Fingerprints of God_ The Search for the Science of Spirituality - Barbara Bradley Hagerty [60]
It occurred to me there might be something more spiritual at work in these terminally ill patients than merely rearranging priorities and appreciating the precious time they had left. I voiced that suspicion to Stanislav Grof. Grof had headed psychedelic research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, before the research was shut down. In his fifty years of studying psychedelics and “nonordinary states,” he has sat in on more than 4,000 psychedelic sessions.
Grof said the mystical experiences were in a class by themselves, because they altered the patients’ concept of reality, an effect that neither antibiotics nor Percocet has achieved. I thought back to Mary Ann and the peyote ceremony. Aided by mescaline that night in the tipi, the Navajo woman had traveled to what she believed was another spiritual dimension, and when she returned, the pain had evaporated.What Mary Ann and Grof ’s subjects shared was mystical experience.
“They lost fear of death,” Grof continued. “It’s also something we know happens to people who have near-death experiences. They’ve been in a car accident or have cardiac arrest, and they come back and they say they’re not afraid of death anymore. And we found out it had tremendous impact on pain. It frequently helped with pain that was not responding to narcotics. Or the effect was beyond the pharmacological effect of the drug. The relief sometimes lasted several weeks.”
In his book The Ultimate Journey,12 Grof offers vignettes of cancer patients who had taken psychedelics for his research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. Their mystical experiences could have been lifted from the pages of Raymond Moody’s Life After Life or other books on near-death experiences: the visions included hell, judgment, and—always—light and redemption. The patients emerged from the trips convinced that life and love extended beyond the grave. Often, Grof reported, the pain levels dropped so dramatically that the bedridden patients were able to return to work for weeks or months.
In a groundbreaking study of patients with terminal cancer,13 Grof, Richards, and other scientists reported the case of a woman whose breast cancer had metastasized to her spine.When the doctors first met “Mrs. G,” she was paralyzed from the waist down, anxious, and depressed. After her first LSD session, she emerged determined to work with her physical therapist, and after a few months, she was able to get around with a walker. But a year later, she learned her cancer had spread throughout her body and that she would soon die. She fell into a depression and received another LSD treatment. During this session, “the patient had the experience of passing through a series of blue curtains or veils,” the researchers reported. “On the other side, she felt as if she were a bird in the sky soaring through the air.”14
Mrs. G’s pain eased dramatically. She was able to walk down the aisle at her daughter’s wedding without so much as a cane, and amazed the guests by dancing with her husband during the reception. Six months later, she was considering returning to work, and asked for another LSD session. This time, she enjoyed a full-blown out-of-body experience. The session began smoothly, but Mrs. G became frightened when she saw a huge wall of flames. After encouragement from the attending therapist, she was able to pass through the middle of the flames, and at this point experienced “positive ego transcendence.”
“She felt that she had left her body, was in another world, and was in the presence of God, who seemed symbolized by a huge diamond-shaped iridescent Presence,” Grof reported. “She did not see Him as a person, but knew He was there.