Although commonly celebrated as a distinct manifestation of Americana, hippies and psychedelics are routinely de-emphasized in favor of direct political activism, a phenomenon that constrains the full telling of the hippie counterculture as it relates to a radical religiosity defined by mutuality and altruism. Psychedelic Mysticism reevaluates the religious significance of the 1960s psychedelic counterculture, tracing how psychedelics became entheogenic, leading sixties figures to transition personal moments of enlightenment into everyday projects of social justice.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Introduction: "Mysticism Sacred and Profane": Psychedelics, Hippies, and the Limits of Representation
Seeing Differently: Hippies and Problems of Representation
Psychedelic Consciousness and a Perennial Altruism
Chapter Breakdown
Chapter One: "Exploring the Borderlands of the Mind": Aldous Huxley, Transforming Consciousness, and Mapping Psychedelic Mysticism
Huxley and a Psychonautic Topography
Writing the Ineffable
Mapping the "Sacramental Vision of Reality"
From the Religious Mind of Huxley to the Altruistic Heart of Psychedelic Mystics
Chapter Two: "A Necessary but Not Sufficient Condition": Psychedelic Mysticism, Perennial Oneness, and Questions of Authenticity
From Material Hedonism to Mystical Liminality
Perennialism, Comparative Mysticism, and Psychedelic Consciousness
Psychedelic Mysticism: Universally Available or Culturally Contingent?
From Psychedelic Mysticism to Entheogenic Religion-A Case Study
Chapter Three: "Awakened from a Long Ontological Sleep": Timothy Leary, Deconditioning the Game, and Ecstatic Therapy
Acid Casualties, Mediated Images, and an "Empirical Metaphysics"
The Games of Life, Psychedelic Therapy, and Spiritual Efficacy
Religious Awakening and Changing Behavior
The Concord Prison Experiment-A Case Study
Chapter Four: "Trust your Divinity, Trust your Brain, Trust your Companions": Psychedelic Manuals, Entheogens, and the Flowering of a Perennial Religion
Appropriating Beliefs and the Challenge of Mystical Release
"A Journey to New Realms of Consciousness": An Ethics of Use
The Bardos and the Mystical Form of Psychedelic Consciousness
Psychedelic Manuals, Unitive Therapy, and the Void
Conclusion: "This Season's People": Stephen Gaskin, Psychedelic Unity, and a Religious Community of Social Justice
Psychedelics, Religion, and Moral Living
Psychedelic Communality and Religious Interbeing
Psychedelic Religiosity as "Right Vocation"
Standing "Behind his Principles": Sacralizing Praxis
Bibliography
