Mixed Grill: William James, Mind & a Passage to India

This is a trilogy with very different topics. It begins with an exploration of the spiritual side of William James and his writings, including his experiments with psychedelic substances, studies on pure experience and metaphysics of consciousness, and journeys into parapsychology. This great philosopher and psychologist struggled to achieve a scientific rigor in these subjects that defied scientific analysis while maintaining a foothold in another world, that of spirit. The second part is a suggestion, if not a plea, for a new approach to the analytic reconstruction of the incredible complexity of the human brain's consciousness. This approach is based upon the ever increasing discoveries by evolutionary science of the elements of consciousness in life, leading up the Darwinian ladder of evolution to Homo sapiens. Such a comparative study is akin to disassembling a clock and understanding its function through the study of its parts.The third part is a bit of self-indulgence, describing my family's automobile journey to India fifty-nine years ago and the subsequent rewards of social intercourse, artistic performance, medical practice, and scientific studies during the academic sabbatical year that was spent there.