Ra - Gates of Tiphareth
(Suntrip Records)

Grapes of Wrath - D'em D'aliens
(Dropout Productions)

Nimba - Intoxicated Nomads
(Avatar Records)

Atriohm - Beyond Rituals
(Ajana Records)

Carbon Based Lifeforms - World Of Sleepers (Ultimae Records)

"The Tibetan Book of the Dead" is ostensibly a book describing the experiences to be expected at the moment of death..This book is a guide for the dead and dying..The first part, called Chikhai Bardo, describes the moment of death. The second part, Chonyid Bardo, deals with the states which supervene immediately after death. The third part, Sidpa Bardo, concerns the onset of the birth instinct and of prenatal events...

(A manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead)

A psychedelic experience is a journey to new realms of consciousness. The scope and content of the experience is limitless, but its characteristic features are the transcendence of verbal concepts, of spacetime dimensions, and of the ego or identity. Such experiences of enlarged consciousness can occur in a variety of ways: sensory deprivation, yoga exercises, disciplined meditation, religious or aesthetic ecstasies or spontaneously. Most recently they have become available to anyone through the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT...

Of course, the drug dose does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key - it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures. The nature of the experience depends almost entirely on set and setting. Set denotes the preparation of the individual,
including his personality structure and his mood at the time. Setting is physical (the weather, the room’s
atmosphere), social (feelings of persons present towards one another) and cultural (prevailing views as to what is real).

Following the Tibetan model then, authors distinguish three phases (periods) of the psychedelic experience. The first period (the period of Ego-Loss or Chikhai Bardo) is that of complete transcendence - beyond words, beyond space-time, beyond self. There are no visions, no sense of self, no thoughts... The second lengthy period involves self, or external game reality (the period of hallucinations or Chonyid Bardo) - in sharp exquisite clarity or in the form of hallucinations (karmic apparitions)... The final period (the period of Re-Entry or Sidpa Bardo) involves the return to routine game reality and the self...

..a must read for all psychedelic travelers..