The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead

By Ram Dass

Written while he was still Richard Alpert, this is the founding document of the psychedelic era — the Tibetan Book of the Dead reworked into a guide for navigating the dissolution of the ego. Leary, Metzner and Alpert map the session as a journey through three bardos, with instructions for a guide to read aloud. It gave a generation its language for altered states, and John Lennon lifted lines from it for "Tomorrow Never Knows."