A bold synthesis of ancient sacred science, modern physics, and neuroscience designed to open access to higher consciousness

• Explores how esoteric teachings from India and Tibet offer specific methods for tuning and directing consciousness to reach higher stages of awareness

• Presents a wide-ranging collection of practical techniques, as well as numerous figures and diagrams, to facilitate navigation of altered states of consciousness and heightened mystical states

• Develops an integrated structural map of higher consciousness by viewing Tibetan and Indian Tantra through the work of Steiner, Gurdjieff, Teilhard de Chardin, Aurobindo Ghose, and quantum physicists Planck and Bohm

Throughout the millennia shamans, saints, and yogis have discovered how the brain-mind can be reprogrammed to become a powerful instrument facilitating access to higher states of consciousness. In particular, the written Tantric texts of India and Tibet describe, in extraordinarily precise detail, interior transformations of conscious energy along with numerous techniques for stimulating, modulating, and transforming consciousness to reach increasingly higher states and stages of awareness.

In this in-depth examination of esoteric Tantric practices, Shelli Renée Joye, Ph.D., presents a wide-ranging collection of psychophysical techniques integrating Tibetan Vajrayana and Patanjali’s Yoga to induce altered states of consciousness for the exploration of heightened mystical states. Sharing numerous figures and diagrams, she shows how these theories and techniques are not only fully supported by modern biophysics, brain science, and quantum physics but are also in line with the work of Rudolf Steiner, G. I. Gurdjieff, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Aurobindo Ghose, Max Planck, and David Bohm. The author also shares insights from her own personal practices for consciousness exploration, which include prayer, mantra, emptying the mind, psychedelics, yoga, and visualization of interior physiology.

Offering a structural map of the dynamics of consciousness, Joye reveals that one can develop new ways of tuning and directing consciousness to reach extraordinary modes of being and intense levels of lucid awareness, the requisites for the direct exploration of supersensible dimensions and sailing in the ocean of consciousness.

Shelli Renée Joye, Ph.D., entered Rice University on a physics scholarship and graduated with a B.S. in electrical engineering. In 1970 she began studying psychonautics with John Lilly and contemplation with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. She completed a master’s degree in Sanskrit and Indian philosophy and a doctorate in philosophy, cosmology, and consciousness at the California Institute of Integral Studies. The author of several books, including The Electromagnetic Brain, she lives in Viola, California.

An Invitation to the Modern Psychonaut

Preface: How I Became a Psychonaut and Discovered Tantra

PART ONE
Introduction to Tantric Psychophysics
1 Tantra: An Integral Approach to Esoteric Practices
2 What Tantra Is and Is Not
3 The Psychophysics of the Cosmos

PART TWO
Western Tantric Psychophysics
4 On Christian Contemplation: That They May All Be One
5 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: Noosphere
6 Rudolf Steiner: Supersensible Perception
7 G. I. Gurdjieff: “Remembering the I”

PART THREE
Hindu Tantric Psychophysics
8 Patañjali: Samādhi and Jñāna Yoga
9 Sri Aurobindo: The Supermind
10 Further Techniques of Hindu Psychophysics

PART FOUR
Tibetan Tantric Psychophysics
11 Foundations of Tibetan Tantric Psychophysics
12 The Teachings of Düdjom Lingpa: Tibetan Vajrayāna
13 Further Techniques of Tibetan Psychophysics

PART FIVE
Practical Advice for Modern Psychonauts
14 Mapping the Psyche for Direct Exploration
15 My Personal Experience of Meditation and Contemplation

Notes

Bibliography

Index