Unanswered Questions from Huxley's Experiments
by Peter Stafford
Editors Note: This essay was first published in Blotter No. 2,
in early 1978. The newsletter was the work of The Psychedelic
Education Center/Linkage, a Santa Cruz based group that organized
two psychedelic conferences and met regularly from 1977 to 1982.
The main writings of Aldous Huxley about psychedelics and the visionary
experience have now been gathered into a single volume -- entitled Moksha,
Stonehill Press, edited by Michael Horowitz and Cynthia Palmer. Though
more than a quarter century has passed since Huxley's death, this material
resurrected from letters, talks and articles is timely today. For as the
law and public reassess psychedelic questions via the door of medicine,
nowhere will they find a more profound study of implications and of the
questions raised.
In 1931, Aldous described his delight upon coming upon an unpromising
looking, ponderous work by a German pharmacologist -- "a thick book,
dense with matter and, in manner, a model of all that literary style
should not be." He read this from cover to cover with a growing interest
in "how the story of drugtaking constitutes one of the most curious and
also, it seems to me, one of the most significant chapters in the natural
history of human beings." But it wasn't until 22 years later, after he
had published 39 books concerning human nature, that Huxley tried a
psychedelic -- 400 mg. of mescaline sulfate, administered at about 11
am on May 6th, 1953 by a young Canadian psychiatrist named Humphry Osmond.
In one of several remembrances of Aldous appearing in this volume,
Osmond comments that the finest praise one could receive came in his
expression, "How absolutely incredible!" Well, after about an hour
and a half into the experience, Aldous noticed he was "not looking
now at an unusual flower arrangement. I was seeing what Adam had seen
on the morning of his creation -- the miracle, moment by moment, of
naked existence." (In a letter to Chatto & Windus just after this
mescaline experience, Huxley writes: "It is without any question the
most extraordinary and significant experience available to human beings
this side of the Beatific Vision; and it opens up a host of philosophical
problems, throws intense light and raises all manner of questions in the
fields of aesthetics, religion, theory of knowledge . . .")
Over the next decade, there were to be nine other tries -- two more with
mescaline, one with morning glory seeds (8 of them), two with psilocybin
and four with LSD. This may not be considered by some that much experience. But Huxley and his colleagues -- mainly Osmond -- were unusually sensitive to and articulate about what was at stake here. In an important sense, they have affected the way in which we see the issues.
In the first of his two short books about psychedelics -- The Doors of
Perception -- Huxley remarked that the "untalented visionary may perceive
an inner reality no less tremendous, beautiful and significant than the
world beheld by Blake; but he lacks altogether the ability to express,
in literary or plastic symbols, what he has seen." Aldous, by way of
contrast, by the time of his first contrived mystical experience had
already spent a long lifetime as a student of the curious and mystical,
and of English prose. Writing first about psychedelics at the age of 60,
he was able to give (quoting from the above passage again) "some hint at
least of a not excessively uncommon experience."
I mean by this that the exploration of inner space is at least as vast
and mysterious a study as that of outer space -- and that in the former
we were lucky to have had an Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond aboard as
investigators. It is as if we had sent poets that first time to the moon!
It took Huxley 70 pages to describe what had happened on that first trip,
to give some hint of this "not excessively uncommon experience," as when
he wrote that "All at once I saw what Guardi had seen and (with what
incomparable skill) had so often rendered in his paintings -- a stucco
wall with a shadow slanting across it, blank but unforgettably beautiful,
empty but charged with all the meaning and the mystery of existence."
Compare just this fragment with the total remaining report from the Harvard
Psilocybin Project invesigators -- when Huxley took 10 mg. psilocybin, and
was observed: "No. 11 sat in contemplative calm throughout; occasionally
produced relevant epigrams; reported experience was an edifying philosophic
experience."
There is much truth to the claim that to get the Aldous Huxley mescalinized
experience you had to be Huxley -- especially if talking about the bringing
back of souvenirs. Aldous Huxley, blind at the age of 20, after regaining
his sight was probably not by accident to become the most listenable of all
as to the content of the contrived visionary experience. That appeared
principally in his two books on the subject, after only two or three
experiments. What he thought of the rest -- which were quite different --
is here, in what should stand as an unparalleled guide to investigators.
Speculations and explanations provided by Huxley are based on wide-ranging
inquiries he undertook after having been greatly energized by that initial
experiment. Most of this seems fresh today. How odd it seems, for example,
to hear him describe the work of John Lilly with dolphins, or that of
those accumulating death and dying accounts -- and to realize that this
was written more than a quarter century ago!
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:
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?
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 due to a
temporary upset in the sugar supply to the brain?
Have you ever tried the effects of mescalin on a congenitally blind man
or woman? This would surely be of interest.
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?
Why should gems ever have been regarded precious? What has induced men
to spend such enormous quantites of time, trouble and money on the
finding and cutting of colored pebbles?
Did I tell you that my friend Dr. Cholden had found that the stroboscope
improved on mescalin effects, just as Al Hubbard did? . . . 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?
Who, having once come to the relization of the primoridal 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
childen 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?
How strange that we should all carry about with us this enormous universe
of vision that which 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 infine in finite things, the eternal in
time. The problem is how to learn that supreme art of life?
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?
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 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?
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 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.
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?
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
unimaginably 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?
Peter Stafford lives in Santa Cruz, California and is the author of
three books including LSD: The Problem-Solving Psychedelic written
with Bonnie Golightly (1967, Award Books), Pychedelic Baby Reaches
Puberty (1971) and Psychedelics Enclopedia (First Edition, 1977,
And/Or Press, Second Edition, J. P. Tarcher Books, 1983 and Third
Edition to be publsihed by Ronin Publishing, Winter, 1992).
Peter first took peyote in the early 'Sixties and was an editor of
Crawdaddy, the first rock magazine.
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