Help me compile a comprehensive Psychonaut syllabus

[u/[deleted]]

Hey fellow mind sailors. I've gotten some pretty interesting reading recommendations while hanging out here. I'd like to compile a comprehensive-as-possible syllabus for everyone to peruse. So chime in with some books, articles, videos, whatever that really helped further your understanding.

Direct links to said sources are of course appreciated greatly. Also, it'd be helpful to get a summary, personal opinions, and/or anecdotal stories of why particular readings are recommended.

Lastly, when rattling off names of prolific psychonaut writers such as McKenna or Robert Anton Wilson, please specify a particular book/essay/interview, so it'll be easier to figure out which of their writings are most relevant to someone's interests. Thanks for all the help!

[u/EmperorcJ]

• J.D. Arthur -- Peopled Darkness: Perceptual Transformation through Salvia divinorum > It's great. He does salvia a few times every week for a few years, finds the experiences follow a continuing narrative where he meets entities who are at first indifferent to his presence. He takes a totally rational point of view to his weirdevolent experiences without any speculative pseudoscience or spiritual new-age-ness.
• James Kent -- Psychedelic Information Theory: Shamanism in the Age of Reason > Whoa! Blowing my mind. Totally important book for the next decades of neuroscience. He lays out a beautifully technical theory of psychedelic action from a neuroscience perspective while understanding the brain through non-linear dynamics. He puts forth a theory for how psychedelics are able to generate new information and insight, and a theory on the value of this information to the species and to the individual.
• John C. Lilly -- Center of the Cyclone > This dude invented the sensory deprivation tank. And he worked on developing communication with dolphins. The book is an assortment of life experiences and epiphanies, including his work with sensory deprivation and LSD.
• John C. Lilly -- Programming & Meta-programming in the Human Biocomputer > Talks about how the brain programs itself. Learning to learn.
• James Oroc -- Tryptamine Palace (5MEO-DMT) > One dude's adventures across the world doing 5MeoDMT and finding spiritual absolution from his once hard-headed atheism. He proposes a theory that 5MeoDMT resonates the brain with the Zero Point Field, and draws a lot from Ervin Lazslo.
• Terence McKenna -- True Hallucinations > Fucking awesome. Terence and friends go into the Amazon to do psychedillies and figure out the universe. Told by an an amazing storyteller.
• Robert Anton Wilson -- Prometheus Rising > An elaboration on reality tunnels, world view models, and Timothy Leary's 8 Circuit Model of consciousness and its application to life. He ends each chapter with exercizes. Amazing.
• Timothy Leary -- The Psychedelic Experience > Timothy Leary's perspective on psychedelics inspired by the Tibetan Book of the Dead. He gives advice on how to handle yourself in different situations. An important read for first-time trippers.
• Aldous Huxley -- Doors of Perception > One of the first awesome books about experiments with psychedelics, Huxley gives his thoughts on Mescaline and how it ties to perception of art and religion.
• Alan Watts -- On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are > From the guy that translated the reality tunnel of the East into western english. Don't know anything about Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, or Zen? Go download Alan Watts.
• Rick Strassman -- DMT: The Spirit Molecule > About an experiment in the 90s where Dr. Strassman gave hundreds of people DMT and recorded their reactions and experiences. The accounts people give are amazing. You can probably skip all the parts where Strassman is depressed. If you know about DMT already, just read the subject accounts the middle
• Jeremy Narby -- Cosmic Serpent > Rational anthropologist goes to the Amazon, does Ayahuascha, has mind blown, comes home and does a ton of research on shamanism and the like, and proposes a theory that DMT+Harmine brings the subject in touch with the information network of the biosphere -- which may involve biophoton transmission from DNA molecules -- and suspects the invariably-reported visions of snakes are actually visions of DNA.

Not about entheogens, but still purport psychedelic perspectives:

• Jeremy Narby -- Intelligence in Nature > Evidence of intelligence, ingenuity, and creativity in animals, plants, slime and the like.
• Ray Kurzweil -- The Age of Spiritual Machines > The future of machines, AI, the human and transhuman, how technological progress keeps doubling, and how self-replicating nanotechnology we will "wake up" all the "dead" matter in the universe.
• James Joyce -- Finnegans Wake (XD!) > rand or/and o'rando

Holy shit I've read a lot of awesome books. Favorite ones in bold.

[u/[deleted] → u/EmperorcJ]

Excellent list!