High Culture by Partridge Christopher;

Author:Partridge, Christopher;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2018-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Concluding Comments

The cultural ripples caused by the impact of The Doors of Perception and, to a lesser extent, Heaven and Hell became waves by the dawn of the 1960s. Many aspiring mystics, typically working with Buddhist and Hindu ideas, agreed with Huxley that the house need not be burned down in order to roast a pig. There was little point in following the arduous path of asceticism if a mystical state could be experienced simply by swallowing a psychedelic substance while sitting in a comfortable chair listening to one’s favorite music. By the close of the 1950s, there was not only a burgeoning countercultural interest in Zen Buddhism, as evocatively described in Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums (1959), but also a fascination with what Alan Watts referred to as “adventures in the chemistry of consciousness,”207 as discussed in the work of Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. There was an emerging feeling, particularly amongst young people, that, as Watts put it, “modern chemists [had] prepared one or two substances . . . that in some cases . . . induce states of mind remarkably similar to cosmic consciousness.”208

Having said that, while Watts became an enthusiastic advocate of Huxley’s thesis, he had initially expressed concerns similar to Zaehner’s about spiritual shortcuts: “For one thing, mystical experience seems altogether too easy when it simply comes out of a bottle, and is thus available to people who have done nothing to deserve it, who have neither fasted nor prayed nor practiced yoga. For another, the claim seems to imply that spiritual insight is after all only a matter of body chemistry involving a total reduction of the spiritual to the material.” However, as noted in Chapter 1, he decided that while “these are serious considerations,” it needs to be understood that “the difficulty is found to rest upon semantic confusion as to the definitions of ‘spiritual’ and ‘material.’ ”209 In other words, the public concern about psychedelics rests on a false opposition of spirit and matter—one of the principal themes of his work. As with Huxley and some of the principal currents of the 1960s psychedelic revolution, his overall point was that “the use of such chemicals does not reduce spiritual insight to a mere matter of body chemistry.” Indeed, “even when we can describe certain events in terms of chemistry this does not mean that such events are merely chemical.”210 Brain chemistry, altered states of consciousness, and spiritual experiences are fundamentally related. In response to criticisms such as those of Zaehner, he argued that we need at least to consider the possibility that “some of the chemicals known as psychedelics provide opportunities for mystical insight in much the same way that well-prepared paints and brushes provide opportunities for fine painting, or a beautifully constructed piano for great music.”211

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