Alan W.Watts

  • THE JOYOUS COSMOLOGY: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness

hbk: Pantheon / Random House, (New York) US, 1962
pbk: Vintage Books / Random House, (New York) US, 1965

SBN ? (US hbk),,, 394-70299-9 (US pbk 1965)

non-fiction, autobiographical, consciousness, psychology, comparative religion, visionary experience, ecstasy, mescaline, psychedelics, peak experience, neurologic, metaphysics

Illustrated with 21 photographs. Foreword by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert.


"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." [jacket blurb, US pbk, 1965]


"...a stirring introduction to one of mankind's newest self-examinations." -- (in Newsweek ).


"This is one of the earliest books I read about psychedelics before experimenting on my own. It's a damn good look at the higher aspects of peak experiences. This is essential reading for those who dare to venture beyond the ordinary." --Henry W.Targowski (in Mark/Space , 1995).

Highly recommended.




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Of Related Interest

  • Beat Scene / Beat Generation / Bohemians
  • Counterculture / Underground
  • CyberCulture
  • Drugs
  • Metaphysics / Cosmology
  • Neurologic / Consciousness / Mind Control
  • Psychedelics / Altered States
  • Psychology

  • Send comments, additions, corrections, contributions to:
    hwt@anachron.demon.co.uk


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