Huxley- The Doors of Perception - Comment.

 

On that fateful day, 4 May 1953, Aldous Huxley, novelist, philosopher, poet and world famous intellectual, drank a glass of water mixed with silvery white mescalin. As Humphrey Osmond, a Canadian psychiatrist, specializing in schizophrenia, wrote, "It was a delicious May morning in Hollywood, no hint of smog to make the eyes smart, not too hot." Osmond had supplied the drug to Huxley for the experiment and acted as 'observing recorder' of the historical event.

Huxley had high hopes for the experience and believed that the drug would in fact admit him into the world that Blake painted and tried to describe in his poetry; and also, possibly transport him into the mystical world of Meister Eckhart. The reality of the situation exceeded his hopes - as Huxley wrote in The Doors of Perception, "I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation - the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence."

The Doors of Perception is an important commentary from a man of rationality and science, attempting to investigate what some call 'Intuitive knowledge'. As a researcher and writer, he knew second hand these reported heightened states of awareness, had observed and dimly 'felt' these states through painting, architecture and art in general, but wanted desperately to experience them firsthand. The book describes his feelings, perceptions and thoughts about the experiment.

Huxley writes that one of our basic universal human needs is to transcend our, at times, banal consciousness, "...the urge to transcend self-conscious self-hood is...a principal appetite of the soul." (P.54) We have been doing it and continue to do it since time immemorial. Our methods, however, particularly in modern times, has been destructive. He writes, "When, for whatever reason, men and women fail to transcend themselves by means of worship, good works and spiritual exercises, they are apt to resort to religion's chemical surrogates - alcohol and 'goof-pills' in the modern West, alcohol and opium in the East, hashish in the Mohammedan world, alcohol and marijuana in Central America..." (P.54) Unfortunately these sad and destructive alternatives have mounted since this writing, but the central message is the same. He goes on to say, "Ideally, everyone should be able to find self-transcendence in some form of pure or applied religion." But, for the most part, "...the hungry sheep look up and are not fed."

Heaven and Hell is the sequel to The Doors of Perception describing or more so reflecting on the visionary experience through various means. Huxley also explores the understandings of other minds in their perceptions and cosmological notions expressed through art, and why they are impelled to express these notions. 

Huxley also describes the dark side to spiritual insight of the divine nature: the dark, empty journey of the soul when overwhelmed by such experiences, manifested in mental illness such as schizophrenia.

This important book was first published in 1954 and has become a classic that continues to communicate the plight and experience of the human condition: concise and easy to read - an absolute must.