The Psychedelic Path: An Exploration of Shamanic Plants for Spiritual Awakening

Most of THE PSYCHEDELIC LEAP reads like a charming memoir of the author’s experiences using psychedelics in his quest for awakening.The latter part of the book consists a Q&A that I found quite interesting. In it, Richard Haight says, “The very intention is born of the assumption that there is an ultimate truth—” He mentions the suffering caused by belief and the futility of seeking ultimate truth at several points in the book. I like how he explains that during his psychedelic trips and especially when he thinks about them afterwards, he constantly lets go of belief in ideas that he might hold as true. This letting go of belief is a radical approach that I’ve practiced and written about for some time now, and I find it refreshing to discover others talking about this very thing.I also like what he says about attitude. With the right attitude and intention, any activity, including taking psychedelics, can be beneficial. This is a deep message that, as the author says, has many useful applications in many areas of life.Mr. Haight goes out of his way to be highly responsible when presenting the possibility of using psychedelics as an aid to spiritual awakening, suggesting that readers follow their inner “pull” (which he describes as having nothing to do with desire) and do their research prior.He makes it clear that this isn’t for everyone, and while research shows that psychedelics are generally safe, he offers suggestions for maximizing both the safety and the benefits that can be gained.Mr. Haight doesn’t mention the downside to taking psychedelics because from his perspective (a highly useful one in my opinion), a “bad trip,” is only bad if it is perceived as such. With the love and the intention of unearthing even the deepest underlying darkness, there can be no bad experiences, only deep spiritual lessons that have the potential to free the practitioner from the internal disharmony that is blocking the experience of awakening.Read this book with loving openness, and you will find plenty of treasures that may serve you, whether or not your “pull” leads you to psychedelics.

There is much to admire about this book, and the wisdom if offers. It has teachings from someone who has followed a deep spiritual path and is offering unusually deep teachings. That said, I would not recommend using magic mushrooms and salvia diviinorum as he did. We have learned from hard experience of many people that a sober sitter is very important even for experienced psychonaughts for safety and support in the darker parts of a journey. Also, I was troubled by his lack of integrity in taking his first mushroom journey at home intentionally not telling his wife who was also at home. Entering into a journey with these sacred plants without a basic level of honesty dishonors the plants and open one up to the kinds of paranoia Haight experience. He is clearly a man of extremes and has benefitted from it. In that he is an exception, and I wish he would make clear that what he did was definitely not a recommended path except for a special few. The rest of us, if we chose to follow the psychedelic path, would be wise to follow the well established guidelines to be found in Pollan's How to Change your Mind, and Rachael Harris's Listening to Ayahuasca, both better books on how to use psychedelics. So Haight's book as a book of wisdom gets five stars from me, but as a book abut using psychedelics, it gets two stars. So I compromised on four stars. Thank you, Richard, for your courage, compassion, and wisdom, but please remember the first rule: do no harm.

I had previous exposure to psychedelics when I was 18 in 1969. My experiences basically tracked on the same course as yours. At that time such terms like "default mode network" were not in use. I had forgotten some of the anxiety related side effects that I had but they were not as pronounced as yours. No demon ever pursued me abnd the physical side-effects were not severe but I did become accutely aware of the evil in others around me and within myself. I immediately became aware of the need for universal forgiveness. It can be a startling realization to know there are members of your own family who in the ancient karmic past were participants in witch hunts and that I might have been involved as a victim. To also know that as a warrior before I also have the death of many on my hands was troubling. When Jesus told the woman at the well after he forgave her to "Go and sin no more" I understood its profound implications. Only by forgiveness do we obtain redemption. While my family are generally fundamentalist conservatives, after psychedelics (LSD, psilopsybin and peyote) I was always a free-style spiritual type and buried my anger and rebelliousness. Your book offers insight to others whohave not experienced this and for me it was useful as a refresher reawakening old latent memories.

I would rate it 4 and half stars, but thats not an option here. I liked it very much. Is a touching, very personal account. Haight describes in full detail some experiences, specially with mushrooms and salvia divinorum. For anyone experienced in those journeys with a deep self-knowledge intent, there are many passages who relate and ressonate deeply. For any newcomer to the subject, is a very welcome detailed description of some of the possible experiences one may find. Haight closes with good, sound information on all three substances he describes. The most impressing aspect is the level of detail he was capable of bring; the very vivid and clear descriptions. It is no easy feat to describe alternate realities; and in this aspect, Haight does an absolute masterwork. Some of his interpretations are very personal; and one may not agree with some of his views. Nevertheless, it is a valid, important and very informative reading, and Haight's deeply confessional prose is moving to the extreme.

When researching a spiritual option or path, I find personal memoirs to be very useful, if the writer is sincere, includes sufficient and relevant personal background, and includes at least some information on the topic itself. This book succeeds on most of those, though it required outside research to learn more of the authors other work and thus determine his strengths--many spiritual accounts are full of personal weakness, disillusionment, and errors, and therefore can lead the reader to see the narrator as less than wise or strong. The author's other works indicate this account is both sincere and transitional, and the lessons learned are left to the end where they belong in a narrative, though this may reduce attention to some critical events.Here, the author experiments with a few psychedelics, applying the proper spiritual preparations of clear intent and sincerity, and ends up in a literal personal hell, tormented and in fear, while simultaneously managing the body realities of an overdose. He repeats this several times, gaining insight somehow into what the solution is and how to proceed in his life, though this is the least clear part of the narrative, and no matter how the author tries to explain it never made sense to me. Spirituality is full of very personal decisions, and when the reasoning is phrased in the sensory jumble and often seemingly megalomaniacself-centred stories of warped psychedelic dreams, it is even harder to put into words. But the author does gain significant meta-knowledge and emotional stability, and ends by guiding others through similar experiences, helping them avoid the traps he fell into.I decided after reading this book that psychedelics are likely not part of my path, or at least not unless I change in my goals or reach a spiritual impasse in the future. It's clear from the events in this book, as well as other readings and the history of the term itself, that psychedelics arevliterally mental and spiritual dynamite, they force you into visions and experiences that you cannot easily escape from no matter how emotionally overpowering and traumatic, with little or no ability to discriminate their reality, and hold you there for minutes or hours. The goal is to break down blockages or force acceptance of denied or buried truths, but often the back-blast causes just as much trauma. And it's rare that the information comes as a straightforward answer, it requires the usual meditation and discussion to sort the narrative of the "trip" from what the actual lesson is, let alone how to apply it.My own path has seen many visions, many not by choice, including "Saul on the road to Damascus" experiences with soul-shattering content followed by years of integrating afterwards. No drugs involved whatsoever, just awakening through slow mental integration from autism over decades. Later I began shamanic journeying to a drumbeat, which led to equally powerful experiences. No drugs involved, and thus choice, an escape route, and most importantly, no fear. Fear builds on itself and takes over visions, and learning trust and acceptance is key. A lot of the visions and experiences I have had could easily have ended up worse than the author's: death, , dismemberment and transformatin, all are common in shamanic journeys. So is ego dissolution, which sounds bad but it is in fact a wonderful experience if embraced; I could only shake my head at the author's terror as he clutched a couch in fear of being sucked into a different person: if only he had let go, the wonders he might have seen, and later did once he learned the lessons (and gained helpful spiritual allies, which on the shamanic path is the very first step).My point is that some or all of the bad experiences this author suffered through, and those in other books I've encountered, could have been avoided by proper supervision and instruction. Some of the methods and procedures the author (and other sources) suggest might help those preparing for such a journey, and psychedelics could be a way forward for many, as the original discoverers of LSD envisaged. But, only with supervision or proper preparation. And if you can, a drug free way is better. Siberian shamen use the drum and dance, and say, "only a weak shaman needs psychedelics to speak with spirits"'. Psychedelics are a perilous shortcut, or an occasional power boost at best.

Fantastic book! You will not waste your time reading it!Like the best thriller, the book keeps you truly interested what is he going to experience next...and o God is it going to be worth the pain? Very informative, emotional, it will shake you to the core!Thank you Richard for sharing your experience. It is going to be used wisely. At least now, I know (sort of) what to expect, and hopefully will not be disappointed and horrified when difficult scenes come to my mind.Hopefully thanks to your guidance, I will avoid the pitfalls of expectations and maybe, just maybe...will be able to integrate the medicine, and transcend my self induced suffering. Best regards - Irena

This book was instructive and I would recommend anyone who is curious about trying psychedelics to take a look at it. The author shares his most profound experiences without holding back details on the most terrifying as well as on the most beautiful ones. He also shares his personnal interpretations and views on them, sometimes leading to very interesting realizations.What I specifically liked was the fact that the author doesn't pretend to know or to have found the truth. Despite his realizations, he stays grounded and always considers that they may be false. He actually encourages to recognize beliefs as they are; beliefs. Borrowing his words, the opposite would be "to step out of the nexus point and back into the darkness of a divided mind".I would add a minor note. Richard (the author) wonders at one point was would be the best attitude to be living life in harmony with all things. He briefly talks about the "detachment" concept of buddhism, explaining why it is unfit for such an attitude. Unfortunately, his misunderstanding of it is very obvious to anyone who actually understands and practices it. Even more so when he states a few pages later that the way is to "fully embrace and release life simultaneously". Which is comical because the "release" here is the exact same concept as the detachment concept of buddhism.Richard misinterprets detachment as being devoided of love, that one mutually cancels the other, when in fact, it is quite the contrary.Being detached means to be able to fully embrace something or someone without clinging to it, accepting its temporary nature and being able to let it go or to "release it" when the time comes.I would simply advise the author to reconsider his view on it.Despite this little nick-pick, I really enjoyed the book and will probably read it again, as a preparation for a trip.

Its an account of a particular way a male person might go about taking certain hallucinogens if he is lucky enough have a really supportive, non judgemental female partner, but there is no direct or reported input from "her indoors" (as I came to mentally label her all pervading, but completely one dimensional presence, while reading this narrative). Nor do we learn how his various escapades impacted her. Which they must have done, if the extent of her role as a facilitator is to be believed.... now that might have been interesting...Having experienced two out of the three ethnobotanicals in question in some significant measure I am peturbed by some of what the author has to say on these topics. His experiences just are not congruent with mine at all. Whilst I hesitate to say he is making some of it up, the fact is that his accounts are totally underwhelming..... where are Terrence McKenna's ruined planets and machine labyrinths? Where are all the other revelations that abound in this area of literature, and which I know to be true?I bought this book wanting to like it, and I have read a lot of related material over the years, most of which I have hugely enjoyed, understood, learned from and for the most part agreed with, from personal experience. This book is an outlier, it is situated away from that main body of work I've just mentioned and it describes something that, in truth I don't really recognise. My initial thought was that he hasn't done any of the things he claims to have done because his experiences are so different from my own, however I have no way of knowing that to be true. Maybe being an accomplished martial artist changes the way these things affected him? I wouldnt know, I just used to do a bit of martial arts now and again, I'm not a black belt or anything. There seems to be an intensity in the author, a desire to achieve measurable goals in an area where nothing is measureable. He seems very uptight for one who has clearly devoted so much effort to achieving such varied and lofty goals. He seems to come to ethnobotanicals as if they are a terrible challenge, an ordeal to be endured, there is nothing remotely ecstatic about this book. Its as if he is trying to vanquish these wonderful substances and subdue them, as if they are a deadly foe.I humbly opine that this may be the wrong approach.My reluctant and disappointed final view is that, despite being very well written, this book does not describe a spiritual path or indeed any path of any kind that I can recognise, where I'm defining a path as a route that others could follow.Its not even a journey, its very introspective and its all about him basically. The trouble is that on its own that doesn't feel like enough.It is not in my bookcase with all my many other treasured books on this and related shamanic and mystic topics, my copy went straight to the charity shop.

Richard's book showed me what it's like to be truly courageous and I felt fascinated by his experiences. I also enjoyed Richard's attitude of no judgement as psychedelics are not for everyone, you're either drawn to them or you're not and it's a question of timing. Maybe the book will encourage or discourage you from venturing into psychedelics. It's not important whether you do or you don't. Either way it gives a helpful understanding and insight.