Observations placeholder
Grof, Dr Stanislav - On core experiences
Identifier
006073
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Dr Grof experimented on both himself and a number of volunteers to try to unearth lost and buried Perceptions that were affecting Memory and behaviour in a negative way. He found that childhood experiences were key in forming belief systems whether positive or negative.
I think we need to remember when reading this that parents and schools are the principal source of "ancestral, racial or phylogenetic memories, and archetypal structures", there is nothing spiritual in this, it is straightforward transfer of information, often very subtly achieved.
A description of the experience
LSD Doorway to the Numinous – Dr Stanislav Grof
The most important part of the core experience – COEX- system seems to be the core experience itself.
It was the first experience of a particular kind that was registered by the brain and laid the foundation for a specific COEX system. The core experience, thus, represents a prototype, a matrix pattern, for the recording of subsequent events of a similar kind in the memory banks.
It is not easy to explain why certain kinds of events have such a powerful traumatic effect on the child that they influence his psychodynamic development for many years or decades. Psychoanalysts have usually thought in this connection about constitutional and hereditary factors of an unknown nature.
LSD research seems to indicate that this specific sensitivity can have important determinants in deeper levels of the unconscious, in functional dynamic matrices that are inborn and transpersonal in nature. Some of these factors, when brought to consciousness in LSD psychotherapy, have the form of ancestral, racial or phylogenetic memories, archetypal structures .........
In the earliest stages of development, the child is a more or less passive victim of the environment …..
Under the influence of the core experiences, he develops strong specific expectations and generalised anticipations toward certain categories of people and certain situations. These follow the general pattern of the core experiences and can be logically derived from its particular content.
As a result of an early traumatic event or repetitive experience, the child can, for example, develop a strong feeling that people generally cannot be trusted; in such a situation, one is constantly on guard, and each new person is considered to be a potential enemy or aggressor