Otherworlds: Psychedelics and Exceptional Human Experience (Muswell Hill Press)

A very interesting read. Some clinical tests are described with results and this can you you feeling like not enough research has been done in psychedelic psi which is clearly true but still the author makes this an interesting read deserving of more research.

Great book on psi experiences, Definetly worth a read if your interested in Beings, telepathy, near death experiences, out of body experiences, dmt, ESP and all pscydelics. Talks about the things that happened on my first mushroom trip like alien abduction, watching my birth and my encounter with so many beings that were dancing to me for hours. Such an interesting book to have

Just to say I'm happy with it. I'm studying Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred and this is my 1st encounter with the Psychedelics.

A comprehensive study about the effect of mind altering drugs.

This is a fascinating book that I’m sure any psychonaut or anyone with an interest in consciousness and human potential would very much appreciate. The author David Luke is a mover and shaker in the UK psychedelic research scene, and has an academic background in psychology and parapsychology, with a particular research interest in anomalous or exceptional human experiences, especially those catalysed through psychedelics. David engagingly discusses topics ranging from syanaesthesia, extra-dimensional percepts, inter-species communication, eco-consciousness, mediumship, possession, entity encounters, near-death and out-of-body experiences, psi phenomena, alien abduction experiences and lycanthropy spanning the fields of psychology, psychiatry, parapsychology, anthropology, neuroscience, ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology, biochemistry, religious studies, cultural history, shamanism and the occult along the way, so a truly vast frontier is being opened up to the reader. Many of these experiences are labelled "black swan phenomena" given their rarity in occurrence, and objective science can struggle when it comes to probing such experiences, with the scientific method thriving on repeatability, and furthermore experiences being so intimately tied to consciousness are harder still to quantify. Despite this, all of David's literary explorations and contemplations are vigorously referenced to a vast amount of the scientific literature on these topics. These topics are explored with a comprehensive depth and in a lively entertaining way that leaves no stone unturned, and no turn un-stoned. Given that science itself tends to neglect such topics (despite their being widespread, and long a part of human history), it is all the more important they be thoroughly examined and explored, as they may tell us something very interesting and profound about the potentials of human consciousness, and more beyond.Not only is the content fascinating, but David is a very gifted word-smith. He has the ability to educate and entertain at the same time, his writing is lively and engaging and gets your brain matter buzzing…highly recommended!!

"To make this trivial world sublime, just take half a gram of phanerothyme".......or if you don't happen to have any readily to hand, I cannot recommend highly enough reading Dr. Dave Luke's newest book - which will be certain to metamorphose the sometimes seeming mundanity of life into a panaceal plethora of marvels and magic abounding about you. Next thing you know, you'll be gazing into your corduroy trousers in a Huxley-esque basking under the majesty of the "mereness of things" and not a spec of Mescal in your blood.Almost every page was a fresh thump to the old cerebrum - I feverishly devoured the volume in about 3 weeks (and although that might not seem too impressive...it's unprecedented for me!). Perhaps I would have completed it sooner, but I couldn't help but annotate every other paragraph, storming the once pristine pages with flighty reflections and implications of the astonishing information served up to me with each flick of the fingers forwards.This is essentially a concatenation of previously published articles by Luke, strung together with a clear, sequential narrative. Occasionally, this might mean the language in a couple of chapters is not as smooth to digest, but for those with more of a keen scientific eye or used to reading more scholarly material, this won't have any effect - nor necessarily for the layman either!From recounting Luke's own experiments of "n equals 1 (himself)" on mescaline-induced prophesying, to the stimulation of synaesthesia with these brain-boundary-blurring agents...from scrutinising the ontological ramifications of the beguiling "Entity encounter", to delineating the psychedelic-inspired Neurochemical model for experiences of Psi and ESP...from chartering the phenomenology of para-psychedelic experience by asking the general population, to (my personal favourite) evaluating the moves and shakes of experimental psychedelic psi/ESP research to date... you shan't be disappointed with the succulent smorgasbord Doc. Dave delivers.David Luke is a inspirational guy - I've had the privilege to get to know him recently - a man with unparalleled understanding for these psychedelic compounds and parapsychology, indeed effectively single-handedly reviving the realm of 'parapsychopharmacology', or "PSIchedelic research' initiated in the 50's/60's. As well as a wicked sense of humour & wit, and a genuinely caring individual. I think the "Indiana Jones of psychedelia" is an exceptionally apt epithet (Well done Matt..)The forward is by Dean Radin - chief scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California! An ingenious man, heading perhaps the most significant organisation in the sphere of parapsychological academia, who also writes a glowing forward for the book.Just buy the damned thing already. Or if you're really unsure, sleep on it. And hope that the hypothesised DMT squeezing from your pineal gland in the bowels of your slumber will symbiose with your endogenous MAOI pinolene (that is, your very own neural ayahuasca factory - as shall e revealed in Otherworlds) to elicit a precognitive dream illustrating your pressing "add to my basket" at some very near time-point in your future, so that the decision's made for you. See, you've already bought it. You just don't know it yet. Thanks to the Reducing Valve of the conscious trickle that is your Nervous apparatus.......Happy psychedelic sojourning, comrade.Pascal, MSc student, UCL

I received my doctorate under one of the early LSD researchers who literally wrote the manual of guidelines for research for individual and group therapy. He also participated with Abe Hoffer and Humphrey Osmond in the early research treating severe alcoholism with high doses of LSD back in the 1950's.David Luke has both 'seen and observed' to quote Sherlock Holmes. While he references some of his personal experiences, this book is a good introductory summary of many years of serious research on psychedelics by many researchers, told clearly. Highly recommended.