A study of the effects of music and its physiological and psychological effects on the individual human being.

Publisher: Octagon
Pamphlet: 11 pages

In this pioneering book, Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer traces an evocative picture of the evolution of the acoustic environment on planet Earth, from the earliest nature sounds through the beginnings of the Industrial Age and up to the cacophony of the present day. Using quotes from a wide variety of sources from throughout recorded history, he demonstrates the changing character of the world as it has been perceived by the human ear. Virgil describes the relatively new sound of the “shrill saw blade” and waxes nostalgic for an earlier time when “men split wood with wedges.” Charles Dickens writes of the novel rumbling of a passing train in 1848, and how it made “the walls quake, as if they were dilating with the knowledge of great powers yet unsuspected in them.” Luigi Russolo bids us to “have fun imagining our orchestration of department stores' sliding doors, the hubbub of the crowds, the different roars of the railway stations, iron foundries, textile mills, printing houses, power plants and subways.“
In addition to this historical information, Schafer also analyzes the current soundscape across the planet and tells of the very real threat of sound pollution. He explains how to classify sounds, describes the evolving definition of noise, relates music to the soundscapes of different eras, and includes a chapter on that most important and increasingly hard to find element: silence. Not unlike the birds in Aldous Huxley's novel Island, who over and over repeat the same word—“Attention!”—Schafer's ultimate goal is to bring us more fully into awareness in respect to the sonic vibrations which constantly surround and affect us. AS

Publisher: Destiny
Paperback: 301 pages
Illustrated

Startling book on the SPK (Sozialistisches Patienten Kollektiv) including theses and principles, chronology of events, essays and an introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre. The first English translation of this seminal work. AK

Publisher: KRRIM
Paperback: 215 pages

“Is consciousness a purely physical phenomenon or does it transcend the material world? Offers a new perspective based exclusively on evidence from the natural sciences in which materialism and dualism co-exist.”

Publisher: Springer-Verlag
Hardback: 229 pages
Illustrated

“There is a cure for crack and heroin… the CIA declared it Top Secret in the '50s… The Ibogaine Story tells how Drug War hardliners used NIDA (the National Institute on Drug Abuse) to torpedo FDA-approved Ibogaine research in humans, on the brink of proving that a single dose can: interrupt heroin withdrawal, eliminate craving for crack, block nicotine compulsion, stop amphetamine dependency, break addiction to alcohol… for months, or even years!”

Publisher: Cures Not Wars
Paperback: 347 pages
Illustrated

“Writing is perhaps humanity's greatest invention. Without it there would be no history and no civilization as we know it. The Story of Writing is the first book to demystify writing… explains the interconnection between sound, symbol and script, and goes on to discuss each of the major writing systems in turn, from cuneiform and Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphs to alphabets and the scripts of China and Japan today.”

Publisher: Thames and Hudson
Hardback: 224 pages
Illustrated

Synchronicity was coined by Carl Jung to describe meaningful coincidences that conventional notions of time and causality cannot explain. Everyone has them, but no definitive explanation can be given to fully explain them. “The most common meaningful coincidences are those seemingly random but apparently purposeful events which speak to us directly in terms of personal meaning. Jung's investigation of coincidences that occurred in his own life and in the lives of others led him to conclude that they are related to unconscious psychological processes. Alan Combs and Mark Holland use a unique transdisciplinary approach that not only sheds light on this strange phenomena, but also provides a glimpse into the hidden pattern of nature.”
The authors believe that nothing occurs independent of any other thing and that nothing that does occur is entirely random and prey to chance. This is a theory that has been revisited and repeated through-out history. Biologist Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic fields, networks of resonance that form webs of mutual influence beyond the usual limitations of space and time, is a return to the medieval notion that all things are connected. The book shows how modern science and ancient mythology are front and back of the same revolving door onto reality. The work of Jung and quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli is examined along with noted scientists Paul Kammerer, Werner Heisenberg, and David Boehm. The mystery is slowly unraveled to reveal these coincidences as phenomena that involve mind and matter, science and spirit, thus providing rational explanations for parapsychological events like telepathy, precognition, and intuition. This is an extremely interesting book that deals with a subject we are all familiar with but cannot explain. Is it a coincidence that you are right now reading this? AN

Publisher: Marlowe
Paperback: 184 pages

“A second later, while I was opening the box containing the LSD vial, I heard that President Kennedy had been assassinated. Only then did I understand the strange behavior of the people that morning. I said, ‘I am going to give him a shot of LSD-he asked for it.’
The doctor had a moment—you know very well the uneasiness in the medical mind about this drug. But no 'authority,' not even an army of authorities, could have stopped me then. I went into Aldous's room with the vial of LSD and prepared a syringe. The doctor asked me if I wanted him to give the shot-maybe because he saw that my hands were trembling.”

Publisher: Mercury House
Paperback: 330 pages
Illustrated

The 3-Pound Universe, a hip guide to the latest neuro-research circa 1986, has still yet to be surpassed as an overview of the scientific study of consciousness (including altered states of). The authors, veterans of Omni magazine, synthesize the findings of brain research all-stars each probing the grey matter with his/her own paradigm: John Lilly and his dolphins, isolation tanks and ketamine; Ronald K. Siegel and his empirical studies of hallucinatory case histories; Robert G. Heath and his brain electrode implant data; Candace Pert and her discovery of the opiate receptor; Paul Maclean and the “triune brain”; Karl Pribram and his “holographic brain”; as well as delving into the implications of endorphins, serotonin, and more esoteric brain chemistry compounds. SS

Publisher: Tarcher
Paperback: 410 pages
Illustrated

Britain's Society for Psychical Research provides archival material for a re-thinking of precognition. If it does exist, asks the author, “can it be understood in terms of modern science? It directly contradicts the theories of classical physics—but the modern view of time and space as set out in Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity may be able to accommodate it.” From waking impressions of the Titanic sinking, to experimental studies with animals, the quantum level phenomenon of “Action at a Temporal Distance” is explored. GR

Publisher: William Heinemann
Paperback: 178 pages