7 Birth, Sex, and Death: The Cosmic Connection
Experiential confrontation with birth and death seems to result automatically in a spiritual opening and discovery of the mystical dimensions of the psyche and of existence. As I mentioned before, it does not seem to make a difference whether this encounter with birth and death occurs in actual life situations, such as in delivering women and in the context of near-death experiences, or is purely symbolic. Powerful perinatal sequences in psychedelic and holotropic sessions or in the course of spontaneous psychospiritual crises (spiritual emergencies) seem to have the same effect.
Similar breakthroughs have also occurred in many other disciplines. Information and systems theories, Rupert Sheldrake’s concept of morphogenetic fields, the holonomic thinking of David Bohm and Karl Pribram, Ilya Prigogine’s explorations of dissipative structures, the chaos theory, and Ervin Laszlo’s unified interactive dynamics are just
a few salient examples of these new developments. These new theories show increasing convergence and compatibility with the mystical worldview and with the findings of transpersonal psychology. They also provide a new opening for the ancient wisdom that materialistic science rejected and ridiculed.