Word: huxleyism
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When Aldous Huxley published his essay "The Doors of Perception" in 1954, he did much to publicize a very strange drug. "Mescaline," he writes, "admits one to an other-world of light, color, and increased awareness. In some cases there may be extra-sensory perceptions. Other persons discover a world of visionary beauty. To others again is revealed the glory, the infinite value and meaningfulness of naked existence...
Pure mescaline is synthesized today by several chemical companies, which supply it to qualified investigators at prices of about four dollars a dose. Huxley's intriguing essay is a subjective description of the symptoms that followed his taking 400 milligrams of mescaline, the usual amount. What mescaline does to the human mind is difficult to describe; its effects vary strikingly from person to person and from time to time in the same individual. The most significant fact is that a very large proportion of these experiences are pleasant throughout, many of them ecstatically...
Predictably, Huxley compares mescaline to soma, the universal antidote to everyday existence in Brave New World,--a drug with "all the advantages of Christianity and alcohol, none of the drawbacks." Like soma, mescaline is an hallucinogen and a euphoriant that is not harmful and provides a reasonably safe, extremely interesting escape from the world. But the effects of mescaline are far too capricious, much too susceptible to subtle psychological influences, and certainly too time-consuming to rank with those of Huxley's ideal drug. And with the majority that finds heaven in mescaline here is inevitably a small minority that...
...madrigals by Carlo Gesualdo, far too few, introduced the second half of the program. Aldous Huxley has given Gesualdo's art the proper eulogy and analysis; one can only add that bursts of unrelated harmonies and dramatic stops and starts notwithstanding, each part flowed smoothly...
...Princeton astronomer-mathematician, Lovett scoured the world's great universities to get ideas for infant Rice. He brought in such scholars as Julian Huxley, made sure that his first 77 freshmen ("these torchbearers of the sun dawn") meant business. When only 39 students stayed the route to graduation, Rice was permanently stamped as the toughest school in Texas...