Moksha: Aldous Huxley's Classic Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience

Author(s): Aldous Huxley

Classics

In May 1953 Aldous Huxley took four-tenths of a gram of mescaline. The mystical and transcendent experience that followed set him off on an exploration that was to produce a revolutionary body of work about the inner reaches of the human mind. Huxley was decades ahead of his time in his anticipation of the dangers modern culture was creating through explosive population increase, headlong technological advance, and militant nationalism, and he saw psychedelics as the greatest means at our disposal to "remind adults that the real world is very different from the misshapen universe they have created for themselves by means of their culture-conditioned prejudices." Much of Huxley's writings following his 1953 mescaline experiment can be seen as his attempt to reveal the power of these substances to awaken a sense of the sacred in people living in a technological society hostile to mystical revelations. Moksha, a Sanskrit word meaning "liberation," is a collection of the prophetic and visionary writings of Aldous Huxley. It includes selections from his acclaimed novels Brave New Worldand Island, both of which envision societies centered around the use of psychedelics as stabilizing forces, as well as pieces from The Doors of Perceptionand Heaven and Hell, his famous works on consciousness expansion.


Product Information

Michael Horowitz and Cynthia Palmer are the directors of the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library in San Francisco, the only library in the world devoted exclusively to the literature of mind-altering drugs. Michael Horowitz was Timothy Leary's archivist and is coauthor of The High Times Encyclopedia of Recreational Drugs. Palmer and Horowitz live in northern California.

Foreword by Humphry Osmond Preface by Albert Hofmann Introduction by Alexander Shulgin Part I: Precognition 1 1931 A Treatise on Drugs 2 1931 Wantwed, a New Pleasure 3 1932 Soma 4 1936 Propaganda and Pharmacology 5 1944 A Boundless Absence 6 1952 Downward Transcendence Part II: Psychedelic and Visionary Experience 7 1953 Letters 8 1953 May Morning in Hollywood 9 1953 Letters 10 1954 The Door of Perception 11 1954 Letters 12 1954 The Far Continents of the Mind 13 1955 Mescaline and the "Other World" 14 1955 Letters 15 1955 Disregarded in the Darkness 16 1955 Letters 17 1956 Heaven and Hell 18 1956 Brave New World Revisited 19 1956 Letters 20 1956 History of Tension 21 1957 Letters 22 1958 Chemical Persuasion 23 1958 Letters 24 1958 Drugs That Shape Men's Minds 25 1959 Letters 26 1959 The Final Revolution 27 1960 Letters 28 1960 The Art of Fiction 29 1960 Mushroom for Lunch 30 1960 Harvard Session Report 31 1961 Letters 32 1961 London Interview 33 1961 Visionary Experience (Copenhagen) 34 1961 Exploring the Borderlands of the Mind 35 1962 Love and Work 36 1962 Letters 37 Moksha 38 Letters 39 1963 Culture and the Individual 40 1963 O Nobly Born! Appendixes Source Notes Index

General Fields

  • : 9780892817580
  • : Inner Traditions Bear and Company
  • : Park Street Press,U.S.
  • : 0.336
  • : 01 April 1999
  • : 152mm X 229mm X 18mm
  • : United States
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Aldous Huxley
  • : Aldous Huxley
  • : 304
  • : 304
  • : 828.91208
  • : 828.91208
  • : Paperback
  • : Paperback