Christopher Gray – författare

For all who dare to go off the beaten track, this is the inspirational, power-packed playbook for transforming your life and your world—from a young, Black social entrepreneur whose dorm-room tech startup has helped millions pay for college and access unprecedented opportunity. 

Gray, the son of a single working mother who had him at age fourteen, grew up in deep poverty in Birmingham, Alabama. An academic star, he had every qualification for attending a top college—except for the financial means. Desperate, Gray headed off the beaten path, searching online to apply for every scholarship he could find.  His hustle resulted in awards of 1.3 million dollars and became his call to action to help other students win their own “schollys.” It inspired him to start up Scholly, an app that matches college applicants with millions of dollars in outside scholarships that often go unclaimed.

When he was a senior at Drexel University, he appeared on Shark Tank as CEO of Scholly. In the most heated fight in the show’s history, the sharks challenged Gray as to whether his app was a charity or a profitable business.  Both, he insisted, proposing a new paradigm for social entrepreneurship and netting deals from Lori Grenier and Daymond John.     

At the time Scholly’s subscriber base was 90,000 users. Today the app has 4 million subscribers who have won scholarships totaling more than $100 million. Meanwhile, Gray—without help from the mostly all-white boy’s club of Silicon Valley—has emerged as a tech startup superhero now tackling the crisis of student debt with innovative, unrivaled strategies.

Gray’s premise is that when you lead with the good—confronting issues such as poverty and racism—the money will follow.  His story is proof that when you develop a mindset for success, you turn disadvantages into gold. And when you create opportunities for others, you enrich the marketplace for yourself too.  

Gray shows us, we can carve out new paths to better days and leave trails for others. 

Combe Dingle Wood can be found (if you look really hard) in the heart of the Somerset countryside. It exists in that twilight time between myth and reality. It belongs to the era when walkabout scarecrows and Aunt Sallies wandered the hills and vales of the English West country. The local folk can tell you stories of their experiences when entering the wood. Most people that wander in wander out again with a smile on their faces and a sense of well-being. No one has ever quite put their finger on why this should be- they can only say there is something magical about the place. The Chronicles of Combe Dingle Wood are a series of stories about the unique folk that inhabit the wood. They have exciting adventures in Between time (created for them by a friendly witch). They encounter dangers, but they do so with a sense of humour and fortitude that is typical of the West Country folk.It was a few years after the Second Year War when I first encountered the real inhabitants of Combe Dingle Wood. Were they people trees or tree people? You know to this day I am still not sure. Perhaps you could decide? The story books I have produced are based on the records and drawings I kept in my diary all those years ago.

In search of the High King. The Great Creator made the stars and planets in order to fill the vast emptiness of Space. When He had placed them, and was satisfied he had but one task left. He threw a myriad of Blue planets randomly into His created Universe and allowed them to fall and settle where they would. The Blue planets were his true master pieces. On them the inhabitants were created to echo in an infinitely smaller way, the Master architects persona. The intention was that on these blue spheres Humanity would evolve to be the dominant species. They were to be left to their own devices and it would be inevitable that some would be peaceable places of love and harmony, whilst others would see conflict and suffering. Such is the arrogance of human nature that the selfish aspirations of the leaders of the populations and their desire for dominance, would eventually lead to wars and perhaps of Humanities ultimate self-destruction. Gelandor is one of these Blue Planets. It is on its Earth-like surface that the tale unfolds. It is a story of a daughters determination to find her lost father and of the company of Eldorian knights that accompany her on the dangerous quest. The action is set against a background of the violent conflict of opposing war lords in the planets northern hemisphere. Throughout their search for the High King, father of the Princess Erycina, her companions encounter monstrous creatures, betrayal, spies, intrigue, mystery and war.

An exploration of the personal and spiritual truths revealed through LSD • Reveals that LSD visions weave an ongoing story from trip to trip • Shows that trips progress through three stages: personal issues and pre-birth consciousness, ego-loss, and on to the sacred • Explores psychedelic use throughout history, including the mass hallucinations common in the Middle Ages and the early therapeutic use of LSD Toward the end of his fifties, Christopher Gray took, for the first time in years, a 100-microgram acid trip. So extraordinary, and to his surprise so enjoyable, were the effects that he began to take the same dose in the same way--quietly and on his own--once every two to three weeks. In The Acid Diaries, Gray details his experimentation with LSD over a period of three years and shares the startling realization that his visions were weaving an ongoing story from trip to trip, revealing an underlying reality of personal and spiritual truths. Following the theories of Stanislav Grof and offering quotes from others’ experiences that parallel his own--including those of Aldous Huxley, Albert Hofmann, and Gordon Wasson--he shows that trips progress through three stages: the first dealing with personal issues and pre-birth consciousness; the second with ego-loss, often with supernatural overtones; and the third with sacred, spiritual, and even apocalyptic themes. Pairing his experiences with an exploration of psychedelic use throughout history, including the ergot-spawned mass hallucinations that were common through the Middle Ages and the early use of LSD for therapeutic purposes, Gray offers readers a greater understanding and appreciation for the potential value of LSD not merely for transpersonal growth but also for spiritual development.

Una exploración sobre las verdades personales y espirituales reveladas mediante el LSD • Indica que las visiones inducidas por el LSD tejen una trama continua de un viaje a otro • Muestra que los viajes o trances psicodélicos pasan por tres etapas: los temas personales y la conciencia prenatal, la pérdida del ego y, por último, lo sagrado • Explora el consumo de sustancias psicodélicas a lo largo de la historia, incluidas las alucinaciones masivas comunes en la Edad Media y los primeros usos terapéuticos del LSD Christopher Gray, cuando tenía casi sesenta años, por primera vez en mucho tiempo probó a tomar una dosis de 100 microgramos de LSD. Los efectos fueron tan extraordinarios y sorprendentemente agradables, que comenzó a consumir la misma dosis de igual manera cada dos o tres semanas. En Los diarios del ácido, Christopher Gray describe en detalle su experimento con el LSD durante un período de tres años y comparte la sorprendente conclusión de que sus visiones iban entretejiendo una historia coherente de una experiencia a otra, y le revelaban una trama subyacente de verdades personales y espirituales. Basándose en las teorías de Stanislav Grof y con citas de otras experiencias parecidas a la suya (como las de Aldous Huxley, Albert Hofmann y Gordon Wasson), muestra que los viajes pasan por tres etapas: la primera tiene que ver con asuntos personales y la conciencia prenatal; la segunda con la pérdida del ego, a menudo con matices sobrenaturales; y la tercera con temas sagrados, espirituales y apocalípticos. Al cotejar sus experiencias con el estudio de la utilización de sustancias psicodélicas a lo largo de la historia, incluidas las alucinaciones masivas producidas por el cornezuelo, comunes en la Edad Media, y las primeras veces que el LSD se utilizó con fines terapéuticos, Gray ofrece a los lectores una mayor comprensión y apreciación del valor potencial del LSD, no solo con fines de crecimiento transpersonal, sino de desarrollo espiritual.