A Psychonaut's Guide to the Invisible Landscape: The Topography of the Psychedelic Experience

Dan Carpenter

Feb 2006 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

A bold cartography of the inner landscape visible only to those experiencing altered states

• Presents the psychedelic experience as an objective landscape that embodies the Other, rather than a subjective state of mind

• Provides corroboration of phenomena encountered by those who venture into this domain

Journeying into the invisible world revealed by his use of the dissociative psychedelic DXM (dextromethorphan), Dan Carpenter found that what he experienced was not simply subjective sensations and psychological states but an objective world of familiar, if inordinately odd, landmarks and characters. The running diary he kept of these voyages recounts impressions of a landscape charted by other travelers into this Inner Space and includes descriptions of many of the same phenomena recorded by such mind travelers as Terence and Dennis McKenna, Alexander and Ann Shulgin, and others who have experienced the hive mind--the pool of all consciousness. Into this territory where expression is like chaos theory, where oddly symmetrical order manifests out of the seemingly anarchic swirl of images and events, the author ventures with the mind-set of a naturalist, accepting whatever might be rather than what he hopes he might find. What emerges is not a location crafted by subjective experience, but a landscape that embodies the Other and that represents a conscious state in which the barriers between the self and the not-self dissolve.

Ratings and reviews

(About the book, it is great writing) I would personally suggest as not to try overdosing DXM (Dextromethorphan). It is dangerous. I was on the edge of death 15 times, because of the consumption of DXM in high doses. Clearly, it felt great initially. But later it harmed my life a lot. it damages brain. The worst experience was when consumed 2 100ml bottles of dxm. I went into another consicousness which was open-eyed hallucinations where I was my fear. I saw someone killing me and I am shouting at the top of my voice. I saw someone cutting my tongue with my opens. I saw myself gettting kidnapped. All my relatives were worried about me. Later I was in coma for 5 days. when I was resurrected, I could hear voices of my parents saying "wake up, rahul, wake up". Doctors must have given antidote or new medicine to wake me up. So I heard voices (My remembering this now, I feel so emotional and bad for my family to undergo my trauma). I was finally alive (1000 words)

About the author

Dan Carpenter (1963-2005) took thirteen high-dose, closed-eye trips using DXM between January 2003 and July 2004, which he has documented in this book.