When the Impossible Happens Read Online Free Page A

that we were not listening to a scientific lecture, but had a darshan with a spiritual teacher. We had no doubt that Albert had joined the group of great scientists—like Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton—whose rigorous pursuit of their discipline brought recognition of the miraculous divine order underlying the world of matter and the natural phenomena. He will remain a model and shining example for me for the rest of my life.

    My list of acknowledgements would not be complete without expressing my profound gratitude to Christina, my wife, lover, best friend, co-worker, and fellow seeker, for all the inspiration I have received from her over the years and for everything she has contributed to my life and to our joint projects. Among others, she founded the Spiritual Emergence Network (SEN), has made unique contributions to the understanding of the relationship between addiction, attachment, and the spiritual quest, and has codeveloped with me Holotropic Breathwork, a powerful form of therapy and self-exploration. The breathwork workshops and training we have jointly conducted all over the world have been the source of extraordinary observations that provided the material for many of the stories in this book. Christina played an important role in many of these stories and was present “when the impossible happened.” I am aware that writing this book and many others before often encroached on our private life. I would like to use this opportunity to thank Christina for her patience and understanding and extend to her my apologies.

    My special thanks go to two people who have played an important role in the publication of this book. Tami Simon, whom I admire and appreciate very much, has created single-handedly Sounds True, an audio, video, book, and music publishing company, which has grown from one person working in a single room to an organization that has its own state-of-the-art facilities and employs over fifty people. Sounds True recordings have made it possible for hundreds of thousands of listeners to get acquainted with the ideas of spiritual teachers and pioneers of new paradigm science, alternative healing, consciousness research, and transpersonal psychology. I appreciate very much that Tami decided to include the present work in her new publishing project. I am also grateful to Alice Feinstein for the expertise and enthusiasm with which she edited the manuscript and for her advice and suggestions that I have found very helpful in finding the most appropriate format for sharing my stories with the readers.
    PROLOGUE: Discovering Cosmic Consciousness My First LSD Session

    The experience I am about to relate was without any doubt the single most important and influential experience of my entire life. Although it lasted only a few hours—and its most significant part only about ten minutes—it sent me professionally on a radically different course than the one for which I had been trained and prepared. It set for me a trajectory that I have been following with great passion and determination until this very day. It also instigated in me a process of profound personal transformation and spiritual awakening. Today, almost fifty years later, I look at this experience as an initiation similar to that offered to the participants in ancient mysteries.

    This story will take us back to the end of my medical studies and beginnings of my professional career as a psychiatrist. In the mid-1950s, the psychiatric department of the School of Medicine of Charles University in Prague, where I had worked as a student volunteer since the fourth year of my medical studies, conducted research with Melleril. This was one of the early tranquilizers, produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland. My preceptor had a good working relationship with Sandoz and received from time to time complimentary samples of their products. As part of this cooperation, he received for testing a supply of diethylamide of