Psychedelics and Religious Insight: A Precedent in American Psycho-Spirituality from 1 William James to Timothy Leary

Psychedelics and Religious Insight: A Precedent in American Psycho-Spirituality from 2 William James to Timothy Leary

Psychedelics and Religious Insight: A Precedent in American Psycho-Spirituality from 3 William James to Timothy Leary

ABSTRACT

Psychedelics and Religious Insight: A Precedent in American Psycho- Spirituality from William James to Timothy Leary

by Connor James Storck

The primary purpose of this thesis is to stress that there is a relationship between the texts one reads and psychedelic experiences. Reading texts has an effect on set and setting with respect to psychedelic experiences. Further, texts read—by figures like Timothy Leary—in the afterglow of a psychedelic experience can influence later integration of said experiences into one’s worldview. This thesis tracks this through the influence of mind-altering substances in the works of both William James (1842-1910) and Timothy Leary (1920-1996) in order to display James’ influence on Leary. James’ impact of Leary intellectually is critical because recent scholarship and changes in cultural and societal perspectives have led to a Psychedelic Renaissance in many disciplines from the clinical-therapeutic to the religious-spiritual. The paper covers select and relevant historical information relating to periods of the Anesthetic Revolution and the Long

Sixties. I show how James came to experiment with various mind-altering substances and the results of those experiments. For this reason, the thesis also interacts with Benjamin Paul Blood, a figure whose work guided James’ thought towards the use of mind-altering substances. These mind-altering substances include nitrous oxide, diethyl ether, alcohol, chloroform, and peyote. I apply Leary’s theory of set and setting to better understand James’ Hegelian insights while on nitrous oxide. The thesis explicitly shows how James’ mystical hallmarks of noetic quality and ineffability were influential in Leary’s early psychedelic research. Further, I argue for the thesis Psychedelics and Religious Insight: A Precedent in American Psycho-Spirituality from 4 William James to Timothy Leary that James set a precedent for the use of mind-altering substances for religio-mystical insight that was later expanded upon and entrusted to the masses in the form of Leary’s psychedelic projects.

Evidence suggests that these theorists used psychedelics for insights akin to an anagogic interpretation of various works from Hegel to the Tao Te Ching. The conclusion of this thesis briefly ties in contemporary examples and suggests these trends will continue today in the wake of current Psychedelic Renaissance. Psychedelics and Religious Insight: A Precedent in American Psycho-Spirituality from 5 William James to Timothy Leary Acknowledgements

I want first to acknowledge the burdens many have faced in the last year during the

Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic weighed heavy on the collective psyche of humankind. Many families suffered as loved ones lost their lives, alone and gasping for air that would not come.

While disappointments, defeat, and death seemed in excess over the past year, I hope that this experience will open the hearts of all those who have suffered. I hope this suffering might make each of us stronger and better able to take up the burdens of those around us. Passion can be measured in the magnitudes of suffering one is willing to take up for their own causes, but compassion is measured in the magnitude of suffering one is willing to take up to ease the burden of another. I appreciate and acknowledge the compassion of those around me who have helped me through this past year.

Completing my thesis would not have been possible without the support, love, and care of my partner, AriAnna Swaab. Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, she stood by my side. More than anyone else, she was there for me when the light at the end of the tunnel was dimmest.

Without her love and compassion, I would not have made it to this point. AriAnna, I love you and thank you dearly from the core of my being for all the compassion you have shown me. I pray that many more years of triumph over struggle will come to bolster our love for each other.

Thank you kindly, my love.

Being locked away in a small room halfway across the country from my family was not an easy experience. However, I want to thank my parents, who were always there for me when I needed someone to talk to. To my mother, Kerry, thank you for being a steady voice and listening to me even when what I said made little sense to you at all. Simply saying that "it was going to be ok" helped more than you will ever know. To my father, Bradley, thank you for Psychedelics and Religious Insight: A Precedent in American Psycho-Spirituality from 6 William James to Timothy Leary being an example of strength and encouragement. To my stepfather, Mark, thank you for trying to understand my arguments even when they made little sense.

To my sister, Phelan, I thank you for understanding that your brother, though bogged down by the stresses of the last two years, is still always willing to support you and care for you.

To my brother Matt and sister-in-law Caitlyn, I apologize for missing your wedding due to the pandemic, school, and exams. Your care in this event helped me make it through my program without the weight of guilt being too much to bear. Thank you for understanding. To the rest of my siblings, I love and appreciate you all. Thank you for the support you all have offered me over the last two years.

To my Grandpa Storck, thank you for your excitement when I talked to you about my projects. I would also like to thank my Grandma Storck, who sat on the phone for hours when I spoke and read my thesis. Your time was a gift that I will always cherish. To my Papa Jim and

Grandma Oooh Whoo, thank you for reading my thesis along the way. Your comments were always a source of encouragement. Thank you also for the care packages. They made my days brighter and ensured I had something to eat. I also want to thank my partner's mother, Janie, whose kindness and care are examples to others. Janie, you welcomed me into your family, and I cannot express to you enough my gratitude now, but I hope in the years to come, you will see the benefits of your efforts in supporting Ari and me. To my "Grandpa K," who remained strong in the passing of my "Grandma K" this past year, thank you for being an example of strength and source of challenge to my ideas. For "Grandma K," I am sorry I was not there when you passed, but I know your warmth and love continue to keep eyes on me. My family is large and ever- growing, and if a name is missed, please know that it is not out of lack of gratitude. I love and Psychedelics and Religious Insight: A Precedent in American Psycho-Spirituality from 7 William James to Timothy Leary appreciate you all; your support is beyond return. Thank you all kindly from the core of my being.

I also want to express my deepest appreciation to my committee members. I am deeply indebted to my primary advisor, Dr. Brian Ogren, who helped better my thesis throughout the last months of the writing process. I am sure that coming off of sabbatical into the pandemic

Zoom classroom to advise a student you had only met once in person two years prior could not have been an easy task. Still, you continued with tenacious grace, so I thank you for your effort and support. I would also like to extend my deepest gratitude to Dr. Claire Fanger. Her direction and challenge to my ideas helped me see avenues for bettering my arguments. I would also like to acknowledge your incredible compassion and strength through the trials of caring for your family. You truly have love in your heart, and I wish that this be acknowledged and commended.

Your strength and intellect are an example worth striving for. I hope one day I might be as proficient with my voice and intellect as you are. Thank you kindly from the bottom of my heart.

I am also incredibly grateful to Dr. Jeffrey Kripal. Your voice remained a calm source of encouragement throughout these last two years of graduate school. Thank you for offering me directions and calm concern. I also want to thank Dr. Bill Parsons for his cheerful and energetic charisma, who helped me through my final semester at Rice. Thanks should also go out to Dr.

Nikki Clements and Dr. Anthony Pinn. Your courses challenged my ways of thinking and helped me grow as an individual student and scholar.

To the fellow members of my cohort, who know the struggles of the M.A. program over these last two years more than anyone else, I applaud and acknowledge you all. Shani, you are incredible. Teaching at HCC and being a supporting and loving mother, all while finishing this program at Rice—you are an example for us all. Jon, you are truly a compassionate soul. I am Psychedelics and Religious Insight: A Precedent in American Psycho-Spirituality from 8 William James to Timothy Leary sorry for almost burning our apartment down at RVA, you handled the unfortunate turn of events with extreme distinction. I hope that I might be able to pass some of those contemplative thresholds through which you have already passed. Your kindness is an example for others. Toni, your tenacity is unlike any others in our cohort. Thank you for your strength and support throughout the entire process. To Brandon, godspeed, my friend; I do not doubt that your vigor and love will remain strong. Your friendship and voice were ones I always welcomed. Good luck in your future endeavors.

I also want to acknowledge members of the Rice community that I grew close to over these past two years. I cannot begin to express my thanks to Brett Carollo, who spent hours speaking with me about my ideas and thesis topics. Brett, without our conversations, this paper would never have come together as it did. Thank you for being so kind and compassionate, and know I appreciate everything you helped me with along the way. To Thomas Millary, Nick

Collins, and Matthew Southey, thank you for your friendship. I appreciate the guidance each of you offered to me along the way. To Stefan Sanchez, the lone ascended master at Rice, thank you for leading the way for the rest of us. There are many other students to whom I owe thanks.

Please know that though some names are not mentioned here, all Rice community members contributed to fostering the academic atmosphere that made ideas like the ones present in this paper possible.

Lastly, I would like to offer an ode to Valhalla. When I first came to Rice, Valhalla served as a center for the graduate student community. I came from Michigan to Texas alone, without a car, and uncertain of what my time at Rice might hold. Many of my best ideas developed out of the hours I spent with fellow students over a beer and conversation at Valhalla.

I recall my first days in Houston, visiting the bar alone not knowing anyone. Within minutes I Psychedelics and Religious Insight: A Precedent in American Psycho-Spirituality from 9 William James to Timothy Leary found a community of friendly academics as I had never seen before. I recall vividly a Ph.D. student who had just passed his dissertation defense and then had come to Valhalla to celebrate. I watched the newly minted doctor cut his tie and tack it to the bar's inner columns. This is a ritual

I may not be able to pass at this time, but I would like to acknowledge it for all its splendor. It gave me hope for a future at Rice. I saw a fostered community dissolve in the wake of the pandemic, and I hope in years to come, Rice will restore this community as it was part of what made Rice, Rice.

Psychedelics and Religious Insight: A Precedent for American Psycho-Spirituality in 10 William James and Timothy Leary

Table of Contents

Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………...3-4 Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………….5-9 Contents…………………………………………………………………………………………10 1.0 “Laughing Gas”-A poem from Allen Ginsberg 1958…………………………………….11 1.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..12-19 2.1 The Anesthetic Revolution and Why Nitrous Oxide Is a Psychedelic……………….20-23 2.2 William James and Benjamin Paul Blood……………………………………………..24-29 2.3 Blood and Nitrous in Footnotes of The Will to Believe……………………………….30-35 2.4 Psychedelic Poetry in Footnotes from The Will to Believe…………………………...36-41 2.5 Analyzing the Psychedelic Insights of James through Set and Setting………………42-43 3.1 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Ether and Chloroform………………...44-47 3.2 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Alcohol…………………………………48-52 3.3 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Nitrous Oxide………………………….53-58 3.4 William James and His Use of Peyote………………………………………………….59-65 4.1 Timothy Leary’s Discovery of the Psychedelic and Mystical James………………...66-75 4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry……………….76-92 4.3 Conclusions from Leary and James and an Implied Anagogic Method…………….93-96 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………..…97-102

1.0 “Laughing Gas”-A poem from Allen Ginsberg 1958 11

1.0 “Laughing Gas”

To Gary Snyder The red tin begging cup you gave me, “At my feet an ant crawling I lost it but its contents are undisturbed. in the broken asphalt— and this exact white lollipop stick I & twig of branch High on Laughing Gas lain next to that soggy match I’ve been here before near those few grassblades … the odd vibration of and I’ve sat here and took this note the same old universe before and tried to remember— and now I do—remember what” the nasal whine of the dentist’s drill singing against the nostalgic “I’m writing as I write it down piano Muzak in the wall I know when I’m going to stop insistent, familiar, penetrating I know when I’m forgetting and the teeth, where’ve I heard that know when I asshole jazz before? take a jump and change— Impossible The universe is a void to do anything but right now in all in which there is a dreamhole the universe at once— The dream disappears which Art does, and the hole closes the Insight of Laughing Gas?

It’s the instant of going Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha into or coming out of and the monk laughs existence that is at the moon— important—to catch on and everybody 10 miles round to the secret of the magic in all directions wonders box why—he’s just reminding them—of what—of Stepping outside the universe the moon, the old dumb moon by means of Nitrous Oxide of a million lives.” 2 anesthetizing mind-consciousness1 . . . . New York, Fall 1958 -Allen Ginsberg

1Ginsberg, Collected Poems 1947-1997, 198 2Ginsberg, Collected Poems 1947-1997, 206-207 1.1 Introduction 12

1.1 Introduction

After decades of prohibition there is renewed interest in psychedelic substances, so great, that it has been deemed a Renaissance in the media. Given that this renewed interest in psychedelics ties together strains of both contemporary spirituality and psychology, it is important to understand the historic connection between psychedelics, spirituality, and American psychology. This thesis considers evidence that groups the works of William James and Timothy

Leary together in light of the facts that James influenced Leary and that their methods each used psychedelics, all of which ultimately served as an experiential basis for the development of both figures’ theories on mystical religious experiences. I argue that these methods were greatly influenced by the materials they were reading at the time, and that their psychedelic experiences brought about insights that were transformative on philosophical, mystical, and psychological levels.

In the New York Times bestselling book How to Change Your Mind: What the New

Sciences of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and

Transcendence (2018), author Michael Pollan brought the new phrase—Psychedelic

Renaissance— into the contemporary readers’ lexicon. The Psychedelic Renaissance is a current happening marked by the resurgence of medical and therapeutic corporations and special interests seeking to explore the opportunities these substances may hold for a variety of applications. It has been driven by figureheads in the medical and therapeutic field with researchers at places like John Hopkins, New York University, the University of Wisconsin, and

New Imperial College London. This renaissance began according to Pollan in 2006, when the lead psychedelic researcher at John Hopkins, Robert Griffiths, published the article “Psilocybin 1.1 Introduction 13

Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance” in the medical journal Psychopharmacology. Pollan remarks:

The renaissance of psychedelic research now under way began in earnest with the publication of that paper. It led directly to a series of trials at Hopkins and several other universities using psilocybin to treat a variety of indications, including anxiety and depression in cancer patients, addiction to nicotine and alcohol, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression and eating disorders.3

The contemporary Psychedelic Renaissance has swelled in the years since. Drug reform policies in the United States and abroad have seen the legalization of formerly prohibited substances for medical and recreational purposes, the most notable of these being cannabis, ketamine, and psilocybin. Additionally, decriminalization of various psychedelics has begun at the local and state level in the United States and on the local and provincial level in Canada. Research and interest into these mind-altering substances has extended beyond these medical-therapeutic and pharmacological-industrial complexes.

In 2006 an indigenous and Christian syncretic religious group, originating in Brazil, and known as Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal (UDV) successfully litigated a case in the United States, which argued the community’s use of ayahuasca tea was a sacred and sacramental practice and thus protected under the United States constitution and the Religious

Freedoms Restoration Act of 1993. This ensured the religious community protection for their sacramental use of the DMT containing brew. Other similar groups to UDV like the Church

Santo Daime—also originating from Brazil— have since operated in a legal grey-area with regard to their use of ayahuasca brews for religious purposes. Scholars like Benny Shanon and

William Barnard have studied and interacted in depth with these communities and participated in ayahuasca ceremonies. Benny Shanon wrote the classic The Antipodes of the Mind: Charting the

3Pollan, How to Change Your Mind,11 1.1 Introduction 14

Phenomenology of the Ayahuasca Experience (2002). In the text, Shanon remarks, “under the intoxication people feel that the boundaries between themselves and the world blur and dissipate.

And as mystics throughout history have discovered, so do the differences between the individual self and the totality of Being, between individual consciousness and cosmic consciousness.”4

Shanon’s conclusions on the substances reflect the profoundness of the Ayahuasca experience2

Ayahuasca has become a popular entheogen in the recent history. Barnard, for his part, continues to publish work on entheogens like his article “Entheogens in a Religious Context: The

Case of the Santo Daime Religious Tradition” published in the academic journal of religion and science Zygon in 2014. In which he remarks:

Entheogens are simply a way to “change the channel” of the “television” of the brain so that it can receive information from other (and in this case, “spiritual”) dimensions of reality. If we are willing to accept this alternate way of understanding the relationship between the activity of the brain and changes in our states of consciousness (at least as a philosophical possibility), then the visionary/mystical experiences that take place after ingesting various entheogens can be understood as potentially valid and valuable, and not necessarily as delusive psychopathological hallucinations.5

Barnard’s arguments suggest there is validity in these human experiences of extra-conscious spaces, which are produced in conjunction with psychedelics. With the currents of the

Psychedelic Renaissance and the rise of legal protections for new religious movements and their use of psychedelics in sacramental sets and religious setting, i.e., entheogens—new emboldened inquiries into psychedelics and religion have come about.

In 2020 Brian Muraresku published the groundbreaking text The Immortality Key: The

Secret History of the Religion with No Name. The text became a near instantaneous New York

Times Best Seller upon release. Muraresku’s work built upon earlier work from figures like

Albert Hoffman—the discoverer of LSD— and Carl Ruck—a scholar of Classics at Boston

4 Shanon, The Antipodes of the Mind, pg. 402 5 Barnard, “Entheogens in a Religious Context”, 672 1.1 Introduction 15

University. Hoffman and Ruck argued that the mysterious substance of the Greek mystery cults known as Kykeon contained ergot, the substance from which LSD was synthesized.6 Muraresku documented that ergot was found in various ritualistic tools around the Mediterranean, along with other lists of psychoactive brews for both beer and wine, present across Christian and pre-

Christian history. Muraresku’s work has excited many in the field of religious studies for its suggestions and findings. However. Muraresku’s work is just a single example of the storied relationship between mind-altering substances and mystical and religious experiences. The remarkable reception of Muraresku’s text, along with that of Pollan, reflects that there is a real interest in the link between psychedelics and religion, as entheogens. Further there is renewed public interest in the experiences they provoke, and the subsequent creative works produced in their wake.

Christopher Partridge published his phenomenal text High Culture in 2018, in which he tracked the use of various mind-altering substances and their effects on human cultures and ideas since the 19th century. He includes writing on cultural movement and their uses of substances like opium, anesthetics, hash, and other psychedelics in the 19th and 20th century. Partridge casts psychedelics and other mind-altering substances—which he calls drugs— “as technologies of transcendence…providing spaces with which religious and philosophical concepts already available can be explored and developed.”7 Like Shanon and Barnard, Partridge’s suggestions allude to the application of psychedelics for religious and philosophical use in more recent

Western history, while Muraesku’s work points to a more classical western historical lineage linked to Christianity and the Greek Mystery cults. That is, there exists a precedent for the use of

6 For reference see Wasson, Hofmann, and. The road to Eleusis: Unveiling the secret of the mysteries. 2008 7Partridge, High Culture, 29 1.1 Introduction 16 psychedelics for not only the production of mystical experience—as Griffiths findings touted— but also for insight into these realms and other materials linked to these extra-conscious domains.

The reason for this renewal of interest into psychedelics is multifaceted. However, some scholars would argue that the Psychedelic Renaissance is just a rebranding of the research on psychedelics during that was done underground and in marginalized spaces during the sweeping prohibitions during War on Drugs, which Nixon and subsequent presidents exported to much of the world. Scholars of Psychedelicism Christian Greer and Erik Davis have tracked these underground currents. Greer has studied and tracked the continued use of psychedelics in the

1980s and 1990s through the fanzine scenes and other new religious movements like the Church of the SubGenius and Discordianism.8 Erik Davis, another scholar in the field, has tracked the developments that spurred out of the Long Sixties. His High Weirdness (2019) tracks the influence of psychedelics on Terrence McKenna, Philip K. Dick, and Robert Anton Wilson in the years of 1970-1975. Another scholar who has continued in this vein is Morgan Shipley. In

Shipley’s Psychedelic Mysticism (2014) he tracked the Perennialist ideations present in figures like Stephen Gaskin, Aldous Huxley, and Timothy Leary; these were all figure pertinent to the

Long Sixties.9

The Long Sixties was a period in American and global history that was framed by radical challenges to social norms and the status quo. The period was marked by numerous upheavals and accomplishments. This list includes the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, the Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968), which was cut short by the assassination of the

8Greer, J. Christian. "Angel-headed hipsters: Psychedelic militancy in nineteen-eighties North America." PhD diss., Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2020. 9It is also unique to note that all three of these recent scholars studied under pertinent scholastic influencers in the contemporary religious studies scene. Greer completed his Ph.D. dissertation under Wouter Hanegraaff at the University of Amsterdam (UVA) in the March of 2020. Erik Davis completed his Ph.D. dissertation under Jeffrey Kripal at Rice University in 2015. Morgan Shipley completed his Ph.D. dissertation under Arthur Versluis at Michigan State in 2014. 1.1 Introduction 17

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, the Space Race (1955-1975) that culminated in humanity’s first step on the Moon in 1969, the Watergate Scandal (1972-1974) marked by

Nixon’s resignation in 1974, and the entirety of the Vietnam War (1954-1975) marked by the

Fall of Saigon in 1975. Amongst all this came the voice of Timothy Leary.

Leary researched psychedelics at Harvard during the early 1960s, and then went on to tell

America’s disenfranchised youth to take the new wonder-drug, LSD, and to “Tune In, Turn on, and Drop Out.” He was an icon of the Long Sixties counterculture and ran for political office against Ronald Reagan in 1968.10 The Beatles even wrote their hit song “Come Together” for

Leary’s political campaign. Throughout the 1960s Leary published texts like The Psychedelic

Experience (1964), Psychedelic Prayers (1965), and High Priest (1968), which marketed ideas of democratized, ecstatic, and mystical spirituality that almost anyone could have with a hit of

LSD in the right set and setting. Leary’s ideas were widely passed around by the young seekers of the age. In an essay from his 1968 political manifesto, The Politics of Ecstasy, Leary writes,

“If you are serious about your religion, if you really wish to commit yourself to the spiritual quest, you must learn how to use psychochemicals….Pursuing the religious life today without using psychedelics is like studying astronomy with the naked eye.”11 Leary was hardly the first to suggest psychedelics could be used for spiritual insight; but he certainly was the loudest. So loud in fact was he, that disgraced former president Richard Nixon called him “the most dangerous man in America,” and college age kids all across the country took acid and headed towards the coasts in summer of 1967.

Among the Leary cohort were numerous figures pertinent to the Long Sixties. Peter

Conners’ manuscript— White Hand Society (2010)—covers the relationship of Timothy Leary

10Leary Lost. 11Leary, The Politics of Ecstasy, 44 1.1 Introduction 18 and Allen Ginsberg and shows how Leary was no lone wolf in the early 1960s. Rather, Leary rubbed shoulders with numerous Beatnik hipsters. The archivist of the Timothy Leary collection at the New York Public Library, Jennifer Ulrich would call this conglomeration the “Timothy

Leary Project” in her 2018 book of the same name. Her reason for this being that Leary was no individual in a vacuum. Ulrich writes, “His quest to expand the limits of human experience and thought through consciousness-expanding drugs and philosophies resulted in psychedelic drug experiments involving some of the most influential thinkers and artists of the day.”12 Leary took psychedelics with figures like Alan Watts, Richard Alpert/Ram Dass, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-

Shalomi, Aldous Huxley, and Huston Smith just to name a few. Among these figures Leary passed round an idea that these psychedelic substances could invoke spiritual and religious insight. However, before Leary ever spoke to the hippies of Haight-Ashbury on San Francisco

Bay, he was following in the footsteps of another Harvard psychologist who was a proponent for mind-altering substances. This was William James.

“James,” Leary remarked, “was to my surprise an advocate of brain-change drugs.”13

Leary sits squarely in the lineage of James. This is because like James, Leary was a physiologist interested in mystical experiences and altered stats of consciousness, amongst other things.

James was also the first educator in America to teach a course on psychology. Therefore, he is often considered the Father of the American psychological discipline. He was also the founder of the Harvard Department of Psychology, where Leary later worked with various psychedelics in the early 1960s. The late Eugene Taylor was a scholar of William James. He writes of the figure:

William James, whether loved or reviled, looms large in the history of American psychology. He was the first to wrest control of psychology from the abstract philosophers by adapting study of mental functioning to the methods of physiology. He was the first to take up the scientific study of consciousness within the context of the new

12Ulrich, The Timothy Leary Project, 18 13Leary, Flashbacks, 36 1.1 Introduction 19

evolutionary biology. He was the first to teach the new scientific psychology in the United States in 1875; the first to open a laboratory for student instruction that same year; the first to grant a Ph.D. in the new discipline, to G. Stanley hall, in 1878; and the first American to write a world-famous textbook, The Principles of Psychology (1890)14

James remains a renowned figure and his works have long influenced many in the fields of psycho-spirituality.

The Jamesian model of religious and mystical experiences cuts across many methods and theories of psychedelics. For this reason, it is very important to understand James’ ideas as they were informed by his use of mind-altering substances. By exploring James, we can better understand the historical lineage of psychedelic insight that Leary marketed to seeking masses of the Long Sixties. That is, the use of psychedelics for spiritual and philosophical insight are often expressed in creative and intellectual productions. Studying James helps us better understand the role of psychedelics in generating spiritual and philosophical insights that are inaccessible to normal, waking consciousness.

14Eugene. William James on consciousness beyond the margin, 3 2.1 The Anesthetic Revolution and Why Nitrous Oxide Is a Psychedelic 20

2.1 The Anesthetic Revolution and Why Nitrous Oxide Is a Psychedelic

The Anesthetic Revolution was a product of the Second Industrial Revolution and the

American Civil War. It was a medical revolution, during which it was discovered that certain chemicals could be used to inoculate patients before and during surgery. Substances like nitrous oxide and chloroform could be used to render a patient unconscious quickly and for the duration of a procedure. This would prevent any memory or awareness of the procedure itself. These discoveries were extraordinarily groundbreaking. For the first time in western modernity, medical professionals were able to perform on their patients without them needing to be conscious during the procedure and aware of the intense pains produced by cutting into the body.

Before Nitrous oxide, and other like anesthetics, such procedures would inflict substantial amounts of pain and trauma upon the patient. While Nitrous oxide would render the patient- subject unconscious, and thus unaware of and unresponsive to surgical procedures, it also seemed to do much more. If you gave someone nitrous oxide gas diluted in air long enough, then you would see them grow more and more jovial and lightheaded as a hazy frame of consciousness set in. Reports of laughter were so frequently associated with the process that a more colloquial name for nitrous oxide was passed around dentists’ offices the world over: i.e.,

“Laughing Gas.”

When not inhaled in sufficient enough doses as to render the inhaler unconscious, the gas produces a brief, but intense, euphoric high. This euphoria meant there were some recreational uses for nitrous oxide. In a recent historical medical paper, authors Randhawa and Bodenham note “The gas became a fashionable addition to British high-society parties in the early 1800s thanks to its euphoric and relaxant properties.”15 Later, the hippies of the Long Sixties would

15Randhawa, G., and A. Bodenham, "The increasing recreational use of nitrous oxide: history revisited", 321 2.1 The Anesthetic Revolution and Why Nitrous Oxide Is a Psychedelic 21 have similar ideas to that of the British aristocracy. The recreational uses of nitrous oxide among the British aristocracy during the Victorian era is well documented, just like the recreational use of the substances like LSD and cannabis during the Long sixties amongst the youth counterculture. The substance is sometimes referred to on the street as “hippie crack.” This is because of the racy lightheadedness and intense sensation it produces and its prevalence amongst the hippie subcultures.

More recently, nitrous oxide has found popularity as a legal high amongst ravers in various club scenes. On streets outside of nightlife venues in places like Amsterdam in the

Netherlands, Philadelphia in the United States, and Manchester in the United Kingdom, the gas is sold in balloons as part of the recreational nightlife and club drug scene. The gas can also be bought in small metal cannisters, and it is sometimes sold on the street in inflatable balloons.

The experience on nitrous oxide, it should be noted, is short lived, and overindulgence can lead to issues like headaches, frostbite, and damage to blood vessels.16 Still, its use for medical and recreational purposes persists, but this substance has also found philosophical and sacramental use. For instance, the Neo-American Church lists the substance as one of its lower sacraments. Arthur Kleps, founder of the Neo-American Church, said the gas could be used to adjust—or rather, prepare—someone to the True Host of the Church, LSD.17 The Neo-American

Church has its roots tied up with Leary, developing out of Kleps’s and Leary’s time shared at

Millbrook from 1964 to 1968. Interesting to note, there is footage of Leary late into his life in which he can be seen yammering away as he inhales nitrous oxide from a balloon printed with psychedelic patterns.18 The use of nitrous oxide in these ways reflects the fact that, though milder

16 Amsterdam, Nabben, and Brink, "Recreational nitrous oxide use: prevalence and risks", 790-796 17 Kleps, The Boo Hoo Bible , 142 18See BBC documentary the “The Life of Timothy Leary” (2000) 2.1 The Anesthetic Revolution and Why Nitrous Oxide Is a Psychedelic 22 then DMT or LSD, nitrous oxide was used for its psychedelic effects. Therefore, when speaking of those who use the substance for its mind-altering properties beyond medical sedation, it is appropriate to understand nitrous oxide as a psychedelic substance.

Further, this is important because even before the Long Sixties, Kleps, and Leary,

William James was using nitrous oxide, amongst other substances, in fashions that prototyped the later use of other psychedelics. James drew such practice from the works of his close friend

Benjamin Paul Blood. Thus, it is appropriate to retroactively apply the term psychedelic to works of both James and Blood.

Some may cry objection to retroactively applying the term psychedelic to James and

Blood. Such a counter argument would make a point of emphasizing that James did not use the term. True, James did not have access to the term historically. Two World Wars would come and pass before the word “psychedelic” entered any spoken lexicon. James and Blood were both deceased before either of these events came to pass. It is correct that James speaks in terms of the

Anesthetic Revolution (1840-1954) which was in its height during his lifetime (1844-1910).

Such a counter argument would thereby hold that applying the term retroactively is incorrect because James did not use the term for himself. This paper’s author sees such an argument’s validity on this point but suggests that this stance is too limiting. However, just because James could not use the term does not mean that we cannot use it when analyzing James for his use of nitrous oxide for non-anesthetic purposes. Any stance that limits our understanding of James’ use of nitrous oxide to solely as that of an anesthetic is outdated. It reflects ignorance of the gas’s use as a psychedelic in more recent history. It also seemingly ignores the fact that James was not using the gas for anesthetic—inoculating or sedating—purposes. Rather James used the 2.1 The Anesthetic Revolution and Why Nitrous Oxide Is a Psychedelic 23 substance to incite altered states of consciousness. Therefore, the paper will refer to James in terms of the psychedelic lexicon, and not the anesthetic which he uses.

Just as Humphrey Osmond and Aldous Huxley coined the word psychedelic to replace the psychological standard— “psychotomimetic,” certain vocabulary of the Anesthetic

Revolution was supplanted by the vocabulary of the Psychedelic Revolution. In the future I am sure vocabulary of the Psychedelic Revolution will be supplanted by whatever terms are better oriented for the expressions of expanded states of consciousness. The fact that term “Entheogen” was develop in the 1980s—as well as the fact that Ralph Metzner later came to prefer the term

“Consciousness Enhancers/Expanders”—suggests that the umbrella of term of psychedelic is finding challengers. Still. it is not unfounded to say that nitrous oxide is a psychedelic, however less enthralling it may be from than DMT or LSD. The Anesthetic Revolution deemed substances like nitrous oxide by the terms of the age—that is, as anesthetics. Nitrous oxide would later come to be used as psychedelics. Being that the focus of this paper is on the psychedelic uses of these substances for religio-philosophical insight, the paper continues from here from here referring to nitrous oxide as a psychedelic. 2.2 William James and Benjamin Paul Blood 24

2.2 William James and Benjamin Paul Blood

Benjamin Paul Blood (1832-1919) was an American philosopher and poet. Blood wrote extensively and his writings, most notably “The Anesthetic Revelation and the Gist of

Philosophy” (1874), greatly impacted James’ own works. Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar who are scholars of drug culture in America note, “William James read it and was prompted to experience the metaphysical illumination himself.”19 Blood’s influence is most evident in James’

Will to Believe (1896), The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), and A Pluralistic Mystic

(1910).

James used Blood’s works as a basis for the development of his own thoughts on mysticism. James understood Blood’s accounts as those of a mystic. Jamesian scholar William

Barnard writes about the relationship between James and Blood in his text Exploring Unseen

Worlds: William James and the Philosophy of Mysticism (1997). “By establishing his friend as an authentic mystic,” Barnard writes, “James is then able to draw upon Blood’s mystical

‘authority’ by linking Blood’s perspective with his own.”20 This would be a beneficial stance for

James to take, as it helped to construct his own ideas and theories. Barnard also notes, “Having by this time experienced for himself the mystical insights that can arise during an anaesthetic trance, James accepts Blood’s post-trance proclamations as those of a seasoned mystic.”21

Thanks to Dr. Barnard’s excellent work on the pair’s relationship, we acknowledge Blood as a mystic just like William James.

This becomes even more clear as we examine the writings of both Blood and James. The experiences, prompted by anaesthetic trances, were in fact the experiences that James and Blood

19Bakalar and Grinspoon, Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, 58 20Barnard, Exploring Unseen World, 31-32 21Barnard, Exploring Unseen World, 31 2.2 William James and Benjamin Paul Blood 25 classified as mystical. The experiences triggered by Blood’s use of nitrous oxide and other anaesthetic were what led to the publication of “The Anesthetic Revelation and the Gist of

Philosophy" in 1874. In the pamphlet, Blood coined the termed Anesthetic Revelation. Blood explains what he means by the term, writing, “By the Anesthetic Revelation I mean a certain survived condition, (or uncondition,) in which the satisfaction of philosophy by an appreciation of the genius of being… cannot be formally remembered, but remains informal, forgotten until we return to it.”22 Blood sees the Anesthetic Revelation reflected in the poem “The Two Voices,” written by the Poet Laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson. The stanza quoted by Blood reads:

‘As here we find in trances, men Forget the dram that happen then, Until they fall in trance again’23

The selected stanza reflect the sentiments Blood held as central to the Anesthetic Revelation.

That is, one comes into these states and seems to find some new information. However, upon exiting these states such information is largely lost, as these truths and revelations are state dependent.

From here, Blood notes that these insights and conditions may be attained by non- chemical means, but he knows the path to this condition “only by the use of anesthetic agents.”24

Blood also explains that he only came to this conclusion after spending nearly fourteen years experimenting with anesthetics like nitrous oxide. Blood records from his own experiences with the psychedelic gas in the following testimony:

After experiments ranging over nearly fourteen years I affirm---what any man may prove at will---that there is an invariable and reliable condition (or uncondition) ensuing about the instant of recall from anesthetic stupor to sensible observation, or “coming to,” in which the genius of being is revealed; but because it cannot be remembered in the normal condition it is lost altogether through the infrequency of anesthetic treatment in any

22Blood, B. P. "The anesthetic revelation and the gist of philosophy. Amsterdam, NY."33 23Blood, B. P. "The anesthetic revelation and the gist of philosophy. Amsterdam, NY.", 33 24Blood, B. P. "The anesthetic revelation and the gist of philosophy. Amsterdam, NY.", 33 2.2 William James and Benjamin Paul Blood 26

individuals’ cases ordinarily, and buried, amid the hum of returning to common sense, under that epitaph of all illumination; ‘this is a queer world.’25

Yes, indeed how strange the world must be after fourteen years attempting to make sense of it through the altered states produced by inhaling nitrous oxide and similar substances. James would note the seeming absurdity of the concept---and of Blood’s entire pamphlet---in a review of the book published in November of 1874. In his review of “The Anesthetic Revelation and the

Gist of Philosophy," James writes:

More indeed than visionary, --crack-brained, will be the verdict of most readers, when they hear that he has found a mystical substitute for the answer which philosophy seeks; and that this substitute is the sort of ontological intuition, beyond the power of words to tell of, which one experiences while taking nitrous oxide gas and other anesthetics.26

However, as “crack-brained” as the idea may have seemed to some readers, James found Blood’s pamphlet and its contents appealing enough to suggest others to write Blood and request a copy for themselves. This we see in the final lines of James’ review of Blood’s pamphlet: “We sincerely advise real students of philosophy to write for the pamphlet to its author. It is by no means as important as he probably believes it, but still thoroughly original and very suggestive.”27 And so, we see James promoting interest in Blood’s ideas however far-fetched they may have seemed in the November of 1874. However, in the years following his review of

The Anesthetic Revelation, James found Blood’s suggestions to be provocative and alluring.

James would go on to experiment with anesthetics and other substances, himself. James would come to the understanding that nitrous oxide could occasion a mystical mode of consciousness.

Therefore, the substance warranted further study and interaction.

25Blood, B. P. "The anesthetic revelation and the gist of philosophy. Amsterdam, NY.", 33-34 26James, "Review of The Anesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy", 627-628 27James, "Review of The Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy", 627-628 2.2 William James and Benjamin Paul Blood 27

To explore Blood’s work and ideas, James struck up a friendly correspondence with

Blood in the years following his review of The Anesthetic Revelation. As Barnard notes “Blood and James began an active correspondence with each other in 1887 and continued to exchange letters regularly with each other until James’ death in 1910.”28 In letters, James would even praise Blood for his writings and ideas. We learn in these letters that James worked actively to share Blood’s writings with students and publishers. James writes to Blood in June of 1896:

My dear Blood,—Your letter was an "event," as anything always is from your pen…. I wound up my "seminary" in speculative psychology a month ago by reading some passages from the "Flaw in Supremacy"…. "There is no Absolute" were my last words. Whereupon a number of students asked where they could get "that pamphlet" and I distributed nearly all the copies I had from you.29

We see here how James would regularly try to share Blood’s work and ideas. This was because

Blood was not widely read and published during his lifetime even though he was a prolific writer. Blood simply refused to conform to the standards of the academic presses and journals of his day. His writing possessed far too much floral or “purple prose.” Barnard notes that although he was so prolific, “he rarely attempted to publish any of his ideas in the standard academic forum of that time, preferring instead, to publish most of his ideas in letters to small local newspapers.”30 Barnard suggests that this was because of his “unwillingness to engage in the stylistic requirements of most conventional philosophical journals.”31 James understood Blood as an exceptional mind, and James even classed him as a sort of religious and poetic genius.

In numerous letters, James would praise Blood’s poetic voice. He even compares Blood’s styling to that of Walt Whitman, stating, “You seem to be a man after Walt Whitman’s own

28Barnard, Exploring Unseen World, 29 29Letter from William James to Benjamin Paul Blood, Chatham, Mass., June 28, 1896. From The Letters of William James. Vol. 2. Little, Brown, 1920 30Barnard, Exploring Unseen World: William James and the Philosophy of Mysticism pg.29 31Barnard, Exploring Unseen World: William James and the Philosophy of Mysticism pg.30 2.2 William James and Benjamin Paul Blood 28 heart—I’ve got much good from that man’s verse,— if such it can be called. “32 James refers especially to Blood’s mystical and anesthetic induced poem—“Lion of the Nile.” In a letter

James shares with one, Xenos Clark, the pair speak of Blood’s Anesthetic Revelation and

Blood’s poetry. James writes: “As for Blood, I gloat on all he writes— such a wonderful sense for words. His lion of the Nile is a great poem.”33 Blood had shared the poem with James in

April of 1885. In the letter where Blood shares the poem with James, he writes, “I send you a poem enclosed with a lurking hope of praise—a altho’ praise I take to mean insight front the same standpoint…. The line in the penultimate: Many are the alters, but the flame is one: seems to me one that must have been written before.”34 Blood’s poetry possessed a mystical tone. This tone to Blood’s poetry resonated with something in James, so James shared his work and ideas with many close to him.

In fact, Blood’s contemporary readership and legacy should largely be accredited to

James’ use of his ideas and work. James’ thought relied heavily on Blood’s ideas. This is the case so much so that portions of works attributed to James are actually James’ own renditions of

Blood’s thought. This was done in an attempt to help bring Blood’s ideas out into a wider population. It was also done, at times it seems, without Blood’s permission. In the last year of his life, James even wrote a paper drawn mostly from Blood for the purpose of promoting his ideas.

James even admits as much in a letter to Blood:

You will also be surprised by receiving the "Hibbert Journal" for July, with an article signed by me, but written mainly by yourself. Tired of waiting for your final synthetic pronunciamento, and fearing I might be cut off ere it came, I took time by the forelock, and at the risk of making ducks and drakes of your thoughts, I resolved to save at any rate

32Letter from William James to Benjamin Paul Blood CAMBRIDGE, MASS, June 19th, 1887. From Skrupskelis and Berkely The Correspondences of William James. Vol. 6 1885-1889,157-158 33Letter from William James to Xenos Clark CAMBRIDGE, MASS, November 9th, 1886. From Skrupskelis and Berkely, The Correspondences of William James. Vol. 6 1885-1889.,179 34Letter from Benjamin Paul Blood to William James Amsterdam, New York, April 30th, 1885. From Skrupskelis and Berkely The Correspondences of William James. Vol. 6 1885-1889., 29 2.2 William James and Benjamin Paul Blood 29

some of your rhetoric, and the result is what you see. Forgive! forgive! forgive! It will at any rate have made you famous, for the circulation of the H. J. is choice, as well as large (12,000 or more, I'm told), and the print and paper the best ever yet…35

This writing would become a segment in James’ final text before his death, A Pluralistic Mystic

(1910). Barnard discusses this in his text on James: “In ‘A Pluralistic Mystic’… he attempts to make Blood’s thought accessible to a larger philosophical audience and to utilize the authority of

Blood’s own mystical experiences to support his own philosophical pluralism.”36 Therefore,

Blood’s ideas continued to have an effect on James even until his very death in 1910. In any case, it seems James held Blood as a mystic, and his mysticism was produced with the help of nitrous oxide. This would make Blood one of the first modern psychedelic mystics and James one of the first modern scholars to take into account, and openly explore, these psychedelic mystical expressions within their models and theories.

35Letter from William James to Benjamin Paul Blood, Constance, June 25, 1910. From The Letters of William James. Vol. 2. Little, Brown, 1920 36 Barnard, Exploring Unseen World, 30 2.3 Blood, Nitrous, and Hegel in Footnotes of The Will to Believe 30

2.3 Blood, Nitrous, and Hegel in Footnotes of The Will to Believe

In this section we explore William James’ footnote from the greater work, The Will to

Believe. The specific essay, to which the footnote belongs, is called “On Some Hegelisms.” We concentrate on this footnote because it functions as an appendix conclusion to his essay on

Hegel. In addition to this, its length is quite long—five pages in total. Further, in contrast to the essay “On Some Hegelism,” the appendix footnote demonstrates a transformation in how James viewed Hegelian thought. This transformation was spurred by James’ experimentation with psychedelic gas—nitrous oxide. James explored nitrous oxide, thanks to prompting by Blood.

James urged other to attempt the same experiment with the psychedelic gas, and James even used the psychedelic gas on numerous occasions. We shall attempt to make sense of James’ earliest remarks on the nitrous experience, and then further how these remarks reflected a transformed opinion of the Hegelian philosophy. Demonstrating this, we see how nitrous oxide experiences affected his thought on Hegel. We shall also breakdown segments of James’ footnote to explore the profoundness of James’ nitrous oxide experiences. First, let us introduce some of James remarks from his essay “On Some Hegelisms.”

James’ essay “On Some Hegelisms” is a retort against Hegelianism. The essay was written in response to the rise of American Hegelianism among young intellectuals. James also wrote the retort before his experiences on nitrous oxide. Before his use of the gas, James seemed to have less appreciation for Hegel’s ideas. James remarks:

Hegel's philosophy mingles mountain-loads of corruption with its scanty merits, and must, now that it has become quasi-official, make ready to defend itself as well as to attack others. It is with no hope of converting independent thinkers, but rather with the sole aspiration of showing some chance youthful disciple that there is another point of view in philosophy that I fire this skirmisher's shot, which may, I hope, soon be followed by somebody else's heavier musketry.37

37James, The Will to Believe, 263 2.3 Blood, Nitrous, and Hegel in Footnotes of The Will to Believe 31

We note James was clearly not a fan of Hegel when he begins his essay. His essay “On Some

Hegelisms” is in fact trying to steer young intellectuals away from Hegel. James attacks Hegel on numerous points, and even goes after the Hegelian dialectic.

James understands that the Hegelian philosophy is held together by triads, which suggest the synthesis of opposites in constant flux. James writes, “The principle of the contradictoriness of identity and the identity of contradictories is the essence of the Hegelian system.”38 This principle of contradictoriness of identity represents the thesis of Hegel’s philosophy, while the identity of contradictories represents Hegel’s antithesis. James further remarks:

What probably washes this principle down most with beginners is the combination in which its author works it with another principle which is by no means characteristic of his system, and which, for want of a better name, might be called the 'principle of totality.' This principle says that you cannot adequately know even a part until you know of what whole it forms a part.39

This principle of totality represents Hegel’s synthesis in James’ mind. Thus, James opposes

Hegel’s dialectical triads. “Hegel's own logic,” James remarks, “with all the senseless hocus- pocus of its triads, utterly fails to prove his position.”40 Before using nitrous oxide, James holds that Hegelian dialectical methods fails to support its own claims.

However, after experimenting with nitrous oxide, James’ opinions on Hegel change. The addition of the footnote shows a shift in James’ understanding of Hegel. This shift was spurred by his reading of Blood’s Anesthetic Revelation and then James’ subsequent experimentation with nitrous oxide. James begins the footnote remarking:

Since the preceding article was written, some observations on the effects of nitrous- oxide-gas-intoxication which I was prompted to make by reading the pamphlet called The Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy… have made me understand better than ever before both the strength and the weakness of Hegel's philosophy.41

38James, The Will to Believe, 277 39James, The Will to Believe, 277 40 James, The Will to Believe, 292 41James, The Will to Believe, 294 2.3 Blood, Nitrous, and Hegel in Footnotes of The Will to Believe 32

The quote clearly exposes that James drew directly from Blood’s ideas. Further it shows James’ experimentation with the psychedelic gas produced some form of insight into Hegel. This fact— that James, through the use of psychedelics, garnered a deeper understanding of Hegel—is critically important. By following James words further, we might better understand how James associated the effects of this experience with Hegelian thought.

Following his introduction of Blood’s work, James advocates others to explore the effects produced by the psychedelic gas. James becomes the first widely read psychedelic pusher remarking, “I strongly urge others to repeat the experiment, which with pure gas is short and harmless enough.”42 James notes that from person to person the effects produced by the gas are not uniform, writing, “The effects will of course vary with the individual. Just as they vary in the same individual from time to time; but it is probable that in the former case, as in the latter, a generic resemblance will obtain.”43 The quote shows that James used nitrous oxide more than once, and that he also likely observed its use by other on various occasions. It also implies that this use was not in solitary isolation, but in community.

“I have sheet after sheet of phrases dictated or written during the intoxication,” remarks

James, “which to the sober reader seem meaningless drivel, but which at the moment of transcribing were fused in the fire of infinite rationality.”44 We must note that James’ remark about the phrases being dictated further provides evidence that James did not undergo these states of consciousness by himself, but with others. How else would it be that James has recordings of the insights beyond that of his own handy work? No other options seem likely.

42James, The Will to Believe,294 43James, The Will to Believe, 294 44James, The Will to Believe, 295 2.3 Blood, Nitrous, and Hegel in Footnotes of The Will to Believe 33

Thus, we know for certain James was in the company of others while undergoing these

Anesthetic Revelations.

The suggestion of community is further reflected in the writings of James, as he remarks,

“With me, as with every other person of whom I have heard, the keynote of the experience is the tremendously exciting sense of an intense metaphysical illumination.”45 James is neither theorizing, nor experimenting, alone. James is still the most important figure of this era because of his legacy. His works have known a persistent and wide readership, and ever since they were written they have informed numerous methods and theories in both psychology, philosophy, and religion. Such influence is therefore informed by psychedelics. Additionally, we add, James would have his own metaphysical illumination spurred by nitrous oxide, which lent itself to a new understanding of “both the strength and the weakness of Hegel's philosophy.”46 Readers take note when James writes:

Truth lies open to the view in depth beneath depth of almost blinding evidence. The mind sees all the logical relations of being with an apparent subtlety and instantaneity to which its normal consciousness offers no parallel; only as sobriety returns, the feeling of insight fades, and one is left staring vacantly at a few disjointed words and phrases, as one stares at a cadaverous-looking snow-peak from which the sunset glow has just fled, or at the black cinder left by an extinguished brand.47

Because the quote shows that even though the experience leaves one baffled, it still leaves one with something. This something is an experiential insight, or psychedelic revelation, which in the case of James pertained to Hegel. We see such even clearer when James continues to explain his nitrous experiences. James writes:

Its first result was to make peal through me with unutterable power the conviction that Hegelism was true after all, and that the deepest convictions of my intellect hitherto were wrong. Whatever idea or representation occurred to the mind was seized by the same logical forceps, and served to illustrate the same truth; and that truth was that every

45James, The Will to Believe, 294 46James, The Will to Believe, 294 47James, The Will to Believe, 294 2.3 Blood, Nitrous, and Hegel in Footnotes of The Will to Believe 34

opposition, among whatsoever things, vanishes in a higher unity in which it is based; that all contradictions, so-called, are but differences; that all differences are of degree; that all degrees are of a common kind; that unbroken continuity is of the essence of being; and that we are literally in the midst of an infinite48

This insight from James’ anesthetic revelation clearly reflects the Hegelian method of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Further, it shows a shift in how James regards Hegelianism. James writes he now has “the conviction that Hegelism was true after all.”49 This is a total transformation on the part of James, and it reflects the effect of the psychedelic experience. As after the use of nitrous oxide, James recognized potential in Hegel, whom before he found sterile.

This is a total transformation in James’ opinions of Hegel.

James’ thoughts on this appear ever clear when he elaborates further that “Without the same as a basis, how could strife occur?” James writes:

Strife presupposes something to be striven about; and in this common topic, the same for both parties, the differences merge… denial of a statement is but another mode of stating the same, contradiction can only occur of the same thing,—all opinions are thus synonyms, are synonymous, are the same. But the same phrase by difference of emphasis is two; and here again difference and no-difference merge in one.50

James prose remind us of the Hegel dialectical method, to which he now claims a deeper appreciation after his nitrous experience. James too notes how, “It is impossible to convey an idea of the torrential character of the identification of opposites as it streams through the mind in this experience.”51 This idea would become a foundational characteristic in James’ definitions for mysticism. This is that these experiences cannot be fully explained, conveyed, or understood with words and language. These insights are ineffable, but their effect is enough to change one’s entire opinion on a subject.

48James, The Will to Believe, 295 49James, The Will to Believe, 295 50James, The Will to Believe, 295 51James, The Will to Believe, 294 2.3 Blood, Nitrous, and Hegel in Footnotes of The Will to Believe 35

Still James jots down pairs of words and lines of notes garnered and recorded during the experience. This is in an attempt to gain an understanding of the consciousness that is subjected effects of to the psychedelic gas. He shares the list of pairs in the footnote, which reads:

God and devil, good and evil, life and death, I and thou, sober and drunk, matter and form, black and white, quantity and quality, shiver of ecstasy and shudder of horror, vomiting and swallowing, inspiration and expiration, fate and reason, great and small, extent and intent, joke and earnest, tragic and comic, and fifty other contrasts figure in these pages in the same monotonous way.52

The majority of the list clearly shows grand opposites. It is intriguing that these concepts were conjured to the mind of James while under the effects of the psychedelic gas. We might posit that the grandness of the pairs, which James provides, speaks to the grandness of the experience itself. Further, the grandness of the pairs that make it on to James’ lists inform us as to why

James feels the experience holds any potential at all. If when one pokes at the ineffable and pairs like “God and devil, good and evil, life and death, I and thou,” pop out, then one might be intrigued to pursue these routes further—just as James did. The fact the James’ experience invokes insights into the opposites like “God and devil,” implies that the experiences and revelations produced by the psychedelic gas are far beyond normal human insight. Beyond these grand lists James also includes an early example of psychedelic poetry. James’ psychedelic poetry reflects his nitrous oxide experience, and they demonstrate his views shifting towards a more favorable impression of Hegel, which the footnote ultimately conveys.

52James, The Will to Believe, 295 2.4 Psychedelic Poetry in Footnotes from The Will to Believe 36

2.4 Psychedelic Poetry in Footnotes from The Will to Believe

At this point we diverge briefly to address the genre of psychedelic poetry. This is in order to ensure a common awareness of the term. Psychedelic poetry is a unique genre of poetry coined in the works of Timothy Leary, but its examples precede any of Leary’s own writings. Its form is various, but its contents are geared towards a variety of attempts, which are made to express and convey insights associated with psychedelic experiences. The production of psychedelic poetry became a regular product of psychedelic experiences, and it has been seen across many actors of the Long Sixties from classic Beatniks like Ginsberg and William

Boroughs to the hippie forefathers Ram Dass/Richard Alpert and Aldous Huxley. Psychedelic poetry is quite common amongst many psychonauts, such as those listed above.

We even note that that the very word “psychedelic” was derived from attempts by Aldous

Huxley and Humphry Osmond to create a term that would lend itself to poetic verse when describing and making sense of the experience to others. In a letter to Huxley, Osmond wrote the short poem:

To fathom Hell or go angelic Just take a pinch of Psychedelic. (Delos, to manifest)53

From this point the word psychedelic stuck around, cemented in its use by numerous psychedelic stakeholders since the Long Sixties. The word has remained useful to those who have dwelt in the products of its imaginaries ever since. The fact that the word was developed for its poetic appeal is critical as psychedelic poetry became not only a product of specific cultural conditionings, but across the genre one finds numerous examples that lend themselves to the

53Letter from Humphry Osmond to Aldous Huxley dated Early April 1956 from Psychedelic Prophets, 267 2.4 Psychedelic Poetry in Footnotes from The Will to Believe 37 ineffable hallmark of mystical and psychedelic experiences. Additionally, mystics and psychedelic seekers alike have often turned towards poetic modes and devices in attempts to convey their experiences and insights to others. James’ account is not an exception to this often- observed phenomenon.

James’ psychedelic-inspired poetry is perplexing and transformative as that of Leary’s psychedelic poetry, which we will see in later sections. Nonetheless, here and now we examined the examples of James’ psychedelic poetry as to be more aware of its contents. Thereby we might further inquire about how the psychedelic gas experience effected the verses contents and then further the contents of William James’ thought, method, and theory.

Now aware that James wrote his own psychedelic poetry, let us understand how James experienced the phenomena coming to his mind. In the footnote James explains:

The mind saw how each term belonged to its contrast through a knife-edge moment of transition which it effected, and which, perennial and eternal, was the nunc stans of life. The thought of mutual implication of the parts in the bare form of a judgment of opposition, as 'nothing—but,' 'no more—than,' 'only—if,' etc., produced a perfect delirium of theoretic rapture. And at last, when definite ideas to work on came slowly, the mind went through the mere form of recognizing sameness in identity by contrasting the same word with itself, differently emphasized, or shorn of its initial letter. 54

One might imagine in their mind’s eye the complexity of James’ own experience. He saw letters turning in their place in words to reveal concepts hidden deeper, to a point of almost mystical truth. James’ best attempts to express these revealed truths could only come through his poetic voice. So, subjected to the effects of nitrous oxide, James recorded the following lines of poetic verse:

What's mistake but a kind of take? What's nausea but a kind of -ausea? Sober, drunk, -unk, astonishment.55

54James, The Will to Believe, 295-296 55James, The Will to Believe, 296 2.4 Psychedelic Poetry in Footnotes from The Will to Believe 38

We briefly break James’ poetic flow to note how these first lines reflect some of the sentiments, which James introduced in the paragraphs proceeding the poem in his multipage footnote. Recall

James’ remark about how, while subject to the gas and its psychedelic effects---words and ideas could be recognized for their sameness by emphasizing different aspects of the word.56 Now we must return to the lines of James’ psychedelic poetry, which continues:

Everything can become the subject of criticism—how criticise without something to criticise? Agreement—disagreement!! Emotion—motion!!! Die away from, from, die away (without the from). Reconciliation of opposites; sober, drunk, all the same! Good and evil reconciled in a laugh! It escapes, it escapes! But—— What escapes, WHAT escapes?57

Yes, precisely “WHAT” escapes? There is little need for speculation in order to suggest that the

“WHAT,” which escapes James, is a collection of adequate words, language, and symbols for conveying the total insights of the experience. However, proceeding this “WHAT” was the reconciliation of good and evil in laughter. James’ discovery—that reconciliation of good and evil occurs through laughter—calls to mind the later poetic remarks of Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg famously made reference to the “Cosmic Giggle” in poetry written in response to his own psychedelic experiences. This is an expression found across other poetic pieces produced on psychedelics. Its theme is the reconciliation of seeming opposites in laughter that eludes explanation. James’ experience of this “WHAT” that eludes entrapment by his words and verse

56The turning of words comes about again and again in James’ psychedelic poetry, and it is not too hard to notice. This turning of words and letters to discover new insights from a word or concept might remind one of some Kabbalistic exegetic practices and techniques. 57James, The Will to Believe, 296 2.4 Psychedelic Poetry in Footnotes from The Will to Believe 39 also clearly reflects the ineffable characteristic of the mystical experience, which he would later note in his Varieties. We return to James’ psychedelic poetry, which reads on:

Emphasis, EMphasis; there must be some emphasis in order for there to be a phasis. No verbiage can give it, because the verbiage is other. Incoherent, coherent—same. And it fades! And it's infinite! AND it's infinite! If it was n't going, why should you hold on to it? Don't you see the difference, don't you see the identity? Constantly opposites united! The same me telling you to write and not to write! Extreme—extreme, extreme! Within the extensity that 'extreme' contains is contained the 'extreme' of intensity. Something, and other than that thing! Intoxication, and otherness than intoxication. Every attempt at betterment,—every attempt at otherment,—is a—. It fades forever and forever as we move.58

Again, James’ verse demonstrates the fading of insights garnered in these altered states. While this is reflective of the ineffable characteristic of mystical experiences, it might be more likely linked to the altered state of consciousness produced by the nitrous oxide gas itself. While time might be diluted and stretched under the effects of the psychedelic gas, the user fades out of the state rather quickly overall. James’ psychedelic poetry continues to its end where it implies the final dynamics of the Hegelian dialectical process:

There is a reconciliation! Reconciliation—econciliation! By God, how that hurts! By God, how it does n't hurt! Reconciliation of two extremes. By George, nothing but othing! That sounds like nonsense, but it is pure onsense! Thought deeper than speech——! Medical school; divinity school, school! SCHOOL! Oh my God, oh God, oh God!59

58James, The Will to Believe, 296 59James, The Will to Believe, 297 2.4 Psychedelic Poetry in Footnotes from The Will to Believe 40

James ends his poem with words certainly familiar to many who come to such a climactic and shaking experience—"Oh my God, oh God, oh God!” However, what haunts the mind here are the words “Thought deeper than speech,”60 as these words yet again reflect clearly James’ understanding of his psychedelic event. The reader is urged to hold on to this line for later. That is, to reinforce the understanding that James’ psychedelic experiences produced ineffable insights. These ineffable insights would ultimately be reflected in his writings on mysticism in

The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), which are addressed later in more detail.

After providing his psychedelic poetry to the footnote’s readers, James writes, “The most coherent and articulate sentence which came was this: There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.”61 According to James this sentence rung home the most Hegelian of sentiments as he remarks, “This phrase has the true

Hegelian ring, being in fact a regular sich als sich auf sich selbst beziehende Negativität.”62 The

German here translates poorly into English, but one might translate it as “itself as pertaining to itself as self-referential negativity.” The statement carries sentiments of James, which were intended to speak to an implicitly Hegelian impulse beneath the currents of his experiences on the psychedelic gas. In light of this, James offers up a concluding theory for why this might be the case. James begins, “My conclusion is that the togetherness of things in a common world, the law of sharing, of which I have said so much, may, when perceived, engender a very powerful emotion,”63 and this very powerful emotion is, to James, what lays behind the postures found in the Hegelian philosophy. This sets the stage for James to link the emotions provoked by the psychedelic gas phenomenon to that of Hegel’s philosophy. As James continues:

60James, The Will to Believe, 297 61James, The Will to Believe, 297 62James, The Will to Believe, 297 63James, The Will to Believe, 297 2.4 Psychedelic Poetry in Footnotes from The Will to Believe 41

Hegel was so unusually susceptible to this emotion throughout his life that its gratification became his supreme end, and made him tolerably unscrupulous as to the means he employed; that indifferentism is the true outcome of every view of the world which makes infinity and continuity to be its essence, and that pessimistic or optimistic attitudes pertain to the mere accidental subjectivity of the moment; finally, that the identification of contradictories, so far from being the self-developing process which Hegel supposes, is really a self-consuming process, passing from the less to the more abstract, and terminating either in a laugh at the ultimate nothingness, or in a mood of vertiginous amazement at a meaningless infinity.64

We draw from this quote an understanding about James’ methods and theory that defined segments of his thought until his death. That is, James garnered a transformed understanding of

Hegel thanks to his use of nitrous oxide. Therefore, it is possible to posit that James’ first writings about his experiences with the psychedelic gas set a precedent, which suggested psychedelic substances might lend themselves to deeper understanding of philosophies, words, and ideas to which normative modes of consciousness did not.

64James, The Will to Believe, 298 2.5 Analyzing the Psychedelic Insights of James through Set and Setting 42

2.5 Analyzing the Psychedelic Insights of James through Set and Setting

In this section we will suggest a theory as to why James reported a more Hegelian insight for his trips as opposed to, say, that of another philosopher. It would be too much to suppose that some sort of Hegelian metaphysics is the driving current beneath James’ psychedelic insight.

What is more likely is that while James was using the psychedelic gas he was immersed in the works of Hegel near the time of the experience. James’ trip would have been influenced by his involvement with the texts and materials of Hegel and Neo-Hegelians at a time and space near and adjacent to his experimentation with the nitrous gas. I propose that James’ Hegelian trip on the psychedelic gas was due to “Set and Setting.” This is implied and theorized by retroactively engaging with James’ thought through Timothy Leary’s theorized structure of Set and Setting.

Set and Setting refers to the idea that psychedelic trips can be affected by conditions pertinent to the surrounding external and internal environments/systems of the tripper. The theory was popularized by Leary in the years following 1960 to 1962, and the Leary cohort’s

Harvard sponsored naturalist studies with various psychedelic substances. Set and Setting is perhaps the greatest finding of Timothy Leary’s various projects. It remains one of the best working theories for approaching psychedelic trips. Additionally, it remains one of the best structures for influencing psychedelic trips in any particular direction.

More directly, “Set” is understood as the mindset or mentality from which one embarks upon their trip. As Leary clearly states, “Set refers to that which the subject brings to the situation, his earlier imprinting, his learning, his temperament, his emotional, ethical and rational predilections and, perhaps most importantly, his immediate expectations about the drug experience.”65 We know that James had certain factors that predisposed him to a mindset that

65 Leary. Introduction to LSD: The Consciousness-Expanding Drug by David Solomon published in 1964 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons: pages 1-19. Printed and sourced from James Penner, Timothy Leary: The Harvard Years, pg. 260 2.5 Analyzing the Psychedelic Insights of James through Set and Setting 43 was geared toward Hegelian dialectics. As his very footnote is in response to his views on

Hegelianism, which shifted due to his nitrous oxide experimentation. This would have likely been driven by an engagement with Hegelian works in proximity to his trips with the psychedelic gas. Therefore, I suggest James had been reading Hegel’s theories prior to experimenting with the gas. The fact that James’ transformed views on Hegel are found as footnote to an essay on

Hegel further reflects this likelihood.

Since James is relating his psychedelic gas experiences to Hegel, then he likely also had notes on Hegelian literature nearby. The fact that his footnote responds to Hegel and demonstrates a transformed opinion on the philosophy shows that the nitrous experiences were informed by Hegel’s works. Perhaps notes on Hegel and Hegelian literature were sitting on his desk or recently engaged with in his study. James was, after all, writing the entire footnote in response to his essay “On Some Hegelisms.” This may have affected the setting of James trip.

“Setting” is a combination of numerous environmental factors that impact the psychedelic session. Though as Leary clearly puts it, “Setting refers to the environment, social, physical, emotional, [and] to the milieus of the session.”66 In this case we come to the understanding that James had been reading Hegel in close relation to his trip, then he likely would have had Hegelian materials nearby. As result, James’ psychedelic insights into Hegelian thought could be due to factors of Set and Setting.

66 Leary. Introduction to LSD: The Consciousness-Expanding Drug by David Solomon published in 1964 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons: pages 1-19. Printed and sourced from James Penner, Timothy Leary: The Harvard Years, 260 3.1 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Ether and Chloroform 44

3.1 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Ether and Chloroform

After and around the period in which James was writing his Will to Believe, he began experimenting with other substances. In his Principles of Psychology Vol 2. James lists numerous psychoactive substances that he had firsthand experience with. James remarks:

In certain intoxications it becomes exciting, and it may be intensely exciting. I can hardly imagine a more frenzied excitement than that which goes with the consciousness of seeing absolute truth, which characterizes the coming to from nitrous-oxide drunkenness. Chloroform, ether, and alcohol all produce this deepening sense of insight into truth; and with all of them it may be a 'strong' emotion; but then there also come with it all sorts of strange bodily feelings and changes in the incoming sensibilities.67

James’ list includes Chloroform, ether, nitrous oxide, and alcohol as substances capable of producing “insight into truth.” Therefore, it is good to understand each of these substances to a certain degree, as we then may be aware of how James’ experiments led to such a statement.

We shall begin with what James calls “ether” because it was the substance he first experimented with.

The “ether” James refers to is diethyl ether. Diethyl ether was popular for the euphoric head rush the substance produced. Diethyl ether was commonly used at parties as recreational substances in the 19th and early 20th century. These parties were called “Ether Frolics.” Frank

Freemon writes about this in his text Gangrene and Glory: Medical Care During the American

Civil War (1999). Travelling merchants would bring their wares to the public, in this case diethyl ether and nitrous oxide. These merchants sold the gas for either medical, recreational, or spiritual use.68 James, no doubt, would have partaken in these events. The inhalants would be mixed with oxygen/air and then breathed in for recreational amusement. Later, especially in Central and

67James, Principles of Psychology Vol 2.,477 68For Reference see Freemon, Gangrene and Glory : Medical Care During the American Civil War, 2001 3.1 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Ether and Chloroform 45

Eastern Europe, diethyl ether became popular as an additive to drinks.69 The concoction causes a certain euphoric delirium. In Hunter S. Thompson’s classic novel, Fear and Loathing in Las

Vegas (1971), the gonzo journalist called the substance “Devil Ether.” Thanks to Thompson’s renown and the novel’s success the book would get the Hollywood treatment, and diethyl ether along with it. In the 1998 blockbuster version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas there is a scene in which Johnny Depp’s character, Raoul Duke—based on Hunter S. Thompson, himself— huffs diethyl ether through an American flag bandana and makes the remark:

Devil’s Ether, it makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel, total loss of all basic motor skills, blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue, the mind recoils in horror, unable to communicate with the spinal column, which is interesting because you can observe yourself behaving in this way, but you can’t control it.70

Thompson’s imagination captures the substance’s effects wonderfully. The character of Raoul

Duke and the site location of Las Vegas are far removed from William James and Cambridge.71

Nonetheless, James made experiments with ether thanks to his reading of Blood. James experiments with ether set off a series of further experiments with other substances.

We can observe a shift in James’ opinion through a set of letters James shared with one

Xenos Clark between 1880 and 1886. James’ shift in tone is notably spurred by his experimentation with diethyl ether in 1886. In 1880, James wrote Clark about Blood’s suggestions in the Anesthetic Revelation. James then wrote:

I recollect writing a notice of Blood’s book when it appeared for the Atlantic in which I said something about intoxication of moral volition having more of gnosis in it that any other drunk, or words to that effect. All drunks have their gnosis and all gnoses teach the same lesson but the moral one has no reaction. I am awfully afraid that the pursuit of “Φ” will keep you forever epigrammatizing in’s blaue hinein and thereby spoil a mind fitted

69Hoegberg, Cecilie, Jesper, Telving, Andreasen, Staerk, Christrup, and Kongstad. "Recreational drug use at a major music festival: trend analysis of anonymised pooled urine”, 245-255. 70 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1998, 32:18-32:40 71Oh, to imagine these two figures, James and Duke, set against each other huffing diethyl ether through American rags—such a surreal scene, no? 3.1 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Ether and Chloroform 46

for the analysis of concrete psychological matters and the retreatment of particular philosophical questions.72

In 1880, it seems James was not yet sold on the effects the substance produced, although he does point out that “All drunks have their gnosis.” In 1880, James was not yet convinced that these substances could produce useful insight. However, in 1886 James would write Clark again in reference to Blood’s work after his own experiment with diethyl ether. James remarks, “The subject of A.R.Φ, as I believe you called it, is deeply interesting. The most exquisitely baffling experience! I had a beautiful glimpse of it with ether the other night….I hope someday to have another bout with the gas.”73 James’ shorthand “A.R.” is a reference to Blood’s Anesthetic

Revelation. The “Φ” is particular reference that links the two letters from 1880 and 1886. “Φ” appears to be a placeholder for some ineffable—or perhaps esoteric— concept. It may be of note that Xenos Clark founder a secret fraternity called Phi Kappa Sigma, but there is no evidence that James was a member.74 James experimentation with diethyl ether, thus marks a turning point in his thought about psychoactive substances. James’ letters to Clark demonstrate a shift in thinking following experimentation with the mind-altering substance, and they imply the experience may have some benefit and offer some insight.

James would go on to experiment with Chloroform. Chloroform is a nearly instantaneous sedative and deliriant, closely related to chloral hydrate, which is perhaps the oldest synthetic sleeping medication still produced and in use today. First synthesized in 1832, the substance remained prevalent until its replacement by other barbiturates and benzodiazepines in the mid

72Letter from William James to Xenos Clark CAMBRIDGE, MASS, December 12th, 1880. From Skrupskelis and Berkely ,The Correspondenes of William James. Vol. 5 1878-1884.,179 73Letter from William James to Xenos Clark CAMBRIDGE, MASS, November 9th, 1886. Skrupskelis and Berkely From The Correspondenes of William James. Vol. 6 1885-1889.,179 74Internal documents of the organization are esoteric and hidden, as is common among Greek Fraternities like Phi Kappa Sigma. As a brother in Sigma Chi, I know my fraternity claimed many secret and esoteric rites. This could be the case for Phi Kappa Sigma as well. 3.1 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Ether and Chloroform 47

20th century. It was sometimes used recreationally or in abusive ways as it produced a hypnotic, sedative state.75 James would not gain quite as much from Chloroform, as he did from ether, but further still he would experiment with other substances

75Butler, "The introduction of chloral hydrate into medical practice,” 168-172. 3.2 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Alcohol 48

3.2 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Alcohol

The most common intoxicant and mind-altering substance James recognizes as producing religious mentalities is alcohol. Examining alcohol and its relationship to James’ theory and method helps us see James as an advocate for the freedom of experimentation with these substances. Alcohol has long been present in numerous religious traditions, and it was implicated in James’ thoughts on mystical and personal religious experience.

In his Varieties, one of the substances James suggests might occasion mystical-type experiences is alcohol. James preempts the introduction of this idea, stating, “The next step into mystical states carries us into a realm that public opinion and ethical philosophy have long since branded as pathological.” 76 James was operating in socio-cultural conditions that pathologized modes of consciousness considered deviant from the norm. He skirts this point by considering personal experience more worthwhile than societal currents. James continues, “private practice and certain lyric strains of poetry seem still to bear witness to its ideality.”77 In the previous section we saw James’ psychedelic poetry in the footnotes of The Will to Believe. In his

Varieties, James’ thoughts on mysticism are directly and clearly informed by his use of the psychedelic gas, nitrous oxide, as well as that of other substances. Though. they are also informed by the regimes of truth which circulate around James’ era. We summon this

Foucauldian expression—regimes of truth—because in James’ time drugs, like alcohol, were moving towards prohibitory regulations. The term, regimes of truth, is used to express convergent systems that worked to establish what is “true” in a given discourse. In the case of

James, this building regime was the Temperance movement.

76James, The Varieties of Religious Experience,386 77James, The Varieties of Religious Experience,386 3.2 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Alcohol 49

Consider, for example, the Temperance movement in the life of James see parallels to the

“War on Drugs” from more recent history. The Temperance movement sought to establish a prohibition on alcohol under the pretenses that it had no good merit for society. The Temperance movement wish to establish an anti-alcohol discourse. The War on Drugs did this with numerous psychoactive substances. The War on Drugs entire platform—on top of being racist and classist—was based on an anti-psychoactive substance propagandic campaign. Add to this the fact that James is writing his Varieties at the turn of the 19th century. James’ cultural and social environment precede Prohibition (1920-1933), but his whole lifetime runs parallel to the

Temperance movement. These were real currents of dissent against alcohol, which culminated with the Eighteenth Amendment (1919). These modes percolated in political conditions to which

James was exposed. James’ inclusion of alcohol in his writing—as we shall shortly see—runs in contrast to the Temperance movement, which worked to ban the substance. This is well before the rise of psychedelics and the Long Sixties. By the time Nixon came and declared his asymmetric, racially biased War on Drugs, James had been buried for 50 plus years. Still parallels in currents of pietist thought exist. Though James did not come up in the wake of the

Nixonian truth regime, he had grown near enough to another to see that even in 1902 powers were working to slam the Overton Window shut on the debate of various psychoactive substances like that of alcohol.

James would not lend his name to the crusade of the Temperance movement’s regime of truth, and this is not by omission, but rejection of the campaign’s ideals. In 1894, James was offered the opportunity to support the Temperance movement by one, Francis Greenwood

Peabody. Peabody was organizing a board known as the Committee of Fifty. The Committee of

Fifty sought to investigate the problem of alcohol. They would go on to publish The Liquor 3.2 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Alcohol 50

Problem (1905). The text was an argument against alcohol, and it is comparable to anti-drug propaganda of the War on Drugs. Peabody invited James to the Committee of Fifty and author part of the text, but James refused him. James writes to Peabody:

I hate to say no to anything, especially to anything proposed by you, but pray don’t propose me for this committee of fifty, council of ten, or Garibaldi thousand. Do you fellows think you can scare alcohol by the portentousness of your names? Never! It seems to me we know quite enough for all practical purposes already78

Peabody’s invitation was an attempt to comingle James’ good name with that of sober prohibitionist society. Adding James’ name to a text like The Liquor Problem would strengthen the Temperance movement and its regime of truth. James wouldn’t lend his name to such a campaign because James did not support the Temperance movement and its push to demonize alcohol. As a psychologist he was well aware of the impacts of alcoholism, but he found no favor in outlawing it. James viewed that alcohol had its place in society. James specifically viewed that alcohol had a place in the religious expression and experience of the individual.

James’ intrigue into mystical mode of consciousness are informed by his use of alcohol.

James writes, “I refer to the consciousness produced by intoxicants and anæsthetics, especially by alcohol.”79 James holds that these modes of consciousness offer certain insights into both society and personal mystical experiences. James recognizes such when he remarks of alcohol:

The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the Yes function in man…. It makes him for the moment one with truth.80

78Letter from William James to Francis Greenwood Peabody, October 18th, 1894. Skrupskelis and Berkely, From The Correspondences of William James. Vol. 7 1890-1894, 554 79James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 387 80 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 387 3.2 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Alcohol 51

James thusly designates alcohol on the spectrum of religious stimuli, though it is technically a depressant. James continues, “To the poor and the unlettered it stands in the place of symphony concerts.”81 Such a remark might be recognized as a nod to class disparities, as by these words

James relegates the experiences of alcohol to a lower class. Still, he does not explicitly exclude himself from it. That is, James’ words provide such a thick description that it assumes firsthand knowledge of drunkenness as he languishes: “it is part of the deeper mystery and tragedy of life that whiffs and gleams of something that we immediately recognize as excellent should be vouchsafed to so many of us only in the fleeting earlier phases of what in its totality is so degrading a poisoning.”82 Based on these remarks, it is clear William James was no friend of

Bill.83 To further substantiate this charge, one turns to select letters that support the assertion that

James enjoyed the drink, but not to the point that he enjoyed it too much or too often.

In a letter to a friend in 1893, James reflects on his predilection towards the drink and other psychoactive substances which he knew from firsthand experience to increase happiness.

James remarks,

Happiness, I have lately discovered, is no positive feeling, but a negative condition of freedom from a number of restrictive sensations of which our organism usually seems to be the seat. When they are wiped out, the clearness and cleanness of the contrast is happiness. This is why anesthetics make us so happy. But don't you take to drink on that account!84

Such remarks reflect James’ familiarity with the happiness produced by substances like nitrous oxide and hard spirits. However, James clearly does not advocate for drunkenness on this

81 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 387 82 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 387 83 The phrase “A friend of Bill” –or more often the question “Are you a friend of Bill?”— is a euphemism use by members of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.). Members use the turn of phrase to maintain anonymity in their affiliation to the group when in public, since the phrase is not commonly known used outside of A.A. 84Letter from William James to Miss Frances R. Morse dated Nauheim, July 10, 1901. From The Letters of William James. Vol. 1. Little, Brown, 1920. 3.2 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Alcohol 52 account. His words do not suggest a propensity towards regular over consumption of alcohol; they only display firsthand familiarity with the vice.

Still, James was apparently charged a drunkard by one Harvard colleague and friendly eristic, Josiah Royce. In a letter to the German-British philosopher Ferdinand Canning Scott

Schiller, James writes:

Royce wrote a very funny thing in pedantic German some years ago, purporting to be the proof by a distant-future professor that I was an habitual drunkard, based on passages culled from my writings. He may have it yet. If I ever get any animal spirits again, I may get warmed up, by your example, into making jokes…85

James’ remark on Royce’s accusation of his drunkenness plays off such charges as little more than an amusing suggestion which should be met in the field with only casual mirth. Thus, James pokes fun at Royce’s inflated accusation, largely deflating it with good humor and pragmatic reason. While James abused alcohol at times, he was not the drunkard that Royce makes him out to be.

Further, it should be understood that James believed alcohol could catalyze mystical states. James remarks, “The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness.”86 He continues, “our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.”87 Thus,

James considers alcohol as one of the many means of producing mystical states of consciousness, but alcohol was not nearly as important to James theory as nitrous oxide.

85Letter from William James to F. C. S. Schiller dated Rye, April 13, 1901. From The Letters of William James. Vol. 1. Little, Brown, 1920. 86James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 387 87James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 387 3.3 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Nitrous Oxide 53

3.3 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Nitrous Oxide

For the purposes of this paper, the most potent quote from James is the one that follows:

“Nitrous oxide and ether, especially nitrous oxide, when sufficiently diluted with air, stimulate the mystical consciousness in an extraordinary degree.”88 This quote is so important because it set a precedent that linked mystical states of consciousness to psychoactive substances. This would later be expanded to includes psychedelics during the Long Sixties, and then more explicitly entheogens in the 1980s. Entheogen was a term coined by Carl Ruck, Gordon R.

Wasson, and Johnathan Ott in a short paper from 1979.89 Entheogen was a rebranding of the psychedelic, as the term had been tarnished by bad actors, acid casualties, and propaganda produced for the Nixonian War on Drugs. The term entheogen was thus an attempt to skirt the

Nixonian regime of truth. The term focused on shamanistic and ecstatic uses of these psychoactive substances. It has since been further employed to refer to the use of mind-altering psychoactive substances for religious, shamanistic, and spiritual practices. The use of cannabis by Rastafarian’s is an example of an entheogenic practice. Psychoactive substances refer more generally to any chemical that affects the nervous system and its many faculties. It is a much wider term than that of psychedelic or entheogen, containing in its range chemical compounds from caffeine to DMT.

James clearly expresses his operating theory that psychoactive substances—such as the psychedelic gas nitrous oxide—have the ability to produce mystical states of consciousness. A breakdown of James’ words on nitrous oxide demonstrates how his experiences with the psychedelic gas informed his theories on mysticism.

88 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 387 89 Ruck, Bigwood, Staples, Ott, and Wasson. "Entheogens.",145-146. 3.3 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Nitrous Oxide 54

James remarks that under the effect of nitrous oxide, “Depth beyond depth of truth seems revealed to the inhaler.”90 Such a remark reflects the Jamesian sentiment of noetic quality, which

James set down as one of the hallmarks of mysticism. James defines the noetic quality stating:

Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time.91

James recognizes that these noetic qualities linger in the mind, holding degrees of authority for mystics and then also for those who recognize them as such. James’ work implies that the states of complex unreasoning that are produced by psychedelic gases like nitrous oxide point in the direction of mysticism. Further, James records that “This truth fades out… at the moment of coming to; and if any words remain…they prove to be the veriest nonsense.”92 While this remark clearly reflect the effects of nitrous oxide on the consciousness—fading in and out—it also reflects two characteristics of the Jamesian mysticism: ineffability and transiency. We shall handle ineffability first and then transiency.

Ineffability is, according to James, “the handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical,”93 establishing it as a primary identifier of mystical type experiences.

James continues his comments on ineffability, stating, “The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words.”94 James remarks that these experiences carry with them a “state of feeling”95 as opposed to a “state of intellect.”96 James continues, “No one can make clear to another who has never had a certain

90 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 387 91 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 381 92 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 387 93 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 381 94 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 381 95 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 381 96 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 381 3.3 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Nitrous Oxide 55 feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists.”97 He then compares this way of knowing— through feeling—to that of how a maestro comes to know a symphony through their musician’s ears. James also compares this mode of knowing to the ways in which sets of lovers come to know their partners through shared acts of intense intimacy. Earlier in our handling of The Will to Believe and James’ psychedelic poetry we noted James ineffable insights. Selected verses from James impress upon his readers this idea of ineffability, which we recall from the poetic line “Thought deeper than speech.”98

James’ next qualifier is “Transiency.” We see this transiency when James mentions how the experience of ineffable insights fade in and out with the inhalation of the nitrous gas. James understands that, “Mystical states cannot be sustained for long.”99 James qualifies that “except in rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour or two, seems to be the limit beyond which they fade into the light of common day.”100 It is likely that James had determined this time range from his own experimentations and observations of others on psychoactive substances. James notes that in coming out of this transiency, “when faded, their quality can but imperfectly be reproduced in memory,” which is yet again a seeming nod to the ineffability of these states. This only further reflects the weight James’ nitrous oxide experiences had in crafting his theory.

However, James continues, “when they recur it is recognized; and from one recurrence to another it is susceptible of continuous development in what is felt as inner richness and importance.”101 The profoundness of James’ psychedelic gas experience, despite the transiency of its nature, further informed his theory on mysticism.

97 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 381 98 James, The Will to Believe, 297 99 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 381 100 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 381 101 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 381 3.3 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Nitrous Oxide 56

“Nevertheless,” James remarks, “the sense of a profound meaning having been there persists.”102 This profoundness that persists is reflective also of James’ remarks on the mystical qualifier of noetic quality. Paraphrasing, James reported that as a rule such mystical experiences carry with them a curious sense of authority for a time afterwards.103 James is keen to remark that this authority does not hold absolute claim upon non-mystics. However, for those regarded as mystics, these noetic qualities hold some degree of authority after the experiences pass. We see such influence persist even until the end of James’ life. From the time of writing The Will to

Believe (1896) through to The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) and then on until the last published work of James’ lifetime “A Pluralistic Mystic” (1910)—William James displayed a consistent stance that advocated for the production of mystical states of consciousness via psychoactive and psychedelic substances like nitrous oxide. James’ experiences on the psychedelic gas then served as an experiential basis from which he later developed his explicit hallmarks of mystical-type experiences.

Just as we have in this paper, James tracks this line of thinking through his writings. He remarks, “I know more than one person who is persuaded that in the nitrous oxide trance we have a genuine metaphysical revelation.”104 This remark is clearly a reference to his friend

Benjamin Paul Blood, whom we covered. James records, “Some years ago I myself made some observations on this aspect of nitrous oxide intoxication, and reported them in print.”105 This remark is a direct reference to James’ footnote in The Will to Believe, which follows his essay

“On Some Hegelisms” and was handled in previous sections of this paper. By invoking the nitrous oxide experience half a decade later, James displays a degree of the persistent effect of

102 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 387 103 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 388 104 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 388 105 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 388 3.3 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Nitrous Oxide 57 the noetic quality induced through his use of the psychedelic gas. James remarks, “One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken.”106 This remark reflects that James’ thoughts were influenced by his nitrous oxide experiences. Further, it reflects that James’ impressions “remained unshaken” since the time of his nitrous oxide experiences, which are dated to nearly half a decade earlier. Such a timeline stands out. This is because it is unique that such transient and ineffable nitrous oxide experiences would continue to inform James’ thought from a time well before writing his Will to

Believe and then through his Varieties and until his essay on “A Pluralistic Mystic.” The timeline of nitrous oxide’s influence on James’ theory and method spans across the greater portion of the last two decades of his life. The fact that James demonstrated lasting ramifications to his though from his nitrous experiences stands out because his works hold an important place for scholars of religion. It also establishes a kind of methodological approach that used psychoactive chemicals to pursue newfound understandings of texts and ideas of all kinds.

James remarks that his impressions, which remained unshaken, was “that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.”107 These various levels of consciousness, occasioned through the use of psychoactive substances, would prove fruitful ground for later theorists like

Timothy Leary. James acknowledges that many go through life without suspecting such levels to consciousness exist. However, James reports, “apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have

106 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 388 107James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 388 3.3 The Jamesian Mystical Model Informed by Nitrous Oxide 58 their field of application and adaptation.”108 During the Long Sixties this idea was drawn upon by Leary to introduce psychedelics like LSD to American psychospiritual models. Much of

Psychedelicism and its thought has relied on these remarks from James, as they set a precedent that suggested “No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.”109 There also set a example for the methodological application of mind-altering substances in the development of one’s thoughts and ideas.

Still in 1902 James is not fully certain of how to handle these experiences, “for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness.”110 Because of this discontinuity with normative modes of consciousness James remarks that, “they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas.”111 Thus, James was a pioneer in this realm of thinking. He was only beginning to scratch at the surface. Later actors like Leary would seek to extend beyond these initial suggestions, experimenting with numerous more powerful psychedelics. James writes that nitrous oxide and like substances “open a region though they fail to give a map.”112 Leary and his cohort would go on and attempt to make such a map of consciousness. This will be handled in the sections of chapter 4.

108James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 388 109James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 388 110James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 388 111James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 388 112James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 388 3.4 William James and His Use of Peyote 59

3.4 William James and His Use of Peyote

Beyond these anesthetics, barbiturates, and inhalants, James also tried the classic psychedelic peyote, otherwise referred to as mescal button. A reference to mescal buttons is made in his Varieties of Religious Experience. James knew about mescal buttons when writing his Varieties, citing James Henry Leuba. Leuba was a former Ph.D. student of G. Stanley Hall.

Leuba quotes a mysterious Mr. Peek. James cites, “Leuba quotes the case of a Mr. Peek, where the luminous affection reminds one of the chromatic hallucinations produced by the intoxicant cactus buds called mescal by the Mexicans.”113 The quote from Leuba accredited this mysterious

Mr. Peek reads as follows:

When I went in the morning into the fields to work, the glory of God appeared in all his visible creation. I well remember we reaped oats, and how every straw and head of the oats seemed, as it were, arrayed in a kind of rainbow glory, or to glow, if I may so express it, in the glory of God.114

Mr. Peek’s account of the psychedelic experience on mescal buttons/peyote is interesting because James references peyote in such an off handed manor. In his Varieties, he addresses substances like diethyl ether, nitrous oxide, and alcohol with so much more gusto than peyote.

Yet without exception, peyote is certainly a more powerful psychedelic than nitrous oxide, and furthermore profound psychoactive substance than diethyl ether or alcohol.

More interesting than James’ reference to mescal buttons is his use of mescal buttons.

This information can also be found directly in a letter James sent to his brother Henry James in

June of 1896. But how did William James come to acquire peyote in the first place? He had received peyote buttons from one Dr. S. Weir Michell via mail. It seems there was an extensive network for the trade of mail order peyote/mescal buttons around the turn of the 19th century and

113James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 253 114 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 253 3.4 William James and His Use of Peyote 60 into the 20th. Mitchell, however, had only come across peyote after reading an article published in 1896 called “Mescaline Buttons- Anhelonium lewin-Henning” by the pair D.W. Prentiss and

Francis Morgan.

Prentiss and Morgan’s paper was written in response to the writings of two doctors listed only as “Drs. Lewin and Heffter, of Germany.”115 This was the famous chemist Louis Lewin and colleague Arthur Heffter. The first research into mescal buttons from Lewin was published in

1888 in German, and followed by another German publication later in 1894. However, in 1891, an American ethnologist named James Mooney presented a paper on his work before the

Anthropological Society of Washington. Prentiss and Morgan write of Mooney’s report that it

“first brought to public attention the remarkable religious ceremonial use of the plant by the

Kiowas and other tribes of the Southern plains.”116 Mooney’s figure looms large in the history of the mescal button because he was the first the first white man to sit with the indigenous plains’ peoples in their Tipi and share in their sacred peyote ritual.117

Mooney spent large portions of his life with the indigenous plains’ peoples. He learned their languages and observed their customs. He observed how the Kiowa people would make use of the mescal buttons for medical and ceremonial religious purposes. Mooney would go one to participate in peyote ceremonies on numerous occasions. He found them to be so incredible that he gathered large quantities of the cactus for the United States Department of Agriculture. Later

Mooney handed over thousands upon thousands of dried mescal buttons to one “Mr. E. Ewell of the Department of Agriculture in the United States for chemical analysis and to the writers for

115Prentiss and Morgan, “Remarks on the effects of Anhelonium lewinii (the mescal button)”, 1 116Prentiss and Morgan, “Remarks on the effects of Anhelonium lewinii (the mescal button)”, 1 117Jay, Mescaline, 59 3.4 William James and His Use of Peyote 61 therapeutic test”.118 The writers who would get the peyote for experimentation were Prentiss and

Morgan.

Prentiss and Morgan reported that their study showed “that the mescal buttons possess properties which are remarkable, the exact likeness of which is not found in any other known drug.”119 Even in 1896, scholars and observers of these indigenous plains’ peoples like the

Kiowa and other associated tribes knew that the cactus was “a regular part of their religious ceremonies.”120 In their paper, Prentiss and Morgan even noted the concerns for religious liberties attached to the Kiowas use of mescal buttons. They write of the mescal button:

Its use has spread to such an extent that the rite has become the chief religion of all the tribes of the Southern plains. Complaint being made to the government authorities at Washington [DC] by missionaries and others, the eating of the drug was rendered unlawful and was forbidden under severe penalties. Nevertheless, the use of the mescal has persisted to the present time.121

Prentiss and Morgan’s research built upon Mooney’s reports. The pair would go on to give mescal buttons to eight young male volunteers. These personal accounts were reported in the

September 16th edition of the Therapeutic Gazette in 1895, a medical journal sponsored by a

Detroit based pharmaceutical firm, Parke-Davis.122

Parke-Davis would produce numerous psychoactive chemicals during its existence in

Detroit. The company was an international supplier and producer of cocaine, which was then sold as a pharmaceutical drug.123 It also produced mescaline distillates and funded research into

118Prentiss and Morgan, “Anhalonium Lewinii (Mescal Buttons)”, 1 119 Prentiss and Morgan, “Anhalonium Lewinii (Mescal Buttons)”, 1-2 120 Prentiss and Morgan, “Anhalonium Lewinii (Mescal Buttons)”, 2 121Prentiss and Morgan, “Anhalonium Lewinii (Mescal Buttons)”, 5 122 Jay, Mescaline, 59 123 A quick note of interest— the Therapeutic Gazette seems to have had an international readership. The journal was where Sigmund Freud first learned of the cocaine thanks to an article on the substance published in 1894. Freud touted the substances as a wonder drug, to which he later became addicted, and then withdrawn from. One might meditate on what this might means as just a year later the journal was publishing some of the first trip reports for the mescal button. 3.4 William James and His Use of Peyote 62 the substance. In 1956 the firm also discovered ketamine.124 Interestingly, the firm is now owned by the Pfizer group, who is one of the leading producers for the Covid-19 vaccine.125

The reports and personal accounts of these eight human subjects are fascinating and quite entertaining to read. Even in 1895 we begin to pick up on some of those characteristics that would become hallmarks of the psychedelic experience, namely, the shift in frame of mind psychedelics are known to produce, as well as visions of brilliant patterns, changing colors, and ecstasy. In the report of one subject’s experience, we read:

I noticed that closing my eyes I could see all sorts of designs in brilliant and ever- changing colors. These visions were so pleasing that I at once decided to continue the experiments, and I placed the fourth and a part of the fifth button in my mouth. Then followed a train of delightful visions such as no human being ever enjoyed under normal conditions. My mind was perfectly clear and active; the power to concentrate my thoughts upon any desired subject was only slightly lessened….by concentrating my thoughts upon various subjects successively, the nature of the visions could be determined, and considerable control exercised over time that they remained in view…. Indeed, during the passage of this and many other visions before my enraptured mental gaze, my pleasure so far passed the more ordinary realms of delight as to bring me to that high ecstatic state in which our exclamations of enjoyment became involuntary. I truly thought that I had experienced great pleasure upon many previous occasions, but the experience of this night was one quite unique in this regard in the history of a lifetime.126

This is but one of eight personal accounts of the experience under the effects of the mescal button. In another report we see similar remarks about patterns and forms produced by the mescal buttons. The report reads:

No words can give an idea of their intensity or of their ceaseless, persistent motion. The figures constantly changed in form and color, but always remained a series of fantastic curves, revolving rapidly back and forth upon their own axis. The forms changed through rich arabesques, Syrian carpet patterns, and plain geometric figures, and with each new form came a new flush of color, every shade appearing, from pure white to deepest purple.127

124Li and Vlisides. "Ketamine: 50 years of modulating the mind.", 612 125Pfizer purchased Warner-Lambert who purchased Parke-Davis 126Prentisss and Morgan “Anhalonium Lewinii (Mescal Buttons)” 580 127Prentisss and Morgan “Anhalonium Lewinii (Mescal Buttons)” 581 3.4 William James and His Use of Peyote 63

This report witnesses early descriptions used to describe the psychedelic experience to others, as the reporter here compares the visions he has to “Syrian carpet patterns.” This would become a common description used by some psychedelic trippers. Leary, for instance, compares his visions to “Moving belts like Inlaid Moorish patterns.”128 These effects captured the attention of many in the medical community at the time. Included in this lot are of course Drs. S. Weir

Mitchel and William James.

Shortly after learning of the Prentiss and Morgan article and the work of Mooney, Dr.

Mitchell obtained mescaline for ingestion in 1896. Within the year Mitchell published "Remarks on the effects of Anhelonium lewinii (the mescal button).” The article would be one of the first widely read accounts of the effect of mescaline published in Western medical journals. The article received a remarkable reception and readership on both sides of the Atlantic. Mitchell reported of his experience on peyote:

The display which for an enchanted two hours followed was such as I find it hopeless to describe in language which shall convey to others the beauty and splendour of what I saw. I shall limit myself to a statement of a certain number of the more definite visions thus projected on the screen of consciousness.129

This talk of consciousness and mescal piqued the interest of James, so he went on to try the mescal button that were provided to him by S.M. Weir.

In a letter dated June 11th, 1896 William James tells his brother Henry about his experience on peyote/mescal buttons. James writes to Henry:

I had two days spoiled by a psychological experiment with mescal, an intoxicant used by some of our Southwestern Indians in their religious ceremonies, a sort of cactus bud, of which the U. S. Government had distributed a supply to certain medical men, including Weir Mitchell, who sent me some to try. He had himself been "in fairyland." It gives the most glorious visions of color—every object thought of appears in a jeweled splendor unknown to the natural world. It disturbs the stomach somewhat, but that, according to W. M., was a cheap price, etc. I took one bud three days ago, was violently sick for 24

128Timothy Leary, High Priest (1964) pg.26 129Mitchell, S. Weir. "Remarks on the effects of Anhelonium lewinii (the mescal button).",1626 3.4 William James and His Use of Peyote 64

hours, and had no other symptom whatever except that and the Katzenjammer the following day. I will take the visions on trust!130

Clearly William James did not take enough, as one typically needs to consume three to five buttons minimum to experience the cacti’s most potent and profound psychedelic effects. This occasion, however, cannot just be written off on account of the fact that James’ trip report was one of ill and limited effect.

This is because less than a fortnight later—on June 28th, 1896— James would send a letter off to Benjamin Paul Blood recounting this unsuccessful quest for truth via means of peyote intoxication. James writes to Blood:

I have just been having an amusing experiment in seeking truth by intoxication. Weir Mitchell wrote me he had from the U.S. Gov. a supply of ‘mescal’ for experimental purposes. M. is a cactus used by some of our South Western Indians for narcotic purposes in certain religious ceremonies. Mitchell and others had taken it and found the most gorgeous stimulation of the visual centers, magnificently colored hallucinations pure fairyland pictures such as the earth cannot afford etc. I took a small dose at 6.30 A.M. and had nothing but nausea & diarrhea till 4 the following A.M., when I remember I omitted for the last time. Not a flicker of light or colour, not a twinge of rationality, only loathsome sickness the whole time. Should you like me to send you some? It might affect you less strongly in that way!131

James not only writes Blood to share his peyote experience with him, but he offered peyote to

Blood for his own religious and mystical experimentation. The letter in response to Blood seems lost, and their correspondences thereafter make no mention of mescaline or peyote, so it is unlikely that Blood tried the substance. However, the offer of peyote to Blood demonstrates

James interest in getting Blood’s take on the substance. However, James would never experiment with peyote again as his physical constitution— he was convinced—would not allow for the substance to agree with him.

130 Letter from William James to Henry James CHOCORUA, June 11, 1896. James, William. From The Letters of William James. Vol. 1. Little, Brown, 1920. 131Letter from William James to Benjamin Paul Blood CHATHAM, MASS, June 28, 1896. From Skrupskelis and Berkely, The Correspondenes of William James. Vol. 8 1895-June 1899,157-158 3.4 William James and His Use of Peyote 65

One trip is never enough, let alone one taken at well below the threshold dose. If one is able, then they ought to try everything at least twice before coming to any impression. James on account of his Katzenjammer wrote off mescal buttons far too soon.132 Imagine how James’ theories of mysticism would have changed had he talked of trips on mescaline as opposed to nitrous oxide. Beyond James’ advocacy of nitrous oxide—but never mescal buttons—other scholars would write off psychedelics too soon in the development of their theories on account of limited or ill-effected exposure.

Most notably, the scholar R.C. Zaehner would take mescaline sulfate, the synthesized product of the peyote cactus on one occasion and from his experience form strong theoretical opinion of psychedelics based on the experience. Zaehner provides his experience in the appendix Mysticism: Sacred and Profane (1957). The book was written in response to a text written by Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954).Mysticism: Sacred and Profane

(1957), reflected Zaehner’s strong theoretical opinions against psychedelic induced mysticism.

Zaenher claimed that Huxley’s mescaline induced mysticism was of a lower class to the classic

Christian mystical experiences. Zaehner also would later attack Timothy Leary, whom he admonished in his book Drugs, Mysticism, and Make Believe (1972).

132A wise friend once told me that with mescal buttons the hangover comes before communion and not after. 4.1 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 66

4.1 Timothy Leary’s Discovery of the Psychedelic and Mystical James

References to Jamesian theory are found throughout the writings of Timothy Leary.

James was, in a sense, a spiritual predecessor for Leary. It makes sense given the numerous parallels between the two. Just as James experimented with mind-altering substances, so too did

Leary. Both James and Leary were psychologists, linked together by the institutions of Harvard.

Both made inspired suggestions, which went on to have great implications for the generations that would follow.

In Flashbacks, Leary includes an introductory biography for James. The remarks found here further reflect the lineage shared between James and Leary, and the biography makes clear

Leary’s thoughts on his relationship to James intellectually. Leary records:

WILLIAM JAMES (1842-1920 [sic]), a philosopher-psychologist was America’s first distinguished brain-drug researcher. Son of a Swedenborgian minister and brother of novelist Henry James, he wrote the classic text Principles of Psychology (1890) and established himself as the father of American psychology. In contrast to authoritarian European theories, James’ approach stressed the active and self-determining role of the mind in creating individual reality. His hypothesis that we ‘carve out’ our realities from the ‘jointless continuity of space’ became the principle underlying the drug culture of the 1960s. William James initiated the Harvard tradition of brain-change research, shocking the academic community with his peyote and nitrous oxide experiments. In The Varieties of Religious Experience William James demonstrated that important levels of intelligence, hidden behind the narrow-gauged conditioned mind, could be accessed by drugs.133

The quote reflects Leary’s awareness of James’ experimentation with mind-altering substances, noting the two explicitly psychedelic substances that James used: peyote and nitrous oxide.

Further, Leary stresses that Jamesian theory is the underlying current of the 1960s drug culture.

This point is quite interesting. It is a reflection of James’ greater influence on Leary and his cohort, and it further implies James’ greater influence over the 1960s psychedelic counterculture.

That is, since many of the psychedelic currents of the Long Sixties were informed by Leary, and

133Leary, Flashbacks, 19 4.1 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 67 since Leary was so informed by James, the reasoning holds that large swaths of the psychedelic currents of the Long Sixties drew from Jamesian theories that were expressly used by Leary.

This is beyond the link between James and Leary as psychologists at Harvard. This is linked to the psychospiritual ideations that cut across James’ methods and theories and continues into those of Leary and the greater American New Age.

However, when Leary came to Harvard in 1960, he was not aware of James’ mystical leanings, nor was he aware of psychedelics. Leary came to Harvard at the turn of the 1960s.

James himself founded the department half a century earlier. Given the facts that Leary was brought up in the field of American psychology and that James was the founder of the American discipline, Leary without doubt was aware of James prior to his experimentations with psychedelics. James’ Principles of Psychology was a landmark text for the discipline and Leary would have known it. However, it is not clear that Leary was aware of James experimentation with mind-altering substances until after his own initial psychedelic experience in the summer of

1960.

In Flashbacks and High Priest Leary explains how he came to read William James and how his understanding of James impacted his work from the very beginning. Interestingly Leary only came to read James for his mystical reflections and drug experimentation because he had been turned on to them by the same individual who turned him on to psychedelics in the first place, this individual being Frank Barron.

Leary describes Frank Barron as “a gentleman scholar of the old school- a cross between

William James and Dylan Thomas.”134 Dylan Thomas was a Welsh poet known and James we have handed at length. This description of Barron might be a nod to the fact he had introduced

134Timothy Leary High Priest (1968) pg.287 4.1 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 68

Leary to the psychedelic, and mystical James. Further, it reflects a nod to inspired poetry often found across the works of psychedelic writers. At the start of the 1960s the relationship Leary had with Barron was unique. It was one of both of deep friendship and professional colleagueship. Barron was the one who helped Leary land a professorship at Harvard. He introduced Leary to David McClelland who gave him the job at Harvard. Barron was also the one who had turned Leary on to the psychedelic experience. Barron told Leary about these magic little mushrooms the local Náhuatl used in rituals and healing ceremonies. These were of the same genre of psilocybin containing mushrooms as those that Gordon R. Wasson wrote about in his 1957 Life Magazine Article “Seeking the Magic Mushroom.” Barron was familiar with the text, which is in part how he came interact with the mushrooms in Mexico. The Náhuatl people called these sacred fungal beings teonanácatl, which translates as “the flesh of the gods.”135

Barron told Leary about how the mushrooms could induce vivid hallucinations. Leary remarks that “Frank had taken the mushrooms two years before and it plunged him into twelve months of contemplation, wild poetry, and dedicated study of mystical philosophy.”136 This path saw

Barron read William James after his psychedelic mushroom experience. The path Barron followed was quite similar to that of Leary.

Leary and his colleagues sought out the local curandera137, and they got their hands on some magic mushrooms. Leary with a group of his colleagues and friends tripped for the first time that summer in Mexico. At the time Leary didn’t have a framework to integrate the experience he just had into his life, but he knew it was the most profound experience he had ever had. It didn’t fit snuggly in his professional method of psychology, nor any other frame. It

135Wasson, “Seeking the Magic Mushroom”,102 136Timothy Leary High Priest,287 137Curandera is the term used to refer to a traditional healer in regions of central and southern American that uses folk medicines like teonanácatl 4.1 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 69 transcended all of that. Leary would come to develop his own language for the experience. This jargon and rhetoric drew from a wide breath of vocabularies, methods, and theories.

Leary writes that “in early September the kids and I moved to Newton Center, a Boston suburb about five miles from Cambridge…. Frank moved into the east wing.”138 The research team lived and worked together in a fashion that would become a hallmark of Leary’s method until his law troubles overcame him in 1968. Leary continues from the break in the quote above,

“he [Barron] unpacked a suitcase filled with books about visionary experiences. ‘I’d read

William James first,’ he said.”139 And so, Leary read James first before anyone else in the Fall of

1960. It is very important that William James was the first individual Leary read after his first claimed psychedelic mystical experience. Leary read James in a state of psychedelic afterglow and found his works invigorating. He integrated ideas from James’ methods and theory into his own. Like James, Leary would use psychedelc substances to explore those furthest constellations of the mind. The Jamesian model is one of the first places to suggest that the adapt scholar of psychology—and religion— might be able to engage firsthand with a mystic state of consciousness via the use of mind-altering substances.

One such way in which James clearly informed Leary’s method was recorded in

Flashbacks. Leary records that after an experiment with psychedelics his patient had forgotten his psychedelic insights. Leary remarks, “He said he found the secret of the universe but forgot it.’”140 To answer this phenomenological problem, Leary and Barron turned to the methodology of James. Barron remarked:

Perhaps there's a lesson in that. William James was not above taking notes on his own experiences as they came to him under the influence of nitrous oxide. After one session he found that he had written: 'The secret of the universe is the smell of burned almonds.'

138Leary, Flashbacks, 61 139Leary, Flashbacks, 36 140Leary, Flashbacks, 61 4.1 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 70

The universe can keep its secrets as far as I’m concerned, but I'd like to have a record of what people are experiencing under unusual conditions.’141

To this remark Leary responded, “So the solution…is for us to take lots of notes. And to record the external circumstances at the time. The smell of burned almonds is not bad for starters. With a nitrous oxide hose over your nose, it's understandable that the portal to the gates of mystery would be nasal.”142 Here we observe Leary’s first turn to naturalistic empirical studies in an effort to begin to understand these mind-altering substances to a fuller extent.

“The precedent for our psychedelic research,” Leary records, is “traced back to the turn of the century, to that most venerable and greatest of American psychologists, William James, who had mystic experiences using nitrous oxide and saw God.”143 Leary notes that when he and his colleagues began their work, they “knew very little about the contents of mystic experience.

It was difficult to put into words, and we couldn't map these experiences or diagram them in three-dimensional space/time.”144 The very words used in this quote ring with Jamesian sentiments. Leary’s remark—that the experience was difficult to put into words—evokes James’ mystical hallmark of ineffability. Further the need for a map also reflects James.

Leary references James’ article “Consciousness Under Nitrous Oxide,” which also detailed James’ experimentation with nitrous oxide. In Flashbacks, he quotes from the footnotes about nitrous oxide and Hegel from The Will to Believe. Being that William James’ was one of the first pieces of material Leary read when he returned to Boston in the Fall of 1960 after having his first mushroom trip in Mexico, the influence of James on Leary was critical. James set a

141Leary, Flashbacks, 61 142Leary, Flashbacks, 61 143Leary, Flashbacks, 61 144Timothy Leary, “The Effects of Test Score Feedback on Creative Performance and of Drugs on Creative Experience” from Widening Horizons in Creativity by Calvin Taylor and Frank Barron in 1964 by John Wiely and sons: pages 87-111. Printed and sourced from James Penner, Timothy Leary: The Harvard Years, 128 4.1 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 71 foundational precedent that suggested (a) mind-altering substance could induce mystical states of consciousness, (b) these states could produce mystical-type insights, and (c) there was a suggestion that you could apply these methods to texts.

On the first point Leary took favorably to the suggestion that these substances produced mystical modes of consciousness. When James wrote “apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch, they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation,”145 Leary read the statement and then ran with it. He extended it beyond nitrous oxide to include more psychoactive substances like

LSD and DMT, which were not known to James in his lifetime. Footage of Leary in later life is available in which he inhales nitrous oxide to maintain a liminal altered state like that found in works of James.146 On the third point, Leary, like James, also suggests that there may be some application, or adaptation of these consciousness expanding substances. James would remark that in order for these substances to be used there needs to be a map because:

No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness entirely quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question, - for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map.147

This quote in particular drove Leary’s search for maps. The need for such a map—to assist in directing the mind under the influence of psychedelics— resulted in The Psychedelic

Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead (1964). Leary produced the text mainly with the help of Ralph Metzner, though Richard Alpert—later Ram Dass—was included as an author. Leary turned to the Bardo Thödol because there was precedent for the use of the text in the works of Aldous Huxley.

145James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 111 146Abbott, “Timothy Leary”, 2000 147James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 111 4.1 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 72

Huxley famously made use of the text while tripping. He records such in his work, The

Doors of Perception (1954) which Leary became aware of, in October of 1960. Huxley records in his Doors of Perception how he called upon the Bardo Thödol in a moment of panic induced by a 400-milligram dose of mescaline sulfate. Huxley records that he was “[confronted] by a

Last Judgement which, after a long time and with considerable difficulty, [he] recognized as a chair.”148 While under the influence of the mescaline, Huxley further recalls in his writing:

I found myself all at once on the brink of panic. This, I suddenly felt, was going too far... even though the going was into intenser beauty, deeper significance….The literature of religious experience abounds in references to the pains and terrors overwhelming those who have come, too suddenly, face to face with some manifestation of the Mysterium Tremendum.149

Huxley then writes of literature related to experiences of the Mysterium Tremendum in the theological works of Boehme and William Law, which posited that when beheld “by unregenerate souls, the divine Light at its full blaze can be apprehended only as a burning, purgatorial fire.”150 Huxley in this moment of contact with the Mysterium Tremendum, turned to the Bardo Thödol .

Huxley was wisely guided to the Bardo Thödol by his wife, Laura Huxley. In this state of awe-induced panic she asked him, "Would you be able...to fix your attention on what The

Tibetan Book of the Dead calls the Clear Light?.... Would it keep the evil away, if you could

151 hold it? Or would you not be able to hold it?" Huxley records that he considered this question for a long time and then responded "perhaps I could-- but only if there were somebody there to tell me about the Clear Light. One couldn't do it by oneself,”152 and this was the point, Huxley

148Huxley, The Doors of Perception, 34 149Huxley, The Doors of Perception, 34-35 150 Huxley, The Doors of Perception, 35 151 Huxley, The Doors of Perception, 36 152Huxley, The Doors of Perception, 36 4.1 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 73 supposed, of the Tibetan ritual and its purposeful inclusion of a guide, “someone sitting there all the time and telling you what's what."153 At this moment Huxley and his wife took down his copy of “Evans-Wentz's edition of The Tibetan Book of The Dead, and opened at random.”154

Huxley recorded that his experience on mescaline reflected “an almost identical doctrine…found in the Tibetan Book of the Dead where the departed soul is described as shrinking in agony from the Pure Light of the Void, and even from the lesser, tempered Lights, in order to rush headlong into the comforting darkness of self-hood.”155 The use of the Bardo Thödol by the Huxley’s thus set a precedent for the use of the text while under the influence of psychedelics. Leary would later use the Bardo Thödol when writing his 1st psychedelic manual, The Psychedelic

Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Now return to the second point, psychedelics states seem to produce mystical-type insights. James wrote that the experience of mystics allowed sudden transformative insights, among other things, into texts. This suggestion is important to our own identification of the psychedelic method through which Leary and others found sudden insight and understanding in texts of mystical and mythic variety. James writes:

The kinds of truth communicable in mystical ways, whether they be sensible or supersensible, are various. Some of them relate to this world- visions of the future, the readings of hearts, the sudden understanding of texts, the knowledge of distant events, for example; but the most important revelations are theological and metaphysical.156

Thus, considering Jamesian models there is a precedent that suggests mystical experience might lends itself to sudden insights of a text. The mystical experience produced by the psychedelics seem for some to produce immediate and sudden insight into texts. In addition to this James

153Huxley, The Doors of Perception, 36 154Huxley, The Doors of Perception, 35 155 Huxley, The Doors of Perception, 35 156James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 116 4.1 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 74 writes that, “Since the denial of the finite self and its wants, since asceticism of some sort, is found in religious experience to be the only doorway to the larger and more blessed life, this moral mystery intertwines and combines with the intellectual mystery in all mystical writings.”157 These ideas certainly played into the early approaches of Leary. In the works of

Leary, we find the suggestion that the psychedelic experience might allow more individuals to garner insight into texts and into this particular variety of mystical consciousness. Leary, like

James extend these altered states of consciousness to the mystical visionary texts, but then Leary rooted his approach more firmly in the psychedelic agents.

We further notice these influences in particular when Leary writes: “The exact nature of the experience is usually felt and reported to be ineffable, which the figures of speech used to describe it and the language used is reminiscent of the mystics.”158 Because of the similarity in the language of ineffability, amongst numerous other reasons, Leary began to ask, “whether an experience, apparently touched off by ingestion of a material substance, can be described as mystical.”159 Leary’s answer to this question was a resounding yes. The indistinguishability of psychedelic experience from the mystical experience was taken at face value by Leary. Leary writes, “The best assumption we can make at the moment is that some forms of the psilocybin experience and mysticism are identical.”160 Such assumptions, Leary notes, “raise some interesting and important issues for the student of religion and suggests several ways in which

157 James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 118 158 Leary and Clark, “Religious Implication of Consciousness-expanding Drugs” From Religious Education 58, no. 3, 1963, pages 251-256. Printed and sourced from James Penner, Timothy Leary: The Harvard Years, 198 159 Leary and Clark, “Religious Implication of Consciousness-expanding Drugs” From Religious Education 58, no. 3, 1963, pages 251-256. Printed and sourced from James Penner, Timothy Leary: The Harvard Years, 198 160Leary and Clark, “Religious Implication of Consciousness-expanding Drugs” From Religious Education 58, no. 3, 1963, pages 251-256. Printed and sourced from James Penner, Timothy Leary: The Harvard Years, 198

4.1 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 75 consciousness-expanding substances may be useful.”161 Leary’s translation of the Bardo Thödol was part of this effort to make consciousness-expanding substances more useful for the public and the mystical seeker.

161 Leary and Clark, “Religious Implication of Consciousness-expanding Drugs” From Religious Education 58, no. 3, 1963, pages 251-256. Printed and sourced from James Penner, Timothy Leary: The Harvard Years, 198 4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 76

4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry

Just as James suggest mind-altering substances could help us understand mystical states of consciousness, Leary proposed that psychedelics could help us understand mystical domains.

One such domain was that of mystical and visionary literature. Insight into such texts are claimed through the use of psychedelics. This was demonstrated by Leary, who claimed his psychedelic mystical experiences gave him insight into chapters of the Tao Te Ching, which transformed them into his Psychedelic Prayers. In this transformation of the text, there is an implied anagogic method that makes use of psychedelics when reading various literature. We see that, like James,

Leary produces a kind of psychedelic poetry in addition to his psychedelic—psychospiritual— manuals. Leary is far more extensive than James on this account, but his prodigious use of psychedelics was far beyond that of James. The section introduces Leary’s method for creating the psychedelic poetry based on the Tao chapters. Before this let us understand how Leary experimented with the idea of using psychedelic to produce mystical and religious transformative experiences.

Leary would later note that “The chief and most obvious use to which they [psychedelic substances] may be put is in the study of the nature of religious experiences and their sources."162

To add to this claim, Leary’s later suggests that psychedelics could be used especially in religious instruction and for the interpretation of religious texts. Leary remarks that:

If it were to be proven that psilocybin, administered under serious conditions, is a safe and effective means towards self-discovery, this also would have religious significance…. it is to be noted that many religious people who have participated in the Harvard psilocybin research have reported that their spiritual sensitivities have also been expanded. Biblical passages or religious terms formerly meaningless or pale have suddenly acquired vivid meaning…. It is in this way, only more poignantly and

162 Leary and Clark, “Religious Implication of Consciousness-expanding Drugs” From Religious Education 58, no. 3, 1963, pages 251-256. Printed and sourced from James Penner, Timothy Leary: The Harvard Years,198 4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 77

effectively, that the psilocybin experience might be found to be a powerful aid in religious instruction.163

Leary’s remark here that “Biblical passages or religious terms formerly meaningless or pale have suddenly acquired vivid meaning” is a hint at the psychedelic hermeneutical method Leary would popularize. Such sentiments were already well into development by the time Leary made these remarks in 1963 and 1964.

We can see this in the research Leary performed at Harvard from 1960-1962. The initial research project was called the Harvard Psilocybin Project. It was a naturalist study into the effects of the psychedelic substance. Leary and his cohort gave psychedelics to whoever was willing to take them and in whatever setting was available. About a year into the Harvard

Psilocybin Project, Leary began to realize that the set and setting around the experience could affect the effects of psychedelic substances, with which he was experimenting. Leary noted that those who ingested psychedelics in suitable sets and settings could occasion both profound transformational and intensely mystical experiences—much like those Leary had during his first trip in Mexico in the summer of 1960. These experiences were also noted as highly transformative. We note Leary transformed his life after his use of magic mushrooms, but not entirely for the better.

On top of this Leary’s research led him to investigate the connection between Alcoholic

Anonymous (A.A) and psychedelics. A.A.’s founder, Bill Wilson had taken LSD under the supervision of Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard. Recall, that Huxley’s claimed he first tripped with Humphrey Osmond, who at the time was studying the use of mescaline and LSD as

163 Leary and Clark, “Religious Implication of Consciousness-expanding Drugs” From Religious Education 58, no. 3, 1963, pages 251-256. Printed and sourced from James Penner, Timothy Leary: The Harvard Years, 199-200 4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 78 potential treatments for alcoholism.164 Leary knew that under the proper conditions the psychedelic experience could be immensely transformative. So, the next step of the Harvard

Psilocybin Project was towards the Concord Prison Experiments. The Concord Prison

Experiments sought to use psilocybin to reform convicted criminals in prison through group assisted psychedelic therapy. The goal was to transform the convicts into outstanding, tax paying citizens. This did not really work as intended. The results were inconclusive, though Leary presented the experiments as successful, though brought to an end too fast and too soon. Later the findings of the experiments were contested on the account that the findings, which Leary presented, were overly positive and skewed by Leary’s bias. Leary’s bias for psychedelics had grown greater and greater with his continued use of psychedelics. However, Leary found that the

164 Huxley claimed his first mescaline experience was in 1953, the result of which spurred the text, The Doors of Perception (1954). However, there is a counter-narrative to this that ought to be included as a footnote. The Scholar of Occultism, James Webb wrote “There is firsthand evidence that Crowley introduced Aldous Huxley to mescaline in pre-1933 Berlin.” (Webb, The Occult Establishment, 439) The source Webb lists “is a former disciple of Crowley.” (Webb, The Occult Establishment, 439) This rumor has been circulating around Crowleyan followers and Thelemic scholars. Marco Pasi writes “in all probability, the source is Gerald Yorke.” (Pasi, Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics, 170) Pasi’s reasoning for this is that the Yorke Collection at the Warburg Institute in London contains a pair of post cards, and a letter from Huxley to Crowley. I have been unable to access these materials, but Pasi reports that the letter was dated December 9, 1932, while the post cards were dated March 1st, 1933 and July 14, 1933. (Pasi, Aleister Crowley and the Temptation of Politics, 170) We know Huxley was aware of peyote as early as 1931, where he reports his thoughts on Louis Lewis’s Phantastica (1924) in his essay “A Treatise on Drugs” (1931). In addition to this, the excellent work of Patrick Everitt, under Wouter Hanegraff and Marco Pasi at the UvA, confirmed that Crowley did in fact use mescaline sulfate, which he acquired through Parke-Davis during the early 1900s. (Everitt, The Cactus and the Beast: Investigating the role of peyote (mescaline) in the Magick of Aleister Crowley) We know that Crowley was using entheogens in his magick rituals as early as 1909, when he supposedly channeled his Book of Law. Additionally, we know that Huxley did meet with Crowley in October of 1930. This is found in an unpublished diary of Crowley from 1930, which Pasi handles in his article “September 1930, Lisbon: Aleister Crowley’s lost diary of his Portuguese trip.” Crowley records that he spent three days in Berlin with Huxley and John W.N. Sullivan, a figure who knew both Crowley and Huxley. There is no apparent reference in the diary to mescaline, but there is a page missing that cover the events from September 29th to September 30th of 1930. However, Crowley does include the symbol “⌖31” on October 1st, 1930. The symbol “⌖” according to Pasi is Crowley’s shorthand for preforming a magick ritual. Add to this the number 31, which Christopher Partridge in his article “Aleister Crowley on Drugs” (2017) writes Crowley would sometime refer to the drug by the number “31.” This was because, according to Partridge, “the initials of the drug, ‘A’ and ‘L’ correspond :1 =א :lamedh), in accordance with gematria, Crowley assigned it the number 31) ל aleph) and) א to Hebrew letter ,Partridge, “Aleister Crowley on Drugs”, 15) The diary also includes pages for October 2nd through 4th 1930) ”.30=ל which show Huxley spent 3 days with Crowley in Berlin, so perhaps the pair did speak of mescaline, but much more research needs to be done to confirm this rumor as anything more than just that, a rumor. 4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 79 experiments with psilocybin could produce profound mystical and transformative results, further these results often carried with them mystical and religious undertones.

So, Leary’s psychedelic experiments at Harvard would shift to involve numerous theologians, religious studies scholars, and developing students in the field of theology and religious studies.165 Out of all of Leary’s Harvard projects, the Marsh Chapel Experiments would represent the greatest implantation of psychedelics for the production of mystical experiences. In

1962 a Harvard Divinity student—Walter Pahnke— organized an experiment, under the advisory of Leary, which involved giving psylocibin to half of a group of divinity and theology students from the Boston area, while the other half received an active placebo. The March Chapel

Experiment took place in the March Chapel on Boston University’s campus on Good Friday during a special service, and for this reason the experiment is sometime referred to as the Good

Friday Experiment. So in a clearly religious set and setting of the March Chapel on Good Friday,

1962, a group of theologians and divinity students tripped in church.

Huston Smith participated in the experiment and later wrote, “The experiment was the most powerful for me, and it left a permanent mark on my experienced worldview.”166 Smith records how at the peak of the experience there was a soprano singing whose voice he writes, “I can only describe as angelic.”167 Smith continues:

What she sang was no more than a simple hymn, but it entered my soul so deeply that its opening and closing verse have stayed with me ever since. My times are in Thy hands, my God, I wish them there; My life, my friend, my soul, I leave entirely in Thy care…. My times are in Thy Hands, I’ll always trust in Thee: And after death at Thy right hand I shall forever be. In broad daylight those line are not at all remarkable, but in the context of the experiment they said everything….When that acquisition and my Christian nurturance converged on the Good Friday story under psilocybin, the gestalt transformed

165In a conversation with Wendy Doniger, I learned that she took a course with Leary between 1961 and 1962 at Harvard. During the course she was offered LSD, but she refused the opportunity on account that her husband, at the time, was serving in the military and warned her against taking the substance. 166 Smith, Cleansing the Doors of Perception, 100 167 Smith, Cleansing the Doors of Perception, 101 4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 80

a routine musical progression into the most powerful cosmic homecoming I have ever experienced.168

The experience reflects how under the effects of the psychedelic, one’s interpretation or understanding of religious media can become transformed into a cacophony of new insight into media that prior was “in broad daylight...not at all remarkable.”169 Smith’s reaction to the March

Chapel experiment would remain a foundational experience, and it greatly affected his worldview throughout his life, thereafter. Smith’s account of the Marsh Chapel Experiment further reflected Leary’s movement towards using psychedelic for religious purposes. The Marsh

Chapel Experiment was perhaps Leary’s most important experiment at Harvard. In the wake of it he would go on to produce his Bardo Thödol translation, which served as a one of the first manuals for psychedelic seekers. Leary’s second attempt at transforming mystical, visionary text through psychedelic insights came about in his Psychedelic Prayers.

This is how Leary used psychedelics for insights to produce his Psychedelic Prayers based on his interpretations of the Tao Te Ching. Leary writes, “The work went like this. I had nine English translations of the Tao.170 I would select a Tao chapter and read and reread all nine

English versions of it.” 171 So, in this first step Leary would read the text, and not just one but multiple versions of the material. He did not seem to read the text’s chapters in any particular order, instead opting to select the chapters at random. In the Psychedelic Prayers he presents his versions of the Tao chapters in uncollated order, so it’s likely that Leary read the chapters in nonsequential order as well.

168 Smith, Cleansing the Doors of Perception, 101 169 Smith, Cleansing the Doors of Perception, 101 170Leary only lists two in his sources, so there is doubt to Leary’s use of seven other English translations 171Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers. Pg38 4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 81

After reading the material multiple times over, Leary would also meditate on these readings. Leary writes that “after hours of rereading and meditation the essence of the poem would slowly bubble up.”172 This sober essence of the poem is the pre-product before any psychedelic insight is found. Only after spending the time reading and reflecting on text would one then come away with an interpretation of the essential theme of the material, which Leary oddly calls the “essence theme.” Leary writes “The aim was to relate this essence theme to psychedelic sessions,”173 so we must note that aim, or intention, is an important factor in this method. One’s engagement with the material prior to the psychedelic experience would develop an initial sober interpretation of the text. This sober interpretation, exemplified by Leary’s

“essence theme,” is primed with the intent to relate this initial interpretation to the psychedelic experience. Once this essential interpretation of the text is arrived at, one is next supposed to relate this essence to the psychedelic session by placing the primed material “under the psychedelic microscope.”174 This psychedelic microscope was a euphemism for the “Mind at

Large” or the mind exposed to psychedelic induced altered states.

Heading into the trip with material primed and intentions set on insight into these materials, Leary would consume some kind of psychedelic. Leary in particular referenced two substances: LSD and attar, as catalysts for entering into his preferred psychedelic consciousness.

Leary’s method and approach involved a weekly consumption of LSD. In-between these sessions there was also regular use of cannabis. He writes, “for several years I have pursued the yoga of one LSD session every seven days. The neurological amplification of cannabis was also

172Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 38 *Far Out Man* 173Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 38 174Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 38 4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 82 available.”175 This use of cannabis between these sessions surely contributed to Leary’s writing just as much as the LSD.

Attar is essentially finger hash made from rubbing the sticky resin of cannabis between the thumbs and fore fingers until a tacky ball of cannabis oil is formed. Attar is stronger and more shelf stable than standard cannabis flower. It would have been comparable to those solventless cannabinoid concentrates produced through mechanical extraction methods like the contemporary rosin-presses found across the cannabis industries of North America today. LSD was by far the most popular drug, aside from cannabis during the Long Sixties, and LSD was clearly the primary catalyst in Leary’s psychedelic insight.

The practice’s combination of psychedelics, Attar and LSD, is intriguing. The use of attar concurrently with, and in the wake of, LSD would have likely amplified the individual effects of each substance, prolonging aspects of psychedelic induced liminal states of consciousness. Leary suggests as much when he writes, “LSD opened up the lenses of cellular and molecular consciousness. Attar cleansed the windows of the senses.”176 With these lenses open, and senses cleansed, Leary would then either read the text to himself or have another read it to him at specific intervals of the trip. Leary later corresponded these intervals to the essential essences of the Tao Te Ching, which were drawn from his psychedelic interpretations of the Tao’s chapters.

In practical use of Leary’s Psychedelic Prayers, one would read, or have read to them, a selected poem at segments of the psychedelic experience which would correlate to a specific Tao chapter.

Reading the poem aloud during the trip returned the text’s essence to the forefront of the tripper’s mind. The expanded states of psychedelic consciousness would apparently give way to insight and edit when the selected portions were read aloud. Thus, the interaction with the text

175Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 38 176Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 38 4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 83 during these moments of trip was central to the experiential method’s intention to produce insights into the selected texts. As in these moments of examination, Leary writes “a ruthless process of polishing, cutting away takes place. Slowly the most blatant redundancies and mentalism were pruned.”177 This psychedelic edit was not a singular occurrence as Leary writes,

“Each poem in this volume has been exposed to several dozen appraisals by lysergicized [sic.] nervous systems.”178 The resulting product of the psychedelic insight were reinterpretations of the original readings of the text material via the insights garnered during the psychedelic experiences, whatever those may be. For Leary, they particularly lent themselves to claims of experiential gnosis, which reflected scientific theories like evolution, DNA, and atomic energy.

Leary suggested that others should apply the same method to the Tao Te Ching and other texts. Leary writes that “The Tao manual, like all other psychedelic texts, must be studied intensively, the detailed theory of energy transformations thoroughly learned, and the commentary notes for those prayers selected for the sessions reread several times.”179 This was

Leary’s psychedelic method for insight. This statement also served as an encouragement to others to make use of the very process by which Leary produced his Psychedelic Prayers as based on his psychedelic insights into the Tao Te Ching.

Leary also provides a method for how his poems, and other materials should be read during the session. Leary writes, “Psychedelic poetry should be read aloud (or taped) at a slow tempo, in a low natural voice. The prayers are best read or taped by one who is “high” at the time. Any tension, artificiality or game-playing on the part of the reader stands out in embarrassing relief.”180 Thus we see that the manner by which one is brought into the process is

177Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 39 178Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 39 179Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 41 180Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 42 4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 84 just as important. If one were to shout aggressively while reading, or move too quickly through the material, then the intended effect of the method would be less likely to occur. The manner in which one introduced the textual material during the trip was critical. Different sections of different texts would correlate with the swelling and dispersing waves of intensity that were experienced across the trip. 181

There are fifty-six poems in the Psychedelic Prayers. These prayers are derived from the first forty-five chapters of the Tao Te Ching and set into six separate groupings. These groupings are arranged in the following sections: Part I - Prayers for Preparation, Part II – The Experience of Elemental Energy, Part III – The Experience of Seed-Cell Energy, Part IV – The Experience of Neural Energy, Part V – The Experience of the Chakras, and Part VI – Re-entry to The

Imprinted World.

As Leary writes, Part I contains “preparatory prayers to be read before the session. These hymns apply the creative quietude of Lao Tse to the technique of running a psychedelic session.”182 These poems would have been read prior to the psychedelic session. Leary writes that, “these prayers are not specific to any particular level of consciousness. They present the philosophy of creative quietude passed on by Lao Tse.”183 Thus, these prayers were used to focus intent and prepare the mindset of the tripper as well as to sacralize the setting for the trip.

181Leary also provides a method for how his poems, and other materials should be read during the session. Leary writes, “Psychedelic poetry should be read aloud (or taped) at a slow tempo, in a low natural voice. The prayers are best read or taped by one who is “high” at the time. Any tension, artificiality or game-playing on the part of the reader stands out in embarrassing relief.” Thus we see that the manors by which one is brought into the process is just as important. If one were to shout aggressively while reading, or move too quicky through the material, then the intended effect of the method was less likely to occur. The manner in which one introduced the textual material during the trip was critical. Different sections of different texts would correlate with the swelling and dispersing waves of intensity that were experienced across the trip. 182Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 36 183Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 41 4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 85

Part I contains six poems. The first is entitled “I-1: The Guide.” This prayer is both a preparatory warning to the tripper and advice for the psychedelic guide. It was drawn from the

17th chapter of the Tao Te Ching translated as “Rulers” by Lin Yutang and “The Unadultered

Influence” by James Legge. James Legge and Lin Yutang are the only two English translators that Leary sources though he says he was working from nine different translations of the Tao Te

Ching. The next prayer is titled “When the Harmony is Lost.” This prayer is a list of options of where to turn if things end up worse than sideways during the trip, i.e. wise friends and doctors.

The next prayer is titled “Life, Light, Love, Seed, Sun, Son, Death, Daughter, DNA.” This prayer pokes at the underlying facet, which Leary sees as the basic unit all life conscious experiences, i.e. DNA, sex, and reproduction. The fourth prayer is titled, “Let There Be Simple Natural

Things During the Session.” This prayer encourages one to recognize and take note of the settings from which they intend to embark on their psychedelic voyage. It promotes simple joys, as well as old things and seclusion in nature. The fifth prayer is titled, “All Things Pass.” This prayer is about the liminality of all space-times. It is a reminder to the tripper that all their experiences during the trip, as well as in life, will come to pass. The sixth and final prayer of Part

I is entitled, “The message of Posture.” This prayer is calling the tripper to recognize their body and its posture. This prayer calls attention to how orientation and posturing affect the messages received by the body. This is not just on the level of asana, or body posture, but on a level much more deeply rooted in the orientation of the body/mind.

Part II, as Leary writes, contains “prayers invoking pure energy flow, molecular or atomic energy beyond symbol, sense-organ or cellular energy. These prayers are to be read slowly and ethereally during the ‘high’ point which usually come during the first three hours of 4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 86 an LSD session.”184 The poems from Part II were intended to guide the tripper through experiences which Leary interpreted through his psychedelic insights as exposing “the wisdom of molecular and atomic process.”185 Thus, poems from Part II would have been read following the come-up on psychedelics and during the duration of the trip considered to be most intense moments. Thus, the poems from Part II “prepares you for this awesome level of consciousness and guides you through it,”186 according to Leary.

Part III contains, as Leary writes, “prayers invoking cellular consciousness, seed energy.

Odes glorifying the DNA code to be read from the third to sixth hours of the LSD session.”187

Leary largely held that DNA was the center of much of the human and ancestral human/nonhuman experience.

Part IV contains “prayers invoking sensory experiences registered by the external sense organs.”188 These poems, focused on bodily awareness, were linked to the standard, normative senses of human perception. Leary states as much when he writes that Part IV contain, “hymns glorifying the direct awareness of vision hearing, touching, smell, taste.”189 Leary also writes that poems from Part IV are “to be read from the sixth to ninth hours of the LSD session or during session invoking neural ecstat-agenic [sic.] agents such as marijuana, low doses of LSD, hatha yoga, meditation;”190 thus the poems from section IV were not limited to psychedelics but were suited to other altered state practices as well. These hymns were meant to draw the individual’s awareness back into the body, back into the individual frame of constricted consciousness. Leary also writes, “the prayers of Part IV… are hymns to the five exterior senses. Odes of gratitude and

184Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 39 185 Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 41 186Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 41 187 Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 39 188 Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 39 189 Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 39 190Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 39 4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 87 reverent readiness to attend to the tattoo of energies hitting the visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory sense bulbs.”191 Thus, we see that for Leary, Part IV, reflects a return to the neural/nervous systems of the individual body. Leary writes, “the nervous system defines the level of neural consciousness- direct, symbol-free registration of energies by nerve endings.”192

Leary’s ideas implied that drawing awareness into the body contextualizes the insights of the psychedelic experience into a human form. It helps to bring the individual back into a normal waking state reality that is connected to the body and its facilities.

“Part V,” Leary writes, contain “prayers invoking sensory experiences registered by internal sense organs, visceral awareness from the nerve plexes [sic.] mediating elimination, sex, heart, lungs, and the frontal cortex.”193 Leary also writes, “Part V… includes hymns to five classes of internal sensations-message from the eliminative, sexual, cardiac, respiratory and fore- brain centers.”194 Leary suggests that these “hymns can be read during the sixth to ninth hours of the LSD session when the subject has cut himself off from external stimulation.”195 This cutting off from external stimulation is unique, as Leary suggests that all production in this point of the psychedelic experience are of the awareness contain “interoceptive sensations.” “Interoceptive sensations” according to Leary, “are messages from internal organs.”196 The systems Leary identifies here are linked to internal organs, which Leary says produce sensation that are not encoded in the same way by the symbolic/imprinted mind. Leary writes that, “most of these sensations are excluded from symbolic consciousness.”197 Thus, we might determine that, according to Leary, one is typically unaware to these mechanisms and the information they

191 Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 40 192Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 40 193 Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 39 194 Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 41 195 Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 39 196Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 40 197Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 40 4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 88 provide. Leary’s understanding of these systems is drawn from Buddhist and Tantric chakra systems. We see such when Leary writes, “Tibetan Buddhists and Tantric Hindus have worked for centuries with methods of contacting interior sensations and maps for symbolizing them.

These levels of consciousness are called chakras.” Leary jargon is informed by terms taken from different cultures and traditions.

Part VI, Leary writes, contains “Re-imprinting prayers designed to guide the subject during the period of re-entry (nine to 24 hours), while the subject is returning to the symbolic world and the post-session imprint is being formed.”198 From Leary’s perspective, the world was expressed and contained in the symbolic mind. “The symbolic mind,” according to Leary was a

“fraction of the nervous system which perceives, discriminates, interprets, remembers learned

(i.e., conditioned) cues selectively imposed on the kaleidoscope of sensation.”199 Leary understood that this symbolic mind is actually “the imprinted mind.”200 The imprinted mind was the mind informed by developmental circumstances like culture, language, and personal experiences. Leary writes that “the prayers in Part VI… are to be used during the latter stages of the psychedelic experience when the re-imprinting process begins to impose stasis on the ecstatic flow.”201 This takes the fluidity of the psychedelic experiences and congeals it. This is done so that during the reintegration insights from the psychedelic encounter are not lost but integrated into a new interpretation and understanding. Reading in the afterglow of the psychedelic experience seems to produce profound results. This integration into the individuals experience and understanding of the world and the interpreted material is a core facet of how psychedelics have been used for insight.

198Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 40 199Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 40 200Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 40 201Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 40 4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 89

Now we understand the layout of Leary’s Psychedelic Prayers and how he came to produce them based on psychedelic insights. Let us see what one of these translations looks like when compared to the texts he references. We will examine the eighth poem of Part III of

Leary’s Psychedelic Prayers which is entitled “Fourfold Representation.” It is entitled as “The

Four Enteral Models” in Lin Yutang’s Wisdom of Lao Tse (1948), and in James Legge’s The

Texts of Taoism (1962) it is called “Representation of the Mystery.” We read the stanzas in sequences with one another below, offering commentary between stanzas to highlight Leary’s psychedelic poetry and psychedelic insight. The poem begins:

Timothy Leary (TL): Before Heaven and Earth There was something Nebulous 202 Lin Yutang (LY): Before the Heaven and Earth existed There was something nebulous:203 James Legge (JL): There was something undefined and complete, coming into existence before Heaven and Earth204

In the first stanza we see little change; Leary instead opts for the less loquacious stylings of

Yutang over Legge. This will be a pattern for Leary. He prefers to use Yutang’s less wordy lines in making is own interpretations, but he takes words from Legge if they are more poetic.

The next stanza goes on:

(TL): Tranquil… effortless Permeating universally Revolving soundlessly Fusing205 (LY): Silent, isolated, Standing alone, changing not, Eternally revolving without fail,206 (JL): How still it was and formless, standing alone, and undergoing no change, reaching everywhere and in no danger (of being exhausted)!207

Here, Leary departs from both Yutang and Legge to elicit more an explicitly psychedelic take of the chapter’s lines. Leary adds certain psychedelic buzz words throughout to try and key the

202Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 40 203Yutang, Wisdom of Lao Tse, 145 204Legge, The Texts of Taoism, 67 205Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 40 206Yutang, Wisdom of Lao Tse, 145 207Legge, The Texts of Taoism, 67 4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 90 chapter to the psychedelic experience, but still, he preserves elements of the translations from which he is working. The poem goes on:

(TL): It may be regarded as the Mother Of all organic forms208 (LY): Worthy to be the Mother of All Things.209 (JL): It may be regarded as the Mother of all things.210

Leary here adds some scientific language into the poem with the word “organic.” We continue on:

(TL): Its name is not known nor its language But it is called Tao211 (LY): I do not know its name And address it as Tao.212 (JL): I do not know its name, and I give it the designation of the Tao (the Way or Course).213

Here Leary clearly reflects the Jamesian sentiment of ineffability behind the psychedelic mystical experience. He does so by adding “language”—which is not known— to the poem. This differs from the translations of Yutang and Legge and thus shows Leary psychedelic adjustments with Jamesian hints. The poem continues:

(TL): The ancient sages called it “great” The Great Toa214 (LY): If forced to give it a name, I shall call it "Great."215 (JL): Making an effort (further) to give it a name I call it The Great.216

Here Leary tries to import some authority to his translation by invoking “ancient sages” into his poetry. Note how neither Legge, nor Yutang invoke sages here. Legge does however use the term sage later. The poem continues:

(TL): Great means in harmony In harmony means tuned in Tuned in mean going far Going far means returning To the harmony217

208Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 40 209Yutang, Wisdom of Lao Tse pg.145 210Legge, The Texts of Taoism, 67 211Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 40 212Yutang, Wisdom of Lao Tse pg.145 213Legge, The Texts of Taoism, 67 214Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 40 215Yutang, Wisdom of Lao Tse pg.145 216Legge, The Texts of Taoism, 67 217Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 40 4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 91

(LY): Being great implies reaching out in space, Reaching out in space implies far- reaching, Far-reaching implies reversion to the original point.218 (JL): Great, it passes on (in constant flow). Passing on, it becomes remotes. Having become remote, it returns.219

Here we see Leary change course and continue with his own mantra plugging in his idea of tuning in during the psychedelic session. Recall how Leary championed the phrase. “Tune in,

Turn on, Drop Out” in the Long Sixties. Here is a plug of that slogan into the Tao chapter.

(TL): The tao is Great, The coil of life is great, The body is great, The human is designed to be great220 (LY): Therefore: Tao is Great, The Heaven is great, The Earth is great, The King is also great.221 (JL): Therefore the Tao is great; Heaven is great; Earth is Great; and the (sage) king is also great.222

Here we see where Leary might have gotten his term “sage” for the prior lines above, as Legge’s translation uses the term “sage” as a placeholder for king. Leary seems to humanize the poem in a way that is divergent from both Yutang and Legge. Yes, the Tao is great, but Leary changes

“Heaven” to “the coil of life”—DNA—Earth to the body, and the king sage to the human. This sort of movement seems to individualize and democratize this kind of relationship to the Tao.

This is common to James’ democratizing of religion through personal experience. The poem goes on:

(TL): There are in existence four great notes The human is made to be one thereof223 (LY): There are the Great Four in the universe, And the King is one of them.224 (JL): In the universe there are four that are great, and the (sage) king is one of them.225

218Yutang, Wisdom of Lao Tse, 145 219Legge, The Texts of Taoism, 67 220Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 40 221Yutang, Wisdom of Lao Tse,145 222Legge, The Texts of Taoism, 67 223Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 40 224Yutang, Wisdom of Lao Tse, 145 225Legge, The Texts of Taoism, 68 4.2 Timothy Leary’s Implied Anagogic Method and Psychedelic Poetry 92

In this line the only real change is that Leary uses “human” instead of “King” or “sage” like

Yutang and Legge. We read Leary final lines next to Yutang’s and Legge’s respectively:

(TL): When you place yourself in harmony with your body the body tunes itself to the show unfolding of life. Life flows in harmony with the Tao All proceeds Naturally in tune226 (LY): Man models himself after the Earth; The Earth models itself after Heaven; The Heaven models itself after Tao; Tao models itself after nature.227 (JL): Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its beings what it is.228

Leary’s shifts reflect the incorporation of certain psychedelic buzz words, that were added to the

Tao translations as it seems. It is intriguing that for Leary his psychedelic trips warranted an entire reinterpretation of the Tao Te Ching.

These movements by Leary imply an anagogic method by which psychedelics are used for insight into these texts. These insights can transform and change an individual’s understanding of the original text just as Leary transformed the chapters of the Tao Te Ching to reflect insights he found during his psychedelic experiences. These shifts are often reflecting an integration of the psychedelic experience’s contents into the contents of the text, as was the case with Leary. This move’s foundation was first rooted, by Leary, in James’ ideas that certain mind- altering substance produced mystical insights. It is unique that there is this linage of thought that prevails across the psychedelic currents of the last 150 years.

226Leary, The Psychedelic Prayers, 40 227Yutang, Wisdom of Lao Tse, 145-146 228Legge, The Texts of Taoism, 68 4.3 Conclusions from Leary and James and an Implied Anagogic Method 93

4.3 Conclusions from Leary and James and an Implied Anagogic Method

Leary understood that there was a strong relationship between psychedelic-using intellectuals of Long Sixties and their readings of James and other translated texts. This method of textual interpretation informed by psychedelics—along with a common set of shared texts and ideas— was pervasive in the Long Sixties.

In the 1995 re-introduction to High Priest (1968) published a year before his death,

Timothy Leary remarks reflect just this. He writes, “In 1960 we Middle-Aged, Middle-Class,

Naive, White, Harvard Faculty Intellectuals expected that psychedelic drugs would be used by

Academic Scholarly Adults who had read William James ("Varieties of Religious Experience") and the Pop-Hindu and Pop-Buddhist texts.”229 Leary pokes self-aware fun at these expectations, but his remarks reflect the link between (a) the readings of William James, (b) the reading of spiritual and mythic texts, and (c) the use of psychedelics.

The figures informed by James and Leary and also enamored by eastern texts included the likes of Richard Alpert/ Ram Dass and Allen Ginsberg. In the foreword, which Allen

Ginsberg wrote for Leary’s High Priest, the Beatnik poet invokes James. Ginsberg records,

“William James, whose pragmatic magic probably called the Peyote God to Harvard in the first place, had included shamanistic chemical visions among the many authentic ‘Varieties of

Religious Experience.’”230 The origins of the Timothy Leary Project were informed by the works of William James. Numerous figures surrounding Leary used psychedelics for mystical and religious insight sight based on the premises set forth in James’ work. This insight where there persisted in value were transformational. Perhaps they were even more transformational for

229Leary, High Priest, xi 230Ginsberg, “Foreword by Allen Ginsberg” to High Priest, xvii 4.3 Conclusions from Leary and James and an Implied Anagogic Method 94

Leary than James because instead of using nitrous oxide for insight, Leary used psilocin, LSD, and DMT. However, James clearly set the precedent for using mind-altering substances to explore non-normative consciousness. James also linked the use of mind-altering substances to mystical experiences. Further, James laid out the groundwork for an understanding of mystical- type experiences that were both ineffable and producing of insight.

But if such a theory lent itself to the interpretation of texts and accounts recognized as classically inspired by mystical visions and encounters with “Awe,” then perhaps the techne could exist in certain spiritual/intellectual toolboxes. For Leary and the Jamesian model, the psychedelic insight is akin to an anagogic perspective. Such a suggestion is important to our own tracking of the use psychedelic for claimed textual insight and transformative reimagination of myths. We stressed that James experienced insights into Hegel when he inhaled nitrous oxide.

This is not too far off from the method by which Leary and others found sudden insight and understanding into texts of a wide mystical and mythic sort on LSD, Psilocybin, and DMT.

Before Leary and his psychedelic projects James had experimented with a method and theory that were essential to the evolution of Leary's psychedelic methodology. Therefore,

Jamesian methods and theory were highly influential in the development of Leary’s ideas. James' use of the psychedelic gas nitrous oxide transformed his views on Hegel and later led to claims that such mind-altering substances could produce mystical-type experiences. James' experimentation with various mind-altering substances informed his theories, and his example set a methodological precedent that implicated the use of mind-altering substances for philosophical, scientific, and mystical insight. Later, Leary picked up James following his first psychedelic trip and used his experiential methodology to develop his theories. The examples found in James' and Leary's methodologies indicate that psychedelics—among other 4.3 Conclusions from Leary and James and an Implied Anagogic Method 95 psychoactive substances—have been employed to interpret various religious, philosophical, and psychological texts and ideas, which have often resulted in transformative, creative and intellectual productions. Given that contemporary research into psychedelics has been deemed a

Renaissance, it is critical that we walk away understanding the American psychospiritual methodology that democratized mysticism through the use of mind-altering substances as passed from James through Leary and then into the psychedelic counterculture.

Let us conclude. The parallels between James and Leary were numerous. Like James,

Leary was an American psychologist. James founded the Department of Psychology at Harvard.

From 1959 until 1963, Leary lectured at Harvard in the Psychology Department and performed research at the school. Throughout their work, each of the pair became engrossed in personal mystical and religious experiences. Most importantly, the pair employed a methodology that used psychedelic substances to better understand human psychology and mystical states of consciousness.

Between 1886 and 1910, James employed a methodology experimenting with mind- altering substances to understand human psychology better. James' methodology informed his subsequent theories and works. From 1960 to 1996, Leary employed a more extensive methodology, experimenting with mind-altering substances to understand human consciousness.

Leary's methodology informed his theories and methods, which became widespread in the Long

Sixties' psychedelic counterculture.

As the first torchbearer in American Psychology, James set a methodological precedent for American psycho-spirituality that utilized psychoactive substances to explore consciousness and its relationship to mystical experiences. James's methodological approach to the study of psychology, philosophy, and personal religious experiences involved mind-altering substances: 4.3 Conclusions from Leary and James and an Implied Anagogic Method 96 nitrous oxide, diethyl ether, Chloroform, alcohol, and peyote. James' firsthand experiences with the psychedelic gas-- nitrous oxide--served as a vital source when developing his typology for mystical-type religious experiences.

This is a similar mode of understanding found behind the use of psychedelics for insight into texts. James claimed such insight into Hegel and mystical frames of consciousness from his nitrous oxide experiences. This insight into the Hegelian philosophy represents an early turn towards mystical insight through mind-altering substances in American psycho-spirituality. We have already tracked this across the Anesthetic Revolution, the Long Sixties period, and the contemporary Psychedelic Renaissance. These paper’s examples, in the case of James and Leary, have demonstrated clearly how the use of mind-altering substances in conjunction with text produced insights into such materials in correspondence to the theory of set and setting. With the current rise in interest in psychedelics and the reform of drug laws in the United States and

Canada, it is likely that psychedelics will again have a pronounced impact on the religiosities of

Americans. It will be interesting to see if—like James and Leary—the contemporary Psychedelic

Renaissance will lead to a more democratic claim to mystical and religious materials.

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