Frances Vaughan Books

This work reveals entheogens as catalysts for spiritual growth and direct encounters with the sacred. Contributions from notable figures such as Albert Hofmann, Huston Smith, Stanislav Grof, and Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin provide insights into how psychedelics can facilitate primary spiritual experiences that underpin all religions. The text discusses protocols for the ceremonial use of psychedelics and the challenges of integrating entheogenic insights into lasting change. It questions the reliance on secondary religious experiences, suggesting that powerful sacraments could enable direct experiences of the divine. The book examines psychoactive sacraments in the Bible, myths surrounding LSD, and transformative ayahuasca rituals of Santo Daime. Personal accounts, including Walter Pahnke’s Good Friday Experiment and a 25-year follow-up with participants, illustrate the potential of entheogens to foster spiritual development. By dispelling fears of inauthentic spirituality and ill-prepared encounters with the sacred, it posits that entheogens can lead to genuine encounters with God’s power, marking the dawn of a new religious era rooted in personal spiritual experience.

This book is a clarion call for an expanded vision of human possibilities. In it, many of the best thinkers of our day ask us to renew the perennial search for self-knowledge and to discover the deeper meaning of our lives.For this, they offer the transpersonal perspective—which extends beyond consciousness in its myriad forms, including altered states, yoga, dreams, and contemplation. This marriage of psychology and science with the spiritual traditions has borne ripe fruit: the transpersonal vision, which offers a uniquely generous and encompassing view of human nature.The fifty essays that make up Paths Beyond Ego apply transpersonal thinking to individual growth, psychotherapy, meditation, dreams, psychedelics, science, ethics, philosophy, ecology, and service. The result is an integrated and comprehensive overview of the many dimensions of human experience.In clear, accessible writing, the contributors suggest that our potential for enhancing human abilities is much greater than previously suspected and that our tools for this grand undertaking are widely available today. The transpersonal vision offers great hope for the future—and links us to the timeless wisdom of the ages.

A Course in Miracles is one of the greatest inspirational texts of our time. From that inexhaustible treasury of spiritual wisdom, Frances Vaughan and Roger Walsh have compiled this marvellous collection of poetry and insight, a companion volume to A Gift of Peace and Accept This Gift. Suffering may be an inevitable part of life, but we can all learn to heal ourselves and others. By coming to see that our pain is located in our minds and not our bodies, we can overcome the burden of the past, exchange anger and fear for forgiveness and love, and begin to understand how healing is our ‘function on earth'. Such are the eternal truths that all the great religions have taught, yet they have seldom been expressed with such beauty and power as in these haunting reflections.