IVIV LSD re Grof

[Robin Landseadel]

On Sep 13, 2009, at 8:59 AM, Doug Millison wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Grof*
>
> Grof's book, LSD Psychotherapy, may be difficult to find but it's  
> worth reading,  I have a copy I acquired a few years ago. Grof  
> apparently conducted LSD psychotherapy sessions with thousands of  
> patients over a period of years, and it's rumored he had CIA  
> connections but I forget the details of that particular story.
>
> Dr. Hilarious comes to mind, easily.

There is a time and location issue here, a bit of a hurdle we may not  
be able to get over: Grof "completed his Ph.D. in Medicine at the  
Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences in 1965, training as a Freudian  
psychoanalyst at this time."* He didn't make it to the States until  
1967. While it is possible that TRP bi-located—time-travelled into the  
future to see what Stanislav Grof might become, as time-traveller  
Pynchon moves forward in history while writing Lot 49—Occum's Razor  
won't cut that theory.

Of course, if TRP did the whole time travel thing, that would explain  
a lot of went on in Against the Day.

Mind you, for many years I assumed that Dr. Hilarius just had to be a  
variation/fictionalization of Grof. I even met Dr. Grof at KPFA. Also  
met Timothy Leary there as well. Still, considering the Brotherhood of  
Eternal Love's inclusion in Inherent Vice and their checkered history  
with the CIA, I'm voting for Leary as Hilarius, even though Dr.  
Leary's handshake is as American as a used Falcon rolling off the lot  
of Ralph William's Motors.

Meanwhile, here's a documentary on LSD, now on YouTube, called "The  
Beyond Within."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzq_sBsjbAU&feature=related

If you've got any other information concerning Dr. Grof, I'm all ears— 
or eyes, or whatever synethestic mash-up of sensory impressions you  
might provide.