An Analytical Study of Mystical Experience in the Transcendental Psychology of Stanislav Grof

n this paper, the place of mystical experiences in Stanislav Grof's transpersonal psychology is examined and analyzed from the perspective of philosophy of mind. Contrary to popular belief in academic psychology, Graf sees mystical experiences as the basis for access to deeper levels of psyche and consciousness. He uses the holographic model in Bohemian physics to explain the emergence of consciousness at all levels of the universe, and argues that modern physics, in contrast to Newtonian-Cartesian worldviews, can defend the realism of mystical experience and access to the latent order of the universe. Grof presents a holographic pattern of consciousness given the shortcomings of physicalist thinking. According to Grof, organic unity with the world is one of the characteristics of mystical experience. Grof also considers conditions such as illness and insomnia as the basis of mystical experience, which is in the form of an explanatory reduction that is not necessarily accepted by those with mystical experience. Grof explains mystics' descriptions of mystical experience simply by referring to their categories and cultural context. The need for such a view is to distinguish between pure experience and its interpretation, which can be critiqued by the intellectual test of transparency in the philosophy of mind.