The doors or perception..Heaven & Hell

I thought i was interesting that taking mescalin in small does changes the quality of consciousness in a profound way, and it is NOT as toxic as most drugs. It has an affect on the central nervous system and affects the relationship between the brain and consciousness.
I LOVED the quote, "the martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse thier insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain" this gives me such a sad feeling. Huxley uses it in describing how we are overall actually all by ourselves, even though we feel like we are with others. It makes me think about my own perception of reality. He continues on about how communication between 'universes' is pretty much nonexsistent. The minds of the insane and gifted are so unique compared to normal men and women. He poses the question, "How can the sane get to know what it feels like to be mad?"

I needed to know what some words meant:
mesomorphy means of, relating to, or existing in a state of matter intermediate between liquid and crystal.
somatotonia: is defined as the temperamental trait associated with a mesomorphic somatotype, characterized by an active, aggressive, and risk-taking approach to life.

These both relate by means of there is an inside to expierence as well as an outside.

I liked the authors description of his mescalin expierence. He thought he was going to have a crazy episode and see all sorts of things. He actually only saw more vivid colors and speace ceased to matter to him. It is interesting that to humans, we percieve things in terms of intensity of exsistence, significance, and patterns. Suddenyl, space meant little to Huxley. He was concerned simply with being and meaning.

The author states on page 23 that "every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the lingusitic tradition into which he has been born" this brings me to think about the whole "nature versus nurture" argument.

The use of mescalin causes: the ability to remember is mostly reduced, visual impressions are intensified, intrest in space is diminished, the intellect is intact, but perception is improved, the will diminishes, and 'better things' may be expierenced 'out there' and 'in there'.

"the elegantly composed recipe in lieu of actual dinner", a great analogy for the way someone thinks while on mescalin.
I like how Huley says our minds still have the darkest Africa's, unmapped Borneo's and amazonian basins. We still have much to learn about the human mind. The zoologist analogy is creative.
A visionary is not seeing anything that reminds him of his past. He is looking for new things to be a creation. I think this is hard for some people to do this, because we are emotional and tend to relate things to our expierences.

Carbon dioxide and the stroboscopic lamp, causes the user to have certain physical and psycholoical changes. Some see swirls of colors, vivid recollection of past expierences.