Aldous Huxley and the Visionary Experience

Selections from the Aldous and Laura Huxley Papers

Fall Quarter 2013

YRL Special Collections Exhibit Gallery

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Throughout his life, Aldous Huxley explored the potential of alternative religions, therapies, and disciplines to expand human consciousness and to unite body and spirit. Aldous Huxley and the Visionary Experience draws upon the writings and papers of Aldous and Laura Huxley to examine his search for a universal experience beyond the language of words and the limits of physical being.

Huxley had a long and fruitful relationship with UCLA. He was a frequent user of the UCLA library and pledged his papers to Special Collections, but most were destroyed by the 1961 Hollywood Hills fire before they could come to UCLA. UCLA’s Huxley collection was acquired over the years through gifts, purchases, and a major 2009 donation of the extant papers through the auspices of Huxley’s second wife, Laura Archera Huxley, the Huxley Foundation, and funds provided by UCLA graduate Bill Edwards and his wife Ann Edwards. Huxley’s circle and interests, both mystical and scientific, are reflected in this exhibit through the Aldous and Laura Huxley Papers, selected works of Aleister Crowley, Christopher Isherwood,  Krishnamurti  and others from the library’s holdings, and a variety of personal papers, including those of psychoanalyst and LSD researcher Sidney Cohen and writer and philosopher Gerald Heard.

The exhibit was curated by Lilace Hatayama and Genie Guerard, with research assistance from Claire Kennedy Quezada and Mitchell Erzinger.

The Bonnie Cashin Lecture and Reception

Speaker: Don Lattin

Aldous Huxley, Gerald Heard, Sidney Cohen: Pioneers of Consciousness in the City of Angels

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

4-6 p.m.

Charles E. Young Research Library Main Conference Room

RSVP by October 18, 2013 to UCLA Library Development at 310.206.8526 or rsvp@library.ucla.edu

Don Lattin is one of the nation's leading journalists covering alternative and mainstream religious movements and figures in America. The October 23 lecture draws from Lattin’s research in the Huxley and Cohen papers in Library Special Collections, as well as from his most recent book, Distilled Spirits: Getting High, Then Sober, with a Famous Writer, a Forgotten Philosopher, and a Hopeless Drunk (UC Press, 2012) which looks at how Huxley, philosopher Gerald Heard, and Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson opened new doors in Western religious thought.

Please join us for the lecture and exhibit reception. All are invited, and space is limited. RSVP by October 18, 2013 to UCLA Library Development at 310.206.8526 or rsvp@library.ucla.edu