Here are 77 books that LSD and the Mind of the Universe fans have personally recommended if you like
LSD and the Mind of the Universe.
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I am passionate about exploring consciousness using psychedelics, meditation, and the dreamscape because it leads us toward our greatest human potential. Psychedelics have been my main tool for exploring consciousness, and I want to share how they can be safely used to access our greatest psychic gifts and, in particular, to lovingly share consciousness telepathically with others to explore the infinite living cosmos together.
This book is at the leading edge of providing expert insights and techniques for advanced use of psychedelics, particularly 5-MeO-DMT. Martin Ball validated the profundity of my years of working with psychedelics and fractal energetic yoga. He provided me with new techniques and thought forms for working one-on-one with others in sharing consciousness, clearing energetic blockages, and delving into the infinitude of nonduality.
I found his description of the ego as an energetic construct particularly valuable for understanding how we navigate the physical world and its positive and negative impact on the body's energetics. I also benefited from his knowledge of the opportunities and challenges associated with using psychedelics.
From the author of the groundbreaking book, Being Human, comes a radical newguide to personal liberation and transformation. Written by one of the world’sleading authorities on nonduality and psychedelic experience, Martin W. Ball, Ph.D.,Entheogenic Liberation is the definitive work on 5-MeO-DMT and its applicabilityto genuine enlightenment and freedom from the illusory prison of the ego. With wisdom and guidance culled from years of direct therapeutic work, this book laysout precise and detailed instructions and methodologies for working with the world’s most powerful entheogenic medicine for the purpose of achieving liberationinto the fundamental unitary state of being. Presented as a form…
I am passionate about exploring consciousness using psychedelics, meditation, and the dreamscape because it leads us toward our greatest human potential. Psychedelics have been my main tool for exploring consciousness, and I want to share how they can be safely used to access our greatest psychic gifts and, in particular, to lovingly share consciousness telepathically with others to explore the infinite living cosmos together.
I loved how this book provided me with the most expansive maps of the territory of consciousness to be explored using psychedelics. In the two-volume set, Stanislav Grof summarizes his lifetime’s wisdom of personal discovery and working with thousands of people using high-dose psychedelics and Holotropic Breathwork.
I learned about the paramountcy of set and setting and how my biography, including prenatal and ancestral roots, can influence my psychonautical exploration. I further learned about how trauma is stored in the body as systems of condensed experience (COEXs), how it can be released when using psychedelics, other benefits and challenges of using psychedelics, and the nature of the spiritual emergency. Grof also taught me more about navigating archetypes and the cosmos and connecting to the powers of synchronicity.
The Way of the Psychonaut, Volume 1 is one of the most important books ever written about the human psyche and the spiritual quest.
The new understandings were made possible thanks to Albert Hofmann’s discovery of LSD―the microscope and telescope of the human psyche―as well as other psychedelic substances.
This comprehensive work is a tour de force through the worlds of psychology and psychotherapy, Holotropic Breathwork, maps of the psyche, birth, sex, and death, psychospiritual rebirth, the roots of trauma, spiritual emergency and transpersonal experiences, karma and reincarnation, higher creativity, great art, and archetypes. Written in his late eighties, at…
I am passionate about exploring consciousness using psychedelics, meditation, and the dreamscape because it leads us toward our greatest human potential. Psychedelics have been my main tool for exploring consciousness, and I want to share how they can be safely used to access our greatest psychic gifts and, in particular, to lovingly share consciousness telepathically with others to explore the infinite living cosmos together.
While this book is not about the use of psychedelics, I loved how this book on astral travel provided me with expansive maps of what realms and beings can be explored in the infinitude of consciousness when using psychedelics.
Leland provided me insights into a long list of energetically advanced beings, whom he defines by their function, who can be called into psychedelic sessions for guidance and help. He also taught me how my biography and cultural beliefs can create the visual personal experience of cosmic energies experienced during psychonautical explorations.
Learning the nuances of using thought forms to create my immediate reality and experience was of the greatest value to me: awareness follows thought, and when out of the body, thought manifests itself instantly.
REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION* I wrote Otherwhere: A Field Guide to Nonphysical Reality for the Out-of-Body Traveler in the early 1990s to sum up nearly twenty years of out-of-body adventures that began when I was fifteen years old.
These adventures took me into nonphysical realms in which time and space behaved differently, "quite other" than we normally experience them--hence the name Otherwhere. I explored the locations where our dreams occur and where we find ourselves after death. It took me nearly ten years to find a publisher, but when Otherwhere came out in 2001, it sold well and went into…
I am passionate about exploring consciousness using psychedelics, meditation, and the dreamscape because it leads us toward our greatest human potential. Psychedelics have been my main tool for exploring consciousness, and I want to share how they can be safely used to access our greatest psychic gifts and, in particular, to lovingly share consciousness telepathically with others to explore the infinite living cosmos together.
This book is a tome of Ken Wilber's lifetime wisdom. His book thoroughly explores a vast range of states of consciousness that helped me navigate the vastness of psychedelic experiences. More importantly, Wilber’s wisdom helped me integrate years of psychedelic experiences through his philosophy of integral theory and concepts of Growing Up, Waking Up, Cleaning Up, and Showing Up. And, funny enough, Wilber does not discuss psychedelics, yet his book is a psychonaut's guide to the universe.
This book rates in the top five books I have ever read. I felt heavily rewarded for the time and effort required to work through this epic book.
A provocative examination of how the great religious traditions can remain relevant in modern times by incorporating scientific truths learned about human nature over the last century
A single purpose lies at the heart of all the great religious traditions: awakening to the astonishing reality of the true nature of ourselves and the universe. At the same time, through centuries of cultural accretion and focus on myth and ritual as ends in themselves, this core insight has become obscured.
Here, Ken Wilber provides a path for re-envisioning a religion of the future that acknowledges the evolution of humanity in every…
I have always been fascinated by strange and “forbidden” states of consciousness. My first taste of psychedelia came in the form of cannabis—more potent and otherworldly than it gets credit for—and quickly graduated to MDMA, which blew me away. I dove head first into this new world, experimenting with psychedelics new and ancient while reading about all things psychedelic: their history, emerging science, and therapeutic and spiritual possibilities. My other great passion is books, so it was only natural that I would try to encapsulate all that I had learned in book form.
There are plenty of academic tomes about psychedelics—their chemistry, their medical applications, their cultural impact, and so on. I was hunting for something more personal: stories of people’s experiences while zonked out of their gourds. What I found was this aptly named collection of tripping stories, with chapters submitted by writers from all walks of life.
It's a sipping book—at over 500 pages, it’s one you take a chapter at a time, not devour cover to cover. What makes the book special is its remarkable curation: the stories are diverse, covering the full gamut of psychedelic experiences from spiritual nirvana to hellish ordeals. Some stories struck me as stronger than others, but thanks to the editor’s deft hand, the prose always sparkles.
Like a good acid trip, the overall effect is stimulating and emotionally satisfying. But unlike a real trip, this vicarious ride is one you can pause and resume…
A collection of transformational, awe-provoking psychedelic experiences.
In Tripping, Charles Hayes has gathered fifty narratives about unforgettable psychedelic experiences from an international array of subjects representing all walks of life--respectable Baby Boomers, aging hippies, young ravers, and accomplished writers such as John Perry Barlow, Anne Waldman, Robert Charles Wilson, Paul Devereux, and Tim Page. Taking a balanced, objective approach, the book depicts a broad spectrum of altered states, from the sublime to the terrifying. Hayes's supplemental essays provide a synopsis of the history and culture of psychedelics and a discussion of the kinetics of tripping. Specially featured is an interview…
All my work--as a novelist and a licensed clinical therapist--deals with what happens in families, which sometimes includes overwhelming grief. But now, it hasn’t been long since I lost my own son. In these novels, I recognize a piece of myself as I, like any survivor, have struggled to cope. Like few other events in our lives, death has the possibility of completely derailing us with its brutality, and often surviving family cast about blindly, searching for sense, for meaning. Sometimes we can’t find any; sometimes we do, and sometimes we create it ourselves. These novels put different approaches into story, and that, too, is a way to search out direction--and hope.
One of the common reactions to the death of a loved family member–especially any death we perceive to be unnecessary or unnatural–is extreme anger. We have to blame someone, and yes, there’s plenty of reproach and self-recrimination in John Burnham Schwartz’s novel, Reservation Road. But there’s a clear culprit–a hit and run driver–and it seems the police are hardly bothering to investigate, and in a case like that, anyone would have a target for their helpless rage. We see Ethan, a father who witnessed his ten-year-old son killed, become obsessed with tracking down the perpetrator himself to accomplish some justice. I understand that kind of anger and frustration, and I know many others do, too. I think it’s useful to both accept that it’s normal, but to look at how destructive it can become to carry it, and to consider how to let it go.
A tragic accident sets in motion a cycle of violence and retribution in John Burnham Schwartz's riveting novel "Reservation Road". Two haunted men and their families are engulfed by the emotions surrounding the unexpected and horrendous death of ten-year-old Josh in a hit and run accident. Ethan, a respected professor of literature at a small New England college and father of Josh, is wracked by an obsession with revenge that threatens to tear his family apart. Dwight, a man at once fleeing his crime and hoping to get caught, wrestles with the overwhelming guilt and his sense of obligation to…
I teach and have written too many articles on these books as an English professor. There’s a time for tragic or difficult books (James Joyce, anyone?), but also a time for fun, and I believe it’s good for my students to giggle and enjoy reading while they learn. As a Canadian, I’m told my humor is dry but warmer, and accordingly, the books I prefer make me think—and some break my heart—but my favorites also make me laugh. If you want a quality read but aren’t above a fart joke, I hope you will check out my list.
I’m not Professor Dixon and wouldn’t want to be!—I am not drunk while lecturing, chasing female students, or in a crazy love triangle. But this book makes me snort every time I read it for its amicable, deadpan snark.
Kingsley Amis’s reputation didn’t age well as an alcoholic misanthrope, and this isn’t for the easily offended. However, in this first work of his, there’s still room for a likable but bungling young history professor. Lucky Jim basically started campus humor in the ‘50s and still holds up and parodies a side of faculty life that still very much exists.
Penguin Decades bring you the novels that helped shape modern Britain. When they were published, some were bestsellers, some were considered scandalous, and others were simply misunderstood. All represent their time and helped define their generation, while today each is considered a landmark work of storytelling.
Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim was published in 1954, and is a hilarious satire of British university life. Jim Dixon is bored by his job as a medieval history lecturer. His days are only improved by pulling faces behind the backs of his superiors as he tries desperately to survive provincial bourgeois society, an unbearable…
I am the author of over a dozen LGBT novels. I wrote my college thesis on queer criminal coding in Victorian London novels vs. 20th-century American literature. I was a teenage fan of Leopold and Loeb fiction before I added to the canon myself. I chose these books for a queer murder compendium because each offers something unique to the genre. Challenge yourself by asking: do you have sympathy for these murderers? Is it dangerous when queer characters are criminals? Is it fair representation, since homosexuality is illegal to act on, identify with, or speak of in many places? Read these stories, and let their implications disturb you.
Ezekiel Farragut is a former university professor and current inmate at Falconer prison.
A drug addict and a murderer for killing his own brother during an argument, while incarcerated Farragut must wean himself from his addiction with methadone, and suffer visits from his profoundly disappointed wife. He is also involved romantically with a fellow prisoner—the captivating Jody, who all the guys want to screw.
When Jody successfully escapes, Farragut is left to contemplate how his own failures got him to this lonely place, and how to be a better man if he is ever able to leave it. This is where the grim, dreamlike beauty of Cheever’s best-known signature works shines through.
If you like this, also check out Blake Bailey’s biography of Cheever. The parallels between fact and fiction are fascinating.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Stunning and brutally powerful, "one of the most important novels of our time" (The New York Times) tells the story of a man named Farragut, his crime and punishment, and his struggle to remain a man in a universe bent on beating him back into childhood.
In a nightmarish prison, out of Farragut's suffering and astonishing salvation, Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Cheever crafted his most powerful work of fiction. Only Cheever could deliver these grand themes with the irony, unforced eloquence, and exhilarating humor that make Falconer such a triumphant work of the moral…
I started writing a series about menopausal werewolves eleven years ago, right before my fiftieth birthday. I wanted to see more women like me in science fiction and fantasy: middle-aged and older women who had led full lives but were still up for more adventure, new worlds, eager to see what came next. I also started a bibliography project on older women protagonists in speculative fiction and began proposing and speaking on convention programming about older women in the genre. We’ve had a lot of great discussions and agree that the needle is slowly moving toward more and better representation. I’m thrilled to be a part of that.
In a genre full of stories of almost infinite variety, this is one that caught my eye.
A middle-aged female professor of mathematics goes on a quest with her cat to track down a former student who is the only one who can save their world from destruction. Sounds cozy, doesn’t it? Except for the world-ending part.
And the fact that Vellitt’s path lies straight through a dreamscape out of the Lovecraftian mythos in this critique/homage to H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. But you don’t have to have read the latter to enjoy the journey.
Vellitt is a marvelous character, the world-building is brilliant and the cat is the perfect addition that helps set the tone for a new and different kind of quest fantasy.
World Fantasy Award winner, Hugo, Nebula, John W. Campbell, and Locus Award finalist for Best Novella, and one of NPR's Best Books of 2016
Professor Vellitt Boe teaches at the prestigious Ulthar Women’s College. When one of her most gifted students elopes with a dreamer from the waking world, Vellitt must retrieve her. d"Kij Johnson's haunting novella The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe is both a commentary on a classic H.P. Lovecraft tale and a profound reflection on a woman's life. Vellitt's quest to find a former student who may be the only person who can save her community takes her…
I came of age in Oklahoma as a gay youth in the late 1970s and early 1980s, keeping myself hidden out of safety and shame. Once I was old enough to leave my small-minded town and be myself, I crashed headlong into the oncoming AIDS epidemic. It set me on a path to understanding the world and my place in it as a homosexual. I turned to reading about the lives and histories of those who came before me, to learn about their deaths and survivals in what could be an ugly, brutal world. These works continue to draw me, haunt me, and inspire me to share my story through my writing.
The quiet endurance of grief. I love this small, meditative novella that captures the essence of grief as it continues to linger in the body, the mind, and the heart long past the comfortability of those around you.
While the story focuses on the main character, an aging, gay professor who has come to Washington, DC, for a visiting professorship after losing his mother to a long illness, each person encountered is grieving something in their own way (I truly love that Holleran mirrors the main character’s grief with that of Mary Todd Lincoln’s after losing her husband to an assassin but also still grieving the death of her son via a biography he’s reading).
What I find so beautiful about this book is that Holleran doesn’t go for the theatrics of grief. He keeps the story and the emotions calm, methodic, and persistent with such great care to craft…
In the tradition of Michael Cunningham's The Hours, a beautiful novel destined to become a classic
Reeling from the recent death of his invalid mother, a worn, jaded professor comes to our nation's capital to recuperate from his loss. What he finds there--in his repressed, lonely landlord, in the city's mood and architecture, and in the letters and journals of Mary Todd Lincoln--shows him new, poignant truths about America, yearning, loneliness, and mourning itself.
Since Andrew Holleran first burst onto the scene with 1978's groundbreaking Dancer from the Dance, which has been continuously in print, he has been dazzling readers…