Aldous Huxley and his Techniques of Ecstasy

Aldous Huxley’s Artistic Beginnings and Influences

Before Morrison, the writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley sought to penetrate beyond the “Doors of Perception.”

Belonging to the eminent Huxley family and being the great-grandnephew of the poet Matthew Arnold on his mother’s side, Aldous inherited the scientific curiosity, encyclopedic spirit, and artistic sensitivity of his predecessors.

He was a novelist, essayist, and critic, equally interested in the visual arts, music, and architecture.

One aspect often overlooked “due to his renown as a novelist”[1] and essayist is that Huxley began his artistic career as a poet, continuing to write volumes of poetry until near the end of his career.

Influenced by Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Rimbaud, or Laforgue, Huxley’s poetry[2] is complex, rich in metaphors, ironic, and imbued with a bitter nostalgia for the indecipherable world of the spirit.

Thus, the first period of Huxley’s work was marked by volumes of poetry and short prose, culminating in the novels Crome Yellow, Antic Hay, and Those Barren Leaves[3].

The second period was influenced by his friendship with the writer D.H. Lawrence, through which Huxley gained a new perspective on literature and life. During this time, his major novels were born: Point Counter Point and Eyeless in Gaza[4].

Huxley’s Influence on American Bohemian Culture

Huxley’s fame spanned both sides of the Atlantic before World War II, from the United Kingdom to the United States.

In 1937, he moved to California, where he exerted a significant influence on the bohemian intellectual climate, from the Beat Generation, as noted by Serge Fauchereau[5], to Jim Morrison and The Doors, who borrowed their name from Huxley’s essay The Doors of Perception[6].

Huxley was admired in American bohemian circles, first and foremost, as an elite intellectual.

His writings, often ironic and critical of British intellectual society, demonstrate clarity, and his encyclopedic expression, sprinkled with erudite references, delights any reader thirsty for culture.

Secondly, Huxley was associated in the American collective consciousness with mystical experiences induced by hallucinogenic drugs.

Huxley’s major works are not merely the product of a subtle interplay of intellect. In his writings, there is a glimpse—albeit timid amidst the imposing, cold edifices built by intelligence—of the flame of a unique artistic sensitivity.

This faint flame would erupt into a blaze upon Huxley’s move to America.

The writer became aware in America of the metaphysical longing that dwelled in the depths of his soul, a longing that would transform into an almost mystical vocation.

Huxley’s Mystical Journey and Hallucinogenic Experiments

Huxley began a mystical journey in Los Angeles through Eastern culture, drawn to Indian mysticism and frequenting one of the centers for the study and practice of Vedic philosophy established in Hollywood[7].

In Huxley, the metaphysical yearning seems to be coupled with a harrowing dread of the prisons that shackle the spirit, the pressure of these bonds being felt in the physical world as well.

Through ecstasy, Huxley perhaps sought to free himself from the metaphysical dungeons he invoked in his descriptions of the works of De Quincey or Beckford in the essay “Variations on a Theme by Piranesi”[8].

Realizing that erudition does not serve transcendence, Huxley began experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs such as mescaline, LSD, or peyote to induce a state of ecstasy and facilitate vision.

The essay The Doors of Perception, which enjoyed great popularity, presents itself as a series of notes by Huxley describing, in what he intended to be an objective manner, his personal experiences under the influence of hallucinogens.

Ironically, The Doors of Perception does not appear as a visionary experience but as a pseudo-scientific research journal, filled with passages marked by ambiguity and vague conclusions, despite the aim of the experience being to liberate the intellect from its own weight.

The preceding essay, Heaven and Hell, represents the “lapidary continuation”[9] of The Doors of Perception.

The approach is logical, and Huxley offers a dissection of the visionary experience in this essay.

He draws parallels between the techniques of ecstasy in various cultures and mythologies, across different eras and religions, or those of great mystic-artists.

Following a complex yet concise presentation, exploring visionary techniques through their physiological or psychological effects, Huxley concludes that there is a fundamental difference between the visionary experience and the mystical experience.

The visionary experience is a path to understanding the psychic world in relation to the universe, thus closely tied to the material reality of antipodes, with vision serving as a superior tool of knowledge.

On the other hand, the mystical experience transcends this realm[10], in other words, the mystical experience leads to coincidentia oppositorum.

Scientific Rationalization and Lasting Legacy

As expected, Huxley brings the visionary experience into the scientific realm, finding a device to separate vision from mystical experience, facilitating explanation in rational terms.

Beyond drugs, Huxley identifies other methods to aid vision, such as “carbon dioxide and the stroboscopic lamp”[11], pyrotechnic effects[12], or nutritional deficiencies[13].

Huxley impresses with his extensive documentation and ingenious references, proving mastery over diverse fields such as psychology, chemistry, physics, history, and philosophy.

His attempt to present vision in scientific terms may seem sterile, though at times, in Heaven and Hell, faint shadows of Eternal Truth appear in evanescent forms. Indeed, Huxley had already ventured into the history of mystical philosophy in 1945 with the remarkable work suggestively titled The Perennial Philosophy.

Whether Huxley was right or not is less important.

What is essential is that the British writer aspired to a profound understanding of the spirit, inspiring in his quest both American artistic figures of the 1950s and 60s (think of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Jim Morrison, or Ray Manzarek) and the broader American youth, who united in the Hippie movement, invoking total freedom.

Aldous Huxley chased the visionary chimera until the end.

In 1963, on his deathbed, he asked his wife to administer an overdose of LSD[14], merging body and soul in the throes of ecstasy and stepping beyond the “Doors.”

We will further explore the possibility that Aldous Huxley may have been hasty in distinguishing the two types of experiences.

The visionary experience could be considered the antechamber of the mystical experience, with the ultimate goal being transcendence through ecstasy facilitated by music, poetry, and dance in shamanic trance.

[1] Mircea Pădureanu, Aldous Huxley, București, Editura Științifică și Enciclopedică, 1978, p. 173.

[2] Pădureanu, pp. 173-175.

[3] Pădureanu, pp. 5-7.

[4] Pădureanu, pp. 8-12.

[5] Cf. Serge Fauchereau, Introducere în poezia Americană modernă, București, Tracus Arte, 2016, p. 262.

[6] The essay’s title was, in turn, inspired by Blake’s lines from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “If The Doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite,” a work also known to Morrison and Manzarek when choosing the name The Doors.

[7] Pădureanu, pp. 14-15.

[8] Pădureanu, p. 243.

[9] Aldous Huxley, Porțile percepției. Raiul și iadul, Iași, Editura Polirom, 2012, p. 82.

[10] Huxley, p. 136.

[11] Huxley, pp. 138-139.

[12] Huxley, pp. 151-152.

[13] Huxley, pp. 143-150.

[14] Shaun Usher, The most beautiful death, https://lettersofnote.com/2010/03/25/the-most-beautiful-death/, accessed on 07.10.2020.