Letters
ALDOUS HUXLEY AND GERALD HEARD
May 10, 1961
Mr. Aldous Huxley
3276 Deronda Drive
Los Angeles, California
Dear Aldous,
Our work progresses well. We are trying to work out some of Grey Walter’s ideas. Thanks for the reference. The work at the prison is proceeding beautifully. The prisoners are deeply affected—by the drug and by the vistas that are suggested and which we encourage.
We are closing our first naturalistic study of 114 cases—413 separate ingestions. All but one case eager to try again. Results very positive. I’ll be reporting results in Copenhagen.
In order to make the results more “objective” we are tabulating responses to questionnaires. If you could spare a few minutes to complete these forms I would be very grateful. I know you understand the pressure on us to count.
We have the convicts reading D. to P., H. and H. Also textbooks on criminology.
Looking forward to seeing you in Denmark.
Best regards,
Timothy Leary
The Plaza
Fifth Avenue at 59th Street
New York
13.vi.61
Dear Tim,
Next time you are in New York, go & see the Max Ernst show at the Museum of Modern Art. Some of the pictures are wonderful examples of the world as seen from the vantage point of LSD or mushrooms. Ernst sees in a visionary way & is also a first-rate artist capable of expressing what he sees in paintings which are about as adequate to the visionary facts as any I know. It might be interesting to get in touch with him, find out what his normal state is, then give him mushrooms or LSD & get him to compare his normal experiences with his drug-induced ones. His combination of psychological idiosyncrasy and enormous talent makes him a uniquely valuable case.
Yours,
Aldous
6. ii.61
Dear Tim,
Thank you for your letter of Jan 23rd, which came during my absence—first in Hawaii, then at San Francisco where we had a good conference on Control of the Mind.
Alas, I can’t write anything for Harpers—am too desperately busy trying to finish a book.
At S.F. I met Dr. Janiger, whom I had not seen for several years. He tells me that he has given LSD to 100 painters who have done pictures before, during & after the drug, & whose efforts are being appraised by a panel of art critics. This might be interesting. I gave him your address & I think you will hear from him.
I also spoke briefly with Dr. Joly West (prof of psychiatry at U. of Oklahoma Medical School), who told me that he had done a lot of work in sensory deprivation, using improved versions of John Lilly’s techniques. Interesting visionary results—but I didn’t have time to hear the details.
You are right about the hopelessness of the “scientific” approach. These idiots want to be Pavlovians not Lorenzian Ethologists. Pavlov never saw an animal in its natural state, only under duress. The “scientific” LSD boys do the same with their subjects. No wonder they report psychoses.
Yours,
Aldous
19 April 1961
Dear Dr. Leary:
Thank you very much for your letter of April 10. I have just returned from a week’s absence from Santa Monica, and it was waiting here when I got back two days ago.
I am delighted at the prospect of meeting with your research group in Cambridge. In consequence, I now plan to come directly to Boston from Los Angeles, on May 15th, and stay for at least two days, possibly three, depending on how New York City dates work out.
You are very kind and hospitable to offer to put me up in your house; but I fear that it would be a real imposition on you, for a number of reasons—among them (a) there is only one through flight from Los Angeles to Boston daily, and it arrives in Boston at 11:25 PM. And since planes are never on time, it could easily be midnight or later. (b) I will be 72 this year and since I don’t have the extra strength and energy to cope with the demands made by travelling, it is necessary for my associate, Michael Barrie, to accompany me. So there would be two of us. (c) When away from home I like to remain quiet in the forenoon in order to be in shape for seeing people and going about in the afternoon and evening, which are my best times.
So perhaps it would be best if Mr. Barrie and I stop at a hotel in Cambridge. Otherwise, I really would feel that we were imposing an undue strain on both your hospitality and your household.
I was particularly interested in what you say in paragraph two about ‘set and suggestion are always with us.’ This is a topic I much wish to discuss with you. As you know, a number of researchers after some years of experience have begun to wonder whether in the end if one could produce optimum conditions of place, companion and preparation, it would be possible to produce at least some of these upper states of mind without any medicament. I wonder too if you know of Alastair Hardy’s empirical work as an ecologist in the attempt to study and measure the religious experience? He believes that beside obtaining good reporting by the experient it might be most helpful to make careful records of the person’s life in the periods after the experience.
I will not take more of your time now but I am full of hope about the discussions we may be able to have owing to your kindness in arranging this meeting.
Sincerely yours,
Gerald Heard
Berkeley 4,
California
2nd February, 1962
Dear Tim,
I forgot in my last letter to answer your question about Tantra. There are enormous books on the subject by “Arthur Avalon” (Sir John Woodruffe), which one can dip into with some profit. Then there is the chapter on it in Heinrich Zimmer’s “Philosophies of India.” The fullest scholarly treatment, on a manageable scale, is in Mircea Eliade’s various books on Yoga. See also Conze’s “Buddhist Texts.” As far as one can understand it, Tantra seems to be a strange mixture of superstition and magic with sublime philosophy and acute philosophical insights. There is an endless amount of ritual and word magic.
But the basic ideal seems to me the highest possible ideal—enlightenment achieved, essentially, through constant awareness. This is the ultimate yoga—being aware, conscious even of the unconscious—on every level from the physiological to the spiritual. In this context see the list of 112 exercises in awareness, extracted from a Tantrik Text and printed at the end of “Zen Flesh Zen Bones” (now in paperback. The whole of gestalt therapy is anticipated in these exercises—and the world) as the Vedantists and the Nirvana-addicts of the Hinayana School of Buddhists. But within the world, through the world, by means of ordinary processes of living. Tantra teaches a yoga of sex, a yoga of eating (even eating forbidden foods and drinking forbidden drinks). The sacramentalizing of common life, so that every event may become a means whereby enlightenment can be realized, is therapy not merely for the abnormal, it is above all a Therapy for the much sickness of insensitiveness and ignorance we call “normality” or “mental health.”
LSD and the mushrooms should be used, it seems to me, in the context of this basic Tantrik idea of the yoga of total awareness, leading to enlightenment within the world of everyday experience—which of course becomes the world of miracle and beauty and divine mystery when experience is what it always ought to be.
Yours,
Aldous
17.vii.62
Dear Tim,
Delighted to get your Zihuatanejo letter. I’ve greatly enjoyed our afternoon with you & hope the Hotel Catalina looks promising for your purposes.
As you say the Trinity of the 3Ps Police, Priest, Paymaster (Banker) is always against the journey of the soul but the current of consciousness is against the 3. For better or worse—better if you and the con: chang: druggists do it—worse if the politician is bright enough [in] his dark way to get in on the act in either case police priest & paymaster have had their day. Did you see that Glen Seaborg head of the A.E.C. asked what would be the big breakthrough in the next 30 years said the consciousness changing drugs.
We are off to visit Sandoz et al: due to start in a week. Hofmann wrote to say he’ll be in Mexico looking up the mushrooms. I guess you’ll meet him thereupon.
Michael joins in affectionate greetings & best wishes.
Love,
Gerald
Santa Monica Calif.
rec Feb. 9 63
Dear Tim,
Very glad to have news of you. It is fine that your first insight into the possibilities of Zihuatanejo are in process of being confirmed. It certainly sounds & looks lovely. It is, too, very good news that you will be in this part in April. Let us know as soon as you can your actual dates. We are due to be doing some work at Big Sur at Easter (round 14 of April for about a week) otherwise we expect to be here as far as plans are now made.
With affectionate best wishes in which Michael joins,
Gerald
6233 Mulholland
LA 28 / Cal.
20.vii.63
Dear Tim,
Thank you for your letters. I think the idea of the school is excellent, for what needs exploring, more than anything else, is the problem of fruitfully relating what Wordsworth calls “wise passiveness” to wise activity—receptivity & immediate experience to concept making and the projection upon the experience of intelligible order. Now do we make the best of both the worlds described in Wordsworth’s Expostulation & Reply and The Tables Turned? That is what has to be discovered. And one should make use of all the available resources—the best methods of formal teaching and also LSD, hypnosis (used, among other things, to help people to re-enter the LSD state without having recourse to a chemical), time distortion (to speed up the learning process), auto-conditioning for control of automatic processes and heightening of physical & psychological resistance to disease & trauma etc etc. . . .
Ever yours,
Aldous
LA 28
Cal.
7.v.61
Dear Tim,
Thank you for your letter. As you may have heard or read, we have been burned out. Nothing—literally nothing—remains & I am now a man without a past & Laura is a pastless woman—no old letters, diaries, notes, MSS, address books, & of course none of the common objects whose presence one takes for granted.
Among the uncommon objects which vanished was the bottle of psilocybin tablets you gave me—full but for a single dose. If you have any more to spare, I wd be grateful for a new supply. I expect we shan’t meet before mid-April in Copenhagen. Goodbye till then.
Yours,
Aldous
PS This address will find me as all mail will be forwarded to wherever I happen to be.
6233 Mulholland
LA 28 / Cal
27.vi.63
Dear Tim,
Alan Watts has given me your current address, & and I am writing, first of all, to say that I hope all goes well with you and your projects, in spite of the Mexican set-back; and in the next place, to ask if you know anything about the present intentions & future plans of Mr. Payne & his Playboy colleagues. I sent them my piece some 3 weeks ago (a copy, incidentally, went to you in Zihuatanejo—but perhaps you were gone before it arrived); no acknowledgement was sent. I wrote 10 days later to ask what had happened & received a wire to say that the text had been received & that Payne wd “try to write tomorrow.” That was a week ago & no word has come to me from Payne or anybody else. This is very odd, discourteous & unbusiness-like behavior, and I should be grateful if you stir these people into telling me 1) if they propose to use the piece 2) what price they are proposing to pay. Alan Watts has implanted in my mind serious doubts as to the bona fides of Playboy in this matter, and I am concerned to know where I stand and what is to become of my essay.
Ever yours,
Aldous
6233 Mulholland
LA 28
Cal
3.vi.63
Dear Tim,
Herewith a script of my essay-in-introduction, which I have deliberately not confined to a discussion of psychedelics, but have treated in more general terms the whole problem of the individual’s relation to his culture—a problem in whose solution the psychedelics can undoubtedly play their part. In haste,
Ever yours,
Aldous