First published in 1954, it details his experiences when taking mescaline. The book takes the form of Huxley's recollection of a mescaline trip that took place over the course of an afternoon in May 1953. The book takes its title from a phrase in William Blake's 1793 poem 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'. Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, which range from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision". He also incorporates later reflections on the experience and its meaning for art and religion.

    This sense of our self may seem incredibly real but a wealth of recent scientific evidence reveals that it is not what it seems--it is all an illusion. In The Self Illusion, Bruce Hood reveals how the self emerges during childhood and how the architecture of the developing brain enables us to become social animals dependent on each other. Humans spend proportionally the greatest amount of time in childhood compared to any other animal. It's not only to learn from others, Hood notes, but also to learn to become like others. We learn to become our self. Even as adults we are continually developing and elaborating this story, learning to become different selves in different situations--the work self, the home self, the parent self. Moreover, Hood shows that this already fluid process--the construction of self--has dramatically changed in recent years. Social networking activities--such as blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter--are fast becoming socialization on steroids. The speed and ease at which we can form alliances and relationships are outstripping the same selection processes that shaped our self prior to the internet era. Things will never be the same again in the online social world. Hood offers our first glimpse into this unchartered territory. Who we are is, in short, a story of our self--a narrative that our brain creates. Like the science fiction movie, we are living in a matrix that is our mind. But Hood concludes that though the self is an illusion, it is an illusion we must continue to embrace to live happily in human society.

    Joe Dispenza has spent decades studying the human mind--how it works, how it stores information, and why it perpetuates the same behavioral patterns over and over. In the acclaimed film What the Bleep Do We Know!? he began to explain how the brain evolves--by learning new skills, developing the ability to concentrate in the midst of chaos, and even healing the body and the psyche.Evolve Your Brain presents this information in depth, while helping you take control of your mind, explaining how thoughts can create chemical reactions that keep you addicted to patterns and feelings--including ones that make you unhappy. And when you know how these bad habits are created, it's possible to not only break these patterns, but also reprogram and evolve your brain, so that new, positive, and beneficial habits can take over.This is something you can start to do right now. You and only you have the power to change your mind and evolve your brain for a better life--for good.

    Many times the solution does not solve the problem, because the manager did not uncover the root causes of the problem. In Zap The Gaps, Bill Ambers, the Director of Customer Service in a high tech firm, encounters a business problem: his newly inherited call center is not making its numbers. With the help of a colleague, he works through the problem and discovers the GAPS approach to performance improvement:

    The theory predicts that many, and perhaps all, animals experience the sights and sounds of life; consciousness is much more widespread than conventionally assumed. Contrary to received wisdom, however, Koch argues that programmable computers will not have consciousness. Even a perfect software model of the brain is not conscious. Its simulation is fake consciousness. Consciousness is not a special type of computation--it is not a clever hack. Consciousness is about being

    He holds that the universe is self-aware, and that consciousness creates the physical world.

    In this highly readable analysis of the academic research, Dutton shows that we are evolved to judge people’s psychology from what they look like, we can accurately work out people’s personality and intelligence from how they look, and (quite often) we have to if we want to survive. Body shape, hairiness, eye width, finger length, even how big a woman’s breasts are . . . Dutton shows that these, and much else, are windows into personality, intelligence, or both. Once you read How to Judge People by What They Look Like, you’ll never look at people the same again.

    

    This exploration, which involves every aspect of human behavior--the instinctive, motor, emotional, and intellectual--is, in the words of the author, "the only game worth playing"--the Master Game. This best-known consciousness classic by Robert S. de Ropp sold more than 200,000 copies in the '60's and '70's and influenced two generations of readers on their spiritual paths. Scientist de Ropp's summary provides a fine introduction to the various practices of meditation, yoga, Fourth Way, and other paths.

    Laing presented madness as a voyage of discovery that could open out onto a free state of higher consciousness, or hypersanity. But if there is such a thing as hypersanity, then mere sanity is not all it’s cracked up to be, a state of dormancy and dullness with less vital potential even than madness. We could all go mad, in a way we already are, minus the promise. But what if there was another route to hypersanity, one which, compared to madness, was less fearsome, less dangerous, and less damaging? What if, as well as a backdoor way, there was also a royal road strewn with petals and sprayed with perfume?This is a book about thinking, which, astonishingly, is barely taught in formal education. Our culture mostly equates thinking with logical reasoning, and the first few chapters examine logic, reason, their forms, and their flaws, starting with the basics of argumentation. But thinking is also about much more than logical reasoning, and so the book broadens out to examine concepts such as intelligence, knowledge, and truth, and alternative forms of cognition that our culture tends to overlook and underplay, including intuition, emotion, and imagination.If Hypersanity fails to live up to its tall promise, it should at least make you into a better thinker. And so you can approach the book as an opportunity to hone your thinking skills, which, in the end, are going to be far more important to your impact and wellbeing than any facts that you could ever learn. As B.F. Skinner once put it, ‘Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.’

    This volume also features increased coverage of computational modelling, discussions of prominent methodological advances and an enhanced art programme.

    Whatever your circumstances, you can create the life you desire by following simple, counterintuitive steps; not the steps society wants you to follow. Unfortunately, you cannot even trust yourself when it comes to creating the life that you desire, because you’re programmed by your past, an accumulation of hundreds of thousands of years, a mind still adapted for a hunter-gatherer time period. What does this mean? It means every day you’re battling your emotions, logic versus emotion. Logically, you want to do one thing, but emotionally, you are drawn to something else. First, if this sounds familiar, then great, because it means you are human. But, if you’re going to win the game of life, you cannot sit around and wait for things to happen, because you’ll be living a life of supreme comfort and sameness; ultimately, a great sin. You are destined for great things, capable of forging dreams and living your aspirations. Maybe you’ve forgotten about this truth: that you are capable, worthy, and ready. Maybe you’ve been beaten into the ground by life, a teacher who doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor, weak or strong, ready or not, because life will continue forward regardless, waiting for no one. Fortunately, there’re things you can do to set yourself apart from the millions that will ultimately suffer and fail. One such thing, perhaps the most powerful of all, is by studying the great, people who have succeeded and who have gone beyond what is humanly thought possible. When it comes to studying someone great, there’s one name that stands tall, Stephen Hawking, a person who has persevered and flourished. Not only has he conquered great adversity, but he has inspired millions around the world with his brilliant mind. There is a reason why people compare him with the once living Albert Einstein, the genius. What follows are Stephen Hawking’s greatest life lessons, gems of wisdom that you can easily apply to your own life, which will help you live a more abundant, stronger life. If you’re in need of inspiration, a boost of confidence, or just a friendly reminder of the wonders in life, you’ve come to the right place. See for yourself why millions study his work and regard him as a genius. Scroll up and grab your copy today.*** Limited time offer ***

    'Foundations of Physiological Psychology' offers a briefer, 16 chapter introduction to the foundations of physiology, incorporating the latest studies and research in the rapidly changing fields of neuroscience and physiological psychology.

    Easwaran taught meditation for over forty years, and his instructions are practical and clear. He shows you how to choose a spiritual text, or passage, from the world's great traditions that embodies your highest ideals. With regular practice, meditation becomes your lifeline, taking you to the source of wisdom deep within and guiding you through all the challenges of daily life.This short ebook is an extract from Passage Meditation by Eknath Easwaran.

    Not a disorder but a neurological trait—like perfect pitch—synesthesia creates vividly felt cross-sensory couplings. A synesthete might hear a voice and at the same time see it as a color or shape, taste its distinctive flavor, or feel it as a physical touch. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Richard Cytowic, the expert who returned synesthesia to mainstream science after decades of oblivion, offers a concise, accessible primer on this fascinating human experience.Cytowic explains that synesthesia's most frequent manifestation is seeing days of the week as colored, followed by sensing letters, numerals, and punctuation marks in different hues even when printed in black. Other manifestations include tasting food in shapes, seeing music in moving colors, and mapping numbers and other sequences spatially. One synesthete declares, “Chocolate smells pink and sparkly”; another invents a dish (chicken, vanilla ice cream, and orange juice concentrate) that tastes intensely blue. Cytowic, who in the 1980s revived scientific interest in synesthesia, sees it now understood as a spectrum, an umbrella term that covers five clusters of outwardly felt couplings that can occur via several pathways. Yet synesthetic or not, each brain uniquely filters what it perceives. Cytowic reminds us that each individual's perspective on the world is thoroughly subjective.