Concerned with scholarly, popular, and religious backdrops that
understand the connection between psychedelics and mystical
experiences to be devoid of moral concerns and ethical dimensions-a
position supported empirically by the rise of acid fascism and
psychedelic cults by the late 1960s-Psychedelic Mysticism:
Transforming Consciousness, Religious Experiences, and Voluntary
Peasants in Postwar America traces the development of sixties
psychedelic mysticism from the deconditioned mind and perennial
philosophy of Aldous Huxley, to the sacramental ethics of Timothy
Leary, Richard Alpert, and Ralph Metzner, to the altruistic
religiosity practiced by Stephen Gaskin and The Farm. Building
directly off the pioneering psychedelic writing of Huxley, these
psychedelic mystics understood the height of psychedelic
consciousness as an existential awareness of unitive oneness, a
position that offered worldly alternatives to the maladies
associated with the postwar moment (e.g., vapid consumerism and
materialism, lifeless conformity, unremitting racism, heightened
militarism). In opening a doorway to a common world, Morgan Shipley
locates how psychedelics challenged the coherency of Western
modernity by fundamentally reorienting postwar society away from
neoliberal ideologies and toward a sacred understanding of reality
defined by mutual coexistence and responsible interdependence. In
1960s America, psychedelics catalyzed a religious awakening defined
by compassion, expressed through altruism, and actualized in
projects that sought to ameliorate the conditions of the least
advantaged among us. In the exact moments that historians and
cultural critics often locate as signaling the death knell of the
counterculture, Gaskin and The Farm emerged, not as a response to
the perceived failures of the hippies, nor as an alternative to
sixties politicos, but in an effort to fulfill the religious
obligation to help teach the world how to live more harmoniously.
Today, as we continue to confront issues of socioeconomic
inequality, entrenched differences, widespread violence, and the
limits of religious pluralism, Psychedelic Mysticism serves as a
timely reminder of how religion in America can operate as a tool
for destabilization and as a means to actively reimagine the very
basis of how people relate-such a legacy can aid in our own efforts
to build a more peaceful, sustainable, and compassionate world.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
