Showing results by author "Daniel Pinchbeck - introduction" in All Categories

We are in the midst of a powerful psychedelic renaissance. After four decades of hibernation, the promise of the psychoactive 60s - that deeper self-awareness, achieved through reality-bending substances and practices, will lead to greater external harmony - is again gaining a major following. The signs are everywhere, from the influence of today's preeminent psychedelic thinker Daniel Pinchbeck, to the renewed interest in the legacy of Terence McKenna, and to the upsurge of collective cultural phenomena like the spectacle of Burning Man.

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.