Mescaline and Indian Philosophy: Aldous Huxley and the Mythology of Experience

Psychometric brahman , psychedelic science: Walter Stace, transnational Vedanta, and the Mystical Experience Questionnaire

“…The complex history of the relationship between perennialism and South Asian religions lives in the shadow of British colonialism and is beyond the scope of this paper. Yet it is important to note that so-called Neo-Vedanta was, in part, a response to and reinterpretation of perennialist principles that privileged experience as ‘a common core of religion, philosophy and science’ (Halbfass 2001, 226). Vivekananda, for example, writes that Ramakrishna ‘from actual experience … came to know that the goal of every religion is the same, that each is trying to teach the same thing … At the core, all sects and all religions have the same aim’ (Vivekananda and Mozoomdar 1901, 44–45, emphasis added).…”

“…Notably, Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), one of the primary popularizers of perennialism and a central figure in the history of psychedelic studies, was active in the Vedanta Society of Southern California. In the years before Huxley wrote The Perennial Philosophy (1945), he was close friends with Swami Prabhavananda and, as Partridge explores in detail, his philosophical outlook was shaped by his connection to the Vedanta Society (Halbfass 2001, 221–235; Partridge 2018, 201–224). As such, Huxley's perennialism was in many ways a product of the modern, transnational Vedantic movement; The Perennial Philosophy ‘reads like a document of Neo-Hindu favourites’ (Halbfass 2001, 226).…”

“…In the years before Huxley wrote The Perennial Philosophy (1945), he was close friends with Swami Prabhavananda and, as Partridge explores in detail, his philosophical outlook was shaped by his connection to the Vedanta Society (Halbfass 2001, 221–235; Partridge 2018, 201–224). As such, Huxley's perennialism was in many ways a product of the modern, transnational Vedantic movement; The Perennial Philosophy ‘reads like a document of Neo-Hindu favourites’ (Halbfass 2001, 226). In fact, Stace used a version of the Bhagavad Gita to which Huxley had written a foreword claiming that ‘the Bhagavad-Gita is perhaps the most systematic scriptural statement of the Perennial Philosophy’ (Huxley 1944, 19).…”

Viviendo el “infinito turbulento”: la inmanencia de la mescalina en la obra plástica de Henri Michaux

“…Se trata de trabajos que han identificado distintos personajes de las artes o del pensamiento, que ejercieron influencia en el mundo de las letras, de la plástica, de la filosofía, de la dramaturgia y que decidieron consumir sustancias alucinógenas buscando experiencias singulares y acicates creativos. Sobre el tema existen varios trabajos escritos sobre Artaud (Arriaga y Marcial, 2017), también sobre la Generación Beat (Marcial, 2022), y sobre Aldous Huxley (Halbfass, 2001), acerca de Quincey y Baudelaire (Monette, 2014), entre otros. En todos ellos se advierten los resultados de esas experiencias de consumo como característica de cada autor.…”