Here is a fascinating inquiry into the religious significance of consciousness-magnifying substances by Huston Smith, author of THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS and a leading thinker of our time. In CLEANSING THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION, Smith's historical knowledge and personal experience combine with his literacy in the cognitive sciences to produce the only comprehensive book that has been written for the general public on the mysterious relation between the entheogens, consciousness, and faith. Psychoactive plants have long served as spiritual catalysts, from the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece to the Native American Church and from India's sacred soma to the religious practices emerging from the Amazonian rainforests. In this book, Smith takes us into the heart of modernity's struggle to align historical evidence with what we now know about brain chemistry. His friendships with Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary (while Leary was at Harvard), Gordon Wasson (who cracked the 2000-year-old secret of India's soma plant), and Albert Hofmann (the discoverer of LSD) have made him eye-witness to much of the twentieth century's work in this area. Cleansing the Doors of Perception (the title pays tribute to Huxley's THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION and to Blake's original use of the phrase) is a deeply serious and learned inquiry into a topic of enduring importance.
Huston Cummings Smith (born May 31, 1919) is among the preeminent religious studies scholars in the United States. His work, The Religions of Man (later revised and retitled The World's Religions), is a classic in the field, with over two million copies sold, and it remains a common introduction to comparative religion.
Smith was born in Soochow, China, to Methodist missionaries and spent his first 17 years there. He taught at the Universities of Colorado and Denver from 1944 to 1947, moved to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, for the next 10 years, and then served as professor of Philosophy at MIT from 1958 to 1973. While at MIT, he participated in some of the experiments with entheogens that professor Timothy Leary conducted at Harvard University. Smith then moved to Syracuse University, where he was Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy until his retirement in 1983 and current emeritus status. He now lives in the Berkeley, California, area where he is Visiting Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
During his career, Smith not only studied but also practiced Vedanta Hinduism, Zen Buddhism (under Goto Zuigan), and Sufism for over 10 years each. He is a notable autodidact.
As a young man, of his own volition after suddenly turning to mysticism, Smith set out to meet with then-famous author Gerald Heard. Heard responded to Smith's letter, invited him to Trabuco College (later donated as the Ramakrishna Monastery) in Southern California, and then sent him off to meet the legendary Aldous Huxley. So began Smith's experimentation with meditation and his association with the Vedanta Society in Saint Louis under the auspices of Swami Satprakashananda of the Ramakrishna order.
Via the connection with Heard and Huxley, Smith eventually experimented with Timothy Leary and others at the Center for Personality Research, of which Leary was research professor. The experience and history of that era are captured somewhat in Smith's book Cleansing the Doors of Perception. In this period, Smith joined in on the Harvard Project as well, in an attempt to raise spiritual awareness through entheogenic plants.
He has been a friend of the XIVth Dalai Lama for more than 40 years, and has met and talked to some of the great figures of the century, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Thomas Merton.
Smith developed an interest in the Traditionalist School formulated by Rene Guenon and Ananda Coomaraswamy. This interest has become a continuing thread in all his writings.
In 1996 Bill Moyers devoted a five-part PBS special to Smith's life and work: The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith. Smith has also produced three series for public television: The Religions of Man, The Search for America, and (with Arthur Compton) Science and Human Responsibility.
His films on Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, and Sufism have all won awards at international film festivals. His latest DVD release is The Roots of Fundamentalism--A Conversation with Huston Smith and Phil Cousineau.
