Albion Dreaming (13 page)

Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley both emigrated to America in 1937. Prior to their move both were well-known in Britain as writers. But it was America that brought out their genius as philosophers of altered states of consciousness. In California, Heard introduced Huxley to the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta, as well as to meditation. Their perennial theme was how to change man and society, both of them believing that humans could – should – pursue the intentional evolution of consciousness.
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Even before LSD was synthesised, there was considerable interest in mind-expanding drugs. Mescaline, found in a variety of cacti including the peyote cactus, was first synthesised in 1919. In its cactus form mescaline already had a history of structured religious usage in America which pre-dated the European invasion. Word of mescaline’s effects spread and soon after the end of World War II the drug was used by the US Navy in Project Chatter, an attempt to find a drug to aid interrogation. Shortly afterwards, in 1952, Dr. Humphrey Osmond an English émigré in Canada took an interest in mescaline in his work on schizophrenia.

A few adventurous individuals had also heard of mescaline and wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Captain Alfred M. Hubbard was one of the first individuals to try mescaline outside military or medical experiments. Hubbard worked for the Office
of Strategic Services during World War II, conducting barely legal covert operations such as smuggling American weapons to Britain via Canada, before Pearl Harbour officially brought America into the war. His clandestine activities were approved by President Roosevelt and to all intents and purposes he was an establishment figure, albeit somewhat of a maverick.

Hubbard entered the world of mind altering drugs when he appeared unannounced at Humphrey Osmond’s hospital, took the doctor out for lunch and asked if he could buy some mescaline. Hubbard took to the mescaline experience like a duck to water and set himself on a course of consciousness exploration which lasted until his death in 1982.

Controversy surrounds Hubbard’s role in the history of LSD. It has been suggested he is part of a mysterious and unarticulated government conspiracy to introduce LSD into society. These same conspirators, however, offer no evidence other than Hubbard’s links with the intelligence services. It is more likely that Hubbard simply was one of those individuals who took LSD and was instantly converted into an acid evangelist. Yet there are some inconsistencies in the accounts and chronology of how Hubbard first came to take LSD.
Acid Dreams
author Martin A. Lee wrote that Hubbard had been introduced to LSD in 1951 by British psychotherapist Dr. Ronnie Sandison.
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Yet Sandison, by his own account, did not come across LSD until late 1952 and has no recollection of Hubbard: “I do not think that I ever met him. If I did it must have been briefly in the States, and certainly not in the UK. I certainly never gave him his first, or any other, LSD trip.”
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That mystery notwithstanding, Hubbard’s first trip astonished him. Among other experiences he witnessed his own conception, “... the deepest mystical thing I’ve ever seen.” LSD led him to see that most people were sleepwalking through life, unaware of the larger reality they existed in. Hubbard wanted to enlighten them through the agency of the drug so that they would “... see themselves for what they are.”
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Hubbard felt it was his mission to turn as many people as possible on to LSD. Reputedly, he introduced over 6000 people to LSD, including scientists, politicians, intelligence officials, diplomats and church figures.
Hubbard travelled with a leather case containing pharmaceutically pure LSD, mescaline and psilocybin, earning the sobriquet of the “Johnny Appleseed of LSD”.

In January 1953 Aldous Huxley received a letter from his old friend, Dr. Humphrey Osmond. Huxley’s reply railed against the herd mentality of most human beings. It seemed to him that: “Under the current dispensation the vast majority of individuals lose, in the course of their education, all the openness to inspiration, all the capacity to be aware of other things than those enumerated in the Sears-Roebuck catalogue which constitutes the ‘real’ world.”
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Huxley suggested that mescaline, which he had not yet taken, might play a role in opening people’s minds to the reality hidden behind the material world. Osmond immediately planned a visit to see Huxley, promising to bring some.

Huxley prised open the “doors of perception” at eleven o’clock on the morning of 4 May 1953 when he swallowed four-tenths of a gram of mescaline. The trip was carefully planned and under Osmond’s medical supervision. Huxley’s biographer, Nicholas Murray has described this event as “... the most famous literary drug taking since De Quincy.” Though Huxley took mescaline and not LSD, this occasion was the genesis of the modern world’s fascination with mind-altering drugs.
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Huxley was initially disappointed. He had hoped, expected even, to see visions of the kind experienced by the poets, Blake and “A.E”. But there was nothing so dramatic. The drug’s effects were subtle and imperceptibly crept up him. After an hour and a half, as he observed a glass containing some flowers, his perception of the world changed. He noted: “I was not looking now at an unusual flower arrangement. I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation – the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.” When asked whether the experience was agreeable Huxley could only answer: “It is neither agreeable nor disagreeable. It just
is
.”

As his mescaline experience deepened, everything in his field of vision shone with an inner light. Huxley’s perception of time altered to the point where he was completely indifferent to it. When Osmond enquired what his views on time were he
replied: “There seems to be plenty of it.” Indeed, he spent “several centuries” examining furniture in the room, furniture which had lost all utilitarian function; now Huxley was seeing it as “... the sacramental vision of reality ... Infinite in its significance.”
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Throughout the trip, Huxley repeatedly uttered variations on “This is how one ought to see, how things really are”. Nevertheless, even at the height of the altered state, the philosopher questioned what life would be like if everyone viewed the world with mescaline vision all the time. People, he believed, would just spend their time just
looking
, just
being
. Valuable as the psychedelic experience was, Huxley wondered: “How was this cleansed perception to be reconciled with a proper concern for human relations, with the necessary chores and duties, to say nothing of charity and practical compassion?” This was the fundamental problem at the root of the psychedelic lifestyle. Going to work or doing the household chores after a psychedelic experience might seem tame by comparison.

Huxley wrote about his mescaline experience in
The Doors of Perception
, published in 1954. He took the title from William Blake’s belief that “if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything will appear to man as it is, infinite”. The book became a best seller and one of the crucial texts in the counter culture’s attempts to understand the psychedelic experience. The title, from which the rock band the Doors took their name, has been used countless times in books and articles about LSD and related drugs and is a now recognised phrase cognate with mind altering substances.

Despite his enthusiasm for the drug’s effects, Huxley did not immediately see psychedelics as being a route to spiritual enlightenment, “I am not so foolish as to equate what happens under the influence of mescaline or of any other drug, prepared or in the future preparable, with the realisation of the end and ultimate purpose of human life: Enlightenment, the Beatific Vision.” Though he had doubts about the nature of the mescaline experience, he was certain that anyone who used the drug in controlled circumstances would return “... wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship
of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.”
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Huxley had desperately wanted Gerald Heard to join him on his initial mescaline experiment, but it was not possible. Heard eventually took the drug with him in November 1953. On this occasion Al Hubbard joined them, Huxley writing to Osmond afterwards, “Your nice Captain tried a new experiment – group mescalinisation ... Since I was in a group the experience had a human content, which the earlier, solitary experience, with its Other Worldly quality and its intensification of aesthetic experience, did not possess ... it was a transcendental experience within
this
world and with human references.”
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They repeated their mescaline experiments on several occasions, discussing their experiences with friends who were curious about the meaning and purpose of psychedelics. This was the genesis of a movement concerned with the theory and practice of consciousness-altering drugs, and the results of Huxley and Heard’s experiments had unknowingly triggered the coming revolution in consciousness.

On 2 September 1955 the British Labour MP, Christopher Mayhew agreed to be filmed taking mescaline for a BBC TV
Panorama
special. This extraordinary state of affairs came about because Mayhew had been contacted by Humphrey Osmond, an old friend, who was looking for ways to spread news of the amazing effects of mescaline. “I took the drug because I am an old school friend of Dr. Humphrey Osmond. ... He said he was coming over to England and could I recommend him for a BBC Third Programme broadcast to describe his research work. I said, ‘Don’t go on sound radio. No one listens to that. Explain about hallucinogens on television and give me this stuff in front of a film camera.’”

As Mayhew was a well-known politician and TV broadcaster it was thought the most effective way to structure the programme was to have Mayhew take 400 mg of mescaline while being supervised by Osmond. The film was made at Mayhew’s home in Surrey. The full programme was never shown, although extracts have appeared on various documentaries dealing with psychedelia. Transcripts of the film reveal Mayhew, the epitome of the English gentleman, slowly loosening his grip on consensus reality as
Osmond asks him a series of mundane questions. Mayhew gets the answers correct but seems rather detached from them. As the trip progresses Mayhew continues to respond to Osmond’s questions but is clearly drifting in and out of a reverie.

When Osmond queries Mayhew about his perception of time, asking him if he is experiencing time and space differently, Mayhew replies, “I’m perfectly certain of that! I haven’t the slightest doubt. And I’m saying that with my conscious mind now, as well as my unconscious mind.” Interesting though the experiment was, it’s clear Mayhew thought the questions being asked of him were superficial compared with the actual experience he was undergoing. He was fascinated by time and how its passage was completely different in his altered state. By mid-afternoon Mayhew had reached the point where there was “... no absolute time ... no absolute space ... it is simply what we impose on the outside world ... and, er, the more closely I feel this, the more relaxed I feel ... and, er ... the less I feel inclined to talk ...”
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Mayhew’s televised journey into inner space proved that the psychedelic experience was not amenable to being studied in any objective way. What appeared obvious to the mescaline voyager sounded illogical to the trained observer and vice versa. Osmond, no stranger to Mayhew’s altered state of consciousness, concurred, “Now, I know quite well ...
some
of the experiences that you’re having but I don’t know how one gets them across in words, and I’ve been trying to puzzle out ways in which we can demonstrate this, and I’m still quite defeated.”

Prior to 1956 there was no catch-all term for the effects of mescaline, LSD and similar drugs. Louis Lewin, the German toxicologist, had coined the word Phantastica to refer to drugs that caused visionary states and hallucinations, but the word was too Victorian in tone and failed to enter popular usage. The term hallucinogen was often used but was a prescriptive term suggesting that hallucinations were the main characteristic of this type of drug, which was not always the case. Huxley, perturbed by the lack of a suitable name, wrote to Osmond, “About a name for these drugs – what a problem.”
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After some thought Huxley came up with
phanerothyme
, from the Greek, and meaning to make the
soul visible. Huxley was so pleased with the word he suggested it to Osmond with the rhyme: “To make this trivial world sublime; Take half a gramme of phanerothyme.”
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Osmond thought the word was clumsy and quickly responded to Huxley with his own term,
psychedelic
: “To fathom hell, or soar angelic, take a pinch of psychedelic.”
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Psychedelic was also taken from the Greek root words: “psyche” – mind and “delos” – clear or manifest. Psychedelic literally means “manifesting clear mind”. It is also sometimes defined as “mind-expanding” or “mind-manifesting”.

Huxley’s first encounter with LSD was in October 1955 when he took two 200 μg doses separated by an interval of forty minutes. He had read that the drug had helped someone uncover some childhood memories and he hoped it would do the same for him. When the drug took hold memories were soon forgotten as he became imbued with “... the direct, total awareness, from the inside, so to say, of Love as the primary and cosmic fact.”
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