Home · Book Reports · 2017 · The Doors of Perception
- Author :: Aldous Huxley
- Publication Year :: 1954
- Read Date :: 2017-04-11
- Source :: The_Doors_Of_Perception_- Aldous_Huxley.pdf
designates my notes. / designates important.
Thoughts
If you are aware of the Huxley’s involvement with eugenics generally and Aldous’ involvement with the creation of the 1960’s counter-culture specifically then everything that comes out of this psychopaths mouth should be extremely suspect. For more information than I could possibly provide on the subject, check out gnosticmedia.com and tragedyandhope.com.
After personally trying mescaline and other psychedelic substances, on quite numerous occasions, I can see how they put the imbiber into a state of hyper-suggestibility. Couple this with mass media and you have a recipe for disaster. These substances were likely used through all time as a means of social control - from the mystery schools to the Aztecs to Madison Ave.
pdf page numbers
page 2:
- 1 See the following papers: “Schizophrenia. A New Approach.” By Humphry Osmond and John Smythies. Journal of Mental Science. Vol. XCVIII. April, 1952. “On Being Mad.” By Humphry Osmond. Saskarchewan Psychiatric Services Journal. Vol. I. No. 2. September. 1952. “The Mescalin Phenomena.” By John Smythies. The British Journal of the Philosophy of Science. Vol. III. February, 1953. “Schizophrenia: A New Approach.” By Abeam Hoffer, Humphry Osmond and John Smythies. journal of Mental Science. Vol. C. No. 418. January, 1954.
page 3:
- The mind is its own place, and the Places inhabited by the insane and the exceptionally gifted are so different from the places where ordinary men and women live, that there is little or no common ground of memory to serve as a basis for understanding or fellow feeling. Words are uttered, but fail to enlighten.
page 4:
- From what I had read of the mescalin experience I was convinced in advance that the drug would admit me, at least for a few hours, into the kind of inner world described by Blake and AE.
page 6:
- Reflecting on my experience, I find myself agreeing with the eminent Cambridge philosopher, Dr. C. D. Broad, “that we should do well to consider much more seriously than we have hitherto been inclined to do the type of theory which Bergson put forward in connection with memory and sense perception. The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful.”
page 7:
- Though the intellect remains unimpaired and though perception is enormously improved, the will suffers a profound change for the worse. The mescalin taker sees no reason for doing anything in particular and finds most of the causes for which, at ordinary times, he was prepared to act and suffer, profoundly uninteresting. He can’t be bothered with them, for the good reason that he has better things to think about.
page 10:
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What is important is less the reason for the experience than the experience itself.
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But in that case what about other people? What about human relations? In the recording of that morning’s conversations I find the question constantly repeated, “What about human relations?" How could one reconcile this timeless bliss of seeing as one ought to see with the temporal duties of doing what one ought to do and feeling as one ought to feel? “One ought to be able,” I said, “to see these trousers as infinitely important and human beings as still more infinitely important.” One ought-but in practice it seemed to be impossible.
page 11:
- Successfully (whatever that may mean) or unsuccessfully, we all overact the part of our favorite character in fiction.
page 13:
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The sum of evil, Pascal remarked, would be much diminished if men could only learn to sit quietly in their rooms.
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Contemplatives are not likely to become gamblers, or procurers, or drunkards; they do not as a rule preach intolerance, or make war; do not find it necessary to rob, swindle or grind the faces of the poor.
page 19:
- 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.
page 23:
- Gestalt psychologists, such as Samuel Renshaw