The Doors of Perception

London: Chatto & Windus, 1954 First edition, first printing. Publisher's periwinkle cloth, lettered in gilt; in the original pictorial dust jacket designed by John Woodcock, with an illustration of three eyes with geometric irises to the front panel, lettered in white. Very good book, with light spotting to board margins, bright gilt, and some offsetting to endpapers; very good unclipped dust jacket, with light toning to spine and upper margin of rear panel, a hint of soiling to panels, shallow chipping to head of spine, a small closed tear to bottom edge of front panel, and a tiny chip to top right corner of front panel. A lovely, vibrant copy. The Doors of Perception is Huxley's reflection on a mescaline-induced hallucinogenic experience he had. After offering himself up as a test subject, Huxley was administered a supervised dose and, as he explains vis-à-vis William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, "the doors of perception were cleansed." In his introduction, Huxley explains: "The other world which mescaline admitted me was not the world of visions; it existed out there, in what I could see with my eyes open. The great change was in the realm of objective fact…. I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation - the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence." While criticized for its promotion of psychedelic drug use, The Doors of Perception was also a foundational text for the 1960s counterculture, inspiring both Timothy Leary's psychedelic research and Jim Morrison's band The Doors. In 1958, Huxley published a sequel - the essay Heaven and Hell, which refers to the two possible experiences one will have after breaking through the "doors of perception." . 1st Edition. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Dust Jacket Included. Illus. by Woodcock, John.