The Doors of Perception And Heaven and Hell

I picked up this slim Aldous Huxley book because it was referenced by Michael Pollon in his book, How to Change Your Mind, and because I thought, well, after all, it's Aldous Huxley. It is partly about Huxley's 1953 experience using mescalin, or peyote, a naturally occurring psychedelic alkaloid famously used by some Native American tribes as a religious sacrament. Huxley had the normal "trip" associated with peyote or with "magic mushrooms", and he describes it well, to the extent it can be described in words, and he fully recognizes and describes the limitations of such an attempt at describing an ineffable experience. But also, being Huxley, he brings countless cultural references into the mix, so I was busy googling the Le Pain brothers, Swedenborg, Vuillard, et al, and checking out paintings by Vermeer, writings by Aquinas, and the meaning of "Yggdrasil". If you've read the Pollon book, this might be worth your while. Huxley is certainly the most literate person I am aware of who has described a psychedelic experience.

Do you have to be on mescalin to understand what is happening? 3,5*