John C. Lilly seems to be the only person who has done serious studies on the effects of psychedelics. Every other "researcher" either sets out to prove they're harmful by looking at it from the outside and comparing it to psychosis without having tried it themselves, or otherwise their only goal is to advertise them to the masses by appealing to religious and supernatural mythologies. The most famous authors on psychedelics from the 1970s onward (Terence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson, Rick Strassman, etc.) are all a bunch of delusional pseudoscientists trying to build a cult around themselves. Prior to the hippie era, more educated people like Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley, and Alan Watts were more into making comparisons between the psychedelic experience and Buddhism than seeking out the differences between the psychological processes of the high and sober mind. These early writers did not veer into pseudoscience territory talking about aliens, ESP, or other idiotic things you're tired of hearing from your stoner friends, but they never tried to discuss the effects of psychedelics psychologically, philosophically, or scientifically. John C. Lilly was the first and probably the last person to attempt this with moderate success. Clearly psychedelics does something other than cause a list of symptoms, but that's no reason to go to the extreme of saying it allows you to communicate with beings from other worlds. Instead of naively believing in the hallucinations, John C. Lilly correctly identifies them as projections from one's inner imagination onto the white noise generated by the psychedelics.

I once theorized that lethal doses of psychedelics that aren't due to accidents in the external world come from the subjective experience itself, the white noise and hallucinations becoming so intense that the subject loses control or allows themselves to dissociate to such a degree that they end up forgetting everything, even how to breathe. Even on smaller doses, one could reprogram some of the vital programs required to survive, leading to immediate or gradual death. Or they could simply abandon their body and die. It would be difficult to prove or disprove this without risking considerable psychological damage but it's interesting to see the same idea introduced in this book, which states that when the white noise becomes too intense it could lead to unconsciousness or even death at high levels.

The problem with scientists studying psychedelics in general in that they aren't willing to admit that there's such a thing as free will, and that through the use of free will people can make changes within themselves. The reason why results are so varied and unpredictable is because there's no formula to people's choices. Observing from the outside a living being as if they're a piece of stone, scientists get frustrated and confused by the fact that humans don't operate like inorganic matter. I blame this on the way they're taught in industrial-age universities, with years of research in the lab or in school memorizing theorems and playing with corpses. Suddenly introduced to the real world they're often unwilling to face the new complexities of having to deal with other egos doing their own thing independently of the data collected and patterns observed by statisticians who desperately wish to reduce humans into algorithms. Because of this limitation in the scientific method, they're compelled to deny the subjective experiences of others, and even themselves, preventing them from understanding anything beyond the superficial view of an outsider voyeuristically projecting their own observations onto all of humanity, just like how paranoiacs might hear conversations in TV static just because it occurs to them to listen for it.

Anyone interesting in psychedelics or human consciousness should read this. The only real problem is that it seems like it's just an introduction to the ideas presented, and it needs to be expanded and elaborated upon in a much larger book.