The most radical reinterpretation of existing evidence from the disciplines of evolution, ecology, neurology, psychology and anthropology etc that finally makes sense of the ancient ‘Ages of Mankind’ traditions. These universal traditions were once the only version of history we had, they describe the onset and progression of a neurodegenerative condition that really has left us in the dark. Often considered no more than the imaginings of a primitive mind and easy to dismiss as mere myths are they in fact a more accurate natural history of humankind than modern science has thus far recognised. The book outlines the origin and nature of a condition that eventually left us blind to its existence. Evidence is cited that supports such a scenario, a means of definitively testing its validity is proposed and most importantly what can be done to treat the condition and prevent its occurrence. While this may seem a challenging prospect it promises amongst other things the restoration of phenomenal abilities, exceptional immune function and most importantly a greatly enhanced state of mind and well being only rarely glimpsed by a tiny minority. (zvg)

While this may seem a challenging prospect it promises amongst other things the restoration of phenomenal abilities, exceptional immune function and most importantly a greatly enhanced state of mind and well being only rarely glimpsed by a tiny minority. (zvg) For additional information I recommend the author's article Consciousness and the Direction of Structure about the the molecular origins of our species wide insanity and the fundamental causality of our self inflicted suffering. (dah)

The peace symbol is recognized around the globe. It has become an enduring cultural icon. For five decades, millions of people worldwide, regardless of race or religious beliefs, have looked to the peace sign to unite them. And the symbol's appeal continues with each succeeding generation. And nothing more eloquently symbolizes the counterculture era than the peace sign. How did this simple sketch become so powerful an image? This book tells the surprising story of the sign in words and pictures, from its origins in the nuclear disarmament efforts of the late 1950s to its adoption by the antiwar movement of the 1960s, through its stint as a mass-marketed commodity and its enduring relevance now.
As the symbol’s popularity blossomed, so did an entire generation, and author Ken Kolsbun’s expertly selected images—from his own collections as well as a variety of historical archives—illustrate both the sign itself and the larger history that it helped to shape. Along the way, the book recounts the controversy inspired by the peace symbol, bringing to light several trials that challenged its very existence. Drawing on exclusive archival interviews with Gerald Holtom, the late creator of the symbol, Peace recounts its birth and goes on to build a historic portrait using both iconic and rarely seen photographs. (zvg)

This book is about the history and future of civilization from a unique perspective: the evolution of the human sense of self. It describes how all the expressions of our civilization—its miraculous technology as well as the pillage of earth, culture, goodness, and beauty—arise from our identity, our way of being, "the discrete and separate self". The gathering crises of our age demonstrate that this way of being is on the verge of collapse. And this collapse is setting the stage for a revolution in human beingness whose stirrings we already begin to feel.
The Ascent of Humanity is about Separation: its origins, its evolution, its ideology, its effects, its consummation and resolution, and its cosmic purpose. What is the purpose of the grandeur and the ruin we have wrought? If civilization is to collapse, Why? and What for? Will we then go back to the Stone Age, or will we be born into something entirely new? This book draws from mythological sources, as well as natural processes of birth and transformation, to offer a narrative framework for the majesty and madness of human civilization.
More than anything, The Ascent of Humanity is about how to create the more beautiful world our hearts tell us is possible. I have long found most prescriptions for "what you can do" to reverse humanity's trajectory of ruin quite empty. Recycle your bottles and turn off the faucet when you brush your teeth. Write your Congressman. What are these tiny individual actions against the juggernaut of destruction that consumes oceans, trees, soil, and culture? This book offers an entirely different approach that begins with the reconception of our very selves. It invalidates the logic of despair that so many activists have felt, that arises inescapably from the conception of ourselves as discrete and separate subjects in a world of other. This is the ideology of separation. The ideology that has created the human realm we know is the same ideology that has us despair we can ever change it. Wait, did I say "we"? I mean actually "you" and "I". "We" is often disempowering too, because it leads us to wish, "Oh if only everyone would get it, then we would have a better government, better laws, and stop being so greedy." But they don't—how could I make them?—and the despair comes back. Helplessness. Frustration. This may be the only book you have ever read that fully gets the enormity of the crises facing us, yet responds neither with despair nor with fantasy suggestions about what "we" should do about it. (zvg)

Brilliant and original, with great depth of insight and understanding, Eisenstein’s Ascent of Humanity easily ranks with the works of such giants of our age as David Bohm, Julian Jaynes, Jean Gebser, Whitehead. It is a profoundly serious, indeed somber portrait of our times, even as it opens a door of honest hope amidst the dark destiny we have woven about us. Accept the challenge of this major accomplishment and discover the light shining within it.
Joseph Chilton Pearce

Global warming is contentious and difficult to measure, even among the majority of scientists who agree that it is taking place. Will temperatures rise by 2oC or 8oC over the next hundred years? Will sea levels rise by 2 or 30 feet? The only way that we can accurately answer questions like these is by looking into the distant past, for a comparison with the world long before the rise of mankind.
We may currently believe that atmospheric shifts, like global warming, result from our impact on the planet, but the earth's atmosphere has been dramatically shifting since its creation. This book reveals the crucial role that plants have played in determining atmospheric change - and hence the conditions on the planet we know today. Along the way a number of fascinating puzzles arise: Why did plants evolve leaves? When and how did forests once grow on Antarctica? How did prehistoric insects manage to grow so large? The answers show the extraordinary amount plants can tell us about the history of the planet -- something that has often been overlooked amongst the preoccuputations with dinosaur bones and animal fossils.
David Beerling's surprising conclusions are teased out from various lines of scientific enquiry, with evidence being brought to bear from fossil plants and animals, computer models of the atmosphere, and experimental studies. Intimately bound up with the narrative describing the dynamic evolution of climate and life through Earth's history, we find Victorian fossil hunters, intrepid polar explorers and pioneering chemists, alongside wallowing hippos, belching volcanoes, and restless landmasses. (zvg)

As Gandhi observed, our fork can be a weapon of violence. Will Tuttle, pianist, composer and teacher, embraces this simple truth by keeping violence off his plate and adopting a vegan way of being in the world. He expresses the heart and soul of the animal liberation and compassionate living movement with insights that prove how inextricably linked is the suffering of animals with the war, violence and terrorism we currently face on earth when he says, "If we cause war against animals we will cause war against ourselves." From mythology, religion, and human systems, Tuttle offers a set of universal principles for all people of conscience to show how we as a species can move our consciousness forward - allowing us to become more free, more intelligent, more loving, and happier in the choices we make. (zvg)

Will Tuttle brings a priceless perspective—not only to the planetary crisis confronting us all, but also to powerful ways we each can affect it. This book is radiant with his learning and his compassion.
Joanna Macy

A world at once familiar and unimaginably strange exists all around us–and within us. It is the world of consciousness, a protean mental landscape that each of us knows intimately in bits and pieces yet understands in its totality scarcely at all. Tied to the body and the brain, consciousness is nonetheless beyond our ability to measure or quantify. Despite the attempts of scientists and mystics, poets and dreamers, crackpots and geniuses, to map its contours and explain its secret workings, the mind remains mysterious. And the more we learn about it, the more mysterious it becomes.
But that is not to say that we know nothing about consciousness. In fact, as gonzo science journalist Jeff Warren demonstrates in this provocative, often hilarious, and always fascinating synthesis of cutting-edge research and personal experience, just how much we do know is little short of astonishing. And when Warren fits the pieces together, the implications of that knowledge are, well, mind-blowing.
Warren begins with the insight that consciousness is not a simple on-off proposition, with rigid demarcations separating waking awareness from the murky depths of sleep, but rather a round-the-clock continuum regulated by natural biorhythms. He then sets out to explore, and to experience for himself, the seemingly miraculous, all-but-untapped potential of the human mind.
From the full-immersion virtual realities of lucid dreaming to the esoteric disciplines of Eastern meditative practices that have reached outposts of consciousness far beyond the grasp of Western science, from techniques of hypnosis and neurofeedback to such exotic states of awareness as the Watch and the Pure Conscious Event, Warren takes us on an incredible journey through our own heads–a journey conducted with the adventurous spirit and intellectual curiosity of a Darwin coupled with the sensibility of a stand-up comedian.
Part user’s manual and part travel guide, The Head Trip is an instant classic, a brilliant summation of consciousness studies that is also a practical guide to enhancing creativity, mental health, and the experience of what it means to be human. Many books claim that they will change you. This one gives you the tools to change yourself. (zvg)

This book addresses the role and significance of consciousness expansion in the psychospiritual transformations of the individual, and in the transformations of culture and society associated with the 1960s. Both texts have been written for the international symposium "LSD – Problem Child and Wonder Drug", presented by the Gaia Media Foundation in January 2006.
In the first part, Metzner describes how the holistic transformation teachings of alchemy, originating in the sacred science of ancient Egypt, persecuted by the Church in the Middle Ages, and ridiculed by scientific modernism, were revived in the 20th century by the work of two Swiss scientists: C.G. Jung, who identified alchemical symbolism as the objective language of the psyche; and Albert Hofmann, who, with the discovery of LSD reconnected the broken link between Spirit and Matter, the mysterious link known traditionally as the Philosophers' Stone.
In the second part, he describse how the introduction of consciousness expanding substances into Western culture, synchronous with the invention of the atomic bomb at the height of World War II, was followed by the socio-cultural upheavals of the 1960s. These social transformation movements can be seen as a response of the collective psyche to the unprecedented challenges to civilization posed by nuclear war, environmental destruction and rampant population growth. Though seemingly "counter-cultural" in that they countered the domination agenda of the power-elites, they were really the attempt to articulate an expanded consciousness and a vision of society centered around humane, ecological, creative and spiritual values. (zvg)

First published in 1971, it almost immediately became the must-have philosophy book of its generation. The impact of "The Guide" elevated its author, Thaddeus Golas, from a bit part in the Beat and Psychedelic movements to a lead role. The Guide is not currently in print, but do not despair: a recording of this classic book, read by the author, is now available as a remastered, quality 2-disc CD. In this audio book, Golas updated his original text for a newer audience. He removed drug references that were unnecessary to his philosophy. He also clarified numerous passages on the advice of his many readers. This booklet in this deluxe CD package highlights Golas' own updates and revisions. All told, the recording is a lovely testament, and a rare chance to hear Thaddeus Golas' voice preserved in this new stereo digital mix. Until The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment returns in print, this is your only opportunity to experience this transformative book. And best of all, having the book read to you, by the author, is even lazier. www.evenlazier.com (zvg)

This final volume of the highly acclaimed Pharmako trilogy covers the visionary plants: the contemporary uses of plant poisons, historic cultural lore, and shamanic rites. It presents the author's poetic study of botany, chemistry, spirituality, psychology and history, covering the composition and uses of visionary plants. This work contains chapters, including Phantastica, Hypnotica and Telephorica that explore the hallucinogenic plants, the bringers of sleep and the bearers of distance. (zvg)

"Pendell's ongoing subjects are the botanical 'allies' humans have always associated with, and the 'pharmakon,' the drug that is both poison and cure. A poet, ethnobotanist, and amateur chemist, he's the best writer on drugs to come along since the late Terence McKenna."
The Village Voice

Here a leading neurobiologist investigates the phenomenon of mindfulness—the paying attention to life in the present moment—as it impacts our daily lives, offering readers insight into personal relationships, emotional behaviour, parenting and work. (zvg)

A brilliant and visionary wedding of mindfulness and neurobiology. Siegel's book stands out for its skillful weaving together of the interpersonal, the inner world, the latest science, and practical applications, all envisioned as a whole.
Jack Kornfield

This book marks a major landmark in the emerging field of contemplative neuroscience. Daniel Siegel offers a provocative, highly original and brilliant theory integrating mindfulness meditation with brain research, one that will shape thinking in the field for years to come. A must-read for anyone interested in the science of mind and mindfulness.
Daniel Goleman

This original research monograph investigates and re examines the ideas generated by the Hermetic tradition. The work discusses the effects of the tradition on modern philosophy and science and assays the influence of hermetic imaginary on areas such as AI, Cybernetics, Cyberspace as well as Leibnitz and Fludd that have been influential in modern philosophy and science. (zvg)

The book is rated higher than it deserves, there are many errors in the story, but since it is about the only history of the subject. Now again available as a reprint it remains popular and by default, "authoritative". (dah)

This title does not only sound like a whole program. There's enough material to fill three books, and very convincing material it is indeed.
What we were taught in school is wrong, or at least incomplete: Dionysos and his maenads were inebriated by something stronger than wine alone! Everywhere in Arcadia we find fungal and herbal ecstasy, as a plethora of artifacts shown by the author demonstrates.
It is because the classical Greeks are not given much attention in an ordinary curriculum anymore that these obviously facts were not disclosed before – or only very disparately, for scholars only? Carl Ruck is precisely such a scholar, and he has devoted the research of a lifetime to this astonishing little book that certainly deserves more space in future editions.
In his preface, the eminent religious philosopher Huston Smith points to the universal grammar of revelatory plants, while the evidence gathered by thoroughly conscientious Ruck bridges an important gap on the entheogenic map.
Starting with a discussion of mystery cults in general, we are taken on a botanical journey through the ancient world, revealing hitherto largely ignored plants with a great variety of psychoactive properties. Thus the potion given Achilles may have contained mind altering drugs leading him to fear nothing and no one at the moment of battle, High Priestess Medea held her spell over Jason by many a magic concoction, and the Goddess Demeter lost her daughter Persephone to Hades due to a poppy seed, keeping the Kore spellbound in the underworld during the dark months of the year.
Thus, as has been the case with fly agaric in the Middle East and throughout the European continent, many Greek myths find a new reading.
Susanne Seiler

Only a new Eleusis could help mankind to survive the threatening catastrophe in Nature and human society and bring a new period of happiness.
Albert Hofmann

True Visions is an anthology dedicated to contemporary visionary art. The term Visionary Art includes a great variety of styles, kinds, periods, and degrees of abstraction. But they all resonate with the visionary experience -- the divine, the magical, the spiritual, and the experience of multidimensional perception. Psychedelic, man! Rich with rare -- and rarely published -- Klarwein & Fuchs art. Includes text in English and in Italian, and interviews (in English) with all the artists. (lastgap)
Betty Books

This remarkable book introduces a Gnostic approach to Sophia-Gaia, the feminine wisdom principle embodied by the earth, vividly soliciting us to embrace Her revival for our survival.
When the human race revered the fertility of the earth, the perennial philosophy of human kindness and good sense, as embodied in the common laws of indigenous people the world over, was equally prominent in ancient Europe. Gyncentric societies did not know the taint of sexual apartheid; mystery cults were participatory, experiential and peaceful.
The erudition and mindfulness of the Pagan world have been hugely underestimated, since the onslaught of patriarchy, symbolized by the flood, destroyed a much larger civilization than we have been lead to believe. Initiated in antediluvian times with the arrival of misogynic sky gods, it took the three monotheistic religions to achieve the undoing of the sophisticated way of life of our forebears.
In Gnostic terms, evil came from outside of the matrix of the earth, from another dimension or parallel universe. Entities of this parallel dimension managed to insinuate themselves into our world. It may come as a shock to many, that the Gnostics held Yahweh to be such an entity, facilitating the promotion of the perpetrator-victim ethos of Salvationism, held to be an abomination and a fateful error.
John Lash presents the stark contrast between the tenets of retribution and exploitation - of the feminine –, and the ethos of illuminism, with its emphasis on personal experience and communion with nature, within the framework of a vast body of knowledge, reaching from the classic authors of antiquity to present-day proponents of eco-science and eco-spirituality. A fascinating read.
Susanne G. Seiler

John Lash's heretical book is a precious act of spiritual disobedience that seeks to save the world from Salvationism.
Jeremy Narby

Journeying into the invisible world revealed by his use of the dissociative psychedelic DXM (dextromethorphan), Dan Carpenter found that what he experienced was not simply subjective sensations and psychological states but an objective world of familiar, if inordinately odd, landmarks and characters. The running diary he kept of these voyages recounts impressions of a landscape charted by other travelers into this Inner Space and includes descriptions of many of the same phenomena recorded by such mind travelers as Terence and Dennis McKenna, Alexander and Ann Shulgin, and others who have experienced the hive mind--the pool of all consciousness. Into this territory where expression is like chaos theory, where oddly symmetrical order manifests out of the seemingly anarchic swirl of images and events, the author ventures with the mind-set of a naturalist, accepting whatever might be rather than what he hopes he might find. What emerges is not a location crafted by subjective experience, but a landscape that embodies the Other and that represents a conscious state in which the barriers between the self and the not-self dissolve. (zvg)

Dan Carpenter's forays into the fractal hyperspace and hive minds of the DXM realms offer a serious contribution to contemporary psychedelic thought. His work follows in the tradition of inner-space investigators such as Coleridge, Antonin Artaud, Aldous Huxley, and Terence McKenna. This is a ‘must-read' for every serious psychonaut.
Daniel Pinchbeck

Daniel Pinchbeck unifies the inquiry into cosmological phenomena — including crop circles, quantum physics, and the worldwide resurgence of shamanism — in support of the Mayan prophecy that the year 2012 will bring an unprecedented global shift in human consciousness. Appearing forty years after the pivotal heyday of the 1960s, 2012 also argues forthe legitimacy of the 1960s-era spiritual and intellectual legacy, embracing the works of writers such as Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, and Carlos Castaneda.
A generation ago, pursuing "mind expansion" through altered states of consciousness was hip as well as culturally relevant. By the end of the 1960s, not only were psychedelic drugs outlawed but our society had rejected the idea that it was valuable to open the "doors of perception" at all. For more than three decades, the mainstream has not allowed any serious inquiry into these areas, which once seemed to point toward a new consciousness.
Author Daniel Pinchbeck has deep personal roots in the New York
counterculture of the 1950s and 1960s. His father was an abstract
painter, and his mother, Joyce Johnson, was a member of the Beat Generation and dated Jack Kerouac as On the Road hit the bestseller lists in 1957 (chronicled in Johnson's bestselling book, Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir). Pinchbeck was a founder of the 1990s literary magazine Open City with fellow writers Thomas Beller and Robert Bingham. He has written for many publications, including Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, the Village Voice, and Rolling Stone. In 1994, he was chosen by The New York Times Magazine as one of "Thirty Under Thirty" destined to change our culture.
A profound spiritual crisis in his late twenties led Pinchbeck to the study of shamanism. His first book, Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism, recounted his personal initiation into several tribal cultures that continue to use "magic mushrooms" and other hallucinogens in their rituals. Pinchbeck became convinced of the legitimacy of the shamanic and mystical worldview held by indigenous peoples around the world.
This brought up troubling questions: If the modern West, in its pursuit of rational science and materialism, had rejected crucially important aspects of reality, what did this say about our society, and its immediate future?
2012 chronicles the writer's journey to answer these questions, beginning with an exploration of prophecy, especially the vision of the Classical Mayan culture (also the subject of a new Mel Gibson movie, Apocalypto, filmed entirely in the Mayan language). The Mayans were obsessed with time, and according to their Sacred Calendar, the year 2012 marks the end of a "Great Cycle" of more than 5,000 years, and the climax of larger patterns that appear to go back 16 billion years. Pinchbeck discovered that a number of theorists, working outside the mainstream of archaeology, make a compelling argument that 2012 could represent a transformation in the nature of human consciousness as well as, potentially, a unified and harmonic global civilization.
In 2012, Pinchbeck recounts his own personal experiences as he follows the traces of prophetic and occult knowledge, including a visit to southern England to investigate the crop circles, and a journey to the Brazilian Amazon to study Santo Daime, a religion that uses the psychedelic drink ayahuasca as its sacrament. He unifies the ideas of a large number of writers, philosophers, and physicists to create a new cultural context for understanding the many aspects of being that to date have been ignored and suppressed by mainstream culture and the academy.
2012 is an unusually elegant, serious, critical and adventurous exposition of ideas often regarded as beyond the purview of intellectual inquiry. Readers may share or reject its conclusions, but they are certain to find the journey unforgettable. Pinchbeck lives in New York's East Village, where he is currently launching Evolver (www.evolverproject.com), a new media and membership organization, with offices in Manhattan and on the West Coast. (zvg)

A dazzling kaleidoscopic journey through the quixotic hinterlands of consciousness, crop circles, and ancient prophecy, as well as an intriguing and deeply personal odyssey of transformation. 2012 presents a compelling and complex teleological argument, weaving together the twilit realms of the human imagination and the harsh realities of accelerated global catastrophe. Its conclusions are surprisingly robust, original, and thankfully optimistic.
Sting

This fascinating book by Tom Roberts takes a close look at multi-mind states, entheogenic healing, and more.
Dr. Tom Roberts' interest in psychedelics is best reflected in his recent book "Psychedelic Horizons". His fascination with, and appreciation of the untapped potential of these substances is best summed up in his words, "As an educational psychologist, I am grateful to psychedelics for teaching me that our minds function in many mindbody states... psychedelics challenged me to explore our minds, and I am thankful that they invited me when they did." The exploration of the concept of different mind-body states is one of the more intriguing theories in Dr. Roberts' book. Roberts feels that attachment to our ordinary, normal, "awake" state (single state) is limiting. What is needed, he says, is the recognition that "our minds do useful work in mindbody states in addition to our ordinary awake state". This is the idea of the multistate mind. He likens the concept to a person who has bought a powerful computer, but will only use it to play chess, thus underutilizing a powerful information-processing resource.
Dr. Roberts feels that psychedelics, along with other psychotechnologies (e.g. yoga, meditation, martial arts, dream work, etc.) have helped to expand our assumptions about our minds. He proposes a "Multistate Studies Center" to "explore how current abilities vary across mindbody states, to reask educational questions from a multistate perspective, to explore leads from other cultures on our own, and develop the possibilities of designing new mindbody states and housing them".
The second, rather revolutionary theory, is related to the "placebo effect"... Dr. Roberts posits that the placebo effect is a mindbody skill our minds and our bodies have. He calls this "placebo ability". He feels that psychedelically enhanced mystical experiences could produce an overwhelming sense of well being and might offer clues to spontaneous, unaccountable healing (i.e. placebo effect). He questions and hypothesizes: "do entheogen-induced mystical experiences boost the immune system?" Dr. Roberts calls this the EMXIS hypotheses, short for Entheogen, induced Mystical Experiences Influence the Immune System. This theory differentiates between psychedelics and their transformation to "entheogens" (generating the experience of god within) when a sense of sacredness accompanies the emotional peaks.
I found Dr. Roberts book to be very thought provoking, informative and entertaining. His chapter on "Snow-White-Grof's Landmarks in Disney's Land", for example, is a whimsical, psychedelic interpretation of Snow White that will change the way you read this fairy tale.
The last part of Dr. Roberts' book "Enlarging Education" expands the meaning of what it means to be a well educated (i.e., one with multistate capacities) person: "A well educated person can select from a large number of mindbody states, enter them, and use their resident abilities". Dr. Roberts acknowledges this multi-state education when he expresses his gratefulness in discovering through psychedelics "that religion is about something, and that something is unitive consciousness". He feels that psychedelics democratizes primary religious experience: "for spiritual guidance, verbalists consult the word of God, mystics consult their experience of God" Part of the entheogenic experience, by definition is the direct experience of the divine. These mystical experiences, drug induced or otherwise, often cause major paradigm shifts -which make it easier to experience mystical states more often and/or to a stronger degree. This could potentially increase our spiritual intelligence. This increase in spiritual intelligence generated by the use of entheogens could have far reaching affects in society and planetary survival.
The final chapters in the book speculate about the future of multistate education and where it may take us. It is fascinating reading both for the uninformed and those of us, who in the seventies sense, "are experienced".
Bruce Sewick, LCPC
http://www.lightworks.com

Tom Roberts has written an easy going, laid-back, even light-hearted yet extremely profound book. He proposes essential and radical reformulations of ideas in medicine, psychology, and education. They're spot on. Some of my previously favorite points of view have been forever changed. My world is richer, more open, and more inviting now.
James Fadiman, Ph.D.

While Buddhism and psychedelic experimentation share a common concerm, the liberation of the mind, Zig Zag Zen is both a celebration, and a cautionary tale.
With a foreword by renowned Buddhist scholar Stephen Batchelor and a preface by historian of religion Huston Smith, along with numerous essays and interviews, Zig Zag Zen is a provocative and thoughtful exploration of altered states of consciousness and the potential for transformation.
Accompanying each essay is a work of visionary art selected by artist Alex Grey, such as a vividly graphic work by Robert Venosa, a contemporary thangka painting by Robert Beer, and an exercise in emptiness in the form of an enso by a 17th-century Zen abbot.
Packed with enlightening entries and art that lie outside the scope of mainstream anthologies, Zig Zag Zen offers eye-opening insights into alternate methods of inner exploration. (zvg)

... shines by its fairness: its authors squarely face the Zig as well as the Zag. That's Zen at its best.
David Steindl-Rast

There exists within our world a unique category of medicines, unparalleled in their ability to heal the human mind. Utilized by our ancestors for thousands of years, these consciousness-altering plant derivatives effectively suspend the psychological defense mechanisms and egoic mind, allowing a 4 to 12 hour internal revelation into the origins of our own addictions, neuroses, fears, personality disorders, and patterned behavior.  Invaluable as this mind-revealing encounter may be, there is no doctor able to prescribe this therapeutic method, as it has been deemed by our legal system to be devoid of any medical value.
There exists within our world a revered class of sacraments, unequaled in its effectiveness to initiate a direct experience of transcendental knowledge. Applied in ritualized ceremony for hundreds of generations, these special plants hold the potential to generate the biochemical requisite necessary to attain the highly sought Mystical Experience. Yet, there exists no priest, rabbi or minister permitted to facilitate this method of direct knowing to the congregation, as it has been judged by authorities to posses a high potential for abuse.
Psychedelic Perceptions is a multi-perspective examination of how — and more importantly why — the substances which produce vital access to non-ordinary states of consciousness have been unjustly portrayed, legally forbidden, and misunderstood in our society. (zvg)

Read excerpts from the book or order Psychedelic Perceptions now:
Psychedelic Perceptions

Psychedelics have been a part—often a central and sacred part—of most societies throughout history, and for half a century psychedelics have rumbled through the Western world, seeding a subculture, titillating the media, fascinating youth, terrifying parents, enraging politicians, and intriguing researchers. Not surprisingly, these curious chemicals fascinated some of the foremost thinkers of the twentieth century, fourteen of whom were interviewed for this book. Because no further human research can be done, these researchers constitute an irreplaceable resource. Higher Wisdom offers their fascinating anecdotes, invaluable knowledge, and hard-won wisdom—the culmination of fifty years of research and reflection on one of the most intriguing and challenging topics of our time. (zvg)

This is an important book, not only as a valuable historical document, but as a reminder of the remarkable promise and peril of what are broadly called psychedelics. The fact is—apart from all the government oppression at one end to the hippie hype at the other—psychedelics are a profound doorway into areas of the psyche rarely glimpsed otherwise, and thus, at the very least, are important psychological research tools. However, because the oppressive side of the argument has generally won the day, accounts such as those contained in this book are not only invaluable historical records, but reminders of the importance of individual freedom of choice as well.
Ken Wilber

Rejecting arguments that the elusive philosophers' stone of alchemy and the Hindu elixir of life were mere legend, Clark Heinrich provides a strong case that Amanita muscaria, the fly agaric mushroom, played this role in world religious history. Working under the assumption that this "magic mushroom" was the mysterious food and drink of the gods, Heinrich traces its use in Vedic and Puranic religion, illustrating how ancient cultures used the powerful psychedelic in esoteric rituals meant to bring them into direct contact with the divine. He then shows how the same mushroom symbols found in Hindu scriptures correspond perfectly to the symbols of ancient Judaism, Christianity, the Grail myths, and alchemy, arguing that miraculous stories as disparate as the burning bush of Moses and the raising of Lazarus from the dead can be easily explained by the use of this strange and powerful mushroom. While acknowledging the speculative nature of his work, Heinrich concludes that in many religious cultures and traditions the fly agaric mushroom--and in some cases ergot or psilocybin mushrooms--had a fundamental influence in teaching humans about the nature of God. His insightful book truly brings new light to the religious history of humanity.

An extraordinary and beautiful book. ... I read it with the highest interest and enjoyed enormously following its excursions into the realm of myths and the origins of religions, into fascinating possible connections. I have learned a good deal.
Albert Hofmann

To fully appreciate "What the Dormouse Said", it helps to think back to what the world was like in 1959, when this story begins. At that time, with a few rare exceptions, the entire computing profession was focused exclusively on mainframes; even the concept of time-sharing was considered a heresy. There was no student protest movement, not a single campus had yet seen a demonstration, and LSD had not yet found its way out of the hands of a small and elite group of researchers. To travel from a world without computers, without the Internet, and without psychedelics to where we are today is no small feat, but John Markoff does an admirable job of it by focusing on three main themes: personal computing and networking, social consciousness leveraged by technology, and a spiritual component that fused new tech with new consciousness.
As the prime mover behind the development of small, personal computers, Markoff (rightly I believe) selects Doug Englebart, who was obviously far ahead of the pack in his thinking about the future of computers. And who better than Fred Moore to represent the marriage of social consciousness and high tech? Moore staged the very first anti-military college demonstration on an American college campus. It was Moore's one-man hunger strike at Berkeley that inspired the leaders of what now is called the Free Speech Movement. Fred Moore was also a key figure in the Homebrew Computer Club.
The third person in this trinity of the 60s is Myron Stolaroff, who left a top spot at the hottest electronics company of the day to found what is now affectionately called The Menlo Park Institute. Within a few miles of where Englebart's team was inventing personal computing and Fred Moore was moving this new tech into activist circles, the Menlo Park Institute was working with LSD and other powerful psychoactive substances in a variety of healing and creative settings. Interestingly, some of the participants in the Menlo Park work were the very same people who created the personal computer and the Internet, and who provided the inspiration and energy that ultimately led to many of today's progressive movements.
Could the personal computer, the Internet, and a highly wired social consciousness have come about without the catalyst for consciousness that psychedelic medicines provide? That is a question you will have to answer for yourself, but Markoff's wonderful book will certainly provide you with enough details for you to make your own well-informed decision about this little piece of history.
Lorenzo Hagerty, by courtesy of Erowid.org.

Thanks to the cunning of history and the wondrous strangeness of Northern California, the utopian counterculture, psychedelic drugs, military hardware and antimilitary software were tangled together inextricably in the prehistory of the personal computer. Full of interesting details about weird but not arbitrary connections, John Markoff's book tells one of the oddest--because truest--of California tales and thereby helps illuminate the still unsettled legacy of the Sixties.
Todd Gitlin

Besuchern des Stanford Reserach Instituts (SRI) fiel das Mitte der 60er Jahre sofort ins Auge: In Engelbarts «Arche», dem Augmentation Research Center (ARC), sassen keine typischen Techniker in Schlips und Kragen, sondern Typen in bunten Hemden mit langen Bärten und Haaren. Auf dem Boden lagen Teppiche und in der Luft duftete es nach Marihuana. Mit der Bewusstseinserweiterung zum Zwecke technischer Problemlösungen hatte unbemerkt auch ein neuer Geist in die heiligen Hallen der vor allem vom US-Militär finanzierten Forschungsstätte gehalten: die Anti-Kriegs-Bewegung, das Free Speech Movement, die Hippiekultur. Ein Lebens- und Arbeitsstil, der das Denken über die täglichen Routinen hinausbrachte. ... Auch mit Substanzen wie dem 1943 von Albert Hofmann in Basel entdeckten LSD, der stärksten bewusstseinsverändernden Substanz überhaupt, war zuvor von Militär und Geheimdiensten als Wahrheitsserum und psychologischer Kampfstoff experimentiert worden - doch so wie Myron Stolaroff diesem Gebrauch mit seinem Institut eine neue Wendung gab und LSD als Werkzeug zur intellektuellen und spirituellen Entwicklung nutzte, so hatten auch die Forscher in Stanford zunehmend die individuelle und persönliche Nutzung des Computers und weniger Militärisches im Sinn.
Mathias Bröckers

Anthropologist Jeremy Narby ("The Cosmic Serpent")has altered how we understand the shamanic cultures and traditions that have undergone a worldwide revival in recent years. Now, in one of his most extraordinary journeys, Narby travels around the globe-from the Amazon basin to the Far East-to probe what traditional healers and pioneering researchers perceive about the intelligence present in all forms of life.
Intelligence in Nature offers overwhelming illustrative evidence that independent intelligence is not unique to humanity. Indeed, bacteria, plants, animals, and other forms of nonhuman life display an uncanny proclivity for self-deterministic decisions, patterns, and actions. The Japanese possess a word for this universal knowing: chi-sei. For the first time, Narby presents an in-depth anthropological study of this concept in the West. He not only uncovers a mysterious thread of intelligent behavior within the natural world but also probes the question of what humanity can learn from nature's economy and knowingness in its own search for a saner and more sustainable way of life. (zvg)

There is superstition in avoiding superstition, as Bacon once remarked, and I honor Jeremy Narby for finding his way through the numerous thickets that scienticif reason has left behind in ist attempts to turn plain truths of experience into the superstition it avoids.
Francis Huxley

In his latest interview collection, renowned author David Jay Brown has once again gathered some of the most interesting minds of today to consider the future of the human race, the mystery of consciousness, the evolution of technology, psychic phenomena, and more.
   David Jay Brown weaves together new discussions with celebrated visionairies and inspirational figures from a wide variety of backgrounds. 21 Contributors reveal their thoughts on multiple universe theory, the spiritual significance of hallucinogens, black holes, stem-cell research, aliens, and even psychokinesis. They contemplate the end of the world, but also provide us with new visions of human potential and purpose.
   Part scientific exploration, part philosophical speculation, and part intellectual rollercoaster, the free-form discussions are original and captivating, and offer surprising revelations. Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalpyse is a fascinating look into the minds of some most original thinkers of our time. (zvg/dah)

Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse could not be more timely. These interviews of visionary thinkers, and the provocative interactions between those people interviewed, provide diverse road maps for navigating our way through an era of terror, conflict, and incipient disaster. Readers who are interested in novel paradigms, especially worldviews that will help humanity survive and even prosper, will find David Jay Brown's book a source of delight, of wonder, and even of hope.
Stanley Krippner

The book is a series of interviews between Myron Stolaroff, Ph.D., a pioneering psychedelic researcher and the author Thanatos to Eros, and "Jacob," the secret chief of the underground psychedelic psychotherapy network in the United States.
     "Jacob" is an actual person who passed away in 1988, after having changed the course of thousands of lives. During his career, he trained hundreds of therapists in the procedures of psychedelic psychotherapy and facilitated the psychedelic experiences of thousands of people. «Jacob» was the person who coined the code name "Adam" for MDMA. Years after his death, his family and friends are finally comfortable with letting Myron's conversations with "Jacob" be made publicly available. In The Secret Chief, "Jacob" lets Dr. Stolaroff in on the methods he developed over the course of several decades practicing his unique labor of love. He talks about how he developed his procedures for individual and group sessions, what he thought were the different qualities of the drugs that were the tools of his trade, how he felt they could be put to the wisest use, and how he handled issues of security, fear, illegality, sexuality and emotional catharsis.

"In the illegality of his time it was unthinkable to publish the excellent results of his therapy. It is therefore praiseworthy that today, years after his death, a friend has undertaken the task of publishing the details of the therapeutic methodology of this interpid Ph.D. psychologist."
Albert Hofmann

"Suffice to say, ‘The Secret Chief' is the story of a great man whose story has come due. ‘Jacob's' influence on a great part of psychedelic thinking is unquestionable and seminal. Our laws must eventually loosen up regarding the uses of psychedelics in therapy. It is hoped - like ‘Jacob' in this book - more and more of the unsung heroes of the psychedelic movement will be showcased. Applause to Myron Stolaroff for bringing this story to light, and for revealing the hidden history of psychedelic therapy and its elders. Applause as well, for donating all the proceeds from this book to psychedelic therapy. I would recommend picking this fine book up. I was definitely inspired and encouraged by it. This tale needed to be told, and the author did it in a fine style. Bravo ... !"
Tom Lyttle

"Perhaps this is Jacob's most valuable legacy to his many friends and admirers: follow your spiritual vision and guidance, but keep your eyes open to the social and political realities that surround you. As the Sufi proverb goes: ‘Put your trust in Allah, but don't forget to tie up your camel.' Thank you, Jacob. We can all do well to follow your example."
Ralph Metzner

In Peter Russell's worldview, science and spirit are not in conflict. The bridge between them is light. From Science to God invites the reader to cross that bridge into a radically different, and ultimately healing, view of ourselves and the universe - one in which God takes on new meaning, and spiritual practice a deeper significance.
The author, a former student of Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University, integrates a thorough knowledge of science with his own experiences of meditation. His previous books include The TM Technique, The Brain Book, The Global Brain, and Waking Up in Time. (zvg)

A modern hero's journey - a record of a courageous traveler who has ventured where scientists aren't supposed to go, who has gainedgreat wisdom, and who has returned to share it.
Larry Dossey

Teonanácatl was the name given to the visionary mushrooms of indigenous Mesoamerica by the Aztecs, who used them in shamanic religious ceremonies for healing and divination. Condemned by the Catholic church and driven underground, the mushroom cult re-appeared in mainstream Western culture through an article in LIFE magazine in 1957 by the legendary ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson, who wrote about his participation in a mushroom ceremony with a Mazatec sage woman healer named Maria Sabina. The psychoactive principle of the visionary mushroom was identified as psilocybin by Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD. Psilocybin has beeen used as an adjunct to psychotherapy, prisoner rehabilitation, enhancement of creativity and catalyst for mystical experience; and is presently being studied as a treatment for OCD. The use of the mushroom, both wild and cultivated, spread from Mexico into North America and Europe, by seekers of consciousness expanding experiences – whether for self-understanding, spiritual exploration, creative inspiration or recreational hedonism. A worldwide mushroom culture was born that, like ayahuasca and other plant-based entheogens, still exerts, to this day, a hidden but profound influence in the worldwide renewal of a spiritual relationship with the natural world. (zvg)

This book provides an outstanding, comprehensive gathering of vital information from the psychedelic world. Experiences reported in this book permit a view of the astronomical ranges of consciousness reaching vastly beyond our ordinary understanding, revealing the incredible beauty and wonder of our universe, and the enormous potential that lies waiting for the serious seeker. Myron Stolaroff

This is a wonderful compilation of scientific information, historical lore, and experiential reports about the magical psilocybe mushrooms. This book tells how the magic mushroom came out of humble obscurity in the mountains of Mexico, to be the focuse of a subculture in North America and around the world. It is sure to be treasured for years to come. Andrew Weil, M.D.

This is a pioneering cognitive psychological study of Ayahuasca, a plant-based Amazonian psychotropic brew. Benny Shanon, Professor, Department of Psychology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and holder of the Mandel Chair in Cognition, presents a comprehensive charting of the various facets of the special state of mind induced by Ayahuasca, and analyzes them from a cognitive psychological perspective. He also presents some philosophical reflections. Empirically, the research presented in this book is based on the systematic recording of the author's extensive experiences with the brew and on the interviewing of a large number of informants: indigenous people, shamans, members of different religious sects using Ayahuasca, and travellers. In addition to its being the most thorough study of the Ayahuasca experience to date, the book lays the theoretical foundations for the psychological study of non-ordinary states of consciousness in general. (zvg)

In 1954 a Los Angeles psychiatrist began experimenting with a then new chemical discovery known as LSD-25. Over an eight-year period Dr. Oscar Janiger gave LSD-25 to more than 950 men and women, ranging in age from 18 to 81 and coming from all walks of life. The data collected by the author during those trials and from follow-up studies done 40 years later is now available here for the first time, along with the authors' examination of LSD's ramifications on creativity, imagination, and spirituality. 
In this book Marlene Dobkin de Rios, a medical anthropologist who has studied the use of hallucinogens in tribal and third world societies, considers the spiritual implications of these findings in comparison with indigenous groups that employ psychoactive substances in their religious ceremonies. The book also examines the nature of the creative process as influenced by psychedelics and provides artwork and poetry from the original experiment sessions, allowing the reader to personally witness LSD's impact on creativity. The studies recounted in LSD, Spirituality, and the Creative Process depict an important moment in the history of consciousness and reveal the psychic unity of humanity.
Marlene Dobkin de Rios, Ph.D., is a medical anthropologist who has conducted fieldwork in the Amazon on the plant hallucinogen ayahuasca. She has written several books, including Visionary Vine and Hallucinogens: Cross Cultural Perspective. She lives in southern California.
Oscar Janiger, M.D. (1918-2001), was one of the first American researchers to study the psychedelic drugs DMT and LSD and was the author of A Different Kind of Healing. (zvg)

Provides sources for: Info, Gatherings, Peyote, Organizations, Psilocybes, Tabernanthe Iboga, Gardening, Research Chemicals, Smart Drugs and other Pharmaceuticals, Cannabis, Salvia divinorum, Paraphernalia, Lab supplies, Ayahuasca, Opium poppies, and much more. (zvg)

Here is a fascinating inquiry into the religious significance of consciousness-magnifying substances, by one of the leading religious thinkers of our time. In Cleansing the Doors of Perception, Huston Smith, author of The World's Religions, combines historical insight, personal experience, and an understanding of the cognitive sciences to produce the only comprehensive book written for the general public on the mysterious relation among entheogens, consciousness, and faith.
Psychoactive plants have long served as spiritual catalysts, from the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece to Native American Church rites, and from India's sacred soma to religious practices emerging from the Amazonian rain forests. In this book, Smith takes us into the heart of modernity's struggle to align this historical evidence with what we now understand about brain chemistry. Smith's friendships with Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary (while Leary was at Harvard), Gordon Wasson (who cracked the two-thousandyear-old secret of India's soma plant), and Albert Hofmann (the discoverer of LSD) have made him an unusual eyewitness to much of the twentieth century's work in this area.
Cleansing the Doors of Perception - the title is a tnibute to both Huxley's The Doors of Perception and Blakes original phrase - is a deeply serious and learned inquiry into a topic of enduring importance. (zvg)