A Psychonaut's Guide to the Invisible Landscape: The Topography of the Psychedelic Experience

Dan Carpenter

Inner Traditions / Bear & Co, Feb 14, 2006 - Body, Mind & Spirit - 111 pages

A bold cartography of the inner landscape visible only to those experiencing altered states

• Presents the psychedelic experience as an objective landscape that embodies the Other, rather than a subjective state of mind

• Provides corroboration of phenomena encountered by those who venture into this domain

Journeying into the invisible world revealed by his use of the dissociative psychedelic DXM (dextromethorphan), Dan Carpenter found that what he experienced was not simply subjective sensations and psychological states but an objective world of familiar, if inordinately odd, landmarks and characters. The running diary he kept of these voyages recounts impressions of a landscape charted by other travelers into this Inner Space and includes descriptions of many of the same phenomena recorded by such mind travelers as Terence and Dennis McKenna, Alexander and Ann Shulgin, and others who have experienced the hive mind--the pool of all consciousness. Into this territory where expression is like chaos theory, where oddly symmetrical order manifests out of the seemingly anarchic swirl of images and events, the author ventures with the mind-set of a naturalist, accepting whatever might be rather than what he hopes he might find. What emerges is not a location crafted by subjective experience, but a landscape that embodies the Other and that represents a conscious state in which the barriers between the self and the not-self dissolve.

Contents

• Psychedelics and the Wilderness of the Mind: 6
• Dissociates: 12
• Trip One: 18
• Trip Two: 19
• Trip Three: 24
• Liquid Technology: 26
• Breaks in Time: 28
• Trip Four: 30
• Meeting Myselves: 32
• Visions of Strife: 35
• Dream Police: 37
• Reintegration of the Selves: 38
• Trip Five: 47
• NearDeath Experiences: 49
• Outposts of Reality: 50
• The Buddhist Guides: 51
• Reading and Remembering: 53
• The Dead in the Hive: 54
• Trip Six: 56
• The Face of God: 57
• The Spiral: 59
• Thought Cakes: 62
• Trip Seven: 63
• Fabrics of Families: 65
• The Machinery Behind: 66
• The Circus Behind: 70
• Trip Eight: 74
• Offers of Power: 75
• Trip Nine: 77
• Trip Ten: 79
• The Invisible Landscape: 85
• Room One: 86
• Machine Elves Solved: 87
• Trip Eleven: 92
• Trip Twelve: 97
• Trip Thirteen: 104
• Afterthoughts: 107
• Bibliography: 110

Popular passages

Page xiv - I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.

Page x - I had vainly been seeking a description of consciousness within science; instead, what I and others have to look for is a description of science within consciousness,

About the author

A bold cartography of the inner landscape visible only to those experiencing altered states

• Presents the psychedelic experience as an objective landscape that embodies the Other, rather than a subjective state of mind

• Provides corroboration of phenomena encountered by those who venture into this domain

Journeying into the invisible world revealed by his use of the dissociative psychedelic DXM (dextromethorphan), Dan Carpenter found that what he experienced was not simply subjective sensations and psychological states but an objective world of familiar, if inordinately odd, landmarks and characters. The running diary he kept of these voyages recounts impressions of a landscape charted by other travelers into this Inner Space and includes descriptions of many of the same phenomena recorded by such mind travelers as Terence and Dennis McKenna, Alexander and Ann Shulgin, and others who have experienced the hive mind--the pool of all consciousness. Into this territory where expression is like chaos theory, where oddly symmetrical order manifests out of the seemingly anarchic swirl of images and events, the author ventures with the mind-set of a naturalist, accepting whatever might be rather than what he hopes he might find. What emerges is not a location crafted by subjective experience, but a landscape that embodies the Other and that represents a conscious state in which the barriers between the self and the not-self dissolve.

Bibliographic information

• Title: A Psychonaut's Guide to the Invisible Landscape: The Topography of the Psychedelic Experience
• Author: Dan Carpenter
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Inner Traditions / Bear & Co, 2006
• ISBN: 1594770905, 9781594770906
• Length: 111 pages
• Subjects: Body, Mind & Spirit / Mysticism; Body, Mind & Spirit / Parapsychology / Out-of-Body Experience; Psychology / General; Religion / Psychology of Religion; Self-Help / Substance Abuse & Addictions / Drugs; Social Science / Popular Culture