Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals (Signed, Limited Edition)

Description

In this book, renowned philosopher and scholar of religion Huston Smith, takes a serious look at the use of psychedelic drugs as a means to achieve mystical union with the divine. In a unique blend of direct experience and academic depth, Smith examines this controversial subject and describes the historic and turbulent academic experiments of the sixties in which he was both a subject and an observer. Smith begins by telling the story of his own initiation into the world of psychedelic drugs in the company of Timothy Learya meeting arranged by Aldous Huxleyand the profound effect it had on his understanding of reality.

In wrestling with the questionDo drugs have religious import?he draws on history, theology, philosophy, psychology, and anthropology.
He tells of fascinating experiments that attempted to shed light on this question, such as the one in which he participated as a guide, where twenty volunteersmostly seminary studentswere given psilocybin before they attended a traditional Good Friday church service. He discusses as well the use of peyote in Native American sacred rituals and the hallucinogenic plant soma in ancient India.

Throughout, he does not approach the question of drugs and religion from any fixed standpoint. Instead, he mines his own experiences and his relationships to pioneers in this field to come up with insights on this intriguing subject that are not available in any other book written for the general public.
Author

Huston Smith

Author Info

Huston Cummings Smith (born May 31, 1919) is among the preeminent religious studies scholars in the United States.

His work, The Religions of Man (later revised and retitled The World’s Religions), is a classic in the field, with over two million copies sold, and it remains a common introduction to comparative religion. Smith was born in Soochow, China, to Methodist missionaries and spent his first 17 years there. He taught at the Universities of Colorado and Denver from 1944 to 1947, moved to Washington University in St.

Louis, Missouri, for the next 10 years, and then served as professor of Philosophy at MIT from 1958 to 1973. While at MIT, he participated in some of the experiments with entheogens that professor Timothy Leary conducted at Harvard University. Smith then moved to Syracuse University, where he was Thomas J.

Watson Professor of Religion and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy until his retirement in 1983 and current emeritus status. He now lives in the Berkeley, California, area where he is Visiting Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. During his career, Smith not only studied but also practiced Vedanta Hinduism, Zen Buddhism (under Goto Zuigan), and Sufism for over 10 years each.

He is a notable autodidact. As a young man, of his own volition after suddenly turning to mysticism, Smith set out to meet with then-famous Author Gerald Heard. Heard responded to Smith’s letter, invited him to Trabuco College (later donated as the Ramakrishna Monastery) in Southern California, and then sent him off to meet the legendary Aldous Huxley.

So began Smith’s experimentation with meditation and his association with the Vedanta Society in Saint Louis under the auspices of Swami Satprakashananda of the Ramakrishna order. Via the co ection with Heard and Huxley, Smith eventually experimented with Timothy Leary and others at the Center for Personality Research, of which Leary was research professor. The experience and history of that era are captured somewhat in Smith’s book Cleansing the Doors of Perception.

In this period, Smith joined in on the Harvard Project as well, in an attempt to raise spiritual awareness through entheogenic plants. He has been a friend of the XIVth Dalai Lama for more than 40 years, and has met and talked to some of the great figures of the century, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Thomas Merton. Smith developed an interest in the Traditionalist School formulated by Rene Guenon and Ananda Coomaraswamy.

This interest has become a continuing thread in all his writings. In 1996 Bill Moyers devoted a five-part PBS special to Smith’s life and work: The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith. Smith has also produced three series for public television: The Religions of Man, The Search for America, and (with Arthur Compton) Science and Human Responsibility.

His films on Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, and Sufism have all won awards at international film festivals. His latest DVD release is The Roots of FundamentalismA Conversation with Huston Smith and Phil Cousineau.
ISBN-13

978-1889725031

Publisher

Council on Spiritual Matters

Publication Date

2000

Edition

Signed (1st Edition, Limited Deluxe Edition)

Binding

Hardcover in Slipcase

Condition

Very Good – (Signed Limited 1st Edition, dedication signatures on flyleaf)

Page Count

272 Pages