Psychedelic Consciousness: Plant Intelligence for Healing Ourselves and Our Fragmented World

by Daniel Grauer

From the Publisher: An examination of the use of psychedelics for understanding ourselves, connecting with the world around us, and enacting outer change through inner transformation.

• Explores sacred tools and technologies to help us reestablish a lost ideology of unity, with a specific focus on natural plant/fungi psychedelics
• Looks at the history of psychedelics and their role in facilitating natural intelligence’s ability to increase itself through ongoing analysis of its own experience
• Provides guidelines for safely using natural plant/fungi psychedelics and integrating them into society to access unified consciousness and restore balance to our world

Our ecological, social, and political issues all stem from the ideologies that drive our collective actions. In contrast to our innate humanity, which is rooted in unity, these ideologies have led us to believe that we are separate from each other, separate from nature, and separate from the results of our actions. Such a worldview encourages individuals to maximize self-interest, which then causes fragmentation, conflict, pollution, and the depletion of natural resources. Offering practical steps that we can take to heal ourselves and our fragmented world, author Daniel Grauer explores the use of sacred tools and technologies, such as natural psychedelics, meditation, and yoga, in order to reestablish an ideology of unity, work in symbiotic harmony with the Earth, and restore our world as a sustainable and prosperous whole.

Grauer explains how individuals–and by extension societies–benefit from safely accessing transcendent states of consciousness, such as those provided by psychedelics. He explores how psychoactive substances have been used throughout history all over the world for healing, personal growth, spiritual development, and revealing hidden truths, such as in the Eleusinian Mysteries, Soma practices in Vedic India, and rituals in several South American indigenous cultures. Drawing on the plant intelligence work of Paul Stamets and Stephen Buhner, Grauer shows that the growth of individual and collective intelligence is hindered by the prohibition of psychedelics, which naturally foster humanity’s capacity for analysis, innovation, and cooperation. In addition to creating a sense of unity with all things, psychedelics offer the mind a new perspective from which to analyze its experience and heighten its awareness. Drawing on his own experience and research, Grauer provides guidelines for how to safely use natural plant/fungi psychedelics in order to access the unified consciousness of our ancestors and induce the states of awareness we need to restore natural harmony to our world.

Praise for the Book: “In Psychedelic Consciousness, Daniel Grauer undertakes a highly ambitious assessment of the very nature of life itself, and of the countless tangulations, from physical to spiritual, that afflict humanity and promote suffering and misunderstanding. Taking us from early ancestry up through modern discovery, from single-cell life to complex society, he weaves a case for the employment of psychedelics as psychic crowbars capable of opening us to more life-affirming and expansive awareness.” – “Chris Kilham, author of The Ayahuasca Test Pilots Handbook and The Five Tibetans”

“Daniel Grauer’s beautiful and insightful book Psychedelic Consciousness couldn’t be more timely. Philosophically intriguing and spiritually inspiring, Grauer provides a historical perspective on our collective state of mind, the dangers of our wayward world’s dark spiral into fragmentation, and the power of sacred tools and technologies–such as visionary plants, psychedelic fungi, meditation, and yoga–to restore personal, collective, and ecological balance. Grauer offers practical steps for how to dissolve these dangerous illusions of fragmentation, to promote experiences of boundary-dissolving unity, and to experience the transformative power of self-transcendence and mystical experiences. Interdisciplinary in its scope, hopeful and inspiring in its plea for sanity, Grauer’s wise words demonstrate how personal transformation can lead to radical collective change and a better world.” – “David Jay Brown, author of Dreaming Wide Awake and The New Science of Psychedelics”

“In Psychedelic Consciousness, Grauer asks us how we are to overcome our lack of community and social unity and our sense that something is off. The author lays out his clear and sensible plan for transformation.” – “Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D., author of The Psychedelic Future of the Mind”

With the right tools and the right mindset, Grauer offers up a path for finding symbiosis with nature. Tapping into the zeitgeist, Psychedelic Consciousness is a balm to every weary individualist who is ready to come back into balance and feel the unity inherent to all life. –  “Louie Schwartzberg, director of Fantastic Fungi”

About the Author: Daniel Grauer is a writer, teacher, and speaker who explores individual and collective transformation through the lens of philosophy, psychology, spirituality, and ecology. He teaches workshops on the transformative potential of psychedelics and is the cofounder of Marble Blue, a community-based think tank striving to harmonize human systems with ecosystems. He lives in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains of New York.

ISBN: 164411030X    –    EAN: 9781644110300