Stop and smell the roses...and stare at a chair

I really enjoyed Huxley's two essays. I thought they were very interested and were easier reading than what we've been doing. Although it was easier reading, the content was very thought provoking. 

The first thing that became obvious to me in The Doors of Perception was that during his experience on mescalin, Huxley said space and time ceased to matter, which was mostly what I remember from our last class discussion. We talked a lot about the present, and how that's all there would be without space and time. The more I think about altered states of consciousness, space and time seem to be key markers in noting what an ASC is and whether you're in one. This concept of space helps me understand, especially as a bartender, why drunk people lose control of their motor skills. The more they drink, the further into the altered state they get and the less concerned they are with staying seated on their barstool. Consequently, I'm much less concerned with serving them more alcohol. Similarly, a characteristic of smoking marijuana is that people don't do anything while they are high. A friend of mine says she can't smoke while she is taking classes because she won't get anything done. Perhaps this is because in the altered state, time doesn't matter, so we take time to stare at a chair and respect its beauty. I guess I always knew the side effects of drugs but never questioned why they were that way. 

I also found it fascinating when Huxley said that language is both beneficial and harmful, that we are both the beneficiary and the victim of it. Again, I only ever viewed language as beneficial (if I ever even really thought about it--it's always been there) and never realized language can be restraining as well. As Huxley says we are "the victim in so far as it confirms in him the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things." So words aren't things, they only represent things. The only reason a chair is a chair is because we agree to call a chair a chair. I think what Huxley is suggesting is that as children, before we learn to speak or have a large vocabulary, our minds are extraordinary, experiencing many different worlds and many adventures. But as we learn a language, we learn that "reality" is this certain state of consciousness, which Huxley calls reduced awareness, and all the other realities we've experience, like the world where we have "imaginary" friends, don't really exist. Perhaps as children, we actually know more than we do as educated adults. 

I don't know why but when I'm reading I always instinctively compare things with religion. Perhaps it's because I am choosing not to define my religion and am constantly exploring things, but I am always thinking of Bible stories and how this is so similar to that in religion. When Huxley began explaining human relations and himself as a "Not-self", I thought of the story of creation, of Adam and Eve, and the garden. Huxley says, "This participation in the manifest glory of things left no room, so to speak, for the ordinary, the necessary concerns of human existence, above all for concerns involving persons." This made such an impression on Huxley that he should be able to experience this altered state while at the same time care for others in the room with him, but he could not. Maybe before Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, they were in the ultimate altered state where you experienced the joy of human interaction and the bliss of timelessness and spacelessness. See, everything comes back to Adam and Eve screwing everything up for the rest of us!

One question I thought of during the reading was if we actually have a need for altered states? Not for drugs, but for the actual altered state. Do we need to experience an ASC to fill a need we don't even know we have? Can we only be truly content if we have experienced an ASC? 

Back on the religion track, Huxley argues that Christianity and alcohol mix as well as drinking and driving. This made me think of a friend in high school who was a very Christian boy, but he drank a lot. I asked him once why he did that. "Keith," I said, "You are such a Christian, it's not funny. You're saving yourself for marriage and everything. But you drink. Doesn't that go against what you believe?"

His response was so simple, but so undeniable that I often think of it when I'm pondering religion. He said, "Alli, Jesus drank wine." And that was that.

Now I think of it and I wonder if Jesus drank wine to reach an altered state where he could talk to God. Perhaps Jesus could only hear God when in an altered state. I don't think it makes it any less real. So what if Christianity were to re-embrace alcohol? (I say re-embrace it, because many churches did and some still do use wine in Communion.) Maybe it would make the whole personal relationship with Jesus more attainable. 

In Heaven and Hell, I think Huxley's strongest point is that there is still so much we don't know about the brain. He says, "Like the earth of a hundred years ago, our mind still has its darkest Africas, its unmapped Borneos and Amazonian basins." I know from watching Grey's Anatomy an House that the brain is the least understood and most important organ in our body. It controls the rest of our body, our emotions, and our thoughts. Everything we do, our brain controls. If someone can't feel their legs, check the brain. But scientists and doctors are constantly finding out new information about our brain. We only know a relatively little bit about the powers of our brain, so we can't scientifically rule out even the craziest of hypotheses. 

I also like how he compares the brain to Australia and kangaroos. He says, "All he can do is to go to the mental equivalent of Australia and look around him." I think what Huxley is saying has been embraced by Nike in their famous slogan, "Just do it." Huxley is saying to just try it. Go to an altered state of consciousness and see what you're brain is up to. Look in the corners and the shadows. What's the worst thing that could happen? Enlightenment? Just do it...why not?

When Huxley is describing elements of old churches and synagogues and religious art, like stained glass windows and shiny metals and polished stone and bright shiny glass, I realized that many churches do not include any of these traits. For example, I think of the sanctuary of the church I grew up in. It has little windows along the side, which let in little light, horrid green carpet and even worse goldish-yellow (gold without the metallic aspect) covered pews. The shiniest thing in the entire sanctuary is the baby grand piano. The cross at the very front is even dull. I think it's either made out of wood or it could be just a dull metal. Then I thought of how Jehovah's witness churches have no windows at all. I just think this is weird that religions used to include certain traits that induced ASCs in their architecture and art, but they don't as much anymore.

My last point also has to do with religion...go figure. When Huxley talks about how singing actually deprives increases the concentration of CO2 in our lungs and blood, which then affects our brain, I couldn't help but wonder if the worship part of church, singing "for God", isn't actually to bestow our praise onto Him, but for the singers to actually reach a religious high that is purely biological.