Lexington Books
Pages: 294
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-4985-0909-1 • Hardback • November 2015 • $133.00 • (£102.00)
978-1-4985-0910-7 • eBook • November 2015 • $126.00 • (£97.00)
Morgan Shipley is visiting assistant professor in religious studies at Michigan State University.
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
In this fascinating and wide-ranging text, Morgan Shipley notes that in our culture, the use of psychedelics (especially in the 1960s) is often associated with a type of hedonistic and narcissistic turning inwards, a drug-induced pseudo-mysticism that deflected energy from the political and social activism of the time. Shipley suggests that while “acid casualties” did exist, and are what stand out in our collective memory of that time period, in actuality, psychedelics often served as a catalyst for a genuine religious awakening, on both an individual and cultural level.
Shipley does an excellent job of recovering the all-too-often overlooked mystical dimensions of the use of psychedelics, particularly in the 1960s. In addition, his suggestion that the mystical insights that are frequently catalyzed by psychedelics can often lead to ethically and spiritually transformed lives is thoughtful and provocative.
— Reading Religion
Morgan Shipley’s new book, Psychedelic Mysticism: Transforming Consciousness, Religious Experiences, and Voluntary Peasants in Postwar America, is going to prove quite helpful in my attempt to persuade my students to take seriously the connections between psychedelic drugs, religious awakenings, and countercultural ways of living during the 1960s. The goal of the book, according to Shipley, is “to expand how we understand the religious efficacy of psychedelics, specifically in terms of the perennial interpretations that emerged as a means for fundamentally reordering the makeup of modern society” (3).... Shipley achieves this goal and supports his argument masterfully.... Most impressive about Shipley’s book is the author’s willingness to use his research to confront both historical and popular misconceptions about the 1960s.... Shipley’s book is a testament to the importance of paying attention to psychedelic religion and offers an alternative way of understanding this pivotal decade in U.S. history.... [This book] will be particularly helpful in undergraduate and graduate courses that focus on the 1960s and on American religious, intellectual, and cultural history. Beyond academia, this book should also be of interest to a sizable segment of the population grappling with the changing role of religion in contemporary American society.
— Journal for the Study of Radicalism