Page "The Doors of Perception" Paragraph 22

In the field of religion, Huxley ’ s friend and spiritual mentor, the Vedantic monk Swami Prabhavananda, thought that mescaline was an illegitimate path to enlightenment, a " deadly heresy " as Christopher Isherwood put it.

Martin Buber, the Jewish religious philosopher, attacked Huxley's notion that mescaline allowed a person to participate in " common being ", and held that the drug ushered users " merely into a strictly private sphere ".

Philosophically, Buber believed the drug experiences to be holidays " from the person participating in the community of logos and cosmos — holidays from the very uncomfortable reminder to verify oneself as such a person.

" For Buber man must master, withstand and alter his situation, or even leave it, " but the fugitive flight out of the claim of the situation into situationlessness is no legitimate affair of man.