"One must explore deep and believe the incredible to find the new particles of truth floating in an ocean of insignificance."
- Joseph Conrad
"The reader, the thinker, the flaneur, are types of illuminati just as much as the opium eater, the dreamer, the ecstatic. … Not to mention that most terrible drug - ourselves - which we take in solitude."
- Walter Benjamin
Breaking op the head includes a cultural history of psychedelic use, philosophical and critical perspectives on shamanism, and personal explorations, ranging from transcendent to terrifying.
While researching, he visited shamans in West Africa, Mexico, and the Ecuadorean Amazon - not to mention the fabulous neo-shamanic Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. In Gabon, a small country on the Equator, he goes through a Bwiti initiation, eating iboga, a psychedelic rootbark inducing a trance that lasts for thirty hours. The bark powder temporarily releases the soul from the body, allowing the initiate entry into the African spiritual cosmos, where he is shown the outline of his fate.
Some of the Bwiti call this ceremony, "breaking open the head."
His 2nd book 2012, explores the idea of doomsday prophesied by the Mayans. He closely follows and analysis his journey to piece together a brilliantly convincing meta-physical puzzle that is rooted in shamanism and the prophecies of this super culture that's intelligence and understanding of the cosmos far surpassed that of our scientific approach today.
His style and ideas flow naturally and i find his journey fascinating. He has a blog set up with reality sandwich that is well worth following.
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