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chapter five From the Joyous Cosmology to the Watercourse Way: An Appreciation of Alan Watts Ralph Metzner My first encounters with Alan Watts occurred via the Psychedelic Research Project under the direction of Timothy Leary at Harvard University. The research program originated when Leary happened upon psychedelics while vacationing in Mexico during summer 1960. He tried “sacred mushrooms” at the suggestion of psychologist Frank Barron and had a profoundly moving mystical experience. Leary returned to Harvard with the determination to commit significant time to researching psychedelic substances. On the whole, a set of ground-breaking explorations unfolded where researchers and study participants , informed by Leary’s (1960) existential-transactional approach, experienced LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin beyond the standard scientific laboratory settings of the traditional medical model. The substances were ingested in an ambiance of “esthetic precision, philosophic inquiry, inner search, self-confident dignity, intellectual openness, philosophic courage, and high humor” (Leary, 2000, p. 4; see also, Riedlinger, 1993). Leary often asserted that the intellectual sway of the early psychedelic researchers at Harvard and elsewhere had yet to be fully appreciated in the academic literature. In the twenty-first century, however, there is renewed enthusiasm for psychedelic research after many years of prohibition and disinterest (Metzner, 2005, 2008; Roberts, 2006). The pioneers of psychedelic exploration now constitute a unique source of wisdom for new research agendas moving forward in time. These “eminent elders” have a depth of insight to offer contemporary explorers as they embark on new psychedelic journeys (Walsh & Grob, 2005, 2006). In 2004, one of our most distinguished elders, Huston Smith, offered his retrospective reflection on psychedelics and religion (Smith et al., 2004). In 2010, Ram Dass and I published conversations about the Harvard experiments and Leary’s Millbrook commune (Dass, Metzner, & Bravo, 2010). In this volume, writings are devoted to Alan Watts, a preeminent member of our research group at Harvard University. My goals for this chapter are 103 104 ALAN WATTS—HERE AND NOW threefold. First, some recollections of my early Harvard years are correlated with those of Watts and Leary as described in their autobiographical writings. Second, the experiential riches contained in Watts’ (1965) classic text, The Joyous Cosmology, are detailed, and his ambivalence about sharing this information is juxtaposed against the institutional resistances to Leary’s psychedelic works at Harvard. Finally, Watts’ transition out of his psychedelic phase toward renewed focus on Chinese Daoism is elaborated and followed by a final appreciation for the profound impact of Alan’s mentoring on the trajectory of my professional life. SET AND SETTING By the time Alan Watts came into contact with psychedelics in 1958, he was enthusiastically engaged in a midlife process of separating from the conventional forms of his early life. From a boyhood in strict English boarding schools, he had been an Anglican priest, college professor, author of a dozen books on Eastern philosophy and the arts, and dutiful husband and father. He had migrated first to New York and Chicago, and then to California, where “at the age of forty-five I broke out of this wall-to-wall trap, though it was a hard shock to myself . . . I discovered who were my real friends and became closer to them and indeed to friends in general, than had hitherto been possible for me” (Watts, 1973c, pp. 352–353). Alan had met the woman, Jano, who was to be his constant companion for the rest of his life. He found himself in the midst of the cultural flowering associated with the San Francisco Beat poets, the humanistic and Gestalt psychotherapy movements, the Esalen Institute with its personal growth seminars, and the beginnings of what later became known as the New Age. In his autobiography, Watts (1973c) speaks with fondness of his newfound friendship with “people who were not embarrassed to express their feelings, who were not ashamed to show warmth, exuberance, and earthy joie de vivre” (p. 353). Alan was told of Leary’s research program by Aldous Huxley, and from the academic and aloof tenor of Huxley’s version of the project, Watts (1973c) was expecting Timothy to be “a formidable pandit” but instead found “an extremely charming Irishman who wore a hearing-aid as stylishly as if it had been a monocle (p. 403). Watts eventually secured a two-year fellowship at Harvard through the Department of Social Relations chaired by the renowned psychologist Henry Murray. This fellowship gave Alan time to work on two of his major publications, The Two Hands of God (1963b...

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