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Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave.
—Joseph Hall
Man puts himself at once on the level of the beast if he seeks to gratify lust alone, but he elevates his superior position when, by curbing the animal desire, he combines with the sexual functions ideas of mortality, of the sublime, and of the beautiful.
—Baron Richard von Krafft-Ebing
Intimate Links between Birth, Sex, and Death
In the chapter exploring the ways to reunion with the cosmic source, I briefly mentioned three aspects of human life that have a particularly close connection with the transpersonal domain: birth, sex, and death. As we saw, all three of them represent important gateways to transcendence and unique opportunities for cosmic reunion. This is true whether our encounter with one of these areas occurs in a symbolic way in the process of deep experiential self-exploration or in situations of our everyday life.
Delivering women and people participating in the delivery as assistants or observers can experience a powerful spiritual opening. This is particularly true if birth does not occur in the dehumanized context of a hospital, but under circumstances where it is possible to experience its full psychological and spiritual impact. Similarly, having a close personal brush with death or spending intimate time with dying people can be a powerful catalyst for mystical experiences. And love-making with a highly compatible partner can be a profoundly spiritual event and, on occasion, even initiate an ongoing process of consciousness evolution. The close connection between sexuality and spirituality is the basis of Eastern Tantric practices.
Besides their intimate link with spirituality, birth, sex, and death also show a significant experiential overlap with each other. For many women, an uncomplicated delivery under favorable conditions can be the strongest sexual experience of their life. Conversely, a powerful sexual orgasm in women, as well as men, can occasionally take the form of psychospiritual rebirth. The orgasm can also be so overpowering that it can be subjectively experienced as dying. The connection between sexual orgasm and death is reflected in the French language that refers to it as “small death” (“la petite mort”). And dying, particularly if it is associated with choking, can have a strong sexual component.
Equally close is the relationship between birth and death. In advanced stages of pregnancy, many women have dreams that contain the motifs of death and destruction. Childbirth is a potentially life-threatening event for the mother, as well as the child. And delivery can be associated with strong fears of dying, even if it is not particularly difficult and does not endanger life. The reverse is also true; the near-death experiences share certain elements with birth, particularly the frequent sense of passing through a tunnel or funnel and emerging into light.
In the work with holotropic states, we can get deep insights into the nature of these experiential connections between birth, sex, and death. In the unconscious psyche, these three crucial areas of our life are so intimately linked and interwoven that it is impossible to experience one of them without touching upon the other two. This comes as a surprise, because in our everyday life we usually think about these three areas as separate and discuss them in different contexts. Birth is something that marks the beginning of our life and involves an infant. Death, unless it is a result of a serious disease or accident, is associated with old age and thus with the final stage of our life. Sexuality, in the full sense of the word, belongs to an intermediate period of our life characterized by physical maturity.
Birth, Sex, and Death in the Perinatal Process
This conventional view of the relationship between birth, sex, and death undergoes profound changes when our process of deep experiential self-exploration moves beyond the level of memories from childhood and infancy and reaches back to birth, to the perinatal domain of the psyche. We start encountering emotions and physical sensations of extreme intensity, often surpassing anything we previously considered humanly possible. At this point, the experiences become a strange mixture of the themes of birth and death. They involve a sense of a severe, life-threatening confinement and a desperate and determined struggle to free ourselves and survive. This intimate relationship between birth and death on the perinatal level reflects the fact that birth is a potentially life-threatening event. The child and the mother can actually lose their lives during this process and children might be born severely blue from asphyxiation, or even dead and in need of resuscitation.
The reliving of various aspects of biological birth can be very authentic and convincing and often replays this process in photographic detail. This can occur even in people who have no intellectual knowledge about their birth and lack elementary obstetric information. We can, for example, discover through direct experience that we had a breech birth, that a forceps was used during our delivery, or that we were born with the umbilical cord twisted around the neck. We can feel the anxiety, biological fury, physical pain, and suffocation associated with this terrifying event and even accurately recognize the type of anesthesia used when we were born. This is often accompanied by various postures and movements of the head and body that accurately recreate the mechanics of a particular type of delivery. All these details can be confirmed if good birth records or reliable personal witnesses are available.
The strong representation of birth and death in our psyche and the close association between them might surprise traditional psychologists and psychiatrists, but is actually logical and easily understandable. The delivery brutally terminates the intrauterine existence of the fetus. He or she “dies” as an aquatic organism and is born as an air-breathing, physiologically and even anatomically different, form of life. And the passage through the birth canal is itself a difficult and potentially life-threatening situation.
It is not so easy to understand, why the perinatal dynamics also regularly includes a sexual component. And yet, when we are reliving the final stages of birth in the role of the fetus, this is typically associated with an unusually strong sexual arousal. The same is true for delivering women, who can experience a mixture of fear of death and intense sexual excitement. This connection seems strange and puzzling, particularly as far as the fetus is concerned, and certainly deserves a few words of explanation.
There seems to be a mechanism in the human organism that transforms extreme suffering, especially when it is associated with suffocation, into a particular form of sexual arousal. This experiential connection can be observed in a variety of situations other than birth. People who had tried to hang themselves and were rescued in the last moment typically describe that, at the height of suffocation, they felt an almost unbearable sexual arousal. It is known that males executed by hanging typically have an erection and even ejaculate. The literature on torture and brainwashing describes that inhuman physical suffering often triggers states of sexual ecstasy. In a less extreme form, this mechanism operates in various sadomasochistic practices that include strangulation and choking. In the sects of flagellants, who regularly engage in self-inflicted torture, and in religious martyrs, subjected to unimaginable torments, extreme physical pain at a certain point changes into sexual arousal and eventually results in ecstatic rapture and transcendental experiences.
Dynamics and Symbolism of the Basic Perinatal Matrices (BPMs)
So far, we have focused primarily on the emotional and physical aspects of the birth experiences. However, the experiential spectrum of the perinatal domain of the unconscious is not limited to elements that can be derived from the biological processes involved in childbirth. It also involves rich symbolic imagery that is drawn from the transpersonal realms. The perinatal domain is an important interface between the biographical and the transpersonal levels of the psyche. It represents a gateway to the historical and archetypal aspects of the collective unconscious in the Jungian sense. Since the specific symbolism of these experiences has its origin in the collective unconscious, and not in the individual memory banks, it can come from any geographical and historical context, as well as any spiritual tradition of the world, quite independently from our racial, cultural, educational, or religious background.
Identification with the infant facing the ordeal of the passage through the birth canal seems to provide access to experiences of people from other times and cultures, of various animals, and even mythological figures. It is as if by connecting with the experience of the fetus struggling to be born, one reaches an intimate, almost mystical, connection with the consciousness of the human species and with other sentient beings who are or have been in a similar difficult predicament.
Experiential confrontation with birth and death seems to result automatically in a spiritual opening and discovery of the mystical dimensions of the psyche and of existence. As I mentioned before, it does not seem to make a difference whether this encounter with birth and death occurs in actual life situations, such as in delivering women and in the context of near-death experiences, or is purely symbolic. Powerful perinatal sequences in psychedelic and holotropic sessions or in the course of spontaneous psychospiritual crises (spiritual emergencies) seem to have the same effect.
Biological birth has three distinct stages. In the first one, the fetus is periodically constricted by uterine contractions without having any chance of escaping this situation, since the cervix is firmly closed. Continued contractions pull the cervix over the fetus’ head until it is sufficiently dilated to allow the passage through the birth canal. Full dilation of the cervix marks the transition from the first to the second stage of delivery, which is characterized by the descent of the head into the pelvis and its gradual, difficult propulsion through the birth pathways. And finally, in the third stage, the newborn emerges from the birth canal and, after the umbilical cord is cut, he or she becomes an anatomically independent organism.
At each of these stages, the baby experiences a specific and typical set of intense emotions and physical sensations. These experiences leave deep unconscious imprints in the psyche that later in life play an important role in the life of the individual. Reinforced by emotionally important experiences from infancy and childhood, the birth memories can shape the perception of the world, profoundly influence everyday behavior, and contribute to the development of various emotional and psychosomatic disorders. In holotropic states, this unconscious material can surface and be fully experienced. When our process of deep self-exploration takes us back to birth, we discover that reliving each stage of delivery is associated with a distinct experiential pattern, characterized by a specific combination of emotions, physical feelings, and symbolic images. I refer to these patterns of experience as basic perinatal matrices (BPMs).
First Basic Perinatal Matrix (BPM I)
The first perinatal matrix (BPM I) is related to the intrauterine experience immediately preceding birth and the remaining three matrices (BPM II–BPM IV) to the three clinical stages of delivery described above. Besides containing elements that represent a replay of the original situation of the fetus at a particular stage of birth, the basic perinatal matrices also include various natural, historical, and mythological scenes with similar experiential qualities drawn from the transpersonal realms. In what follows, I will briefly outline the specific connections between the perinatal dynamics and the transpersonal domain.
I would like to emphasize that the connections between the experiences of the consecutive stages of biological birth and various symbolic images associated with them are very specific and consistent. The reason they emerge together is not understandable in terms of conventional logic. However, that does not mean that these associations are arbitrary and random. They have their own deep order that can best be described as “experiential logic.” What this means is that the connection between the experiences characteristic for various stages of birth and the concomitant symbolic themes are not based on some formal external similarity, but on the fact that they share the same emotional feelings and physical sensations.
While experiencing the episodes of undisturbed embryonal existence (BPM I), we often encounter images of vast regions with no boundaries or limits. Sometimes we identify with galaxies, interstellar space, or the entire cosmos other times we have the experience of floating in the ocean or of becoming various aquatic animals, such as fish, dolphins, or whales. The undisturbed intrauterine experience can also open into visions of nature—safe, beautiful, and unconditionally nourishing, like a good womb (Mother Nature). We can see luscious orchards, fields of ripe corn, agricultural terraces in the Andes, or unspoiled Polynesian islands. The experience of the good womb can also provide selective access to the archetypal domain of the collective unconscious and open into images of paradises or heavens as they are described in the mythologies of different cultures.
When we are reliving episodes of intrauterine disturbances, or “bad womb” experiences, we have a sense of dark and ominous threat and we often feel that we are being poisoned. We might see images that portray polluted waters and toxic dumps. This reflects the fact that many prenatal disturbances are caused by toxic changes in the body of the pregnant mother. The experience of the toxic womb can be associated with visions of frightening demonic figures from the archetypal realms of the collective unconscious. Reliving of more violent interferences during prenatal existence, such as an imminent miscarriage or attempted abortion, is usually connected with a sense of universal threat or with bloody apocalyptic visions of the end of the world.
Second Basic Perinatal Matrix (BPM II)
When the experiential regression reaches the onset of biological birth, we typically feel that we are being sucked into a gigantic whirlpool or swallowed by some mythical beast. We might also experience that the entire world or even cosmos is being engulfed. This can be associated with images of devouring or entangling archetypal monsters, such as leviathans, dragons, giant snakes, tarantulas, and octopuses. The sense of overwhelming vital threat can lead to intense anxiety and general mistrust bordering on paranoia. We can also experience a descent into the depths of the underworld, the realm of death, or hell. As mythologist Joseph Campbell so eloquently described, this is a universal motif in the mythologies of the hero’s journey (Campbell 1968).
Reliving the fully developed first stage of biological birth when the uterus is contracting, but the cervix is not yet open (BPM II), is one of the worst experiences a human being can have. We feel caught in a monstrous claustrophobic nightmare, are suffering agonizing emotional and physical pain, and have a sense of utter helplessness and hopelessness. Our feelings of loneliness, guilt, absurdity of life, and existential despair can reach metaphysical proportions. We lose connection with linear time and become convinced that this situation will never end and that there is absolutely no way out. There is no doubt in our mind that what is happening to us is what the religions refer to as Hell—unbearable emotional and physical torment without any hope for redemption. This can actually be accompanied by archetypal images of devils and infernal landscapes from different cultures.
When we are facing the dismal situation of no exit in the clutches of uterine contractions, we can experientially connect with sequences from the collective unconscious that involve people, animals, and even mythological beings who are in a similar painful and hopeless predicament. We identify with prisoners in dungeons, inmates of concentration camps or insane asylums, and with animals caught in traps. We might experience the intolerable tortures of sinners in hell or of Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the mountain in the deepest pit of Hades. Our pain can become the agony of Christ asking God why He has abandoned him. It seems to us that we are facing the prospect of eternal damnation. This state of darkness and abysmal despair is known from the spiritual literature as the Dark Night of the Soul. From a broader perspective, in spite of the feelings of utter hopelessness that it entails, this state is an important stage of spiritual opening. If it is experienced to its full depth, it can have an immensely purging and liberating effect on those who experience it.
Third Basic Perinatal Matrix (BPM III)
The experience of the second stage of birth, the propulsion through the birth canal after the cervix opens and the head descends (BPM III), is unusually rich and dynamic. Facing the clashing energies and hydraulic pressures involved in the delivery, we are flooded with images from the collective unconscious portraying sequences of titanic battles and scenes of bloody violence and torture. It is also during this phase that we are confronted with sexual impulses and energies of a problematic nature and unusual intensity.
I have already described earlier that sexual arousal is an important part of the experience of birth. This places our first encounter with sexuality into a very precarious context, into a situation where our life is threatened, where we are suffering pain as well as inflicting pain, and where we are unable to breathe. At the same time, we are experiencing a mixture of vital anxiety and primitive biological fury, the latter being an understandable reaction of the fetus to this painful and life-threatening experience. In the final stages of birth, we can also encounter various forms of biological material—blood, mucus, urine, and even feces.
Because of these problematic connections, the experiences and images that we encounter in this phase typically present sex in a grossly distorted form. The strange mixture of sexual arousal with physical pain, aggression, vital anxiety, and biological material leads to sequences that are pornographic, aberrant, sadomasochistic, scatological, or even satanic. We can be overwhelmed by dramatic scenes of sexual abuse, perversions, rapes, and erotically-motivated murders.
On occasion, these experiences can take the form of participation in rituals featuring witches and satanists. This seems to be related to the fact that reliving this stage of birth involves the same strange combination of emotions, sensations, and elements that characterizes the archetypal scenes of the Black Mass and of the Witches’ Sabbath (Walpurgi’s Night). It is a mixture of sexual arousal, panic anxiety, aggression, vital threat, pain, sacrifice, and encounter with ordinarily repulsive biological materials. This peculiar experiential amalgam is associated with a sense of sacredness or numinosity that reflects the fact that all this is unfolding in close proximity to a spiritual opening.
This stage of the birth process can also be associated with countless images from the collective unconscious portraying scenes of murderous aggression, such as vicious battles, bloody revolutions, gory massacres, and genocide. In all the violent and sexual scenes that we encounter at this stage, we alternate between the role of the perpetrator and that of the victim. This is the time of a major encounter with the dark side of our personality, Jung’s Shadow, which we discussed in the chapter on good and evil. As this perinatal phase is culminating and approaching resolution, many people envision Jesus, the Way of the Cross, and crucifixion, or even actually experience full identification with Jesus’ suffering. The archetypal domain of the collective unconscious contributes to this phase heroic mythological figures and deities representing death and rebirth, such as the Egyptian god Osiris, the Greek deities Dionysus and Persephone, or the Sumerian goddess Inanna.
Fourth Perinatal Matrix (BPM IV)
The reliving of the third stage of the birth process, of the actual emergence into the world (BPM IV), is typically initiated by the motif of fire. We can have the feeling that our body is consumed by searing heat, have visions of burning cities and forests, or identify with victims of immolation. The archetypal versions of this fire can take the form of the cleansing flames of Purgatory or of the legendary bird Phoenix, dying in the heat of his burning nest and emerging from the ashes reborn and rejuvenated. The purifying fire seems to destroy in us whatever is corrupted and prepare us for spiritual rebirth. When we are reliving the actual moment of birth, we experience it as complete annihilation and subsequent rebirth and resurrection.
To understand why we experience the reliving of biological birth as death and rebirth, one has to realize that what happens to us is much more than just a replay of the original event of childbirth. During the delivery, we are completely confined in the birth canal and have no way of expressing the extreme emotions and sensations involved. Our memory of this event thus remains psychologically undigested and unassimilated. Much of our later self-definition and our attitudes toward the world are heavily contaminated by this constant deep reminder of the vulnerability, inadequacy, and weakness that we experienced at birth. In a sense, we were born anatomically but have not really caught up emotionally with the fact that the emergency and danger are over. The “dying” and the agony during the struggle for rebirth reflect the actual pain and vital threat of the biological birth process. However, the ego death that immediately precedes rebirth is the death of our old concepts of who we are and what the world is like, which were forged by the traumatic imprint of birth.
As we are purging these old programs from our psyche and body by letting them emerge into consciousness, we are reducing their energetic charge and curtailing their destructive influence on our life. From a larger perspective, this process is actually very healing and transforming. And yet, as we are nearing its final resolution, we might paradoxically feel that, as the old imprints are leaving our system, we are dying with them. Sometimes, we not only experience the sense of personal annihilation, but also the destruction of the world as we know it.
While only a small step separates us from the experience of radical liberation, we have a sense of all-pervading anxiety and impending catastrophy of enormous proportions. The impression of imminent doom can be very convincing and overwhelming. The predominant feeling is that we are losing all that we know and that we are. At the same time, we have no idea what is on the other side, or even if there is anything there at all. This fear is the reason that at this stage many people desperately resist the process if they can. As a result, they can remain psychologically stuck in this problematic territory for an indefinite period of time.
The encounter with the ego death is a stage of the spiritual journey when we might need much encouragement and psychological support. When we succeed in overcoming the metaphysical fear associated with this important juncture and decide to let things happen, we experience total annihilation on all imaginable levels. It involves physical destruction, emotional disaster, intellectual and philosophical defeat, ultimate moral failure, and even spiritual damnation. During this experience, all reference points, everything that is important and meaningful in our life, seems to be mercilessly destroyed.
Immediately following the experience of total annihilation—“hitting cosmic bottom”—we are overwhelmed by visions of light that has a supernatural radiance and beauty and is usually perceived as sacred. This divine epiphany can be associated with displays of beautiful rainbows, diaphanous peacock designs, and visions of celestial realms with angelic beings or deities appearing in light. This is also the time when we can experience a profound encounter with the archetypal figure of the Great Mother Goddess or one of her many culture-bound forms.
The experience of psychospiritual death and rebirth is a major step in the direction of the weakening of our identification with the “skin-encapsulated ego” and reconnecting with the transcendental domain. We feel redeemed, liberated, and blessed and have a new awareness of our divine nature and cosmic status. We also typically experience a strong surge of positive emotions toward ourselves, other people, nature, God, and existence in general. We are filled with optimism and have a sense of emotional and physical well-being.
It is important to emphasize that this kind of healing and life-changing experience occurs when the final stages of biological birth had a more or less natural course. If the delivery was very debilitating or confounded by heavy anesthesia, the experience of rebirth does not have the quality of triumphant emergence into light. It is more like awakening and recovering from a hangover with dizziness, nausea, and clouded consciousness. Much additional psychological work might be needed to work through these additional issues and the positive results are much less striking.
Perinatal Process and the Collective Unconscious
From what I have described, we can see that the perinatal domain of the psyche represents an experiential crossroad of critical importance. It is not only the meeting point of three absolutely crucial aspects of human biological existence—birth, sex, and death—but also the dividing line between life and death, the individual and the species, and the psyche and the spirit. Full conscious experience of the contents of this domain of the psyche with good subsequent integration can have far-reaching consequences and lead to spiritual opening and deep personal transformation.
People usually begin the process of intensive experiential self-exploration for very personal reasons—either for therapeutic purposes or for their own emotional and spiritual growth. However, certain aspects of perinatal experiences strongly suggest that what is happening here is an event that in its significance transcends by far the narrow interests of the individual. The intensity of the emotions and physical sensations involved and the frequent identification with countless other people throughout history give these experiences a distinctly transpersonal quality.
The following excerpt from an account of a powerful session involving a holotropic state of consciousness, beautifully captures the nature of perinatal experiences, their intensity, and the degree to which they engage the collective unconscious of humanity. (Bache 1997)
I was surprised and caught off guard by how terribly painful this session was. It was not personal and had little to do with my biological birth. The pain I was suffering was clearly related to the birthing of the species first, and my birthing second. My experiential boundaries stretched to include the entire human race and all of human history, and this “I” was caught up in a horror that I am incapable of describing with any accuracy. It was a raging insanity, a surging kaleidoscopic field of chaos, pain, and destruction. It was as if the entire human race had gathered from all corners of the globe and gone absolutely stark raving mad.
People were attacking each other with a rabid savagery augmented by science fiction technology. There were many currents crossing and crisscrossing in front of me, each composed of thousands of people—some killing in multiple ways, some being killed, some fleeing in panic, others being rounded up, others witnessing and screaming in terror, others witnessing and having their hearts broken by a species gone mad—and “I” was all their experiences. The magnitude of the deaths and the insanity is impossible to describe. The problem is finding a frame of reference. The only categories I have available to me are simplistic approximations that can give only a vague sense of it.
This kind of suffering comprises all of human history. It is at once species-specific and archetypal. It comprises the wildest science fiction worlds of horror beyond our imagination. It involves not only human beings but billions and billions of pieces of matter in agonizing galactic explosions. Horror beyond any scope. It is a convulsing of the human species, a convulsing of the universe. Floating through it were scenes of tragic suffering caused by nature and human indifference. Thousands of starving children from around the globe, their bodies bloated in death, their eyes staring out blankly at a humanity that was killing them through systemic ecological abuse and human neglect. Lots of violence between men and women—rape, beating, intimidation, retaliation—cycles and cycles of destruction.
The extraordinary nature of perinatal experiences raises some interesting and important questions. Why is it that in the process of deep self-exploration we reach a phase when we transcend our individual boundaries and connect with the collective unconscious and the history of our species? Why does this involve such intimate connection with death and with the reliving of birth? How and why is this process so closely associated with sexuality? What role does the frequent participation of the archetypal elements play in these experiences? And finally, what is the function and meaning of this process and how is it related to spirituality and consciousness evolution?
I would like to refer here to the work of Christopher Bache (1996), who has made an interesting attempt to clarify the problem of the presence of collective suffering at the perinatal level and the role of the individual in the spiritual awakening of the species. Bache pointed out that the key to the understanding of the perinatal process is the fact that its function is to liberate us from the confines of separate unenlightened existence and awaken in us the realization of our true nature, our essential identity with the creative principle. Like the Roman god Janus, the perinatal domain has a dual nature. It will show us a very different face, depending on the direction from which we look at it, whether from the point of view of the body-ego or our transpersonal Self.
Seen from the personal perspective, the perinatal domain appears to be the basement of our individual unconscious, a repository of undigested fragments of those experiences that most seriously challenged our survival and body integrity. From this angle, we perceive the perinatal process, and the violence that it entails, above all as a threat to our individual existence. From the transpersonal perspective, the identification with the body-ego appears to be the product of fundamental ignorance, a dangerous illusion that is responsible for the fact that we live our lives in an unfulfilling, destructive, and self-destructive way. Once we understand this fundamental truth of existence, we see the perinatal experiences, in spite of their violent and painful nature, as radical and drastic, but loving, attempts to liberate us spiritually by demolishing the prison of our false identity. We are not being annihilated, but birthed to a higher reality where we reconnect with our true nature.
Individual Transformation and Healing of Species Consciousness
We know from the practice of experiential therapy that it is possible to purge from our unconscious undigested memories of emotional and physical pain from our infancy, childhood, and later life by fully experiencing them. This, together with ensuing positive experiences that become available in this process, frees us from the distorting influence of past traumas that make our daily life inauthentic and unsatisfactory. Christopher Bache suggests that, in a similar way, perinatal experiences might play an important role in the healing of the traumatic past of the human species.
Is it not possible, he asks, that the memory of the violence and insatiable greed that is woven into the fabric of human history, causes disturbances in the collective unconscious that contaminate humanity’s present? Why could not the healing impact reach beyond the individual person, as our consciousness expands beyond the body-ego? Is it not conceivable that by experiencing the pain that countless generations of people inflicted on each other in the course of human history, we are actually clearing the collective unconscious and contributing to a better planetary future?
Spiritual literature offers great examples of individual suffering that has redeeming influence on the world. In the Christian tradition, it is Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for the sins of humanity. This is vividly reflected in the mythological theme of the Harrowing of Hell depicting Jesus, at the time between death on the Cross and his resurrection, descending into Hell and liberating sinners from its jaws by the power of his suffering and sacrifice. The Hindu tradition accepts the possibility that very advanced yogis can significantly positively influence the situation in the world and the collective problems of humanity by confronting them internally in deep meditation, without actually physically leaving their caves.
Mahayana Buddhism has the beautiful archetypal image of the Bodhisattva who reaches enlightenment, but refuses to enter nirvana and makes a sacred commitment to continue reincarnating until all sentient beings are liberated. The Bodhisattva’s determination to take on the suffering of incarnate existence in order to help others is expressed in his powerful vow:
Sentient beings are numberless;
I vow to save them all.
Delusions are inexhaustible;
I vow to end them all.
The gates of Dharma are manifold;
I vow to enter them all.
The Buddha way is supreme.
I vow to complete it.
Dying Before Dying
Many people who have experienced holotropic states describe the perinatal level of the psyche as a gate between the transcendental realm and material reality, a passageway that functions in both directions. At the time of our biological birth, when we emerge into the material world, we “die” to the transcendental dimension and, conversely, our physical demise can be seen as birth into the world of spirit.
However, the spiritual birth does not have to be associated with the death of the body. It can occur at any time in the course of deep self-exploration or even during a spontaneous psychospiritual crisis (spiritual emergency). It is then a purely symbolic event, an “ego death,” or “dying before dying,” which does not involve any biological damage. Abraham à Sancta Clara, a seventeenth-century German Augustinian monk, summed it up in one sentence when he wrote: “The man who dies before he dies, does not die when he dies.”
This “dying before dying” has played an important role in all shamanic traditions. By undergoing death and rebirth in their initiatory crises, shamans lose the fear of death and become familiar and comfortable with its experiential territory. As a result, they can later visit this realm on their own terms and mediate similar experiences for others. In the mysteries of death and rebirth, which were widespread in the Mediterranean area and other parts of the ancient world, initiates experienced a profound symbolic confrontation with death. In this process, they lost the fear of death and developed an entirely new set of values and strategy of life.
The experience of psychospiritual death and rebirth (“second birth,” “birth from water and spirit,” becoming a dvija) has played an important role in many religious traditions. All pre-industrial cultures attributed great significance to these experiences from a personal as well as collective perspective and developed safe and effective ways to induce them in various ritual contexts. Modern psychiatry sees the same experiences as pathological phenomena and indiscriminately suppresses them when they occur spontaneously in contemporary individuals. This unfortunate strategy has been a significant contributing factor in Western civilization’s loss of spirituality.
Sexuality: Way to Liberation or Pitfall on the Spiritual Path?
Sex shows a similar inherent ambiguity as birth and death. Depending on circumstances, it can mediate deep unitive states or deepen separation and alienation. Which of these two modes will manifest in a particular case will depend on the circumstances and on the attitude of the individuals involved. If the partners who are interacting sexually do not feel love and respect for each other and are driven only by instinctual impulses or by the need for power and domination, having intercourse will very likely intensify their feelings of separation and alienation. If the sexual union occurs between two partners who are personally mature and have not only good biological compatibility, but also deep emotional resonance and mutual understanding, love-making can result in a profound spiritual experience. Under these circumstances, they can transcend their individual boundaries and experience feelings of oneness with each other and, at the same time, have a sense of reunion with the cosmic source.
This spiritual potential of sex is the basis of the ancient Indian Tantric practices. Pañchamakara is a complex Tantric ceremony that involves ingestion of powerful Ayurvedic herbal mixtures combining aphrodisiac and psychedelic properties. An intricate, highly stylized ritual procedure helps the partners identify with the archetypal principles of the feminine and masculine. It culminates in a ritualized sexual union maintained for a long period of time (maithuna).
With special training, participants are able to suppress the biological orgasm and the extended sexual arousal then triggers a mystical experience. In the course of this ritual event, the partners transcend their everyday identities. In full identification with archetypal beings, Shiva and Shakti, they experience a sacred marriage, a divine union with each other and with the cosmic source. In Tantric symbolism, various aspects of sexuality and reproductive functions, such as genital union, menstrual flux, pregnancy, and delivery, not only have literal biological meaning, but also refer to various higher levels of the cosmic creative process.
Practical Implications of the Insights from Consciousness Research Concerning Birth, Sex, and Death
The observations described in this chapter have important practical implications. They strongly indicate that changes of our attitudes to the triad birth/sex/death and of our practices related to them could have a profound influence not only on the quality of our personal life, but also on the future of the human species and our planet. We have seen that the memories of prenatal existence, birth, and early postnatal events leave deep imprints in our unconscious and exert a profound influence on our life. It is, therefore, imperative that in the future we do whatever is possible to improve the conditions under which children are conceived, develop as embryos, are born, and are treated after delivery.
This should begin with education of the young generation providing the necessary sexual information without irrational moral and religious distortions and unrealistic injunctions, prohibitions, and expectations. However, it would not be sufficient to offer unbiased technical data about reproductive functions. It is essential that we raise the image of sex, which is currently seen as a purely biological affair and often portrayed in its worst manifestations, to that of a spiritually based activity. Another important task is to bring awareness to the fact that the fetus is a conscious being. This would increase the responsibility in regard to conceiving a child and bring attention to the importance of the emotional and physical condition of the pregnant mother. It would also make a big difference, if the education in postadolescence could include elements increasing psychospiritual maturity for future parenthood.
The delivery typically activates the mother’s own perinatal unconscious, which can interfere with the birth process, both emotionally and physiologically. It would, therefore, be ideal if women could do their own deep experiential work before becoming pregnant to eliminate these potentially disturbing elements from their unconscious. Special attention should then be given to the delivery itself. This would include good psychological and technical preparation for delivery, natural conditions for childbirth, and loving postnatal care with adequate physical contact between the infant and the mother. There are good reasons to believe that the circumstances of birth play an important role in creating a disposition for future violence and self-destructive tendencies or, conversely, for loving behavior and healthy interpersonal relationships.
The French obstetrician Michel Odent (1995) has shown how this perinatal imprinting, which has the potential to sway our emotional life in the direction of love or hatred, can be understood from the history of our species. The birth process has two different aspects and each of them involves specific hormones. The stressful activity of the mother during the delivery itself is primarily associated with the adrenaline system. The adrenaline mechanisms also played an important role in the evolution of the species as mediators of the aggressive and protective instincts of the mother at times when birth was typically occurring in open natural environments. They made it possible for females to rapidly shift from delivering to fight or flight when an attack by a predator made it necessary.
The other task associated with birth, which is equally important from the evolutionary point of view, is the creation of the bond between the mother and the newborn. This process involves the hormone oxytocine, which induces maternal behavior in animals and humans, and endorphins that foster dependency and attachment. Prolactine, the hormone that is instrumental in nursing, has similar effects. The busy, noisy, and chaotic milieu of many hospitals induces anxiety and unnecessarily engages the adrenaline mechanisms. It conveys and imprints the picture of a world that is potentially dangerous. Like the jungle setting in the primordial times, such a situation calls for aggressive responses. Conversely, a quiet, safe, and private environment creates an atmosphere of safety that engenders affectionate patterns of relating. Radical improvement of birth practices could have a far-reaching positive influence on the emotional and physical well-being of the human species and assuage the insanity of its behavior that is currently threatening to destroy the very basis of life on this planet.
The prenatal and perinatal history also has important implications for our spiritual life. As we have seen earlier, incarnation and birth represent separation and alienation from our true nature, which is Absolute Consciousness. Positive experiences in the womb and after birth are the closest contacts with the Divine that we can experience during our embryonal life or in infancy. The “good womb” and “good breast” thus represent experiential bridges to the transcendental level. Conversely, negative and painful experiences that we encounter in the intrauterine period, during birth, and in the early postnatal period send us deeper into the state of alienation from the divine source.
When our prenatal and early postnatal experiences are predominantly positive, we tend to maintain throughout our life a natural connection with the cosmic source. We can sense the divine dimension in nature and in the cosmos and are able to enjoy to a great degree the incarnate existence. Conversely, when our early development was just a series of continuing traumas, the loss of connection with the spiritual source can be so complete that our existence in the material world is a painful ordeal full of emotional torment.
I should also mention that sometimes an extremely severe trauma can result in a situation where consciousness splits from the body and is catapulted into the transpersonal realm. This can establish an escape route that is regularly used as a defense mechanism in later difficult life situations. This form of spiritual connection can help to protect us from excessive pain, but it does not enhance the quality of life, since this mechanism is not well integrated with the rest of the personality.
Substantial changes are also necessary in our attitude toward death. We have seen that death has a powerful and important representation in our unconscious. Its deepest manifestations are transpersonal in nature and have the form of wrathful archetypal figures and karmic records of life-threatening situations from other incarnations. The memories of vital threats in the womb, during delivery, and after birth represent additional important sources of fear of death. For many of us, this is complemented by memories of serious traumas that we experienced later in life. The menacing specter of death that we harbor in our unconscious interferes with our everyday existence and makes our life in many ways inauthentic. In technological societies, the predominant reactions to this situation are massive denial and avoidance that are in their consequences destructive and self-destructive on an individual as well as a collective level.
It is essential for the future of humanity that we break through this denial and come to terms with the problem of impermanence and of our mortality. There exist ancient and modern methods of deep self-exploration that can help us to confront the fear of death, bring it fully into consciousness, and overcome it. We have already seen how “dying before dying” can open for us the channels to the transcendental dimension of existence and initiate a journey that can eventually lead to the discovery of our true identity. In this process, we can experience emotional and psychosomatic healing and our life becomes more satisfying and authentic. This profound psychospiritual transformation can raise our consciousness to an entirely different level and make our life less taxing and more rewarding.
It is important to be aware of the existence and nature of this process and to provide guidance and support for people who experience it unintentionally in near-death situations or spontaneous psychospiritual crises (spiritual emergencies). Another important step is to make available, on a large scale, various ancient and modern methods of deep self-exploration that make it possible to undergo this process deliberately. Preindustrial and ancient societies had certain procedures in the form of rites of passage and mysteries of death and rebirth that were designed specifically for this purpose. Thanks to the ancient knowledge that, in the last several decades, has been rediscovered by consciousness research, transpersonal psychology, and thanatology, we have now the possibility of substantially improving the emotional quality of our life, as well as our death.
People, who have during their lifetime experientially confronted birth and death and connected with the transpersonal dimension, have good reasons to believe that their physical demise will not mean the end of their existence. They have personally experienced in a very convincing way that their consciousness transcends the boundaries of their physical body and is capable of functioning independently of it. As a result, they tend to see death as a transition into a different state of existence and an awe-inspiring adventure in consciousness rather than final defeat and annihilation. Naturally, this attitude can in itself substantially change the approach to death and the experience of dying. In addition, people who are involved in deep self-exploration have the opportunity to gradually come to terms with many difficult aspects of their unconscious that we otherwise have to deal with in the final period of our life.
The insights from the work with holotropic states also have important implications for the way we practically approach the final stages of life, our own as well as those of other people. When we believe that the critical dimension of our existence is consciousness and not matter, we will be concerned about the nature and quality of our experience of dying and death rather than a mechanical prolongation of life at all costs. In the work with other people who are dying, we will put emphasis on the quality of communication and will offer meaningful psychospiritual support. We will complement, and in some instances replace, the technological wizardry of modern medicine with genuine human care. If the information conveyed by the Bardo Thodol, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, is correct, the way we approach death and experience it is of critical importance. If we are adequately prepared, this time is a unique opportunity to achieve instant spiritual liberation. According to the Tibetan teachings, even if we do not succeed, the quality of our preparation for death or the lack thereof will determine the nature of our next incarnation.