The convention in Stockholm in 1963 was my last meeting with Aldous Huxley. His physical appearance was already marked by a severe illness; his intellectual personage, however, still bore the undiminished signs of a comprehensive knowledge of the heights and depths of the inner and outer world of man, which he had displayed with so much genius, love, goodness, and humor in his literary work.
Aldous Huxley died on 22 November of the same year, on the same day President Kennedy was assassinated. From Laura Huxley I obtained a copy of her letter to Julian and Juliette Huxley, in which she reported to her brother- and sister-in-law about her husband's last day. The doctors had prepared her for a dramatic end, because the terminal phase of cancer of the throat, from which Aldous Huxley suffered, is usually accompanied by convulsions and choking fits. He died serenely and peacefully, however.
In the morning, when he was already so weak that he could no longer speak, he had written on a sheet of paper: "LSD—try it—intramuscular—100 mmg." Mrs. Huxley understood what was meant by this, and ignoring the misgivings of the attending physician, she gave him, with her own hand, the desired injection-she let him have the moksha medicine.
9. Correspondence with the Poet-Physician Walter Vogt
My friendship with the physician, psychiatrist, and writer Walter Vogt, M.D., is also among the personal contacts that I owe to LSD. As the following extract from our correspondence shows, it was less the medicinal aspects of LSD, important to the physician, than the consciousness-altering effects on the depth of the psyche, of interest to the writer, that constituted the theme of our correspondence.
Muri/Bern, 22 November 1970
Dear Mr. Hofmann,
Last night I dreamed that I was invited to tea in a cafe by a friendly family in Rome.
This family also knew the pope, and so the pope sat at—the same table to tea with us. He was all in white and also wore a white miter. He sat there so handsome and was silent.
And today I suddenly had the idea of sending you my Vogel auf dem Tisch [Bird on the table—as a visiting card if you so wish—a book that remained a little apocryphal, which upon reflection I do not regret, although the Italian translator is firmly convinced that is my best. (Ah yes, the pope is also an Italian. So it goes. …)
Possibly this little work will interest you. It was written in 1966 by an author who at that time still had not had any shred of experience with psychedelic substances and who read the reports about medicinal experiments with these drugs devoid of understanding.
However, little has changed since, except that now the misgiving comes from the other side.
I suppose that your discovery has caused a hiatus (not directly a Saul-to-Paul conversion as Roland Fischer says…) in my work (also a large word) - and indeed, that which I have written since has become rather realistic or at least less expressive. In any case I could not have brought off the cool realism of my TV piece "Spiele der Macht"
[Games of power] without it. The different drafts attest it, in case they are still lying around somewhere.
Should you have interest and time for a meeting, it would delight me very much to visit you sometime for a conversation.
W. V.
Burg, i.L. 28 November 1970
Dear Mr. Vogt,
If the bird that alighted on my table was able to find its way to me, this is one more debt I owe to the magical effect of LSD. I could soon write a book about all of the results that derive from that experiment in 1943....
A. H.
Muri/Bern, 13 March 1971
Dear Mr. Hofmann,
Enclosed is a critique of Jünger's Annahenngen [Approaches], from the daily paper, that will presumably interest you....
It seems to me that to hallucinate—to dream—to write, stands at all times in contrast to everyday consciousness, and their functions are complementary. Here I can naturally speak only for myself. This could be different with others—it is also truly difficult to speak with others about such things, because people often speak altogether different languages....
However, since you are now gathering autographs, and do me the honor of incorporating some of my letters in your collection, I enclose for you the manuscript of my "testament"—in which your discovery plays a role as "the only joyous invention of the twentieth century...."
W. V.
dr. walter vogts most recent testament 1969
I wish to have no special funeral
only expensive and obscene orchids
innumerable little birds with gay names
no naked dancers
but
psychedelic garments
loudspeaker in every corner and
nothing but the latest beatles record [Abbey Road]
one hundred thousand million times
and
do what you like ["Blind Faith"]
on an endless tape
nothing more
than a popular Christ with a halo of genuine gold
and a beloved mourning congregation
that pumped themselves full with acid [acid = LSD]
till they go to heaven [From Abbey Road, side two]
one two three four five six seven
possibly we will encounter one another there
most cordially dedicated
to Dr. Albert Hofmann
Beginning of Spring 1971
Burg i.L., 29 March 1971
Dear Mr. Vogt,
You have again presented me with a lovely letter and a very valuable autograph, the testament 1969....
Very remarkable dreams in recent times induce me to test a connection between the composition (chemical) of the evening meal and the quality of dreams. Yes, LSD is also something that one eats....
A. H.
Muri/Bern, 5 September 1971
Dear Mr. Hofmann,
Over the weekend at Murtensee [On that Sunday, I (A. H.) hovered over the Murtensee in the balloon of my friend E. I., who had taken me along as passenger.] I often thought of you—a most radiant autumn day. Yesterday, Saturday, thanks to one tablet of aspirin (on account of a headache or mild flu), I experienced a very comical flashback, like with mescaline (of which I have had only a little, exactly once)....
I have read a delightful essay by Wasson about mushrooms; he divides mankind into mycophobes and mycophiles.... Lovely fly agarics must now be growing in the forest near you. Sometime shouldn't we sample some?
W. V.
Muri/Bern, 7 September 1971
Dear Mr. Hofmann,
Now I feel I must write briefly to tell you what I have done outside in the sun, on the dock under your balloon: I finally wrote some notes about our visit in Villars-sur-Ollons (with Dr. Leary), then a hippie-bark went by on the lake, self-made like from a Fellini film, which I sketched, and over and above it I drew your balloon.
W. V.
Burg i.L., 15 April 1972
Dear Mr. Vogt,
Your television play "Spiele der Macht" [Games of power] has impressed me extraordinarily.
I congratulate you on this magnificent piece, which allows mental cruelty to become conscious, and therefore also acts in its way as "consciousness- expanding", and can thereby prove itself therapeutic in a higher sense, like ancient tragedy.
A. H.
Burg i.L., 19 May 1973
Dear Mr. Vogt,
Now I have already read your lay sermon three times, the description and interpretation of your Sinai Trip. [Walter Vogt: Mein Sinai Trip. Eine Laienpredigt [My Sinai trip: A lay sermon] (Verlag der Arche, Zurich, 1972). This publication contains the text of a lay sermon that Walter Vogt gave on 14 November 1971 on the invitation of Parson Christoph Mohl, in the Protestant church of Vaduz (Lichtenstein), in the course of a series of sermons by writers, and in addition contains an afterword by the author and by the inviting parson. It involves the description and interpretation of an ecstatic-religious experience evoked by LSD, that the author is able to "place in a distant, if you will superficial, analogy to the great Sinai Trip of Moses." It is not only the "patriarchal atmosphere" that is to be traced out of these descriptions, that constitutes this analogy; there are deeper references, which are more to be read between the lines of this text.] Was it really an LSD trip?… It was a courageous deed, to choose such a notorious event as a drug experience as the theme of a sermon, even a lay sermon. But the questions raised by hallucinogenic drugs do actually belong in the church—in a prominent place in the church, for they are sacred drugs (peyotl, teonanacatl, ololiuhqui, with which LSD is mostly closely related by chemical structure and activity).