Blog number six

The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell:

Immediately reading this book I found that the last paragraph on page 12 to be very insightful. “We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves… By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies –all these are private and, except through symbols at second hand, incommunicable.”
I really liked that because I often acknowledge the fact that a lot of times I am by myself and experience much on my own, to think about it deeper than that as Huxley puts it, down to yes, our thoughts feelings and insights are incommunicable for the most part, and sometimes when we try to reveal the things in our head to others, meanings or ideas get lost in the translation from one mind to another.

The concept of Mind at Large…
I definitely think it’s possible. Huxley quotes Cambridge Philosopher, Dr. C. D. Broad, “The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is 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.”

Huxley makes a good point in connecting this to survival, “Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet.”
I find this interesting because we know that we don’t use all of our brain. This provides a realistic explanation as to what happens. Plus, we definitely do disassociate ourselves with certain things of the past for survival. I think this kind of explains it.

Through mescalin Huxley had an inkling of what it is to be mad. Mescalin = Schizophrenia.
After a semester of hard core upper level undergraduate Psychology courses, I had my fare share of studying schizophrenia. The fact that this drug induces the “heavenly part of schizophrenia” seems intimidating to a degree. For starters that means, it’s not always a good experience for everyone, and two, schizophrenia includes: hallucinations- often auditory, delusions, disorganized speech, disorganized or catatonic behavior, and “Negative” symptoms (e.g., flat affect, alogia, avolition, anhedonia). So really, it’s really a use at your own risk kind of thing.

I really liked how Huxley stated, “Humanity at large will ever be able to dispense with Artificial Paradises seems very unlikely. Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul.”

Mescalin apparently may interfere with the enzyme system that regulates cerebral functioning. The theory is that by doing so, it lowers the efficiency of the brain as an instrument for focusing the mind on the problems of life on the surface of the planet. It also resembles the state of schizophrenia, which after hearing about in Psych class, sounds crappy.
The concept of antipodes was interesting… regions of the mind that can be reached with certain meditation, drugs, etc. It was the first time I heard the term.

I also never really noticed that my dreams are in black and white and that 2/3 of all dreams are in black and white. Few people ever dream in color and few never experience color in their dreams. It’s also concluded that color in dreams doesn’t say anything about the personality of the dreamer.