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Deviate
newbie
Registered: 04/20/03
Posts: 4,497
Last seen: 8 years, 4 months
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The Psychedelic Experience
#22174344 - 09/01/15 02:58 PM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
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Who has used this book as a trip manual? I remember finding it very confusing at first, I had no idea what they were talking about with the first and second bardos and what not. I was like, what the hell is a bardo? So my first few years of tripping, I just tripped with no instructions.
Lately, I have been more interested in getting the most out of my trips. WHen I started listening to the native american peyote music, I realized I had barely scratched the surface with psychedelics and what they can truly offer.
In addition to learning from the native americans and their peyote ceremony, I have also found this book by Leary, Alpert and Metzner to be an incredible trip manual.
It teaches you how to attain transcendence. The more you learn how to do this, the more difficult it becomes to have a bad trip because no matter where the trip takes you, you know you always have The Clear Light, or your safe refuge beyond ego, to return to.
Even when you can't seem to find the CLear Light, simply knowing its there and can be attained at any moment changes the whole dynamic of the trip.
I really don't understand why John Lennon disliked this book.
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Aldebaran
Psilo-Scribe



Registered: 11/26/09
Posts: 1,323
Loc: Altered States of Europe
Last seen: 5 hours, 49 minutes
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Re: The Psychedelic Experience [Re: Deviate]
#22181910 - 09/03/15 07:23 AM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
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I've not used it as a tripping manual as such, I wouldn't like the idea of trying to use it as a fixed framework telling me how to trip and what I'm supposed to be experiencing.
I think it makes more sense when you can compare it to your own trips - even if they don't quite seem to fit into the descriptions of bardos, visions and so on, there is an overall theme that starts to make sense.
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It teaches you how to attain transcendence. The more you learn how to do this, the more difficult it becomes to have a bad trip because no matter where the trip takes you, you know you always have The Clear Light, or your safe refuge beyond ego, to return to.
That's a pretty good summing up. Originally I was a bit sceptical about how they'd somehow converted a religious text into a tripping manual, but I read through a translation of the actual "Tibetan Book of the Dead" (there's a nice Penguin books version with notes e.t.c) and a trip does fit into the buddhist concept of an "intermediate state" of consciousness, and a trip can sometimes be experienced as a journey to a borderland between life and death.
Considering how old this book is, it's very strange how it manages to provide some appropriate guidance through the psychedelic realm for trips that seem to threaten oblivion - that however hostile it seems, you shouldn't fear what you are seeing, it's just your own mind, that there is a transcendent state waiting for you if you can surrender to it....it does make sense for Leary & co. to want to use this as a guide for tripping in some way.
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Even when you can't seem to find the CLear Light, simply knowing its there and can be attained at any moment changes the whole dynamic of the trip.
I find it helpful to think like this when everything else is being torn away, it makes the trip less scary to know that beyond whatever doom seems imminent, there is a blissful state where you would least expect to find it.
-------------------- I wrote that, but I meant something else
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Thayendanegea
quiet walker



Registered: 02/20/12
Posts: 7,596
Loc: 7 Lodges Nation
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Re: The Psychedelic Experience [Re: Aldebaran]
#22182250 - 09/03/15 09:46 AM (8 years, 4 months ago) |
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I keep a copy of this book on file...and suggest beginners read parts of it before your first journey....it explains alot.
-------------------- Look Deep Into Nature,and Then You Will Understand Everything Better. Albert Einstein
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