Tor Syvrud is a mathematically trained former financial engineer whose rejection of a conventional achievement-driven life led him through international development in Myanmar, EMT training, wilderness therapy, graduate counseling studies and frontline pediatric psychiatric care. A destabilizing psychedelic experience shattered his materialist conception of reality and launched an intense confrontation with identity, madness, death, religion, meaning and spirituality. Seeking Shangri-La: Through the Seven Dragons of the Self transforms that lived journey into an unconventional philosophical initiation, using seven archetypal dragons to explore the forces that imprison the modern self.

Blending memoir, existential philosophy, psychology, psychedelic consciousness, social criticism and mystical writing, the book ultimately rejects spiritual escape itself: after searching for liberation beyond ordinary existence, Tor discovers Shangri-La through return—to the body, the Earth, other people, service, creativity and unconditional love. The book is accompanied by his multi-genre Multi-Dimensional Medicine music series and sits within a larger body of work concerning consciousness, healing and regenerative cultural transformation.