S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 2 - 2 Fa l l 2 0 1 6 1 7 Stanislav Grof concepts of reincarnation and karma, ideas that seem to be surprisingly neglected in Ken’s discussions of spirituality in spite of their paramount cultural significance. The concept of reincarnation and karma represents a cornerstone of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, and Taoism. Various forms of belief in previous existences can be found in such historically, geographically, and culturally diverse groups as the Neoplatonists and Gnostics, various African tribes, American Indians, Pre-Columbian cultures, the Polynesian kahunas, and the practitioners of the Brazilian umbanda. Since such beliefs are based on experiences of events in other historical periods, they involve as a necessary prerequisite temporal regression of consciousness to earlier stages of human evolution. Conscious re-experiencing of episodes from human history and from the evolution of the species, of the earth, or of the entire universe has been an important part of many mystical experiences resulting in spiritual opening and growth. The psychospiritual alchemical process has been described as opus contra naturam, working against nature, since it involves the discovery of the spiritual dimensions of existence by retracing not only one’s own psychological history, but the entire history of creation and bringing its various stages to full conscious awareness (Fabricius 1976). Retracing the ancestral lineage and returning to the origins is an important part of the rites of passage of many aboriginal tribes. These observations suggest that spiritual evolution typically does not follow a direct linear trajectory from the centaur to the subtle and causal levels, but involves a combined regressive and progressive movement of consciousness with good subsequent integration of the experiences involved. Deep experiential regression can lead to full conscious manifestation of the spiritual dimension of various stages of evolution, a dimension that was implicit and latent in them, but not consciously experienced at the time of the original unfolding of the evolutionary process in linear time. In this way, what was lost in involution, or cosmogenesis, is regained in regressive revisiting of its previous stages. A new creative synthesis of the historical and transcendental is then integrated into the present. Thus, the distinction between pre- and trans- has a paradoxical nature; they are neither identical, nor are they completely different from each other. The spiritual opening often follows a spiral trajectory during which consciousness enfolds into itself reaching back into the past and then again unfolds into the new present. Michael Washburn argues, correctly I believe, along similar lines in his bookThe Ego and the Dynamic Ground (Washburn 1988) when he emphasizes the “spiral concept of ego transcendence’ versus Ken’s ‘ladder concept of ego transcendence”. The problem of entry into the spiritual realm through the “back door” or the “front door” is closely related to the question whether children can have transpersonal experiences and whether true spirituality can exist in cultures that are at what Ken refers to as the “magical” or “mythical” stages of development. If reaching the centauric level were a necessary prerequisite for the entry into the spiritual realm on the individual and collective level, transpersonal experiences should not be possible in children. The ritual and religious life of shamanic cultures and ancient civilizations at the mythical stage of development would then be interpreted as prepersonal activity that lacks a genuine spiritual dimension. However, actual observations have shown that transpersonal experiences, both spontaneous and evoked, are fairly common in children. Ian Stevenson’s meticulous study of spontaneous past life experiences in children involving more than three thousand cases is just the most salient example (Stevenson 1966, 1984, 1987). We have ourselves observed several clearly transpersonal experiences, including sequences of death and rebirth, in ten and twelve year olds who have participated in sessions of holotropic breathwork. Shamanic literature, as well as the personal experiences of many anthropologists with shamans, leaves little doubt that they regularly have spiritual experiences not only of the subtle realms, but also of the causal realms. For many shamans, the entry into the spiritual domain is mediated by the “shamanic illness”, a spontaneous visionary episode with distinct perinatal features. It would also be difficult to deny that the Eleusinian mysteries of death and rebirth, conducted in ancient Greece regularly for a period of almost two thousand years, as well as other mystery religions in the Mediterranean area, were authentic spiritual activities (Wasson, Hofmann and Ruck 1978). Although Ken himself admits the possibility of transpersonal experiences in children and shamans, he again considers them, like the transpersonal experiences of psychotics, as “invasions” alien to the corresponding fulcrums of his developmental scheme rather than natural and regular occurrences. As Roger Walsh pointed out in his study of shamanism, according to Ken’s scheme, the shamans who have consistently subtle experiences would have to be shortcutting two major developmental stages, one of them actually being the rational one (Walsh 1991).
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