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The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell
Half an hour after swallowing the drug I became aware of a slow dance of golden lights . . .
Among the most profound explorations of the effects of mind-expanding drugs ever written, here are two complete classic books--"The Doors of Perception" and "Heaven and Hell"--in which Aldous Huxley, author of the bestselling "Brave New World," revea
...morePaperback, 185 pages
Published
July 28th 2009
by Harper Perennial
(first published January 1st 1954)
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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...more
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...more
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 he...more
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 he...more
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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 f...more
So: The Doors of Perception. It's fascinating, insightful, and provided more food f...more
i have some serious reservations about this book. While i was significantly impressed by Huxley's Brave New World, The Doors of Perception did not fare too well with me.
i believe one can draw many parallels with Huxley's 'spiritual' experience to that of Dr. R Hawkins, who i read of in Truth vs Falsehood and The Eye of the I - the terminology is very similar too with words like 'suchness' and 'being' and 'emanating' and 'truth'. Also their acounts of Rembrandt are shockingly similar...more
i believe one can draw many parallels with Huxley's 'spiritual' experience to that of Dr. R Hawkins, who i read of in Truth vs Falsehood and The Eye of the I - the terminology is very similar too with words like 'suchness' and 'being' and 'emanating' and 'truth'. Also their acounts of Rembrandt are shockingly similar...more
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.
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
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 e...more
A remarkable, and frequently ecstatic recollection of the author's own experiences with mescalin. Of course, to use his own argument against him, such a venture must be necessarily unsuccessful, "for the glory and the wonder of pure existence belong to another order, beyond the power of even the highest art to express." The final section of the essay, where Huxley speculates on the potential uses of such mind-expanding drugs to achieve heightened perceptions and greater understandings,...more
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 a...more
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 a...more
Amanda
rated it
Pseudoscience-y in that it was subjective and very speculative. As to be expected, Huxley compares the effects of his peyote experiment with that of religious experience but he goes too far when he equates it with the many manifestations of schizophrenia, which weren't even particularly well understood at the time. But there is something redeeming for an account that provokes a good laugh.
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 socie...more
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 socie...more
It's not for everyone. To be honest, had my prof not assigned it to use I would have never picked it up.
It's about effect of mescalin as felt by Huxley. He talks about how he sees world after taking it, how the perception changes.
As a psych student, I found it fascinating. It's not that he's seeing the world wrong, it's just a different perception.
It's about effect of mescalin as felt by Huxley. He talks about how he sees world after taking it, how the perception changes.
As a psych student, I found it fascinating. It's not that he's seeing the world wrong, it's just a different perception.
A shorter essay about Huxley's first experience as an LSD lab rat, and how it changed his view of art, society, nature, and human consciousness. If you like his fictional stuff, you may enjoy this as a more serious and scientific look at some of the elements that he includes in his fiction books such as A Brave New World.
In a brief but solid narrative Huxley speaks candidly about the effects of the relatively harmless drug mescaline and its ability to induce an altered mental state where perception is no longer limited to the confines of reality. An interesting connection between this hallucinogenic state and spirituality are made and understandably so. Huxley's work undoubtedly sheds light on something most considered taboo at the time, in fact even now very few would willingly participate in an experiment of t...more
Huxley was a fan of drugs - really more because of his philosophical approach to perception. He saw drugs as a way to view all of reality in a way that the human mind typically cannot, and a way to clear the mind of the natural limiting factors that it contains.
Worth reading.
Worth reading.
The story of his mescaline trip, interesting as poetry. Also, his light attack on the shift from our cultural interest in humanities and our inability to accept these kinds of novel experiences...remember, written in the 50's.
The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall
will never be quite the same as the man who went out.
He will be wiser but less cocksure,
happier but less self-satisfied,
humbler in acknowledging his ignorance
yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things,
of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery
which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend...
will never be quite the same as the man who went out.
He will be wiser but less cocksure,
happier but less self-satisfied,
humbler in acknowledging his ignorance
yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things,
of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery
which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend...
Huxley gets to the essence of the psychedelic experience, he articulates every aspect very well. It's quite impressive to make such a personalized experience sound so appealing and universal. It's not JUST about the trip, it's about what makes up the trip. In Heaven and Hell, he mostly speaks of visual arts from different cultures and time periods, with astonishing insights into possible thought patterns of said times, as well as mentioning insanity numerous times and goes into religion a bunch ...more
He makes very good points about seeing the world as it is, but there were some things I didn't necessarily agree with. It is all a bit dated. It's alleged that the band The Doors got their name from this book, and you can very easily see why when you read it.
i remember almost nothing about this book other than that its title, taken from william blake's poem "the marriage of heaven and hell," sparked my interest. so, only two stars because it clearly was not memorable...
Misha
added it
The fixed perception of the world around us is just an illusion. Everything flows and is in a constant change. Once we realize that, we will be able to see the reality as it is, enjoy every moment of our existance.
I am sorry, Huxley, but you were wrong. Drugs are not the only way you can open your mind and use it's full potential. But to be honest, I found this book interesting.
Premise: Giving mescaline to a guy who knows how to introspect and how to turn a phrase. No more, no less.
If you're interested in perception and how it is influenced by psychoactive drugs, you may like this book.
If you're interested in perception and how it is influenced by psychoactive drugs, you may like this book.
TRIPPING ON LSD HUXLEY ATTEMPTS TO DEPICT THE ESSENCE OF THE METAPHYSICAL WORLD THAT OPENS WHEN THE ACID HIGH KICKS IN. SENSATIONAL IN EVERY RESPECT.
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 p...more
The Doors of Perception is a very short book about Huxley's experience with mescaline (a psychoactive compound found in the Peyote cactus). He takes it in his own home with a friend and muses on the wonders he sees.
The title is a reference to a book by William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which contains these lines:
"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he...more
The title is a reference to a book by William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which contains these lines:
"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he...more
A methodic ride through mescalin trips and the multiple ways to conceptalize and describe the human mind.
Intensely literate gobbledygook about the need for further investigation into an hallucinogenic drug in the mistaken belief that it facilitates greater experience and understanding of the beauty of the world. It's an hallucinogen, duh!! That is not the real world now, is it?
This is an excellent book. I bought it and read it at the age of 15. I wish i still had it as I just got to read some samples from it online. This is good old Aldous Huxley whom wrote A Brave New World.
La edición que leí no tiene ISBN. Es de Edixtlan Ediciones.
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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
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“He can go about his business, so completely satisfied to see and be part of the divine Order of Things that he will never even be tempted. When all things are perceived as infinite and holy, what motive can we have for covetousness, for drearier forms of pleasure?”
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“We live together,we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand and hand into the arena; they are crucified alone.”
—
1 person liked it
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