Word: huxley
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...article in Tuesday's CRIMSON reviewed Huxley's theories on mescaline and related them to psilocybin studies being executed by some staff members at the Center for Research in Personality. The CRIMSON essay was a gallant attempt to summarize a most difficult subject matter, but some clarification seems needed...
...Doors to Perception, Aldous Huxley is concerned with the social applications of the so-called Budda drugs (mescaline, psilocybin, LSD). He refers to society's need for escapes. The escape motif should not be emphasized. For most subjects the opposite seems true. Confrontation, intense (and often painful) contact with reality more accurately characterize the experience...
...Huxley's assertion that man needs frequent escape from his environment and that some of this must be chemically induced. The stupendous consumption of alcohol in the world today may support this contention; certainly the interest aroused by mescaline among non-researchers is indication that it, too, has strong appeal...
...issue may be raised sooner than one might expect. Since mescaline became available, several other drugs with similar properties have been isolated, and some of these have very many of the qualities of Huxley's soma. The most astounding one is psilocybin, a compound isolated quite recently from a certain genus of Mexican mushrooms and now also synthesized. Psilocybin affects the mind much more selectively than mescaline, specifially stimulating those psychic effects that have been termed "broadened consciousness." It never impairs the higher mental functions, often it greatly enhances them. Visions and physical symptoms do occur but seem less intense...
Investigators of psilocybin at Harvard's Center for Research In Personality are unbounded in their enthusiasm for this new drug, reporting that it frequently increases powers of creative thinking in both artistic and scientific areas. A number of authors (Aldous Huxley, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and others) studied in the Harvard project found that their work benefited enormously from the influence of psilocybin, and preliminary investigations have indicated that the "mushroom experience" may be of value in the rehabilitation of prisoners. The directors of the Center envision the use of psilocybin in a "mushroom seminar" for graduate students in theology...