Stanislav Grof, MD and Richard Tarnas, PhD – Psyche & Cosmos

We’ll present an overview of the course and of our research as we sought to understand the archetypal dynamics of human experience and non-ordinary states of consciousness. We’ll recount the clinical effort in the 1960s and early 1970s to find a reliable way to predict the nature and outcome of psychedelic sessions, experimenting with a wide range of standard psychological tests. This effort, which proved futile with such tests, eventually resulted in a profoundly unexpected discovery, in which both the timing and the character of psychedelic states, as well as other non-ordinary states of consciousness such as spontaneous mystical awakenings or spiritual emergencies, consistently correlated with specific planetary alignments in relation to the birth chart of the individual.

In this opening module, you’ll:

• Be introduced to a particularly rigorous form of astrological analysis, informed by Jungian psychology and its archetypal perspective, which has emerged as a kind of Rosetta stone of the human psyche
• Hear the inside story of the beginnings of our research at Esalen Institute in the 1970s, and how it expanded to include larger and larger areas of inquiry and application
• Examine the remarkable support from various forms of consciousness research for the worldview that underlies astrology (such as the interconnected and ensouled universe, the psychological reality and potency of archetypes, synchronicity, the importance of birth, the relationship of the individual psyche to collective psyche and to the historical unconscious)
• Be given a preview of the rest of the course

We’ll explore the vastly expanded cartography of the psyche that has emerged from psychedelic therapy and Holotropic Breathwork. It includes not only the biographical-recollective level (which mainstream psychiatry sees as the totality of the psyche), but also two large transbiographical regions of the unconscious, the perinatal and the transpersonal domains.

Quite unexpectedly, two features of this cartography turned out to provide an important bridge between psychology and archetypal astrology. Emotionally strongly charged (cathected) experiences do not exist in the unconscious as a mosaic of disjointed elements, but form complex dynamic constellations — COEX systems (systems of condensed experience) and Basic Perinatal Matrices (BPMs).

In this module, you’ll:

• Explore holotropic states of consciousness and the vastly extended cartography of the psyche that has emerged from the research of these states
• Hear about two newly discovered transbiographical regions of the unconscious — the perinatal and transpersonal domains — and important specific features of the new cartography — COEX systems and Basic Perinatal Matrices (BPMs)
• Examine the dynamics of COEX systems, including the review of clinical examples, and their influence throughout this course
• Understand how the discovery of COEXes and BPMs paved the way for bridging between psychology and archetypal astrology
• Connect the dots between the anatomical and physiological underpinning of the perinatal matrices and biology and archetypal symbolism (this will serve as theoretical preparation for detailed exploration of the perinatal symbolism in the next module)
• Participate in a Q&A period at the end of the session

The work with holotropic states of consciousness revealed the paramount role that birth plays in the human psyche, thus confirming an important basic tenet of archetypal astrology. We’ll use powerful paintings from psychedelic and Holotropic Breathwork sessions to explore the perinatal domain of the unconscious, the existence and importance of which has not yet been recognized by mainstream psychiatry and psychology. We’ll pay special attention to its relevance for archetypal astrology.

We’ll discuss the archetypal symbolism of the Basic Perinatal Matrices (BPMs), experiential patterns associated with the reliving of the four stages of childbirth, and their connections with the anatomy and physiology of birth and with archetypal dynamics. Knowledge of the phenomenology of the perinatal domain is essential for understanding the process of psychospiritual death and rebirth and for any serious approach to the ritual and spiritual history of humanity.

In this module, you’ll:

• Discover the importance of biological birth trauma for psychiatry, psychology and archetypal astrology
• Explore the phenomenology and symbolic language of the Basic Perinatal Matrices (BPMs) and of the transpersonal realm through the art of people who experienced them
• See the importance of these realms for the ritual and spiritual history of humanity, art and emotional and psychosomatic disorders
• Examine how BPMs provide important guidelines for people involved in systematic self-exploration and spiritual quest
• Recognize the role that the trauma of birth and the archetypal realm have as sources of human violence

We’ll set forth a brief overview of the evolution of cosmology and the history of astrology as these have unfolded from prehistoric times to the present. The gradual disenchantment of the cosmos brought about by the complex cultural and scientific developments of the modern era simultaneously eclipsed the status and plausibility of astrology, and helped catalyze the emergence of depth psychology. As Jung, who carefully studied astrology for decades and used it in his work with many patients, wrote: “Since the stars have fallen from heaven and our highest symbols have paled, a secret life holds sway in the unconscious. That is why we have a psychology today, and why we speak of the unconscious. All this would be quite superfluous in an age or culture that possessed symbols.”

In this module, you’ll:

• Examine the basics of archetypal astrological analysis through the discussion of natal charts, planetary alignments, world transits, and personal transits
• Explore how astrology makes possible an understanding of one’s life — its cycles, its ups and downs, the crises and the breakthroughs, the periods of major change and transformation — through the study of transits. Transits occur when the planets currently in the sky form certain geometrical patterns with respect to the planetary positions at one’s birth. The nature of those patterns — which planets are involved and how they are positioned — appears to correlate in a strikingly consistent way with the archetypal character of the experiences one tends to have at that time
• Delve into two issues fundamental to any discussion of astrology: the issue of causality, or how does astrology “work”; and the issue of determinism, or fate and free will, and the nature of our co-creative participation in an archetypal cosmos

In this module, we will set forth in a systematic way the ten archetypal principles that astrological research has determined are associated with each of the planets, as well as the two luminaries, the Sun and Moon.

In this module, you’ll:

• Examine the nature of archetypes, and how the understanding of archetypes has evolved from their original ground in the mythological traditions, as gods and goddesses, to Platonic metaphysical and cosmic principles, to Jungian psychological archetypes
• Study the specific qualities, traits and tendencies for each planet and luminary — beginning with the Sun and Moon, then the inner planets Mercury, Venus and Mars, then Jupiter and Saturn, the furthest away planets known to the ancients and visible to the naked eye, and finally the outer three planetary bodies discovered in the modern era, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto; it is these 10 astronomical bodies for which we have both the greatest amount of research and a very strong consensus among astrologers concerning their meanings
• Interpret examples for each planetary archetype, so that you’ll receive a clear sense of the basic qualities and potentials related to each principle

This entire module will be devoted to responding to participants’ questions concerning the content of the two preceding modules in which we covered the fundamentals of archetypal astrology and the basic meanings of the planetary principles.

We’ll present an in-depth analysis of a dramatic case history from LSD therapy — the case of Flora, who in 1968 was treated for multiple severe psychopathological and somatic conditions in three powerful LSD sessions. The third was an extremely powerful experience with enduring therapeutic results that can serve as an unusually illustrative case example, demonstrating a number of essential principles for understanding and facilitating such sessions.

We’ll then present the archetypal astrological analysis in terms of the birth chart of the patient, and the particular once-in-a-lifetime convergence of transits that she was undergoing at that particular time. The case history is rich in its many dimensions and provides a very useful paradigm case for assessing the relevance and value of the archetypal astrological understanding of psychotherapeutic process and non-ordinary states of consciousness.

In our final module, we’ll address participants’ questions concerning the case history set forth in the preceding module as well as the overall course content.