Spirit on the Brain

I’ve come across the quote from William James (below) in all sorts of contexts, including “serious” meditation books.

I had no idea it came from James’s use of cheap-thrill drugs.

From Todd Thies’s Legally Stoned:

The well-known psychologist and philosopher William James inhaled nitrous oxide and wrote about his experiences in 1889, in an article titled “Consciousness under Nitrous Oxide,” in the Psychological Review. He also discussed his experience with nitrous oxide in his probably best known work, The Varieties of Religious Experience. In that book, he states, “I myself made some observations on … nitrous oxide intoxication, and reported them in print. One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is 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 flimsiest of screens, there lies potential forms of consciousness entirely different.”

Presumably, that 1889 article was also where James recorded his classically gassy insight,

Hogamous, Higamous,
Man is polygamous.
Higamous, Hogamous,
Woman is monogamous.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 11th, 2010 at 9:21 pm and is filed under Entheogens. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.