The Doors of Perception

Aldous Huxley – 1954

“But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out.  He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.”

The English writer and spiritual seeker Aldous Huxley was doggedly circumspect in his public discourse (including his writings) about psychedelics, unlike his acquaintance Timothy Leary who become tightly associated with same, somewhat to the detriment of his scientific credibility.  In concise, modest language, Huxley relates his interest and experience with mescaline on one afternoon in Los Angeles in 1953.  Any implications on his private life he reserves for himself, content instead to speculate on the potential for deeper introspection not only in a religious sense but in the arts and sciences too.  (I particularly like his observation, emblazoned in my mind since first reading the book at the age of 15, that artists may already be in a psychedelic state and not require - or be much affected by - the use of mushrooms, peyote and LSD.)  Revisiting the book in 2015, it is remarkable to note how little times have changed in the past 60 years.  The public stigma about willful temporary adjustment of consciousness is no less severe in all this time, regardless of the fact that alcohol, tobacco and prescription drugs barely raise an eyebrow despite their well-documented damaging effects to mind and body.  Huxley eloquently describes the rituals of the Native American tribes that have used peyote for thousands of years; how they treat it with respect, glean insight and compassion from it, and never regress into the drunken frat-house debauchery that critics imagine is the main goal of such experimentation.  Huxley brought a lifetime of careful research and contemplation to his trials with mescaline, and advised others to do the same; he was not a desperate man looking for a new thrill or oblivion.