Richard Alpert – författare

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.

Years after the Summer of Love, the promise of the psychoactive 1960s—that deeper self-awareness and greater harmony can be achieved through reality-bending substances and practices—is close to becoming a mainstream phenomenon. The signs are everywhere, from a renewed interest in the therapeutic effects of LSD to the popularity of ayahuasca trips and the annual spectacle of Burning Man.The Psychedelic Experience, created by the prophetic shaman-professors Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), is a foundational text that serves as a model and a guide for all subsequent mind-expanding inquiries. Based on a unique interpretation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, The Psychedelic Experience remains a vital testament to broadening spiritual consciousness through a combination of Tibetan meditation techniques and psychotropic substances. For a new generation seeking the trip of a lifetime, The Psychedelic Experience is the essential guidebook to getting there.

Un manual basado en El libro tibetano de los muertosA mediados de los años sesenta, una especial vibración recorrió nuestro planeta. La revolución hippie, destrozada por los tentáculos del pulpo capitalista que la vio nacer, supuso un revulsivo que, con el paso del tiempo, adoptó las formas más exóticas, las sutilezas más asombrosas, para sugerir a las personas el gratificante estado de éxtasis, el desarrollo de las dormidas capas de percepción, la generosa paz que deviene en un superior estado de comprensión, ausente el yo, aquietada la mente,situados en el espacio sin límites...Timothy Leary, junto a otros colaboradores, hicieron varios viajes a la India tras constatar que, en sí mismo, el «viaje» del ácido lisérgico no era la fórmula mágica para volver a todas las personas seres realizados.Estos ensayos sobre El libro tibetano de los muertos, concebidos en la época más inspirada de sus experiencias, son el resultado del contacto con la cultura oriental y la estrecha relación de ésta con los estadios superiores de la mente.

Out of print for more than half a century, LSD: A Journey into the Asked, the Answered, and the Unknown, is now available in a commemorative edition, with candid commentary, a new introduction by counterculture journalist Jessica Hundley, and a photographic portrait of a generation.In the midst of a raging national controversy around the indiscriminate use of LSD, two authorities – Richard Alpert, PhD (AKA Ram Dass) and psychoanalyst Sidney Cohen, MD – spoke out on the dangers, merits, legal regulations and control of the revolutionary psychedelic drug. Their book was illustrated with a groundbreaking photo essay by journalist Lawrence Schiller, whose cover story for Life magazine introduced America to the sweeping new LSD epidemic and was a precursor to the federal criminalization of the drug.As the first national photojournalist to capture the American acid scene from the inside, Schiller began with a single contact in Berkeley, California, and built a large network of young, receptive subjects who allowed him to document their private experiences with LSD. At first, his contacts were few and difficult. “Many of them were afraid,” and said no. There were others, however, who were trying to exercise their rebellion, “and some…had a sort of missionary quality. They not only wanted to tell about their experiences; they seemed as though they had to.”Schiller’s reporting expanded to include Timothy Leary, then on trial in Laredo, Texas, and the Merry Pranksters, who stopped by his studio for stroboscopic photos after the Hollywood Acid Test. The deeper he went into the story, the more questions he had. Questions like, “Is the LSD state reality or illusion?” and “Can you understand…without having had “the experience?” Figuring others did as well, he asked Alpert and Cohen to answer them for readers—from their two opposing points of view. The unexpected result is perhaps one of the most deeply informative documents on psychedelics ever published. It sold close to a million copies.At a time when the use of consciousness-expanding substances is again making headlines, the moment that LSD burst out from the rarified world of Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert’s experiments at Harvard to acid parties on the Sunset Strip is worth a second look.