The Doors of Perception
Encyclopedia
The Doors of Perception is a 1954 book by Aldous Huxley
detailing his experiences when taking mescaline
. The book takes the form of Huxley’s recollection of a mescaline trip which took place over the course of an afternoon, and takes its title from William Blake
's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
. Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, which range from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision". He also incorporates later reflections on the experience and its meaning for art and religion.
cactus peyote
, which has been used in Native American
religious ceremonies for thousands of years. A German pharmacologist, Arthur Heffter
, isolated the alkaloids in the peyote cactus in 1891. These included mescaline, which he showed through a combination of animal
and self-experiments
was the compound responsible for the psychoactive
properties of the plant. In 1919, Ernst Späth
, another German chemist, synthesised the drug. Although personal accounts of taking the cactus had been written by psychologists such as Weir Mitchell
in the US and Havelock Ellis
in the UK during the 1890s, the German-American Heinrich Kluver
was the first to systematically study its psychological effects in a small book called Mescal and Mechanisms of Hallucinations published in 1928. The book stated that the drug could be used to research the unconscious mind. In the 1930s, an American anthropologist Weston La Barre, published The Peyote Cult, the first study of the ritual use of peyote amongst the Huichol people of western Mexico. La Barre noted that the Indian users of the cactus took it to obtain visions for prophecy, healing and inner strength. Most psychiatric research projects into the drug in the 1930s and early 40s tended to look at the role of the drug in mimicking psychosis. In 1947 however, the US Navy undertook Project Chatter
, which examined the potential for the drug as a truth revealing agent. In the early 1950s, when Huxley wrote his book, mescaline was still regarded as a research chemical rather than a drug and was listed in the Parke-Davis
catalogue with no controls.
Huxley had been interested in spiritual matters and had used alternative therapies for some time. In 1936 he told TS Eliot that he was starting to meditate, and he used other therapies too; the Alexander Technique
and the Bates Method
of seeing had particular importance in guiding him through personal crises. In the late Thirties he had become interested in the spiritual teaching of Vedanta
and in 1945 he published The Perennial Philosophy
, which set out a philosophy which he believed was found amongst mystics of all religions. He had known for some time of visionary experience achieved by taking drugs in certain non-Christian religions. More specifically, Huxley had first heard of peyote use in ceremonies of the Native American Church
in New Mexico
soon after coming to the USA in 1937. He first became aware of the cactus’s active ingredient, mescaline, after reading an academic paper written by Humphry Osmond
, a British psychiatrist working at a Saskatchewan provincial mental hospital in early 1952. Osmond’s paper set out results from his research into schizophrenia using mescaline that he had been undertaking with colleagues, doctors Abram Hoffer and John Smythies. In the epilogue to his novel The Devils of Loudon published earlier that year, Huxley had written that drugs were “toxic short cuts to self-transcendence” For the Canadian writer George Woodcock
, Huxley had changed his opinion because mescaline was not addictive and appeared to be without unpleasant physical or mental side-effects, further he had found that hypnosis, autohypnosis and meditation had apparently failed to produce the results he wanted.
After reading Osmond’s paper, Huxley sent him a letter on 10 April 1952 expressing interest in the research and putting himself forward as an experimental subject. His letter explained his motivations as being rooted in an idea that the brain is a reducing valve that restricts consciousness and hoping mescaline may help access a greater degree of awareness, (an idea he later included in the book). Reflecting on his stated motivations, Woodcock wrote that Huxley had realised the ways to enlightenment were many, and prayer and meditation were techniques among others. He hoped drugs might also break down the barriers of the ego, and both draw him closer to spiritual enlightenment and satisfy his quest as a seeker of knowledge.
In a second letter on 19 April, Huxley invited Osmond to stay while he was visiting Los Angeles to attend the American Psychiatric Association
convention. He also wrote that he looked forward to the mescaline experience and reassured Osmond that his doctor did not object to him taking it. Huxley had invited his friend, the writer Gerald Heard
to participate in the experiment; although Heard was too busy this time he did join him for a session in November of that year.
The experience started in Huxley's study before the party made a seven block trip to The Owl Drug (Rexall
) store, known as World's Biggest Drugstore, at the corner of Beverly and La Cienega Boulevards. Huxley was particularly fond of the shop and the large variety of products available there, (in stark contrast to the much smaller selection in English chemist's shops). There he considered a variety of paintings in art books. For one of his friends, Huxley's poor eyesight manifested in both a great desire to see and a strong interest in painting, which influenced the strong visual and artistic nature of his experience. After returning home to listen to music, eat, and walk in the garden, a friend drove the threesome to the hills overlooking the city. Photographs show Huxley standing, alternately arms on hips and out stretched with a grin on his face. Finally, they returned home and to ordinary consciousness. One of Huxley’s friends who met him on the day said that despite writing about wearing flannel
trousers, he was actually wearing blue jeans. Huxley admitted to having changed the fabric as Maria thought he should be better dressed for his readers. Osmond later said he had a photo of the day which showed Huxley wearing flannels.
After Osmond’s departure, Huxley and Maria left to go on a three-week, 5,000-mile car trip around the national parks of the North West of the USA. After returning to Los Angeles, he took a month to write the book. The Doors of Perception was the first book Huxley dedicated to his wife Maria. Harold Raymond, at his publisher Chatto and Windus
, said of the manuscript, “You are the most articulate guinea pig that any scientist could hope to engage.” The title was taken from William Blake
's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
:
Huxley had used Blake's metaphor in The Doors of Perception while discussing the paintings of Vermeer and the Nain brothers, and previously in The Perennial Philosophy, once in relation to the use of mortification as a means to remove persistent spiritual myopia and secondly to refer to the absence of separation in spiritual vision. In the early Fifties Huxley had suffered a debilitating attack of the eye condition Iritis
. This increased his concern for his already poor eyesight and much of his work in the early part of the decade had featured metaphors of vision and sight.
By 12:30 pm, a vase of flowers becomes the "miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence". The experience, he asserts, is neither agreeable nor disagreeable, but simply "is". He likens it to Meister Eckhart
’s ‘istigheit’ or ‘is-ness’, and Plato
’s ‘Being’ but not separated from ‘Becoming’. He feels he understands the Hindu
concept of Satchitananda
, as well as the Zen
koan that ‘the dharma body of the Buddha is in the hedge’ and Buddhist suchness. In this state, Huxley explains he didn’t have an ‘I’, but instead a ‘not-I’. Meaning and existence, pattern and colour become more significant than spatial relationships and time. Duration is replaced by a perpetual present.
Reflecting on the experience afterwards, Huxley finds himself in agreement with philosopher C.D. Broad that to enable us to live, the brain and nervous system eliminate unessential information from the totality of the Mind at Large
.
In summary, Huxley writes that the ability to think straight is not reduced while under the influence of mescaline, visual impressions are intensified, and the human experimenter will see no reason for action because the experience is so fascinating.
Temporarily leaving the chronological flow, he mentions that four or five hours into the experience he was taken to the World’s Biggest Drug Store (WBDS) where he was presented with books on art. In one book, the dress in Botticelli’s Judith provokes a reflection on drapery as a major artistic theme as it allows painters to include the abstract in representational art, to create mood, and also to represent the mystery of pure being. Huxley feels that human affairs are somewhat irrelevant whilst on mescaline and attempts to shed light on this by reflecting on paintings featuring people. Cézanne’s Self portrait with a straw hat seems to him as incredibly pretentious, while Vermeer’s human still lives (also, the Le Nain
Brothers and Vuillard) are the nearest to reflecting this not-self state.
For Huxley, the reconciliation of these cleansed perceptions with humanity reflects the age old debate between active and contemplative life, known as the way of Martha
and the way of Mary
. As Huxley believes that contemplation should also include action and charity, he concludes that the experience represents contemplation at its height, but not its fullness. Correct behaviour and alertness are needed. Nonetheless, Huxley maintains that even quietistic
contemplation has an ethical value, because it is concerned with negative virtues and acts to channel the transcendent into the world.
After listening to Mozart’s C- Minor Piano Concerto
, Gesualdo
’s madrigals
and Alban Berg
’s Lyric Suite, Huxley heads into the garden. Outside, the garden chairs take on such an immense intensity that he fears being overwhelmed; this gives him an insight into madness. He reflects that spiritual literature, including the works of Jacob Boehme, William Law
and the Tibetan Book of the Dead
, talk of these pains and terrors. Huxley speculates that schizophrenia is the inability to escape from this reality into the world of common sense and thus help would be essential.
After lunch and the drive to the WBDS he returns home and to his ordinary state of mind. His final insight is taken from Buddhist scripture: that within sameness there is difference, although that difference is not different from sameness.
The book finishes with Huxley’s final reflections on the meaning of his experience. Firstly, the urge to transcend one’s self is universal through times and cultures (and was characterized by H.G. Wells as The Door in the Wall). He reasons that better, healthier ‘doors’ are needed than alcohol and tobacco. Mescaline has the advantage of not provoking violence in takers, but its effects last an inconveniently long time and some users can have negative reactions. Ideally, self-transcendence would be found in religion, but Huxley feels that it is unlikely that this will ever happen. Christianity and mescaline seem well-suited for each other; the Native American Church
for instance uses the drug as a sacrament, where its use combines religious feeling with decorum.
Huxley concludes that mescaline is not enlightenment
or the Beatific Vision
, but a 'gratuitous grace' (a term taken from St Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica
). It is not necessary but helpful, especially so for the intellectual, who can become the victim of words and symbols. Although systematic reasoning is important, direct perception has intrinsic value too. Finally, Huxley maintains that the person who has this experience will be transformed for the better.
“Mr. Huxley’s experiment is extraordinary, and is beautifully described”. Thomas Mann
, the author and friend of Huxley, believed the book demonstrated Huxley's escapism. He thought that while escapism found in mysticism might be honorable, drugs were not. Huxley's 'aesthetic self-indulgence' and indifference to humanity would lead to suffering or stupidity, and he concluded the book was irresponsible, if not quite immoral, to encourage young people to try the drug. For Huxley’s biographer and friend, the author Sybille Bedford
, the book combined sincerity with simplicity, passion with detachment. “It reflects the heart and mind open to meet the given, ready, even longing, to accept the wonderful. The Doors is a quiet book. It is also one that postulates a goodwill – the choice once more of the nobler hypothesis. It turned out, for certain temperaments, a seductive book.”. For biographer David King Dunaway The Doors of Perception, along with The Art of Seeing
, can be seen as the closest Huxley ever came to autobiographical writing.
Psychiatric responses included those of William Sargant
, the controversial British psychiatrist, who reviewed the book for The British Medical Journal and particularly focused on Huxley's reflections on schizophrenia. He wrote that the book brought to life the mental suffering of schizophrenics, which should make psychiatrists uneasy about their failure to relieve this. Also, he hoped that the book would encourage the investigation of the physiological, rather than psychological, aspects of psychiatry. Other medical researchers questioned the validity of Huxley's account. The book contained "99 percent Aldous Huxley and only one half gram mescaline" according to Ronald Fisher. While Joost A.M. Meerloo found Huxley's reactions "not necessarily the same as... other people's experiences." For Steven J. Novak, The Doors Of Perception (and Heaven and Hell) redefined taking mescaline (and LSD, although Huxley had not taken it until after he had written both books) as a mystical experience with possible psychotherapeutic benefits, where physicians had previously thought of the drug in terms of mimicking a psychotic episode, known as psychotomimetic
. The popularity of the book also affected research into these drugs, because researchers needed a random sample of subjects with no preconceptions about the drug in order to conduct experiments, and these became very difficult to find.
, thought that mescaline was an illegitimate path to enlightenment, a "deadly heresy" as Christopher Isherwood
put it. Martin Buber
, the Jewish religious philosopher, attacked Huxley's notion that mescaline allowed a person to participate in "common being", and held that the drug ushered users "merely into a strictly private sphere". Philosophically, Buber believed the drug experiences to be holidays "from the person participating in the community of logos and cosmos—holidays from the very uncomfortable reminder to verify oneself as such a person." For Buber man must master, withstand and alter his situation, or even leave it, "but the fugitive flight out of the claim of the situation into situationlessness is no legitimate affair of man."
It was probably the criticisms of The Doors of Perception put forward by Robert Charles Zaehner
, a professor at Oxford University, that formed the fullest and earliest critiques from a religious and philosophical perspective. In 1954, Zaehner published an article called The Menace of Mescaline, in which he asserted that "artificial interference with consciousness" could have nothing to do with the Christian "Beatific Vision". Zaehner expanded on these criticisms in his book Mysticism Sacred and Profane (1957), which also acts as a theistic riposte to what he sees as the monism
of Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy
. Although he acknowledged the importance of The Doors of Perception as a challenge to people interested in religious experience, he pointed out what he saw as inconsistencies and self-contradictions. Zaehner concludes that Huxley’s apprehensions under mescaline are affected by his deep familiarity with Vedanta
and Mahayana Buddhism. So, the experience may not be the same for others who take the drug and do not have this background, although they will undoubtedly experience a transformation of sensation. Zaehner himself was a convert to Catholicism
.
That the longing to transcend oneself is "one of the principal appetites of the soul" is questioned by Zaehner. There are still people who do not feel this desire to escape themselves, and religion itself need not mean escaping from the ego. Zaehner criticises what he sees as Huxley’s apparent call for all religious people to use drugs (including alcohol) as part of their practices. Quoting St Paul’s proscriptions against drunkenness in church, in 1 Corinthians
xi, Zaehner makes the point that artificial ecstatic states and spiritual union with God are not the same.
Holding that there are similarities between the experience on mescaline, the mania
in a manic-depressive psychosis and the visions of God of a mystical saint suggests, for Zaehner, that the saint’s visions must be the same as those of a lunatic. The personality is dissipated into the world, for Huxley on mescaline and people in a manic state, which is similar to the experience of nature mystics. However, this experience is different from the theistic mystic who is absorbed into a God, who is quite different from the objective world. The appendices to Mysticism Sacred and Profane include three accounts of mescaline experiences, including those of Zaehner himself. He writes that he was transported into a world of farcical meaninglessness and notes that the experience was interesting and funny, but not religious.
and G. K. Chesterton
wrote the praises of alcohol they were still considered good Christians, while anyone who suggested other routes to self-transcendence was accused of being a drug addict and perverter of mankind. Later Huxley responded to Zaehner in an article published in 1961: "For most of those to whom the experiences have been vouchsafed, their value is self-evident. By Dr. Zaehner, the author of Mysticism, Sacred and Profane, their deliberate induction is regarded as immoral. To which his colleague, Professor Price, retorts in effect, 'Speak for yourself!'".
Professor of religion and philosophy Huston Smith
took issue with the belief that Mysticism Sacred and Profane had fully examined and refuted Huxley’s claims made in The Doors of Perception. Smith claims that consciousness-changing substances have been linked with religion both throughout history and across the world, and further it is possible that many religious perspectives had their origins in them, which were later forgotten. Acknowledging that personality, preparation and environment all play a role in the effects of the drugs, Huston Smith draws attention to evidence that suggests that a religious outcome of the experience may not be restricted to one of Huxley’s temperament. Further, because Zaehner’s experience was not religious, does not prove that none will be. Contrary to Zaehner, Huston Smith draws attention to evidence suggesting that these drugs can facilitate theistic mystical experience.
As the descriptions of naturally occurring and drug-stimulated mystical experiences cannot be distinguished phenomenologically, Huston Smith regards Zaehner’s position in Mysticism Sacred and Profane, as a product of the conflict between science and religion – that religion tends to ignore the findings of science. Nonetheless, although these drugs may produce a religious experience, they need not produce a religious life, unless set within a context of faith and discipline. Finally, he concludes that psychedelic drugs should not be forgotten in relation to religion because the phenomenon of religious awe
, or the encounter with the holy
, is declining and religion cannot survive long in its absence.
, had been nothing but entertaining sideshows. He wrote in a letter to Humphry Osmond
, that he experienced "the direct, total awareness, from the inside, so to say, of Love as the primary and fundamental cosmic fact. ... I was this fact; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that this fact occupied the place where I had been. ... And the things which had entirely filled my attention on that first occasion, I now perceived to be temptations - temptations to escape from the central reality into a false, or at least imperfect and partial Nirvanas of beauty and mere knowledge." The experience made its way into the final chapter of Island
. This raised a troublesome point. Was it better to pursue a course of careful psychological experimentation.... or was the real value of these drugs to "stimulate the most basic kind of religious ecstasy"?
, was given the book by a colleague soon after returning from Mexico where he had first taken psilocybin mushrooms in the summer of 1960. He found that The Doors of Perception corroborated what he had experienced 'and more too'. Leary soon set up a meeting with Huxley and the two became friendly. The book can also be seen as a part of the history of entheogenic model of understanding these drugs, that sees them within a spiritual context. Looking to broader culture, Huxley's experiment can be seen, alongside the work of other artists such as John Cage
and Jackson Pollock
, as proposing a model of the imagination opposite to the symbolic, representational structures that had governed Western thought for centuries. Although this new direction cannot be attributed entirely to mescaline or Huxley, it had made a strong impact on politics, art and religion.
(1956).
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
detailing his experiences when taking mescaline
Mescaline
Mescaline or 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine is a naturally occurring psychedelic alkaloid of the phenethylamine class used mainly as an entheogen....
. The book takes the form of Huxley’s recollection of a mescaline trip which took place over the course of an afternoon, and takes its title from William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a book by the English poet and printmaker William Blake. It is a series of texts written in imitation of biblical prophecy but expressing Blake's own intensely personal Romantic and revolutionary beliefs. Like his other books, it was published as printed sheets...
. Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, which range from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision". He also incorporates later reflections on the experience and its meaning for art and religion.
Background
Mescaline is the principal agent of the psychedelicPsychedelic drug
A psychedelic substance is a psychoactive drug whose primary action is to alter cognition and perception. Psychedelics are part of a wider class of psychoactive drugs known as hallucinogens, a class that also includes related substances such as dissociatives and deliriants...
cactus peyote
Peyote
Lophophora williamsii , better known by its common name Peyote , is a small, spineless cactus with psychoactive alkaloids, particularly mescaline.It is native to southwestern Texas and Mexico...
, which has been used in Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
religious ceremonies for thousands of years. A German pharmacologist, Arthur Heffter
Arthur Heffter
Arthur Carl Wilhelm Heffter was a German pharmacologist and chemist. He was the first chairman of the German Society of Pharmacologists, and was largely responsible for the first Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology...
, isolated the alkaloids in the peyote cactus in 1891. These included mescaline, which he showed through a combination of animal
Animal testing
Animal testing, also known as animal experimentation, animal research, and in vivo testing, is the use of non-human animals in experiments. Worldwide it is estimated that the number of vertebrate animals—from zebrafish to non-human primates—ranges from the tens of millions to more than 100 million...
and self-experiments
Self-experimentation
Self-experimentation refers to the very special case of single-subject scientific experimentation in which the experimenter conducts the experiment on her- or himself. Usually this means that the designer, operator, subject, analyst, and user or reporter of the experiment are all the same...
was the compound responsible for the psychoactive
Psychoactive drug
A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, or psychotropic is a chemical substance that crosses the blood–brain barrier and acts primarily upon the central nervous system where it affects brain function, resulting in changes in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, and behavior...
properties of the plant. In 1919, Ernst Späth
Ernst Späth
Ernst Späth was an Austrian chemist.He was the first to synthesise Mescaline and was one of the first to synthesize cuscohygrine on a small scale with Hans Tuppy....
, another German chemist, synthesised the drug. Although personal accounts of taking the cactus had been written by psychologists such as Weir Mitchell
Silas Weir Mitchell
Silas Weir Mitchell was an American physician and writer.He was son of a physician, John Kearsley Mitchell , and was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....
in the US and Havelock Ellis
Havelock Ellis
Henry Havelock Ellis, known as Havelock Ellis , was a British physician and psychologist, writer, and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He was co-author of the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and...
in the UK during the 1890s, the German-American Heinrich Kluver
Heinrich Klüver
Heinrich Klüver was a German-American psychologist born in Holstein, Germany.After having served in the Imperial Germany Army during World War I, he studied at both the University of Hamburg and the University of Berlin from 1920-23. In the latter year, he arrived in the United States to attend...
was the first to systematically study its psychological effects in a small book called Mescal and Mechanisms of Hallucinations published in 1928. The book stated that the drug could be used to research the unconscious mind. In the 1930s, an American anthropologist Weston La Barre, published The Peyote Cult, the first study of the ritual use of peyote amongst the Huichol people of western Mexico. La Barre noted that the Indian users of the cactus took it to obtain visions for prophecy, healing and inner strength. Most psychiatric research projects into the drug in the 1930s and early 40s tended to look at the role of the drug in mimicking psychosis. In 1947 however, the US Navy undertook Project Chatter
Project CHATTER
Project CHATTER was a United States Navy program beginning in the fall of 1947 focusing on the identification and testing of drugs in interrogations and the recruitment of agents. Their search included laboratory experiments on both animal and human subjects...
, which examined the potential for the drug as a truth revealing agent. In the early 1950s, when Huxley wrote his book, mescaline was still regarded as a research chemical rather than a drug and was listed in the Parke-Davis
Parke-Davis
Parke-Davis is a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. Although no longer an independent corporation, it was once America's oldest and largest drug maker, and played an important role in medical history.- History :...
catalogue with no controls.
Huxley had been interested in spiritual matters and had used alternative therapies for some time. In 1936 he told TS Eliot that he was starting to meditate, and he used other therapies too; the Alexander Technique
Alexander Technique
The Alexander Technique teaches the ability to improve physical postural habits, particularly those that have become ingrained and conditioned responses...
and the Bates Method
Bates Method
The Bates method is an alternative therapy aimed at improving eyesight. Eye-care physician William Horatio Bates attributed nearly all sight problems to habitual strain of the eyes, and felt that glasses were harmful and never necessary...
of seeing had particular importance in guiding him through personal crises. In the late Thirties he had become interested in the spiritual teaching of Vedanta
Vedanta
Vedānta was originally a word used in Hindu philosophy as a synonym for that part of the Veda texts known also as the Upanishads. The name is a morphophonological form of Veda-anta = "Veda-end" = "the appendix to the Vedic hymns." It is also speculated that "Vedānta" means "the purpose or goal...
and in 1945 he published The Perennial Philosophy
The Perennial Philosophy
The Perennial Philosophy is a 1945 book by Aldous Huxley, published by Harper & Row in the US. It was published in the UK in 1946 by Chatto & Windus.-Social and political context:...
, which set out a philosophy which he believed was found amongst mystics of all religions. He had known for some time of visionary experience achieved by taking drugs in certain non-Christian religions. More specifically, Huxley had first heard of peyote use in ceremonies of the Native American Church
Native American Church
Native American Church, a religious denomination which practices Peyotism or the Peyote religion, originated in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, and is the most widespread indigenous religion among Native Americans in the United States...
in New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
soon after coming to the USA in 1937. He first became aware of the cactus’s active ingredient, mescaline, after reading an academic paper written by Humphry Osmond
Humphry Osmond
Humphry Fortescue Osmond was a British psychiatrist known for inventing the word psychedelic and for using psychedelic drugs in medical research...
, a British psychiatrist working at a Saskatchewan provincial mental hospital in early 1952. Osmond’s paper set out results from his research into schizophrenia using mescaline that he had been undertaking with colleagues, doctors Abram Hoffer and John Smythies. In the epilogue to his novel The Devils of Loudon published earlier that year, Huxley had written that drugs were “toxic short cuts to self-transcendence” For the Canadian writer George Woodcock
George Woodcock
George Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet, and published several volumes of travel writing. He founded in 1959 the journal Canadian Literature, the first academic journal specifically...
, Huxley had changed his opinion because mescaline was not addictive and appeared to be without unpleasant physical or mental side-effects, further he had found that hypnosis, autohypnosis and meditation had apparently failed to produce the results he wanted.
In a second letter on 19 April, Huxley invited Osmond to stay while he was visiting Los Angeles to attend the American Psychiatric Association
American Psychiatric Association
The American Psychiatric Association is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the most influential worldwide. Its some 38,000 members are mainly American but some are international...
convention. He also wrote that he looked forward to the mescaline experience and reassured Osmond that his doctor did not object to him taking it. Huxley had invited his friend, the writer Gerald Heard
Gerald Heard
Henry Fitzgerald Heard commonly called Gerald Heard was an historian, science writer, educator, and philosopher. He wrote many articles and over 35 books....
to participate in the experiment; although Heard was too busy this time he did join him for a session in November of that year.
The experience and composition
Osmond arrived at Huxley’s house in West Hollywood on May 3, and recorded his impressions of the famous author as a tolerant and kind man, although he had expected otherwise. The psychiatrist had misgivings about giving the drug to Huxley, and wrote that "I did not relish the possibility, however remote, of being the man who drove Aldous Huxley mad," but instead found him an ideal subject. Huxley was “shrewd, matter-of-fact and to the point” and his wife Maria "eminently sensible". Overall, they all liked each other, which was very important when administering the drug. The mescaline was slow to take effect, but Osmond saw that after two and a half hours the drug was working and after three hours Huxley was responding well. The experience lasted eight hours and both Osmond and Maria remained with him throughout.The experience started in Huxley's study before the party made a seven block trip to The Owl Drug (Rexall
Rexall
Rexall was a chain of North American drugstores, and the name of their store-branded products. The stores, having roots in the federation of United Drug Stores starting in 1902, licensed the Rexall brand name to as many as 12,000 drug stores across the United States from 1920 to 1977...
) store, known as World's Biggest Drugstore, at the corner of Beverly and La Cienega Boulevards. Huxley was particularly fond of the shop and the large variety of products available there, (in stark contrast to the much smaller selection in English chemist's shops). There he considered a variety of paintings in art books. For one of his friends, Huxley's poor eyesight manifested in both a great desire to see and a strong interest in painting, which influenced the strong visual and artistic nature of his experience. After returning home to listen to music, eat, and walk in the garden, a friend drove the threesome to the hills overlooking the city. Photographs show Huxley standing, alternately arms on hips and out stretched with a grin on his face. Finally, they returned home and to ordinary consciousness. One of Huxley’s friends who met him on the day said that despite writing about wearing flannel
Flannel
Flannel is a soft woven fabric, of various fineness. Flannel was originally made from carded wool or worsted yarn, but is now often made from either wool, cotton, or synthetic fibre. Flannel may be brushed to create extra softness or remain unbrushed. The brushing process is a mechanical process...
trousers, he was actually wearing blue jeans. Huxley admitted to having changed the fabric as Maria thought he should be better dressed for his readers. Osmond later said he had a photo of the day which showed Huxley wearing flannels.
After Osmond’s departure, Huxley and Maria left to go on a three-week, 5,000-mile car trip around the national parks of the North West of the USA. After returning to Los Angeles, he took a month to write the book. The Doors of Perception was the first book Huxley dedicated to his wife Maria. Harold Raymond, at his publisher Chatto and Windus
Chatto and Windus
Chatto & Windus has been, since 1987, an imprint of Random House, publishers. It was originally an important publisher of books in London, founded in the Victorian era....
, said of the manuscript, “You are the most articulate guinea pig that any scientist could hope to engage.” The title was taken from William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a book by the English poet and printmaker William Blake. It is a series of texts written in imitation of biblical prophecy but expressing Blake's own intensely personal Romantic and revolutionary beliefs. Like his other books, it was published as printed sheets...
:
- "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."
Huxley had used Blake's metaphor in The Doors of Perception while discussing the paintings of Vermeer and the Nain brothers, and previously in The Perennial Philosophy, once in relation to the use of mortification as a means to remove persistent spiritual myopia and secondly to refer to the absence of separation in spiritual vision. In the early Fifties Huxley had suffered a debilitating attack of the eye condition Iritis
Iritis
Iritis is a form of anterior uveitis and refers to the inflammation of the iris of the eye.-Types:There are two main types of iritis: acute and chronic. They differ in numerous ways....
. This increased his concern for his already poor eyesight and much of his work in the early part of the decade had featured metaphors of vision and sight.
Synopsis
After a brief overview of research into mescaline, Huxley recounts that he was given 4/10 of a gram at 11:00 am one day in May 1953. Huxley writes that he hoped to gain insight into extraordinary states of mind and expected to see brightly-colored visionary landscapes. When he only sees lights and shapes, he puts this down to being a bad visualiser, however, he experiences a great change in his perception of the external world.By 12:30 pm, a vase of flowers becomes the "miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence". The experience, he asserts, is neither agreeable nor disagreeable, but simply "is". He likens it to Meister Eckhart
Meister Eckhart
Eckhart von Hochheim O.P. , commonly known as Meister Eckhart, was a German theologian, philosopher and mystic, born near Gotha, in the Landgraviate of Thuringia in the Holy Roman Empire. Meister is German for "Master", referring to the academic title Magister in theologia he obtained in Paris...
’s ‘istigheit’ or ‘is-ness’, and Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
’s ‘Being’ but not separated from ‘Becoming’. He feels he understands the Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
concept of Satchitananda
Satchitananda
Saccidānanda, Satchidananda, or Sat-cit-ānanda is a compound of three Sanskrit words, Sat , Cit , and Ānanda , meaning Existence , Consciousness, and Bliss respectively...
, as well as the Zen
Zen
Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...
koan that ‘the dharma body of the Buddha is in the hedge’ and Buddhist suchness. In this state, Huxley explains he didn’t have an ‘I’, but instead a ‘not-I’. Meaning and existence, pattern and colour become more significant than spatial relationships and time. Duration is replaced by a perpetual present.
Reflecting on the experience afterwards, Huxley finds himself in agreement with philosopher C.D. Broad that to enable us to live, the brain and nervous system eliminate unessential information from the totality of the Mind at Large
Mind at Large
Mind at Large is a concept from The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley. This philosophy was influenced by the ideas of C. D. Broad. Psychedelic drugs are thought to disable filters which block or suppress signals related to mundane functions from reaching the conscious mind...
.
In summary, Huxley writes that the ability to think straight is not reduced while under the influence of mescaline, visual impressions are intensified, and the human experimenter will see no reason for action because the experience is so fascinating.
Le Nain
The three Le Nain brothers were painters in 17th-century France: Antoine Le Nain , Louis Le Nain , and Mathieu Le Nain...
Brothers and Vuillard) are the nearest to reflecting this not-self state.
For Huxley, the reconciliation of these cleansed perceptions with humanity reflects the age old debate between active and contemplative life, known as the way of Martha
Martha
Martha of Bethany is a biblical figure described in the Gospels of Luke and John. Together with her siblings Lazarus and Mary, she is described as living in the village of Bethany near Jerusalem...
and the way of Mary
Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus' most celebrated disciples, and the most important woman disciple in the movement of Jesus. Jesus cleansed her of "seven demons", conventionally interpreted as referring to complex illnesses...
. As Huxley believes that contemplation should also include action and charity, he concludes that the experience represents contemplation at its height, but not its fullness. Correct behaviour and alertness are needed. Nonetheless, Huxley maintains that even quietistic
Quietism (Christian philosophy)
Quietism is a Christian philosophy that swept through France, Italy and Spain during the 17th century, but it had much earlier origins. The mystics known as Quietists insist, with more or less emphasis, on intellectual stillness and interior passivity as essential conditions of perfection...
contemplation has an ethical value, because it is concerned with negative virtues and acts to channel the transcendent into the world.
After listening to Mozart’s C- Minor Piano Concerto
Piano Concerto No. 24 (Mozart)
The Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491 is a concertante work for piano, or pianoforte, and orchestra by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart composed the concerto in the winter of 1785–1786 and completed the work on 24 March 1786...
, Gesualdo
Carlo Gesualdo
Carlo Gesualdo, known as Gesualdo di Venosa or Gesualdo da Venosa , Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, was an Italian nobleman, lutenist, composer, and murderer....
’s madrigals
Madrigal (music)
A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six....
and Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
’s Lyric Suite, Huxley heads into the garden. Outside, the garden chairs take on such an immense intensity that he fears being overwhelmed; this gives him an insight into madness. He reflects that spiritual literature, including the works of Jacob Boehme, William Law
William Law
William Law was an English cleric, divine and theological writer.-Early life:Law was born at Kings Cliffe, Northamptonshire in 1686. In 1705 he entered as a sizar at Emmanuel College, Cambridge; in 1711 he was elected fellow of his college and was ordained...
and the Tibetan Book of the Dead
Bardo Thodol
The Liberation Through Hearing During The Intermediate State , sometimes translated as Liberation Through Hearing or Bardo Thodol is a funerary text...
, talk of these pains and terrors. Huxley speculates that schizophrenia is the inability to escape from this reality into the world of common sense and thus help would be essential.
The book finishes with Huxley’s final reflections on the meaning of his experience. Firstly, the urge to transcend one’s self is universal through times and cultures (and was characterized by H.G. Wells as The Door in the Wall). He reasons that better, healthier ‘doors’ are needed than alcohol and tobacco. Mescaline has the advantage of not provoking violence in takers, but its effects last an inconveniently long time and some users can have negative reactions. Ideally, self-transcendence would be found in religion, but Huxley feels that it is unlikely that this will ever happen. Christianity and mescaline seem well-suited for each other; the Native American Church
Native American Church
Native American Church, a religious denomination which practices Peyotism or the Peyote religion, originated in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, and is the most widespread indigenous religion among Native Americans in the United States...
for instance uses the drug as a sacrament, where its use combines religious feeling with decorum.
Huxley concludes that mescaline is not enlightenment
Enlightenment (spiritual)
Enlightenment in a secular context often means the "full comprehension of a situation", but in spiritual terms the word alludes to a spiritual revelation or deep insight into the meaning and purpose of all things, communication with or understanding of the mind of God, profound spiritual...
or the Beatific Vision
Beatific vision
The beatific vision - in Christian theology is the ultimate direct self communication of God to the individual person, when she or he reaches, as a member of redeemed humanity in the communion of saints, perfect salvation in its entirety, i.e. heaven...
, but a 'gratuitous grace' (a term taken from St Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica
Summa Theologica
The Summa Theologiæ is the best-known work of Thomas Aquinas , and although unfinished, "one of the classics of the history of philosophy and one of the most influential works of Western literature." It is intended as a manual for beginners in theology and a compendium of all of the main...
). It is not necessary but helpful, especially so for the intellectual, who can become the victim of words and symbols. Although systematic reasoning is important, direct perception has intrinsic value too. Finally, Huxley maintains that the person who has this experience will be transformed for the better.
Reception
The book met with a variety of responses, both positive and negative, from writers in the field of literature, psychiatry, philosophy and religion. These included a symposium published in The Saturday Review magazine with the unlikely title of, Mescalin - An Answer to Cigarettes, including contributions from Huxley, J.S. Slotkin a professor of Anthropology, and a physician, Dr. W.C. Cutting. For the Scottish poet, Edwin MuirEdwin Muir
Edwin Muir was an Orcadian poet, novelist and translator born on a farm in Deerness on the Orkney Islands. He was remembered for his deeply felt and vivid poetry in plain language with few stylistic preoccupations....
“Mr. Huxley’s experiment is extraordinary, and is beautifully described”. Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
, the author and friend of Huxley, believed the book demonstrated Huxley's escapism. He thought that while escapism found in mysticism might be honorable, drugs were not. Huxley's 'aesthetic self-indulgence' and indifference to humanity would lead to suffering or stupidity, and he concluded the book was irresponsible, if not quite immoral, to encourage young people to try the drug. For Huxley’s biographer and friend, the author Sybille Bedford
Sybille Bedford
Sybille Bedford, OBE was a German-born English writer. Many of her works are partly autobiographical. Julia Neuberger proclaimed her "the finest woman writer of the 20th century" while Bruce Chatwin saw her as "one of the most dazzling practitioners of modern English prose".-Early life:She was...
, the book combined sincerity with simplicity, passion with detachment. “It reflects the heart and mind open to meet the given, ready, even longing, to accept the wonderful. The Doors is a quiet book. It is also one that postulates a goodwill – the choice once more of the nobler hypothesis. It turned out, for certain temperaments, a seductive book.”. For biographer David King Dunaway The Doors of Perception, along with The Art of Seeing
The Art of Seeing
The Art of Seeing is a 1942 book by Aldous Huxley, which details his experience with and views on the controversial Bates method, which Huxley believed improved his eyesight.-Huxley’s own sight:...
, can be seen as the closest Huxley ever came to autobiographical writing.
Psychiatric responses included those of William Sargant
William Sargant
William Walters Sargant was a controversial British psychiatrist who is remembered for the evangelical zeal with which he promoted treatments such as psychosurgery, deep sleep treatment, electroconvulsive therapy and insulin shock therapy.Sargant studied medicine at St John's College, Cambridge,...
, the controversial British psychiatrist, who reviewed the book for The British Medical Journal and particularly focused on Huxley's reflections on schizophrenia. He wrote that the book brought to life the mental suffering of schizophrenics, which should make psychiatrists uneasy about their failure to relieve this. Also, he hoped that the book would encourage the investigation of the physiological, rather than psychological, aspects of psychiatry. Other medical researchers questioned the validity of Huxley's account. The book contained "99 percent Aldous Huxley and only one half gram mescaline" according to Ronald Fisher. While Joost A.M. Meerloo found Huxley's reactions "not necessarily the same as... other people's experiences." For Steven J. Novak, The Doors Of Perception (and Heaven and Hell) redefined taking mescaline (and LSD, although Huxley had not taken it until after he had written both books) as a mystical experience with possible psychotherapeutic benefits, where physicians had previously thought of the drug in terms of mimicking a psychotic episode, known as psychotomimetic
Psychotomimetic
A drug with psychotomimetic actions mimics the symptoms of psychosis, including delusions and/or delirium, as opposed to just hallucinations. Some drugs of the opioid class have psychotomimetic effects, such as pentazocine and butorphanol....
. The popularity of the book also affected research into these drugs, because researchers needed a random sample of subjects with no preconceptions about the drug in order to conduct experiments, and these became very difficult to find.
Religious response and RC Zaehner
In the field of religion, Huxley’s friend and spiritual mentor, the Vedantic monk Swami PrabhavanandaSwami Prabhavananda
Swami Prabhavananda was an Indian philosopher, monk of the Ramakrishna Order, and religious teacher.-Biography:...
, thought that mescaline was an illegitimate path to enlightenment, a "deadly heresy" as Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...
put it. Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
, the Jewish religious philosopher, attacked Huxley's notion that mescaline allowed a person to participate in "common being", and held that the drug ushered users "merely into a strictly private sphere". Philosophically, Buber believed the drug experiences to be holidays "from the person participating in the community of logos and cosmos—holidays from the very uncomfortable reminder to verify oneself as such a person." For Buber man must master, withstand and alter his situation, or even leave it, "but the fugitive flight out of the claim of the situation into situationlessness is no legitimate affair of man."
It was probably the criticisms of The Doors of Perception put forward by Robert Charles Zaehner
Robert Charles Zaehner
Robert Charles Zaehner was a British academic who specialised in Eastern religions. He was also an intelligence officer.-Life:Born on 8 April 1913 in Sevenoaks, Kent, the son of Swiss immigrants to England, Zaehner was educated nearby at Tonbridge School...
, a professor at Oxford University, that formed the fullest and earliest critiques from a religious and philosophical perspective. In 1954, Zaehner published an article called The Menace of Mescaline, in which he asserted that "artificial interference with consciousness" could have nothing to do with the Christian "Beatific Vision". Zaehner expanded on these criticisms in his book Mysticism Sacred and Profane (1957), which also acts as a theistic riposte to what he sees as the monism
Monism
Monism is any philosophical view which holds that there is unity in a given field of inquiry. Accordingly, some philosophers may hold that the universe is one rather than dualistic or pluralistic...
of Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy
The Perennial Philosophy
The Perennial Philosophy is a 1945 book by Aldous Huxley, published by Harper & Row in the US. It was published in the UK in 1946 by Chatto & Windus.-Social and political context:...
. Although he acknowledged the importance of The Doors of Perception as a challenge to people interested in religious experience, he pointed out what he saw as inconsistencies and self-contradictions. Zaehner concludes that Huxley’s apprehensions under mescaline are affected by his deep familiarity with Vedanta
Vedanta
Vedānta was originally a word used in Hindu philosophy as a synonym for that part of the Veda texts known also as the Upanishads. The name is a morphophonological form of Veda-anta = "Veda-end" = "the appendix to the Vedic hymns." It is also speculated that "Vedānta" means "the purpose or goal...
and Mahayana Buddhism. So, the experience may not be the same for others who take the drug and do not have this background, although they will undoubtedly experience a transformation of sensation. Zaehner himself was a convert to Catholicism
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
.
That the longing to transcend oneself is "one of the principal appetites of the soul" is questioned by Zaehner. There are still people who do not feel this desire to escape themselves, and religion itself need not mean escaping from the ego. Zaehner criticises what he sees as Huxley’s apparent call for all religious people to use drugs (including alcohol) as part of their practices. Quoting St Paul’s proscriptions against drunkenness in church, in 1 Corinthians
First Epistle to the Corinthians
The first epistle of Paul the apostle to the Corinthians, often referred to as First Corinthians , is the seventh book of the New Testament of the Bible...
xi, Zaehner makes the point that artificial ecstatic states and spiritual union with God are not the same.
Holding that there are similarities between the experience on mescaline, the mania
Mania
Mania, the presence of which is a criterion for certain psychiatric diagnoses, is a state of abnormally elevated or irritable mood, arousal, and/ or energy levels. In a sense, it is the opposite of depression...
in a manic-depressive psychosis and the visions of God of a mystical saint suggests, for Zaehner, that the saint’s visions must be the same as those of a lunatic. The personality is dissipated into the world, for Huxley on mescaline and people in a manic state, which is similar to the experience of nature mystics. However, this experience is different from the theistic mystic who is absorbed into a God, who is quite different from the objective world. The appendices to Mysticism Sacred and Profane include three accounts of mescaline experiences, including those of Zaehner himself. He writes that he was transported into a world of farcical meaninglessness and notes that the experience was interesting and funny, but not religious.
Huxley and Huston Smith's response
Soon after the publication of his book, Huxley wrote to Harold Raymond at Chatto and Windus that he thought it strange that when Hilaire BellocHilaire Belloc
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalised British subject in 1902. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. He was known as a writer, orator, poet, satirist, man of letters and political activist...
and G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
wrote the praises of alcohol they were still considered good Christians, while anyone who suggested other routes to self-transcendence was accused of being a drug addict and perverter of mankind. Later Huxley responded to Zaehner in an article published in 1961: "For most of those to whom the experiences have been vouchsafed, their value is self-evident. By Dr. Zaehner, the author of Mysticism, Sacred and Profane, their deliberate induction is regarded as immoral. To which his colleague, Professor Price, retorts in effect, 'Speak for yourself!'".
Huston Smith
Huston Cummings Smith is a religious studies scholar in the United States. His book The World's Religions remains a popular introduction to comparative religion.-Education:...
took issue with the belief that Mysticism Sacred and Profane had fully examined and refuted Huxley’s claims made in The Doors of Perception. Smith claims that consciousness-changing substances have been linked with religion both throughout history and across the world, and further it is possible that many religious perspectives had their origins in them, which were later forgotten. Acknowledging that personality, preparation and environment all play a role in the effects of the drugs, Huston Smith draws attention to evidence that suggests that a religious outcome of the experience may not be restricted to one of Huxley’s temperament. Further, because Zaehner’s experience was not religious, does not prove that none will be. Contrary to Zaehner, Huston Smith draws attention to evidence suggesting that these drugs can facilitate theistic mystical experience.
As the descriptions of naturally occurring and drug-stimulated mystical experiences cannot be distinguished phenomenologically, Huston Smith regards Zaehner’s position in Mysticism Sacred and Profane, as a product of the conflict between science and religion – that religion tends to ignore the findings of science. Nonetheless, although these drugs may produce a religious experience, they need not produce a religious life, unless set within a context of faith and discipline. Finally, he concludes that psychedelic drugs should not be forgotten in relation to religion because the phenomenon of religious awe
Awe
Awe is an emotion comparable to wonder but less joyous, and more fearful or respectful. Awe is defined in Robert Plutchik's Wheel of emotions as a combination of surprise and fear...
, or the encounter with the holy
Sacred
Holiness, or sanctity, is in general the state of being holy or sacred...
, is declining and religion cannot survive long in its absence.
Later experiences and developments in Huxley's thought
Huxley continued to take these substances several times a year until his death, but with a serious and temperate frame of mind. He refused to talk about the substances outside scientific meetings, turned down an invitation to talk about them on TV and refused the leadership of a foundation devoted to the study of psychedelics, explaining that they were only one of his diverse number of interests. For Philip Thody, a professor of French literature, Huxley's revelations made him conscious of the objections that had been put forward to his theory of mysticism set out in Eyeless in Gaza and Grey Eminence, and consequently Island reveals a more humane philosophy. However, this change in perspective may lie elsewhere. In October 1955, Huxley had an experience while on LSD that he considered more profound than those detailed in The Doors of Perception. Huxley was overwhelmed to the point where he decided his previous experiments, the ones detailed in Doors and Heaven and HellHeaven and Hell (essay)
Heaven and Hell is a philosophical essay written by Aldous Huxley, and published in 1956. Huxley derived the title from William Blake's book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The essay discusses the relationship between bright, colorful objects, geometric designs, psychoactives, art, and profound...
, had been nothing but entertaining sideshows. He wrote in a letter to Humphry Osmond
Humphry Osmond
Humphry Fortescue Osmond was a British psychiatrist known for inventing the word psychedelic and for using psychedelic drugs in medical research...
, that he experienced "the direct, total awareness, from the inside, so to say, of Love as the primary and fundamental cosmic fact. ... I was this fact; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that this fact occupied the place where I had been. ... And the things which had entirely filled my attention on that first occasion, I now perceived to be temptations - temptations to escape from the central reality into a false, or at least imperfect and partial Nirvanas of beauty and mere knowledge." The experience made its way into the final chapter of Island
Island (novel)
Island is the final book by English writer Aldous Huxley, published in 1962. It is the account of Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist who is shipwrecked on the fictional island of Pala. Island is Huxley's utopian counterpart to his most famous work, the 1932 novel Brave New World, itself often...
. This raised a troublesome point. Was it better to pursue a course of careful psychological experimentation.... or was the real value of these drugs to "stimulate the most basic kind of religious ecstasy"?
The book's influences
A variety of influences have been claimed for the book. The psychedelic proselytiser, Timothy LearyTimothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...
, was given the book by a colleague soon after returning from Mexico where he had first taken psilocybin mushrooms in the summer of 1960. He found that The Doors of Perception corroborated what he had experienced 'and more too'. Leary soon set up a meeting with Huxley and the two became friendly. The book can also be seen as a part of the history of entheogenic model of understanding these drugs, that sees them within a spiritual context. Looking to broader culture, Huxley's experiment can be seen, alongside the work of other artists such as John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
and Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
, as proposing a model of the imagination opposite to the symbolic, representational structures that had governed Western thought for centuries. Although this new direction cannot be attributed entirely to mescaline or Huxley, it had made a strong impact on politics, art and religion.
Cultural references
- Greek composer Kyriakos SfetsasKyriakos SfetsasKyriakos Sfetsas is a Greek composer. His body of work consists of a large number of compositions: symphonic, choral, ballet and theatre music, chamber, electronic, film scores, pieces for solo instruments, pieces in jazz and fusion style, songs in Greek and world poems.-Early life:Sfetsas was...
based his "Four pieces for two pianos" (1986) on "The doors", with appropriate titles for each movement.
- This book was the influence behind Jim MorrisonJim MorrisonJames Douglas "Jim" Morrison was an American musician, singer, and poet, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the rock band The Doors...
naming his band The DoorsThe DoorsThe Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger...
in 1965.
- Beware the Sliverman, The Game of Reason, Imagination and Knowledge uses the Doors of Perception as a gateway for players to see their Sliverman.
Publication data
The Doors of Perception is usually published in a combined volume with Huxley's essay Heaven and HellHeaven and Hell (essay)
Heaven and Hell is a philosophical essay written by Aldous Huxley, and published in 1956. Huxley derived the title from William Blake's book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The essay discusses the relationship between bright, colorful objects, geometric designs, psychoactives, art, and profound...
(1956).
- The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, 1954, 1956, Harper & Brothers
- 1977 Harpercollins (UK), mass market paperback: ISBN 0-586-04437-X
- 1990 Harper Perennial edition: ISBN 0-06-090007-5
- 2004 Harper Modern Classics edition: ISBN 0-06-059518-3
- 2004 Sagebrush library binding: ISBN 1-4176-2859-6
- The Doors of Perception, unabridged audio cassette, Audio Partners 1998, ISBN 1-57270-065-3