nickdrake:

The Doors of Perception (1954) & Heaven and Hell (1956) are two essays written by English writer, Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963.) The two are now, more often than not, bound together in a single volume, which form a remarkable insight into psychedelics. Through Huxley’s astute exploration of his own subjective, psy-experience with Mescaline, to his philosophical treatment of the mystical experience, therein lies the conceptual groundwork for contemporary psychedelic literature (psy-lit.)

It was a Spring, Monday morning in 1953 when Huxley took four-tenths of a gramme of mescaline and, armed with the use of a sitter (his wife) and a voice recorder, experimented the psychedelic experience on himself. The resulting essay of analysis and observation, The Doors of Perception, took it’s name from a passage by Blake, however Huxley was quick to psychologically differentiate between himself and the great poet artist.

“From what I had read of the mescaline experience I was convinced in advance that the drug would admit me, at least for a few hours, into the kind of inner world described by Blake. But what I had expected did not happen.”

Text from psypress.co.uk. The above edition, probably from 1971, features a Max Ernst detail, Penguin No. 1351.