The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience

Rating:
Summary: The Best of the Best
Review: Finally a book on Ayahuasca that goes beyond the surface....way beyond the surface ! Dr. Benny Shanon picks up where the others leave off . This exceptionally in-depth book cuts right to the chase : the phenomenology of the visions produced by Ayahuasca . For the first time we get a detailed analysis of the visions from every angle , including the multitude of visionary themes , cross-cultural themes , the importance of set and setting , non-visual perceptions , general stages and order of the visions , along with the many illuminating insights supplied by Shanon and his experienced informants along the way . I must say that of all the books I've read concerning entheogens in general , and Ayahuasca in particular , I've found this one to be the most useful .....and like a rich piece of music by Bach , I can keep going back to it again and again to discover something new .

Rating:
Summary: The Science of Ecstasy
Review: Antipodes of the Mind is a classic of a relatively-new field, the psychological study of visionary experiences.

A tour-de-force of science and storytelling, well-organized and lucid in its expression, Antipodes has generated a lot of buzz on entheogen-related internet message boards and is much in demand among readers who can shell out the $35 ticket to its exquisite entertainments. It's a book that challenges the beliefs of materialists and mystics alike, on a subject that has received much too little attention because of the difficulty of accessing it. There are areas of the mind which are as hard to reach as the depths of the oceans, Shanon reminds us, but life similarly flourishes there.

As a person interested in literature, in stories and images, one of my favorite aspects of Antipodes is the hundreds of accounts of visions that pepper its pages. Each is like a koan, or a poem, or a distilled adventure film. Some of them are Shanon's own, and others from his many respondants; all are accompanied by carefully-considered analysis.

I'll quote an example almost at random that shows how he organizes and evaluates the stories he has recorded, and that then moves into the realm of personal experience and the kind of poetic profundity that Lorca termed "duende":

"An experientially distinct category (of figures seen in visions) is that of individuals who do not have a name but who do have a specific, well-defined identity. Often, the figures seen have a distinct presence and those who report seeing them feel an intimate link or identification with them. Invariably, in both indigenous and non-indigenous contexts, this phenomenon is attributed to the figures seen being reincarnations of the Ayahuasca drinker's past lives. Putting the interpretative speculations aside for now, I would like to underline the special force of the experience in question. The first time this happened to me was before I had heard of such experiences from other people, and it was clear to me, instantaneously and without any doubt, that the old man who appeared before me in the vision, a lonely shaman in the icy tundra of Siberia was, while still being himself, me." (P.116)

Shanon rightly places ayahuasca visions within the realm of artistic experiences that one may have. He compares them to pieces of classical music in their richness and complexity, and in the esthetic pleasure they can give. Without them, he implies, the world would be a poorer place.

Rating:
Summary: Perhaps one of the most crucial pursuits of our time.
Review: Professor Shanon leaves no stone unturned in his exploration of the Ayahuasca inebriation and the very powerful (in many cases life-altering) ideations so characteristic of this Amazonian brew. Drawing from the reports of more than 200 informants, and nearly as many direct experiences, the author reaches into the particulars of Ayahuasca visions with the utmost concentration, mapping the unfolding stages of consciousness with great detail....a near daunting task considering the ineffable nature of these visualizations. Each mode of consciousness examined is bolstered with the authors' very own direct observations, from the inside; the only way to speak with real authority. Shanon exercises not only a genuine respect for empirical observation, but also the love of wisdom and the intuitive processes therein; virtues essential to any dedicated study of the Mind.

Ayahuasca occasions an experience that runs the gamut of human emotion and wonder, from the mastery of fear and the delicate state of vulnerability, to the empowerment of rebirth and the majesty of existence.... which by all accounts renders this study 'perhaps one of the most crucial pursuits of our time.'

Rating:
Summary: the poetical power of the mind
Review: The book of Mr. Benny Shanon is an exploratory travel, something like Darwin or Humboldt discovering new landscapes and bringing back quantities of samples of unknown species. And beginning to shape a quite new theory of... life on the surface of the earth. Ayahuasca seems to be a continent. But the more exciting for me (as an artist) is the depth of the insight it gives on a faculty, the poetic power of the human mind, which is often misunderstood or described only in "romantic" terms. That "seeing" and "creating" and "understanding" and "loving" are not necessarily separate activities, but are crossing their efficiencies, when our mind is at its higher (and also in its "simpler") mode : that is the poetic mode of the mind. This book of Mr. Shanon is nothing less than the opening of a new "library" in the knowledge of this power and its ethics. Thanks. (Sorry for my bad english)

Rating:
Summary: The Bible of the Ayahuasca Experience
Review: The most poetic, engaging, and exhaustive work on ayahuasca. There is no better book on the subject. Not merely a scientific anaylisis, but also a very personal work.

Contrary to an otherwise great reveiw posted here, Benny Shanon isn't an atheist. The book is neither 'atheist', materialist', or 'reductionist'. His personal point of view is made clear in the introduction.

I don't feel I need to say much more, the reviews already posted here are better and more thorough than what I'm capable of writing. I have nothing really to add but that you will not find a better book on the subject of ayahuasca.

Rating:
Summary: The Antipodes of the Mind
Review: This book consists of an extensive psychological-phenomenological description and discussion of the Ayahuasca experience. It is based on the author's firsthand experiences with Ayahuasca (an Amazonian-psychoactive brew), as well as on interviews with a great number of people. I find it very interesting and thought-provoking, and recommend it to anyone who finds interest in human consciousness and the riddles it presents. The author's attitude is committed, on the one hand, to science and to serious Western standards. On the other hand, the author holds genuine respect to his targets of research: Ayahuasca, the people who use it, and the traditions associated with it. This results in a rich and complex perspective, raising some important questions regarding the Western-scientific worldview and the boundaries of knowledge and wisdom.

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant exploration of psychedelic experiences
Review: This is one of the most compelling books on altered states I???ve read, up there with James???s Varieties of Religious Experience, Huxley???s Doors of Perception (to which Shanon???s title alludes) and PIHKAL and TIKHAL by Ann and Alexander Shulgin. Unlike, say, the psychedelic performance artist Terence McKenna (whose writings I enjoy), Shanon???s authorial persona is earnest, serious, straightforward, absolutely trustworthy. He is a true scientist, dedicated to precise reporting and careful analysis rather than to entertainment. Not that his book is dull. Far from it. Antipodes is suffused with a sense of genuine adventure, of a kind that has virtually vanished from modern science. Plunging into the depths of his own ayahuasca-intoxicated mind, Shanon resembles one of the great Victorian explorers trekking into uncharted wilds, maintaining his equilibrium and wits even in the face of the most fantastical sights. Like Darwin on the voyage of the Beagle, Shanon is concerned primarily with collecting and categorizing data rather than theorizing. At the end of his book, however, he ponders his and others??? experiences and draws some tentative conclusions. Ayahuasca, he asserts, can be both truth-revealing and "the worst of liars." Shanon remains skeptical of the occult claims often made for the drug???that it puts us in touch with spirits, makes us clairvoyant, lets us leave our bodies and travel astrally. He suggests that ayahuasca visions are products of the imagination rather than glimpses of a supernatural realm existing in parallel to our own. This proposal will sound reductionistic to some, but it is actually quite provocative, and raises many questions requiring further consideration. Why does the imagination, when stimulated by ayahuasca, yield visions so much stranger and more powerful than those we encounter in, say, ordinary dreams? Why do ayahuasca-drinkers from widely disparate cultures so often hallucinate similar phenomena, such as jaguars and snakes, or palaces and royalty? Why are the visions of even an atheist like Shanon so often laden with religious significance? Antipodes will no doubt be eagerly seized upon by the psychedelic intelligentsia. But it deserves to be read by anyone interested in religion, mysticism, and consciousness--and who is not? It should be required reading for psychologists, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists, because it shows how absurdly simplistic are the biochemical, Darwinian, and genetic models now dominating mind-science. Inner space, Shanon reminds us, truly is the last great frontier of science, and its reaches are vast and wild and strange.