Influence
A variety of influences have been claimed for the book. The psychedelic proselytiser, Timothy Leary, was given the book by a colleague soon after returning from Mexico where he had first taken psilocybin mushrooms in the summer of 1960. He found that The Doors of Perception corroborated what he had experienced 'and more too'. Leary soon set up a meeting with Huxley and the two became friendly. The book can also be seen as a part of the history of entheogenic model of understanding these drugs, that sees them within a spiritual context. Looking to broader culture, Huxley's experiment can be seen, alongside the work of other artists such as John Cage and Jackson Pollock, as proposing a model of the imagination opposite to the symbolic, representational structures that had governed Western thought for centuries. Although this new direction cannot be attributed entirely to mescaline or Huxley, it had made a strong impact on politics, art and religion.
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Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“The talk shows are stuffed full of sufferers who have regained their health—congressmen who suffered through a serious spell of boozing and skirt-chasing, White House aides who were stricken cruelly with overweening ambition, movie stars and baseball players who came down with acute cases of wanting to trash hotel rooms while under the influence of recreational drugs. Most of them have found God, or at least a publisher.”
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“Somewhere along the line of development we discover who we really are, and then we make our real decision for which we are responsible. Make that decision primarily for yourself because you can never really live anyone else’s life not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life and what you become yourself.”
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