The Ecstatic Adventure

by Ralph Metzner (Editor)

Contributors: John Blofeld, Henrick Bull, George Castayne, Walter H. Clark, Eric Clough, David Crosby, Allen Ginsberg, Ken Green, Mary Hart, Karin Harvey, Ronald Harvey, Joseph Havens, Gray Henry, Stanley Krippner, Timothy Leary, Peter Matthiessen, Ralph Metzner, John Robertson, Zalman H. Schachter, Huston Smith, Linda Sontag, Charles Soames, Elsa von Eckartsberg, Rolf von Eckartsberg, Sugar Wagner, Alan Watts, Arnold West, Irwin Wunderman

Contents: Foreword by Alan Watts, introduction, 25 chapters divided into 6 unnumbered parts: I. Experiences Described in the Language of Psychology; II. Experiences Described in the Language of Religion, Psychedelic Poetry; III. Experiences of Therapeutic Self-Confrontation; IV. Experiences Programmed for Creative Problem-Solving; V. Experiences of Parents and Children; VI. Experiences of New Dimensions.

Excerpt(s): In The Ecstatic Adventure, thirty-eight people from a broad spectrum of backgrounds and beliefs tell what it was like for them by describing their own experiences with hallucinogenic drugs-mescaline, LSD, peyote, psilocybin. Some of the trips are hell, others ecstasy.

Genres: Drugs

306 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Ralph Metzner Ph.D. was an American psychologist, writer and researcher, who participated in psychedelic research at Harvard University in the early 1960s with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later named Ram Dass). Dr. Metzner was a psychotherapist, and Professor Emeritus of psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where he was formerly the Academic Dean and Academic Vice-president. He received his undergraduate degree at Oxford University and his doctorate in clinical psychology at Harvard University, where he was also the recipient of an NIMH Post-doctoral Fellowship in psychopharmacology at the Harvard Medical School. He had a life-long interest in the many different realms of consciousness and its modifications.

He is the author of The Well of Remembrance, The Unfolding Self, Green Psychology, Birth of a Psychedelic Culture (with Ram Dass); editor of two collections of essays on ayahuasca and on psilocybe mushrooms; and author of a new series of seven books on The Ecology of Consciousness.