Huxley: The Doors of Perception/Heaven and Hell

At the beginning I liked how Huxley explains all about the chemical breakdown of Mescaline and it's research. I mean, I guess when your high on drugs you can achieve an altered state of consciousness but not all drugs give you the same effect; so it was relevant for him to go in detail about what you feel under this drug. Huxley goes on to talk about his first effects on the drug (which weren't so successful at the beginning). He was waiting to reach this other "Universe" and experience the unknown. Little did he know that he was getting into. I really enjoyed the part when he was at home and realized that he was looking at the bouquet of flowers on the table with a different light. He saw colors and textures beyond what he'd ever seen. Without words and brilliant was when he noticed the chair and desk as a composition like no other. He probably passed this chair and desk a million times and never understood it this way. He didn't see this composition as just his furniture but as someone who is only concerned with "forms and their relationship within the field of vision or the picture space".(22) He spent several minutes contemplating this piece of furniture, it's texture, color and space and not for it's actuality of being but because HE was the being this piece of furniture.

When the investigator asked numerous times about how long did he (Huxley) think this altered state was for, Huxley responded, "My actual experience had been, was still, of an indefinite duration or alternatively of a perpectual present made up of one continually changing apocalypse." (21) This is some wild quote, I mean i know it may sound like everyone who has done some kind of hallucinogens can say this because they are high on the drug but really "one continually changing apocalypse" (21); it's like he is saying that no space and time and "Universe" as we may know it would or could compare with this feeling and realization.

Huxley also touches on the topic of how "man" has made a language and domesticated society to the extend that we are separated or a "victim" of our own man made linguistic tradition making our experiences those of others and vice versa and thus forth only allowing ourselves to be "reduced" in awareness of what is reality. He goes on to say that along with all the majority of mescalin tested, usually everyone experiences the same effects, intensified visuals and no sense of time as if you were in a long vacation and didn't care whether it was night or day. Huxley continues, " In some cases there may be extra-sensory perceptions. Other persons discover a world of visionary beauty. To others again is revealed the glory, the given, unconceptualized event." (26) I can say that maybe, yes there's some known related effects under mescalin but for those to whom it affects in different ways can be translated as what you could have taken for granted; the little things can mean so much.

On another note, I was really interested by the differences between visionary experiences and ordinary dreams. I didn't know that we can't see color in dreams or some partial color. All this time I was under the influence that I could see colors just fine. Huxley quotes Professor Calvi Hall, " Only one dream in three is colored, or has some color in it."(89) Only a few people dream entirely in color. Looking back into my dreams I don't remember if I am a partial color dreamer or all black or white.