Sublime

Edited by Charles T. Tart, a psychologist, the book is a doorstop of an anthology of scholarly writings about non-ordinary mental states, covering the spectrum from dreaming and hypnosis to meditation and psychedelics. But the reason the book made such a lasting impression on Stamets had less to do with its contents, provocative as these were, than

They referenced studies on near-death experiences—cases in which people were clinically dead, and upon being resuscitated, recalled highly lucid memories suggestive of an afterlife.

Many human beings have intuited that the mind operating at its highest potential is connected to the notion of light.

One has to wonder: Are the altered states of consciousness experienced in psychedelic trips and near-death experiences hallucinations? Or are they exposing us to some version of the “real” reality that is normally hidden by our limited brain?

In the decades since, he had been practicing more conventional psychotherapy out of his home in a leafy Baltimore neighborhood called Windsor Hills, biding his time and waiting patiently for the world to come around so that he might work with psychedelics once again.

Then there was Fadiman’s colleague at the institute Myron Stolaroff, a prominent Silicon Valley electrical engineer who worked as a senior executive at Ampex, the magnetic recording equipment maker, until an LSD trip inspired him to give up engineering (much like Bob Jesse) for a career as a psychedelic researcher and therapist.

Holotropic Breathwork created by a Czech psychiatrist named Stanislav Grof.