Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals
Author: Huston Smith Manufacturer: Tarcher Keywords: Drug Reference ISBN: 1585420344
Book description 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…
Book review: Valuable scholarship for a number of reasons This book collects essays from nearly 40 years of Smith's research into psychedelics. It addresses a number of issues: o The experiential dimension of the drugso The relationship of the drugs to… Somehow, over the past 40 years of so, certain drugs have gotten a very bad reputation. Drugs, that is, that do not have official approval. Alcohol, prescription opiates, anti-depressants, caffeine… |
