Zig-Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics
More than ever, people are in pursuit of greater fulfillment in their lives, seeking a deeper spiritual truth and strategies for liberation from suffering. Both Buddhism and psychedelics are inevitable subjects encountered on the journey to wisdom. Examined together, the reader may understand more deeply the essence of each.
TiHKAL: The Continuation is the sequel to PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story but can stand alone to any reader. Where PiHKAL focuses on a class of compounds called phenethylamines, TiHKAL is written about a family of psychoactive drugs known as tryptamines with TiHKAL being an acronym for “Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved”. Like its predecessor PiHKAL, it is divided into two parts. The first part of the book begins with the story of Alice and Shura, a fictionalized autobiography, which picks up where the similar section of PiHKAL left off. The book opens with the story about the DEA raid that occurred a few years after the publication of their first book, PiHKAL. It’s a window into the DEA, the institutional aspect and human side of it as well, and the price that Shura and Alice pay for doing what they do, including exercising their first amendment rights. It then continues with a collection of essays on topics ranging from psychotherapy and the Jungian mind, to the prevalence of DMT in nature, ayahuasca, the War on Drugs, and even the Big Bang. It is a blend of travel, botanical facts, scientific speculation, psychological and political commentary. It is fascinating getting to know the mind of the man behind the compounds – his thoughts on science, technology, law, and society. And the mind of the woman who brought his work and their story into the light of the world. The second part of TiHKAL is “The Chemistry Continues”. It is a detailed manual for 55 psychedelic compounds (many discovered by Shulgin himself). For each compound there is information on synthesis, effective dosage, duration of effects, and commentary on the subjective effects that were experienced. The Shulgins’ two big books span autobiography, organic chemistry, politics, ethnobotany and psychopharmacology and the cultural impact of these works has been profound and will continue to be so in the future.
From 1990 to 1995 Dr. Rick Strassman conducted U.S. Government-approved and funded clinical research at the University of New Mexico in which he injected sixty volunteers with DMT, one of the most powerful psychedelics known. His detailed account of those sessions is an extraordinarily riveting inquiry into the nature of the human mind and the therapeutic potential of psychedelics. DMT, a plant-derived chemical found in the psychedelic Amazon brew, ayahuasca, is also manufactured by the human brain. In Strassman’s volunteers, it consistently produced near-death and mystical experiences. Many reported convincing encounters with intelligent nonhuman presences, aliens, angels, and spirits. 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 Rene Descartes to be the seat of the soul. DMT: The Spirit Molecule makes the bold 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.
The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys
Called “America’s wisest and most respected authority on psychedelics and their use,” James Fadiman has been involved with psychedelic research since the 1960s. In this guide to the immediate and long-term effects of psychedelic use for spiritual (high dose), therapeutic (moderate dose), and problem-solving (low dose and microdose) purposes, Fadiman outlines best practices for safe, sacred entheogenic voyages learned through his more than 40 years of experience—from the benefits of having a sensitive guide during a session (and how to be one) to the importance of the setting and pre-session intention. Fadiman reviews the newest as well as the neglected research into the psychotherapeutic value of visionary drug use for increased personal awareness and a host of serious medical conditions, including his recent study of the reasons for and results of psychedelic use among hundreds of students and professionals. He reveals new uses for LSD and other psychedelics, including microdosing, extremely low doses for improved cognitive functioning and emotional balance. Cautioning that psychedelics are not for everyone, he dispels the myths and misperceptions about psychedelics circulating in textbooks and clinics as well as on the internet. Exploring the life-changing experiences of Ram Dass, Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley, and Huston Smith as well as Francis Crick and Steve Jobs, Fadiman shows how psychedelics, used wisely, can lead not only to healing but also to scientific breakthroughs and spiritual epiphanies.
The Ethnopharmacology of Ayahuasca
Ethnopharmacology is a relatively new science that studies the cultural aspects of substances (plants, animals, minerals) and their biological characteristics and activities. While investigating and identifying compounds and the various uses they have in indigenous and non-indigenous groups, this science is also involved in studying the bio-activity of these materials. Ethnopharmacology is connected with other ethno-sciences, especially ethnobotany, which studies the uses of plants by human groups and their chemical and biological aspects.
Tryptamine Palace: 5-MeO-DMT and the Sonoran desert toad
A journey from Burning Man to the Akashic Field that suggest how 5-MeO-DMT triggers the human capacity for higher knowledge through direct contact with the zero-point field • Examines Bufo alvarius toad venom, which contains the potent natural psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT, and explores its entheogenic use • Proposes a new connection between the findings of modern physics and the knowledge held by shamans and religious sages for millennia The venom from Bufo alvarius, an unusual toad found in the Sonoran desert, contains 5-MeO-DMT, a potent natural chemical similar in effect to the more common entheogen DMT. The venom can be dried into a powder, which some researchers speculate was used ceremonially by Amerindian shamans. When smoked it prompts an instantaneous break with the physical world that causes out-of-body experiences completely removed from the conventional dimensions of reality. In Tryptamine Palace, James Oroc shares his personal experiences with 5-MeODMT, which led to a complete transformation of his understanding of himself and of the very fabric of reality. Driven to comprehend the transformational properties of this substance, Oroc combined extensive studies of physics and philosophy with the epiphanies he gained from his time at Burning Man. He discovered that ingesting tryptamines unlocked a fundamental human capacity for higher knowledge through direct contact with the zero-point field of modern physics, known to the ancients as the Akashic Field. In the quantum world of nonlocal interactions, the line between the physical and the mental dissolves. 5-MeO-DMT, Oroc argues, can act as a means to awaken the remarkable capacities of the human soul as well as restore experiential mystical spirituality to Western civilization.
MDMA, or as it is commonly known, “ecstasy,” has a pardoxical double role in contemporary society. As the party-drug ecstasy, it is consumed by tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of people at “rave” dance parties in the United States, Europe, and the Far East. In its other role as a promising adjunct to psychotherapy, MDMA is currently being researched as a treatment for many conditions, including PTSD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and interpersonal anxiety. This book, originally published in 1985 before MDMA became illegal, is a compilation of experiences conducted in supportive and/or therapeutic settings. The vignettes are not part of a formal research study, and there is no control group. These accounts illustrate the value and potential of MDMA for generating insight, facilitating empathic communication, and supporting spiritual practice. Although the use of MDMA remains illegal (except in the limited context of research), the editors of this book, like many professionals in the field of psychotherapy, believe that a fresh look at this very promising substance is warranted.
In this monograph, I relate findings from more than 30 years of experiences and observations with this substance, in various user groups and individuals, both in the US and in Europe. I use the term underground in referring to the explorations with these substances, in the sense that they were hidden – out of respect for the restrictions and prohibitions of mainstream culture.These are ethnographic field reports: first-hand observations from an underground sub-culture, accompanied by the experiences of a selected number of participant-observers. It is important to recognize that in research with these and other so-called psychedelic or entheogenic substances, one cannot limit the observations and reflections solely to their physical and psychological effects. As most of the people cited here emphasize, the experiences with these substances at times can go far beyond their physical and psychological effects into the deepest and highest dimensions of our existence, both the cosmic and the spiritual. Ralph Metzner, Ph.D., received his undergraduate degree at Oxford University and his doctorate in clinical psychology at Harvard University, where he was also the recipient of an NIMH Post-doctoral Fellowship in psychopharmacology at the Harvard Medical School. He collaborated with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert in the studies of psychedelic drugs and co-authored The Psychedelic Experience. He is a psychotherapist and Professor Emeritus at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he taught for 30 years. He has a life-long interest in the many different realms of consciousness and its modifications. He is the author of The Well of Remembrance, The Unfolding Self, Green Psychology, Birth of a Psychedelic Culture (with Ram Dass); editor of two collections of essays on ayahuasca and on psilocybe mushrooms; and author of a series of seven books on The Ecology of Consciousness
Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals
Huston Smith, internationally recognized philosopher, scholar of religion, and author of the long-acclaimed classic The World’s Religions, now offers Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals.The entheogens are plants and chemicals that have been used, some of them for thousands of years, and are being used today around the world, as means for going beyond the ordinary and encountering the sacred.The greatest single impediment to understanding the entheogens is “psychedelia”: the entire range of cultural baggage dating from the 1960s, from Day-Glo painted minibuses to lava lamps, tied together by the implicit belief that the most important use of entheogenic mushrooms, peyote, and their chemical cousins is to have a perpetual Happening.Cleansing the Doors of Perception aims to undo that confusion. It does not restate the extreme claims of the sixties about liberation through intoxication; rather, it asserts that those claims were profoundly mistaken and helped cause some people to lose their spiritual way. It communicates the key role that entheogens can play when used in contexts of faith and discipline, and it sets out what the entheogens show us about the nature of mind and spirit.Smith explains that he has kept his eye on this issue throughout the last 40 years of his career because he shares Aldous Huxley’s opinion that nothing is more curious, or to his thinking more important, than the role that mind-altering plants and chemicals have played in human history. “My intent,” writes Smith, “has been to produce a work that touches on the major facets of its enigmatic subject as seen through the eyes of someone (myself) who, given my age, may have thought and written more about it than anyone else alive.”