How does a boy raised in the Deep South who became a professor of religious studies come to write a book about his 20-year journey with LSD? Raised in the Deep South, Chris attended the University of Notre Dame, eventually majoring in religious studies with a focus on New Testament studies. He read Carl Jung and Mahatma Gandhi, both of whom made a deep impression on him. Against the backdrop of Vietnam, he became a conscientious objector. By the time he graduated from college, he had left Catholicism.
At Cambridge, his passion became the search for the historical Jesus. He learned the art of peeling away history with form criticism, redaction criticism, and textual criticism. The historical Jesus became his way out of Christianity, as in Jesus he found a depth of spiritual realization that was larger than Christianity.
At Brown University he studied the broad contours of Western religious thought, following Christian and Jewish theology through the great minds of the Middle Ages into the fateful encounter with the Age of Enlightenment. He absorbed the philosophical revolutions of the modern mind and finished graduate school a deeply convinced agnostic.
At Youngstown State University he encountered the work of Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia (reincarnation research) and Stanislav Grof. He quickly saw that Grof’s work represented a turning point not only in psychology but philosophy of religion, as it allowed one to explore the deep structure of consciousness and experientially probe questions that philosophers had pondered for centuries. Thus began the work that would define the rest of his life.
At the California Institute of Integral Studies Chris served as adjunct faculty in the Department of Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness, teaching graduate students eager for the psychedelic conversation. Chris feels his psychedelic work was so central to his incarnation that everything in his life was calibrated to bring it into being. Much like James Hillman.
Chris is the author of four books: LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven (2019), The Living Classroom: Teaching and Collective Consciousness (2008), Dark Night, Early Dawn: Step to an Ecology of Mind (2000), and Lifecycles: Reincarnation and the Web of Life (1990).
Chris lives in in Weaverville, NC with his wife, Christina Hardy, who is a professional astrologer and past life therapist. Chris’ website is chrisbache.com.
