When the Impossible Happens (17 page)

In the twentieth century, the main challenge for Great Britain and France was Germany, and they maintained a relatively decent relationship with each other. However, a few centuries earlier, they were sworn enemies. At one point of history, the major challenge for England was Spain and for Russia, France: Spain was at war with Holland, Russia’s enemy was Sweden, and so on. Having experienced as a child and teenager the horrors of the German occupation of Czechoslovakia and in my later years the ruthless Stalinist regime imposed on us by the Soviet Union, I have strong personal feelings about this problem.

Since my early childhood, I have always hated borders and everything that belonged to them—the towers with submachine guns, barbed-wire fences, mine fields, and the soldiers and dogs that guarded them. This aversion ex tended even to more civilized forms of frontiers in the free world and their custom officers, visas, and tolls. I have often dreamed about a United States of Europe, about a future when all European nations would live in peaceful coexistence. Later in my life, this vision broadened to include the entire planet. I like to imagine a future when humanity will overcome all racial, sexual, national, cultural, political, and economic divisions and create a global community. However, I am sufficiently aware of the complexity of the problems involved to realize that this is not a very plausible scenario for our planet.

After this somewhat pessimistic introduction, I would like to relate an episode from my life that gave me some hope in a better future for us all in spite of the grim overall situation. It was an experience of profound healing and transformation that occurred many years ago in a group of people with whom I shared a non ordinary state of consciousness. Although it happened more than thirty years ago, I still feel very moved and tearful whenever I think and talk about it. This event showed me the depth of the problems we are facing in our world, where for many centuries hatred has been passed from one generation to another. However, it also gave me hope and trust in the possibility of lifting this curse and dissolving the barriers that separate us from each other.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I participated in a government-sponsored research program at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center in Baltimore, exploring the potential of psychedelic therapy. One of our projects at the center was a training program for mental health professionals. It made it possible for psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and priests doing pastoral counseling to have up to three high-dose LSD sessions for educational purposes. One of the participants in this program was Kenneth Godfrey, a psychiatrist from the VA hospital in Topeka, Kansas. Ken was one of the pioneers of psychedelic research himself, conducting sessions with his clients, but he did not have in his program provision for his own sessions. I was his guide in the three psychedelic sessions he had in our institute, and, in the process, we became very close friends. Ken and his wife were both Native Americans and had a very deep connection with the spiritual tradition of their people and with the elders of their tribe.

When I was still in Czechoslovakia, I read about the Native American Church, a syncretistic religion combining Indian and Christian elements and using as a sacrament the Mexican psychedelic cactus peyote. I became very interested in having a personal experience of a peyote ceremony, which would make it possible for me to compare therapeutic use of psychedelics with their use in a ritual context. After my arrival in the United States, I was looking for such an opportunity, but without success.

During our final discussion after Ken’s third LSD session, it crossed my mind that he might have some contacts with the Native American Church and could help me find a group that would allow me to participate in their peyote ceremony. Ken promised to explore this issue with John Mitchell, a well-known Potawatomi “road chief,” or leader of sacred ceremonies, who was his close friend. Several days later, Ken called me on the phone and had some good news. John Mitchell had not only invited me as a guest to his peyote ceremony, but offered that I could bring along several other people from our staff.

The following weekend, five of us flew from Baltimore to Topeka. The group consisted of our music therapist Helen Bonny, her sister, psychedelic therapist Bob Leihy, professor of religion Walter Houston Clark, and me. We rented a car at the Topeka airport and drove from there deep into the Kansas prairie. There, in the middle of nowhere, stood several teepees, the site of the sacred ceremony. The sun was setting, and the ritual was about to begin. But before we could join the ceremony, we had to be accepted by the other participants, all of whom were Native Americans. We had to go through a difficult process that resembled a dramatic encounter group.

With intense emotions, the native people brought up the painful history of the invasion and conquest of North America by white intruders—the genocide of American Indians and rapes of their women, the expropriation of their land, the senseless slaughter of the buffalo, and many other atrocities. After a couple of hours of dramatic exchange, the emotions quieted down and, one after the other, the Indians accepted us into their ceremony. Finally, there was only one person who had remained violently opposed to our presence—a tall, dark, and sullen man. His hatred toward white people was enormous.

It took a long time and much persuading from his peers, who were unhappy about further delays of the ceremony, before he finally and reluctantly agreed that we could join the group. Finally, everything was settled, at least on the surface, and we all gathered in a large teepee. The fire was started and the sacred ritual began. We ingested the peyote buttons and passed the staff and the drum. According to the Native American custom, whoever had the staff could sing a song or make a personal statement; there was also the option to pass.

The sullen man, who was so reluctant to accept us, sat directly across from me, leaning on a pole of the teepee. He radiated anger and hostility, and it was obvious to everybody that he was sulking. While all other participants whole heartedly participated in the ceremony, he remained detached and aloof. Every time the staff and the drum made the circle and came to him, he very angrily passed them on. My perception of the environment was extremely sensitized by the influence of peyote. This man became a sore point in my world, and I found looking at him increasingly painful. His hatred seemed to radiate from his eyes like bright laser beams that were consuming me and filling the entire teepee. He managed to maintain this recalcitrant attitude throughout the ceremony.

The morning came, and, shortly before sunrise, we were passing the staff and the drum for the last time. It was an opportunity for everybody to say a few final words about their experiences and impressions from the night. Walter Houston Clark’s speech was exceptionally long and very emotional. He expressed his deep appreciation for the generosity of our Native American friends, who had shared with us their beautiful ceremony. Walter specifically stressed the fact that they had accepted us in spite of everything
we
had done to them—invaded and stolen their land, killed their people, raped their women, and slaughtered the buffalo. At one point of his speech, he referred to me—I do not remember exactly in what context—as “Stan, who is so far from his homeland, his native Czechoslovakia.”

As soon as Walter uttered the word Czechoslovakia, the man who had resented our presence all through the night suddenly became strangely disturbed. He got up, ran across the teepee, and threw himself on the ground in front of me. He hid his head in my lap, crying and sobbing loudly. After about twenty minutes, he quieted down, returned to his place, and was able to talk. He explained that the evening before the ceremony he had seen us all as “pale faces” and thus automatically enemies of Native Americans. After hearing Walter’s remark, he realized that, being of Czechoslovakian origin, I had nothing to do with the tragedy of his people. The Czechs certainly were not notorious as raiders of the Wild West. He thus hated me through the sacred ceremony without justification.

The man seemed heartbroken and desolate. After his initial statement came a long silence, during which he was going through an intense inner struggle. It was clear that there was more to come. Finally, he was able to share with us the rest of his story. During World War II, he had been drafted into the American Air Force, and several days before the end of the war he personally participated in a rather capricious and unnecessary American air raid on the Czech city Pilsen, known for its world-famous beer and the Skoda automobile factory. Not only had his hatred toward me been unjustified, but our roles were actually reversed; he was the perpetrator, and I was the victim. He invaded my country and killed my people. This was more than he could bear. He came back to me and kept embracing me, begging my forgiveness.

After I had reassured him that I did not harbor any hostile feelings toward him, something extraordinary happened. He went to my Baltimore friends, who all were Americans, apologized for his behavior before and during the ceremony, embraced them, and asked them for forgiveness. He said that this episode had taught him that there would be no hope for the world if we all continued to carry in us hatred for the deeds committed by our ancestors. And he realized that it was wrong to make generalized judgments about racial, national, and cultural groups. We should judge people on the basis of who they are, not as members of the group to which they belong.

His speech was a worthy sequel to the famous letter attributed to Chief Seattle, in which he addresses European colonizers. He closed it with these words: “You are not my enemies; You are my brothers and sisters. You did not do anything to me or my people. All that happened a long time ago in the lives of our ancestors. And, at that time, I might actually have been on the other side. We are all children of the Great Spirit; we all belong to Mother Earth. Our planet is in great trouble, and if we keep carrying old grudges and do not work together, we will all die.”

By this time, most people in the group were in tears. We all felt a sense of deep connection and belonging to the human family. As the sun was slowly rising in the sky, we partook in a ceremonial breakfast. We ate the food that throughout the night had been placed in the center of the teepee and was consecrated by the ritual. Then we all shared long hugs, reluctantly parted, and headed back home. We carried with us the memory of this invaluable les son in interracial and international conflict resolution that will undoubtedly remain vivid in our minds for the rest of our lives. For me, this extraordinary synchronicity experienced in a non-ordinary state of consciousness foments feelings of hope that, sometime in the future, a similar healing could happen in the world on a large scale.

PART 2: TRAILING CLOUDS OF GLORY: Remembering Birth and Prenatal Life

Among the most frequent experiences occurring in holotropic states of consciousness of different origin are episodes of psychological regression to birth, during which one relives with extraordinary intensity all the emotions, physical sensations, body postures, and other aspects of this process. The strong representation of birth in our unconscious psyche comes as a great surprise for mainstream psychologists, psychiatrists, and neurophysiologists because it challenges their deeply ingrained assumptions about the limits of human memory. However, closer examination reveals that these assumptions are unfounded beliefs that are in sharp conflict with scientific facts.

According to the traditional psychiatric view, only birth that is so difficult that it causes irreversible damage to the brain cells can have psychological and psychopathological consequences. It is well known that extended exposure to oxygen deprivation associated with difficult and long delivery can cause psychiatric problems, primarily mental retardation or hyperactivity. There also exist studies linking criminal recidivism with a history of long, difficult, and complicated birth with high degrees of asphyxia. Viral infections during mother’s pregnancy and obstetric complications during birth, including long labor and oxygen deprivation, are among the few consistently reported risk factors for schizophrenia. But, surprisingly, academic psychiatrists tend to interpret these finding only in terms of physical dam age to the brain and do not consider the possibility that pre- and perinatal insults, whether or not they damage the brain cells, also have a strong psychotraumatic impact on the child.

The cerebral cortex of the newborn is not fully myelinized, which means that its neurons are not completely covered with protective sheaths of a fatty substance called
myelin.
This is usually offered as an obvious reason why birth is psychologically irrelevant and why the experience of it is not recorded in memory. The belief of mainstream psychiatrists that the child is not conscious during this extremely painful and stressful ordeal and that the birth process does not leave any record in the brain not only contradicts clinical observations, but also violates common sense and elementary logic.

It is certainly hard to reconcile such an assumption with the fact that widely accepted psychological and physiological theories attribute great significance to the early interaction between the mother and the child. This includes such factors as eye contact between the mother and the infant immediately after birth (“bonding”), loving physical contact, and the quality of nursing. It is well known that “imprinting” of these early experiences has critical influence on the relationship between the mother and the child in the future and on the emotional well-being of the individual for the rest of his or her life. The image of the newborn as an unconscious and unresponsive organism is also in sharp conflict with the growing body of literature describing the remarkable sensitivity of the fetus during the prenatal period.

The denial of the possibility of birth memory, based on the fact that the cerebral cortex of the newborn is not fully myelinized, does not make any sense, considering the fact that the capacity for memory exists in many lower life forms, which do not have a cerebral cortex at all. The assertion that the memory of birth would require a myelinized neocortex becomes absurd and ridiculous if we compare it with the fact that the Swedish physiologist Eric Kandel was awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize in medicine for his study of memory mechanisms in the sea slug
Aplysia,
an organism with only a small number of nerve cells that is many rungs lower on the evolutionary ladder than the newborn infant. Moreover, it is well known from biology that certain primitive forms of protoplasmic memory exist even in unicellular organisms.