Quotes By Stanislav Grof

Dying before dying has two important consequences: It liberates the individual from the fear of death and influences the actual experience of dying at the time of biological demise.

The elimination of the fear of death transforms the individual's way of being in the world.

The study of consciousness that can extend beyond the body is extremely important for the issue of survival, since it is this part of human personality that would be likely to survive death.

There are people who can start having very powerful experiences without taking psychedelics. It can happen against their will. This is a universal phenomenon.

In some instances, the accuracy of past-life memories can be objectively verified, sometimes with remarkable detail.

It is possible to see the intermediate state between lives as being in a way more important than incarnate existence.

I spent much of my later childhood and adolescence very, very involved and interested in art, and particularly in animated movies.

Whether or not we believe in survival of consciousness after death, reincarnation, and karma, it has very serious implications for our behavior.

Consciousness after death demonstrates the possibility of consciousness operating independently of the body.

The experiences associated with death were seen as visits to important dimensions of reality that deserved to be experienced, studied, and carefully mapped.

Patients reported that their psychedelic sessions were an invaluable experiential training for dying.

Ancient eschatological texts are actually maps of the inner territories of the psyche that seem to transcend race and culture and originate in the collective unconscious.

Many of us who have experienced psychedelics feel very much that they are sacred tools. They open spiritual awareness.

The materialistic paradigm of Western science has been a major obstacle for any objective evaluation of the data describing the events occurring at the time of death.

The beliefs concerning reincarnation have great ethical impact on human life and our relationship to the world.

Individuals approaching death often experience encounters with their dead relatives, who seem to welcome them to the next world. These deathbed visions are authentic and convincing; they are often followed by a state of euphoria and seem to ease the transition.

For any culture which is primarily concerned with meaning, the study of death - the only certainty that life holds for us - must be central, for an understanding of death is the key to liberation in life.

It became much more complicated politically to work with psychedelics because of the unsupervised experimentation with psychedelics, particularly among young people.

Walt Disney was my great hero.

Each of us can manifest the properties of a field of consciousness that transcends space, time, and linear causality.

Freud said that we are born as a tabula rasa. This is a model that simply is too superficial and inadequate.

I have to say I regretted giving up animated movies.

A text of Tibetan Buddhism describes the time of death as a unique opportunity for spiritual liberation from the cycles of death and rebirth and a period that determines our next incarnation.

If consciousness can function independently of the body during one's lifetime, it could be able to do the same after death.

The knowledge of the realm of death makes it possible for the shaman to move freely back and forth and mediate these journeys for other people.

The psyche of the individual is commensurate with the totality of creative energy. This requires a most radical revision of Western psychology.

Many cultures have independently developed a belief system in reincarnation that includes return of the unit of consciousness to another physical lifetime on Earth.

Traditional academic science describes human beings as highly developed animals and biological thinking machines. We appear to be Newtonian objects made of atoms, molecules, cells, tissues, and organs.

The human psyche shows that each individual is an extension of all of existence.

Dying people in pre-industrial cultures typically died in the context of an extended family, clan, or tribe.