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InvisibleOneMoreRobot3021
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Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts.
    #6952080 - 05/22/07 01:58 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness by Alan Watts.

You can find this wonderful volume here in its entirety. If you don't like reading things online (and I don't either) do what I did and copy and paste the entire thing into word and print it out. It's not that hefty, a rather slim read.

A brief excerpt..

Quote:

When I wrote this book, I was well aware that LSD in particular might become a public scandal, especially in the United States where we had the precedents of Prohibition and of fantastically punitive laws against the use of marijuana - laws passed with hardly a pretense of scientific investigation of the drug, and amazingly foisted upon many other nations. That was nine years ago (1961) and since then all that I feared would happen has happened. I ask myself whether I should have ever written this book, whether I was profaning the mysteries and casting pearls before swine. I reasoned, however, that since Huxley and others had already let the secret out, it was up to me to encourage a positive, above-board, fearless, and intelligent approach to what are now known as psychedelic chemicals.

But in vain. Thousands of young people, fed up with standard-brand religions which provided nothing but talk, admonition and (usually) bad ritual, rushed immediately to LSD and other psychedelics in search of some key to genuine religious experience. As might be expected, there were accidents. A few potential psychotics were pushed over the brink, usually because they took LSD in uncontrolled circumstances, in excessive dosage, or in the air and threatening atmosphere of hospital research run by psychiatrists who imagined that they were investigating artificially induced schizophrenia. Because most news is bad news, these accidents received full coverage in the press, to the relative exclusion of reports on the overwhelming majority of such splendid and memorable experiences as I describe further on. A divorce is news; a happy marriage isn't. There were even deliberately falsified stories in the newspapers, as that several young men taking LSD stared at the sun for so long that they became blind. Psychiatrists raised alarms about "brain damage," for which no solid evidence was ever produced, and warnings were issued about its destructive effect on the genes, which was later shown to be insignificant and more or less the sme as the effects of coffee and aspirin.

...

Now a law against LSD is simply unenforceable because the substance is tasteless and colorless, because effective dosages can be confined, in vast amounts, to minute spaces, and because it can be disguised as almost anything drinkable or eatable from gin to blotting paper. Thus as soon as the reliable Sandoz material was withdrawn, amateur chemists began to produce black-market LSD in immense quantities - LSD of uncertain quality and dosage, often mixed with such other ingredients as methedrine, belladonna, and heroin. Consequently the number of psychotic episodes resulting from its use began to increase, aggravated by the fact that, in imporperly controlled situations and under threat from the police, the LSD taker is an easy victim of extreme paranoia. At the same time, some of these amateurs, mainly graduate students in chemistry with a mission to "turn people on," produced some tolerably good LSD. Thus there were still so manymore positive experiences than negative that fascination with this alchemy continued and expanded, and though the general public associates its use with hippies and college students, it has been very widely used by mature adults - doctors, lawyers, clergymen, artists, businessmen, professors, and levelheaded housewives.

The blanket suppression of LSD and other psychedelics has been a complete disaster in that

1) It has seriously hindered proper research on these drugs;
2) It has created a profitable black market by raising the price;
3) It has embarassed the police with an impossible assignment;
4) It has created the false fascination with fruit that is forbidden;
5) It has seriously impeded the normal work of courts of justice, and herded thousands of non-criminal types of people into already overcrowded prisons, which, as everyone knows, are schools for sodomy and for crime as a profession;
6) It has made users of psychedelics more susceptible to paranoia than ever.




--------------------
Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake.

-Erik Davis

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InvisibleOneMoreRobot3021
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Registered: 06/06/03
Posts: 61,026
Loc: the sky
Re: Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts. [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #6952163 - 05/22/07 02:18 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

How about this paragraph...

Quote:

Psychedelics are feared, basically, for the same reason that mystical experience has been feared, discouraged, and even condemned in the Catholic, Protestant, and Islamic orthodoxies. It leads to disenchantment and apathy toward the approved social rewards of status and success, to chuckles at pretentiousness and pomposity, and, worse, to disbelief in the Church-and-State dogma that we are all God's adopted orphans or fluky little germs in a mechanical and mindless universe. No authoritarian government, whether ecclesiastical or secular, can tolerate the apprehension that each one of us is God in disguise, and that our real inmost, outmost, and utmost Self cannot be killed. That's why they had to do away with Jesus.




--------------------
Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake.

-Erik Davis

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InvisibleOneMoreRobot3021
Male


Registered: 06/06/03
Posts: 61,026
Loc: the sky
Re: Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts. [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #6955903 - 05/23/07 09:27 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

:whistling:


--------------------
Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake.

-Erik Davis

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InvisibleEllisDSox
King Hella!

Registered: 01/22/07
Posts: 25,730
Re: Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts. [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #6955968 - 05/23/07 09:43 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Added it to favourites. I'll read it when I get the chance. Thanks for posting it.


--------------------
Disclaimer: If you have any kind of heart condition, my posts are not for you. You could literally die from reading the first couple of words in any one of them. Scroll down the page, live your life and prosper, but don't read my posts because your heart will probably explode. I am not joking.

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Offlinearne
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Re: Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts. [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #6956006 - 05/23/07 09:51 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

nice, thanks for the link :laugh:
im gonna put it on my ipod to read in the train

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Onlineschmutzen
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Re: Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts. [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #6956060 - 05/23/07 10:06 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

OneMoreRobot3021 said:
How about this paragraph...

Quote:

Psychedelics are feared, basically, for the same reason that mystical experience has been feared, discouraged, and even condemned in the Catholic, Protestant, and Islamic orthodoxies. It leads to disenchantment and apathy toward the approved social rewards of status and success, to chuckles at pretentiousness and pomposity, and, worse, to disbelief in the Church-and-State dogma that we are all God's adopted orphans or fluky little germs in a mechanical and mindless universe. No authoritarian government, whether ecclesiastical or secular, can tolerate the apprehension that each one of us is God in disguise, and that our real inmost, outmost, and utmost Self cannot be killed. That's why they had to do away with Jesus.







Self sufficiency is competition for their business.


--------------------


"Blow up your TV, throw away your paper.  Go to the country, build you a home."

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InvisibleOneMoreRobot3021
Male


Registered: 06/06/03
Posts: 61,026
Loc: the sky
Re: Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts. [Re: schmutzen]
    #6956062 - 05/23/07 10:06 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Well put.


--------------------
Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake.

-Erik Davis

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Offlinetheorganicdomino
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Re: Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts. [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #6956068 - 05/23/07 10:08 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I've had a copy of this book for a year or so now and have read it about 10 times!

THE best description of the psychedelic experience ever committed to paper!

Pure genius!


--------------------
"You've got to get hold of the thread of marching time, pull the fuck thing down, get on the end of it and pang yourself to the infinitude of absolute mind"
Ken Campbell - Furtive Nudist

"The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced" - Aart van der Leeuw

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InvisibleOneMoreRobot3021
Male


Registered: 06/06/03
Posts: 61,026
Loc: the sky
Re: Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts. [Re: theorganicdomino]
    #6956072 - 05/23/07 10:09 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

theorganicdomino said:
I've had a copy of this book for a year or so now and have read it about 10 times!

THE best description of the psychedelic experience ever committed to paper!

Pure genius!




I'm very jealous that you have a physical copy of the book - they seem hard to find, out of print for quite some time now.


--------------------
Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake.

-Erik Davis

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Offlinetheorganicdomino
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Re: Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts. [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #6956098 - 05/23/07 10:16 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Try amazon sellers:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0394702999/ref=pd_bbs_sr_olp_1/102-0358976-1880926?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179936819&sr=1-1

As for my copy - the cover's battered, the pages are nicotine yellow, but it's from the original print run and reeks of the sixties.

Along with Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, it's one of my favourite books.


--------------------
"You've got to get hold of the thread of marching time, pull the fuck thing down, get on the end of it and pang yourself to the infinitude of absolute mind"
Ken Campbell - Furtive Nudist

"The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced" - Aart van der Leeuw

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InvisibleOneMoreRobot3021
Male


Registered: 06/06/03
Posts: 61,026
Loc: the sky
Re: Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts. [Re: theorganicdomino]
    #6956102 - 05/23/07 10:17 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

theorganicdomino said:
Along with Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, it's one of my favourite books.




The only book I never, ever tire of re-reading. :smile:


--------------------
Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake.

-Erik Davis

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Offlinetheorganicdomino
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Re: Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts. [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #6956111 - 05/23/07 10:19 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

OneMoreRobot3021 said:
Quote:

theorganicdomino said:
Along with Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, it's one of my favourite books.




The only book I never, ever tire of re-reading. :smile:




That book is so fucking important to me, I read it every couple of months.


--------------------
"You've got to get hold of the thread of marching time, pull the fuck thing down, get on the end of it and pang yourself to the infinitude of absolute mind"
Ken Campbell - Furtive Nudist

"The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced" - Aart van der Leeuw

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InvisibleOneMoreRobot3021
Male


Registered: 06/06/03
Posts: 61,026
Loc: the sky
Re: Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts. [Re: theorganicdomino]
    #6956116 - 05/23/07 10:20 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

theorganicdomino said:
Quote:

OneMoreRobot3021 said:
Quote:

theorganicdomino said:
Along with Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, it's one of my favourite books.




The only book I never, ever tire of re-reading. :smile:




That book is so fucking important to me, I read it every couple of months.




:heart:!

Whenever I re-read it, it kind of has the same effect on me that I look for in a trip...I know a lot of people assume heads get scrambled by tripping but I always feel like I'm defragmenting my mental hard drive. Something about reading Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind makes me feel like I'm smoothing out wrinkles, returning to a calm baseline.


--------------------
Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake.

-Erik Davis

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Offlinetheorganicdomino
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Re: Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts. [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #6956149 - 05/23/07 10:29 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

OneMoreRobot3021 said:
Quote:

theorganicdomino said:
Quote:

OneMoreRobot3021 said:
Quote:

theorganicdomino said:
Along with Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, it's one of my favourite books.




The only book I never, ever tire of re-reading. :smile:




That book is so fucking important to me, I read it every couple of months.




:heart:!

Whenever I re-read it, it kind of has the same effect on me that I look for in a trip...I know a lot of people assume heads get scrambled by tripping but I always feel like I'm defragmenting my mental hard drive. Something about reading Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind makes me feel like I'm smoothing out wrinkles, returning to a calm baseline.




Reading it is meditation in itself.

I totally concur with your defragmentation metaphor - I trip once a month in order to keep my head in order, filter out nonsense and irrelevancy and it keeps me relatively sane.

I often use Zen Mind as good packing material for a trip - even having it lying around while I'm tripping can help guide me back from any storms in the psyche.


--------------------
"You've got to get hold of the thread of marching time, pull the fuck thing down, get on the end of it and pang yourself to the infinitude of absolute mind"
Ken Campbell - Furtive Nudist

"The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced" - Aart van der Leeuw

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OfflineVampireSlayer
killing ghosts,zombies andvampires forlife
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Re: Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts. [Re: theorganicdomino]
    #6956341 - 05/23/07 11:35 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

ONE MORE:: hey man this is nice! how'd you find this?


--------------------
I Don't come to fight flesh and blood but spiritual wickedness in high and low places

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InvisibleOneMoreRobot3021
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Re: Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts. [Re: VampireSlayer]
    #6956382 - 05/23/07 11:45 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I went to a lecture at Alex Grey's art gallery, the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, featuring Ralph Metzner (of Leary, Alpert and Metzner fame). During the Q&A one of the men in attendance, a photographer at every Grey event, mentioned it and it sounded quite good, Metzner endorsed it as well.


--------------------
Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake.

-Erik Davis

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Invisibleslackophage
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Re: Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts. [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #6956424 - 05/23/07 11:57 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Erowid added the PDF version recently. Looks good, have to check this out soon.

http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/joyous_cosmology.pdf

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InvisibleOneMoreRobot3021
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Registered: 06/06/03
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Re: Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts. [Re: slackophage]
    #6956433 - 05/23/07 12:01 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Ah! Thanks for posting that!


--------------------
Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake.

-Erik Davis

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InvisibleOneMoreRobot3021
Male


Registered: 06/06/03
Posts: 61,026
Loc: the sky
Re: Suggested reading: The Joyous Cosmology, by Alan Watts. [Re: OneMoreRobot3021]
    #7041180 - 06/13/07 08:53 AM (16 years, 9 months ago)

Bump cause I am really enjoying it all over again.


--------------------
Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake.

-Erik Davis

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