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Stanislav Grof's Journey of Consciousness w/ Susan Hess Logeais - Connecting Minds Podcast Ep01
237 Plays5 years ago
On this inaugural episode of Connecting Minds, we have Susan Hess Logeais, the writer/producer/director of the just-released feature length documentary The Way of the Psychonaut: Stanislav Grof’s Journey of Consciousness, released on 14th October 2020
The film explores the life and work of Stanislav Grof, Czech-born psychiatrist and psychedelic psychotherapy pioneer. Stan’s quest for knowledge and insights into the healing power of non-ordinary states of consciousness, influenced the discipline of psychology and profoundly changed many individual lives.
In this episode we talk with Susan about how her journey, her discovering Stan Grof’s work, and working with him on creating the film about him. We also get into some deeper topics which were fascinating!
Episode show notes here: https://christianyordanov.com/01-susan-hess-logeais/
Watch this interview in video: https://youtu.be/zhl9yW3QuSU
Links to Susan’s work and websites:
Watch The Way of the Psychonaut: https://www.thewayofthepsychonaut.com/
Susan’s website: https://susanhesslogeais.com/
Become a member here to watch expert interviewee Q&A’s and get other resources and updates about the project: https://www.thewayofthepsychonaut.com/learn
The film is also available on:
- Vimeo download/on-demand: https://wotp.vhx.tv/
- Apple TV
- Google Play:
- Amazon Direct: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B08K927SCC/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r
Links to Stan Grof’s work:
His website, where you will find his books and other many resources: http://stangrof.com/
Grof Transpersonal Training (Holotropic Breathwork): http://www.holotropic.com/
Topics discussed in his episode:
- Susan’s background in ballet and how she transitioned into into film-making.
- How she got into Stan Grof’s work.
- Meeting Stan Grof and convincing him to work together on a film to tell his story.
- Who is Stanislav Grof?
- Working with LSD. Unlocking the psyche.
- Co-founding Transpersonal Psychology.
- How the birth process and its traumas can affect us.
- Stan’s work in Esalen.
- The Perinatal Matrices.
- Rites of passage and the mono-myth of death and rebirth.
- The development of Holotropic Breathwork after LSD was made illegal.
- The process of making The Way of the Psychonaut
- The importance of bringing this project to the world. The need for a massive shift in our human consciousness.
- The expert interviews in the film and their pushing of the envelope of our scientific understanding of the mind, the world, and reality.
- Susan’s spiritual practices.
- Using dreams to find answers during periods of creativity.
- Archetypal Astrology and the work of Richard Tarnas.
- Tarnas’ book Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View: https://www.amazon.com/Cosmos-Psyche-Intimations-World-View/dp/0452288592
- Working with psychedelic medicines.
- Susan’s strategies and practices to stay healthy.
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast & Guest
00:00:10
Speaker
Connecting Minds is a space dedicated to honoring the amazing authors, researchers, clinicians, artists, and entrepreneurs who are contributing to our collective evolution or simply making the world a better place. These thought-provoking conversations are intended to expand our horizons, so come with an open mind and let us grow together. Here is your host, Christian Yordanov.
00:00:41
Speaker
Hello and thank you for tuning into Connecting Minds. My name is Christian Jornov and I am so excited to bring you this podcast. Today, we have our inaugural episode and I present to you Susan Hesse-Loge. She is the writer, producer and director of the film called The Way of the Psychonaut Stanislav Groff's Journey of Consciousness.
00:01:04
Speaker
Now this film is set to be released on the 14th of October, which is a day before this episode is released, which means that if you're listening to this now, you can go to the website, thewayofthesyconaut.com to watch the film on demand or download it.
00:01:21
Speaker
It's also available on Google Play, Apple TV, and Amazon Direct. I, for one, cannot wait to watch it. I also, of course, have the links to the film in the show notes of this episode.
Stanislav Groff's Influence on Psychology
00:01:35
Speaker
But in case you have not been acquainted with Stanislav Gruff's work yet, very briefly, he is the Czech psychiatrist who is one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology.
00:01:47
Speaker
He's a researcher into the use of non-ordinary states of consciousness for purposes of exploring, healing, and obtaining growth and insights into the human psyche. Albert Hoffman, the man who first synthesized LSD, called Stan Groff, the godfather of LSD,
00:02:07
Speaker
He has done a tremendous amount of psychotherapeutic work and research with LSD before it was made illegal. And he continued his work after that with his development of what is known as holotropic breath work, which is very much still growing around the world as a therapeutic modality.
00:02:26
Speaker
So he's a fascinating man and he's really contributed a lot to various fields. Of course, he co-founded Transpersonal Psychotherapy Psychology, so truly a great man. And Susan has done a great job of telling his story in this film.
Susan's Background and Filmmaking Journey
00:02:45
Speaker
They have some videos on the website already available or they had already available before the release of the movie that I watched and just a tremendous job with telling his story.
00:02:56
Speaker
A little bit about Susan. Susan Hesse-Loge brings her passion as a social activist to her work as a filmmaker, creating thought-provoking and inspiring films. Her background as a dancer, actress, and perpetual student allows her to craft stories that do more than entertain. She also blends the knowledge and understanding earned from over 30 years of spiritual exploration with her technical experience as a filmmaker
00:03:24
Speaker
providing her with a unique perspective on building projects that draw the viewer into a heartfelt experience of the story.
00:03:32
Speaker
Susan holds a BA in interdisciplinary studies with a concentration in transformational entertainment and human consciousness and is working on her master's in philosophy, cosmology, and consciousness. Truly a fascinating person. I really, really enjoyed our conversation together. She definitely opened my eyes to several topics that I'm going to be researching, a few books I'll be reading.
00:04:00
Speaker
In this episode, we talk with Susan about basically her journey, how she got into this Stan Groff's work, her spiritual explorations, and her journey with working with Stan on producing this film about him. Near the end, we also get into some deeper topics that I found fascinating and I hope that you will too. Remember,
00:04:29
Speaker
on christianjordanov.com, we'll have show notes for each of our episodes in the future. There'll be links to our guests, to their websites. In Susan's case, we'll have links to her own websites, of course, to the film The Way of the Psychonaut, and I highly encourage you to explore those websites. There's a lot of really good, valuable content there. There's a lot of
00:04:57
Speaker
interviews with some of the experts that were featured in The Way of the Psychonaut and kind of clips of them from the film itself. So there's a lot of really, really interesting stuff on Susan's websites. Of course, check out the show notes.
00:05:17
Speaker
Another thing, this interview is also available in the video on YouTube. There will be a link in the show notes in your podcast or podcast player. And yeah, I think that is all. I really sincerely thank you for joining us on this first episode and I hope that you will keep coming back for more. We have some amazing guests lined up. I've already interviewed 12.
00:05:40
Speaker
So it's been difficult to restrain myself from launching it all together. But patience is a virtue, as they say. So I will be working hard to bring you some amazing people over the coming weeks, months, hopefully years. I hope you stay with us. I hope you find these conversations as interesting, fascinating, illuminating as I do.
00:06:08
Speaker
And yeah, thank you for joining us. Now, without further ado, here is our guest, Susan Hess-Loje. All right. So today on the Connecting Minds podcast, we have Susan Hess-Loje. Susan, thank you so much for spending an hour or so of your time today. It's my pleasure. Nice to meet you, Christian.
00:06:31
Speaker
Nice to meet you too. So you must be very, very busy. I believe you are releasing the movie that we'll be discussing for the most of the episode on the 13th of October, was it or the 15th? 14th.
00:06:44
Speaker
14th. Okay, so it must be a lot of stuff right now to coordinate, right? Yeah, so that's even more of an honor to have you on. So let's start with a little bit of your background. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and what kind of got you into filmmaking and how you got to where you are today?
00:07:10
Speaker
Well, I actually come from a ballet background. I started as a ballet dancer and was actually danced one year with San Francisco Ballet. And then at the age of 18, pretty much decided that wasn't what I came here to do and modeled for a number of years and acted for some period of time. And again, realized that it's not really what I like to do, but it was when I was acting and I was watching how
00:07:37
Speaker
productions took place. I saw the crew, camera, lighting. I saw all the elements that come into play and then very disillusioned. I left New York City and moved to the West Coast and spent nine months in Grants Pass, Oregon.
00:07:57
Speaker
And I ended up working with children, middle school students, at-risk youth. I choreographed a musical for amateur community members that wanted to participate in a musical. And what I discovered was the greatest joy I'd ever felt was
00:08:19
Speaker
Seeing other people do well helping them achieve their best and what had always been sort of this dissatisfaction with whatever i did because i needed other people to tell me that i was good suddenly i felt that i was
00:08:37
Speaker
doing something that was really of value.
Exploring Women's Roles Through Film
00:08:41
Speaker
And I discovered this tremendous sense of joy. And that just propelled me to write stories. And I did a produced and wrote a feature length film that I also acted in. And then I ended up directing a series of... Is that The Nurse of Steel?
00:09:02
Speaker
Nerves of Steel was my first documentary project about the ballet studio where my daughter was dancing. The feature film is called Not Dead Yet, and it's about a bunch of women turning 50 and realizing that, wait a minute, even though society thinks we have no more value, that's not true.
00:09:22
Speaker
And so it was sort of paralleling what I saw women facing as they reached that transition in their life. And then the other documentary that I did that actually convinced Dan Groff to work with me is called SOAR, S-O-A-R, and it's about two sisters, and one is a quad amputee.
00:09:41
Speaker
And she's a choreographer, and she was a dancer. And it's about this story between she and her sister who has all of her limbs, and then Kiara, who lost her limbs at age two because of a blood infection. And so that was on PBS here in the United States, public broadcasting. And I shared it with Stan. And when he saw that, he felt that he could really work with me.
00:10:11
Speaker
He felt that I respected their story, that I had compassion and empathy, and that I understood how to tell a good story. Actually, I'm glad you kind of mentioned your background in ballet because I was going to ask you about that because I was just reading through kind of your websites, your bios and stuff like that. And I mentioned to my girlfriend,
00:10:36
Speaker
you know, that you were doing ballet and because she has been doing ballet since the age of four and she danced for the Lithuanian National Ballet and similar to you, she had to go to the big city, albeit smaller than New York when she was, I think she was 13 on her own. So she had a similar kind of journey like you, you know, but very, very, very interesting.
00:11:03
Speaker
So what actually got you into Stan Groff's work?
00:11:13
Speaker
Another part of my story is that I never felt like I belonged on Earth, that I, as a kid, I dreamt of flying, I jumped off our roof when I was five years old. I try to put that into the opening of the movie so that people have this idea of, I imagine I'm not the only one who feels like, wait a minute, why am I here? How did I get here? How does this place work?
00:11:41
Speaker
And so it wasn't until my 30s that I discovered shamanic journey work working with Michael Harner.
00:11:48
Speaker
And so I actually was able to go to a dimension of consciousness and meet a group of teachers. And I began to gain real understanding of who I am and how this world works and the idea that there are dimensions of consciousness, that there are beings or spirits that are here to work with us.
00:12:11
Speaker
And for three years I had another meditation technique that allowed me to go there as well. I went every day for three years and had a relationship with these spirits and they worked with me and gave me information and helped guide my life in a very difficult period at the time I had breast implants.
Spiritual Journey and Connection with Groff
00:12:31
Speaker
And I became very sick. And it was a moment in the United States where there was this huge, it was in the early 90s, it was this huge sort of wave of women who were having serious health complications because of breast implants.
00:12:47
Speaker
And so I was very public when I got them out. I'd done it because I felt that I wasn't enough of a woman if I didn't have a certain breast size. And so there was a lot of shame and I was able to clear that. And I would not have been able to face that without this support that I was getting.
00:13:07
Speaker
And so I ended up leaving the United States, I went to France, I met my husband, we got married, and then we couldn't have children. And I tell this story in the movie just briefly to let people know what drew me to Stan, but it was
00:13:26
Speaker
It was this understanding that I had associated myself to a dimension that wasn't part of really this physical place. And so yes, there was surgery involved that helped me become pregnant, but I let go of that spiritual practice and I fully got here on the planet. It's like if you're gonna have a physical act of pregnancy and giving birth, you need to be fully here. And I wasn't.
00:13:53
Speaker
And so I made that choice. And when my kids got to a certain age, I tried to go back out through the shamanic journey work, nothing, nothing. And so then I just felt like, but I need that information. I need that connection. I'm ready.
00:14:10
Speaker
I thought, well, let me see if I can do LSD. That opened me up when I was younger in my 20s. That's what sort of opened me to the whole idea. But now I'm a middle-aged woman. It's illegal. I have children. Where am I going to find it? What do I do? Hey kids, I'm going to go do some LSD. No.
00:14:30
Speaker
So I thought, okay, I'll participate in a trial. And I started looking into psychedelic trials, and then I found Stan's name. I saw, oh, holotropic breath work. I've done rebirthing. I can do that. So I found, I said, but I want to hear him speak. I went to his website.
00:14:49
Speaker
And I highly recommend anyone who hasn't visited his website, so many papers, so much information, so many books. I was able to read so much and I thought, well, I want to learn from him. So I signed up for a workshop that he would be speaking at and I heard him speak.
00:15:10
Speaker
He covered all the subjects that I had loved so much, mythology, quantum physics, tantric science, shamanic journey work, all these theories of Eastern spiritual traditions. And I thought, if I tell his story, then I will complete my understanding of knowledge and be able to share what I had learned up to that point. So I had to tell a story.
00:15:40
Speaker
So what year did you come across his work? It's 2013, I think. Okay. Yeah, 2013. And then you started planning the movie in 2014, correct?
00:15:55
Speaker
Well, 2013, when I first met him, I really wanted to tell his story. But at the time his deceased wife, Christina, was still living, Stan and Christina's health was not good. And Stan was just sort of pulling back from public life. And so there wasn't really access to him. And then I learned that his wife, Christina, passed in 2014.
00:16:23
Speaker
in June, then there was a conference honoring him in October. I had become interested in archetypal astrology, which is something that Stan developed with Richard Tarnas when they were at Esalen. And so I had a reading by someone named Matthew Steltzner.
00:16:41
Speaker
And Matthew looked at my chart and I told him what I wanted to do. I want to tell Stan's story. And he said, well, your chart is perfect. It aligns with Stan's. You're Saturn, second Saturn return and Stan's third Saturn return. And this is perfect. You're the one. There's a conference.
Groff's Life and Work
00:17:00
Speaker
You need to go.
00:17:02
Speaker
And I did, and I was able to meet Stan and found courage and just said, I want to make a movie about you. And May and Bill Melton joined me. And it was their participation that really got this thing going.
00:17:17
Speaker
Okay, so I think for folks that are not so familiar with Stanislav Groff, can you maybe give us a brief history of, you know, he has had a very rich life.
00:17:33
Speaker
a difficult and lengthy story to tell. Can you give folks an idea of who this man was, what he did, and what aspect of his life did you cover in The Way of the Psychonauts, Stanislav Groff's Journey of Consciousness? Well, I actually tried to give the full scope of his life. He grew up in Nazi-occupied Prague.
00:17:59
Speaker
And he was, I think, eight years old when Prague was, you know, the Nazis arrived and just took over. So he had the experience of the Holocaust. There were Czech resistance fighters that had escaped and were dropped in by parachute from England.
00:18:18
Speaker
They managed to blow up or shoot this Reinhard Heydrich, which was the third highest ranking officer in the Nazi, you know, SS party. And he was the architect of the Holocaust. And he died of his wounds a few days later and Hitler wanted to kill 10,000 innocent Czechs.
00:18:43
Speaker
And he ended up killing 5,000. But while these resistance fighters were hiding, Stan remembers every few minutes a siren going off, which signified that they had just killed another innocent citizen.
00:18:59
Speaker
because they wanted the local population to give up these resistance fighters. Stan was 12 years old at the time, and males over the age of 15 were the people that were pulled for those assassinations. After the Nazis were defeated, they had three years of peace, and then the communist takeover took place. He grew up with these
00:19:29
Speaker
the Nazis, then the communists. And as a student, he was arrested and held in jail for a few months. This would have destroyed his career. His brother Paul says that this would have just destroyed his career.
00:19:43
Speaker
With that mark, no one in the family would have been able to advance beyond anything but just menial labor. And for some reason, Stan was the only one of the students that were arrested that got away with it. They couldn't charge him with anything.
00:19:59
Speaker
Then the director of a school where he went was sick when Stan arrived, recovering from a heart attack, I think, never read his file. So Stan was this amazing student. And when he graduated, they gave him a, I mean, President Gottwald, you know, head of this Communist Party, gave him a gold medal publicly.
00:20:20
Speaker
And so he was about to get into medical school and now it's like, but wait a minute, he was arrested, but they couldn't prove anything. He got this gold medal. It's too embarrassing to go back. We can't take that medal back. So they let him go into medical school. His brother Paul was able to go to medical school and Stan excelled again. And it was his first LSD experience as he calls it, a freshly baked psychiatrist that changed his life.
00:20:49
Speaker
Prior to that, everything he did was electroshock therapies and insulin-induced comas. And I think he did, I hope I don't get it wrong, I think he did like 10 insulin comas a day and 15 to 20 electroshock sessions a day. So it was just this factory system of shocking, he calls it medieval psychiatry.
00:21:17
Speaker
And so when he discovered psychedelics, that was it. So 10 years of research. First, is this pharmacology? Can a psychedelic, can we tell what it's going to do? And the answer was no.
00:21:28
Speaker
There's no, you can't, one person takes the same substance more than once has a totally different experience. There's no predictability. People, you give the same substance to a different, you know, series of different kinds of people. Everybody has a different experience. So there was no way, it's not pharmacology. It's nothing you can predict like an antibiotic or a, you know, aspirin or something. Just can't do that. It's an amplifier of the psyche.
00:21:58
Speaker
And so then Stan spent 10 years or this part of that 10-year period was, so what does it do? And that's where he discovered that it unlocks the deep psyche and transpersonal psychology, which he co-founded with Abraham Maslow and Tony Sudich, is the idea that the deep psyche represents also the collective unconscious.
00:22:23
Speaker
And so all we might begin by sort of going in and exploring aspects of ourself, but at some point we sort of go beyond what it is that represents our personal experience in this lifetime. And we go into the collective experience and also often into our past lives. So transpersonal psychology was trying to say we are more than our
00:22:50
Speaker
biography from the moment we're born. And he also saw that the birth process itself had a dramatic influence and there were four stages and that it would, depending on how those experiences went and the kind of birth experience an individual had, those unconscious memories could be influencing decisions and behaviors as that person went through their life.
00:23:18
Speaker
So he was able to dramatically help people by allowing them to re-experiencing, re-experience these profound, often traumatic memories and let them go. Because as an adult, they had the maturity to gain objectivity. So that represents his work. He went on to the United States 14 years at Esalen.
00:23:43
Speaker
work at Spring Grove, then LSD was shut down and his time at Esalen was bringing in thought leaders in quantum physics, psychology, all kinds of different biology, Rupert Sheldrake, for Chav Capra. There were so many people that came through Esalen.
00:24:07
Speaker
sharing their knowledge from all around the world, from all walks of life and many different perspectives. And it was this tremendous learning experience for all involved. And it just kept rippling out into society for decades and still influencing us.
00:24:25
Speaker
First of all, I love the little segments because for folks listening, there are little segments of some of the interviews. I'm not sure if it's all the interviews of folks in the film. So I'll have links in the show notes for people to watch. They're very interesting.
00:24:42
Speaker
But I was watching a few of them today and I love Rupert Sheldrake's work. I've been kind of immersing myself a lot into it and it's so interesting to see how many of, and we're talking some serious heavy hitters that are featured in the movie, that how many
00:25:05
Speaker
people he influenced, it's just incredible. And how those people's ideas and theories and research fed back and enriched his work. It's just a really amazing process, which I feel like you've really captured well, even though I've only seen snippets and I've read a little bit of Stan's work.
00:25:27
Speaker
some of his biography but i also love the video where you talk about what you just mentioned those perinatal matrices the birth perinatal matrices you know with one to four and how you know how important they can be at least for some people in in shaping our behavior our personalities and
00:25:53
Speaker
And to a certain extent, the negative patterns of our behavior. But I can't remember, was it yourself or someone else? But you talk about how many cultures around the world have these rites of passage
00:26:12
Speaker
that potentially are a way similar to how psychedelics can induce for us to access and process these perinatal experiences. Can you maybe talk a little bit about that? I don't really know something about that.
00:26:25
Speaker
Yeah, it has a lot to do with Rupert Sheldrake's, not Rupert Sheldrake, Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell met Stan in the early 60s, I believe, and Joseph Campbell is one of the most famous mythologists. He was a huge student of Jung, Carl Gustav Jung, and
00:26:49
Speaker
And so Joseph Campbell brought this amazing perspective of mythological beliefs from around the world. And he had what he called the monomyth, and he could never understand how these cultures that had no connection with each other
00:27:06
Speaker
had a similar rite of passage that involved this myth, this death rebirth myth. Then when he met Stan and heard Stan's presentation about the four perinatal matrices, he understood that these cultures were reliving the memory of their birth. And so it made sense to him that this is something every human being must experience and that it must have this profound impact on the psyche.
00:27:31
Speaker
And so a rite of passage, which is what a breathwork session might be or a psychedelic session and in indigenous cultures, it's what happens as a young person goes through puberty. And the idea is that you confront these fears. You have this death rebirth experience so that you reach a certain level of maturity and you can become a functioning, responsible member of your community.
00:27:59
Speaker
And so that's really how Stan, through his friendship with Joseph Campbell, sort of came to this understanding of what that process represents. Do you cover how Stan developed holotropic breath work in the movie?
00:28:22
Speaker
I don't go into, I mean, he, I don't spend a lot of time on how he developed it.
Production and Challenges of 'The Way of the Psychonaut'
00:28:28
Speaker
Essentially it was because they, drugs weren't allowed and people that were arriving, Stan may briefly discuss it, but people were coming from around the world and they wanted an experience and it couldn't just be theory. And so Stan noted that people would breathe heavily towards the end of an LSD session if something wasn't
00:28:50
Speaker
resolved he would encourage them to breathe more and so he thought so breathing deeply and regularly will cause people to go into a deeper state and
00:29:02
Speaker
He initially, he was, I'm trying to think, everybody was breathing at once and he was taking care of everybody. But he hurt his back and he couldn't get up and down. And so they decided that people would pair off and one would breathe and one would sit.
00:29:21
Speaker
And Stan speaks about, in the end, that that's really one of the greatest healing aspects of the breath work is that for three hours, someone is going to give you their undivided attention.
00:29:34
Speaker
and whatever you need, they will be there for you. And so he talks about there's commission and that is things that we experienced that were done to us that caused us trauma. And then there's omission, things that we didn't get, that we needed in order to feel like we deserve to be loved. And so for this three hours, you deserve to be loved and you get the sitter's 100% attention. That's amazing.
00:30:01
Speaker
Now, I know we kind of talked a little bit before we started recording. Could you give folks a little bit of an idea how the journey progressed once Stan was convinced that you were the right person to do this production? How did things unfold? Well, we started just getting background, meeting together. Then there was a process of trying to write a story.
00:30:31
Speaker
I didn't want to waste hours filming, filming, filming, and then have so much footage I didn't know what to do with. So I felt, let's just write a story. And so we wrote a story, Stan would read it, give me feedback. And once we agreed on what that story was, then I started filming reenactment sequences that would bring to life some of the key moments of his process.
00:30:55
Speaker
And concurrently, every time I met, pretty much I was asking questions. I would ask him to tell his story so I would have him to describe what we might be seeing. And I was also asking him to explain, you know, what is the psyche? I didn't understand when I first started working with him. What is an archetype? There were things that I came, I mean, I felt that I represented the general audience. I don't have a background in psychology.
00:31:25
Speaker
I'm 62 and I'm working on getting a master's. So I'm not really fully up to speed in everything that Stan knows and shares. And so I was learning and asking questions about what he knows and how he knows it.
00:31:46
Speaker
And so that guided our interview process and how I tell the story. So the reenactments, what does an insulin coma look like? What does an electroshock therapy look like? Stan would come back and say, yes, but I would have cleaned with alcohol before I gave the shot. And it's like, well, I'm not going to reshoot it for that.
00:32:13
Speaker
But or the fluid goes so fast, you know, okay, we'll slow that down But you know or no, that's not quite how that works. Okay, so we would reshoot to meet the way it really took place and and Stan felt comfortable in the end that our reenactments are accurate and accurately reflect what he did and it makes me happy because Stan has
00:32:41
Speaker
now a accurate portrayal of, in his own words, his beliefs and his theories with imagery and storytelling to support it so that it's more easily understood. And there's less possibility of his teachings being distorted as we move forward into the future because he got to explain it in his own words and he approved the imagery that we use to explain it. And where did you shoot?
00:33:12
Speaker
All over. I mean, I'm in Portland, Oregon, so the reenactment footage was in my house, in the studio, outdoors. You know, wherever we could find a place to shoot, we worked with a local dance company to incorporate them into this perinatal sequence.
00:33:33
Speaker
Most of the interview footage took place down in California in different people's homes, some in Stan's house. Initially it would just be me with a camera and a little baby lighting kit trying to do everything and of course not doing all of it well. And then I was able to hire a crew and worked with a cinematographer who lit and filmed and for the most part everything was very professional.
00:34:02
Speaker
Yeah. So you probably didn't have a massive budget to work with for this. I still haven't been paid. And I mean, I, I put my own money into it and I'll probably never get it out, but I, I don't care because I mean, sure, I'd like to get paid. That would be nice, but, um, it's more valuable. I feel to, um,
00:34:29
Speaker
get this information out there. We're at a point in our human evolution where we could just be wiped off this planet if we really don't change the way we
00:34:39
Speaker
treat the natural world, reduce our impact on it, and how we live together. That requires a massive shift out of our limited understanding of who we are and what we're entitled to.
Film's Impact and Societal Transformation
00:34:55
Speaker
And so I don't see that happening without these powerfully transformative experiences
00:35:02
Speaker
And, you know, coining Rupert Sheldrake, the more people that have these experiences, whether through breath work, spiritual emergence, can be also vipassana, shamanic journey work. I mean, there's no limit to how you can get in to these states and
00:35:20
Speaker
have access to these dimensions, but without that, I don't believe we can come to a critical mass of enough people having these experiences. And as Rupert would say, once they're in the collective, once they're in that field of consciousness, it's easier for those who are less likely to make that shift, to be drawn into it.
00:35:45
Speaker
So you have to have pioneers willing to just sort of find their way there and they strengthen that access to these dimensions and then other people, it will be easier for them to follow. I love that. And this is actually why I reached out to you because these are the kind of people that I want on the podcast is folks that are
00:36:10
Speaker
either accelerating or breaking new ground in our collective transformation by first either spreading knowledge or by actually exploring the realms of the unconscious as to kind of quote one of Stan's books. So what's kind of the plan now? Did you mean to launch earlier in the year, I think you said, and then kind of obviously COVID through a spanner in the works?
00:36:40
Speaker
We had thought that we would, you know, we would bring the film to conferences that we might, you know, I might participate in panels and things like that. And in the end, that just didn't work out because everything was happening virtually. And then to me, it felt that the expert interviews, as you say, represent
00:37:08
Speaker
thinking that is critical. We don't teach, I don't think anywhere, the full scientific paradigm that currently is embraced, that is acknowledged, the quantum physics,
00:37:25
Speaker
you know, Akashic field that Ervin Laszlo speaks of, the morphic resonance and morphogenetic fields that Rupert speaks of. There are concepts in science that would dramatically shift our understanding of what the world is and how we participate in it, if it was taught.
00:37:46
Speaker
And it is not. And so my goal in sharing information from these various experts was to introduce people to these points of view, to this information and to the individuals that are continuing to push this envelope and to get that information out there. So, you know, I feel that
00:38:11
Speaker
What we shared over the course of the summer was probably better than participating in conferences and just limiting the focus to the movie because it really became an opportunity to share about 90% of what I filmed.
00:38:25
Speaker
and educate people in the process and all those Q&As are available on the website through the Livestream Archive page. You just have to become a member. So many people that participated, nobody asked for money. As long as it was made available for free, they were happy to participate. That is so amazing and definitely we'll have the link for that because
00:38:49
Speaker
I wasn't aware there were actual Q&As with these guys and these are amazing people. You know, guys like, we already said Rupert Sheldrake, but you know, Jack Cornfield and, oh, just, you know, Robin Carhartt Harris and Rick Doblin is there. So I think this will appeal to a very wide audience, this film. I kind of forgot what I was going to ask you next.
00:39:18
Speaker
So what would be the distribution channel for people that want to watch the movie? We are in the process of making the film available through Apple TV, Google Play, Amazon Direct,
00:39:35
Speaker
And then through the website itself with Vimeo has a streaming platform and a video on demand. It will be available for purchase, which would be a download or for streaming. And so everything is available through the website. And then again, if you did a search on Apple TV beginning October 14th or soon after, there will be access to the film. And we have it subtitled in
00:40:03
Speaker
nine different languages. So English is there, of course. But there's also Czech, German, French, Brazilian Portuguese, simplified Mandarin, Russian, Italian. So all these and Chinese, I said Chinese. So all these languages will be available and Spanish, Latin American Spanish.
00:40:31
Speaker
So the idea was that there are quite a number of breathwork practitioners and facilitators that have been trained over the many years since Stan introduced his technique that he
00:40:44
Speaker
that his wife, at the time, Christina Groff had participated in, that these facilitators be able to train their own generation of facilitators and that the film might serve them, as well as these interviews to explain some of the thinking behind. Yeah, that actually I was going through some of the resources that you link to from the way of the Psychonauts website and
00:41:10
Speaker
I even saw there is, I think it's a three year course in the Czech Republic in English, as well as obviously Czech, that I am very seriously considering, not this year, but next year potentially starting. So, you know, this movie would definitely
00:41:27
Speaker
bring that to the attention of more and more people out there, which I think it looks like a tremendous amount of work that you've put in for obviously no immediate reward for yourself. But I believe and I have to thank you for your work because
00:41:47
Speaker
the collective truly benefits from this work and you're probably gonna earn yourself a good few karma points, right? Good karma points for this.
00:41:58
Speaker
I say that. I say that in the United States we're having a pretty rough period of I guess it's the Pluto return for the United States and Pluto is the planet of disruption. And you've got just as I said that our glass recycling happened outside with a big crash.
00:42:19
Speaker
Pluto is about destruction and destroying things, sort of this primordial creative energy that has to wipe something out so something new can take place. And so when I look at what's happening in the United States and people are going, how can they get away with this? Or what's happening? And I always say, you cannot escape karma. And so
00:42:41
Speaker
for those who take on responsibility but don't do well with it and cause suffering for others, those are bad karma points. And I would hope that this project helps people. And I wouldn't mind getting some good karma points. That's probably worth more in the long run than any financial gain.
00:43:03
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I don't mean to derail too much, but some book I read fairly recently said if we were to take an even wider view of the world and the cosmos really in the universe, it's there is no good or bad. And we're all, you know, players in a game or in a theater. We're actors and we all have roles. You know, you have the good role. I have the bad role. Someone has the other role and
00:43:31
Speaker
Apparently, at least this particular author's explanation was, in the end, the bad guys actually get even more
00:43:42
Speaker
karma points that they're good because they took on the extra responsibility of being the bad guy and it takes really evolved advanced beings to be able to make the sacrifice in order to do that. So I suppose on a much grander scheme of things, maybe
00:44:01
Speaker
There's nothing bad or good happening. It's just the way the physical realm is evolving. But if we were to scale it back to our own human consciousness, we certainly seem to have this instinct to want to avoid negativity and bad and push towards
Spiritual Practices and Philosophies
00:44:21
Speaker
the good. And this is definitely you and your team are helping us
00:44:28
Speaker
there in that direction. And just actually, how big was your team for the project?
00:44:35
Speaker
Basically me, Stan and Brigitte co-produced in terms of helping to raise money, helping to verify the integrity of my work. But I did all of the editing. And I worked with an incredibly talented motion graphics person. I would create these sequences if anyone's familiar with editing software. You layer things. So there's maybe 10 layers of video.
00:45:06
Speaker
Throwing in and out of things, blending, I would make things bigger, make them smaller, turn them, rotate them, do all kinds of things. And the best I could do using Premiere Pro, and then this person, Scott Graves, would take what I had done, bring it into After Effects, which I don't know is a program, and smooth it out, clean it out, make it more elegant, more beautiful. And his work, he just made everything so beautiful.
00:45:35
Speaker
And I was just very grateful for that. And I want to come back to what you said about the karma, because I completely agree with that point of view. And in the big scheme of things, we take turns having lifetimes on this earth, and every lifetime is an opportunity to grow. And there's a full spectrum of experience that we need to pass through. And so there will be times where we're the victim or the perpetrator. And I believe that
00:46:03
Speaker
depending on a lifetime series of lifetimes that and I actually saw this in my ayahuasca first ayahuasca experience that we take turns flipping you know between one lifetime to the next which sort of perpetuates an endless cycle of suffering and that there that we don't have to wait for the next lifetime to sort of escape the duality that is inherent in the physical world it's the nature of of the material
00:46:34
Speaker
Dimension that you have a positive and negative pole and that they they balance each other there will always be equal amounts, but it's held within a greater whole and to me from my experience we escape suffering and
00:46:50
Speaker
when we can attain a perspective from that greater unity. And that is achieved through a psychedelic session, a shamanic journey, meditation, yoga. And I do believe that a daily practice is really valuable in just connecting our energies to this place of peace and love. And Ervin Laszlo would call it unconditional love. That's how he describes the intelligence that shapes the universe.
00:47:20
Speaker
So just to say that. Well, that was actually a perfect segue because I was going to ask you, first of all, I noticed, I saw on LinkedIn that you are, and you already mentioned that you're doing a master's in the California Institute of Integral Studies. So you're clearly a student of, you know,
00:47:47
Speaker
philosophy and cosmology and, you know, of course, consciousness. But I was going to ask you what daily and maybe not just daily but occasional other practices do you utilize to, you know, tap into this, you know, field of unconditional love or
00:48:10
Speaker
or the field that permeates all of the physical world, what do you do yourself to kind of get in there and explore it? Well, I had the good fortune to encounter some techniques.
00:48:26
Speaker
some that are based in Tibetan Buddhism and some that are based in Hinduism. One is called the Sri Chakra in the Sri Vidya and it's a chakra meditation where you're
00:48:41
Speaker
you're working with the energies of each chakra and you're treating them as dimensions and that they're almost worlds and you're kind of developing your awareness of those energies and really giving your attention to each of them, opening them, clearing them, and then really focusing on
00:49:02
Speaker
this point above your head, which is about 18 inches above your head, which is the portal to these dimensions of higher consciousness. And so it's really developing that capacity to being fully grounded to be able to go up, very parallel to shamanic journey work, which I'm also circling back to, because now that I've been able to sort of build that connection up,
00:49:27
Speaker
I feel like shamanic journey work will work again, and it is working. The other thing that I do is something called CH, C-H-O-D, and it's this Tibetan Buddhist practice of
00:49:44
Speaker
It's sort of ritual sacrifice in the sense that you imagine yourself as big as the universe and you're offering yourself to these higher beings that are so delighted with your sacrifice that they bless you and then, you know, your spirit is out of your body at that point and now you imagine all these souls
00:50:07
Speaker
that from all these dimensions, many in the middle world, as Michael Harner might say, souls that have agendas that aren't here for necessarily the best, you know, for human evolution, that they feed on you. And by feeding on your purified form, they're cleansed of what might hold them back from moving forward. I've studied quite a bit of, you know, different perspectives and there's similar theme is the idea of
00:50:37
Speaker
physical dimension that we live in as a sort of a middle world. And then there are upper worlds of the higher evolved spirits and dimensions, more subtle dimensions of consciousness, and then the lower world, which would be the earth and animal spirits and things like that, benevolent, both sides, without agendas.
00:50:57
Speaker
And the passage from this middle world to the upper world is a sort of a passerelle or a bridge. And if you haven't practiced that passage, you in the course of your passing, someone might get confused and not go there. A death that happens abruptly, a suicide, an accident, if you're not prepared.
00:51:25
Speaker
then you might not make it. And then you're kind of lost in this limbo. And the goal of ch is to help those spirits find their way to this dimension and begin to do the work necessary for what comes after, be it another reincarnation or not coming back into physical form, but remaining in a more subtle dimension.
00:51:54
Speaker
Yeah, these Tibetan... I'm kind of reading a bit here and there where I can... Recently, I have it here. I got a book in a secondhand bookstore, the Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep. And since starting to read this book, I've noticed... Actually, I had my first lucid dream, I think two or three days ago, ever in my life.
00:52:18
Speaker
And I had read, I had heard someone say that if you find yourself in a lucid dream, you must not try to control the dream. But it was just really awkward and I kind of ruined it. But I've been noticed, I've been tapping into, I've been more aware of my dreams and I've been dreaming a lot more. Do you do any practices like that with regards to dreaming or while sleeping?
00:52:41
Speaker
Well, I use dreams, you know, like when I'm working on the film and I'm trying to come up with how the movie should work or how do I resolve something? How do I show something? How do I bring it to life? Often I'll just go to bed. And when I wake up in the morning, like about an hour before I wake up, I'll see it. It'll just play out in my mind. Or I'll have dreams that are very clear, often that feel that I'm out of my body visiting something else or I am somewhere else.
00:53:11
Speaker
So I try to remain open to them. And I haven't cultivated a practice of dreaming, but I really rely on them in periods of creativity for providing me with either the language or the imagery I need to complete something. And do you consciously set an intent before you go to sleep, or does it just spontaneously arise? It's much more helpful in going to bed to say,
00:53:40
Speaker
you know, help me understand what I'm trying to do here. Help me, you know, show me the best way to do it. And then you just go to bed with, I really want to understand the best way to do this. And then you go to sleep. And when you wake up, generally, as you're on the edge of coming awake, that's where the ideas come. Or as Richard Tarnas says, always have something next to the bed, because whatever comes up, if you don't write it down in that moment, you probably won't remember it. And so I also would do that.
00:54:09
Speaker
Very cool. Well, one thing I actually meant to ask you earlier, because you talked a little bit about you had a reading prior to approaching, I think, Stan, about the movie. I'm going to include any links or resources you mentioned. Can you give us, because I have a particular interest in this, can you give us any resources, authors or other, you know, whatever books,
00:54:37
Speaker
about astrology and how we can kind of use that to, you know, not just to know if we're gonna, you know, win the lot or get a raise, but for actual more inner work and collective transformation. Well, Richard Tarnas wrote a really powerful book called Cosmos and Psyche.
00:54:57
Speaker
And we're actually studying that book, and I read it previously before I even started on this project. He looks at 3,000 years of the Earth's history and charts what happened through the lens of the planetary transits. So certain planets, Saturn and Pluto together, result in often world wars.
00:55:20
Speaker
Uranus, Pluto, whether they're on top of each other, which would be a conjunction, or on opposite sides of the Sun, that would be an opposition, or whether they're square, you know, those are called hard aspects. And they're either amplifying each other, Pluto can have an impact on Uranus, Uranus can have an impact on Pluto. And when you
00:55:42
Speaker
When you learn to understand how these cycles, these are forces influencing human behavior, the idea is that if you understand these forces and how they work together and influence human behavior,
00:55:58
Speaker
you can start to kind of objectively not feel like you're, imagine you're in a surf and the waves keep hitting you and you're tumbling, tumbling, tumbling. Well, if you learn how to surf, you learn how to read the waves, you learn how to stay on top of them, then you can navigate what's coming at you and not feel powerless. And so that's a real value of the archetypal astrology.
00:56:24
Speaker
So I'll send you information about these things. But that's the perspective of archetypal astrology and it's very valuable because you begin by when you have access to this information and especially when you work with people that have understood on a deep level through years of work and an intuitive level what it means for a particular individual
00:56:52
Speaker
It can help make sense of a lot of what's happened in someone's life and give you a sense of perspective about your past.
00:57:00
Speaker
give you a sense of perspective about where you are right now. And even looking back and looking at the charts of people you're interacting with, you can start to see where the conflicts arise, when they started, and how they might resolve. So I think it takes away this feeling of powerlessness and confusion and fear. Yeah. Fascinating stuff. Fascinating.
00:57:29
Speaker
All right, I'm actually I wrote that down Richard Tarnas. I'm definitely looking into his stuff. I have a book on on a very old book from the 80s. It's supposed to be a good book on astrology. Still haven't cracked it open. So did you actually have readings or kind of analyze when to release the movie? No, no, you know, I didn't. I don't.
00:57:57
Speaker
The only time that I used astrology was when I was trying to determine to have an experience. If I was going to have an inner journey and I was, whether it was ayahuasca or LSD or something like that, because I did have a few high dose sessions that were very different from the exploration I had as a younger person. And they were very powerful. How high are we talking? Say that again, sorry. How high are we talking?
00:58:26
Speaker
Initially, with LSD, anything above 175 micrograms, getting towards 200, anywhere from about 250 to 400 is considered a high dose. After 600, it just doesn't even absorb. I mean, people can take 1,000 and
00:58:43
Speaker
You know it doesn't mean much Stan has said that it just your brain can only absorb so much and you need a two week period in between. For it to clear out and for those receptors to be able to take it a new so people taking it every day aren't getting anything either.
00:58:57
Speaker
except for distortion. And then psilocybin mushrooms, four grams is a very high dose. One gram would be a low dose. So anywhere from two to four, three to four is considered high. Ayahuasca, God knows. You never know. It's always different and it really doesn't... I would... I don't know. It depends on the person, body weight, the whole deal.
00:59:27
Speaker
So, but yeah, I would only look at astrology then to say what, how interesting might this be?
00:59:35
Speaker
And if there was nothing happening, no major transits. But I didn't even understand when I started this whole thing that this Uranus, Uranus is the planet of new breakthrough, new ideas, disruptive, Pluto, death, rebirth, Saturn, hard limits, hard lessons, just going to force you to take a look and deal.
01:00:02
Speaker
Come up with something strong and
Personal Health and Lifestyle Choices
01:00:04
Speaker
solid. It's not fun I wouldn't say but I didn't realize that all those planets were very active in my chart across from what would be a Sun sign which is yourself, you know how you present to the world that was you know, they were opposing each other the whole time and so every experience I had was a basic death rebirth experience and
01:00:28
Speaker
Well, so I don't know if I I didn't know that at the time so Good, you know, sometimes I would I have if I knew everyone was going to be hard would I have done it? Probably not
01:00:41
Speaker
Okay, one more question before you can kind of tell folks where to find you. You said you're 62. You don't seem to be ashamed of saying that, which is amazing. Apart from kind of spiritual mindfulness practices, what, I suppose, strategies or practices do you have to take care of your physical bodies that have worked for you really well?
01:01:07
Speaker
Well, I am definitely shifting more towards a plant-based diet, eating limited amounts of animal protein, basically because I just think they're treated so poorly that I would hate to cause more suffering. Industrial farming practices are just awful. I want to grow more of my own food.
01:01:32
Speaker
Movement that is you know, I love working out hard, but my body doesn't like it so much as I'm getting older so sort of limiting what I do to what's necessary and Maintaining a I don't want to be positive like Pollyannish, you know, everything's good. It's all beautiful but Trying trying to be very honest with my feelings If I'm angry allowing myself to be angry
01:02:01
Speaker
not being embarrassed about what I feel and just honesty and compassion. Always compassion. Whoever I meet, if we don't agree, if there's conflict, I always try to understand what's causing that person to behave in this way. So just trying to have compassion for people and myself. Yeah, I think that's really
01:02:30
Speaker
kind of good advice to live by to allow to feel what should be felt so it doesn't store in the body and then to practice in compassion. It just breeds, you kind of start losing this positive energy that actually permeates others and I think that's a really kind of great note to end on Susan.
Conclusion and Film Access
01:02:53
Speaker
I want to thank you so much, not just for your time, but for this obviously gargantuan project for putting your energy, your soul, your heart into it, for the betterment of all of us. I want to really thank you for that. And can you tell folks where they can find just all your websites and any kind of social medias if you want to share?
01:03:13
Speaker
Yeah, so the way of the psychonaut.com is the website. And that's where all the links to purchase will be found, as well as access to these past live stream live streams of our expert interviews, followed by the q&as. And that's free, you just have to become a member.
01:03:32
Speaker
And then we have a Facebook page, The Way of the Psychonaut. And that's a really good thing to follow because then you'll be kept up to breast about what's happening, when it's happening, what's coming out. Various groups are beginning to ask to stream it for their communities, to hold screenings, and we encourage that. If you have a community that you think might be benefited,
01:03:59
Speaker
reach out and we have a pricing sort of guideline on the website, but I'll work with anybody. I really just want this to get out there. And encouraging people, if you have experts in a field in your community, ask us about streaming this. And I'm also happy to connect people if they want to stream, say, Fritjof Capra or Rupert Sheldrake or Richard Tarnas or Sean Kelly or Brigitte Graf or
01:04:27
Speaker
Jill Purce or any of the people, Becca Tarnas for example, any of the people that represent a sort of knowledge base, I'm very sure that these folks would be willing to participate at some level, you know, to sort of expand on what they shared and answer a particular community's ideas. So I'm happy to facilitate any of that.
01:04:50
Speaker
Well, thank you so much once again, Susan. And of course we have all those links in the show notes. And I just want to wish you best of luck with the launch. I certainly will be, you know, cannot wait to watch the full feature and be a best of luck with the launch. And thank you once again for your time and for your hard work and bringing Stan's story to the world. Well, Christian, it's been a pleasure speaking with you and I very much appreciate your kind words. So thank you.
01:05:32
Speaker
to connecting minds. We hope you enjoyed this conversation and found it interesting, illuminating, or inspiring. For episode show notes, links, and further information on our guests, please visit christianjordanov.com. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with someone who might also enjoy it. Thank you for being here.