Title: Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism
Author: Daniel Pinchbeck
LC Rating:
This is for the cognoscenti;
the discerning eye.
big shout to talking plant
for bringing this tome to my attention
This is not ground to be entered lightly.
What Daniel Pinchbeck has created here is the most oddly lucid (i’ll define that in a moment) account of the sacred arena of psychedelic experience that I have ever read. The sacred arena of the psychedelic experience is ground already touched upon by a wealth of writers from McKenna to Castaneda, and is nearly impossible to do any sort of justice to in the space of a few scant paragraphs.
My poor attempt to boil it down to its essence would probably read something like this . . .
What our human senses perceive to be reality is only a fraction of the truth, and throughout human history psychedelic drugs have played an essential role in the evolution of man and human notions of spirituality.
or you could simply state
that there are drugs
which allow you communication
with ‘powers’ beyond
humanity’s ken,
and while the journey
has dangers,
for those who feel called
it may be essential
When I referred to Daniel Pinchbeck displaying an ‘oddly lucid’ style in Breaking Open the Head, what I mean is that in the course of the book, we get to watch his understanding of reality go through a series of shifts that many readers will find simply unbelievable; and through it all he maintains his rationality, and manages a thorough exploration of the history of psychedelic drugs and the issues raised by their usage in our modern world. Pinchbeck never falls into the Leary position of advocating widespread psychedelic experimentation, and does a tremendous job of investigating the inherent problems of the ‘epidemic’ experimentation seen in the ’60s.
For me the best aspects of Breaking Open the Head, was the manner in which Pinchbeck touches on my favorite soap-box (herein known as ‘what in the hell is going on in this world of capitalism run amok’). He does it with a grace and balance that succeed in rousing the inner desire to ‘do something’ rather than heaping your plate with more pathos than you’d care to consume. Pinchbeck is no prophet storming down from the mountain, he neither bursts with revelations nor spews fire; instead he has uncovered a wealth of possibilities, a slew of interesting questions and Breaking Open the Head expresses a desire that more people find -
the courage to confront what lies behind the open doors of our own minds
And finally, at somewhat of a tangent, but to my (admittedly odd) way of thinking, dead on point; we have an audio sample from Bill Hicks . . .