- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: Flamingo (3 Feb 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0007149603
- ISBN-13: 978-0007149605
- Product Dimensions: 23 x 14.8 x 3.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 667,266 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
“Continually enthralling. As gripping as a novel.” Geoff Dyer, LA Weekly
"I much admire Breaking Open the Head for being the account of an authentic quest for enlightenment in jungles, up rivers, in deserts, and hardest of all to access, the human mind and heart via the one of the oldest thoroughfares on earth, mind-expanding drugs. This is a serious and illuminating journey." Paul Theroux
"As mind-expanding as the chemicals it chronicles, Breaking Open the Head is the most artful and provocative investigation of psychedelia since Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception." Stephen Johnson, author of Emergence
'The author of this "journey into the heart of contemporary shamanism" is not some hippy-dippy hedonist staggering down the road of excess but rather a skeptical philosopher of consciousness seeking the enlightened path. In the late-90's, a spiritually exhausted Pinchbeck took a magazine assignment to gobble the African psychedelic iboga, launching an earnest exploration of himself, his self, and this world. Acid in Manhattan, mushrooms in Mexico, yage in Ecuador… He reports on his trips, travels, and travails in an unfailingly strong voice and analyzes a broad range of theorists with a light touch.' Entertainment Weekly
"This is a brave book. Brave because it accepts, as matters of fact, realities that cannot co-exist peacefully with the standard American Myth. That the discussion of these issues avoids both New Age glitter-speak and standard psychedelic hoo-ha makes it all the more provocative. It is also brave for its unflinching willingness to bare the less expanded parts of the author's psyche. And it is brave, as it is always brave, to attempt to speak clearly of that which can't be spoken." John Perry Barlow
'Breaking Open the Head is a thrilling, brave and intellectually engaging account of a visionary search. A sustained but sceptical contribution to the ongoing project of psychedelic exploration, Pinchbeck's book is mind-expanding and heart-felt. It is also, implicitly, a much-needed rebuke to a cocaine-fuelled culture of irony and cynical detachment. I warmly recommend it.' Geoff Dyer
Stephen Johnson, author of Emergence
"As mind-expanding as the chemicals it chronicles, it's the most artful and provocative investigation of psychedelia since Huxley’s The Doors of Perception."
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Once upon a time, Daniel Pinchbeck was a thirtysomething member of the New York literary set: "atheist, suspicious, cynical, disbelieving in metaphysical possibilities". Until he had his head "broken open" during a shamanic ritual involving the visionary plant, Iboga, in the Gabon. Already questioning his dependence on and self-disgust with "that most terrible drug" - himself, he embarked on a quest to explore the limits of his own disbelief. The quest led him on frightening and often hilarious journeys visiting shamans still practicing in far-flung pockets of the world: the Ecuadorian Amazon, the high plains of Mexico, and um, The Burning Man festival in Nevada.
Shadowing these mind-expanding encounters is the personal story of his metaphysical journey to inner space, via the visionary brew yagé, and other psychedelic plants and chemicals. He is relentlessly confronted with experiences flatly contradicting the mechanistic secular scientific world view of Western life, and is forced to change his mind on just about everything.
This is no new-age thesis or extended 'trip report'. The book is an intellectual and personal inquiry. It is rich with literary references and perspectives from thinkers such as Rudolph Steiner, Carl Jung, and Walter Benjamin, as well as the 'usual suspects' such as Sasha Shulgin and Terrence McKenna. It details the cultural history of psychedelic use and delivers philosophical perspectives on shamanism. It probes the powerful synchronicities between the shamanic view of the cosmos and what modern science is just beginning to suspect: that the universe may be far more complex, more bizarre, and more alive and conscious than our rationalistic, materialistic thinking has allowed us to believe.
Pinchbeck discovers shamanism - and its modern, urban psychedelic equivalent - to be an ambiguous tool. An antidote to Western ennui but simultaneously an apocalyptic wake-up call. The more you probe the shamanic cosmos, Pinchbeck discovers, the more it throws up its visions of "imminent historical breakdown and unleashed horrors ahead now approaching us at high speed." Gulp.
Very enjoyable.
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Pinchbeck throws himself so completely into his subject that this book could have been the senseless ramblings of some burnt out hippie that has done too many psychedelics.
Thankfully it isn't, and instead, contains stories of meetings with remarkable people from both from the ancient world and the modern west. Pinchbeck ties this together with some real insights about the role of shamanism and how it can rescue us from our destructive lifestyles.
Everyone I know that has read this book has been changed by it. I myself have started taking what I dream very seriously.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I will not go into a synopsis of this amazing journey, but a more intelligent and insightful detailing of one man's search for the ultimate Consciousness I have not come across. Here is Truth, Wisdom and Belief, stripped of all the distractions and nonsense of organised religion. The author has been to places we cannot even conceive of, but he has returned, sober, sincere and humbled, to tell us of what he has found. The messages he brings back are searing, unequivocal, and would shake the belief-systems of any open-minded person. This book should be required reading for all our leaders, lawmakers, politicians, scientists, anthopologists, priests, rabbis and anyone who has the slightest interest in what it means to be human and self-aware. My first instinct, after reading this book, was to start at the beginning again, this time with a red pen, to underline and mark all the myriad points of interest and profundity that cascade through the pages.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Well researched and eloquent. A point well-made!
A few months ago I ended up having this book reccomended to me by three seperate and completely independent sources within the space of about a week. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Jydd
Brave & Dignified
This is the account of New York writer Daniel Pinchbeck's investigation into the world of Shamanism and the use of natural psychedelics - Ayahuasca, Iboga and others - as a tool in... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Marv
Written by a pretender who is terrified of the real ego death...
Book has interesting points all the way through, unfortunately these are all quotes from other peoples books like Mckenna and Dr Strassman and any other reputable author on the... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Mr. R. M. Bodley
Started good
The first chapters were good when he took the iboga, but the rest was just mind numbing, he talks about his experiences with DMT, DPT and takes the hallucinations as a product of... Read more
Published 23 months ago by Amazon buyer
A few molecules from heaven
I first encountered Daniel at the launch of his book, via Strange Attractor magazine, held at the Horse Hospital in London way back in Febuary 2003. Read more
Published on 1 Feb 2007 by Bruce Fenton
Disappointed
Although initially this book proved interesting, it did not last. A few chapters are devoted to his experiences at the Burning Man festival and I felt he was just 'name dropping'. Read more
Published on 15 Sep 2006 by R. Webster
An inspirational read
One of those rare, life-changing books. I identified with Pinchbeck's disillusionment with lifestyles in the Western world and I was seeking a way of finding meaning in my own... Read more
Published on 19 Feb 2006
an amazing insight
breaking open the head by daniel pinchbeck is an amazing book about shamanism. daniel pinchbeck travels all over the world to meet with different tribes who have shamanistic... Read more
Published on 24 Aug 2003 by "talekglover"
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