Sacred Knowledge
Psychedelics and Religious Experiences
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
Sacred Knowledge is the first well-documented, sophisticated account of the effect of psychedelics on biological processes, human consciousness, and revelatory religious experiences. Based on nearly three decades of legal research with volunteers, William A. Richards argues that, if used responsibly and legally, psychedelics have the potential to assuage suffering and constructively affect the quality of human life.
Richards's analysis contributes to social and political debates over the responsible integration of psychedelic substances into modern society. His book serves as an invaluable resource for readers who, whether spontaneously or with the facilitation of psychedelics, have encountered meaningful, inspiring, or even disturbing states of consciousness and seek clarity about their experiences. Testing the limits of language and conceptual frameworks, Richards makes the most of experiential phenomena that stretch our understanding of reality, advancing new frontiers in the study of belief, spiritual awakening, psychiatric treatment, and social well-being. His findings enrich humanities and scientific scholarship, expanding work in philosophy, anthropology, theology, and religious studies and bringing depth to research in mental health, psychotherapy, and psychopharmacology.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Both a practitioner and professor, Richards writes as a guide into the depths of psychedelic spirituality in an attempt to bring entheogens substances that "generate the divine within" back into the mainstream. Opposing the academic backlash against the use of psychedelics in research that picked up in the 1980s, Richards re-introduces the science and psychedelic experience of entheogens as one part study and another part spiritual devotion. He suggests that taken in proper context and used in specific and pointed ways (via contemporary research such as his own) psychedelics can, and reliably do, catalyze genuine mystical and visionary encounters, which can lead to spiritual awakening. Yet, for all its careful documentation and passionate prose, Richards' work still seems dated with references to bygone scholars and questionable sources of authority. More worrying is Richards' lack of serious consideration of appropriating indigenous entheogen practices and the claims of alternate religious pathways. Perhaps this should be expected for a field that has long lain dormant and marginalized; even so, with the legalization of marijuana for recreational use and a general liberalization of views concerning substances such as ayahuasca this might be the perfect time for Richards' wealth of experience in psychedelics to spearhead the renaissance of spiritual psychedelics.
