More Huxley Stuff
What struck me, reading through this compilation, most forcefully was Huxley's questioning (mainly of Osmond). Here are some of those questions, which yet deserve clear answers:
Last about Shulgins (for now)
Apochryphal or true, this comment emphasizes how psychedelics affect an important segment of world citizenry. These analogs from Shulgin, more specific than classic psychedelics and without the usual emphasis on "ego-death" or "hallucinations," may open up mystical, artistic and problem-solving areas for millions here in the U.S., and may hit millions of semi-dormant minds world-wide.
That's why I say this could be the most important book of the last century.
How many of the current ideas of eternity, of heaven, of supernatural states are ultimately derived from the experience of drug-takers?
Do Galtonian visualizers react in a different way from non-visualizers? Again, is there any marked difference between the average reactions of extreme cerebrotonics, viscerotonics and somatotonics? Do people with a pronounced musical gift get auditory counterparts of the visions and transfigurations of the external world experienced by others? How are pure mathematicians and professional philosophers affected?
The inexplicable fact remains the nature of the visions. Who invents these astounding things? And why should the not-I who does the inventing hit on precisely this kind of thing?
What those Buddhist monks did for the dying and the dead, might not the modern psychiatrist do for the insane?
Have you ever tried the effects of mescalin on a congenitally blind man or woman? This would surely be of interest.
My old friend, Naomi Mitchison writes from Scotland, after reading the Doors, that she had an almost identical experience of the transfiguration of the outer world during her various pregnancies. Could this be do to a temporary upset in the sugar supply to the brain?
Can you tell me in a line or two what was the nature of the experiences induced by being shut up in silence, in the dark? Were those visions of a mescalin-like kind?
Did I tell you that my friend Dr. Cholden had found that the stroboscope improved on mescalin effects, just as Al Hubbard?
And anyhow, what on earth are the neurological correlations of mescalin and LSD experiences? And if neurological patterns are formed, as presumably they must be, can they be reactivated by a probing electrode, as Penfield reactivates trains of memories, evoking complete vivid recall?
Why should gems ever have been regarded precious? What has induced men to spend such enormous quantities of time, trouble and money on the finding and cutting of colored pebbles?
Who, having once come to the realization of the primordial fact of unity in Love, would ever want to return to experimentation on the psychic level?
Who on earth was John Sebastian? Certainly not the old gent with sixteen children in a stuffy Protestant environment. Rather, an enormous manifestation of the Other -- but the Other canalized, controlled, made available through the intervention of the intellect and the senses and emotions.
How and why is heaven
turned into hell?
Can we with impunity replace systematic self-discipline by a chemical?
Is a mescalinized person hypnotizable? If so, can hypnotic suggestions direct his new found visionary capacities into specific channels -- e.g., into the realms of buried memories of childhood, or into specific areas of thought and imagery? Can we suggest to him, for example, that he should see an episode from The Arabian Nights, or from the Gospel, or in the realms of archetypal symbols or mythology?
