This is an extraordinary book of unique psychological power. It reveals not only scholarship and sophistication of the author, but deep and intimate knowledge of the recesses of the human psyche. By masterful juxtaposition of evocative images, poetry, and selected quotes from scholars, Flesh and Blood seems to engage both the right and left hemispheres in an unprecedented dialogue. The result is a multi-dimensional, almost holographic picture of the primordial foundations of the human mind.

Many of us who have experienced psychedelics feel very much that they are sacred tools. They open spiritual awareness.

There is no fundamental difference between the preparation for death and the practice of dying, and spiritual practice leading to enlightenment.

Many cultures have independently developed a belief system in reincarnation that includes return of the unit of consciousness to another physical lifetime on Earth.

LSD was not a pharmacological agent generating exotic experiences by its interaction with the neurophysiological processes in the brain. This remarkable substance was clearly an unspecific catalyst of the deep dynamics of the human psyche. The experiences induced by it were not neurochemical artifacts, symptoms of a toxic psychosis as mainstream psychiatrists called it, but genuine manifestations of the human psyche itself.

These substances function as unspecific amplifiers that increase the energetic niveau in the psyche and make the deep unconscious dynamics available for conscious processing. This unique property of psychedelics makes it possible to study psychological undercurrents that govern our experiences and behaviors to a depth that cannot be matched by any other methods and tools available in modern mainstream science. In emotional and psychosomatic disorders, for positive personality transformation, and consciousness evolution.

The motif of death plays an important role the human psyche in connection with archetypal and karmic material.