DoorsEleusis
What the Mystic Sees: Huxley's Is-ness and the Eleusinian Initiates
Huxley describes the mescaline experience as producing direct perception of the 'is-ness' of things, their bare existence stripped of instrumental overlay. The Eleusinian initiates, Sophocles, Pindar, Cicero, Plato, describe the initiation as producing a vision that transformed their relationship to death. Huxley in 1953 and the Greeks in 400 BCE are describing something structurally identical.
Sources
- Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954)
- Wasson, Hofmann & Ruck, The Road to Eleusis (1978)