[[Aldous Huxley]] [[lit/kindle/The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell|Highlights]] Aldous Huxley captures his experience on mescaline (derived from the Peyote cactus) in the book *The Doors of Perception*. He recruits two compatriots, his wife Maria and the researcher Humphry Osmond, to observe and support him in capturing the experience. He takes a scientific approach, setting up little experiments like viewing various styles of art. Huxley experiences a type of ego death, describing himself as a "not-I" and invoking the eastern description of non-dual realty where objects, such as a vase of flowers, become "miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence". He interprets his own brain as a reducing valve for reality. He notes that while the drug does not limit the observers ability to take action, it eliminates any feeling of need to do so. Time passes, but feels irrelevant. Irrelevant also are human strivings. Following the experience, Huxley concludes that psychoactive drugs like mescaline are useful substitutes for the monastic practices that the spiritual and religious typically practice to perceive higher truth. Drugs like mescaline are not direct experience of the divine but a "gratuitous grace". Originally published in 1954, the book sits in an interesting period of history for psychedelics, some years after their discovery by western scientific thinkers and before the widespread promotion by the likes of Timothy Leary and ultimate criminalization. The title references a metaphor of [[William Blake]] from his 1790 book, _[The Marriage of Heaven and Hell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marriage_of_Heaven_and_Hell "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell")_: > If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.