... elaborates on Huxley's psychedelic experience under the influence of mescaline in May 1953. He recalls the insights he experienced, ranging from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision", and reflects on their philosophical and psychological implications. In 1956 he published Heaven and Hell, another essay which elaborates these reflections further. The two works have often been published together as one book; the titles of both come from William Blake's book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793).
The Doors of Perception provoked strong reactions for its evaluation of psychedelic drugs as facilitators of mystical insight, with great potential benefits for science, art, and religion. While many found the argument compelling, others – including German writer Thomas Mann, Vedantic monk Swami Prabhavananda, Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, and Orientalist scholar Robert Charles Zaehner – countered that the effects of mescaline are subjective and should not be conflated with objective religious mysticism. Huxley himself continued to take psychedelics for the rest of his life, and the understanding he gained from them influenced his final novel, Island, published in 1962.
The above is an almost verbatim transcription of the introduction to Wikipedia's The Doors of Perception page.
© Haydn Thompson 2023