The joyous cosmology : adventures in the chemistry of consciousness

**A classic account of the psychedelic experience**__The Joyous Cosmology__ is Alan Watts’s exploration of the insight that the consciousness-changing drugs LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin can facilitate “when accompanied with sustained philosophical reflection by a person who is in search, not of kicks, but of understanding.” More than an artifact, it is both a riveting memoir of Watts’s personal experiments and a profound meditation on our perennial questions about the nature of existence and the existence of the sacred.__Includes Watts’s article “Psychedelics and Religious Experience”__ Medical, legal, and religious experts have recently been confronted with the problem of the so-called "mystic drugs," that seem to produce, without any apparent physical harm, changes of consciousness comparable to the highest forms of aesthetic and religious experience. This book, by one of the world's leading investigators of the psychology of religion, is an evaluation of these drugs both objectively and from the vantage of the author's own personal experiments. The author's record of his own experiments is a vivid, lyrical account of valuable transformations that can occur in the human mind. The heightening of consciousness ranged all the way from aesthetic insights into nature to a philosophical view of existence as a comedy at once diabolic and divine, resolving itself into "a cosmology not only unified but also joyous." Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, formerly of the psychology department at Harvard University, have written the Foreword. The book is enhanced by photographs of natural forms, which in themselves stand as an abstract expression of the intriguing text. BLURBS . . . a stirring introduction to one of mankind's newest self-examinations. -- Newsweek In describing the effects of mescaline, Aldous Huxley{u2019}s The Doors of Perception opened a proverbial door for a generation of seekers. Watts walked through it with this classic account of the levels of insight that consciousness-changing drugs can facilitate ?when accompanied with sustained philosophical reflection by a person who is in search, not of kicks, but of understanding.? Watts and peers including foreword authors Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (then Harvard professors) anticipated physicists{u2019} recognizing the individual{u2019}s ?inseparability from the rest of the world,? the work of New Age thinkers who combine scientific findings and spiritual experiences, and federally funded clinical trials utilizing psilocybin to treat a variety of conditions. More than an artifact, The Joyous Cosmology is both a riveting memoir of Watts{u2019}s personal experiments and a profound meditation on our perennial questions about the nature of existence and the existence of the sacred A classic account of the psychedelic experience The Joyous Cosmology is Alan Watts’s exploration of the insight that the consciousness-changing drugs LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin can facilitate “when accompanied with sustained philosophical reflection by a person who is in search, not of kicks, but of understanding.” More than an artifact, it is both a riveting memoir of Watts’s personal experiments and a profound meditation on our perennial questions about the nature of existence and the existence of the sacred. Includes Watts’s article “Psychedelics and Religious Experience” "Philosopher Alan Watts describes his experiences with consciousness-changing drugs and the levels of insight that they can facilitate, illuminating questions about the nature of existence and the existence of the sacred. Originally published in 1962; new edition includes article on psychedelics written for the California Law Review"--Provided by publisher