Moksha: Aldous Huxley’s Classic Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience
Moksha: Aldous Huxley’s Classic Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience
By Aldous Huxley edited by Michael Horowitz and Cynthia Palmer
Publisher: Park Street Press (April 1999)
Pages: 280 – Price: $16.95
Ghostvillage.com review
For those interested in the topic of dying and visionary experiences, this last collected group of brilliant articles by the late Aldous Huxley will be a great reading experience. Huxley died in 1963, but his writings continue to live on and capture the interest of new readers worldwide.
This collection of writings is remarkable in the sense it allows the reader open access to the many ideas of Huxley, and Huxley’s approach to various topics including psychology and religion. The final chapter relates Laura Huxley’s vivid description of her husband’s death. It is a chapter that will linger long in the reader’s mind.
Among the many topics covered are the following: “Soma,” “Propaganda and Pharmacology,” “Letters,” “May Morning in Hollywood,” “The Doors of Perception,” “The Far Continents of the Mind,” “Disregarded in the Darkness,” “Heaven and Hell,” “Brave New World Revisited,” “History of Tension,” “The Final Revolution,” “The Art of Fiction,” “Mushrooms for Lunch,” “Ove and Work,” Moksha,” and “Culture and the Individual.” For additional reference, there are the appendixes, source notes, and index.
There is a foreword by Humphry Osmond. In addition to the Editors’ Note, there is a preface by Albert Hofmann, and an Introduction by Alexander Shulgin. Each gives a difference perspective on Aldous Huxley.
Many of Huxley’s major thoughts and approaches can be found on a close reading of his novel masterpiece, Island, which was published in the year of his death. If you want to know Huxley, that is the novel to start with and analyze. Huxley was interested in knowing what was truly needed to awaken a deep sense of the sacred in people living in a contemporary high-tech society which was hostile to personal mystical revelations.
A reading adventure and treat for the mind, Moksha is a fascinating look at the mind and writings of Huxley whose wide-ranging interests ran the gamut of Vedanta, death and dying, literature, individuality, religion, among numerous topics. Moksha (which is a Hindu word meaning “liberation”) is highly recommended reading.
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