Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) - photo 1
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) - photo 2
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) - photo 3
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) - photo 4
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) - photo 5
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) - photo 6

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

Lot 108
15.12.2023 11:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
£ 5 040
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 1108907
Lot 108 | Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Estimate value
£ 3 000 – 5 000
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Three typed letters signed (‘Aldous Huxley’, ‘Aldous’) to J.R. Smythies, 740 North Kings Road, Los Angeles, 1 March 1953 – 1 February 1955
Five pages in total, 278 x 215mm, autograph corrections in ink. [With:] copy reply from Smythies, 5 February 1955, three pages. Provenance: Sotheby’s, 14 December 1989, lot 132.

Experiments in mescaline in the 1950s: Huxley asks his correspondent for advice on its supply and effects, later reporting on his experiences with the drug and giving his views on the importance of self-transcendence. Huxley sends Smythies a copy of The Devils of Loudun – ‘an account of a most extraordinary case involving mass demonic possession […] You will, I am sure, be interested in the case histories – and I hope, too, that you may find something of value in the discussions of the history of psychology and physiology’ – and asks for a copy of Smythies’ paper on mescaline and schizophrenia: ‘I have for long been greatly interested in mescaline, and have recently got in touch with some people – some medical, some laymen – who are making use of it in psychological experiments. I have not as yet used the drug myself; but hope to be able to do so as soon as we can get hold of a supplier of purified mescaline’. Huxley forgets which ‘drug house in the East’ it has been ordered from, but it should arrive soon; he asks his correspondent for any information he can give regarding its psycho-physical effects and on how he sources the drug, before adding a point on Ptolemaic model of the world (1 March 1953). Two years later, he reports on his experiments with mescaline – ‘the experience was This World-Transcendental, not (as on the previous occasion) Other World-Transcendental. It was an experience of Mind in its width, rather than in its height. The concern was with the human order, not with the visionary and non-human’ – before commenting on peyote and Smythies’ negative experience with mescaline, which he suggests might be down to a traumatic experience in childhood or during the War and encourages him to try it again (11 January 1955). His final letter discusses at length the unfavourable reaction to [The Doors of Perception], which he attributes to ‘ancient puritanical prejudices, and disagrees with Smythies that the appetite for self-transcendence is exclusively a cultural phenomenon (1 February 1955).

John Raymond Smythies (1922-2019) was a British neuropsychiatrist, neuroscientist and neurophilosopher who developed the first specific biochemical theory of schizophrenia; his research was inspired by the remarkable effects of mescaline on the human brain and the interdisciplinary work of Albert Schweitzer.
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