“
I understand that the ancient mysteries of death and rebirth,
and also the rites of passage of the native cultures,
enabled people to go through a kind of dying before dying.
The 17th-century German Augustinian monk Abraham of Santa Clara
put it very succinctly: ‘The man who dies before he dies
does not die when he dies.’
Once you have this experience,
you do not see death as the end of who you are,
“
but as a fantastic journey, as a transition
to a different mode and level of existence.
Whether this is a profound cosmic truth or a merciful delusion,
as some of the materialistic critics of transpersonal psychology assert,
it can certainly transform people’s lives.
STANISLAV GROF
VOLUME I | 69