Personal Reflections

I've lived some of what I'm writing

It occurred to me when I woke up this morning that before my next posts from my novel — about Third and Fourth Force Psychology and depth psychology in the 1970s — I should share with you a couple personal experiences and reflections from my life.

(ALDOUS AND LAURA HUXLEY)

In early 1988, I was 22 years old and had just arrived in Los Angeles — I grew up mostly here in Albuquerque — and had begun doing research and writing for the bestselling author Marilyn Ferguson and her internationally-influential Brain-Mind Bulletin.

(MARILYN FERGUSON)

Marilyn was hosting a party for about 20 people, and being new to this social scene I was hovering back in the kitchen, behind a wide counter, observing. I was somewhat amazed when 76-year-old Laura Huxley, widow of Aldous Huxley, walked over, looked across the counter at me, and started talking to me.

I knew three things about Laura Huxley. An Italian, she had been part of Roberto Assagioli’s Psychosynthesis movement in Italy before migrating to the U.S. She had a nonprofit organization focused on perinatal (womb-and-infancy) psychology. And, at his request via a handwritten note — he couldn’t speak because he had throat cancer — she’d given Aldous a shot of LSD in his dying hour. (Like C.S. Lewis, Huxley had died the same day that President Kennedy was assassinated.)

Laura Huxley only shared one thought with me before walking back to mingle with the rest of the guests. She looked at me and said, “I’m just back from one of Stan Grof’s workshops at Esalen. And he’s absolutely right. Deep breathing can do everything psychedelics can do.”

I started deep breathing the next morning.

I was only 22, but I’d already read books by Dr. Stanislav Grof, and by Dr. Arthur Janov, and by Dr. Roberto Assagioli — all of whom make their appearances as characters in my third novel. The approaches and worldviews of Grof and Janov were wildly different, but they shared in common an exploration of perinatal trauma and other perinatal experiences — and an emphasis on their profound importance for the rest of our lives. (Grof is still very much alive in his nineties.)

(ARTHUR JANOV)

It was well known that John Lennon had been through Primal Therapy, and one of the most popular GenX bands of the 1980s, Tears for Fears, had produced a recent album called Songs from the Big Chair that was about their Primal Therapy experiences. Millions of people were singing “shout, shout, let it all out”. Their song “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” — which has 448 million views today on YouTube — included the lyrics:

There's a room where the light won't find you
Holding hands while the walls come tumbling down
When they do, I'll be right behind you

And their less well-known song “I Believe” included the lyrics:

And I believe
No I can't believe that every time
You hear a newborn scream
You just can't see the shaping of a life
The shaping of a life

I couldn’t afford thousands of dollars for Primal Therapy and couldn’t even afford a trip up to the Bay Area for a Grof Holotropic therapy workshop at the Esalen Institute. But deep breathing just means breathing deeper and faster than normal for a really long time — usually a couple hours, maybe five hours, maybe longer. I could afford that. It’s free.

Over the next several years, with long deep breathing sessions and soon with a light-and-sound device called a brain machine — which I used for half an hour each day from age 26 to age 37 — I reexperienced my perinatal experiences dozens of time. And all by myself, without a therapist, I healed from neurosis.

Turns out I had one of the worst all-time beginnings to a life — in the womb and as an infant — that a human being could possibly have. (I’ll write about that here on Substack someday.) And then had a truly blessed life starting around 16 months. So if I hadn’t discovered Grof and Janov and been prompted into deep breathing by Laura Huxley, I may never have healed from the primary traumas of my life.

Now I’ve just written a novel that involves Janov and Grof. I feel a special mission to keep bringing perinatal psychology and depth psychology to other people’s attention and awareness, since they’ve been so transformational for me.

About a year later, Stanislav Grof called Marilyn’s home in Lake Arrowhead and I answered the phone. “Oh,” I told him, “I’ve read all your books,” before letting Marilyn knew who it was. That was my only encounter with Dr. Grof.

(STANISLAV GROF)

Grof went well beyond perinatal psychology. He emerged in the 1970s, during the years in which the novel is set, as the leading thinker in Fourth Force / Transpersonal Psychology. I’d say he’s the most important psychiatric thinker in human history and the most important thinker about the range of experiences of human consciousness. I’ll be posting about Janov next weekend about Grof the following week.

I had an experience in October 2008 that will only resonate with you if you believe in the afterlife. If you don’t, well, then you can think about what a wonderful thing our imagination is.

I was sitting in my living room here in Albuquerque one night when the spirit of Aldous Huxley appeared to me. Standing next to him was the spirit of a lean woman, and I just assumed she was Laura Huxley, who had passed on 10 months earlier.

A few days later, I found out that Marilyn Ferguson had died a few days before Aldous Huxley had appeared to me. I then realized that it had been Marilyn appearing to me after she’d passed over, and that she’d brought Aldous along with her.

Stanislav Grof, Arthur Janov, Aldous and Laura Huxley, and especially my mentor and friend Marilyn Ferguson have all deeply influenced my thinking and have had transformational effects in my life. I look forward to sharing some of the best thinking of Janov and Grof with you beginning next weekend.

All my best,

Mike