This book is an invaluable resource of information about the psychedelic experience for anyone who wants to try to understand a little bit more about it without trying illegal or legal drugs. The author does a great job of explaining that the psychedelic experience is more of a religious experience than plain drug experience.
It's an irrefutable fact that every one of the world's major religions and wisdom traditions had a psychedelic drug ritual attached to them, even Christianity has halos based on mushroom caps and art containing mushrooms everywhere. Timothy Leary went so deep with studying various ancient wisdom traditions to understand or explain or better navigate the psychedelic experience and this book does that 'beautifully.' The Tibetan Book of the Dead and Buddhism as a whole go brilliantly hand in hand with psychedelics, as if they were made for each other, but the inexperienced would need a little guidance to link some of the concepts with one to the concepts of the other, and that's what this book seeks to do. It is a bit deep for younger readers, but it gets the ideas across. ( )

This was a very tiresome and boring read.

Starting with the Confessions of an opium eater by De Quincey, first published in 1821, a small group of writers has kept coming back to exploring and writing about drugs, with names often mentioned randing from Baudelaire, Aldous Huxley in The doors of perception and Heaven and Hell, and William Burroughs and Alan Ginsberg in The Yage Letters. The debate about drugs seems to have run a course from innocense in De Quincy to curiosity and exploration in Huxley and guilt in the writers of the 1960s. As drug use, particularly opium, came to be seen as a bad thing, the spreading illicit use of hard drugs such as cocaine and heroine soon became stigmatized and criminalized. The use of these drugs by William Burroughs and described e.g. in Junky led in the process of criminalization and shame about its use.

Perhaps it is for this reason that the three authors of The psychedelic experience, like Burroughs all style themselves as PhDs. It seems the Penguin Modern Classics series often does not seem to select potential classics, but is more focused on selecting works that defined the period, and in that sense inclusion of this work seems fully justified.

The psychedelic experience consists of five parts, an introduction by Daniel Pinchbeck to the book, and a "general introduction" which is part of the book. This is followed by "Tibetan Book of the Dead" and a manual with instructions for a psychedelic session. This is all very technical stuff and it is hard to imagine who would read it with the purpose of being instructed. Otherwise it is just totally boring stuff.

For the purpose of my general interest, I was delighted with Daniel Pinchbeck's 2007 introduction, while the reading of The psychedelic experience is no more than hitting another tick box. ( )

Essential reading for anyone wanting to delve into the dangerous realm of forbidden substances. Book in a nutshell: try to control your set and setting when indulging. You risk your sanity and having to spend a lot of time putting yourself back together again if you don't. Another of what I would call my "hippie days" classics. Timothy Leary IS dead, but I still preach his message. ( )

2.5 Stars

A guide for the use of psychedelics for an enlightenment, ego-release, or spiritual purpose based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

I have had such expansive and enlightening experiences in my life. These came through and to me in Divine Love and was without outer guidance of any sort. While I like the idea of this book existing for those who do not fully trust the path within, their higher consciousness, and All That Is, I found that most of what it was saying was unnecessary for me to read, as I have already passed through or beyond such “phases” in said, and other, experiences. However, I did like his mention of physically closing your ears to listen to the sounds that your body-processes make-that was a really interesting “meditation” that hasn’t occurred to me since childhood. I also like that he prepares you for simply flowing, rather than trying to grasp or interpret meanings until after the session, which I think enables you to have a clearer, more profound experience, and that he mentions grounding your body into the floor or the earth whenever it is necessary for you. I would like to someday have a guided or tribal setting experience with a harmonious community I trust, though this isn’t the book I’d want to have read to me, it could be a helpful aid to those who are deeply invested in ego games (as he describes it:”‘Games’ are behavioral sequences defined by roles, rules, rituals, goals, strategies, values, language, characteristic space-time locations and characteristic patterns of movement. Any behavior not having these nine features is non-game: this includes physiological reflexes, spontaneous play, and transcendent awareness.”) who are ready for a deeper life, though I think it would be enough to simply set up in a loving environment, and know that fear is never the way.

Note: I think a book like "The Power of Now" or "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle would be something wonderful to read in preparation instead of Timothy Leary's "The Psychedelic Experience", because it teaches ego-death, as well as "Nonresistance, Nonjudgement, Nonattachment" which are perfect "practices" to take into any instance of life, and he gives examples and other teachings that work in both a psychedelic and general life setting. These were the books that significantly brought awareness into my life.

Quotes from “The Psychedelic Experience”:

✦ “The specific reaction has little to do with the chemical and is chiefly a function of set and setting; preparation and environment. The better the preparation, the more ecstatic and revelatory the session.”

✦ “Flexibility, basic trust, religious faith, human openness, courage, interpersonal warmth, creativity are characteristics which allow for fun and easy learning.”

✦ “Remember the bliss of the Clear Light. Let it guide you through the visions of this experience. Let it guide you through your new life to come.”

✦ “The veil of routine perception will be torn from your eyes.”

✦ “Blissful passivity. Ecstatic, orgiastic, undulating unity. All worries and concerns wash away. All is gained as everything is given up. There is organic revelation. Every cell in your body is singing its song of freedom- the entire biological universe is in harmony, liberated from the censorship and control of you and your restricted ambitions.”

✦ “Dominating this ecstatic state is the feeling of intense love. You are a joyful part of all life. The memory of former delusions of self-hood and differentiation invokes exultant laughter.”

✦ “Beyond the light of life is the peaceful silence of the void. The quiet bliss beyond all transformations. The Buddha smile. The Void is not nothingness. The Void is beginning and end itself. Unobstructed; shining, thrilling, blissful. Diamond Consciousness.” ( )

association copy. Book is from Ralph Metzner's personal Library. signed by Simon Vinkenoog to Ralph