The Human Encounter With Death

In THE HUMAN ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH, Stanislav Grof, M.D. and Joan Halifax tell how psychedelic therapy can be used to help people with terminal illness. One way the dying are helped by psychedelic therapy is in accepting their impending death. After a psychedelic-induced transcendent spiritual experience, a person can see their death not just as an ending, but also as a great adventure into the unknown. As a result, patients often have a new zest for life, and savor each moment more deeply, after a good therapy session. Another effect of psychedelic therapy, and one which surprised me, was the temporary reduction in pain-perception that many people experience after a therapy session. And this type of therapy also typically improves relations between the dying person and their family--a valuable asset since their remaining time together is probably limited to several months at most. (Incidentally, on rare occasions, in terminal cancer patients who have been undergoing psychedelic therapy, a spontaneous remission has occurred--but it happens too seldom to be in itself a reason for undergoing psychedelic therapy.) In summary, as the authors say, "It is hard to imagine a more useful way to combine medicine, psychology, and religion than psychedelic therapy with dying individuals" (from chapter two). For those who wish to preview an excerpt of the book, chapter two is available on the web, simply by using any search engine and typing in a search for, "The History of Psychedelic Therapy with the Dying," the chapter's title. For therapists considering administering psychedelic therapy to terminally ill people, I also recommend the following four books, all by Stanislav Grof: REALMS OF THE HUMAN UNCONSCIOUS: OBSERVATIONS FROM LSD RESEARCH (1975), about the author's early low-dose therapy method, which is largely psychodynamic (inducing a reliving of childhod memories); LSD PSYCHOTHERAPY (1980, 2001) which provides complete instructions for conducting psychedelic therapy; BEYOND THE BRAIN: BIRTH, DEATH, AND TRANSCENDENCE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY (1986), Grof's new view of the psyche, derived from his nearly two decades as a pioneering LSD psychotherapist; and BEYOND DEATH: THE GATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS (1991; coauthored by Christina Grof), a collection of worldwide artwork, with accompanying text, on the theme of the soul's journey in the afterlife. This last volume should be useful not only to therapists, but also to the terminally ill persons who are undergoing psychedelic therapy. And the guidelines in LSD PSYCHOTHERAPY (as well as REALMS OF THE HUMAN UNCONSCIOUS) should be useful for conducting psychotherapy using the fully legal, ancient psychoactive herb Salvia divinorum (which has long been used for healing and divination by the Aboriginal tribe where the plant grows naturally in the mountains of Mexico). This is because the herb has effects in therapy--death-rebirth sequences, reliving childhood memories, and transcendent spiritual mystical o