The Ultimate Journey: Consciousness and the Mystery of Death

by Stanislav Grof, M.D., Ph.D., with introduction by David Jay Brown

From the Publisher: Beyond personal history and archetypal themes, a comprehensive psychology must also address the fundamental significance of birth and death. Stanislav Grof, M.D., renowned for his pioneering contributions regarding the psychological and spiritual aspects of the birth process, now adds invaluable insights from more than half a century of research and personal discovery into the experience of death and dying. Dr. Grof distills teachings from ancient wisdom and modern science that suggest how to face the process of death and dying. The ultimate journey challenges us all, and how we approach it is much more than major personal issue. Those who come to terms with death in deep experiential self-exploration tend to develop a sense of planetary citizenship, reverence for life in all its forms, and spirituality of a universal and all-encompassing nature. Such radial inner transformation might be humanities only real chance for survival. The Ultimate Journey describes ancient and aboriginal ritual and spiritual practices that help us understand the experience of death, develop effective ways of making dying easier, and integrate it as a meaningful part of life. The book also summarizes modern studies that shed new light on a variety of phenomena related to death and dying, including psycho-spiritual death and rebirth, near-death experiences, and the new expanded cartography of the psyche that has emerged from Grofís fifty years of research of psychedelic therapy, Holotropic Breathwork, and spontaneous psychospiritual crises.

Praise for the Book: “For all those wishing to understand how humanity has come to terms with its mortality, as well as those interested in how ancient spirituality and modern science intersect around this aspect of the human experience, ‘The Ultimate Journey’ is compulsory reading. It would be difficult, indeed, to find a more comprehensive and up-to-date text on these matters written by a more informed and experienced scholar than Stanislav Grof.” —Juniper Quin of SevenPonds

About the Author: Stanislav Grof, M.D., Ph.D., is a psychiatrist with more than fifty years experience researching the healing and transformative potential of non-ordinary states of consciousness. His groundbreaking theories influenced the integration of Western science with his brilliant mapping of the transpersonal dimension. On October 5, 2007 Dr. Grof received the prestigious VISION 97 award granted by the Foundation of Dagmar and Vaclav Havel in Prague.

He is one of the founders and chief theoreticians of Transpersonal Psychology and received an Honorary Award for major contributions to and development of the field of Transpersonal Psychology from the Association for Transpersonal Psychology in 1993. Dr. Grof is also the founding President of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA) and was its President for many years. He has organized large international conferences throughout the world and continues to lecture and teach professional training programs in Holotropic Breathwork and transpersonal psychology.

Currently, Dr. Grof is Professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in the Department of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness in San Francisco, CA, and at Wisdom University in Oakland, CA.

Dr. Grof was born in 1931 in Prague where he received an M.D. from Charles University and a Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy in Medicine) from the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences. Between 1960 and 1967, he was Principal Investigator in a psychedelic research program at the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

In the United States, Dr. Grof served as Chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD. He was also Scholar-in-Residence at Esalen Institute.

Dr. Grof’s extensive research includes experiential psychotherapy using psychedelics and non-drug techniques, especially the holotropic breathwork (a method he developed with his wife Christina), alternative approaches to psychoses, understanding and treatment of psychospiritual crises (“spiritual emergencies”), the implications of recent developments in quantum-relativistic physics, biology, brain research, and other avenues of the emerging scientific paradigm, for psychiatric theory and consciousness studies.

ISBN: 0966001990    –    EAN: 9780966001990