The Cosmic Game

The Cosmic Game

Stanislav Grof — 1 recording in the archive.

The book: The Cosmic Game by Stanislav Grof.

Michael Harner, an anthropologist and shaman himself, accuses the traditional Western scientific framework of being ethnocentral, i.e., culturally bound. Furthermore, he describes it as cognition-centric, meaning that it only considers what one experiences in a normal state of consciousness and only takes seriously what one experiences . He ignores all important data that comes from non-ordinary states of consciousness and does not want to deal with this whole area. This entire area is assigned to the field of pathology . Something that has nothing to offer that we are not interested in . And of course, this leads to some of the best parts of human history being sensationalized. All saints, all prophets, all shamans are simply a bunch of psychotic ambulances who were lucky enough to live in cultures where there was no proper psychiatry . So they got away with it. Not only did they get away with what they talked about and what they experienced, but they even received recognition from their tribes and cultures. That's what I want to talk about. If you were to change your consciousness, if you were to enter a different state of consciousness , how could you experience yourself, how could you experience the universe, what insights could you gain about who you are and what it's all about, and how would these insights differ from those we share in everyday life ? And then, of course, there's the problem of how to reconcile these two things . That's the vicious cycle. So, if you have two different perspectives on things , how do you live with that? Which of them do you choose or honor, and under what circumstances do you dance between these two? Here you can learn a lot from shamans. Shamans who feel very comfortable in both realities . They can choose how they experience reality, depending on the circumstances. I'll begin now with something that is a kind of autobiographical reminiscence, which will give you a framework. When Christina and I met, she was a follower of Swami Muktananda and was very interested in Sida Yoga. I already knew back then that Muktananda had written this book . It was originally called " The Guru", later known as "The Game of Consciousness". Several of our friends actually tried to arrange a meeting between us, but somehow it never happened . So we never met in person.…