The Mescaline Confession

Sergey Baranov follows his powerful first book, Path: Seeking Truth in a World of Lies, with an unflinching examination of the sicknesses that lie at the heart of Western culture and makes an unshakable case that the ancient shamanic traditions of the world are our one best hope for survival. Grounded in a decade of ongoing experience working in Peru with the Huachuma cactus, also known as San Pedro, Baranov recounts his own story of personal transformation and healing the medicine brought to him and his clients at Huachuma Wasi, a spiritual retreat center he has created in the Sacred Valley of the Incas. A book for anyone who feels trapped by the competing ideologies of religion, science, and consumerism, The Mescaline Confession offers a sensible, honest, and loving way to find the path to healing, self-knowledge, and ecstasy in your life.

A definitive history of mescaline that explores its mind-altering effects across cultures, from ancient America to Western modernity Mescaline became a popular sensation in the mid-twentieth century through Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, after which the word “psychedelic” was coined to describe it. Its story, however, extends deep into prehistory: the earliest Andean cultures depicted mescaline-containing cacti in their temples. Mescaline was isolated in 1897 from the peyote cactus, first encountered by Europeans during the Spanish conquest of Mexico. During the twentieth century it was used by psychologists investigating the secrets of consciousness, spiritual seekers from Aleister Crowley to the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, artists exploring the creative process, and psychiatrists looking to cure schizophrenia. Meanwhile peyote played a vital role in preserving and shaping Native American identity. Drawing on botany, pharmacology, ethnography, and the mind sciences and examining the mescaline experiences of figures from William James to Walter Benjamin to Hunter S. Thompson, this is an enthralling narrative of mescaline’s many lives.

A Father's Love is a true story of the author's long and treacherous journey, which by all accounts, should have simply ended in his unheralded death, imprisonment, insanity, or all of the above. But there is a different ending because this story is also a testimony of God's love""the Father's love""and just some of the miracles he did on behalf of a young man who had no clue as to the true nature and character of God. The story begins with the author's struggles in an abusive home environment mixed in with the strict, legalistic teachings of his church. He enters his teen years with a twisted, unrealistic perspective of God, viewing him as a cruel, merciless ogre intent on damning him to hell. The author recounts his bout with mental illness, and the final incident of parental abuse, which pushed him over the edge where he gave up all hope. Resigning himself to hell, the author vows never to end up there for pettiness and wastes no time in pursuing a life of worldly pleasure, taking to the streets and highways. But he is soon blindsided, falling in love with a girl who changed his mind, his heart, and his world forever. He shares his failure at intimate relationship and the radical effect his loss has on his life. Estranged from his family, he faces life alone and lonely, sure that God is indifferent to his pain, which finally drives him back to the highway, where he lives as a gypsy and a criminal. Desperate to outrun his pain and regain the love he lost, he runs thousands of miles rolling the dice with his life again and again. Just when it seems he has finally succeeded in destroying himself, the unthinkable happens""God begins to reveal himself and then another journey begins, that of experiencing the Father's love.

This book is an anthology written by a diverse group of 40 individuals from around the world. They come from all walks of life, yet they are all united by the choices they have made. Confessions of a Caffeine Addict covers all major products including coffee, tea, yerba mate, energy and sport drinks, soda, caffeine pills, diuretics, medicine, chocolate, and other foods containing the drug. All have acted from their hearts and here, they have written from their hearts, telling the stories of what brought them along to their own conclusions about their use of caffeine. This book was written to inspire more people to make informed choices, to know that their actions do make a difference, and to know that, in their efforts to tell their tales anonymously, that they are not alone.

From the award-winning NPR religion correspondent and author of Life Reimagined: The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife comes a fascinating investigation of how science is seeking to answer the question that has puzzled humanity for generations: Can science explain God? Is spiritual experience real or a delusion? Are there realities that we can experience but not easily measure? Does your consciousness depend entirely on your brain, or does it extend beyond? In Fingerprints of God, award-winning journalist Barbara Bradley Hagerty delves into the discoveries science is making about how faith and spirituality affect us physically and emotionally as it attempts to understand whether the ineffable place beyond this world can be rationally -even scientifically-explained. Hagerty interviews some of the world's top scientists to describe what their groundbreaking research reveals about our human spiritual experience. From analyses of the brain functions of Buddhist monks and Carmelite nuns, to the possibilities of healing the sick through directed prayer, to what near-death experiences illuminate about the afterlife, Hagerty reaches beyond what we think we know to understand what happens to us when we believe in a higher power. Paralleling the discoveries of science is Hagerty's own account of her spiritual evolution. Raised a Christian Scientist, she was a scrupulous adherent until a small moment as an adult triggered a revaluation of her beliefs, which in turn led her to a new way of thinking about God and faith. An insightful examination of what science is learning about how and why we believe, Fingerprints of God is also a moving story of one person's search for a communion with a higher power and what she discovered on that journey.

No study of religious practice ancient or modern is complete without reference to the work of sociologists on religious practice. The volumes in The Sociology of Religion set of the International Library of Sociology explore the social, economic and behavioural contexts of religious activity.

Inspired by an old tale, young mouse Wilfred uses a trip into the hills as an opportunity to look for gold and explore unknown country.