The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead

by Timothy Leary

"The Psychedelic Experience", created by the prophetic shaman-professors Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzer and Richard Alpert, is a foundational text that serves as a model and a guide for all subsequent mind-expanding inquiries. In this wholly unique book, the authors provide an interpretation of an ancient sacred manuscript, the "Tibetan Book of the Dead", from a psychedelic perspective. "The Psychedelic Experience" describes their discoveries in broadening spiritual consciousness through a combination of Tibetan mediation techniques and psychotropic substances.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Philosophy, Spirituality, Drugs, Religion, Science

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Timothy Francis Leary was an American writer, psychologist, futurist, modern pioneer and advocate of psychedelic drug research and use, and one of the first people whose remains have been sent into space. An icon of 1960s counterculture, Leary is most famous as a proponent of the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of LSD. He coined and popularized the catch phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out."

Reviews

[Coquille Fleur]

I remember reading this in high school. Bought it at a cool hippie shop in downtown Indy and finished it in the fall of my senior year. Had an intense night the day I finished it and found enlightenment in a closet. Rushed to the bookstore the next day and randomly picked out Be Here Now, written by Ralph Metzner, Ram Dass, who hung with Leary. Later, my best friend's parents turned out to be married by Tim Leary. Also, as a side note, some boys that teased me mercilessly all through high school saw me reading this book in class and thought I was cool for the rest of the year. LOL. What a trip!

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

No wonder Leary refused to speak to Ken Kesey when he showed up at the house. Leary > Kesey, by a lot. While Kesey’s kind of an idiot, Leary is brilliant, creative, original, inspiring. Kesey is a selfish hedonist, kind of a terror of a Jack Russell terrier, whereas Leary is a serene, sincere, wise, generous-souled therapy dog.

Even reading this book while not on psychedelics was such a calming, reassuring, nurturing, and immersive experience that made me feel connected and serene and mindful.

You must remember that at the very worst, you will end up the same person who entered the experience. Whether you experience heaven or hell, remember that it is your mind which creates them. Avoid grasping the one or fleeing the other. Avoid imposing the ego game on the experience.

Trust your divinity, trust your brain, trust your companions.

Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream.

If you try to impose your will, use your mind, rationalize, seek explanations, you will get caught in hallucinatory whirlpools. The motto: peace, acceptance. It is all an ever-changing panorama. You are temporarily removed from the world of game. Enjoy it.

[Whitney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Timothy Leary gets hate from all sides. He gets hate from squares for the obvious reasons. But he also gets hate from hippies, heads, and others who might form his own community because they somehow feel as if he gives them a bad image. Because mainstream academics don't take Leary seriously, his audience wants to distance themselves from his name.

However, Leary deserves credit as a fearless pioneer. I found myself totally immersed in understanding with this book, but at the same time I felt some aversion just because of who wrote it. But Leary gave up everything to try to help the world. And he did not believe that statement to be hyperbole. He used the language he felt best described the indescribable. The tradition of the shaman had been totally eradicated from the American landscape and Leary was starting from scratch with something totally new and foreign.

With all that in mind, The Psychedelic Experience is a cool little piece of history. We know so much more about these substances now and MAPS is opening up the doors for even better research and a wider, more "legitimate" audience. So Leary's approach does seem silly in hindsight, but I don't hold it against him.

[Evelynn Passino · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to admit, this book leaves me wanting to be a better person. I don't want the drama of acid, but I'm all for the journey of self discovery. As I read through the last section, I found myself wondering if I was capable of meditating to the extent of ego-death. I also pondered recording the guides and meditating "on" them. Somehow that seems like cheating.

So, that's the good part. The bad part is that I basically had to use the techniques (hold on, don't think) to get through this book. It was assigned reading for a class and I was very excited to read it...but once I started, I just didn't care. Maybe I am addicted to fiction, or maybe (like a previous reviewer said) Leary's writing style is downright pretentious. Once I got into the "flow" of the book, I did alright, but I have to admit: 1) I probably would not have stuck it out on my own, and 2) As someone who has not done LSD or been near-death, I don't think I really grasped what he was getting at.

Midway through the book I watched a show on LSD, which wasn't particulary eye-opening, but it did set the tone for the rest of the book. I couldn't help but thinking, "wow, this used to be legal." Leary wrote this as a guide because he wanted to help people through the process. I grew up in the "just say no" era, so it's hard for me to understand the culture. I have known many-a-drug-user, but at least they knew they had to hide it. Leary truely believed this was the gateway to the meaning of life. Maybe he was right...maybe he was tripping.

[Avel Rudenko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly described acquired experiences by three Ph.D's. Although once in a mind trip, you are left to your own mind's devices and figments of the imagination and emerging creative processes. Contained herein is the key to experience life after death while still living in the same body, as hinted at in John 4. English translations do not carry the essence to American audiences as pure as American interpretations. It was for this reason that people hearing of the results of the American version of The "Tibetan Book of the Dead", called "The Psychedelic Experience", were disappointed when they dead-ended in the English versions. Here is a guidebook to take you through the realms of consciousness of death and birth and bring you back the same day. See why one of the authors was called the most dangerous man in America by the US president. Nevertheless it is one of the best documented in print interpretations of what is likely to occur in the psyche of "Joe the plumber" or any average Joe for that matter. Anyone interested in exploring or playing with consciousness levels is welcome to read this book thoroughly and understand the wisdom in this guide.

[Alien Bookreader · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a manual on how to experience death and/or experience a drug trip. A pretty niche topic. I think anyone who reads this expecting a science based guide for drug trips is missing the very overt point of the book: to guide you through a spiritual experience.

So it's the Tibetan Book of the Death and the guide to dying, including the different Bardos (the spaces between life and death, levels of Buddhist purgatory if you will) and how to break the circle of rebirth. However in this case, there's also advice on drug dosage, set and setting and coming out of the drug trip.

In case you want to know how to break the circle of rebirth - you have to know how to achieve an egoless state. Ideally you would practice this so much while alive that it came effortlessly in a time of death. Achieving this while dying, is supposedly how to avoid getting caught in the wheel of life. Indulging in sexual hallucinations is supposedly how you will be reborn in the animal realm.

The general theme is that trying to rationalize or understand what is happening (i.e either the drug trip or the hallucinations that happen during death due to the release of DMT in the brain) will lead to fear and confusion.

"The key is inaction: passive integration with all that occurs around you. If you try to impose your will, use your mind, rationalize, seek explanations, you will get caught in hallucinatory whirlpools"

This mentions that you may have a strong urge to call a family member or friend to save you from the state. You may realize the world is made of waves and is not solid, and this may be destabilizing. You may see the world as a puppet world. I guess these are good things to know before you take drugs.

So often Timothy Leary uses television metaphors. It's telling of the time this was written. Nowadays I think a writer would use virtual reality and video game metaphors.

"That he is involved in a cosmic television show which has no more substantiality than the images on his TV picture tube."

"The terror comes with the discovery of transience. Nothing is fixed, no form solid. Everything you can experience is "nothing but" electrical waves. You feel ultimately tricked. A victim of the great television producer. Distrust. The people around you are lifeless television robots. The world around you is a facade, a stage set. You are a helpless marionette, a plastic doll in a plastic world."

Interesting, I guess, if you want to see how taking drugs and dying are similar. I will still read a more traditional translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, since this one is a kind of adaptation to the 1970's zeitgeist.

[Christine]

A fascinating explanation and step-by-step account of hallucination, Leary, Metzner, and Alpert's The Psychedelic Experience creates and explains an interesting philosophy of what occurs in the mind when it is in a hallucinogenic state. As a writer, this book helped me to understand that even the most organic and seemingly fluid things can, in some way, be broken down and examined in a way that can make sense of them; there is always a way to organize the stories inherent in reality, no matter how chaotic it may seem.

[Natali Fischer · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Como apontou o pioneiro químico psicodélico Alexander Shulgin, a ideia de que a Terra se movia ao redor do Sol foi, em certa época, uma heresia radical. Um século depois, tornou-se uma obviedade. A perspectiva de que a exploração interna da consciência através dos psicodélicos possa ser reconhecida, em si mesma, como um esforço positivo e digno é outra heresia que poderá se transformar em algo evidente no futuro. No lugar de colapsar em pura anarquia, uma civilização que apoie o direito de indivíduos adultos usarem catalisadores químicos para sua autodescoberta e comunhão espiritual poderá evoluir a um estado mais maduro e estável. Muito da ansiedade e do condicionamento negativo em torno do assunto poderia ser dissipado com argumentos lógicos, baseados em evidências de que os psicodélicos, quando comparados a outras drogas, são relativamente seguros, sobretudo os naturais. A questão não é que todos precisem tomar psicodélicos, mas que a minoria de pessoas atraída por essa exploração tenha permissão para fazê-lo."

[Awenydd Orchantra Faeryn · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.”

(Review featured on www.evolvingthread.com )

[Otto Lehto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Branded as the champion of bacchanalian excess and antinomian discord - and the miscreant father of the "turn on, tune in, drop out" slogan - few people care to remember that there was also a more systematic, Apollonian side to Dr. Timothy Leary. Beneath his trickster persona, he was a first rate psychologist who wanted to properly contextualize the psychedelic experience and imbue its therapeutic use with life-transforming structural cohesion. His goal was to pioneer scientific and personal discoveries, and his work with Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner is a good example of those principles.

The Psychedelic Experience exemplifies the interdisciplinary impact that psychedelic research can have on academic scholarship. It is essentially an esoteric Jungian reading of the Tibetan Book of the Dead as a psychological and spiritual manual for consciousness expansion. It undoubtedly has its flaws as religious scholarship. It is openly disinterested in the sociological and ritualistic context of the Tibetan religious faith. It has little interest in the "exoteric" trappings of the Tibetan religion. It disavows all literalistic readings of the afterlife contained in its passages. But if one accepts it as a Huxlean-Jungian exercise in philosophia perennis, or as an esoteric spiritual reading illuminated by the principles of the modern scientific world view, one can gain a lot from it.

The metaphysical trappings are rather secondary, however. The main function of the book is to act as a guide to the optimal pursuit of an orderly transcendental experience. It does so in two interrelated ways: 1) By using the structure of the Tibetan Book of the Dead as a way to anchor the experience. 2) By providing the initiate and the guide with an additional set of Western therapeutic concepts, such as "set and setting", which have clear practical value in preparing the initiate for the journey ahead. The combination of these two methods - the old and the new, the Eastern and the Western, the religious and the scientific - is a powerful way to anchor and guide the process. There was nothing chaotic or irresponsible about this approach: it is the height of responsible therapy.

The scientific and therapeutic benefits of the 60s psychedelic research were profound. However, they also threatened the status quo in politics, morals, and religion. Unsurprisingly, they were soon crippled by the machinery of state terror that stamped down on the exercise of free science. Whatever the excesses of the hippie movement and Leary's trickster persona, the wasted potential of the science that was never pursued, or pursued only clandestinely, makes a truth seeker weep. Today, in the 21st century, as psychedelic research is experiencing something of a renaissance, the pioneering and rigorous work of Leary, Alpert, and Metzner can be reevaluated as a flawed but groundbreaking attempt to contextualize the psychedelic experience in terms of sociology, psychology, and spirituality. Its eminent value as practical guide should be reckoned with not only in terms of its ability to illuminate the psychedelic experience and map out human consciousness, but also to provide fledgling initiates - i.e. all of us - easy ways of changing our lives for the better.

[Bon Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to experiment with psychedelics, this is it. User's manual. Now, I would be first in line if I wasn't so afraid of spiders, and in psychedelic experience you pretty much get what you expect. Damn.

[Alan Newton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise book, which is - essentially - a guide for the voyager, aka the psychonaut, the psychedelic tripper based upon the teachings of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which is a guide for rebirth and reentry from one life to the next.

The Tibetan view is that the mental or spiritual cannot always be reduced to material quanta and manipulated as such — the spiritual is itself an active energy in nature, subtle but more powerful than the material. The Tibetan view is that the “strong force” in nature is spiritual, not material. This is what gives the Tibetan character its “inwardness”.

Timothy Leary famous for his research into psychedelic drugs and their hallucinogenic effects, as well as becoming an enemy of the US establishment following his famous quote to “turn on, tune in, drop out”, a counterculture-era phrase he coined in 1967 when speaking at the ‘Human Be-In’, a gathering of 30,000 hippies in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Where else?

Leary outlines the meaning of this phrase in his book ‘Flashbacks’, identifying that the process of turning on, tuning in and dropping out was a stage by stage process of going within to activate ones neural and genetic equipment; tuning in to the many and various levels of consciousness and what triggers engage them; and to detach from our perceived reality, exploring the inner workings of our minds and - perhaps - the universe, allowing one ego to take a back seat and enable insight free of the normal game-theory associated with our ‘waking’ realities.

Drugs were just one way to accomplish this goal. Regular practitioners of meditation, breath work, yogic practice and lucid dreaming will also be familiar with altered states of consciousness with comparable experiences to psychedelic drug use, albeit maybe not so vivid, colourful and/or wacky. “Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean ‘Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity”, wrote Leary.

The basis of ‘The Psychedelic Experience’ is to provide a map for the psychonaut, exploring the nature of psychedelics as a chemical key to expanding ones mind for inner exploration. The authors suggest that it is not the drug that produces the transcendent experience, it merely helps “open the mind” and “frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures.”

The notions of mindset and setting are, as Michael Pollan would later write in ‘How to change your mind’, critical to the experience. Set being ones state of mind and level of preparation for the experience, and setting being the physical environment and your feeling towards those who are with you. The connection with the Tibetan Book of the Dead is the model by which one would control their experience. The teachings focus upon direct and controlled awareness in such a way as to reach the level of understanding variously called liberation, illumination, or enlightenment. This focus helps the consciousness free itself from the self, from ego and personality to free oneself from “positive-negative hallucinations which often accompany states of expanded awareness.”

The importance of letting go of the ego and not trying to interpret what’s occurring is a fundamental early lesson that is repeated by many authors reporting on psychedelic use. “The key is inaction: Passive integration with all that occurs around you. If you try to impose your will, use your mind, rationalise, seek explanations, you will get caught in hallucinatory whirlpools.”

Leary goes on to describe, in detail, 3 Bardos...

1. First Bardo - period of ego loss or non-game ecstasy, characterised by ‘The White Light’ (1st bardo energy / God / The creator / the central sun / the one truth / the source). “The first sign is the glimpsing of the ‘clear light of reality,’ ‘the infallible mind of the pure mystic state.’ This is the awareness of energy transformations with no impositions of mental categories.” This state can allow for the “ultimate truth” if one is sufficiently prepared and has dispensed with their ego. It outlines multiple symptoms one may feel at the point of ego-loss, and one must embrace and meld with them, to surrender, in order to transcend;

1. Bodily pressure, which the Tibetans call earth-sinking-into-water
2. Clammy coldness, followed by feverish heat, which Tibetans call water-sinking-into-fire;
3. Body disintegrating or blown to atoms, called fire-sinking-into-air
4. Pressure on head and ears, which Americans call rocket-launching-into-space
5. Tingling in extremities;
6. Feelings of body melting or flowing as if wax;
7. Nausea;
8. Trembling or shaking, beginning in pelvic regions or spreading up torso.

2. Second Bardo - Known as the period of hallucinations. “During this period, the flow of consciousness, microscopically clear and intense, is interrupted by fleeting attempts to rationalise and interpret. But the normal game-playing ego is not functioning effectively.”

The authors outline 7 common visions / apparitions experiences by westerners, interrupted from definitions similar to the mandalic schema of the Peaceful Deities listed for the Second Bardo in the Tibetan Book of the Dead;

1. The source or creator vision
2. The internal flow of archetypal processes
3. The fire-flow of internal unity
4. The wave-vibration structure of external forms
5. The vibratory waves of external unity
6. “The Retinal Circus”
7. “The Magical Theatre”

3. The Third Bardo - the period of “re-entry”. For the average person who undertakes a psychedelic voyage, the return to game reality is inevitable. Such persons can and should use this part of the manual for the following purposes:

1. To free themselves from Third Bardo traps
2. To prolong the session, thus assuring a maximum degree of illumination
3. To select a favourable re-entry i.e. to return to a wiser and more peaceful post-session personality

“The Tibetans estimate that about 50% of the entire psychedelic experience is spent in the Third Bardo by most normal people. At times... someone may move straight to the re-entry period if he is unprepared for or frightened by the ego-loss experiences of the first two Bardos.”

The six worlds of game existence (or six levels or six personality types) associated with re-entry ranging from Devas (highest level) and heroes / titans to normal humans (level 3) to wild beasts & insects (level 4), neurotic, frustrated lifeless spirits pursuing unsatisfied desires (level 5), to finally... hell or psychosis (lowest level). Most return to the human level.

The re-entry is of paramount important and should not be rushed. It should be given time to unfold naturally. One can select their new ego from the different levels if one is adept and skilled enough to do so.

Leary indicates the importance of seeking an intention, a Goal of a trip. Classic Hinduism suggests 4 possibilities;

1. For increased personal power, intellectual understanding, sharpened insight into self and culture, improvement of life situation, accelerated learning, professional growth
2. Full of duty, help of others, providing care, rehabilitation, rebirth for fellow man
3. For fun, sensuous and join into, asked Fetick pleasure, interpersonal closeness, pure existence
4. For transcendence, liberation from eco-and space time limits; attainment of mystical union

Differences between extrovert and introverted mystic experiences:
For the extroverts mystic experience one would bring to the session objects or symbols to guide the awareness and the desired direction. Candles, pictures, books, incense, music or recorded passages. An introverted mystic experience requires the elimination of all stimulation; no light, no sound, no smell, no movement.

A period of time (usually at least three days) should be set aside in which the experience will run its natural course and there will be sufficient time for reflection and meditation. It is important to keep schedules open for three days and to make these arrangements beforehand. A too-hasty return to game-involvements will blur the clarity of the vision and reduce the potential for learning. If the experience was with a group, it is very useful to stay together after the session in order to share and exchange experiences.

[Aaiza Naveed · Rating 2 out of 5]

Timothy Leary - The Tibetan Book Of The Dead

Such experiences of enlarged consciousness can occur in a variety of ways: sensory deprivation, yoga exercises, disciplined meditation, religious or aesthetic ecstasies, or spontaneously. Most recently they have become available to anyone through the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, etc.

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Bardo Thodol

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heavy game players, those who anxiously cling to their egos

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With you ego left behind you, the brain can’t go wrong. Try to keep the memory of a trusted friend or a respected person whose name can serve as a guide and protection.

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Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines

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persons trained in mental concentration, or one-pointedness of mind, to such a high degree of proficiency as to be able to

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control all the mental functions and to shut out the distractions of the outside world.” (Evans-Wentz, p. 86, note 2)

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commentaries on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, published with the Evans-Wentz edition. These are the introduction by Evans-Wentz himself, the distinguished translator-editor of four treatises on Tibetan mysticism; the commentary by Carl Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst; and by Lama Govinda, and initiate of one of the principle Buddhist orders of Tibet.

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the Art of Dying is quite as important as the Art of Living (or of Coming into Birth

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Most difficult of all, the scope of psychology is complex, dealing as it does with processes which are ever-changing. Little wonder that psychologists, in the face of such complexity, escape into specialization and parochial narrowness

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methods for controlling and changing consciousness. Western intellectuals tend to dismiss Oriental psychology

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meditation, yoga, monastic retreat, and sensory deprivation

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Eastern psychology can be judged in terms of the use of available evidence. The scholars and observers of China, Tibet, and India went as far as their data allowed them. They lacked the findings of modern science and so their metaphors seem vague and poetic. Yet this does not negate their value. Indeed, eastern philosophic theories dating back four thousand years adapt readily to the most recent discoveries of nuclear physics, biochemistry, genetics, and astronomy

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William James and Carl Jung. [To properly compare Jung with Sigmund Freud we must look at the available data which each man appropriated for his explorations. For Freud it was Darwin, classical thermodynamics, the Old Testament, Renaissance cultural history, and most important, the close overheated atmosphere of the Jewish family. The broader scope of Jung’s reference materials assures that his theories will find a greater congeniality with recent developments in the energy sciences and the evolutionary sciences.] Both of these men avoided the narrow paths of behaviorism and experimentalism. Both fought to preserve experience and consciousness as an area of scientific research. Both kept open to the advance of scientific theory and both refused to shut off eastern scholarship from consideration.

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Bardo Thodol

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Metaphysical assertions, however, are statements of the psyche, and are therefore psychological. To the Western mind, which compensates its well-known feelings of resentment by a slavish regard for “rational” explanations

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Whenever the Westerner hears the word “psychological,” it always sounds to him like “only psychological.”

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Not only the “wrathful” but also the “peaceful” deities are conceived as sangsaric projections of the human psyche, an idea that seems all too obvious to the enlightened European, because it reminds him of his own banal simplifications

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West loves clarity and unambiguity; consequently, one philosopher clings to the position, “God is,” while another clings equally fervently to the negation, “God is not.”

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the Tibetan book. This is not (as Lama Govinda reminds us) a book of the dead. It is a book of the dying; which is to say a book of the living; it is a book of life and how to live

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In this quote Jung settles for the exoteric and misses the esoteric.

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this “Beyond” is not a world beyond death, but a reversal of the mind’s intentions and outlook, a psychological “Beyond” or, in Christian terms, a “redemption” from the trammels of the world and of sin. Redemption is a separation and deliverance from an earlier condition of darkness and unconsciousness, and leads to a condition of illumination and releasedness, to victory and transcendence over everything “given.” Thus far the Bardo Thodol is, as Dr. Evans-Wentz also feels, an initiation process whose purpose it is to restore to the soul the divinity it lost at birth.

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moving in this direction but cautiously and with the ambivalent reservations of the psychiatrist cum mystic

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the end of all conscious, rational, morally responsible conduct of life, and a voluntary surrender to what the Bardo Thodol calls “karmic illusion.” Karmic illusion springs from belief in a visionary world of an extremely irrational nature, which neither accords with nor derives from our rational judgments but is the exclusive product of uninhibited imagination. It is sheer dream or “fantasy,” and every well-meaning person will instantly caution us against it; nor indeed can one see at first sight what is the difference between fantasies of this kind and the phantasmagoria of a lunatic. Very often only a slight abaissement du niveau mental is needed to unleash this world of illusion. The terror and darkness of this moment has its equivalent in the experiences described in the opening sections of the Sidpa Bardo. But the contents of this Bardo also reveal the archetypes, the karmic images which appear first in their terrifying form. The Chonyid state is equivalent to a deliberately induced psychosis. . . .

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the ego was “the true seat of anxiety,” he was giving voice to a very true and profound intuition. Fear of self-sacrifice lurks deep in every ego, and this fear is often only the precariously controlled demand of the unconscious forces to burst out in full strength. No one who strives for selfhood (individuation) is spared this dangerous passage, for that which is feared also belongs to the wholeness of the self

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This liberation is certainly a very necessary and very heroic undertaking, but it represents nothing final: it is merely the creation of a subject, who, in order to find fulfillment, has still to be confronted by an object.

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terrifying dream evoked by karma and played out by the unconscious “dominants” begins.

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In the preceding section the point was made that eastern philosophy and psychology - poetic, indeterministic, experiential, inward-looking, vaguely evolutionary, open-ended - is more easily adapted to the findings of modern science than the syllogistic, certain, experimental, externalizing logic of western psychology. The latter imitates the irrelevant rituals of the energy sciences but ignores the data of physics and genetics, the meanings and implications.

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It may be argued that nobody can talk about death with authority who has not died; and since nobody, apparently, has ever returned from death, how can anybody know what death is, or what happens after it? The Tibetan will answer: “There is not one person, indeed, not one living being, that has not returned from death. In fact, we all have died many deaths, before we came into this incarnation. And what we call birth is merely the reverse side of death, like one of the two sides of a coin, or like a door which we call “entrance” from outside and “exit” from inside a room.”

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not everybody remembers his or her previous death

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it must decide whether to be content with the subjugation of the material world, or to strive after the conquest of the spiritual world, by subjugating selfish desires and transcending self-imposed limitations

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to bring the subconscious into the realm of discriminative consciousness

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subconscious memory, wherein are stored the records not only of our past lives but the records of the past of our race, the past of humanity, and of all pre-human forms of life, if not of the very consciousness that makes life possible in this universe. If, through some trick of nature, the gates of an individual’s subconsciousness were suddenly to spring open, the unprepared mind would be overwhelmed and crushed. Therefore, the gates of the subconscious are guarded, by all initiates, and hidden behind the veil of mysteries and symbols.

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he must die to his past, and to his old ego, before he can take his place in the new spiritual life into which he has been initiated. The dead or the dying person is addressed in the Bardo Thodol mainly for three reasons: (1) the earnest practitioner of these teachings should regard every moment of his or her life as if it were the last;

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The Vedic sages knew the secret; the Eleusinian initiates knew it; the Tantrics knew it. In all their esoteric writings they whisper the message: it is possible to cut beyond ego-consciousness, to tune in on neurological processes which flash by at the speed

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of light

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Westerners do not accept the existence of conscious processes for which they have no operational term.
The attitude which is prevalent is: - if you can’t label it, and if it is beyond current notions of space-time and personality, then it is not open for investigation. Thus we see the ego-loss experience confused with schizophrenia. Thus we see present-day psychiatrists solemnly pronouncing the psychedelic keys as psychosis-producing and dangero

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Faith is the first step on the “Secret Pathway.” Then comes illumination and with it certainty; and when the goal is won, emancipation

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to die consciously

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Liberation is the nervous system devoid of mental-conceptual activity. [Realization of the Voidness, the Unbecome, the Unborn, the Unmade, the Unformed, implies Buddhahood, Perfect Enlightenment - the state of the divine mind of the Buddha. It may be helpful to remember that this ancient doctrine is not in conflict with modern physics.

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And this, according to astrophysicists, is the way it will end;
the silent unity of the Unformed. The Tibetan Buddhists suggest that the uncluttered intellect can experience what astrophysics confirms

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The cosmological awareness- and awareness of every other natural process- is there in the cortex

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The nervous system in a state of quiescence, alert, awake but not active is comparable to what Buddhists call the highest state of dhyana (deep meditation) when still united to a human body. The conscious recognition of the Clear Light induces an ecstatic condition of consciousness such as saints and mystics of the West have called illumination.

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In those who are heavily dependent on their ego games, and who dread giving up their control, the illuminated state endures only so long as it would take to snap a finger. In some, it lasts as long as the time taken for eating a meal.

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signs heralding transcendence. Avoid treating them as symptoms of illness, accept them, merge with them, enjoy them. Mild nausea occurs often with the ingestion of morning-glory seeds or peyote, rarely with mescaline and infrequently with LSD or psilocybin. If the subject experiences stomach messages, they should be hailed as a sign that consciousness is moving around in the body. The symptoms are mental; the mind controls the sensation, and the subject should merge with the sensation, experience it fully, enjoy it and, having enjoyed it, let consciousness flow on to the next phase. It is usually more natural to let consciousness stay in the body - the subject’s attention can move from the stomach and concentrate on breathing, heart beat. If this does not free him from nausea, the guide should move the consciousness to external events - music, walking in the garden, etc.

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Karmic (i.e., game

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biological life-flow.” Here the person becomes aware of physiological and biochemical processes; rhythmic pulsing activity within the body

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Again the person must resist the temptation to label or control these processes. At this point you are tuned in to areas of the nervous system which are inaccessible to routine perception. You cannot drag your ego into the molecular processes of life. These processes are a billion years older than the learned conceptual mind.

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Ill-prepared subjects may interpret the experience in pathological terms and attempt to control it, usually with unpleasant results

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experienced in consciousness alteration, or if you are a naturally introverted person,

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The experienced person is usually beyond dependence on setting. He can turn off external pressure and return to illumination. An extroverted person, dependent upon social games and outside situations may, however, become pleasantly distracted (colors, sounds, people). If you anticipate extroverted distraction and if you want to maintain a non-game state of ecstasy, then remember the following suggestions: do not be distracted; try to concentrate on an ideal contemplative personage, e.g., Buddha, Christ, Socrates, Ramakrishna, Einstein, Herman Hesse or Lao Tse: follow his model as if he were a being with a physical body waiting for you. Join him.

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Urge him quietly to release his ego struggle and drift back into contact with the Clear Light.

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bad karma (heavy ego games) fail to recognize the liberation

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one of the oldest debates in Eastern philosophy. Is it better to be part of the sugar or to taste the sugar

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The experienced person will be able to maintain the recognition that all perceptions come from within and will be able to sit quietly, controlling his expanded awareness like a phantasmagoric multi-dimensional television set

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The key is inaction:
passive integration with all that occurs around you

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peace, acceptance.

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Contact with another participant may be misunderstood and provoke sexual hallucinations. For this reason, helping contact should be made explicit by prearrangement. Unprepared participants may impose sexual fears or fantasies on the contact. Turn them off; they are karmic illusory productions

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Do not try to rationalize this contact

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The cortex contains file-cards for billions of images from the history of the person, of the race, and of living forms

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turn off the fidgety, rationalizing mind. But only the experienced person of mystical bent can do this (and thus remain in serene enlightenment). The unprepared person will be confused or, worse, panicky: the intellectual struggle to control the ocean.

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Most important, he is told that they come from within. All deities and demons, all heavens and hells are internal.

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The aim of this manual is to make available the general outline of the Tibetan Book and to translate it into psychedelic English

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bad karma (usually religious beliefs of a monotheistic or punitive nature), the glorious light of the seed wisdom it can produce awe and terror. The person will wish to flee and will beget a fondness for the dull white light symbolizing stupidity. Persons from a Judaeo-Christian background conceive of an enormous gulf between divinity (which is “up there”) and the self (“down here”

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colored forms, microbiological shapes, cellular acrobatics, capillary whirling. The cortex is turned in on molecular processes which are completely new and strange: a Niagara of abstract designs; the life-stream flowing, flowing. These visions might perhaps be described as pure sensations of cellular and sub-cellular processes. It is uncertain whether they involve the retina and/or the visual cortex, or whether they are flashes of direct, molecular sensation in other areas of the central nervous system. They are subjectively described as internal visions.

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Raw, molecular, dancing units of energy.

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Darwinian insights

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[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book for people who won’t read the Tibetan book of the dead but want to tell their friends that they did.

Before I begin this review, I will note that I am very familiar with the works of Ram Dass and Dr. Timothy Leary. I also understand the cultural context this book had at the time of its writing, and the history that went into its creation. There are a million reviews that will hold this book high on those pieces of history alone. But how does this book hold up now?

To be frank, it doesn’t hold up too well. It has the shallow tone of a couple college kids that took LSD a few times, read one Buddhist book, then said woooaaahhh LSD is like dying man! We should write our thesis on this! I totally understand Buddha now!

The book doesn’t really know if it’s a modern linguistic distillation of the book it’s based on, a guide for a session, or two guys who (at that point in their lives historically) think they have all the wisdom of a Buddhist master after tripping on acid for a few days too many. It’s kind of lazy and unfocused. All the prose is completely copied from the Wentz translation of the Book of the Dead, except words like ego are replaced with “game.”

If you have read the Tibetan Book of the Dead, this work may either clarify some of the Tibetan symbolism or it will feel like complete plagiarism of its mother work. It’s obnoxiously repetitive.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I have read many controversial things about Leary before, I decided to give this book a try. What a joy! Forget what you know about Leary. Read this book from a new perspective. Read it if you are into psychedelics and willing to get broader and mystical experiences. Very unfortunate that many 'psychonauts' or amateurs in psychdelics discuss so much about the trips and all it gets into are memes, funny stories or bad trips. I wish everyone had read this book before challenging and 'overusing' themselves with LSD trips. Again, if you want to have mystical, meditative and self observing state in your trips, read this book and let it guide you. You don't need tripsitters. Everything is in your mind. Do not attach and let your mind look into your mind.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though it's easy to cast a hairy eyeball at Leary & co for their Milbrook antics and for appropriating Tibetan Buddhist iconography and spirituality, there is still some wisdom to be found in this old tome. I found the sections on bodily symptoms of "entering the 2nd bardo" (or coming up, in other words) to be particularly helpful--framing them as the ego's way of protesting its dissolution, instead of any physical disease/problem, is definitely something I'll try to hold onto for my next trip. But the dated emphasis on "game playing" and their attachment to "happy/light" visions do tend to detract from the nuggets of wisdom therein.

[Danny Hartnett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ego death! Ego death! Ego death! Take psychedelics and kill your ego!!

All jokes aside this book is a fantastic guide for people interested in trying psychedelics, giving a good idea of what to expect/what will happen. As well as tool for those who are seasoned trippers as to how to use these “drugs” to further yourself as a person through hallucinogenic meditation. Speaks on self, consciousness, mental power and enlightenment . 10/10 would recommend to anyone curious of trying psychedelics as well as anyone who enjoys them.

[Oma · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Those who have met this doctrine are fortunate. It is not easy to encounter. Even when read, it is difficult to comprehend. Liberation will be won simply through not disbelieving it upon hearing it.”

[Joe Leick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tough book to review, as per the introduction by Daniel Pinchbeck, I prefer to contextualize this book as a cultural artifact for the time. As how this book relates to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, I have no idea. This book is rather esoteric, and I think the Tibetan Book of the Dead likely is too. Not sure that is something I will read anytime soon.

A useful interpretation stated by Pinchbeck, “Ego freedom might be a more appropriate goal than ego loss”.

The book is structured between a long introduction, the middle broken into three sections, Bardos, and notes at the end with direct application for getting through a psychedelic experience and scripturelike readings for guiding others that are struggling with particular visions.

The first bardo is about seeing the primary clear light and secondary light. It’s about the initial experience of ego freedom. The second Bardo is the bulk of the experience and discusses common visions and the beauty of nightmare of each depending upon your state of mind. The third bardo is about losing that feeling of ego freedom and the instinct to reorient yourself with reality.

“If you try to impose your will, use your mind, rationalize, seek explanations, you will get caught in hallucinatory whirlpools”. This is my main takeaway from discussing the several visions/hallucinations/experiences that are likely to occur during the second Bardo, and how to avoid falling into nightmarish traps. The second bardo is the most esoteric portion of the book. I was able to mostly relate due to my own experiences, but for the unacquainted, this rambling could be a slog to interpret.

There are some useful notes at the end for safely conducting a session. The end portion about the “instructions” to read to someone as a guide I found interesting. It helped me conceive of those common hallucinations given in the second bardo a little better.

Overall a short and fine read, I imagine there are better “guides” out there to read. This is my initial introduction to the work of Timothy Leary.

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should have read the Tibetan Book of the Dead before reading this.

In saying that, as a stand-alone piece of work 'The Psychedelic Experience' seemed more woo-woo than substance.

My expectations were more along the lines of a 'psychedelic how-to' - touching base on the benefits of these drugs on cognitive function and spirituality. It didn't live up to these expectations.

[Mujahid Khan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone interested in experiencing Psychedelics should read this for once. The realm of consciousness is explored deeply in this manual which is based on "The Tibetan Book of the Dead."
Timothy Leary indulges the reader into how such substances could have a profound and life-altering effect on the mind of the voyager.
A very short read albeit an interesting one.

[Ugnė · Rating 4 out of 5]

The manual explains the possible effects while experiencing certain psychedelics, basically LSD. Interesting because the manual is written in such a form as being a ‘travel note’ for a voyager ready for a mind trip.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream." The classic guide to psychedelic experience, based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Unusually practical for a book about traversing altered consciousness, hallucinations, colors and sounds, ecstasy and ego-death and rebirth. I feel like a Beatle. The journey of 1000 miles begins with one step, so let's go, I'm ready.

[Guilherme Passos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Confesso que me decepcionei um pouco, apesar de tudo aqui escrito ser extremamente útil pra práticas com substâncias psicodélicas, mas eu esperava mais do Leary antes de conhecer ele, talvez por isso tenha me decepcionado. Os motivos são muito longos pra discutir aqui, talvez um dia entre em detalhes. Quanto aos métodos que ele apresenta e o conceito de set and setting, achei excelente.

[Hannah Suh]

“The quick grafting of entheogenic exploration onto Tibetan Buddhism could be seen as reflecting the absorptive ethos and narcissistic emphasis of our American mind-set, which tends to see all other cultures and resources as fodder to feed its experience, material desires, and knowledge base.”

[Laekin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zoom zoom :-)

[Vanya]

Leary's a bit full of himself but the manual surely has to be reread for the full experience.

[T. Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bewildering and provocative! It sent me back to my Aldous Huxley, by whom Leary was much inspired.

[Devayani · Rating 5 out of 5]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Dyfan Dyfans Dyfanson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminds me of my first Guinness 0