If you like and/or are interested in psychedelic drug experience, this book is for you. At times it comes apart (fuck, I mean the guy was high, give him a break!), and can be more quotable than cohesive, but other pieces like "Propaganda And Pharmacology", "The Doors Of Perception" and "Mescaline And the 'Other World'" will make you want to trip out.

I really liked the subject matter, but I didn't love the repetitive nature of the lectures. My favorite chapters were written by his wife Laura Archera Huxley. She was there for a mescaline trip, a psilocybin trip, and administered his deathbed LSD. It was kind of hilarious to see a relationship develop with Timothy Leary, who I'm pretty sure viewed the use of mind-altering drugs very differently than Huxley, but I guess they both wanted people to use them, so that's common ground.

Most would put this book down, if they even pick it up, thinking it merely about a famous person dabbling in illicit drugs. However this volume brings together letters, speeches, and written excerpts which contain a lot of wisdom. Huxley stood against the World System, making this book quite valuable in its lessons.

i found this in my house. only its a first edition from 1977 with albert hoffman and alexander shulgin.

Psychedelics in itself is obscuring and liberating, concomitantly: This contrast is ironically subtle depending upon one's collective experiences preceding to consuming LSD and ilk. Huxley had association with Vedanta in California; and then disagreement with his guru on use of psychedelics in attainment of Moksha was the genesis of this Novel.

In this novel he tried to make a point, at times even atonement with teachings of his guru or moksha and spiritual practices.

Its a book that would take you the kaleidoscope of after effects of consumption of psychedelic substances. At times raising pertinent question, its a satirical take on meaning of life, spiritualism and psychotropic substance consumption: a prior experience in similar things would help you instantly connect with the book. Worth reading once !

all of Huxley's major (and some of his minor) writings on psychedelia. wonderful stuff.

This is a fascinating book for anyone interested in experiences of altered consciousness. Moksha is Sanskrit for enlightenment. When Huxley wrote Doors of Perception, he had only taken one dose of mescaline, the active ingredient of a particular Mexican cactus. He had far more experience of mescaline, LSD and psilosybin, the active ingredient of psychoactive mushrooms, when he wrote these letters, articles and lectures.

Huxley is a superbly eloquent writer yet even he emphasizes the indescribable quality of these experiences, though he gives it his best shot. He outlines three levels of experience that may be induced: aesthetic, visionary and mystical, with each taking the subject further from the bonds of everyday, ordinary consciousness. He uses several phrases repeatedly, such as "the dissolution of the subject-object experience" – the 'at-oneness' that often marks numinous experience. In spite of the inherent tragedy within human life, he also frequently refers to “the essential All Rightness of the universe”. He acknowledges that, prior to his psychedelic experiments, he dismissed the phrase “God is love” as some vague salve offered by religious types but, having taken these drugs, came to fully understand its meaning. Huxley also recognised evidence of similar experiences in the work of Wordsworth, Blake and others, especially Blake’s insight that “gratitude is heaven.”

Nevertheless, Huxley had the occasional ‘bad trip’ and was aware that others had experiences that were truly hellish. He believed this was a reflection of their extant state of mind and thought that the drugs in some way remove the barriers – “the reducing valve” - that ordinarily restrict both the ability to experience ecstasy and the descent into the darkest recesses of the psyche. He warns against trying these drugs without proper supervision.

In his lectures and articles, Huxley describes various historical and contemporary methods of achieving these altered states. The chemical route, he argues, is as old as humanity itself and lists many of the plants used by shamans across time. But he also refers to various mortifications of the flesh - methods favoured by religious ascetics over the centuries such as extreme fasting, sleep deprivation, self-flagellation and so forth. Finally, and more comfortably one must assume, are the various types of meditation that are meant to focus the mind on one physical point to such an extent that the ego, or the reducing valve as Huxley calls it, disintegrates.

Huxley died of cancer in 1963, writing right up to the last days of his life. He sincerely believed that everyone, particularly adolescents, should receive regular doses of these psychedelics, seeing this as the best chance humanity had of achieving happiness and world peace. He would have been dismayed; to the best of my knowledge, these drugs are still illegal in most countries. Interestingly, recent research in the USA indicates that psilosybin may dramatically resolve the symptoms of depression, including chronic depression, in the long term after only one or two doses. Trials continue. Huxley may yet be proved right.

Huxley's psychedelic books include Island, Heaven & Hell and The Doors of Perception. This collection includes excerpts from them as well as other writings on the same subject. Also included is an essay by his wife describing her administration of LSD to him on his deathbed on 22 November, 1963.

Huxley, virtually blind from childhood, found the psychedelics to be, quite literally, eye-opening both perceptually and philosophically. First taken just before his sixtieth birthday, they changed his life.

As should be expected, Huxley did not take such psychotropics lightly. His decade-long use of them was during the period when they were legally available from pharmaceutical companies and increasingly used in psychiatry and psychotherapeutics. Beyond their medical use, however, Huxley, already much influenced by mystical religious traditions, believed them to have profound spiritual implications.

I tend to agree, despite having grown up in a culture where such drugs had become illegal, very widely available and often used without serious intent. Fortunately, I was too neurotic and bookish as a teen to simply have fun with drugs. Feel-good chemicals have never held much interest for me and the psychedelics, in my early years certainly, were only very rarely pleasurable. Instead, they forced me to think about, often to quite literally see, those things I least wanted to confront, acknowledge and accept. So doing, they helped me quite a lot, psychologically speaking. In addition, the couple of occasions when ample doses caused me to cross over to other worlds (by which I mean that I had no contact, except perhaps through memory, with this intersubjective, consensual reality), caused me not only to reformulate my sense of the real, but also gave me heightened powers of imagination and sympathy for others. Like Huxley, these psychotropics changed my life and, like Huxley, I recommend they be taken seriously and with intention.

Great book to speed read, truly shows the development of the view of the man who'd later write Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell towards drug use, especially Psychedelics. From seemingly, and and not surprisingly for an upperclassman in the 1930s, wary of them, up till the post-Mescaline era. Enjoyed reading it, though it would have been dull to read carefully; speed reading until you find articles that interest you is the way to go.

Había escrito una reseña de puta madre pero se ha perdido, si quieres saber de que va pregúntame

I can only agree with the review by the Los Angeles Times:
„Moksha is more than a book about psychedelics - although it may well be the most intelligent, well rounded one of its kind. It is also another chance to spend hours in Huxley’s fascinating company as he talks about art, literature, religion, psychology and ecology [and philosophy, culture, history, and a bit of pharmacology]”.

Those who are interested in the topic should read his, in my opinion greatest work, “The Perennial Philosophy” as well.

Huxley was so ahead of his time. Contained here are letters, lectures, and essays about his experiments with visionary substances and how they could be used as healing agents, which the current psychedelic renaissance has as its cause celebre over 50 years after Huxley thought the same thing. Also included (and much appreciated) are Laura Huxley's excellent observations on using psychedelics with Aldous--her account of his dying moments when she administered LSD to him are deeply moving.