Huxley

"I am and, for as long as I can remember, I have always been a poor visualizer. Words, even the pregnant words of poets, do not evoke pictures in my mind."

I cannot put my finger on this Aldous Huxley. I have had arguments with friends over Brave New World, and whether it should be a deemed classic fiction. Um... I find this work by him much more relieving. It seems that his writing in non-fiction, although a bit preachy at times, is his stronger medium.

This is the first book we've read that actually follows someone's journey through a drug experiment. Having had some prior knowledge on the subject (from other assigned readings) I found it interesting that his taking mescalin was to see. He had no other reason for taking it. I think for the most part he and his friend were just looking to have a good time. There was no experiment except for, "I'm going to take this drug, and then we'll see what happens."

Is-ness

He even says that the changes the drug makes are not revolutionary. He never mentions Shamanism is his book. I like this because he touches upon some of its principles without even realizing he's done so. For instance, he talks about the pulsing life in a vase of flowers.

Huxley's great change was what had happened to his world of "objective fact." The drug also made him some what reclusive. He mentions not making eye contact with his friend and his wife because he was not interested in their world at that moment. They belonged to "the world of selves, of time, of moral judgements, utilitarian considerations, the world of self-assertion, of cocksureness, of over valued words and idolatrousy worshiped notions." I think this idea is explored in Crack in the Cosmic Egg when Peirce talks about children and autistic thinking.

Heaven and Hell caught me off guard. I took the title literally at first, and thought how is this going to relate to what we're learning at the moment? I was pleasantly surprised. The two books go hand in hand. Huxley mentions his heightened sense of seeing color after taking the pill. He calls the ability of humans to see color a luxury.

I had seen a Felini (sp?) film in a class a few years ago in which he recreated dreams. All of the dreams were in black and white, and I was a bit confused when my professor said that most people dream in black and white. I don't believe this. For so many years we've been having dreams, but nobody I've ever spoken to has said anything about black and white dreams. I never said anything. I never thought I had them, and I'm still convinced I don't. But this is the second time I've been told this fact, and now I don't know what I think about it.

I really enjoyed Huxley's human island analogy. I gather he was a bit of a curmudgeon, but his cynical approach to human interaction was interesting. "By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude." What I find so interesting about it is I don't think a lot of people realize the truth in this statement. Some people spend all their time committing themselves to people, and remain unhappy and insecure. Bukowski wrote something about this as well. The line was something like, "Beware of the person who constantly needs a crowd. When they're alone, they are nothing." Someone put a band-aid on that aching truth. Again, this thought has traces of Shamanism to it. The self.