Customer Reviews

LSD: Doorway to the Numinous: The Groundbreaking Psychedelic Research into Realms of the Human Unconscious

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caveat emptor !!! ; this is a republished version of "Realms of the Human Unconscious" By Stan Grof (Viking Press 1975).

The original book itself is without doubt remarkable and groundbreaking; everything suggested by the professional reviewers 35 years ago and cited in the Amazon spruiking is true. It is just a pity that the Park Street Press (a division of Inner Traditions - from whom I would have expected more) and Amazon, failed to disclose that this text is in fact not new material(other than its brief epilogue [a short research review] from Grof's 2008 "LSD Psychtherapy" ), but "mutton dressed as lamb" almost 35 years on. The failure of disclosure in this instance is frankly appalling and disappointing. As a long-time customer of both companies I expect more. In this era of international book purchases via the web, truthful representation of an item is critical to ensure trust in the marketplace.

Dr. Grof's work is essential reading for medical clinicians, artists, psychologists and the lay public. Currently, in the U.S. psychiatric practitioners cannot employ psychotropic agents to efficaciously treat their compromised patients. Dr. Grof's breakthrough research work in the 1970's provides veracity to this kind of prophylaxis as a quintessential strategy for enhancing the perturbed modern human psyche. Furthermore, the majority of psychiatrists in the U.S. are no longer therapeutically treating personality disorders with comprehensive medicinal strategies. Patients are given SSRIs, SSNRIs or anti-psychotics in most cases for Axis II morbidities.
Dr. Grof's efforts should be lauded and highly commended in the scientific and medical community. His clinical research is courageous and luminous to anyone who is conscious of the body's meta-physiology and higher energy dynamics. This field of research is as important to the human animal as molecular scientific inquiry into the etiology of neoplasias. Furthermore, this text would be inspiring to anyone who has not yet felt the body's numinous essence. Pathogenic materialism is certainly not the way to unleash the etheric impassionment of the human psyche. Dr. Grof's book "LSD: Doorway to the Numinous" and Dr. Rick Strassmans' Books "The DMT Molecule" and "The Inner Paths to Outerspace" all published by Inner Tradition, would certainly benefit the harrowing consciousness of all homosapiens.
Mescaline, psilocybin, ayahuasca and LSD are exquisite protocols in the words of Dr. Grof to ameliorate perturbations of personality and psyche. However, the U.S. government has mandated that board certified psychiatrists cannot utilize these agents in a clinical medical setting. Dr. Grof purports that 21st century humans do not have a prodigious way to experience the brain's mystical circuitry in most cases other than psychedelic agents. It is well documented by anthropologists that indigenous humans have been spiritually employing these naturalistic substances for thousands of years. Furthermore, this medical doctor implicitly suggests that it is retrograde to the heuristic maturation of the human psyche for us not to utilize these substances for mystical genesis. According to Carl Jung modern humans will continue to inwardly degenerate in a cultural context, which stultifies the activation of the numinous sphere of self.

Stanislav Grov's first 17 years of research into nonordinary states of consciousness induced by LSD led to a revolutionary understanding of the human psyche. His research prompted new discussions of the unconscious and revealed two new realms still unacknowledged by academic circles: the perinatal domin which holds birth memories, and the transpersonal, which mediates experiences with other species and mythic figures, access to past life memories, and more. His research into these unmapped areas makes for a fine choice for any new age collection strong in modern consciousness.