happen. Upon his arrival, he found his aunt in the garden, surrounded by cut roses. He was astonished. The day of his visit just happened to be the one-day of the year that his aunt had decided to do some radical pruning of her roses. Experiences of this kind are certainly far from being a definitive proof of the existence of astral realms and discarnate beings. However, these astonishing synchronicities clearly suggest that this fascinating area deserves serious attention of consciousness researchers. Of special interest is the quasi-experimental evidence suggestive of survival of consciousness after death that comes from the highly charged and controversial area of spiritistic seances and mental or trance mediumship. Although some of the professional mediums have been caught cheating, others such as Mrs. Piper, Mrs. Leonard, and Mrs. Verall, withstood all the tests and gained a high esteem of careful and reputable researchers (Grosso 1994). The best media have been able to accurately reproduce in their performance the deceased’s voice, speech patterns, gestures, mannerisms, and other characteristic features. On occasion, the received information was unknown to any of the present persons or even to any living person whatsoever. There 26 (24) Stanislav Grof
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