As for the other two parties that I mentioned in my opening paragraph (and who join Huxley and James on the frontispiece of this book). I will defer until chapter 4 the story of the summer I spent working with Gordon Wasson on his claim that India's sacramental plant, soma, was a psychoactive mushroom. Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD, I include not only for the judiciousness of his discussion of his problem child, but for a personal reason as well. A friend of mine who visited him in Switzerland had occasion to mention my book Forgotten Truth, which outlines the metaphysical position - roughly the Great Chain of Being - that my entheogenic encounters enabled me to experience. When my friend returned from that visit and told me that Hofmann had expressed interest in my book, I sent him a copy. The letter I received in reply opened by saying, "No other book in the last years has meant more to me than your Forgotten Truth. My experience and awareness of reality and its different aspects correspond completely with your view. The reward I got by studying your book was to find my insights, which are those of a natural scientist, a layman in philosophy, confirmed and expanded more fully by a professional in this field." Here is a fascinating inquiry into the religious significance of consciousness-magnifying substances, by one of the leading religious thinkers of our time. In Cleansing the Doors of Perception, Huston Smith, author of The World's Religions, combines historical insight, personal experience, and an understanding of the cognitive sciences to produce the only comprehensive book written for the general public on the mysterious relation among entheogens, consciousness, and faith. Psychoactive plants have long served as spiritual catalysts, from the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece to Native American Church rites, and from India’s sacred soma to religious practices emerging from the Amazonian rain forests. In this book, Smith takes us into the heart of modernity’s struggle to align this historical evidence with what we now understand about brain chemistry. Smith’s friendships with Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary (while Leary was at Harvard), Gordon Wasson (who cracked the two-thousand year-old secret of India’s soma plant), and Albert Hofmann (the discoverer of LSD) have made him an unusual eyewitness to much of the twentieth century’s work in this area. Cleansing the 'Doors of Perception - the title is a tribute to both Huxley’s The Doors of Perception and Blake’s original phrase - is a deeply serious and learned inquiry into a topic of enduring importance. Huston Smith is one of the most respected and beloved authorities on world religions. He has taught at Washington University, MIT, Syracuse University, and the University of California at Berkeley. In 1996, Bill Moyers devoted a five-part PBS special, The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith, to his life and work.