THE CIRCLE
In memory of Aldous Leonard Huxley...
November 22, 1963 was marked by the death in Los Angeles (city where the DOORS also originated), of the British writer, novelist and philosopher Aldous Huxley...
...Writer whose notoriety is no longer to be proven since the publication in 1932 of his dystopian bestseller "Brave New World", Huxley devoted himself during the last years of his life to the study of psychoactive substances at the Like the Psilocybin contained in hallucinogenic mushrooms or even Mescaline, a powerful alkaloid derived from Peyote, a cactus used by the first nations of America during shamanic rituals.
This research will lead him to publish in 1954 "Les Portes De La Perception", a work whose title is directly inspired by one of a poem by William Blake appearing in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" (1793 ): "If the doors of perception were cleared, everything would appear to man as it is...infinite."
In this essay, Huxley sets out to testify with some precision to the effects of mescaline. Indeed, the author made the choice here, surrounded by scientists and researchers, to deliberately ingest a quantity of this drug in order to study its various effects on man and his mind.
It was this same book that inspired Jim Morrison to name "The Doors" for the band he formed with Ray Manzarek, later joined by John Densmore and Robby Krieger.
Suffering from throat cancer, diagnosed in 1960, Huxley saw his health slowly deteriorate until November 1963, when he asked his second wife, Laura, to administer 200 micrograms of another well-known psychedelic, lysergic acid diethylamide, more commonly known as LSD. A kind of chosen death, without pain and in peace...
