Religion and Psychoactive Sacraments:
An Entheogen Chrestomathy
Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D. and Paula Jo Hruby, Ed.D.
Author Index | Title Index
Aldous Huxley: Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience (1931-1963).
Horowitz, Michael, and Palmer, Cynthia. (Editors). (1977).
New York: Stonehill.
ISBN: 0-88373-042-1
Description: First edition,
xxii + 314 pages. A Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library Edition.
Contents: Acknowledgments,
introductions by Albert Hofmann and Alexander
Shulgin, editors' note, 40 chapters divided
into 2 parts: I. Psychedelic
and Visionary Experience, 4 appendices: A. Visionary
Experience (MIT), B. Instructions
for Use During a Psychedelic Session , C. Tributes
from The Psychedelic Review,
D. Coda (from Orion), source notes, index.
Excerpt(s): The publication
of MOKSHA presents for the first time an authoritative collection
of the prophetic and visionary papers of Aldous Huxley-his writings
on mind-altering drugs, psychology, education, politics, the collective
unconscious and the future of mankind. (dust jacket)
Let us use a geographical metaphor and liken the
personal life of the ego to the Old World. We leave the Old World,
cross a dividing ocean, and find ourselves in the world of the
personal subconscious, with its flora and fauna of repressions,
conflicts, traumatic memories and the like. Traveling further,
we reach a kind of Far West, inhabited by Jungian
archetypes and the raw materials of human mythology. Beyond this
region lies a broad Pacific. Wafted across it on the wings of
mescaline or lysergic acid diethylamide, we reach what may be
called the Antipodes of the mind. In this psychological equivalent
of Australia we discover the equivalents of kangaroos, wallabies,
and duck-billed platypuses-a whole host of extremely improbable
animals, which nevertheless exist and can be observed. (page 62)
This brings me to a very interesting and, I believe,
significant point. The visionary experience, whether spontaneous
or induced by drugs, hypnosis, or any other means, bears a striking
resemblance to "the Other World," as we find it described
in the various traditions of religion and folklore. In every culture
the abode of the gods and of in bliss
is a country of surpassing beauty, glowing with color, bathed
in intense light. ... One is reminded, as one reads these descriptions
of the mescaline experience, of what is said of the next world
in the various religious literatures of the world. Ezekiel speaks
of "the stones of fire," which are found in Eden. In
the Book of Revelation, the New Jerusalem is a city of precious
stones and of a substance which must have seemed to our ancestors
almost as wonderful as gemstones-glass. (page 65)
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