The Doors of Perception

The Doors of Perception is a 1954 book by Aldous Huxley detailing his experiences when taking mescaline. Huxley first took mescaline in 1951 while living in Los Angeles and writing Brave New World Revisited (mescaline was actually legal until 1967). He was impressed by the results and speculated that mescaline might be a “psychedelic”, a term he used in The Doors of Perception to describe drugs whose primary effects are not toxic, but which make possible an expansion of consciousness.

Huxley's experiences prompted him to suggest that “there is no physiological or psychological phenomenon which cannot be produced in any man, given the right conditions” and that Gautama Buddha's insights into human consciousness were just as valid 2000 years ago as they are today. He also came to see mescaline as a useful tool for spiritual inquiry. The title of the book is derived from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a phrase which appears at the end of Part One of Blake's work.