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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 615.7883
EAN num: 9780060595180
ISBN number: 0060595183
Label: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 192
Printing Date: May 01, 2004
Publishing house: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Release Date: May 04, 2004
Sale Popularity Level: 5872
Studio: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
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Two classic complete books -- The Doors of Perception (originally published in 1954) and Heaven and Hell (originally published in 1956) -- in which Aldous Huxley, author of the bestselling Brave New World, explores, as only he can, the mind's remote frontiers and the unmapped areas of human consciousness. These two astounding essays are among the most profound studies of the effects of mind-expanding drugs written in the twentieth century. These two books became essential for the counterculture during the 1960s and influenced a generation's perception of life.
Amazon.com Review:
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 and wrote about it some 10 or 12 years earlier than those others. The book he came up with is part bemused essay and part mystical treatise--'suchness' is everywhere to be found while under the influence. This is a good example of essay writing, journal keeping, and the value of controversy--always--in one's work.
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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 very 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 ... Read More
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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.
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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!
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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?
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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 yesterday 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.
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