2003-09-10 AN INFORMATIVE AND POIGNANT READ

This volume brings together selections from Huxley’s Brave New World, Doors Of Perception, Heaven And Hell and Island, as well as magazine articles, letters, lectures and scientific papers. It also includes writings by Timothy Leary, Laura Huxley and Dr. Humphry Osmond. Leary’s interesting account of a 1960 meeting with Huxley at Cambridge is titled Mushrooms For Lunch, whilst the same year’s Harvard Sessions is a report of a psylocybin session where Huxley took part in a group experiment. Other very thought provoking chapters include Dr. Humphry Osmond’s May Morning In Hollywood and Huxley’s own Disregarded In The Darkness, Doors, Mescalin, Heaven And Hell and Brave New World Revisited. But the highlights of the book are Laura Huxley’s 1962 account of her husband in a psychedelic state and especially her moving account of his illness and death, titled Nobly Born. The appendix is titled Instruments For Use During A Psychedelic Experience and the book concludes with an index. This is a brilliant collection of this refined author’s best work and an insightful investigation into the use of entheogenic substances for the expansion of consciousness. I also recommend Huston Smith’s Cleansing The Doors Of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogentic Plants and Chemicals, William James’ Varieties Of Religious Experience the title Chaos, Creativity and Cosmic Consciousness by Ralph Abraham, Terence McKenna and Rupert Sheldrake.