Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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50 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Re: Total Hype (not!), December 25, 2003
I would like to clear up some apparent confusion in the reviews below: Ram Dass' book "Be Here Now" *can't* be a prelude to this book, since "Be Here Now" was written I think seven years *after* "The Psychedelic Experience." For those of you who don't know, "Ram Dass" is in fact Richard Alpert, one of the three authors of "The Psychedelic Experience." To say that this book "adds nothing to the already huge body of liturature written on the topic" is like saying that The Bible adds nothing to the already huge body of christian literature. This book was at it's time absolutely revolutionary. It is to my knowledge the first work published giving a detailed road map for those travellers seeking spiritual enlightenment with the aid of psychedelics. The brilliant reinterpretation of the Bardo Thodol as a guide for premortem ego death and the interpretation of numerous aspects of eastern mysticism in general in the light of Leary's "Game of Life" theory (e.g. "heavy world game playing" interpretations of "karma") makes the meaning of these ancient mystic teachings readily accessible to the mind of the western psychonaut. If you're a psychonaut and want to better understand your experiences, read this book. If everybody who wanted to try a psychoactive substance would first read this book, there would probably never again be anybody who would have what s/he would call a "horror trip" (unless the heavy game players don't understand what they're reading and insist on taking the substances anyway.) Read it and weep. Wishing you Good Journeys, erasurehead
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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tomorrow Never Knows, December 27, 2007
Since there is so much talk about the Beatles song, Tomorrow Never Knows, I have decided to use it as the 'working title' of this review.
We don't know what tomorrow will bring. It is a bit audacious on our part to even think that there might even be a tomorrow because all supposed tomorrows are simply extensions of our today.
I picked this book up in a used bookstore in San Francisco. I was at a crossroads in my life. I thought I really wanted to move up to the Bay Area for good. I thought that Southern California offered me as much as it possibly could, but now it was time to move to a different, higher part of the state.
What it was really time for was to move to a different, higher state of consciousness. It wasn't necessarily Southern California that wasn't offering anything more to my life, I wasn't offering anything more to my life. I was in a slump creatively, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually and you know what they say what the difference is between a slump and a grave --- about six feet.
Fortunately (or unfortunately according to some of my family members) I came across the three musketeers; Ralph Metzner, Richard Alpert, and Timothy Leary. I had long been interested in LDS but I wasn't ready to give up coffee and I didn't realy believe in polygamy...oh, wait, that's Latter Day Saints...I meant, LSD...lysergic acid diethylamide...Albert Hoffman's "problem child".
I had already been meditating and deeply studying Spirituality/metaphysics for a few years and I had many breakthroughs in many areas of my life, but like I said earlier, I felt I was in a slump. Maybe I should've just kept on doing it the 'old fashioned way' because psychedelics may promise enlightenment, but like most drugs do, they tend to lie.
I did my first and only session the right way, with a guide who has been through the process herself. We picked out appropriate music and she read me passages from this book.
The woman who was guiding me was slowly morphing into a beautiful crystal being. I could literally look through her and see the Pure Love that she was made in and out of as she read:
"O John
The time has come for you to seek new levels of reality.
Your ego and the John game are about to cease.
You are about to be set face to face with the Clear Light
You are about to experience it in its reality.
In the ego-free state, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless sky,
And the naked spotless intellect is like a transparent vacuum;
At this moment, know yourself and abide in that state..."
I began to realize, with Real Eyes, that everything I ever knew was 'made up'. I never saw life the way it truly was, I only saw it as I was. I could feel myself dying while at the same time I could feel my true SELF coming forth...
"O John
That which is called ego-death is coming to you.
Remember:
This is now the hour of death and rebirth;
Take advantage of this temporary death to obtain the perfect state -
Enlightenment.
Concentrate on the unity of all living beings.
Hold onto the Clear Light.
Use it to attain understanding and love..."
I began to get very clear messages from within my own heart why I chose the life I did. There might be some people who are reading this who might be thinking, "Oh, you were making it all up..." And that is exactly the point! We are making up life as we go along. Most of us do not understand, however, that all of life is simply a projection of what we are in consciousness.
"If you cannot maintain the bliss of illumination and if you are slipping back into contact with the external world,
Remember:
The hallucinations which you may now experience,
The visions and insights,
Will teach you much about yourself and the world.
The veil of routine perception will be torn from you eyes.
Remember the unity of all living things.
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.
If you feel confused; call upon the memory of your friends and the power of the person whom you most admire..."
I began to feel wave after wave of Love, of Life, of Light...the three symbols that I, to this day, refer to the One Guiding Spirit I call God as. I began to cry as she held my hand - or what I thought of as my hand - and slowly but surely I merged with her and she merged with me and we were One. We always were. But just as I was One with her, I was One with the All. In fact, I never left the One that created me out of Itself.
"O John,
Try to reach and keep the experience of the Clear Light.
Remember:
The light is the life energy.
The endless flame of life.
An ever-changing surging turmoil of color may engulf your vision.
This is the ceaseless transformation of energy.
The life process.
Do not fear it.
Surrender to it.
Join it.
It is part of you.
You are part of it.
Remember also:
Beyond the restless flowing electricity of life is the ultimate reality -
The Void.
Your own awareness, not formed into anything possessing form or color, is naturally void.
The Final Reality.
The All Good.
The All Peaceful.
The Light.
The Radiance.
The movement is the fire of life from which we all come.
Join it.
It is part of you.
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.
The All-Good Buddha.
Your own consciousness, not formed into anything,
No thought, no vision, no color, is void.
The intellect shining and blissful and silent -
This is the state of perfect enlightenment.
Your own consciousness, shining, void and inseparable from the great body of radiance, has no birth, nor death.
It is the immutable light which the Tibetans call Buddha Amitabha,
The awareness of the formless beginning.
Knowing this is enough.
Recognize the voidness of your own consciousness to be Buddhahood.
Keep this recognition and you will maintain the state of the divine mind of the Buddha."
All of my yesterdays and all of tomorrows are simply extensions of my today...of what I am being in this instant. People think that enlightenment or reaching a Christlike state takes years and years to reach. But even the Bible refers to it as something happening instaneously...
"In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed."
Corinthians 15:56
Many years have since passed since my one and only LSD experience. Sometimes my ego wants to go back and have "another one". Like the insatiable kid who could've satisfied his craving with just one piece of chocolate, but got sick after eating the whole box. Nope, all I need was confirmation, validation, appreciation for this Spiritual Path I was already on. It was truly a gift from my Self to my self.
I still live in Southern California. I became a Spiritual Counselor, met my wife, and every day is a beautiful new experience. Sometimes I'm not in awe and appreciation. Sometimes I'm really "stuck" in this world of form but as soon as I close my eyes and breathe in and out and just sloooooow dooooown...I can deeply realize with real eyes see that what I am looking for is always what I am looking with.
Read this book with an open mind and an expanded heart. Feel the Presence of Light all around you...all within you.
I am not advicating psychedelics in any way, shape, or form. I firmly believe you can "get" to another place in consciousness if you "let" yourself let go and just jump in. You are not your body. You never have been. You are the Light, the Life, and the Love of Something I call God, but it is from this Invisible Presence that all life stands forth out of.
Peace & Blessings,
john, 'the Light Coach'
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
flow with fire-blood...., April 17, 2001
This is undoubtedly Learys definitive work.This guide book is absolutely essential if you are going to take a psychedelic drug.It really makes sense of the visions and sensations you will encounter in the different stages,or Bardos of the trip.To put it simply and to the point,Lennon said of this book,"Learys method is the only way to trip".It really is a great guide book that should send you in the right direction. PRICELESS.
P.S:All the negative reviews of this book all seem to miss the point...its a GUIDEBOOK in the truest sense of the word,an internal 'roadmap'.Its not meant to preach to you a certain point,its there to be used as a manual-to memorize and if need be,to read during your trip.You will need to get beyond the sometimes 'poetic' style and get to the essence of the message.
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