The Psychedelic Book of the Dead: Timothy Leary in the Bardo
In 1964, Timothy Leary and a few colleagues published The Psychedelic Experience, a manual for tripping explicitly based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead. At the core of the Tibetan materials lies the concept of the bardo, the in between realm of the afterlife. While acknowledging the problematic...
| Published in: | Nova religio |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
University of Californiarnia Press
[2018]
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| In: |
Nova religio
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Leary, Timothy 1920-1996
/ Ka-rma-gling-pa, Bar do thos grol
/ Psychedelic experience
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| IxTheo Classification: | AZ New religious movements BL Buddhism |
| Further subjects: | B
Tibetan Buddhism
B Bardo B The Tibetan Book of the Dead B W.Y. Evans-Wentz B Timothy Leary B Psychedelics |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | In 1964, Timothy Leary and a few colleagues published The Psychedelic Experience, a manual for tripping explicitly based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead. At the core of the Tibetan materials lies the concept of the bardo, the in between realm of the afterlife. While acknowledging the problematic nature of Leary's radical appropriation, this essay argues that his application of these materials to the orchestration and regulation of psychedelic experience reflected a productive reframing of the phantasmagoria common to strong psychedelic experience. Using tools of comparative religion and secular psychology, Leary constructed a model of psychological transformation that rejected religious or transcendental meaning while creatively expanding the bardo concept already evident in Tibetan Buddhism. |
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| ISSN: | 1541-8480 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Nova religio
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1525/nr.2018.21.3.47 |