by Stanislav Grof Noetic Sciences Review, Winter 1994, pages 21-29 From a talk given at the Institute of Noetic Sciences conference “The Sacred Source: Life, Death, and the Survival of Consciousness”, Chicago, Illinois, July 15-17, 1994. Editor’s Note: In Western societies, the dominant paradigm presents a cosmology in which humans, as biological matter, live and die in a universe governed by the laws of physics. In this worldview, there is no room for the possibility of life after death, and different states of consciousness have significance only as pathological deviations from that worldview. In sharp contrast, the cosmologies of other cultures, ancient and contemporary pre-industrial, have taken for granted the existence of an afterlife. For them, dying is a meaningful part of life, and death […] Read More