Name: The psychedelic experience; a manual based on the Tibetan book of the dead
ISBN: 9780806505527

The psychedelic experience; a manual based on the Tibetan book of the dead

"The authors were engaged in a program of experiments with LSD and other psychedelic drugs at Harvard University until sensational national publicity, unfairly concentrating on student interest in the drugs, led to the suspension of the experiments. Since then, the authors have continued their work without academic auspices"--front cover.

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jonnydubowskySep 2020

I highly recommend The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead by Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert.

"The authors discuss the Tibetan Book of the Dead and use the process of death and rebirth presented in it as a metaphor for the experience of ego death or depersonalization that is commonly experienced under the influence of psychedelic drugs. Similar to how the intended function of the Tibetan Book of the Dead is to be used as a guide for death and rebirth, The Psychedelic Experience is meant to be used as a guide on how to properly handle experiences of ego death while undergoing the psychedelic experience

The book discusses the various phases of ego death that can occur on psychedelics and gives specific instructions on how one should regard them and act during each of these different phases. In addition to containing more general advice for the readers on how to use psychedelics, the book also includes selections of writing presented with the intent for them to be read aloud during events where groups of people take psychedelic drugs together".*

The recommendations in the book can be adapted to work with one other individual, someone who has experience with the different possible states that might be encountered through the trip.

Your state of mind, and the surrounding environment are crucial to realizing an optimal experience. If you go into a psychedelic experience with a lot of anxiety over having a "bad trip", it can end up being a self fulfilling influence.

Following the guidance in this book requires a mindful preparation, often spread out over a few weeks. I think this level of intent is helpful in raising up the overall experience.

"This manual is divided into four parts. The first part is introductory. The second is a step-by-step description of a psychedelic experience based directly on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The third part contains practical suggestions on how to prepare for and conduct a psychedelic session.

The fourth part contains instructive passages adapted from the Bardo Thodol, which may be read to the voyager during this session, to facilitate the movement of consciousness."

Here’s an audio recording of the authors reading from the book:

https://youtu.be/JhgJsg2mMeQ

The book is available as a free pdf on Timothy Leary's website:

http://www.leary.ru/download/leary/Timothy%20Leary%20-%20The...

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carapaceNov 2019

In re: drugs in general and psychedelics in particular:

> "Of course, the drug dose does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key — it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures. The nature of the experience depends almost entirely on set and setting. Set denotes the preparation of the individual, including his personality structure and his mood at the time. Setting is physical — the weather, the room's atmosphere; social — feelings of persons present towards one another; and cultural — prevailing views as to what is real. It is for this reason that manuals or guide-books are necessary. Their purpose is to enable a person to understand the new realities of the expanded consciousness, to serve as road maps for new interior territories which modern science has made accessible."

> — Timothy Leary, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_and_setting

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In re: drugs and meditation. It's great that these folks didn't get thrown in jail but their approach is almost criminally ignorant. The epistemology or metaphysics informing the experiment is so... i don't know, 18th century? Did we learn nothing from the 60's?

Speaking with experience, don't mix meditation and drugs. I did it, and it didn't completely not-work for me, but from my POV, it's irresponsible. (With the caveat that, for a very very small number of people (like, literally one in a million or fewer), a little experience with drug trips can be educational. But the odds are you're not one of them.)

- - - -

In re: meditation, it really depends on what you're going for. If you just want to feel better, then yeah, a beer and/or a joint or a lil shroom tea is fine with one's navel-gazing. Simple muscular relaxation is about 90% of the profundity most folk experience with meditation. (Fun fact, what you think of as your personality is encoded (among other places) in the chronic tension patterns in your facial muscles.)

If your goal is Enlightenment then drugs are a total blind alley.

- - - -

I forgot to mention, if you want to experience "alterations of self-consciousness in association with feelings of bliss, unity, and insightfulness" without any drugs, training, or meditation use the Core Transformation Process ( https://www.coretransformation.org/ ), a simple, reliable algorithm.

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carapaceNov 2019

Set and setting.

I believe it's important to realize that the "magic" is not in the mushroom.

~ Timothy Leary, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_and_setting

Drugs like LSD and psilocybin are the chemical equivalent of banging on the side of the box to make the TV work.

With proper set and setting you can get profound effects from e.g. a sweat lodge, or even just hyperventilation (I'm referring to Leonard Orr's Rebirthing breathwork. I would normally link to the wikipedia article on it but that's been defaced by capital-S Skeptics and reduced to a note crapping on the whole thing as "discredited". My dad actually worked for Leonard Orr for a bit and what he was doing was pretty profound whatever it was.)

On the one hand, it's great that the vindictive hysteria around psychedelic drugs is calming down, on the other hand I wish the scientific establishment had a little more epistemological sophistication when it came to investigating the inner world.

To sum up, the cure is not in the pill, it's in the set and setting. The pill just gives you an excuse. You can also use e.g. hypnosis, prayer, drumming, dancing, sweat lodges, or weird breathing, to effect the change you want, just to name a small sampling of the available modalities.

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carapaceOct 2019

In re: LSD,

> Of course, the drug dose does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key — it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures. The nature of the experience depends almost entirely on set and setting. Set denotes the preparation of the individual, including his personality structure and his mood at the time. Setting is physical — the weather, the room's atmosphere; social — feelings of persons present towards one another; and cultural — prevailing views as to what is real. It is for this reason that manuals or guide-books are necessary. Their purpose is to enable a person to understand the new realities of the expanded consciousness, to serve as road maps for new interior territories which modern science has made accessible.

— Timothy Leary, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_and_setting

LSD merely gets you "high as a Lord".

Leonard Orr used to help people have very profound healing "trips" using set and setting and oxygen (hyperventilation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebirthing_(breathwork)

If you want to explore your inner world in a responsible way, a few LSD trips with deliberate set and setting might be educational, but it's much safer and easier to just use hypnosis and/or meditation.

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carapaceSep 2019

The context of the trip is more important than the chemical. "Set and setting". I'm copying Dr. Leary's quote from the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_and_setting

> > Of course, the drug dose does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key — it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures. The nature of the experience depends almost entirely on set and setting. Set denotes the preparation of the individual, including his personality structure and his mood at the time. Setting is physical — the weather, the room's atmosphere; social — feelings of persons present towards one another; and cultural — prevailing views as to what is real. It is for this reason that manuals or guide-books are necessary. Their purpose is to enable a person to understand the new realities of the expanded consciousness, to serve as road maps for new interior territories which modern science has made accessible.

— Timothy Leary, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead

You can have a transcendent experience without any drugs at all. Your brain can perform all the chemical manipulations required in a much safer manner than e.g. flooding your system with synthetic LSD.

If you have a therapeutic system that works in the first place then drugs would be a sideshow at best. Adding LSD to ineffective scattershot therapies will just amplify random aspects of the subject's psychology.

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