psychedelic-experience

The use and distribution of various psychoactive substances at the joyance create a communal atmosphere of altered consciousness and celebration.

3 chapters across 3 books

The Broken God (2017)David Zindell

Chapter 28

The chapter describes Bardo's acquisition of a cathedral in the Old City and his organization of a massive winter joyance celebrating Mallory Ringess' supposed ascension to godhood. Despite opposition from the Order, tens of thousands gather on the ice ring for a festive event featuring music, food, drugs, and speeches called testaments. The chapter also highlights the tense interpersonal dynamics among key figures like Bardo, Hanuman li Tosh, and Danlo as they prepare for the event.

Crash2 (1686)Unknown

Chapter 21

In Chapter 21 of "Crash2," the narrator meets Vaughan at an airport lounge, where Vaughan is visibly deteriorated and under the influence of acid. The narrator accompanies Vaughan on a hallucinatory car journey along the motorway, experiencing a shared psychedelic vision that blends elements of danger, affection, and surreal imagery of vehicles as angelic creatures. The chapter explores the narrator's complex emotional and psychological states, intertwined with Vaughan's influence and the metaphorical transformation of the motorway into a mystical space.

The Making of a Counter Culture (1969)Theodore Roszak

Chapter V THE COUNTERFEIT INFINITY: THE USE AND ABUSE OF PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE a dusky light—a purple flash crystalline splendor—light blue— Green lightnings.— in that eternal and delirious misery— wrathfires— inward desolations— an horror of great darkness great things—on the ocean counterfeit infinity— —COLERIDGE (From The Notebooks for 1796.) At the bohemian fringe of our disaffected youth culture, all roads lead to psychedelia1 The fascination with hallucino- genic drugs emerges persistently as the common denomina- tor of the many protean forms the counter culture has assumed in the post-World War II period. Correctly understood (which it all too seldom is), psychedelic experience partici- pates significantly in the young’s most radical rejection of the parental society. Yet it is their frantic search for the phar- 1] will for the most part be using the word “psychedelics” in this chapter to cover all the many psychotropic agents, both pro- fessionally concocted and home-brewed, which are currently employed to induce visionary experience. Connoisseurs may find this global asage of the term unsatisfactory, preferring the more fastidious clas- ification of hallucinogens one finds in an essay like Timothy Leary’s The Molecular Revolution” in The Politics of Ecstasy (New York: Putnam, 1968), pp. 332-61. However, I will brazen out this less jiscriminating terminology on the grounds that the thesis of this shapter applies to all the psychotropic agents without distinction.

This chapter examines the role of psychedelic experience within the post-World War II counterculture, emphasizing its potential as a method for exploring consciousness and reformulating personality. It traces early scientific and philosophical interest in hallucinogens by figures like William James and Havelock Ellis, who saw these substances as tools for expanding human understanding beyond conventional rational consciousness. However, the chapter critiques the widespread and often immature use of psychedelics among disaffected youth, arguing that without a cultivated mind and cultural grounding, psychedelic experience can become a superficial and even destructive fixation rather than a genuine expansion of consciousness.