Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "This book opens with a description of my first entheogen experience, and - because objective understanding of these substances is the book's primary aim -..." (more)
Key Phrases: sacred unconscious, psychedelic movement, soma plant, Native American Church, Good Friday, Gordon Wasson (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Cleansing the Doors of Perception is a fresh consideration of the age-old relationship between certain psychoactive plants and chemicals and mystical experience by one of the most trustworthy religious writers of our time. Author Huston Smith (most famous for his classic The World's Religions) is the Walter Cronkite of religion scholars. He has long believed that "drugs appear to be able to induce religious experiences" and that "it is less evident that they can produce religious lives." At the same time, he posits that "if ... religion cannot be equated with religious experiences, neither can it long survive their absence." Therefore, Smith's basic question about entheogens (a word he defines as "nonaddictive mind-altering substances that are approached seriously and reverently") is "whether chemical substances can be helpful adjuncts to faith." Cleansing the Doors does not offer one sustained argument in response to that question. Instead, the book collects Smith's many articles about this subject, and connects them with brief introductory essays. The writings gathered here range from personal testimony about Smith's own experience with entheogens to ethnographic work on the use of entheogens in India. Throughout, Smith's style conveys the wisdom and wonder that has guided his explorations of this strange, fascinating aspect of religious experience. --Michael Joseph Gross

From Publishers Weekly

Religion scholar and "missionary kid" Smith discovered psychedelic drugs in good company, alongside Timothy Leary and the crowd at Harvard that experimented with LSD, mescaline and psilocybin in the 1960s. In Cleansing the Doors of Perception (the title a play on Aldous Huxley's cult classic The Doors of Perception), Smith argues that while psychedelics can illuminate the religious life, these drugs can not induce religious lives. Therefore, Smith concludes, religion must be more than "a string of experiences." If drugs cannot replace religion, however, they can aid the religious life, when psychedelics are used in the context of a larger religious commitmentAas with the Native American use of peyote. But this provocative inquiry into the relationship between drugs and religion is overshadowed by Smith's unreflective strolls down memory laneAsuch as his description of the Good Friday experiment of 1962, when a group of Harvardites popped psychedelics and attended Good Friday services. Smith says it was one of the most spiritually meaningful days of his life. Partly because of such reflections, his book, which includes many previously published essays and interviews, does not hang together. The reader skips from Smith's musings about John Humphrey Noyes to a case study of Hindu drug use to a bizarre comparison of Leary and the church historian Tertullian. In the acknowledgements, Smith thanks the Council on Spiritual Practices for encouraging him to gather all his essays on drugs into one volumeAreaders may wish the Council had held its counsel. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 190 pages
• Publisher: Tarcher; 1st Edition/1st Printing edition (June 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585420344
• ISBN-13: 978-1585420346
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #243,051 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Sober Look AT Spiritual Use of Entheogens, September 22, 2000

By	Thomas M. Seay (Palo Alto, California USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As an advocate of the use of entheogens (psychedelics) as a means of expanding consciousness, I have to praise this book for several reasons.

One, due to Dr. Huston's reputation, many people who would not have considered psychedelics as a spiritual path will now have to take the spiritual use of these substances seriously.

Two for those of us who do use entheogens, Dr. Smith offers an interesting critique of the psychedelic movement of the 60s. He asks himself if the corrolary of "tune in" and "turn on" has to be "drop out".

He also underscores the importance of paying attention to "set" and "setting" (the attitude of the user and the physical environment in which the user takes the psychedelic). He rightly notes that a lot of people pay lip service to this idea without being rigorous in it's application. There seems to be a kind of libertarianism, even philistinism, in the contemporary psychedelic scene. We're going to explore alone without paying attention to the lessons from other cultures who have used these substances for thousands of years. Understandably we do so under the banner of authenticity, but I think we lose out. We should not ape or follow the lessons of those cultures dogmatically, but we should investigate them and heed what is good...especially about set and setting.

Third, he assigns psychedelics their proper place. They are tools. And like any tool, psychedelics work for some and not for others. Or they work for a time for us and then we need to leave them behind. Any way it goes, we are left with integrating the lessons learned from our psychedelic explorations into our everyday life.

This is a sober treatment of the role of psychedelics, not an absolute glorification. I love to dream and hypothesize along with Terence McKenna, but I also love the grounded nature of "Cleaning The Doors of Perception".

If you are interested in a serious discussion of psychedelics,please check out our webclub "Entheogens and Psychedelics" at http://clubs.yahoo.com/entheogensandpsychedelics

TSEAY

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Forbidden Doors, March 2, 2001

By	Edmund Aaron Bravo (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

The third millenium is upon us; where humanity will be at its conclusion is anyone's guess. Huston Smith, a very well-repected religious scholar in the US, has taken a bold position on the topic of entheogens (psychedelics) by advocating their limited use in opening the mind to deep, spiritual experiences.

The book is loaded (no pun intended) with information concerning the historical significance of entheogens dating from the birth of the world's earliest religions in the Far East. Also included are fascinating accounts of his own powerful experience during the Good Friday event at Boston University.

If you are interested in, or have ever experienced forms of perception OTHER than the "default" setting in your own consciousness, this is an excellent book. The author's conviction that entheogens make possible ecstatic, mystical states which take one into the heart of cosmic awareness is genuine...and tempting.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fascinating Book, February 20, 2001

By	Paul Fucich (Palmdale, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I found this book to be very interesting. Most of the people that I have known who are part of the "drug culture" (and by drug culture I mean anyone who partakes of any drug on a regular basis) would have no idea of the value of the chemistry covered in this book. Why?, Because our culture primarily abuses drugs. Personally I have not yet met an individual who did not use chemistry in conjunction with their dysfunction. Unfortunately, this book will be appreciated mainly by the few folks who have no serious chemical addiction. I loved this book and found it fascinating.

I was especially fascinated by the chapter on Stanislav Grof. I learned more about pure psychotherapy from this book than any book I have read on the subject.

This book speaks about cultures within cultures such as The Native American Church. It illuminates the fact that there are societies who use natures chemistry to fight drug addiction. Near the end of the book you hear the testimonials from the patrons of the Native American Church, and it is most enlightening.

This book is about religion, philosophy, psychology, the science of mind, and the study of reality--all in one short and sweet text. I found it very eye-opening and inspiring.