The Joyous Cosmology is a brilliant arrangement of words describing experiences
for which our language has no vocabulary. To understand this wonderful but difficult
book it is useful to make the artificial distinction between the external and
the internal. This is, of course, exactly the distinction which Alan Watts wants
us to transcend. But Mr. Watts is playing the verbal game in a Western language,
and his reader can be excused for following along with conventional dichotomous
models.
External and internal. Behavior and consciousness. Changing the
external world has been the genius and the obsession of our civilization. In
the last two centuries the Western monotheistic cultures have faced outward
and moved objects about with astonishing efficiency. In more recent years, however,
our culture has become aware of a disturbing imbalance. We have become aware
of the undiscovered universe within, of the uncharted regions of consciousness.
This dialectic trend is not new. The cycle has occurred in the
lives of many cultures and individuals. External material success is followed
by disillusion and the basic "why" questions, and then by the discovery of the
world within—a world infinitely more complex and rich than the artifactual structures
of the outer world, which after all are, in origin, projections of human imagination.
Eventually, the logical conceptual mind turns on itself, recognizes the foolish
inadequacy of the flimsy systems it imposes on the world, suspends its own rigid
control, and overthrows the domination of cognitive experience.
We speak here (and Alan Watts speaks in this book) about the politics
of the nervous system—certainly as complicated and certainly as important as
external politics. The politics of the nervous system involves the mind against
the brain, the tyrannical verbal brain disassociating itself from the organism
and world of which it is a part, censoring, alerting, evaluating.
Thus appears the fifth freedom—freedom from the learned, cultural
mind. The freedom to expand one's consciousness beyond artifactual cultural
knowledge. The freedom to move from constant preoccupation with the verbal games—the
social games, the game of self—to the joyous unity of what exists beyond.
We are dealing here with an issue that is not new, an issue that
has been considered for centuries by mystics, by philosophers of the religious
experience, by those rare and truly great scientists who have been able to move
in and then out beyond the limits of the science game. It was seen and described
clearly by the great American psychologist William James:
... 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.. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but 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. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness 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. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality. Looking back on my own experiences, they all converge toward a kind of insight to which I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance.
But what are the stimuli necessary and sufficient to overthrow
the domination of the conceptual and to open up the "potential forms of consciousness"?
There are many. Indian philosophers have described hundreds of methods. So have
the Japanese Buddhists. The monastics of our Western religions provide more
examples. Mexican healers and religious leaders from South and North American
Indian groups have for centuries utilized sacred plants to trigger off the expansion
of consciousness. Recently our Western science has provided, in the form of
chemicals, the most direct techniques for opening new realms of awareness.
William James used nitrous oxide and ether to "stimulate the mystical
consciousness in an extraordinary degree." Today the attention of psychologists,
philosophers, and theologians is centering on the effects of three synthetic
substances—mescaline, lysergic acid, and psilocybin.
What are these substances? Medicines or drugs or sacramental foods?
It is easier to say what they are not. They are not narcotics, nor intoxicants,
nor energizers, nor anaesthetics, nor tranquilizers. They are, rather, biochemical
keys which unlock experiences shatteringly new to most Westerners.
For the last two years, staff members of the Center for Research
in Personality at Harvard University have engaged in systematic experiments
with these substances. Our first inquiry into the biochemical expansion of consciousness
has been a study of the reactions of Americans in a supportive, comfortable
naturalistic setting. We have had the opportunity of participating in over one
thousand individual administrations. From our observations, from interviews
and reports, from analysis of questionnaire data, and from pre-and postexperimental
differences in personality test results, certain conclusions have emerged. (1)
These substances do alter consciousness. There is no dispute on this score.
(2) It is meaningless to talk more specifically about the "effect of the drug."
Set and setting, expectation, and atmosphere account for all specificity of
reaction. There is no "drug reaction" but always setting-plus-drug. (3) In talking
about potentialities it is useful to consider not just the setting-plus-drug
but rather the potentialities of the human cortex to create images and experiences
far beyond the narrow limitations of words and concepts. Those of us on this
research project spend a good share of our working hours listening to people
talk about the effect and use of consciousness-altering drugs. If we substitute
the words human cortex for drug we can then agree with any statement made about
the potentialities—for good or evil, for helping or hurting, for loving or fearing.
Potentialities of the cortex, not of the drug. The drug is just an instrument.
In analyzing and interpreting the results of our studies we looked
first to the conventional models of modern psychology—psychoanalytic, behaviorist—and
found these concepts quite inadequate to map the richness and breadth of expanded
consciousness. To understand our findings we have finally been forced back on
a language and point of view quite alien to us who are trained in the traditions
of mechanistic objective psychology. We have had to return again and again to
the nondualistic conceptions of Eastern philosophy, a theory of mind made more
explicit and familiar in our Western world by Bergson, Aldous Huxley, and Alan
Watts. In the first part of this book Mr. Watts presents with beautiful clarity
this theory of consciousness, which we have seen confirmed in the accounts of
our research subjects—philosophers, unlettered convicts, housewives, intellectuals,
alcoholics. The leap across entangling thickets of the verbal, to identify with
the totality of the experienced, is a phenomenon reported over and over by these
persons.
Alan Watts spells out in eloquent detail his drug-induced visionary
moments. He is, of course, attempting the impossible—to describe in words (which
always lie) that which is beyond words. But how well he can do it!
Alan Watts is one of the great reporters of our times. He has
an intuitive sensitivity for news, for the crucial issues and events of the
century. And he has along with this the verbal equipment of a poetic philosopher
to teach and inform. Here he has given us perhaps the best statement on the
subject of space-age mysticism, more daring than the two classic works of Aldous
Huxley because Watts follows Mr. Huxley's lead and pushes beyond. The recognition
of the love aspects of the mystical experience and the implications for new
forms of social communication are especially important.
You are holding in your hand a great human document. But unless
you are one of the few Westerners who have (accidentally or through chemical
good fortune) experienced a mystical minute of expanded awareness, you will
probably not understand what the author is saying. Too bad, but still not a
cause for surprise. The history of ideas reminds us that new concepts and new
visions have always been non-understood. We cannot understand that for which
we have no words. But Alan Watts is playing the book game, the word game, and
the reader is his contracted partner.
But listen. Be prepared. There are scores of great lines in this
book. Dozens of great ideas. Too many. Too compressed. They glide by too quickly.
Watch for them.
If you catch even n few of these ideas, you will find yourself
asking the questions which we ask ourselves as we look over our research data:
Where do we go from here? What is the application of these new wonder medicines?
Can they do more than provide memorable moments and memorable books?
The answer will come from two directions. We must provide more
and more people with these experiences and have them tell us, as Alan Watts
does here, what they experienced. (There will hardly be a lack of volunteers
for this ecstatic voyage. Ninety-one percent of our subjects are eager to repeat
and to share the experience with their family and friends). We must also encourage
systematic objective research by scientists who have taken the drug themselves
and have come to know the difference between inner and outer, between consciousness
and behavior. Such research should explore the application of these experiences
to the problems of modern living—in education, religion, creative industry,
creative arts.
There are many who believe that we stand at an important turning
point in man's power to control and expand his awareness. Our research provides
tentative grounds for such optimism. The Joyous Cosmology is solid testimony
for the same happy expectations.
Timothy Leary, Ph.D. Richard Alpert, Ph.D. Harvard University, January, 1962 |