The Doors of Perception

The Doors of Perception

3.96 of 5 stars 3.96  ·  rating details  ·  1,750 ratings  ·  81 reviews
Sometimes a writer has to revisit the classics, and here we find that "gonzo journalism"—gutsy first-person accounts wherein the author is part of the story—didn't originate with Hunter S. Thompson or Tom Wolfe. Aldous Huxley took some mescaline & wrote about it some 10 or 12 years earlier than those others. The book he came up with is part bemused essay & part mys...more
Hardcover, First Edition (U.K.), 63 pages
Published 1954 by Chatto & Windus
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B0nnie
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November 22, 1963. That fateful day. Yes, the day Huxley died. His last words were “LSD, 100 micrograms I.M.” He took psychedelic drugs less than a dozen times in his life, but he always did so with a deep spiritual purpose, never casually. The Doors of Perception is a detailed account of the first time. The title comes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up,...more
William Strasse
I need to read more Huxley...maybe I'll finally dig in to the copy of "The Perennial Philosophy" that I've started on several times (although probably not until after "A Brief History Of Everything"...those two at the same time would be just masochistic.)

Although I did get a lot out of this book, the single thing that really made an impact was the discussion of our brain as a sensory-limiting mechanism which is concerned most of the time with filtering out all but what we need for survival at an...more
Lindu Pindu
Huxley. Not on my list of great writers, but an interesting person with ideas.

There are more illuminating books on psychoactive substances, but this would perform well as a primer for those completely brainwashed into thinking that drug-takers are dazed hippies. I see them/us as *seekers*, people seeking to believe in something they can see and experience in an age where we don't take words like mind, soul, reason for granted anymore. This is exactly the point of view Huxley uses here. Also, im...more
Nick Allen
My hopes were partially fulfilled in the second half of the essay, in which Huxley examined the natural human urge to experience the world through the lens of any kind of drug or alcohol, and how this relates to current legal policy and common conceptions of mental well-being. However, most of the essay carried the kind of underlying tone of semi-religious reverence for the effects of drugs that I hear all too much of from the kids at college. The idea that the human brain can have knowledge of...more
Aaron Kent
Another street find. If you're like me, you've always avoided this book due to it being the namesake of the band, The Doors. The Doors constitute everything I find distasteful about the 1960s. This is a wonderful little book which describes a mescalin trip and then offers a small amount of philosophy and opinion on art, music and the need to find a middle ground between the mindset of science and some form of spiritual search for self. I find Huxley's telling so much more powerful because it lac...more
Cecilia W Yu
My friend Amanda who dated & married this guy based on their shared obsession with Nick Cave said I had to read this book in Oz. They even got it out for me at the library. I read it. It was alright. My genuine reaction was that this is a lazy short-cut...everything he described, you could achieve drug-free from mind-training and meditation....so if my tibetan meditation teacher had to spend 30 yrs in some cave up in the Himalayas doing this and lazy people want to pay $30 and take a short-c...more
Justin
In this very short book, Aldous Huxley - probably best known as the author of Brave New World - takes mescaline and chronicles his experiences with the mind-altering drug.

I found Huxley's thoughts on what he described as the "Mind at Large", and how mescaline helped to turn off the brain's "reducing valve" to be very interesting. However, in describing his experiences he often discussed artists and philosophers with whom I'm not overly familiar. Not willing to put in the effort to look all of t...more
Ugh
If I was only rating The Doors of Perception, I would be giving it 5 stars. True, when I read its 50 brilliant pages in a single sitting I was feeling the first effects of a flu infection that I was hoping was going to be fought back before it could take a firm hold (so far so good), but I'm reasonably confident that the impression it made on me was genuine, and not a product of any fevered flights of fancy.
So: The Doors of Perception. It's fascinating, insightful, and provided more food for tho...more
uh8myzen
Aldous Huxley will always be one of my favourite writers as he has a way of capturing my imagination in a unique way. I read Brave New World when I was about fourteen years old and was blown away. I have since reread it a few times, and each time I am equally amazed.

I found this book in my dad's library when I was eighteen, and took to it immediately. I could not help but be swept up by Huxley's writing style, his intellectual examination of the drugs effects and the theories he applies to his o...more
Faith Bradham
One of my friends is a hardcore Huxley fan, and recommended this to me. I had no idea what it was about, and when I picked it up and realized it was about mescalin, I was pretty amused, given my friend's personality.

I found The Doors of Perception pretty interesting, especially when he talked about how it made him view the visual aspects of life... his trousers, the chair, etc. However, I got a little skeptical when it came to the social aspect - that basically everything bad in society can be...more
Wis
I went into Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception" with no expectations, which is how a good friend told me I should approach any book rather than the spiritual and emotional awakening I have been spoiled into wanting, and so I was not surprised when I did not get one. But what I did get is an honest treatise from a profound and respected wordsmith about his experience with the psychoactive mescaline and that dimension alone would have been enough for me to enjoy this little book.
But reading...more
Julio
Una interesante descripción de Aldous Huxley (aquel del Mundo Feliz o la genial Sonrisa de la Gioconda) sobre su directa y personalísima experiencia con la mezcalina. Durante el experimento, Huxley percibe y describe cómo la experiencia de la realidad cambio bajo el efecto de la droga. Cómo la relación entre objetos, y entre ellos y el observador cambia totalmente. Los objetos existen y se imponen a la consciencia por que si. Tienen una calidad propia y no tiene ya sentido diferenciarlos y categ...more
John Martindale
Most of the book, is Huxley giving a detailed account of his experience while on Mescaline, and for the most part, it didn't come across as all that interesting. But once the drug trip is over and Huxley started sharing some of his reflections and opinions, I perked up.

He mentioned how so many people, live lives that are either so horrific or mundane, that its only natural they'll seek diversion, by escaping into other forms of consciousness. As far as whats legal, Alcohol and tobacco, both tend...more
Jonathan Widell
Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception is the book that The Doors famously got its name from. Jim Morrison did his best to fulfil its hallucinogenic agenda, assuming that the doors of perception referred to hallucinogens. However, that is not the only way to read the book. In fact, Huxley got the name for his book from William Blake's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite." Huxley did not deviate from B...more
Bryon
It is fascinating that Aldous Huxley would use himself as a guinea pig and study this subject through his own experience. While on Mescalin he describes that there is no filter between the outside world and our self. Normal everyday things that we take for granted are seen in a new light and have real beauty and meaning.
Chance Maree

Increasingly, I'm learning that perception is far more complicated than I ever imagined. Sight, as an example, isn't simply eyes acting like cameras, sending image data to the brain for interpretation. An article in the online journal, Nature, described the mechanism by which the brain "sees" what our eyes are going to see before our eyes see it. This is why we don't view the world through what would otherwise look like a hand-held camera. Research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Med...more
Sam
"Most visualizers are transformed by mescalin into visionaries"

Note to self: Seek and find drug dealer who supplies mescalin.
Rest-aria
This book is the reason people post experience reports on sites like Erowid; it was essentially proto-trip reporting. The difference of course is that Huxley, being one of the most intelligent people of his era, is able to articulate infinitely better than any layman writing about his experience. Most of his descriptions are more poetic than descriptive, and he manages to profoundly explain complicated parts of the psychedelic experience that most others would find impossible to put into words....more
Matias

Mientras estaba en la lectura de 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' me topé con este libro en la Feria Chilena del Libro, me gustó la temática (y el precio xD)asíque me lo compré y leí en el mismo día.


En pocas palabras es el relato del experimento llevado a cabo por Aldous Huxley, quien bajo los efectos de la mescalina (principio activo delpeyotl), expresa las experiencias sensoriales/trascendentales/transfigurativas en las que se ve envuelto, eso en pocas palabras, porque aventurarse en tod

...more
John H.D. Lucy
I know a lot of people will probably disagree with my brilliant assessment of this little book, and I'm really not sure it deserves 4 stars, but this is a fantastic read for anyone who likes to reflect and ponder on life, its meaning, and what the heck we're doing here.

Huxley doesn't ever really talk about the big life questions nor does he hint at them, but any half-wit reading this book should realize that he's not just talking about a drug and its effects on the mind. And he isn't just prais...more
Anèl
This book tempted me into madness- the only reason I am setting it aside for a while! (2004/ 2005)

After reading it again (2012), I feel a little disappointment. I wasn't in the right frame of mind anymore. I felt it to be a little repetive mostly since it's a topic that shouldn't be too confined by speech (as Huxley argued himself).

Also a bit more scientific exploration would have been cool, although apparantly, and understandably so, scientific writing on many elements of mescalin use was limit...more
Jorge Pérez de rueda
Apr 28, 2013 Jorge Pérez de rueda rated it 1 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: No one
¿Qué pasaría si el autor de una de las mejores novelas del siglo XX, "Un Mundo Feliz", se somete a un "experimento" en el que se toma peyotl (mescalina), para contar en primera persona lo mucho que le acerca esa droga a un estado de percepción avanzada?

Pasa que durante un centenar de páginas, el autor divaga sobre eso en un lenguaje además de lo más engolao, forzado y pedante, sobre lo bueno que es meterse mescalina.

Me sangran los ojos después de leer esto.
Maanasi Baa
Way too many doors to handle. I enjoyed the concept of the brain and he central nervous system narrowing our perception so as to not override the human "soul" with too much information. An informative read that almost generalised the "Trip", which was a let down. But those who have experienced these transcendent mediums will agree that every time its different. Aldous Huxley divulges a lot but shields a lot more too.
A.E. Shaw
I've always been fond of this book, very much the kind of thing I like to view with the "you did this so I don't have to" hat on. A fine essay written with marvellous clarity and interesting pointers on the incompatibility of cigarettes and alcohol with the positive future version of life. A nice thing to read again, being well past the "everyone I know is on drugs" stage of things, and its relevance continues.
Jim
Not really a diary of the author's direct experience with hallucinogenic drugs, but more of a long pseudo-academic speculation. I can't help feeling that the author was enamoured of his own voice and so droned on and on, spinning a very thin amount of real content into a larger work. An unfortunately common weakness in authors IMHO.
Tauni Malmgren
An articulate first hand account about one of the greatest minds taking mescaline.

Although Huxley deplores words as inferior to "suchness" that mankind can only glimpse through the lens of discarded perceptual devices like time, spatial relationships, and ego, there are a ton a good quotes that I look forward to sharing.

Mikey
This is one book you might never get around to reading because you've heard bits about it that lead you to believe it's a druggie piece of fiddle faddle. I ended up buying it because the book i wanted was not in stock but it was a genuine revelation. Reading it was like coming home. huxley points out that mescalin is not necessary to view life in this heightened or "unfiltered" state and rightly conjects that this is the quality of perception that artists (such as Van Gogh - theirs a brilliant p...more
Erica Schwer
I read this book in one shot; there is not one good place to stop. Huxley takes his personal experience and creates a very visual explanation so that it can be understood by other people. It is almost as if it is written by experience itself. So many times throughout this book Huxley was able to take the most intangible thoughts and put them into words as best as possible. I really made a connection with Huxley because I have many similar thoughts and beliefs that I have never been able to expre...more
Kristen
I can't totally remember Brave New World, but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with drugs. This book is out of control. Basically he willingly takes mescaline to try to document how it effects his mind. There weren't many studies done on it at that point in time, and we didn't really have sound scientific explanations for what physically happened to peoples' bodies when they're on drugs. He explains his way through his trip--lost me a lot of the time, but made me REALLY think another part...more
Tomas Lankenau
This is an amazing book! I found incredible how Huxley talks about our paradigms and the understanding he has of them!
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The Doors of Perception (Paperback)
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Las puertas de la percepción (Paperback)

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Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death in 1963. Best known for his novels and wide-ranging output of essays, he also published short stories, poetry, travel writing, and film stories and scripts. Through his novels and es...more
More about Aldous Huxley...
Brave New World Brave New World & Brave New World Revisited The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell Island Brave New World Revisited

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“Neither agreeable nor disagreeable," I answered. "It just is."
Istigkeit — wasn't that the word Meister Eckhart liked to use? "Is-ness." The Being of Platonic philosophy — except that Plato seems to have made the enormous, the grotesque mistake of separating Being from becoming and identifying it with the mathematical abstraction of the Idea. He could never, poor fellow, have seen a bunch of flowers shining with their own inner light and all but quivering under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged; could never have perceived that what rose and iris and carnation so intensely signified was nothing more, and nothing less, than what they were — a transience that was yet eternal life, a perpetual perishing that was at the same time pure Being, a bundle of minute, unique particulars in which, by some unspeakable and yet self-evident paradox, was to be seen the divine source of all existence.”
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“And as I looked, it became very clear that this five-and-ten-cent ship was in some way connected with human pretensions. This suffocating interior of a dime-store ship was my own personal self; these gimcrack mobiles of tin and plastic were my personal contributions to the universe.” 3 people liked it
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