THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE. A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead

New York: University Books, 1964. First Edition. SIGNED BY TIMOTHY LEARY. Illustrated with a designed frontispiece. Square quarto, publisher's cloth, pictorially decorated on the upper and lower covers in green, black, red and white and lettered in colours on the spine panel, the endleaves decorated in red and black with intricate design. 159 pp. A fine copy, beautifully preserved. Rare in this condition and especially signed by the most important of the three authors. FIRST EDITION, SIGNED BY TIMOTHY LEARY, VERY RARE THUS. The authors' statement reflects their interest in how psychedelics can increase awareness and the learning through the experiments they were making at the time. "The drug is only one component of a psychedelic session. Equally important is the mental and spiritual preparation, both before and in the course of taking the drug. The authors find no needed to invent new mental and spiritual materials for this purpose. The great literature of meditation lends itself very well to this use. This particular manual uses for this preparation material from THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD. The authors make an important contribution to the interpretation of THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD. They show that it is concerned, not with the dead, but with the living. The last section of the manual provides instructions for an actual psychedelic session, under adequate safeguards."
Copies of the early works of Leary and Alpert are quite rare, especially signed or inscribed by these early proponents of using psychedelics to enhance awareness and experience.