from Charles University in Prague in 1957 and then completed his Ph.D. in medicine at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in 1965, training as a Freudian psychoanalyst at this time.

[citation needed] In 1973 he was invited to the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, and lived there until 1987 as a Scholar-in-Residence, developing his ideas and conducting month-long workshops.

He went on to become distinguished adjunct faculty member of the Department of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a position he remained in until 2018.

[4] He describes four stages: (1) embryonic peace and transpersonal connection, (2) inundation with bodily matter during fetal growth, (3) the stress of the prenatal period, and (4) the release of birth.

[5] Various neuroses are mapped to traumas at particular stages, e.g. ennui could be caused by Caesarean section, resulting in an individual feeling like they have little reason to exert effort.

[6] Suicidal ideation is explained by the deep memory of prenatal suffering being terminated by release from the womb (transposed to an escape from life itself).

They would eventually research a new way of understanding the timing and content of experiences encountered in holotropic states of consciousness, which Tarnas refers to as "archetypal cosmology".

[citation needed] He also received the VISION 97 award granted by the Foundation of Dagmar and Václav Havel in Prague on October 5, 2007.

[20][independent source needed] In 2020, the documentary The Way of the Psychonaut was released, which explores Grof's lifework and contributions to transpersonal psychology.