WJ "was prompted to self-experiment with nitrous oxide in 1882, recording an "intense metaphysical illumination"… The truth of this illumination, James believed, lay in its incommunicability. Like the mystical states of mind he described in his landmark study "The Varieties of Religious Experience" (1902), it had to be "directly experienced," and this was what made it significant. That the rational mind could not access it proved that human consciousness was not singular but shifting, multiple, many-layered. "Rational consciousness is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different," James wrote…
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/04/24/psychonauts-drugs-and-the-making-of-the-modern-mind-mike-jay-book-review?utm_campaign=likeshopme&utm_medium=social&utm_source=instagram&utm_content=instagram-bio-link&client_service_name=the%20new%20yorker&client_service_id=31202&service_user_id=1.78e+16&supported_service_name=instagram_publishing&utm_social_type=owned&utm_brand=tny
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