The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead

by Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert

"It is a book for the living as well as for the dying."
--Lama Govinda

In the mid-1960s, Harvard University psychology professor Timothy Leary and his colleagues Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert conducted a series of experiments with LSD and other psychedelic drugs--until negative national media attention led to the suspension of their program. But they continued their pursuits in non-academic surroundings. THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE is a manual based on their studies.

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 expanding the mind and spiritual consciousness through a combination of Tibetan meditation techniques and psychotropic substances.

Celebrities and intellectuals as diverse as The Beatles, novelist Aldous Huxley, and poet Allen Ginsberg led a counterculture that accepted Leary's invitation to "turn on, tune in, and drop out," and followed his work religiously. Today, THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE stands as an example of the philosophy behind the LSD movement--even as it retains its reputation as a guidebook for the "trip" of a lifetime.