Altered States is a poetic evolution. A life changing arrangement, Everything from sadness to gladness. Tales of romance to make you want to dance. Even some heartbreak that will bring A tear to your eye. Stories of love lost Was it worth the cost? Tales of family told, Both new and old. Some political satire To get you wired. Some celestial tales, To help you understand To no avail. Share in author Stosh Chappas' joy, sorrow, relief and closure as you get whisked away in the brilliant poetry in Altered States. Stosh Chappas is a union carpenter who travels and works at industrial sites in nuclear and chemical plants and oil refineries.

What are altered states of consciousness? Can altered states produce altered worlds? Altered States brings together poetic journeys that explore the varieties of revelatory experience. These poems expand our sense of selfhood and place in the cosmos, complicating the boundaries between alterity and the ordinary, to propose a new psychedelic style for the 21st century. Introduction by Francesca Gavin Afterword by Erik Davies Contributors: K Allado-McDowell Spiros Antonopoulos Kharaini Barokka Jesse Darling Paige Emery James Goodwin Johanna Hedva Caspar Heinemann IONE Daisy Lafarge Precious Okoyomon Nisha Ramayya Hannah Satz Erica Scourti Emily Segal Tai Shani Sin Wai Kin Himali Singh Soin Jenna Sutela Rebecca Tamas Flora Yin-Wong

In the 1960s, Americans combined psychedelics with Buddhist meditation to achieve direct experience through altered states of consciousness. As some practitioners became more committed to Buddhism, they abandoned the use of psychedelics in favor of stricter mental discipline, but others carried on with the experiment, advancing a fascinating alchemy called psychedelic Buddhism. Many think exploration with psychedelics in Buddhism faded with the revolutionary spirit of the sixties, but the underground practice has evolved into a brand of religiosity as eclectic and challenging as the era that created it. Altered States combines interviews with well-known figures in American Buddhism and psychedelic spirituality—including Lama Surya Das, Erik Davis, Geoffrey Shugen Arnold Sensei, Rick Strassman, and Charles Tart—and personal stories of everyday practitioners to define a distinctly American religious phenomenon. The nuanced perspective that emerges, grounded in a detailed history of psychedelic religious experience, adds critical depth to debates over the controlled use of psychedelics and drug-induced mysticism. The book also opens new paths of inquiry into such issues as re-enchantment, the limits of rationality, the biochemical and psychosocial basis of altered states of consciousness, and the nature of subjectivity.

"Altered States" is a psychedelic ride that deranges your senses as you take a look inside the uknown regions of the concious and subconcious mind.

This anthology breaks new ground in the English speaking world by publishing translations of poems by Polish writers all under the age of forty five. It reflects the range of different writing practices that have flourished in various parts of Poland over the last fifteen years, and tries to acheive a balance between them. Practically all the work in this selection was written in the post-Communist period but in cultural historical terms it reflects the evolution of a sensibility that began to emerge in the mid 1980's when Polish poetry was being realigned contentiously with newly visible traditions of European and American writing.

Consciousness, the last great mystery for science, remains a hot topic. How can a physical brain create our experience of the world? What creates our identity? Do we really have free will? Could consciousness itself be an illusion? Exciting new developments in brain science are continuing the debates on these issues, and the field has now expanded to include biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers. This controversial book clarifies the potentially confusing arguments, and the major theories, whilst also outlining the amazing pace of discoveries in neuroscience. Covering areas such as the construction of self in the brain, mechanisms of attention, the neural correlates of consciousness, and the physiology of altered states of consciousness, Susan Blackmore highlights our latest findings. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Library of Small Catastrophes, Alison Rollins’ ambitious debut collection, interrogates the body and nation as storehouses of countless tragedies. Drawing from Jorge Luis Borges’ fascination with the library, Rollins uses the concept of the archive to offer a lyric history of the ways in which we process loss. “Memory is about the future, not the past,” she writes, and rather than shying away from the anger, anxiety, and mourning of her narrators, Rollins’ poetry seeks to challenge the status quo, engaging in a diverse, boundary-defying dialogue with an ever-present reminder of the ways race, sexuality, spirituality, violence, and American culture collide.