Pathways to Wholeness: Archetypal Astrology and the Transpersonal Journey

we can describe the archetypes simply as primordial patterns of experience, which influence all people and cultures in the form of basic habit patterns, instincts and emotions.

Individuals engaged in deep self-exploration under the influence of BPM IV experience a cluster of themes centered around breakthrough and transcendence. The volcanic arousal and suffering of the previous stage of BPM III eventually reach the extreme limit, then culminate in a sense of total failure on every imaginable level—physically, emotionally

Both of these drives—expansion and integration—entail growth out into the world, but in different ways. Expansion makes something bigger by incorporating the surrounding area into itself. The process of integration, on the other hand, consists of recognizing a commonality with the surrounding area and adopting a new identity that includes both it a

According to Grof, psychedelic substances can be properly understood as non-specific amplifiers of psychological processes. They actively complete chemical and neural circuits in the brain that are usually interrupted—filling in the antenna, so that emotional material which is normally inaccessible can now flood into consciousness. Thus the content

Of course, what usually happens is that the intense perinatal emotions that would ideally be faced in a condensed form during a single holotropic session will, in everyday life, be spread out and experienced in a diluted way over the course of weeks, months, or years. Instead of experiencing the BPM II feelings of compression, entrapment, and meani

People who adhere to the old materialistic, Newtonian understanding of the world may be pragmatic in their everyday lives, but their inner experience will over time become dry, barren and dissatisfying, and without higher meaning. In order to be truly healthy—embodying what Grof calls “higher sanity”—people need to learn to be comfortable in both w

Over hundreds of centuries, astrologers have observed that the activation of these universal forms in human life occur in systematic and meaningful coincidence with geometrically formed alignments between the Sun, Moon, and planets in the solar system. For example, the way in which the impulses toward freedom, breakthroughs, and rebirth manifest in

Tarnas discovered remarkably precise and detailed correlations between Grof's perinatal matrices and the archetypal meanings observed to correspond to the planets Neptune, Saturn, Pluto, and Uranus.

These oceanic Neptunian states are also an antidote to the problems of alcoholism and drug addiction. From the perspective of transpersonal psychology, substance abuse, codependence and other forms of escapism are recognized as being understandable but mistaken attempts to return to the womb and reorient toward Higher Power. Addicts who reach melte