In the epilogue to his novel The Devils of Loudun, published earlier that year, Huxley had written that drugs were "toxic short cuts to self-transcendence". 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. 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 Weyburn Mental Hospital, Saskatchewan, in early 1952. Huxley had first heard of peyote use in ceremonies of the Native American Church in New Mexico, soon after coming to the United States in 1937. He had known for some time of visionary experience achieved by taking drugs in certain religions. In the late 1930s he had become interested in the spiritual teaching of Vedanta and in 1945 he published The Perennial Philosophy, which set out a philosophy that he believed was found amongst mystics of all religions. ![]() 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. Huxley had been interested in spiritual matters and had used alternative therapies for some time. Theirs and many other contemporary artists' works were heavily influenced by over-the-counter forms of mescaline during this time, due to its potency and attainability. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg -all of whom were respected contemporary beat artists of their generation. Mescaline also played a paramount part in influencing the beat generation of poets and writers of the later 1940s to the early 1960s. 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. In 1947 however, the US Navy undertook Project Chatter, which examined the potential for the drug as a truth revealing agent. Most psychiatric research projects into the drug in the 1930s and early 1940s tended to look at the role of the drug in mimicking psychosis. La Barre noted that the Native American users of the cactus took it to obtain visions for prophecy, healing and inner strength. In the 1930s, an American anthropologist Weston La Barre, published The Peyote Cult, the first study of the ritual use of peyote as an entheogen drug amongst the Huichol people of western Mexico. ![]() Huxley himself continued to take psychedelics for the rest of his life, and the understanding he gained from them influenced his final novel Island, published in 1962.Ī peyote cactus, from which mescaline is derived. While many found the argument compelling, others including German writer Thomas Mann, Vedantic monk Swami Prabhavananda, Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, and Orientalist scholar Robert Charles Zaehner countered that the effects of mescaline are subjective and should not be conflated with objective religious mysticism. The Doors of Perception provoked strong reactions for its evaluation of psychedelic drugs as facilitators of mystical insight with great potential benefits for science, art, and religion. The two works have since often been published together as one book the title of both comes from William Blake's 1793 book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. In 1956, he published Heaven and Hell, another essay which elaborates these reflections further. Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, ranging from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision", and reflects on their philosophical and psychological implications. Published in 1954, it elaborates on his psychedelic experience under the influence of mescaline in May 1953. The Doors of Perception is an autobiographical book written by Aldous Huxley.
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