Consciousness is a field of knowledge

Dr. Stanislav Grof, psychiatrist psychiatric researcher, writes: “The many strange characteristics of transpersonal experiences shatter the most fundamental metaphysical assumptions of the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm and the materialistic world view.” He also noted that any attempt to dismiss transpersonal experiences as irrelevant products of human fantasy or hallucinations was naïve and inadequate—for they represent “a critical challenge, not only for psychiatry and psychology, but for the entire philosophy of Western Science.”

He writes in his audiotape book The Transpersonal Vision: “Materialist science holds that any memory requires a material substrate, such as the neuronal network in the brain or the DNA molecules of genes. However, it is impossible ti imagine any material medium for the information conveyed by various forms of transpersonal experiences. This information has clearly not been acquired by conventional means—that is, by sensory perception—during the individual’s lifetime. It seems to exist independently of matter, and to be contained in the field of consciousness itself or in some types of fields undetectable by scientific instruments.”

In other words, transpersonal experiences suggest that there’s a field of consciousness—a source of knowledge—that exists independent of any one person’s mind and is accessible to us beyond our ordinary sensory and mind/body ways of receiving information.

Atwater, P. M. H. with David H. Morgan. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Near-Death Experiences, 377-78.

Stanislav Grof. is a psychiatrist with over sixty years of experience in research of non-ordinary states of consciousness and one of the founders and chief theoreticians of transpersonal psychology. He was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where he also received his scientific training: an M.D. degree from the Charles University School of Medicine and a Ph.D. degree (Doctor of Philosophy in Medicine) from the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences. He was also granted honorary Ph.D. degrees from the University of Vermont in Burlington, VT, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, CA, and the World Buddhist University in Bangkok, Thailand.

Currently, Dr. Grof is Professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in the Department of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness in San Francisco, CA; he has also taught at Wisdom University in Oakland, CA, and the Pacifica Graduate School in Santa Barbara.