Stanislav Grof - When the Impossible Happens: Adventures in Non-Ordinary Reality

When the Impossible Happens

Adventures in Non-Ordinary Realities

Stanislav Grof M.D., Ph.D.

Table of Contents

PRAISE FOR WHEN THE IMPOSSIBLE HAPPENS

This book is extremely intriguing in that it shows how a strong scientific mind confronts things which science cannot explain.

RAM DASS
Author of Be Here Now

This account of a remarkable life spent searching for new frontiers of consciousness is fascinating.

ODE MAGAZINE

What all these [Grofs] books have in common is the courage to speak in a forthright manner about experiences that are often judged as dysfunctional when expressed in general conversation.

WISDOM: PUGET SOUND EDITION

Grof is one of the great explorers of this century. In this book, he has given us a collection of stories that, like those of Marco Polo, are so outside most of our experience that at first one tends to doubt their reality. However, if you are able to stay open, you see how profound, valid, and important these stories are and how much they extend our understanding of our own and humanitys possibilities.

JAMES FADIMAN, PH.D.
Institute of Transpersonal Psychology

Far from the neurochemical artifacts and symptoms of toxic psychoses that main stream psychiatry would assert, Grof provides a compelling alternative approach to understanding and responding to such perturbations of inner experience ... In his most recent book [When the Impossible Happens], he has mapped a course for a new and more conscious field of psychiatry, one that honors the sacred plants and alkaloids passed down from ancient shamanic practitioners and discovered in modern laboratories.

SHIFT: AT THE FRONTIERS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
The Institute of Noetic Sciences

In the late eighteenth century the Australian platypus was an impossibility. The scientific community refused to consider this paradigm-breaking mammalvenomous, egg-laying, and duck-billedas anything but a hoax. Two hundred years later we still refuse to accept that the impossible does happen. Stanislav Grof challenges this narrow minded refusal by half a century of courageously unbiased research of non-ordinary reality in the depth of the human psyche.

BROTHER DAVID STEINDL-RAST, OSB

In this remarkable book, Stanislav Grof reflects upon half a century of research and experience in the realm of non-ordinary realities. The quality and quantity of these incidents place the ball squarely in the court of conventional science and psychotherapy, challenging their perspectives on personal identity, psychosis, and the very nature of reality. Some readers will dismiss When the Impossible Happens as the ravings of a deluded eccentric; for others, the book will be a life-changing experience.

STANLEY KRIPPNER, PH.D.
Coeditor, Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence

Acclaimed academics ... especially the psychiatrist Stanislav Grof author of numerous books on non-ordinary states of consciousness including his latest, When the Impossible Happens: Adventures in Non-Ordinary Realities, go to extreme lengths to assure their unconventional research will stand up to scientific scrutiny ... When the Impossible Happens is sheer entertainment of the voyeuristic type ... That he is one of the foremost practitioners of LSD therapy adds greatly to his story.

WWW.FOREWORDMAGAZINE.COM

Stan Grofs new book, When the Impossible Happens, has become an instant transpersonal classic.

PARADIGM BUSTERS

Dr. Grof is one of the great explorers of the human condition, and in this book you take the journey with him.

WES NISKER
Author of The Essential Crazy Wisdom

Dr. Stanislav Grofs extraordinary life stories are indeed adventures of the Heroic Journey. I have had the privilege of participating in a number of these seemingly impossible happenings; they have all been life transforming. With great admiration and respect for Dr. Grofs lifelong, dedicated work in transpersonal research, reading this book is such a pleasureable wu wei joyride along the Watercourse Way of the Great Tao.

CHUNGLIANG AL HUANG
Founder-president, Living Tao Foundation

When the Impossible Happens offers benefit for oneself and for everyone around one, for it spreads among us the holotropic consciousness that makes the impossible happen.

ERVIN LASZLO, PH.D.

This book presents his [Grofs] mesmerizing firsthand account of over 50 years of inquiry into waters uncharted by classical psychology, an odyssey that will leave readers questioning the very fabric of our existence ... This is an incredible opportunity to journey beyond ordinary consciousness, is guaranteed to shake the foundations of what we assume to be reality, and is sure to offer a new vision of our human potential.

ARIZONA NETWORKING NEWS

Stanislav Grof is a pioneer in the field of the inner exploration of consciousness.

LOTUS GUIDE

Stan Grof is one of the worlds foremost researchers of the further reaches of the human mind. His understandings, which have helped so many, now become even more accessible and fascinating as he shares a multitude of powerful personal experiences, his adventures in non-ordinary reality.

CHARLES T. TART, PH.D.
Author of Altered States of Consciousness

Stan Grofs mastery is to braid the wisdom found in the worlds spiritual traditions with scientific research. His own accounts of non-ordinary realities are validating, insightful reminders of how prevalent and important these realities are to our own spiritual development and creative contributions to the world.

ANGELES ARRIEN, PH.D.
Cultural anthropologist and author of The Four-Fold Way and The Second Half of Life

Stanislav Grof is a pioneering psychiatrist, world-renowned for his immense contributions to the field of psychotherapy (through methods involving LSD, as well as Holotropic Breathwork) and also to an expanded scientific paradigm that takes the spiritual or transpersonal dimensions of existence seriously. I believe this book will be recognized as a watershed work in the transition to a new cosmology for our time.

RALPH METZNER, PH.D.
Professor of Psychology, author of The Unfolding Self and The Well of Remembrance

Stanislav Grof challenges mainstream science and current views of reality with marvelous and exciting personal stories from a life of exploration at the frontiers of consciousness.

MICHAEL HARNER
Author of The Way of the Shaman

ALSO BY STANISLAV GROF

Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research

The Human Encounter with Death

LSD Psychotherapy

Beyond Death: Gates of Consciousness

Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science

Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy

The Adventure of Self-Discovery

Human Survival and Consciousness Evolution

Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis

The Stormy Search for the Self: A Guide to Personal Growth Through Transformational Crises

The Holotropic Mind: The Three Levels of Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives

Books of the Dead: Manuals for Living and Dying

The Cosmic Game: Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness

The Transpersonal Vision: The Healing Potential of Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness

The Consciousness Revolution: A Transatlantic Dialogue

Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research

The Ultimate Journey: Consciousness and the Mystery of Death