Grofians Unauthorized
Discussion Group
PHILOSOPHICAL INSIGHTS
"We can now try to summarize the insights from holotropic states describing existence as a fantastic experiential adventure of Absolute Consciousness - an endless cosmic dance, exquisite play, or divine drama. In producing it, the creative principle generates from itself and within itself a countless number of individual images, split units of consciousness, that assume various degrees of relative autonomy and independence. Each of them represents an opportunity for a unique experience, an experiment in consciousness. With the passion of an explorer, scientist, and artist, the creative principle experiments with all the conceivable experiences in their endless variations and combinations."
"In this divine play, Absolute Consciousness finds the possibility to express its inner richness, abundance, and immense creativity. Through its creations it experiences myriads of individual roles, encounters, intricate dramas, and adventures on all imaginable levels. This divine play of plays ranges from galaxies, suns, orbiting planets, and moons through plants, animals, and humans to nuclear particles, atoms, and molecules. Additional dramas unfold in the archetypal realms and other dimensions of existence that are not available to our perception in our everyday state of consciousness."
"In endless cycles of creation, preservation, and destruction Absolute Consciousness overcomes the feelings of monotony and transcendental boredom. The temporary negation and loss of its pristine state alternates with episodes of its rediscovery and reclaiming. The periods that are full of agony, anguish, and despair are followed by episodes of bliss and ecstatic rapture. When the original undifferentiated consciousness is regained after it was temporarily lost, it is experienced as exciting, surprising, fresh, and new. The existence of agony gives a new dimension to the experience of ecstacy, the knowledge of darkness enhances the appreciation of light, and the extent of enlightenment is directly proportionate to the depth of previous ignorance. In addition, with each excursion into phenomenal worlds followed by return, the Universal Mind is enriched by the experiences of the different roles involved. By having concretized more of its inner potential,
it has augmented and deepened its self-knowledge."
"When we view reality from the perspective of the Universal Mind, all the usually experienced polarities are transcended. This applies to such categories as spirit-matter, stability-motion, good-evil, male-female, beauty-ugliness, or agony-ecstasy. In the last analysis, there is no absolute difference between subject and object, observer and the observed, experiencer and the experienced, creator and creation. All the roles in the cosmic drama have ultimately only one protagonist, Absolute Consciousness. This is the single most important truth about existence revealed in the ancient Indian Upanishads."
- The Cosmic Game
"We know from the practice of experiential therapy that it is possible to purge from our unconscious undigested memories of emotional and physical pain from our infancy, childhood, and later life by fully experiencing them. This, together with ensuing positive experiences that become available in this process, frees us from the distorting influence of past traumas that make our daily life inauthentic and unsatisfactory. Christopher Bache suggests that, in a similar way, perinatal experiences might play an important role in the healing of the traumatic past of the human species."
"Is it not possible, he asks, that the memory of the violence and insatiable greed that is woven into the fabric of human history, causes disturbances in the collective unconscious that contaminate humanity's present? Why could not the healing impact reach beyond the individual person, as our consciousness expands beyond the body-ego? Is it not conceivable that by experiencing the pain that countless generations of people inflicted on each other in the course of human history, we are actually clearing the collective unconscious and contributing to a better planetary future?"
"Spiritual literature offers great examples of individual suffering that has redeeming influence on the world. In the Christian tradition, it is Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for the sins of humanity. This is vividly reflected in the mythological theme of the Harrowing of Hell depicting Jesus, at the time between death on the cross and his resurrection, descending into hell and liberating sinners from its jaws by the power of his suffering and sacrifice. The Hindu tradition accepts the possibility that very advanced yogis can significantly positively influence the situation in the world and the collective problems of humanity by confronting them internally in deep meditation, without actually physically leaving their caves."
"Mahayana Buddhism has the beautiful archetypal image of the Bodhisattva who reaches enlightenment, but refuses to enter nirvana and makes a sacred commitment to continue reincarnating until all sentient beings are liberated. The Bodhisattva's determination to take on the suffering of incarnate existence in order to help others is expressed in his powerful vow:
Sentient beings are numberless;
I vow to save them all.
Delusions are inexhaustible;
I vow to end them all.
The gates of Dharma are manifold;
I vow to enter them all.
The Buddha way is supreme.
I vow to complete it."
- The Cosmic Game
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