Huxley 5
Did you get what I have got so strongly on the recent occasions when I have taken the stuff -- an overpowering sense of gratitude, a desire to give thanks to the Order of Things for the privilege of this particular experience, and also for the privilege -- for that one feels it to be, in spite of everything -- of living in a human body on this particular planet?
How strange that we should all carry about with us this enormous universe of vision that lies beyond vision, and yet be mainly unconscious of the fact! How can we learn to pass at will from one world of consciousness to the other?
The supreme art of life would be the art of passing at will from obscure knowledge to conceptualized, utilitarian knowledge, from the aesthetic to the mystical; and all the time to be able, in the words of the Zen master, to grasp the non-particular that exists in particulars, to be aware of the no-thought which lies in thought -- the absolute in relationships, the infinite in finite things, the eternal in time. The problem is how to learn that supreme art of life?
Human beings will be able to achieve effortlessly what in the past could be only achieved with difficulty, by means of self-control and spiritual exercises. Will this be a good thing for individuals and for societies? Or will it be
a bad thing?
If we have a meeting of this highly pickwickian organization, what (aside from the pleasure and interest of meeting a number of intelligent people interested in the same sort of thing) will be gained?
Would there be
ulterior advantages?
Couldn't the same results be attained more simply and cheaply by discussing matters at a meeting, or by correspondence, and dividing up the work among the various experimenters?
To think of people made vulnerable by LSD being exposed to such people is profoundly disturbing. But what can one do about the problem? Psychiatry is an art based on a still imperfect science -- and as in all the arts, there are more bad and indifferent practitioners than good ones. How can one keep the bad artists out? Bad artists don't matter in painting or literature -- but they matter enormously in therapy and education; for whole lives and destinies may be affected by their shortcomings.
Is it possible for a powerful drug to be completely harmless?
Most of us function at about 15 percent of capacity. How can we step up our lamentably low efficiency?
Will it in fact be possible to produce superior individuals by biochemical means?
To what extent are our thoughts, beliefs and actions the products of our inherited physique and temperament, and of the fluctuations, in response to internal and external events, of our body-chemistry? Just how valid is a philosophy based upon a state of mind (say the conviction of sin) which can be radically changed by the prick of a needle or a small daily dose of Ritalin? And what about those experiences induced by Dr. Hofmann's physically harmless mind-changers -- experiences of a world transfigured into unimaginable loveliness, charged with intrinsic significance, and manifesting, in spite of pain and death, an essential and (there is no other word) divine
All-Rightness? Yes, what about them?
Have you any idea why some people visualize and others don't?
If you were having a love affair with a woman, would you be interested in writing about it?
What's happening in the brain when you're having a vision? And what's happening when you pass from a premystical to a genuinely mystical state of mind?
