Shelli Renée Joye - Tantric Psychophysics: A Structural Map of Altered States and the Dynamics of Consciousness

Dedicated to five teachers whom I met early in my life: Dr. John Lilly, Alan Watts, Chgyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Dr. Rammurti Mishra, and Fr. Bede Griffiths; and to all my many other mentors and friends including Dean Radin, Brian Swimme, Allan Combs, Dmitri Andreyev, James Ryan, and Robert McDermott; and to my amazing family, Susanne, Alyssa, Jason, Teresa, Stella, and Nuggles.

TANTRIC
PSYCHOPHYSICS

Tantric Psychophysics establishes a solid basis for comprehending consciousness and reality at the transcendental intersection between spirituality, philosophy, and science. Joyes skillful integration of key traditional teachings with mystical revelations and a modern transdisciplinary integrative approach beautifully illuminates points of common shared awareness and deepest truth. This book provides a trusty guide for those seeking to safely navigate the farthest expanses of self through meditation and contemplation.

CYNTHIA SUE LARSON, AUTHOR OF QUANTUM JUMPS

Tantric Psychophysics is an atlas of the soul and the network of subtle pathways that connect it to, but can also release it from, the physical body and surrounding cosmos. Recalling her intellectual and actual circumnavigation of the globe in search of the wisdom of spiritual explorers and psychonauts, Joye threads their various insights into a practical handbook meant to guide the reader through mental and physical processes that induce liberating states of extrasensory consciousness.

TIMOTHY DESMOND, PH.D., AUTHOR OF PSYCHE AND SINGULARITY

Joye has written a remarkable book that presents a wide range of traditionally esoteric knowledge in the context of contemporary physics, physiology, and philosophy. Her integral, interdisciplinary approach to consciousness offers practical suggestions that can inform and inspire readers to experience new dimensions of awareness.

IRA RECHTSHAFFER, PH.D., PSYCHOTHERAPIST AND AUTHOR OF WHAT WAS IN BUDDHAS LEFT HAND?

Drawing upon a deep wisdom gained from decades of practice and direct spiritual experience, Joye describes a wide range of contemplative practices from major traditions, clarifying and supporting these various techniques with insights from modern science and quantum physics. The resulting book offers a highly unique approach, free of culturally specific or scientific jargon, to explain clearly some of the most effective psychophysical tools that are available to the modern educated reader interested in the firsthand exploration of consciousness. Tantric Psychophysics is a one-of-a-kind approach to traditional mystical praxis. It is both pioneering and revelatory, an intellectual tour de force of exposition, and yet at the same time it offers a practical and easy-to-follow guide for integrating science and spirituality in the process of personal transformation.

JAMES D. RYAN, PH.D., PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF ASIAN PHILOSOPHIES AND CULTURES AT THE CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF INTEGRAL STUDIES

Entering altered states of consciousness is no longer the privilege of a select few. It is now at the doorstep of people in all walks of life with all kinds of worldviews and values. Joyes book provides a much-needed handbook for finding the path toward entering altered states and an important resource for meeting the challenge of living and thriving in todays world.

ERVIN LASZLO, AUTHOR OF THE IMMORTAL MIND

In an extraordinarily personal and deeply researched review of the embodied methods of achieving spiritual awareness, Joye provides us with a multicultural tour of the great souls in meditation and consciousness. People who have shared their methods and results are set side by side to provide a robust overview of the methods of inner awareness leading to enlightenment. Written in a style to be accessible to every reader, Joye provides deep insight into the inner workings of consciousness through different methods of meditation. A delightful and deeply insightful read.

JOHN ALAN TAYLOR, PH.D., DEAN OF LIBRARY AND LEARNING SUPPORT AT ORANGE COAST COLLEGE

Shelli Joye is a consciousness cartographer whose works appeal to those with a courageous soul and an adventurous spirit. The well-researched and illustrated material collected in Tantric Psychophysics will be a great aid for anyone interested in the nature of consciousness. Highly recommend this fascinating work!

MICHAEL PRYZDIA, PH.D.,SENIOR LECTURER AT ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

Shelli Joye is a master architect, bridging the gaps between our physics of today, consciousness, and spirituality, while revealing hidden secrets under her microscope of words and stories. Bravo!

LAUREN PALMATEER, PH.D., ELECTRICAL ENGINEER

Contents

AN INVITATION TO THE MODERN PSYCHONAUT

A s a product of over fifty years of my own introspective explorations and experiences, this book presents a wide variety of traditional and contemporary material to assist explorers of consciousness at any level to expand their ability to activate new psychophysical systems of awareness. It has been my experience that such an expansion of awareness can lead to the activation of traditionally occult or hidden powers of perception that have been formally described in traditional Tantric texts and taught by shamans and mystics in a great variety of cultures and ages.

Tantric Psychophysics should appeal to anyone seeking a cohesive map of human consciousness and practical guidance as to how to proceed at any stage in the development of new modes of perception for the exploration of new regions of awareness. The material offers a variety of integrated approaches useful not only to the contemplative practitioner but also to those seeking a deeper understanding of consciousness itself: what it is, and why it is, and what might be done with it. Congruent maps of consciousness developed in Tibet and India as well as those of the West are laid out in detail to provide a practical framework of understanding for scientists, philosophers, and the general reader, but should be of particular interest to those who are actively exploring these new regions of consciousness. In addition to reviewing Tibetan and Indian psychophysics, a part called Western Tantric Psychophysics presents the work of three prominent twentieth-century psychonauts: Rudolf Steiner, G. I. Gurdjieff, and Teilhard de Chardin, who called his work hyperphysics.

Herein are a broad range of theories and techniques that will leave the reader with new approaches to explore the spirit world, the various Heavens, the implicate order, the Mind of God, Brahma, Ein Sof, and other rarified regions of awareness. Such regions have been previously encountered, explored, and mapped in varying degrees by every global culture down through the millennia and have been the focus of exploration by generations of reclusive saints, mystics, shamans, and psychonauts. While much of this experiential knowledge was handed down in great secret from master to disciple, many of these pioneers did leave various written records of their experiments in consciousness, records of which are now accessible via modern technology.

For over half a century I have consistently studied, practiced, experienced, and pondered the results of the many techniques described in this book. I have included additional material that I have found useful during my own lifetime of exploring consciousness, a journey that began for me in the summer of 1967 with my first psychonautic experience catalyzed by LSD-25 on a California beach during a star-filled moonless night. The past half century has brought an explosion of revelations to the forefront in printed material, lectures, and a plethora of new schools exploring esoteric methods for the enhancement of consciousness. Practical information that was formerly concealed within the arcana of mystical traditions and studied by only a very small number of explorers has now become widely available for those who seek to awaken these possibilities.