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Cleansing the Doors of Perception

The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals

Huston Smith

Tarcher/Putnam: New York, 2000

173 pp.; $22.95 (hardcover)

Allan Hunt-Badiner

At eighty-one, Huston Smith is one of the most respected authorities on world religions. He has devoted his life to the study of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Hinduism. He says he believes in all of them. So it may come as a surprise to some that an issue of great fascination to him over the last forty years of his life has been the spiritual use of drugs. Smith says that, given his age, he may have thought and written more on this subject than anyone else alive. He professes total agreement with Aldous Huxley’s opinion that “nothing is more important than the role mind-altering plants and chemicals have played in human history.”

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