RISE OF THE PSYCHONAUT: Maps for Amateurs, Nonscientists and Explorers in the Psychedelic Age of Discovery is a book about exploration. Whereas most people nowadays view psychedelics to be medicines used for therapeutic purposes, I claim that psychedelics are technologies, or can be paired with modern technologies, for the purpose of exploring the Other World.
Undoubtedly, drug-induced experiences are subjective and may be hallucinatory, therefore many people, especially intellectual elites, write off researching these experiences. There is a gap in our collective knowledge of the psychedelic experience, the visionary world that it reveals. Since academics can’t or won’t lead this charge for a number of reasons, I think members of the general public are well-positioned—even better positioned—and capable to investigate these experiences themselves.
In this book, I equip amateurs and nonscientists with the conceptual tools they’ll need to make gains in understanding visionary states of consciousness. These include scientific, technological, innovative, anthropological, critical thinking and reasoning skills. Once more people take up the explorer mindset, we will enter a Psychedelic Age of Discovery comparable in many ways to the European Age of Discovery that spanned the 15th through 17th centuries.
If we don’t look, we’ll never find, and thus will never know, what’s out there. The human species is ready for contact with other intelligences, whether in our universe or other dimensions, whether sober or drug-induced. We’re on the brink of imagining and taking action toward realizing our future selves and civilization.
From the back cover:
Much of the world’s landmass is already known. Deep sea and outer space are beyond most people’s reach. It feels like there are fewer places left to discover. Psychedelics, on the other hand, reveal worlds that remain largely obscure. Altered states offer modern, 21st-century audiences boundless opportunities to explore what a human being can experience. In this book, I show you how to become a capable discovery-maker, sample-collecting naturalist, and rational thinker of visionary phenomena.
In the same way European explorers left their shores 500 years ago in search of spice routes by using technologies to get to the other side of the world, you can use psychedelics to get to the other side of ordinary perception and back. Knowing how to gather data, conduct experiments, and make contact with the locals will equip you to chip away at the mystery. You will learn conceptual tools to shape your new mindset, taking an active, rather than passive, role.
If you ever wanted to make more sense of your experiences, now is the time. Find out how you can become part of the Psychedelic Age of Discovery.
Purchase the paperback, ebook, or audio book of RISE OF THE PSYCHONAUT on Amazon.com, starting February 2nd, 2025.