Classroom awakening

Thank you, Emmy. It's wonderful to be in conversation with you.

Well, I'm actually the last person you would have thought from the beginning of my life to end up writing a book on describing what happens on the long series of high-dose LSD sessions. I was raised in the Deep South, in Mississippi. I was a seminarian in the early days, studying to be...

What an honor to be here with you today to celebrate Bicycle Day—an opportunity for the psychedelic community to come together, to see each other, reunite, and make plans for the future. Now, I know what you're probably thinking. You look at me and think, "He doesn't look like he's done a whole lot...

Thank you, Emmy, it's a pleasure to be here.

So I'll tell you one aspect about that particular. I never let my students know that I was doing this work, but I began to find that even though they didn't know about my psychedelic work, they began to have experiences which were moving, showing that they were being impacted by my psychedelic work....

Hi everybody. Sure, it's nice to see you. And thank you for all of your warm greetings. It really touched my heart, and I hope we have a lot of fun today. Because many of you know my work, I just want to show you something which I think you'd like to see. In...

Yep.

Thank you, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here with you tonight. Since my understanding is that psychedelics is not a frequent topic in the San Diego Integral community, in talking with Kathy, Tom, and people on your board, we decided that we would begin with a short breakout before I talk, just to...

Well, I was hoping you were going to start with Dan first.

Hi, Tami. It's a pleasure to be here with you this evening.

Let me add a footnote to that. When I was doing my psychedelic work, I never let my students know about it, never talked about it. I mean, I taught psychedelic research, I taught Stan Grof’s work, but I never let them know that I was doing this work. Personally, I only a few...

Thank you, Aviv, it's a real pleasure to be here with you today.

Thank you, David. Let me shift into screen sharing, if I can do this correctly. Good. Okay. Well, thank you, David, and thank you, everybody. It's an honor and a pleasure to be here with you tonight, and I really look forward to sharing with you the experiences that I'm reporting in this book,...

Okay, you bet that's a good place to start. In my understanding, in my experience, psychedelics in general, and in particular LSD, which was my primary medicine in this journey, is an amplifier of consciousness. When consciousness is amplified, signals which are quiet become large, become loud, and you have the sensation of becoming...

Well, I know it's a radical book, and I think we are at a pivot point in history, and I think that psychedelics represent a major transition point, a true historical before-and-after point with respect to philosophy, not just psychology. It generates not only a new therapeutic protocol for healing the personal psyche, but...

Thank you, Roger. It's a very warm introduction, and I'm just delighted to be here with you and John today. It's a pleasure.

I'm glad to be here.

Thank you, Donna, my pleasure, and thank you everyone for spending part of your Sunday with me. It's a pleasure to be here, a pleasure to talk about these things, and I'm really looking forward to our discussion that follows my comments here. So let me first shift us into share screen so I...

My pleasure, Luisa. It's nice to be with you.

There are four books. The first is "Lifecycles," on reincarnation. The second is "Dark Night, Early Dawn," published by SUNY Press, an academic press. It's a challenging book, integrating psychedelic research, near-death episode research, and out-of-body research. Then I wrote "The Living Classroom," about fields of consciousness that grow around groups and influence the...

It was quite an adventure, quite a long and interesting journey.

I’m not a proponent of high doses myself. The early high-dose work was limited to three sessions. I thought if you could do it safely three times, you could do more. But it presented new challenges not discussed in early work and opportunities for insights. High doses affect your body, mind, and those around...

I think it's both. As my work changed me, certainly my presence in the classroom changed. But the more interesting aspect is working at the subtle level. For example, I found that when I was lecturing and looking for an example to illustrate a concept, I would pause, my mind would go blank, and...

Let's start on your last question and then work forward into the earlier ones. Yes, it did manifest. There were manifestations that emerged in the outer world. In my book, The Living Classroom, there's a chapter on teaching in Dark Night, Early Dawn. I never talked to my students about my work. I kept...

Well, I was actually a professor of religious studies, and I taught in a Philosophy and Religious Studies program at the university, which is part of the Ohio State system, up in the northeast corner of the state. I'm really excited about the conference. I'm very pleased that the book is actually being released...

That kind of jumps ahead in the storyline a bit. I was not aware of any particular synchronicities going into the work. But I'll just tag this, and maybe we'll come back later. As my work deepened over the course of those 20 years, even though my students never knew I was doing this...

My website is still in the making, but soon. "Diamonds from Heaven" will be released by Inner Traditions in 2019. My three earlier books are available on Amazon: "Lifecycles," "Dark Night, Early Dawn," and "The Living Classroom." I've given many talks scattered online that can be found by searching my name.

Well, I was trained as a philosopher of religion. Philosophers of religion are concerned with exploring the deeper questions of existence, the meaning of life, the structure of the universe, and the limits of human consciousness. These are the questions I was trained to pursue in graduate school. Then I came to Youngstown State...

Good morning, everyone. It's a true joy to join you this morning in the continuing celebration of Stan Grof, extraordinary lifetime accomplishment as a scholar, a healer, and a pioneer. Like many others in this room, Stan has had a profound influence on my life. He changed the direction of my professional and personal...

Is Robert here yet? He's coming. Here he is. Among his many illustrious publications, one of the ones that you may not come across too often is his beautiful introduction, his prologue, preface to The Living Classroom, which is a great honor. And he really made me look pretty good, very good. It was...

Not only were they finding their life parts in my lectures, but often those parts were deeply personal and needed for their own healing or evolution. It was as if their soul was whispering to my soul, passing information needed for their healing. During these years, I became a kind of lightning rod of...

The first one is Lifecycles: Reincarnation and the Web of Life. It's basically a book on reincarnation. It looks at reincarnation through the issue of empirical evidence. It examines it as a psychological and spiritual phenomenon and, once it documents the empirical evidence for reincarnation, asks the question, "So what?" What's the difference if...