Maps of Consciousness: I Ching, Tantra, Tarot, Alchemy, Astrology, Actualism

by Ralph Metzner

Metzner was a friend of Timothy Leary and Ram Dass (Richard Alpert); they all wrote of the "psychedelic experience." Those experiences helped define the essence of this book, further exploring yoga, Gurdjieff's self-observation, Reichian bioenergetics, Gestalt therapy, psychosynthesis, Buckminster Fuller, Teilhard de Chardin, Hermann Hesse, Wilhelm Reich, Carl Jung, Lama Govinda, Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, Frank Herbert, Joan Grant, and the incomparable I Ching.

Genres: Spirituality, Psychology, Astrology, Divination

161 pages, Hardcover

First published September 18, 1972

About the author

Ralph Metzner Ph.D. was an American psychologist, writer and researcher, who participated in psychedelic research at Harvard University in the early 1960s with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later named Ram Dass). Dr. Metzner was a psychotherapist, and Professor Emeritus of psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he was formerly the Academic Dean and Academic Vice-president. He received his undergraduate degree at Oxford University and his doctorate in clinical psychology at Harvard University, where he was also the recipient of an NIMH Post-doctoral Fellowship in psychopharmacology at the Harvard Medical School. He had a life-long interest in the many different realms of consciousness and its modifications.

He is the author of The Well of Remembrance, The Unfolding Self, Green Psychology, Birth of a Psychedelic Culture (with Ram Dass); editor of two collections of essays on ayahuasca and on psilocybe mushrooms; and author of a new series of seven books on The Ecology of Consciousness.

Reviews

[Mee Ok · Rating 5 out of 5]

Metzner is amazing at synthesizing very high level information drawing on scholarly sources without using dry academic language. Solid introduction to all of these crafts with tons of resources for further reading.