Chris Bache
Chris is a retired professor, writer, and speaker who spent much of his life in the United States moving between the worlds of academia and psychedelic exploration. He worked at Youngstown State University for 33 years as a professor of religious studies, teaching courses in Eastern religions, Buddhism, eco-spirituality, psychology of religion, transpersonal studies, and comparative mysticism.
He has also taught periodically at the California Institute of Integral Studies and was the Director of Transformative Learning at the Institute of Noetic Sciences from 2000-2002. He has served on the Advisory Council of Grof Legacy Training for many years. He has recently begun teaching in the ketamine-assisted training program at the Polaris Insight Center in San Francisco.
Beneath his academic life, Chris maintained a carefully hidden psychedelic practice. Trained as a philosopher of religion at Brown University, he became convinced early in his career that psychedelics represented a revolution not only in psychology, but in philosophy as well. Accordingly, he began his psychedelic practice in 1979, eventually doing 73 therapeutically structured, high-dose LSD sessions over 20 years following Grof’s protocol. Between the ages of 30 and 50, he maintained this dual identity of professor by day, psychonaut by night.
As a psychedelic explorer, Chris pushed his practice hard, moving beyond therapeutic healing and spiritual awakening to explore the deep structure of the universe itself. His work moved him regularly beyond linear time into Deep Time, beyond personal transformation into the arc of humanity’s collective transformation, giving him prophetic visions of an emerging global crisis and the imminent birth of a radically transformed Future Human. After stopping his sessions in 1999, he spent another 20 years digesting his experiences before publishing LSD and the Mind of the Universe.
Outside of his university teaching, Chris’ primary contribution has been the concepts and understandings he has shared in his four books, and in the workshops and speaking engagements they generated.
Lifecycles: Reincarnation and the Web of Life (1990) is a study in reincarnation, showcasing the strong empirical evidence that exists for rebirth today and exploring the implications of reincarnation for our self-emergent universe – lifting the restriction of time from our lives and expanding the horizon of human development.
Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind (2000) is a pioneering work in psychedelic philosophy, integrating insights from NDE research, OBE research, and his own psychedelic experience to address the dynamics of our collective spiritual awakening.
The Living Classroom: Teaching and Collective Consciousness (2008; 2nd edition 2024), describes the striking impact that Chris’ private psychedelic practice had on his students, growing stronger as his practice deepened, eventually leading him to develop a new approach to teaching, a “quantum pedagogy” that is sensitive to these subtle interconnections and filled with practical strategies for working with the fields of collective consciousness that emerge in our classrooms, and wherever groups form with aligned intention.
LSD and the Mind of the Universe (2019) is the complete story of his 20-year journey with LSD including what happened in the years after he ended his journey.
Chris loves music, camping, hiking, kayaking, and motorcycle riding, though age is narrowing the list. He is a long-time Buddhist practitioner, the father of 3 children, and lives in Weaverville, NC, with his wife, Christina Hardy, a professional astrologer and past-life therapist. His website is chrisbache.com.