Barnard George William - Sacred knowledge: psychedelics and religious experiences

Foreword, by G. William Barnard -- Preface: One Discovery of Transcendence -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Note to the Reader -- Part I. Setting the Stage -- The Death and Rebirth of Psychedelic Research -- Orientation, Definitions, and the Limits of Language -- Revelation and Doubt -- Part II. Mystical and Visionary Forms of Consciousness -- Intuitive Knowledge -- Approaches to Unitive Consciousness -- New Perspectives on Time and Space -- Visions and Archetypes -- Part III. Personal and Interpersonal Dynamics -- The Interpersonal and the Mystical -- Experiences of Meaninglessness, Despair, and Somatic Discomfort -- Religious Conversion and Psychodynamic Experiences -- Discipline and Integration -- Reflections on Death -- Part IV. Present and Future Applications of Entheogens -- Psychedelic Frontiers in Medicine -- Psychedelic Frontiers in Education -- Psychedelic Frontiers in Religion -- Maximizing the Probability of Safety and Benefit -- Part V. Onward -- Fears of Awakening -- Entering Into a New Paradigm -- Movement Into the Future -- Epilogue: A Concise Report of Insights from the Frontier Where Science and Spirituality Are Meeting -- Selected Bibliography -- A Hopkins Playlist for Psilocybin Studies (2008 Version).;In the early 1960s, scientists openly advocated for experimentation with psychedelics. This effort, however, quickly turned into a discredited enterprise involving recreational drug use. But what if a study of psychedelics was undertaken with trusted scientific rigor? William A. Richards does just that in Sacred Knowledge, the first well-documented, sophisticated account of the effect of psychedelics on biological processes, human consciousness, and revelatory religious experiences.