Preface to the English edition
Introduction: Philosophy and madness. A philosophy of madness ; Madness and psychiatry ; Philosophy ; Reading guidelines
Overture: The eternal return.
I. Cognating your head off: Introduction: Setting sail
Realer than real. Everyday realism ; Mad pararealism ; The end of reality
Inlooks and outlooks. Common views of cognition and perception ; Mad focus ; The world in thoughts, thoughts in the world
Outside time. The fabric of everyday time ; Mad crystal time
Inside space. Ordinary space ; Mad space : groundlessly reversible ; Crazy places.
II. Via mystica psychotica: Introduction: Glimpses into troubled water
Detachment. Dissolution and liberation ; Emptying of the soul and internalization ; Evacuation : Thomas Pynchon's mad universe ; Desynchronization
Demagination. Mystical iconoclasm ; Madness by images : Podvoll's Buddhist therapy
Delanguization. Mute language ; Talking language ; Scratch language : a rejection
Dethinking. Beyond thought ; Brave new world : awakening and rebirth ; Debankment : Husserl II, time, and water ; Inflaming
Intermezzo I: Fire at a distance.
III. Light mists: Introduction: De-parting into parts
Pyramids of light : the uni-delusion. Notes from aboveground : Plato's cave ; Union and unification : Plotinus's one ; Under the spell of the one
White fullness : the esse-delusion. High pressure : introduction to the esse-delusion ; Writing yourself out : Custance's live report on the esse-delusion ; The self-induced esse-delusion : Huxley, Mescaline, and other drugs
The infinity trap : the [omega]-delusion. Cantor and mathematical infinity ; Rapture : infinity celebrated ; Dread : the infinity of fear
Intermezzo II: Revelation
Absolutely nothing : the Ø-delusion: "With without my coat" : a linguistic philosophical introduction ; From matter to nothing : nothing as deduced from something ; Absolute zero : nothingness as the basis of existence ; Through nothing to liberation
Intermezzo III: Postmortem.
IV. Crystal fever: Introduction: Complete dis-integration
Paradoxes : philosophy and madness tied up in knots. Introduction: Puzzling paradoxes ; Paradoxes in the absolute : Schelling's "The ages of the world" II ; Indian man-gods : Eliade on yogis and paradoxes ; The crystal castle : Schreber's complex memoirs ; Thought experiments and the world according to Lacan
Intermezzo IV: Imagination and the tightrope walkers
Deliverance and doom in madness and therapy. Charles Taylor and the enchanted worldview ; Madness : sorcery and magic ; Holy healing : spiritual therapies
The mad plan in story and system. Introduction: Crystallizations ; The blueprint ; The script as metaphor for the plan ; The test as a metaphor for the plan
Typology of plans and psychoplanatics. "Them" : conspiracies and persecution ; Superpower, omnipotence, dominance : megalomania ; Messengers and mad prophets ; Journey to the end of the day
Finale: The recipe for crystal, or, The discovery of the wheel. Earth ; Air ; Water ; Fire.