/lit/ - Literature

No. Read this.

Cut down to just the McKenna, Dass, and Huxley and then pick up William James' Varieties of Religious Experience for something more substantial

>>14190583
>Memospore ARG
>Quick rundown on this?
Bro I just said it was half a decade ago, I barely remember it, go Google it, it's all archived, except probably most of the later IRC stuff, but that was really just a vibrant fan community in the end. The original Memospore threads are definitely still around on Bethsoft and /r/teslore.
>a fun, uniquely creative element of TES
You'll come to feel this way about more serious art, I promise. There's nothing wrong with loving it; I loved it. Just try to keep in mind that it is developmental scaffolding, not an endpoint. I was recently invited to a chat with some of my old online weird lore friends and it was kind of depressing to see some of them still stuck on something so trivial. The same is true of me for /lit/, though—I'm on the edge of aging out of it. Regardless, it's a good sign that you're browsing /lit/, and interested in faux-academic theologico-philosophy, and earnest in your interests. Keep on keeping on, anon. You will have many phases in your life, and this is only one of them.

>>14140822
Someone give me a pitch for this guy and his book. I came across it in a bookstore and assumed it was a book on comparative religion, but it seems to be more than that.

>>13945630

>>13844032
>I read Doors of Perception
Consider rereading Brave New World and then reading Island to see how his attitude towards psychedelics evolved.
>I thought True Hallucinations sounded intriguing
It's a decent read. I would take everything with a grain of salt, but it's a decent read. You may also be interested in Burroughs' Yagé Letters to compare and contrast with it in terms of white colonization of South American psychedelic spiritualism (ayahuasca being a tourist industry today).
>>13844045
>>13845632
>>13845647
>>13845672
>>13845891
Do trip if you're interested but don't take guff from aggressive acidheads. Disliking McKenna's mystique is a good start. Remember to take things one step at a time, to ease yourself in, to start with lower doses: disappointment is preferable to trauma, and you can always trip again in the future, and this idea of hurrying to "heroic doses" is exactly the kind of soullessly touristic checkbox ticking that psychedelia should be breaking people out of.
>>13844051
>>13845719
This book is relatively recent, right? I remember first seeing it advertised after my tripping had mostly ended. The focus on McKenna, Wilson, and Dick is very interesting, and tells me exactly what kind of book it is. Is the author as uncritical as his subjects, though? What I always found most frustrating about those three is the disingenuousness of their claims of skepticism. They pretend to be self-critical as a smokescreen to obscure their arbitrariness, or even worse use skepticism as a vehicle to claim whatever they want.
>>13846037
Classic list but very narrow, and a lot of trash mixed in with quality, although that's typical of the topic in general. I would emphasize the William James recommendation (pic related). Although he does not spend long on substance use per se, mainly passingly mentioning nitrous and mescaline, his general method in describing religiois experiences is extremely well suited to psychedelic experience and has had a lasting influence on the field. If you're especially interested in how psychedelia flowered in the 60s, Jay Stevens' Storming Heaven may be of interest to you.

Although he only passingly mentions peyote and nitrous oxide experiences, this book is a very early and influential instance of the "trip report" style, and heavily (albeit quietly, uncreditedly) influenced many 60s-type altered consciousness figures, e.g. Huxley, Leary, Dass, Grof, Watts.

I shill this book a lot on here but it actually is foundational to contemporary philosophy of religion. If you need further encouragement, it was also a big influence on the American 1960s psychedelic movement, and Oliver Sacks considered his Musicophilia a response to it, and Borges put it in his top fifty.

Read this instead.

>>13301506
I hope that you are not implying that Frankl's logotherapy has any substantial value. Throughout the book, although I appreciated his reflections on life and death and the camps and so on as well as his total frankness in discussing awfulnesses, I found his attempts to sell his kitschy psychotherapy tasteless and flaccid. His examples by which he meant to indicate the truth of his model (that, vaguely, "meaning" is the primary need in a complex life, or that "meaning" is too often missing) all too often actually indicated the importance of simple joy. "Meaning" as applied to life is essentially a meaningless term; what does it signify?; you don't need to read Tolstoy's Confession or Wittgenstein's Tractatus to realize this. It's a misnomer that people build glass castles on. Logotherapy is really just a psychotherapeutification of popular existentialism, which is just as vague and tawdry, and in Frankl's in case it seems evident to me that the logotherapeutic model is either a justification or an echo of his religious upbringing, "meaning" in the place of "God," and I feel that his project to talk in circles around his religion is dishonest.
>>13301550
This is interesting. Why?
>>13301564
I still haven't made a proper effort with Whitman although I've read heaps of Hawthorne, Emerson, Melville, Thoreau. Any particular standout poems you think'd grab me?

Try out philosophy /of/ religion.

>>13065845
>What books...describe experiences of people finding God?
Pic rel

Psychology
Crisis Counselor
Varieties of Religious Experience
Blood Meridian
Anatomy of Melancholy
>>12891429
How is working at a funeral home?
>>12892572
How did you become a fisherman?
>>12892699
I've considered going on to pharmacy for the sake of comfy specialization but it sounds tedious, especially given that it appears to be an oversaturated field now and as such it (reputedly) requires academic achievement anxiety to distinguish yourself. Thoughts?
>>12892720
You don't need to go to medical school to be an EMT or a paramedic, let alone an EMT firefighter. The firefighters in my city will medically clear anybody who isn't literally on fire, it's embarrassing.

>>12852839
Posting this image frequently

>>12846707

>>12820124
>just a cope
Transcend "just a cope"ism, first of all.

>>12809118
>>12809154
Because /lit/ at large doesn't know any more about contemporary psychology than it knows about contemporary biology or chemistry or physics.

>>12724049
Last time I participated in this thread I gave a dozen or more recommendations and got a couple kudoses for my life style, but unfortunately, no recommendations. So, in short, I work as a psych provider in a detox (in which I regularly speak with people who are suicidal or in psychosis and am responsible for getting them to a higher level of care) and lately I've been most interested in America in the 1800's, particularly New England Transcendentalism and the Western/Southwest expansion precipitated by the Mexican-American War. Last read Walden, now reading Blood Meridian, thinking of buying Desert Solitaire. I am also Jamesfag.

>>12691104