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Reading is good for your brain

I'd recommend Dune as well. Awesome series, great writing.
I'd really like to get around to reading Brave New World as well.

And yeah! Alan Watts! I just finished reading his book Tao, the Watercourse Way. Great read, very interesting.

And also, +1 for The Elegant Universe, and +1 for lawling at "Reading makes you smart when your a little kid." I especially enjoy the "your" in that sentence.
 
Robert A. Heinlein's - Stranger In a Strange Land

This is where the term Grok came from.

"to share the same reality or line of reasoning with another physical or conceptual reality"

"In Heinlein's view, grokking is the intermingling of intelligence that necessarily affects both the observer and the observed."

A very popular book when psychedelics hit the scene.
 
Flarestar89 said:
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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I started reading the Hitchhiker's Guide but I didn't get through it. I was feeling very lazy at the time so it just kind of got put back on the shelf but I plan to really read it. :)
 
A few off the top of my head :)

Gilles Deleuze: A Thousand Plateaus; The Logic of Sense; Difference and Repetition (super-dense mindblowing French philosophy, psychedelic to the core)

Bill Plotkin: Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (required reading for a sustainable future)

Carl Jung: Aion: Researches Into the Phenomenology of the Self (alchemical allegorical abundance)

{Literature}:

James Joyce: Finnegans Wake (a hyperlinguistic metaverse that can be held in the palm of your hand)

David Foster Wallace: Infinite Jest (Every sentence a small masterpiece)
 
Anything by Aleister Crowley, or by the IOT (Illuminaries of Thanteros). Time for magick! :)
 
^I'd also like to suggest Austin Osman Spare for those of magickal inclination, inspiring stuff:

"O Self my God, foreign is thy name except in blasphemy, for I am thy
iconoclast. I cast thy bread upon the waters, for I myself am meat enough.
Hidden in the labyrinth of the Alphabet is my sacred name, the SIGIL of all
things unknown. On Earth my kingdom is Eternity of DESIRE. My wish
incarnates in the belief and becomes flesh, for, I AM THE LIVING TRUTH.
Heaven is ecstacy; my consciousness changing and acquiring association. May
I have courage to take from my own superabundance. Let me forget
righteousness. Free me of morals. Lead me into temptation of myself, for I
am a tottering kingdom of good and evil.

May worth be acquired through those things I have pleasured.

May my trespass be worthy.

Give me the death of my soul. Intoxicate me with self-love. Teach me to
sustain its freedom; for I am sufficiently Hell. -AMEN."
 
I recently found a book sitting on my friends book shelf and he said I could have it :)

It's called Breaking open the head by Daniel Pinchbeck. It's basically about contemporary shamanism and the use of enthoegens.
I haven't finished yet but so far it's quite interesting. Has anyone else here read it? What did you think?
 
You just reminded me of another book delta 9.

Look up a book called "Psychedelic Information Theaory: Shamanism in the Age of Reason" by James Kent. It's an online book; free to read.

It's very much scientific and non-fiction but it's a really good breakdown of psychedelics.

It's far from finished and there's lots of chapters listed without links attached but the first 1/4 of it is done. In fact when I read it 3 or 4 years ago it was at the same stage of completion; he might have just stopped writing it. Anyways here's the link: http://www.tripzine.com/listing.php?id=pit_toc

I wish he would get to the Audio phenomena section. One of the chapters there deals with ringing tone, ascending/descending tones and other smooth wave function (basically carrier waves). I get carrier waves a LOT and they are very loud, clear and go VERY deep and I would love to learn what they're all about.
 
I'll be sure to check it out when I have a moment, but to be honest I'm backed up on like 5 books right now that I want to read. 8(
 
Yeah, this thread put a lot of things on my list too. I'll have lots of time to read them this winter. :)
 
on my mind right now:

"Only Revolutions" by Mark Z. Danielewski -- A literary ouroboros, its formatting allowing it to be read in many different ways making it quite interactive. It's basically a fractal love story that starts at both ends of the book, including sidebars of specific dates in history where the fluctuations of novelty is supposed to mirror the same ebbs and flows of the page. There is no concept of any interior, the word "in" not appearing in the book once. And it's simply overflowing with bubbling, fantastical language that makes the eyes and heart dance.

"Last and First Men" by Olaf Stapledon -- this book is just an awesome future-history, detailing 18 incarnations of the human race (with us being the first incarnation) through the physiological, perceptual, and systematic leaps and through all the rises and collapses. You can just watch the patterns of growth and systemization multiply and become more inwoven until it reaches a point of cracking apart and starting anew. "Starmaker" is supposed to be the writer's sort of thematic sequel that I haven't read yet, although I'm thinking of starting it tonight. I found some passages online that were strikingly cosmic.

Also I read a short story recently that was really something 'The Library" I think by Borges. It's the universe as a staircase in four pages. Also been kind of getting into Thomas Ligotti for the horror-fans. He picks up where H.P. Lovecraft left off and does it better, imo.
 
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uniter said:
I hear Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a great book with psychedelic qualities without mentioning specific drugs often.

There's a material he talks about called "Soma" that facilitates the utopian world of the book.

I've never read it but it's definitely on my list. :)
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Great, great, great, great, great, great, great...

Reading a lot of Vonnegut lately. I love that guy.

For anyone who is a fan of fantasy/sci-fi, check out Mark (EDIT):Chadbourne's trilogy... forgetting the name but it's awesome. Lots of interesting ideas about society, human nature, drugs; mixed in with action, romance and the lot. Fun and also a little more.
 
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B9 said:
I'd second Dune also but there's a lot more to it than "mindfuck" IMO.
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Agreed. Dune is one complex creation. I'm about 3/4 through and I'm fucking loving it.

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut is also a great book.
 
read through all of the books in the Dune series. beyond epic. spans thousands of years in just two characters lifetimes if i remember correctly. i need to read them again.

oh and my input to this thread would MOST definitely have to be every book in the Carlos Castaneda series. Tales of a journalist turn apprentice to a Mexican Yaqui indian shaman, in which he learns of the power of psychadelic substances and different layers of reality.

The teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui way of Knowledge.
A Seperate Reality.
Journey to Ixtlan
Tales of Power
The Second Ring of Power
The Fire from Within
The Power of Silence

i would say every lurker of the psychadelic forum would enjoy this series immensely.
 
The Dark Tower series by Stephen King & The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub are both amazing and will stay with you for a long time.
 
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