Herbert L Calhoun 2008-11-07

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Like Douglas Hofstadter three generations later, Aldous Huxley is in awe of the complexities of the human mind. Just like Hofstadter, he too is a compassionate and astute observer of what the mind can accomplish when given full and free-reign. He is also a teacher like Hofstadter with the single purpose of conveying what he has learned to later generations. But unlike Hofstadter whose writings seek to soothe our fears, Huxley perhaps unwittingly, heightens them.

Huxley's writings have shocked and informed us for the better part of a century. His relaxed, clear, almost laconic style can be disarming. Yet, lurking behind this easygoing persona and writing style are always truths so devastating that we ordinary "socially adjusted" humans still have great difficulty getting our minds around their full implications. As was true in his most famous novel, "A Brave New World," here in two of his non-fiction works, Huxley continues his exploration into the implications of expanding the dimensions of the mind; or conversely, exploring why we continue to maintain a world in which the mind remains closed, shutoff, rendered static and limited. Using his own self-administered experiments with drugs, the author directs his fire at how cultural limitations and misuse of the mind have often diminished rather than enhanced the richness of man's life as well as affected his survival chances negatively.

The first book in this two-book volume is called "The doors of Perception." It is an all but clinical reporting on the effects of a self-administered experiment with the mind-expanding drug, Peyote. (I will review the second book, "Heaven and Hell," separately.)

Long before the neuro-scientists had confirmed that it was so, Huxley had reported that the brain and its nervous system are primarily a "data-reduction machine." That is to say, since in principle each person is capable of taking in vast amounts of data, including being able to remember all that has ever happened to him, and is capable of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere else in the universe, the primary function of the brain and nervous system is to "reduce" or "abstract from" this universe of infinite complexity and possible perceptions, only those data that might be useful in enhancing survival. This "reducing function," accomplishes its task by allowing us to discriminate between a mass of overwhelmingly irrelevant and useless stimuli, and those that are perceived to be useful to survival. Importantly, the residue that remains is what we have come to know as conscious awareness.

In order to communicate the content of consciousness we have invented symbol systems such as languages, which in themselves have become a mixed blessing: since, at the same time that they allow inter-subjective sharing of accumulated information (usually of survival value), they also erroneously confirm the fact that reality itself is the same as our "reduced" version of it. That is to say, languages teach us that the reality we have constructed to make the world save for our survival, is the only reality. Further, through language, we have also learned to mistake for "real data," the very "concepts" we invent as their substitutes. And likewise, we have learned to mistake "words" for the "things we have assigned them to represent." Thus the world we see is a severely "tapered-down" version of the wider universe. It is one of limited, reduced awareness: a "symbolic playground" that is a mere fragment of the larger, much richer reality: It remains one that is etched and ossified into our brains through language.

Huxley claims here that by depriving the brain of its primary fuel, sugar, drugs such as mescalin, the active ingredient in Peyote, can allow us to bypass the brain's "data reduction function," making it possible for man to see well beyond the narrowly constricted world created only for purposes of advancing survival. Bypassing the brain's data reduction function, mescalin opens up a whole new world of "cleansed or virgin perceptions." It does this by relaxing the constraints and inhibitions perceived necessary for survival: things such as our dependence on time, space and having a need for a goal or a purpose. Without the need for a survival purpose, many ordinary utilitarian concerns simply just become uninteresting.

What become infinitely more interesting are details previously left unattended to: things that artists see naturally and are conditioned to take for granted, such as intensified visual beauty and impressions, form and structure as inherent qualities, the absence of a dependence on time and space, discursive ego-free thinking, the apprehension of new orders of reality, extra-sensory perceptions, awareness at a distance, awareness of un-conceptualized and un-verbalizable events, perceptions of "being one with the universe," simultaneously perceiving everything that is happening within the body (both physically and mentally), and everywhere outside it in the universe at large; a conceptual world that is free of moral judgments, the pursuit of power and control, and all other petty utilitarian concerns that go with them; in short, being able to get beyond the ego-filter allows us to forget the need for self-esteem, ego-relevance, and self-assertion. And most of all it opens the door to transcendental experiences.

The beauty of this expanded dimension of psychic reality is that by existing above "ego-ness," it necessarily also lies beyond good and evil; indeed beyond a preoccupation with power and self-assertion. The problem with this expanded psychic worldview, however, is that it is incompatible with action-based reality. It gives us access to pure contemplation but not to action itself: It cannot bring the contemplative realm down from the clouds and into phase with the realm of action, in the present. This is so because this wider world of inner contemplation is itself acting as a "stand-in" for feelings and ideas. As a result, it reduces to a kind of intuited "proto-language of the mind" of its own: one in which the mind devises its own internal set of psychic symbols, operations and dynamics; symbols and dynamics that interplay among themselves well above our conventional paradigms of how the mind is supposed to function. Schizophrenics use the same self-constructed internal language and in a real sense represent the extreme end, or "worse-case" example of this enlightened "exterior point of view."

Yet, Huxley makes a strong case for exploring this broader "deeper internal" (and "superior external") point of view. It, for instance, allows us to be aware, always, of total reality in its immanent otherness -- arguably, the very definition of awareness. And yet it also allows us to be able to think and feel as an animal and as a human being; that is to say, it does not preclude the possibility of resorting, whenever expedient to systematic survival-based reasoning.

As but one example, Huxley compares religions that are "talk therapy based" -- that is Christianity for instance -- with those that include drugs as part of their sacramental rituals, for instance most Native American religions. Huxley argues rather convincingly that if the purpose of religion is to share a transcendental experience, where the soul knows itself as unconditioned and is of one with nature and with the divine, then Christian bible reading, prayer, hymnal singing and sermonizing, go together to constitute a kind of "talk therapy:" a living abstraction away form both deep feelings and about as far from "true" religious needs as one can get. True religion demands a deep shared psychological experience with the universe and with the divine. All religions strive for this kind of oneness that transcends the bounds of selfness. Yet, Christianity is based on having a "personal God" as man's personal servant, constantly at the very "beck and call" of every religionist's ego.


Huxley suggest that Christians might well learn from our Native American brothers, who took the best of Christianity and married their inherent religious needs with their own self-transcendent experiences, using Peyote. Thus in one religious rite, they satisfied the two appetites of the soul: the urge to independence and self-determination, and the urge to become one with God through self-transcendence.


However, for contradictory cultural reasons, drugs, it seems have no place in the Judeao-Christian Church, even when "sacramentized use" could expand religious understanding, address psychological yearning that can only be satisfied through transcendent experiences, and vastly enrich the religious experience. In order for Christians to have a true religious experience they are required to turn to the drug of alcohol, outside of the walls of the Church, Mosque or Temple.

1000 stars

adead_poet@hotmail.com 2008-10-20

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

These are two essays from Huxley (the brilliant mind that brought us Brave New World) about the psychadelic experience. BUt I found them to be ponderous and outdated. Important books in the sixties, manuals to counter culture even, but nothing more than a mere curiousity nowadays.

William Timothy Lukeman 2008-08-12

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While these two slim volumes, collected here under one cover, will always be associated with the 1960s, they shouldn't be thought of as dated or period pieces by any stretch of the imagination. And that's a key phrase here, because stretching the imagination is precisely what they're about, and what they can do for you -- if you're willing to read them with an open mind.

Certainly they belong in the library of thoughtful, deeply considered books on mind-altering drugs & experience. But let's be clear on this: Huxley wasn't interested in cheap, easy highs, or simple escapism. He saw the use of such drugs as a useful & potentially powerful tool for exploring the depths of the psyche, the "Antipodes of the Unconscious," as he phrased it so well.

And so we not only get Huxley's own account of his controlled experiments, offered in vivid detail, always observed by his keen & penetrating intellect -- but we also get a history of the visionary experience in culture & art. Some might find this extraneous, even boring; but it's of vital import to his inward explorations.

Century after century, culture after culture, Huxley shows us that the visionary experience is essentially the same for all of humanity. The minute, superficial particulars may vary, but the essence is the same. And as he points out, drugs are not necessary for such an experience -- although he's fascinated by & intellectually curious about their possibilities as an entrance to them, and sees no reason not to utilize them under the proper conditions.

In fact, Huxley is reminding us that such visionary experience is the common, rightful inheritance & treasure of all who live. Moreover, now that we live in a culture impoverished by a lack of such experience, with an official contempt & fear of it, he asserts that we need it more than ever. And this was written in the late 1950s!

Yes, there were abuses & mistakes in the drug culture of the 1960s -- some of them dreadful. But much of this was due to an immature, basically hedonistic approach to the visionary world. There were many people hungry for a living visionary experience, but they didn't have the proper knowledge & preparation for it, and wound up plunging into the very deep end ... where some drowned.

Today we have a culture in which the "the only war that counts, the war against the Imagination" (poet Diane DiPrima) is still in full force. We're offered mass-produced substitutes for visionary experience, but they're only empty, glossy sensation, shoddy goods & special effects, with no substance or depth.

Huxley's wise words offer another approach, one that might yield real rewards for the sincere seeker. Again, while this might entail the use of mind-altering drugs for some, they're not a necessity. And if they are used, then they should be used knowledgeably & judiciously. More importantly, Huxley reminds us not to sacrifice the possibilities of rapture & transcendence out of fear. At best, this volume should lead the reader to art, to poetry, to the wisdom of the perennial philosophy. For the honest seeker with honest questions, this is highly recommended!

Anton Franck 2008-07-07

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

Anyone interested in the subject of mind-altering drugs, or what it means to see a mind-altered world, must read this classic self-examination.I Think, Therefore Who Am I?

Moonstone Star White 2008-05-18

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

Aldous Huxley was ahead of his time. And yet, he was right where he needed to be. In a time when modern society had not quite caught on to the mind-expanding powers of psycho-active drugs, psychology was still interested in how they might be used in a beneficial way. Thus, Huxley, one of the most dedicated thinkers of a generation, was able to participate in and produce feedback for, a controlled psychological experiment in which he used mescalin to produce an altered state of consciousness. That anyone could participate in such an experiment today and go on to write candidly about it seems unthinkable.

Today our lust for political correctness has rendered such ideas as the ones expressed in "The Doors of Perception" and "Heaven and Hell" to be nearly unspeakable. These two short books are combined in one book, and complement each other. I believe it is only Huxley's reputation as a creative author, poet, philosopher and thinker that has allowed this work to be taken seriously at all, and to remain part of our collective past.

Certainly, one cannot read his lucid chronicle of his mescalin experience in "The Doors of Perception" or his evaluation of it in the remainder of that book or in the book "Heaven and Hell" which follows it, and believe he saw no merit in the judicious use of psycho-active substances. Huxley describes both psycho-active drugs and hypnosis as tools for accessing what he calls the "antipodes" of the mind. And yet, society has such a social stigma about trying to do that by whatever means.

As a certified hypnotherapist, I can say that society is still mostly in ignorance of the usefulness of hypnosis as a profound tool for accessing realms of the mind that are typically unaccessible. The use of a mind-altering drug for such a purpose has fallen into deep disfavor, with the anti-drug advocates lumping psychadelic drugs in the same category as narcotics and other dangerous drugs. And yet, indigenous cultures have used them for attaining spiritual visions and experiences for as long as they have been available to use, and continue to use them to this day.

The desire to transcend the human mind is as old as humanity. It is the natural result of enlightenment, often achieved only after many years of meditation and intense spiritual practice. And yet, Huxley himself was able to achieve this, at least temporarily, through the use of mescalin. In his own words: "For the moment that interfering neurotic who, in waking hours, tries to run the show, was blessedly out of the way."

I believe Huxley saw the use of psychadelic drugs as a useful tool for opening the normally very filtered awareness of the conscious mind to perceptions that are usually inaccessible. While they have great power, they should also be respected. Yes, there may have been excessive use and misuse of it in the 1960s and 70s, but that is also the period that produced some of the greatest social and creative breakthroughs we take for granted today: things like civil rights, women's liberation and music legends. It is good to step back once in a while and take in the big picture.

Huxley experienced the ability of a psycho-active drug to take its user to much more expanded and profound levels of consciousness, levels rich with possibility, long before the social activism of the 1960s. And yet, his book most likely influenced the willingness of that generation to experiment with such substances, a generation that demanded change as a result of its shared vision and experience.

I was surprised to note as I was preparing this review that this copy, which is at least 30 years old, was printed on 100% recycled paper. This was long before it became fashionable for the publishing industry to be "green" and "earth friendly". Again, this book was ahead of its time. The pages of my copy of this classic are thoroughly yellowed. Unfortunately, at that time recycled paper was not also available as acid-free, so the pages have weathered with time.

Moonstone Star White is the author of High Way from Hell: Using Emotion to Fan the Fire of Enlightment.