NICHOLAS SAND is a former unauthorized chemist and low-profile hero of the psychedelic underground. For the last four decades he has been a student of yoga, the Kabballah, meditation, Krishna consciousness, Sufism, aikido, T'ai Chi, and Zen, as well as having studied the teachings of Krishnamurti, Milarepa, Ramakrishna, Rajneesh, and other great philosophers. In the early years of psychedelic exploration, Sand was one of the original guides at the Millbrook commune, where thousands of individuals were turned on. From 1996 until late 2000, he was a prisoner of the War on Drugs--first in Canada and then in the USA. He is currently working on his forthcoming book, Psychedelic Secrets.

WRYE SENTENTIA is co-director of the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics, where she oversees projects that aim to focus public attention on neuro-technologies in relation to individual rights of mind, as well as neuroethical concerns about trends in psychopharmacology. In Summer 2002, she directed the development of a university course and curriculum on "Cognitive Liberty & Neuroethics." She has published articles and papers on topics ranging from 18th century utopian literature to 21st century forms of mental surveillance, and has provided comments to the President's Council on Bioethics on the topic of mind-enhancing technologies and drugs. Sententia holds an undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley and a Master's degree in Comparative Literature; she is currently writing a Ph.D. thesis on cyber-punk science fiction literature, dissident tactics, and real world mind technologies at the University of California, Davis.

ZOE SEVEN is an international lecturer, author, and cartographer of altered states of consciousness. His primary area of research is "techno-shamanism," a fusion of the use of psychoactive plants and compounds with brainwave technology devices. He is the author of the book, Into the Void, which describes his research and experiments in the late 1990s (see www.zoe7.com). His forthcoming book, Back from the Void (due out later this year), is the second installment of his on-going trilogy. He has written for entheogen and neuro-technology related magazines, has been interviewed on radio and television programs, and will be featured in an upcoming documentary film dealing with the topic of consciousness. Recently he traveled to Lisbon, Portugal, and lectured at the Boom Festival, and he is a core staff member at the Ayahuasca Healing Retreat seminars in Brazil.

ANN SHULGIN is a researcher and writer who—for a time, while they were still legal—worked with psychedelics such as MDMA and 2C-B as a lay-therapist. Her unique insight into the beneficial effects that psychedelics can have is invaluable. With her husband Sasha, she has co-authored the books Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved: A Chemical Love Story (PIHKAL) and the long-anticipated sequel, Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved: The Continuation (TIHKAL), and is currently working on a forthcoming book that dabbles in cactus quinoline alkaloids, tentatively titled Book 3.

SASHA SHULGIN is a pharmacologist and chemist who has synthesized and bioassayed hundreds of psychoactive compounds. He has written the book Controlled Substances: A Chemical & Legal Guide to Federal Drug Laws, and along with his wife Ann, he co-authored the books PIHKAL and TIHKAL. He is currently working on a forthcoming book that dabbles in cactus quinoline alkaloids, tentatively titled Book 3, and also spends his time fielding questions for "Ask Dr. Shulgin" on the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics web site.

DANIEL SIEBERT is a pharmacognosist, ethnobotanist, educator, and author. He has been researching the visionary plant Salvia divinorum for over twenty years and was the first person to work on the human pharmacology of salvinorin A and to clearly identify this compound as the primary psychoactive principal of the plant. He has studied S. divinorum in its native habitat in Oaxaca, Mexico, and has worked with it under the guidance of Mazatec shamans. His work appears in scientific journals and other publications. Siebert is the creator of the Salvia divinorum Research and Information Center web site. This was the first Internet resource to focus exclusively on information about S. divinorum and it continues to be the most comprehensive. He is also the founder and moderator of Sagewise, a closed-membership e-mail discussion forum for S. divinorum researchers and professionals, and its predecessor, Salvia, which was the first on-line S. divinorum discussion forum. Siebert was featured in the 1998 television documentary Sacred Weeds, which aired on channel 4 in the United Kingdom. His comments and opinions on S. divinorum have appeared in USA Today, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and numerous daily newspapers in the United States, as well as in several other countries. Similarly he has discussed the plant on CNN, Fox News, Telemundo International, and many local television stations. He is currently completing work on Divine Sage, his comprehensive book about Salvia divinorum.

R.U. SIRIUS is best known as the former editor-in-chief of the acclaimed Mondo 2000. His books include How to Mutate and Take Over the World, The Cyberpunk's Handbook, and 21st Century Revolutionary, and he co-wrote Design for Dying with Timothy Leary. Sirius is currently the executive editor of the political magazine The Thresher, and senior editor of DigIt, a digital culture magazine. He has written on the topics of cyberculture, smart drugs, surveillance, nanotechnology, psychedelics, and his work has appeared in magazines such as 21C, Rolling Stone, and on-line at Salon.com and the Disinformation web site. He is the founder of the Revolution Party, and as such campaigned to be President of the United States in 2000 (apparently losing due to some miscounted votes, possibly in Florida). Writing and interviews with Sirius are posted at www.revolting.com/media. He is currently working on a history book called Counter Cultures Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House for Villard/Random House.

HUSTON SMITH is an internationally recognized philosopher and scholar of religion. His book The World's Religions has sold over 2.5 million copies, and his films on Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, and Sufism have all won awards at international film festivals. The latest of Smith’s books are Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals and Why Religion Matters. His other books include The Purposes of Higher Education, Forgotten Truth, Beyond the Post-Modern Mind, One Nation Under God: The Triumph of the Native American Church, and (with David Griffin) Primordial Truth and Postmodern Theology.

ALLAN SNYDER received the Marconi Prize—"the world's foremost prize in communication and information technology"—in New York City, December 2001. Bulletin/Newsweek magazine describes him as "agile, playful, audacious, inventive, [he] leaps across boundaries, making unexpected connections, juggling a dozen trains of thought at once." Snyder's controversial hypothesis that the extraordinary skills of savants (like Dustin Hoffman's character in Rainman) can be turned on by turning off part of the brain with magnetic pulses is featured in The New York Times, the Times of London, the Discovery Channel documentary Savants, the BBC documentary Fragments of Genius, Barbara Walters 20/20, and Discovery magazine. Alan is the director of the Centre for the Mind, and holds distinguished professorships at two universities.  He writes for the popular press and frequently appears on radio and television. Previously, he was a John Guggenheim Fellow at the Yale School of Medicine and a Royal Society Guest Research Fellow at Cambridge University. He has degrees from Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University College, London. Dr Snyder is a fellow of the Royal Society of London and the recipient of its 2001 Clifford Patterson Prize.

MYRON STOLAROFF is one of the psychedelic community's "great elders," and he was involved in the early scientific study of the effects of LSD at a time when this compound was still legally available. Active in consciousness studies for over 40 years, Stolaroff has published numerous papers relating to psychedelics, as well as two books: Thanatos to Eros: Thirty-five Years of Psychedelic Exploration, which details his own entheogenic explorations, and The Secret Chief: Conversations with a Pioneer of the Underground Psychedelic Therapy Movement. Stolaroff is a strong advocate of developing a meditation practice to deepen and integrate psychedelic experiences, as described in his Journal of Humanistic Psychology paper "Are Psychedelics Useful in the Practice of Buddhism?"

MARTHA TOLEDO was born in San Miguel Chimilapa, Oaxaca, Mexico. Her photography has been exhibited in several solo shows in Mexico and Germany, as well in group shows in Mexico, El Salvador, and Italy. It has also appeared in publications such as Revista Private, Revista de Antropología Social del Ciesas, and Revista Identidades. Toledo was the recipient of the 2001­2002 FONCA grant and the 2003 FOESCA grant. She has managed a gallery and lecture/demonstration series by artists from Mexico, the United States, Europe, and Asia, in “Jardín,” Juchitan. As well, she founded a library and reading program in an annex to “Jardín.” Currently, Toledo hosts a radio talk show that covers cultural events and regularly invites children to discuss literature.

FRED TOMASELLI assembles hybrid pictures out of various materials, including paint, pills, hallucinogenic plants, and photo collage. Encapsulated in tamperproof resin, these arraigned substances alter perception by traveling to the brain through the act of seeing. His work is inspired by the ideal that painting is both a mirror on the world and a window to another reality. His art blurs the distinction between the real and the artificial and is shaped by the chemical sublime. Fred's work has been seen at numerous institutions around the world including a recent survey show at the Palm Beach ICA which then traveled to Site Santa Fe. He had a recent solo show at the Whitney Museum at Philip Morris, New York which traveled to the Indianapolis Art Museum. His work has been included in the Corcoran, Lyon, Berlin and Liverpool Biennials. He's also participated in numerous museum group shows such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Brooklyn Museum and the Whitney Museum. He's had solo gallery shows at Jack Tilton Gallery, New York; Christopher Grimes Gallery, Los Angeles; Galleri Anne de Villepiox, Paris; Gallerie Gebaure, Berlin; and White Cube, London. He is represented by the James Cohan Galley, New York where his next solo show will open in May. To view some of Fred's art online, click here.

ROBERT VENOSA has had his Fantastic Realism art exhibited worldwide and it is represented in major collections, including those of noted museums, rock stars and European aristocracy. In addition to painting, sculpting and film design--pre-sketches and conceptual design for the movies Dune and Fire in the Sky for Paramount Pictures, and Race for Atlantis for IMAX--Venosa's work has been the subject of three books, with the most recent, Illuminatus, featuring text by Terence McKenna. New York City born, Venosa was transported into the world of fine art in the late 1960s after having experimented with psychedelics and having seen the work of the Fantastic Realists--Ernst Fuchs and Mati Klarwein in particular--both of whom he eventually met and studied under. Along with Martina Hoffmann, Venosa also devotes a few weeks each year giving workshops at such institutes and locations as Naropa/Boulder; the Ayahuasca Healing retreat center in Manaus/Brazil; the Art Academy in Florence/Italy; Skyros Institute on the island of Skyros/Greece; Villa Arenella in Cadaques/Spain; Paradise Point in Kona/Hawaii; and Esalen at Big Sur/California. Of his work, Salvador Dali has said, "Bravo Venosa! Dali is pleased to see spiritual madness painted with such a fine technique." While Terence McKenna has said, "Robert Venosa's imagery is a portal into the mescaline canyons of the imagination. His is an informed yet visionary grasp of the icons of the spiritual and erotic." Presently Venosa maintains studios in both Boulder, Colorado, and Cadaques, Spain. See www.venosa.com for examples of his art.

PETER LAMBORN WILSON is the author of over twenty books, including The Drunken Universe, Sacred Drift, Scandal, and Ploughing the Clouds: the Search for Irish Soma. He lives in New York and works for Semiotext(e) magazine, Pacific Radio, and The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.