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"Doors of Perception" by Aldous Huxley

Pleonastic

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Sep 11, 2000
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Anyone read it? If not, I highly recomend reading it (online text here). Here are a couple of excerpts, the first one from the begining where he describes his experience with mescaline, and the second from his conclusion:
I took my pill at eleven. An hour and a half later, I was sitting in my study, looking intently at a small glass vase. The vase contained only three flowers - a full-blown Belie of Portugal rose, shell pink with a hint at every petal's base of a hotter, flamier hue; a large magenta and cream-colored carnation; and, pale purple at the end of its broken stalk, the bold heraldic blossom of an iris. Fortuitous and provisional, the little nosegay broke all the rules of traditional good taste. At breakfast that morning I had been struck by the lively dissonance of its colors. But that was no longer the point. I was not looking now at an unusual flower arrangement. I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation-the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.
"Is it agreeable?" somebody asked. (During this Part of the experiment, all conversations were recorded on a dictating machine, and it has been possible for me to refresh my memory of what was said.)
"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.
Ours is the age, among other things, of the automobile and of rocketing population. Alcohol is incompatible with safety on the roads, and its production, like that of tobacco, condemns to virtual sterility many millions of acres of the most fertile soil. The problems raised by alcohol and tobacco cannot, it goes without saying, be solved by prohibition. The universal and ever-present urge to self-transcendence is not to be abolished by slamming the currently popular Doors in the Wall. The only reasonable policy is to open other, better doors in the hope of inducing men and women to exchange their old bad habits for new and less harmful ones. Some of these other, better doors will be social and technological in nature, others religious or psychological, others dietetic, educational, athletic. But the need for frequent chemical vacations from intolerable selfhood and repulsive surroundings will undoubtedly remain. What is needed is a new drug which will relieve and console our suffering species without doing more harm in the long run than it does good in the short. Such a drug must be potent in minute doses and synthesizable. If it does not possess these qualities, its production, like that of wine, beer, spirits and tobacco will interfere with the raising of indispensable food and fibers. It must be less toxic than opium or cocaine, less likely to produce undesirable social consequences than alcohol or the barbiturates, less inimical to heart and lungs than the tars and nicotine of cigarettes. And, on the positive side, it should produce changes in consciousness more interesting, more intrinsically valuable than mere sedation or dreaminess, delusions of omnipotence or release from inhibition.
To most people, mescalin is almost completely innocuous. Unlike alcohol, it does not drive the taker into the kind of uninhibited action which results in brawls, crimes of violence and traffic accidents. A man under the influence of mescalin quietly minds his own business. Moreover, the business he minds is an experience of the most enlightening kind, which does not have to be paid for (and this is surely important) by a compensatory hangover. Of the long-range consequences of regular mescalin taking we know very little. The Indians who consume peyote buttons do not seem to be physically or morally degraded by the habit. However, the available evidence is still scarce and sketchy. Although obviously superior to cocaine, opium, alcohol and tobacco, mescalin is not yet the ideal drug. Along with the happily transfigured majority of mescalin takers there is a minority that finds in the drug only hell or purgatory. Moreover, for a drug that is to be used, like alcohol, for general consumption, its effects last for an inconveniently long time. But chemistry and physiology are capable nowadays of practically anything. If the psychologists and sociologists will define the ideal, the neurologists and pharmacologists can be relied upon to discover the means whereby that ideal can be realized or at least (for perhaps this kind of ideal can never, in the very nature of things, be fully realized) more nearly approached than in the wine-bibbing past, the whisky- drinking, marijuana-smoking and barbiturate-swallowing present.
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what an appropiate time to post pleo!
it's the big guys birthday(26/7) today
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Aldous Huxley was in many ways a man to be admired. He was shunned by his peers and ridiculed by the rest of the literary world.
He challenged fundamental principles of society at a time when people dared not suggest things like taking drugs to make your world more interesting. With the times of alcohol prohibition just past, Huxley advocated doing away with hotels and replacing them with mescaline houses. I think this is mentioned in Doors of Perception, written much later.
The popular 'Brave New World' was in many ways pure prophecy. Written in 1927, it depicted a world that Huxley imagined 500 years in the future. And yet many absolutely crazy concepts for that time have already eventuated. The word SOMA was invented by Huxley and referred to in this book. In fact, it is said ‘La Roach’ designed and marketed diazepam (valium) around the soma concept. Right idea - wrong drug!
Huxley had a habit of making up new words to describe the previously unconceived concepts he experienced while on mescaline and LSD. He tried to record his experiences by taping verbal descriptions of his perceptions while tripping. He would then interpret the results when he was straight.
Also worth reading is 'Heaven and Hell', published in '62 back to back with Doors of perception.
Aldous had a brother Sir Julian Huxley, a biologist, who supported Aldous and his works. Julian wrote and published 'Psychometabolism' which looks at mind expansion from the perspective of evolution. This is an interesting read as well. Check out ‘The Psychedelic Reader’, by Leary, Metzner and Weil, page 127.
Aldous Huxley’s writings influenced me more than Leary, Watts, Castaneda, and most others of their time - a great visionary.
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Woah, old thread! Always freaks me out when something I started 5 years ago floats to the top!

Definitely a good read though, and somehow the link isn't dead! I still have a flick through Doors of Perception every now and then. :)
 
"doors of perception" and "heaven and hell" are some classic drug litritture, as are the works of leary, castenada and McKenna. it is a good feeling to know there are people out there who read and appreciate work of this prestige.... my friends and peers would not know what the fuck i was talking about if said " food of the gods" of "a seperate reality"
 
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