One of the most important relationships that human beings have with plants is changing our consciousness -- consider the plants that give us coffee, tea, chocolate, and nicotine. Sacred Bliss challenges traditional attitudes about cannabis by tracing its essential role in the spiritual and curative traditions in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Americas from prehistory to the present day. In highlighting the continued use of cannabis...

"A detailed account of the transformation of consciousness and discovery of life's purpose brought on by peyote. Shows how peyote and other visionary plants do not distort reality but gloriously unveil it, pulling the mind out of its cosmic slumber and revealing our unity with all life. Explains the necessity when working with peyote to remain the master of one's mind and consciously work on oneself. Examines how modern society's revulsion to sacramental...

"Body, Mind & Spirit - Entheogens & Visionary Substances; Body, Mind & Spirit - Shamanism; Social Science - Popular Culture"--

"Ordinarily, events that change our path are impersonal affairs, and yet extremely personal. My teacher, don Juan Matsus, said this is guiding me as his apprentice to collect what I considered to be the memorable events of my life.. Don Juan described the total goal of the shamanistic knowledge that he handled as the preparation for facing the definitive journey: the journey that every human being has to take at the end of his life. He said that what...

Carlos Castaneda takes the reader into the very heart of sorcery, challenging both imagination and reason, shaking the very foundations of our belief in what is natural and logical. His landscape is full of terrors and mysterious forces, as sharply etched as a flash of lightning on the deserts and mountains where don Juan takes him to pursue the sorcerers knowledge- the knowledge that it is the Eagle that gives us, at our births, a spark of awareness,...

Carlos recollects more of the teachings of Don Juan, including the true importance and meaning of sorcery and magic, and the illusory nature of all realities.

A study of the spiritual provocations found in the work of Philip Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson, this book charts the emergence of a new psychedelic worldview out of the American counterculture of the seventies. These three visionaries changed the way millions of readers thought, dreamed, and experience reality - but how did their own writings reflect, as well as shape, the seismic cultural shifts taking place in America during one...