re-experience a spontaneous spiritual experience he had had years before, which had enabled him to overcome his own alcoholism. In the late 1950s, Heard also worked with psychiatrist Cohen to introduce others to LSD, including John Huston and Steve Allen. With experience, Heard arrived at a judicious view of the value of psychedelics, since at their best the insights and ecstasies they facilitate are temporary states. Religion writer Don Lattin wrote that Heard's view was "LSD might provide an experience of the great mysteries, but it offered no instant answers." Heard delivered a series of public lectures, as part of the Sequoia Seminars program, on the topics of history, sciences, and cultural issues, also going into his views on the metaphysical connection with higher realities or Divine realms. The program was offered in the Santa Cruz Mountains near Ben Lomond, California, not far from Stanford University. He mentioned the potential value of psychedelic substances (which were not yet banned or highly controlled at that time). Heard was responsible for introducing the then unknown Huston Smith to Aldous Huxley. Smith became one of the pre-eminent religious studies scholars in the United States. His book The World's Religions is a classic in the field, has sold over two million copies and is considered a particularly useful introduction to comparative religion. The meeting with Huxley led eventually to Smith's connection to Timothy Leary. Five Ages of Man In 1963, what some consider to be Heard's magnum opus, a book titled The Five Ages of Man, was published. According to Heard, the prevalent developmental stage among humans in today's well-industrialized societies (especially in the West) should be regarded as the fourth: the "humanic stage" of the "total individual," who is mentally dominated, feeling him- or herself to be autonomous, separate from other persons. Heard writes (p. 226) this stage is characterised by "the basic humanic concept of a mankind that is completely self-seeking because it is completely individualized into separate physiques that can have direct knowledge of only their own private pain and pleasure, inferring but faintly the feelings of others. Such a race of ingenious animals, each able to see and to seek his own advantage, must be kept in combination with each other by appealing to their separate interests." In modern industrial societies, a person, especially if educated, has the opportunity to begin entering the "first maturity" of the humanic "total individual"