The Doors of Perception
The Doors of Perception is an autobiographical book written by Aldous Huxley. Published in 1954, it elaborates on his psychedelic experience under the influence of mescaline in May 1953. Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, ranging from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision", and reflects on their philosophical and psychological implications. In 1956, he published Heaven and Hell, another essay which elaborates these reflections further. The two works have since often been published together as one book; the titles of both come from William Blake's 1793 book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
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. 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. 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.
Background
William Blake
, who inspired the book's title and writing style, was an influential English artist most notable for his paintings and poetry. The "doors of perception" was originally a metaphor written by Blake in his 1790 book, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The metaphor was used to represent Blake's feelings about mankind's limited perception of the reality around them:Mescaline
Mescaline is the principal active psychedelic agent of the peyote cactus, 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 1897. 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, an Austrian 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 Klüver 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.Image:Peyote Cactus.jpg|left|thumb|alt=Close up of a peyote cactus growing in the wild.|A peyote cactus, from which mescaline is derived.|227x227px
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. La Barre noted that the Native American 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 1940s 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. Mescaline also played a paramount part in influencing the beat generation of poets and writers of the later 1940s to the early 1960s. Most notable, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg—all of whom were respected contemporary beat artists of their generation. 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.
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 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. He had known for some time of visionary experience achieved by taking drugs in certain religions.
Research by Humphry Osmond
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 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. 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 Loudun, 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.Huxley's experience with mescaline
After reading Osmond's paper, Huxley sent him a letter on Thursday, 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 might help access a greater degree of awareness. Reflecting on his stated motivations, Woodcock wrote that Huxley had realised that the ways to enlightenment were many, including prayer and meditation. 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 Saturday, 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 his 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.
Day of the experiment
Osmond arrived at Huxley's house in West Hollywood on Sunday, 3 May 1953, 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, "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 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. 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 outstretched 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 that showed Huxley wearing flannels.
Compilation of the book
After Osmond's departure, Huxley and Maria left to go on a three-week, car trip around the national parks of the North West of the US. 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: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 thro' 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. Blake had a resounding impact on Huxley, who shared many of Blake's earlier revelations and interests in art and literature. In the early 1950s, 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.