Don Juan concludes the instruction of Castaneda with his most powerful and mysterious lesson in the sorcerer's art—a dazzling series of visions that are at once an initiation and a deeply moving farewell.

This is a true classic, a definitive reference volume, the correspondence tables are comprehensive and it's also fascinating - Crowley could make even a dry reference book an interesting read. Three stars off, however, for the blood libel against the Jews of Eastern Europe in the original text. Really, Uncle Al? You actually believed that? (Israel Regardie did excise it from the edition I own (Weiser hardcover ISBN 0 87728 222 6), saying "It is a nasty, malicious piece of writing, and does not do justice to the system with which he is dealing.") The man was brilliant. But he could also be a racist bigot, and apparently even he didn't see the stupidity in making anti-Jewish remarks (or anti-Black, as he sometimes did) while promoting a religion grounded in Jewish mysticism and northern African deities. DO read Crowley. He had a lot of important ideas, and there's much to be learned from him. That Regardie continued to promote his work in spite of the bigoted comments speaks for the quality of the writing. Just don't make an infallible god king of him - or anyone.

This book is out there. Drunvalo tells you everything, the secrets of the past and the future for only $25 US. He describes in full detail what will happen when we move into the fourth dimension. He explains why an ancient race of aliens mined for gold in Africa and created humans as slaves (to fix their atmosphere duh!). He even says where AIDS comes from. He talks about Egypt, sacred geometry, indigo children, you name it. All this and more from a Berkley dropout. Honestly it was a fun read. Come on, like this is any better than reading The Post.

A dazzling work of personal travelogue and cultural criticism that ranges from the primitive to the postmodern in a quest for the promise and meaning of the psychedelic experience. While psychedelics of all sorts are demonized in America today, the visionary compounds found in plants are the spiritual sacraments of tribal cultures around the world. From the iboga of the Bwiti in Gabon, to the Mazatecs of Mexico, these plants are sacred because they awaken the mind to other levels of awareness--to a holographic vision of the universe.Breaking Open the Head is a passionate, multilayered, and sometimes rashly personal inquiry into this deep division. On one level, Daniel Pinchbeck tells the story of the encounters between the modern consciousness of the West and these sacramental substances, including such thinkers as Allen Ginsberg, Antonin Artaud, Walter Benjamin, and Terence McKenna, and a new underground of present-day ethnobotanists, chemists, psychonauts, and philosophers. It is also a scrupulous recording of the author's wide-ranging investigation with these outlaw compounds, including a thirty-hour tribal initiation in West Africa; an all-night encounter with the master shamans of the South American rain forest; and a report from a psychedelic utopia in the Black Rock Desert that is the Burning Man Festival.Breaking Open the Head is brave participatory journalism at its best, a vivid account of psychic and intellectual experiences that opened doors in the wall of Western rationalism and completed Daniel Pinchbeck's personal transformation from a jaded Manhattan journalist to shamanic initiate and grateful citizen of the cosmos.

A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death &amp; Mystical Experiences.A clinical psychiatrist explores the effects of DMT: A behind-the-scenes look at the cutting edge of psychedelic research.From 1990 to 1995 Dr. Rick Strassman conducted US DEA-approved clinical research at the University of New Mexico in which he injected 60 volunteers with DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known. His detailed account of those sessions is an inquiry into the nature of the human mind and the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. DMT, a plant-derived chemical that is also manufactured by the human brain, consistently produced near-death and mystical experiences. Many volunteers reported convincing encounters with intelligent nonhuman presences, especially "aliens." Nearly all felt that the sessions were among the most profound experiences of their lives.Strassman's research connects DMT with the pineal gland, considered by Hindus to be the site of the seventh chakra and by René Descartes to be the seat of the soul. DMT: The Spirit Molecule makes the case that DMT, naturally released by the pineal gland, facilitates the soul's movement in and out of the body and is an integral part of the birth and death experiences, as well as the highest states of meditation and even sexual transcendence. Strassman also believes that alien abduction experiences are brought on by accidental releases of DMT. If used wisely, DMT could trigger a period of remarkable progress in the scientific exploration of the most mystical regions of the human mind and soul.

Back in print after 20 years, this text from the earliest days of psychedelia chronicles the experiences on 16 acid trips taken before LSD was illegal. The trip guides or "high priests" included Aldous Huxley, Ram Dass, Ralph Meltzner, Huston Smith and a junkie from New York City named Willy. It tells of the goings-on and freaking out at the Millbrook mansion in New York State that became the Mecca of psychedelia during the 1960s, and of the many luminaries who made their pilgrimage there to trip with Leary and his group. Chapters include an I Ching reading and a chronicle of what happened during those "spacewalks" of the mind.

Why have people from different cultures and eras formulated myths and stories with similar structures? What does this similarity tell us about the mind, morality, and structure of the world itself? Jordan Peterson offers a provocative new hypothesis that explores the connection between what modern neuropsychology tells us about the brain and what rituals, myths, and religious stories have long narrated. A cutting-edge work that brings together neuropsychology, cognitive science, and Freudian and Jungian approaches to mythology and narrative, Maps of Meaning presents a rich theory that makes the wisdom and meaning of myth accessible to the critical modern mind.

Sometimes a writer has to revisit the classics, and here we find that "gonzo journalism"—gutsy first-person accounts wherein the author is part of the story—didn't originate with Hunter S. Thompson or Tom Wolfe. Aldous Huxley took some mescaline &amp; wrote about it some 10 or 12 years earlier than those others. The book he came up with is part bemused essay &amp; part mystical treatise—"suchness" is everywhere to be found while under the influence. This is a good example of essay writing, journal keeping &amp; the value of controversy—always—in one's work.

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