Books

A journey from Burning Man to the Akashic Field that suggest how 5-MeO-DMT triggers the human capacity for higher knowledge through direct contact with the zero-point field. Learn More

Ancient and indigenous peoples have insisted their knowledge of plant medicines came from the plants themselves, perceived through a heart-centered mode of perception, not trial-and-error experimentation. Author Stephen Buhner explores this heart-centered mode of perception, helping readers to learn about the medicinal uses of plants, and how to gather information directly from the heart of Nature.

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Visionary historian Arguelles unravels the harmonic code of the ancient Maya providing valuable keys to understanding the next twenty years of human evolution.

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Tindall, Robert Learn More

Rainforests contain an amazing abundance of plant life. What's most exciting is that scientists and researchers have only just begun to uncover the medicinal qualities of these plants, which offer new approaches to health and healing. The Healing Power of Rainforest Herbs is a valuable guide to these herbs and their uses. Learn More

Less than fifty thousand years ago mankind had no art, no religion, no sophisticated symbolism, no innovative thinking. Then, in a dramatic and electrifying change, described by scientists as the greatest riddle in human history, all the skills and qualities that we value most highly in ourselves appeared already fully formed, as though bestowed on us by hidden powers. In Supernatural Graham Hancock sets out to investigate this mysterious before-and-after moment and to discover the truth about the influences that gave birth to the modern human mind. Learn More

In the Upper Amazon, mestizos are the Spanish-speaking descendants of Hispanic colonizers and the indigenous peoples of the jungle. Some mestizos have migrated to Amazon towns and cities, such as Iquitos and Pucallpa; most remain in small villages, their houses perched on stilts on the shores of the rivers that are their primary means of travel. Here in the jungle, they have retained features of the Hispanic tradition, including a folk Catholicism and traditional Hispanic medicine. And they have incorporated much of the religious tradition of the Amazon, especially its healing, sorcery, shamanism, and the use of potent plant hallucinogens, including ayahuasca. The result is a uniquely eclectic shamanist culture that continues not only to fascinate outsiders with its brilliant visionary art but also to attract thousands of seekers each year with the promise of visionary experiences of their own.

Ayahuasca shamanism is now part of global culture. The visionary ayahuasca paintings of Pablo César Amaringo are available to a world market in a sumptuous coffee-table book; international ayahuasca tourists exert a profound economic and cultural pull on previously isolated local practitioners; ayahuasca shamanism, once the terrain of anthropologists, is the subject of novels and spiritual memoirs. Ayahuasca shamans perform their healing rituals in Ontario and Wisconsin.

Singing to the Plants sets forth, in accessible form, just what this shamanism is about -- what happens at an ayahuasca healing ceremony, how the apprentice shaman forms a spiritual relationship with the healing plant spirits, how sorcerers inflict the harm that the shaman heals, and the ways that plants are used in healing, love magic, and sorcery. The work emphasizes both the uniqueness of this highly eclectic and absorptive shamanism -- plant spirits dressed in surgical scrubs, extraterrestrial doctors speaking computer language -- and its deep roots in shamanist beliefs and practices, both healing and sorcery, common to the Upper Amazon. The work seeks to understand this form of shamanism, its relationship to other shamanisms, and its survival in the new global economy, through anthropology, ethnobotany, cognitive psychology, legal history, and personal memoir.

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A compilation of writings on the chemical, biological, psychological, and experiential dimensions of Ayahuasca

• Includes 24 firsthand accounts of Ayahuasca experiences and resulting life changes, including contributions from J. C. Callaway, Charles S. Grob, and Dennis J. McKenna

• Discusses the medical and psychological applications of Ayahuasca

Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic Amazonian plant mixture that has been used for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years by native Indian and mestizo shamans in Peru, Colombia, and Ecuador for healing and divination. Many Western-trained physicians and psychologists have acknowledged that this substance can allow access to spiritual dimensions of consciousness, even mystical experiences indistinguishable from classic religious mysticism.

In Sacred Vine of Spirits: Ayahuasca Ralph Metzner, a pioneer in the study of consciousness, has assembled a group of authoritative contributors who provide an exploration of the chemical, biological, psychological, and experiential dimensions of ayahuasca. He begins with more than 20 firsthand accounts from Westerners who have used ayahuasca and then presents the history, psychology, and chemistry of ayahuasca from leading scholars in the field of psychoactive research. He concludes with his own findings on ayahuasca, including its applications in medicine and psychology, and compares the worldview revealed by ayahuasca visions to that of Western cultures. Learn More

Metzner, Ralph Learn More