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THE MENACE OF MESCALIN
Author(s) -
Zaehner R. C.
Publication year - 1954
Publication title -
new blackfriars
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1741-2005
pISSN - 0028-4289
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-2005.1954.tb06115.x
Subject(s) - citation , library science , sociology , computer science
R Aldous Huxley has recently published yet another book. 1 It is not a very good book; nor is it a very attracM tive book; but it is, alas, in its way an important book. Its importance consists in this: that anyone who may feel an inclination to enjoy, here and now, what Christians call the Beatific Vision or the experience which the Zen Buddhists call satori, has merely to buy himself three-pennyworth of mescalin at the nearest chemist’s, and behold, the ineffable vision is his. Whether or not the drug is available in this country in commercial quantities, I am afraid I have been too idle to find out. However, there it is for any who may care to make the experiment-heaven in a capsule. It may be surprising to learn that Mr Huley, who has for so long written in a tone of such great authority on mysticism and the mystical experience, confesses that before he achieved ‘liberation’ though mescah, he had not actually had a mystical experience of any kind himself. ‘For’, says he, ‘until this morning I had known contemplation only in its humble, its more ordinary forms-as discursive thinking; as a rapt absorption in poetry or ainting or