As the descriptions of naturally occurring and drug-stimulated mystical experiences cannot be distinguished phenomenologically, Huston Smith regards Zaehner's position in Mysticism Sacred and Profane, as a product of the conflict between science and religion – that religion tends to ignore the findings of science. Nonetheless, although these drugs may produce a religious experience, they need not produce a religious life, unless set within a context of faith and discipline. Finally, he concludes that psychedelic drugs should not be forgotten in relation to religion because the phenomenon of religious awe, or the encounter with the holy, is declining and religion cannot survive long in its absence. Later experience Huxley continued to take these substances several times a year until his death, but with a serious and temperate frame of mind. He refused to talk about the substances outside scientific meetings, turned down an invitation to talk about them on TV and refused the leadership of a foundation devoted to the study of psychedelics, explaining that they were only one of his diverse number of interests. For Philip Thody, a professor of French literature, Huxley's revelations made him conscious of the objections that had been put forward to his theory of mysticism set out in Eyeless in Gaza and Grey Eminence, and consequently Island reveals a more humane philosophy. However, this change in perspective may lie elsewhere. In October 1955, Huxley had an experience while on mescaline that he considered more profound than those detailed in The Doors of Perception. He decided his previous experiments, the ones detailed in Doors and Heaven and Hell, had been "temptations to escape from the central reality into false, or at least imperfect and partial Nirvanas of beauty and mere knowledge." He wrote in a letter to Humphry Osmond, that he experienced "the direct, total awareness, from the inside, so to say, of Love as the primary and fundamental cosmic fact. ... I was this fact; or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that this fact occupied the place where I had been." The experience made its way into the final chapter of Island. This raised a troublesome point. Was it better to pursue a course of careful psychological experimentation.... or was the real value of these drugs to "stimulate the most basic kind of religious ecstasy"? Influence A variety of influences have been claimed for the book. The psychedelic proselytiser Timothy Leary was