For more than 50 years, Stan Grof has studied powerful states of consciousness that can radically expand our understanding of who we are and what the human psyche is capable of. In this opening session, you'll discover why Stan calls these experiences holotropic states — states that move us toward wholeness — and how they can carry profound healing, transformative, and even evolutionary potential.

You'll explore why conventional psychology's focus on your postnatal biography may represent only the "tip of the iceberg," overlooking the perinatal and transpersonal dimensions that can emerge through psychedelic experiences, spiritual practice, near-death experiences, shamanic rituals, and spontaneous spiritual emergencies.

Stan will share how his own life-changing LSD experience challenged everything he'd been taught about consciousness and set him on a decades-long investigation into the deeper reaches of the psyche.

You'll begin to consider a radically expanded view of human identity in which consciousness may extend far beyond the body, connecting you more deeply with yourself, others, nature, the cosmos, and the larger creative principle.

In this session, you'll:

• Experience a guided exploration of your own consciousness as Stan invites you to consider experiences that may have carried you beyond your ordinary sense of self
• Discover what Stan means by holotropic states, or "moving toward wholeness," and why these experiences can offer powerful possibilities for healing, transformation, and spiritual growth
• Explore Stan's expanded map of the human psyche, including the biographical, perinatal, and transpersonal dimensions that can reveal aspects of yourself far beyond your everyday identity
• Hear how Stan's first psychedelic experience profoundly transformed his understanding of consciousness, challenging the idea that consciousness is simply produced by the brain
• Reconsider experiences often dismissed as pathological — including mystical experiences and spiritual emergencies — as potentially meaningful expressions of your innate capacity for greater connection and wholeness

Module 1 Special Guest Commentary: Jack Kornfield

Renowned meditation teacher and Buddhist psychologist Jack Kornfield will offer his perspective on holotropic states and the expanded dimensions of consciousness Stan has spent decades exploring. He'll explore how these experiences can become not simply extraordinary states, but meaningful pathways for healing, awakening, and bringing greater wisdom and compassion into everyday life.

Death was largely absent from Western psychology until researchers began recognizing how profoundly our encounters with mortality can shape the psyche and how transformative it can be to consciously engage with them.

Stan will reveal how experiences of threat, constriction, and near-death can remain embedded within you, including the powerful imprint of your own passage through birth.

You'll discover how these unresolved experiences may contribute to emotional and psychosomatic patterns while creating an underlying sense that something is missing or that fulfillment always lies somewhere in the future.

Stan will illuminate how the psychospiritual death-rebirth process can help complete what may remain emotionally unfinished, freeing you from the endless pursuit of the next achievement, possession, or circumstance you hope will finally make life feel complete.

You'll also explore how reconnecting with a deeper dimension of consciousness can help you become more present to the life you already have and begin approaching death as part of a larger journey rather than simply its end.

In this session, you'll:

• Reflect on the places where you may be postponing fulfillment, noticing where you've come to believe that life will truly begin once you achieve, acquire, or change something
• Discover how experiences of threat, constriction, and coming close to death can remain active within the psyche, influencing emotional and psychosomatic patterns long after the original experience
• Explore how the imprint of birth may shape your experience of life, including feelings of confinement, discomfort, striving, and the persistent belief that the solution lies somewhere ahead
• Understand how Stan's psychospiritual death-rebirth process can help you move beyond this inner "treadmill" and experience greater freedom, connection, and appreciation for what's already present
• Examine how Western culture's denial of death differs from ancient and Indigenous worldviews, opening you to the possibility that physical death may not necessarily mark the end of consciousness

Module 2 Special Guest Commentary: Susan Hess Logeais

Filmmaker and death-awareness advocate Susan Hess Logeais will offer her perspective on how consciously engaging with mortality can transform the way we live. Drawing on her work exploring our cultural relationship with death, Susan will reflect on what becomes possible when we move beyond avoidance and bring death back into conscious awareness, from releasing fear and questioning long-held assumptions to becoming more present for the life unfolding now. She'll illuminate how approaching death with greater openness and curiosity can become a powerful invitation to live with greater freedom, meaning, and appreciation.

Across cultures and throughout history, human beings have developed powerful practices for encountering death before physical dying, not simply as an idea, but as a transformative inner experience.

Stan will take you into the wisdom of shamanic traditions, rites of passage, and ancient mysteries that used holotropic states to guide people through profound experiences of psychospiritual death and rebirth.

You'll discover how shamans entered initiatory crises that could lead to healing and a new identity, while rites of passage helped people consciously cross the threshold from one stage of life into another.

You'll also explore the universal "hero's journey" identified by Joseph Campbell and its deeper significance as a map of inner transformation through ordeal, surrender, death, and renewal.

Through these traditions, you'll discover how experiencing death symbolically can help you meet change with greater openness, while cultivating a very different relationship with your own mortality.

In this session, you'll:

• Explore your own relationship with life's thresholds, reflecting on a time when an old identity or way of being had to "die" for something new to emerge
• Discover how shamanic initiations use death-rebirth experiences as pathways to healing, transforming the "wounded healer" through direct encounters with deeper dimensions of consciousness
• Explore how rites of passage can help you consciously cross life's major thresholds, using transformative experiences to mark the end of one identity and the emergence of another
• Follow Stan into Joseph Campbell's hero's journey as a map of inner transformation, revealing why stories of descent, ordeal, death, and rebirth appear across cultures
• Discover how ancient mysteries offered experiential preparation for dying, giving initiates a direct encounter with psychospiritual death and rebirth rather than asking them simply to believe what might happen after death

Module 3 Special Guest Commentary: Michael & Annie Mithoefer

Following Stan's exploration of ancient practices for navigating psychospiritual death and rebirth, pioneers in MDMA-assisted therapy Michael and Annie Mithoefer will bring these timeless patterns into a contemporary therapeutic context. Drawing on decades of experience working with trauma and non-ordinary states of consciousness, they'll explore how entering difficult inner territory with courage, support, and trust can allow deeply held experiences to unfold and transform. They'll reflect on the profound processes of surrender, release, and renewal that can arise in psychedelic-assisted therapy, and how moving through what once felt overwhelming can help you meet life's transitions with greater trust, resilience, and openness to what comes next.

Across the world's great spiritual traditions, mystical practices have offered something fundamentally different from religious belief: the possibility of directly experiencing dimensions of consciousness beyond the ordinary self.

Stan will explore how practices from Buddhism, yoga, Sufism, Taoism, Kabbalah, and other traditions can open the door to experiential knowing, including encounters similar to those described in ancient books of the dead and modern near-death experiences.

You'll discover why Stan's decades of research led him to consider the possibility that consciousness continues beyond physical death, and how powerful inner experiences can transform your relationship with mortality without requiring you to adopt any particular belief.

You'll also explore Stan's approach to inner work, which trusts your own "inner healer" to reveal the experiences which can best serve your healing and development rather than imposing a predetermined path upon your transformation.

As you develop this deeper trust in yourself, you can begin shifting from striving, controlling, and constantly reaching toward the future to experiencing more presence, connection, cooperation, and flow in the life you're living now.

In this session, you'll:

• Explore where you may be fighting the current of your own life, noticing what can shift when you loosen your need to control the outcome and become more receptive to where life is leading you
• Discover how direct mystical experience can transform belief into experiential knowing, offering a different way to approach spirituality, consciousness, and the possibility of life beyond death
• Explore the striking parallels between ancient books of the dead, psychedelic experiences, and near-death experiences, and what they may suggest about consciousness beyond the body
• Learn why Stan trusts your innate inner healing intelligence to guide profound transformation — and how reclaiming that authority can deepen your trust in your own psyche
• Shift from striving and forcing toward greater presence and flow, discovering how Stan's "surfing" approach can help you enjoy everyday life more deeply while accomplishing more with less struggle

Module 4 Special Guest Commentary: Roger Walsh and Juliana Balistreri

Professor of psychiatry Roger Walsh together with psychotherapist Juliana Balistreri, who has extensive training in elder care and as a death doula, will explore what it means to trust the deeper intelligence revealed through transformative states. Drawing on their experience with contemplative practice, psychology, and expanded states of consciousness, they'll reflect on how loosening your identification with the everyday self can open you to greater presence, connection, and inner guidance. They'll illuminate how integrating these experiences into daily life can help you release the need to control, trust yourself more deeply, and meet life with greater openness and flow.

The materialistic worldview assumes that consciousness is produced by the brain and therefore ends when the body dies, but Stan's decades of consciousness research have led him to question whether that conclusion can adequately explain what people actually experience.

You'll examine transpersonal experiences in which ordinary boundaries of identity, time, and space seem to dissolve, sometimes revealing information far beyond what a person consciously knows.

Stan will introduce compelling research into deathbed experiences, veridical out-of-body perceptions, near-death experiences, and children who report detailed memories of previous lives.

Rather than asking you to accept reincarnation or survival after death as fact, he'll help you distinguish between observable phenomena and the theories we create to explain them.

You'll emerge with a wider framework for considering consciousness, identity, and death that leaves room for mystery while inviting you to question assumptions about who you are and what may continue beyond the body.

In this session, you'll:

• Explore the boundaries of your own identity, considering what becomes possible when you loosen the assumption that you're only a separate body and individual self
• Examine near-death and veridical out-of-body experiences that challenge conventional assumptions about where consciousness resides and what it may be capable of
• Discover research into children who report memories of previous lives, including cases involving verifiable details, unfamiliar places, unlearned knowledge, and corresponding birthmarks
• Learn to separate observation from interpretation, as Stan helps you consider extraordinary phenomena without turning intriguing evidence into absolute conclusions
• Explore how transpersonal experiences can expand your understanding of consciousness, opening you to possibilities beyond ordinary boundaries of identity, time, space, and even physical death

Module 5 Special Guest Commentary: Richard & Becca Tarnas

Renowned philosopher and cultural historian Richard Tarnas and archetypal cosmologist Becca Tarnas will bring a wider philosophical and cosmological perspective to these questions. Drawing on their work exploring the relationship between psyche, cosmos, and the larger patterns of human experience, they'll consider what becomes possible when we loosen the assumption that consciousness is confined to the individual brain. Together, they'll invite you to remain open to mystery while exploring a more expansive understanding of who you are and how deeply your life may be connected to a larger, meaningful cosmos.

What happens when someone facing the reality of death has a profound experience that changes their understanding of who they are and what dying might mean?

Stan will share his pioneering psychedelic research with terminal cancer patients, revealing how carefully supported experiences affected anxiety, depression, pain, fear of death, and the quality of the life they had remaining.

You'll discover why profound experiences of psychospiritual transformation or the dissolution of ordinary boundaries could dramatically change a person's relationship with mortality, and why trust, preparation, support, and integration were essential to the process.

You'll also explore how participants became more attuned to the beauty of ordinary life, finding greater richness in simple experiences such as music, food, nature, color, and connection with loved ones.

Most importantly, you'll discover how turning your attention from an imagined future to what's here today can help you meet uncertainty with greater presence and experience your life more fully.

In this session, you'll:

• Practice bringing your attention back to today, exploring Stan's "one day at a time" approach to loosening the suffering created by anticipating an uncertain future
• Discover what Stan learned from his pioneering psychedelic research with terminal cancer patients, including profound shifts in anxiety, depression, fear of death, and quality of life
• Explore why trust, preparation, a supportive environment, and integration were essential elements in helping patients safely engage with profound inner experiences
• Learn how transformative experiences can change your relationship with mortality, including experiences in which ordinary boundaries dissolve and a larger sense of consciousness emerges
• Discover how facing death can deepen your capacity to appreciate life, bringing greater attention to everyday beauty, sensory experience, relationships, and the life available to you right now

Module 6 Special Guest Commentary: Rick Doblin

MAPS founder and psychedelic research pioneer Rick Doblin will reflect on how this groundbreaking work helped open the door to today's renewed exploration of psychedelics for healing and transformation. Drawing on decades of advocacy and research, Rick will explore how carefully supported psychedelic experiences can help people face profound fear and uncertainty with greater openness and trust. He'll illuminate how transforming your relationship with death can also transform your relationship with life, helping you become more present, appreciate what matters most, and live more fully in the time you have.

For thousands of years, spiritual traditions have taught that you don't have to wait until physical death to encounter the profound inner transformation associated with dying.

Stan will take you into the ancient Egyptian understanding of the journey through death, revealing how the passage of the sun through darkness and back into light mirrored the journey of the deceased as well as the transformation experienced by living initiates.

You'll explore the richly symbolic journey through the Egyptian underworld, from surrendering an old identity and facing challenges and judgment to renewal and emergence into the light.

At the heart of these teachings is what Stan calls "dying before dying" — loosening your identification with your physical body and discovering a larger, transpersonal sense of who you are while you're still alive.

By encountering death in this way, you can begin to approach your own mortality not simply as an ending, but as a threshold you may be able to meet with greater trust and openness.

In this session, you'll:

• Contemplate what "dying before dying" could mean for you, exploring how loosening your identification with your body and separate self might change the way you approach mortality
• Journey with Stan through the ancient Egyptian map of dying and renewal, discovering how darkness, challenge, judgment, and emergence into light formed a powerful model of transformation
• Explore how the sun god, the deceased, and the living initiate traveled the same symbolic journey, revealing the ancient understanding that you could experience the mysteries of dying while still alive
• Discover the meaning behind the weighing of the heart in the Hall of Ma'at, where a person's character was measured against a larger principle of cosmic order and justice
• Understand how experiencing yourself beyond the boundaries of the physical body can offer a radically different perspective on death and help you meet life's ultimate transition with greater trust and openness

Module 7 Special Guest Commentary: Stan, Brigitte & Paul Grof

In this culminating session, Stan, Brigitte, and Paul Grof will come together to explore how Stan's groundbreaking work can transform the way we understand death and the way we live before it arrives. Drawing on their personal and professional experiences, they'll reflect on what expanded states of consciousness can reveal about who we are beyond our physical identity and how these experiences can shift our relationship with mortality. Together, they'll explore how "dying before dying" can help you move beyond fear, deepen your trust in the larger journey of consciousness, and approach life's final transition with greater openness and peace.