Customer Reviews

A landmark of research on altered states - By: John Horgan, 01 Apr 2003
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) & PIHKAL & TIKHAL by Ann & 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 & 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 & wits evenin the face of the most fantastical sights. Like Darwin on the voyage of the Beagle, Shanon is concerned primarily with collecting & categorizing data rather than theorizing. At the end of his book, however, he ponders his & others’ experiences & draws some tentative conclusions. Ayahuasca, he asserts, can be both truth-revealing & "the worst of liars." Shanon remains skeptical of the occult claims often made for the drug—that it puts usin touch with spirits, makes us clairvoyant, lets us leave our bodies & travel astrally. He suggests that ayahuasca visions are products of the imagination rather than glimpses of a supernatural realm existingin parallel to our own. This proposal will sound reductionistic to some, but it is actually quite provocative, & raises many questions requiring further consideration. Why does the imagination, when stimulated by ayahuasca, yield visions so much stranger & 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 & snakes, or palaces & 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 interestedin religion, mysticism, & consciousness--and who is not? It should be required reading for psychologists, psychiatrists, & neuroscientists, because it shows how absurdly simplistic are the biochemical, Darwinian, & genetic models now dominating mind-science. Inner space, Shanon reminds us, truly is the last great frontier of science, & its reaches are vast & wild & strange.