Review
"...Their recorded conversation has the flavor of a lively reunion as the two recall an
astonishing young adulthood, generously illustrated with snapshots and brief statements
from colleagues...
Craig K Comstock, Huffington Post, March 2010
"...Presented as a conversation between figures
of the movement, the authors provide an enticing read into the era...a piece of history well worth looking into, with its unique stories of a truly unique time.
James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief, The Midwest Book Review
From the Inside Flap
An enchanted treasure chest, overflowing with insightful new dialogues, fascinating anecdotes, valuable historical accounts and other never-before-published material about the origins of modern psychedelic culture, by the people who helped to create it. Difficult to put down, this exciting book enriched my understanding of how Harvards legendary psychedelic research team turned on the world.DAVID JAy BROWN Co-author of Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse & Mavericks of Medicine Ram Dass, Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzner dedicated their knowledge, passion and physical lives to a detailed study of human physio-psychology-spirit. This book shows how their rigorous use of scientific method, combined with courageous personal experience, astounded and educated millions.John allen Inventor of Biosphere 2 Project; Chairman, Global Ecotechnics Someday, when people speak of the Psychedelic Age as they do of the Atomic Era, the Space Age, and the Personal Computer Revolution, the period 1960-1966 at Harvard's Center for Research in Personality and New York's Millbrook Estate will be central to the conversation. PhDs Leary, Alpert?/?Ram Dass and Metzner revolutionized an Ivy League psych-ology department with experimental shamanism during the height of the Cold War era and followed that up by launching a version of Hesse's utopian Castalia Foundation in the guise of a psychedelic commune. They devised novel experiments to study the transformation of the human mind altered by psychedelic drugs available for the first time in history in precise doses. Beginning with psilocybin synthesized from so-called magic mushrooms, they graduated to LSD, the most powerful mind drug ever discovered.They adopted a timeless religious text, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, into a manual for navigating the processes of death and rebirth (The Psychedelic Experience), and produced the first journal (?Psychedelic Review?) solely devoted to this emergent field. They introduced the highly useful concept of ?set and setting, and published scores of papers documenting and analyzing sessions (trips) conducted with graduate students, prisoners, theologians, intellectuals, artists, beat writers and jazz musicians.Transformed from Organization Man styled button-down neuronauts into new wave shamans, these three academics profoundly influenced Western culture despite a relentless push-back by hostile educators, sheriffs and drug agents looking for easy targets, a media that delighted in mocking them, and ultimately the full weight of the United States government challenged by a turned-on youth culture that refused to march in lockstep during the waging of a disastrous war.MICHAEL HOROWITZ Co-author of The High Times Encyclopedia of Recreational Drugs; Co-founder, Director? of Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library
About the Author
Ram Dass first went to India in 1967. He was still Dr. Richard Alpert, an already eminent Harvard psychologist and psychedelic pioneer with Dr.Timothy Leary. He had continued his psychedelic research until that fateful Eastern trip in 1967, when he traveled to India. In India, he met his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, affectionately known as Maharajji, who gave Ram Dass his name, which means "servant of God. Everything changed then - his intense dharmic life started, and he became a pivotal influence on a culture that has reverberated with the words "Be Here Now ever since. Ram Dass's spirit has be
Ralph Metzner, Ph.D. who has a B.A. in philosophy and psychology from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Harvard University, has been involved in the study of transformations of consciousness ever since, as a graduate student, he worked with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass) on the Harvard Psilocybin Projects. He co-wrote The Psychedelic Experience, and was editor of The Psychedelic Review. During the 1970s, Ralph spent 10 years in the intensive study and practice of Agni Yoga, a meditative system of working with light-fire life-energies. He wrote Maps of
