Books : The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 615.32347
EAN: 9780060900076
ISBN: 0060900075
Label: Perennial
Manufacturer: Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 192
Publication Date: 1990-07
Publisher: Perennial
Sales Rank: 360228
Studio: Perennial
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Product Description:
As only he can, Aldous Huxley explores 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 this century.
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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Rating:  -
you don't need to take psychedelics to realize their importance in this world, especially when you have this book to tell the story from the mind of an intelligent writer...
aldous, like all psychedelic virigns, went into the experience of taking a psychedelic with his own ideas of what it would bring...in some ways he was right, in other ways he could never have predicted such wonderful things...
doors of perception is basically a campfire story about a man's journey on mescaline (found in peyote) translated into basic english...he does a fine job of explaining the unexplainable and keeps you interested all throughout the book....my favorite part is how he describes being under the influence as the loss of survival mode....this is spot on and it is the same idea as ego death....there are plants on this earth that can kill you ego for a few hours so you can finally see the world from untainted eyes....finally a chair is just a chair...a tree is just a tree....the ground connects to your feet and to the tree and to the air and back again (reminds me of i am the walrus "i am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together")
if you are not going to take a psychedelic you could at least read this book!
Rating: -
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." ... 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 ... Read More
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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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