HEAVEN AND HELL

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956. First Edition. 8vo, publisher’s original navy over buff blue cloth, the spine and upper cover lettered in red, in original dustjacket. (6), 103, (2) pp. A fine and clean copy, the dustjacket with a bit of light age wear and some rubbing to the extremities. SCARCE FIRST EDITION. Huxley writes: “This little book is a sequel to an essay on the mescalin experience, published two years ago under the title of The Doors of Perception. For a person in whom ‘the candle of vision’ never burns spontaneously, the mescalin experience is doubly illuminating. It throws light on the hitherto unknown regions of his own mind; and at the same time it throws light, indirectly, on other minds, more richly gifted in respect to vision than his own. Reflecting on his experience, he comes to a new and better understanding of the ways in which those other minds perceive and feel and think, of the cosmological notions which seem to them self-evident, and of the works of art through which they feel impelled to express themselves. In what follows I have tried to set down, more or less systematically, the results of this new understanding.”
This essay reflects a change in Huxley’s writing, with an increased interest in mysticism and parapsychology. He suggests that for the artist, a nexus between the idealization of art and grimy reality can be achieved through the use of natural drugs that had been used by indigenous peoples for centuries.