title: Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences
author: William Richards
description: <i>Sacred Knowledge</i> is not only timely and relevant to a whole host of current social/legal issues but also addresses, with seemingly effortless ease, many of the deeper/subtler metaphysical implications of psychedelicstheir therapeutic and spiritual potential. Richards's clear prose makes articulating such difficult topics look easy. (G. William Barnard, Southern Methodist University)<br /><br />Richards' <i>Sacred Knowledge</i> is not a tome but rather a concise work rich with personal stories, observations, and insights into a compelling topic long ignored and now garnering the attention it has long deserved. (Charles S. Grob, University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine)<br /><br />A seminal work that will become required reading for anyone seriously interested in either religious experience or psychedelic research. There has not been a book in this area as valuable since William James's <i>The Varieties of Religious Experience</i>, more than a century ago. (James Fadiman, author of <i>The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys</i>)<br /><br />In this wonderfully sensitive, critical, and confessional history one of the foremost clinicians and scholars of presents his own experience with psychedelics and with guiding others in studies to occasion mystical experiences using entheogens. Neither addictive nor toxic, these drugs whatever called surely can under the right set and setting reveal the God within us all. This book is the best accessible overview by someone who knows by experience, and can guide others whether they choose to be involved with entheogens personally or seek to simply to understand others who do. Regardless of choice, this loving man should be your guide. (Ralph W. Hood Jr. , University of Tennessee)<br /><br />An inspiring testament to half a century of scientific research and personal exploration into the responsible, beneficial use of psychedelic substances. William A. Richards's work is visionary, personal, and transpersonal, instilled with kindness, deep humanity, and quiet wisdom. (Don Lattin, author of <i>The Harvard Psychedelic Club</i>)<br /><br />This is a great book which I highly recommend. It is an immersive experience, which provides an opportunity for those unfamiliar with nonordinary states of consciousness to catch a glimpse of their beauty and power. William A. Richards seamlessly weaves together his extensive understanding of spirituality on the one hand and academic and clinical science on the other  a rare combination. His humour, insights, and empathy shine through on every page. The topic is timely and a manifestation of the fact that the intellectual battle regarding the potential of nonordinary states of consciousness (as, in this case, facilitated by psychedelics) has been won. (Amanda Feilding, director, Beckley Foundation)<br /><br /><i>Sacred Knowledge</i> provides the most comprehensive overview of the actual use of psychedelics in psychotherapy and of the transformative power of mystical experiences. (Torsten Passie, Hannover Medical School)<br /><br />This is a wonderful book and couldn't have been launched at a more auspicious time. As William A. Richards has portrayed so beautifully, psychedelics provide an experience of total sanity and give a glimpse of a deeper, more heart-centred, and universal spiritual reality. In my opinion everyone should read this book, not just researchers, theologians, and philosophers but also the ordinary person in society. As society becomes more and more degraded, the planet more and more polluted, and the natural world destroyed, the truth of what the great mystic Krishnamurthy said, 'It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society,' will become ever more apparent. Increasingly I find more and more people are asking at a deeper level 'why am I here? 'What is this life about? What is it all for'? The sane answer to many of these questions is to be found in this book. (Ivor Browne, University College Dublin)<br /><br />A practitioner and professor, Richards writes as a guide into the depths of psychedelic spirituality in an attempt to bring entheogenssubstances that 'generate the divine within'back into the mainstream. (<i>Publishers Weekly</i>)<br /><br />Richards is a generous and gregarious writer, who avoids platitudes for a mix of hard evidence, anecdotal stories, and memoir-like ruminations... Timely. (<i>Baltimore City Paper</i>)
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  PsychoReligious
  
  
  **Psychedelics and Religious Experience**
  
  
  **by**
  
  
  **Alan Watts**
  
  
  (Originally appeared in the _California Law Review_ ,
  
  
  Vol. 56, No. 1, January 1968, pp. 74-85.)
  
  
  Copyright Alan Watts & _California Law Review_.
  
  
  The experiences resulting from the use of psychedelic drugs are often
  described in religious terms. They
  
  
  are therefore of interest to those like myself who, in the tradition of
  William James, (1) are concerned
  
  
  with the psychology of religion. For more than thirty years I have been
  studying the causes, the consequences, and the conditions of those peculiar
  states of consciousness in which the individual discovers himself to be one
  continuous process with God, with the Universe, with the Ground of Being, or
  whatever name he may use by cultural conditioning or personal preference for
  the ultimate and eternal reality. We have no satisfactory and definitive name
  for experiences of this kind. The terms
  
  
  "religious experience," "mystica