Psychedelic drugs have always fascinated me. One of the early pioneers of psychedelic drug research was the great British/American writer Aldous Huxley. Huxley was the author of such classics as "Brave New World" and "Island". In his later years, after a lifetime spent voraciously absorbing knowledge from fields as diverse as psychiatry, biochemistry, art, music, and mysticism, Huxley wanted to know what it felt like to experience the world as a mystic or genius experiences it. He wanted to know how William Blake read the Bible, how Van Gogh saw the sky, and how the Tibetan Buddhists viewed death. Mescaline, a naturally occurring compound in a number of North & South American cacti including the beautiful peyote cactus, provided Huxley with the chemical push he needed to become a visionary.

Interestingly, in the years that followed his experimentation with mescaline, a drug with almost identical effects (though structurally different and artificially produced) played the role of a catalyst for what was one of humanity's greatest revolutions. The drug was, of course, LSD, and a consequence was the 1960s cultural revolution.

Huxley was dead by the end of the 60s, but his essays on Mescaline - "The Doors of Perception" and "Heaven and Hell" (often packaged together these days in a single paperback) - were viewed as prophetic and catalytic by many famous 1960s personalities, such as Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and Bob Dylan.

"The Doors of Perception" is widely available on the internet free of charge. However my intention today is to talk about its sister work, written after Huxley had had time to assimilate the profound change of worldview he had undergone after his initial experiments with mescaline (which was the subject of "The Doors of Perception"). As far as I can tell, the only location on the internet where the complete text of "Heaven and Hell" is freely available is here. This site also provides links to the many artworks referenced in both "Doors of Perception" and "Heaven and Hell", so it's well worth a visit.

The title "Heaven and Hell" refers to the fact that visionaries, and psychedelic drug users, often find themselves at extreme "poles" of perception. Sometimes this transfiguration manifests itself in the conviction that the entire Universe is indeed heavenly, and every fragment of it is a shard of heaven itself. (What was the line from the Blake poem? "To see a world in a grain of sand / And a heaven in a wild flower"?)

But sometimes (more frequently than is advertised by proponents of restrictionless experimentation with psychedelic drugs), the drug-taker finds herself in hell. Instead of seeing heaven in a grain of sand, she sees a sharp, vicious, eternal fragment of hell in the unnatural glint of every metal object, in the inscrutable facial expressions of her colleagues, and in the vast and impersonal machinery of the Universe itself.

"Heaven and Hell" is a reflection on the nature of visionary experience. It is an attempt to describe the two sides of the visionary coin. And interestingly, it ends with the conviction that truly "mystical" experience is beyond both "Heaven" and "Hell": it is an interface with the highest experience of being.

Huxley's vast erudition is on display throughout his essay. The piece is worth reading if only as a link to the works of brilliant artists you may never have heard of before, such as the disturbing paintings of the negative visionary Théodore Géricault, and the trembling, impassive, blissful works of Édouard Vuillard. These artists are elaborated upon in a couple of the essay's appendices (well worth reading, by the way). Also in the appendix, Huxley proposes scientific bases for some of the "causes" of the visionary state. For example, Huxley mentions some well-known non-drug means of obtaining visionary-like insights, albeit not nearly as powerful as those resulting from the swallowing of mescaline. These methods include the stroboscope, controlled breathing (in particular as it relates to the gradual reduction of oxygen in the blood), malnutrition & fasting, and self-flagellation resulting in effects from sugar imbalances and adrenalin surges in the body & brain.

This is not a book that is read by most students in school, because of its subject matter. Drugs have become, for whatever reason, taboo in America (and most of the rest of the world, too). It's time we opened our minds a little more, don't you think?

"Heaven and Hell", by Aldous Huxley. Available online, for free, here.