Psychedelics: Vintage Minis

by Aldous Huxley

Could drugs offer a new way of seeing the world? In 1953, in the presence of an investigator, Aldous Huxley took four-tenths of a gramme of mescalin, sat down and waited to see what would happen. When he opened his eyes everything, from the flowers in a vase to the creases in his trousers, was transformed. His account of his experience, and his vision for all that psychedelics could offer to mankind, has influenced writers, artists and thinkers around the world.The unabridged text of The Doors of Perception by Aldous HuxleyVINTAGE GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us humanAlso in the Vintage Minis by John CheeverSwimming by Roger DeakinEating by Nigella LawsonDesire by Haruki Murakami

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Essays, Classics, Science, Philosophy, Drugs

69 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 8, 2017

About the author

Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.
Huxley was a pacifist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism, as well as universalism, addressing these subjects in his works such as The Perennial Philosophy (1945), which illustrates commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticism, and The Doors of Perception (1954), which interprets his own psychedelic experience with mescaline. In his most famous novel Brave New World (1932) and his final novel Island (1962), he presented his visions of dystopia and utopia, respectively.

Reviews

[Matthew Ted]

Thankfully I wasn't fooled. I thought (hoped) this would include more ideas from Huxley about drugs but, alas, that is not the case. This is simply The Doors of Perception essay, but for some bizarre reason, sold with a different title. I almost bought it before realising.

[Mark Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The unabridged text of Huxley's masterpiece The Doors of Perception. Wonderful little read this.

Huxley acts as guinea pig for research into the psychedelic drug mescalin.

Some of his experiences:

1.)  For the first time he understood clearly the following concepts: 1.) The Beatific Vision (Catholic supreme happiness through seeing God in heaven), and 2.) Sat Chit Ananda  (Being-Awareness-Bliss, a Hindu philisophy of limitless conscious existence).

2.)  Visual impressions were greatly intensified. The mind became concerned not with measures and locations, but with being and meaning. Flowers and objects became sacred, almost supernatural in transcedental otherness.

3.) Mescalin is akin to the 'heavenly' symptoms of schizophrenia.

4.)  It created an indifference towards time - an indefinite duration and of 'one perpetual present'.

5.) It penetrated his subconscious - revealing an unfathomable and overwhelming sense of self, dissociating body and mind.

6.) His intellect remained unimpaired, and a higher truth was obtained - that our ordinary world is full of meaningless self-assertion, over-valued words and cock-sureness: all utterly trivial and completely pointless. Mescalin is generally peaceful and enlightening. Alcohol is destructive and limiting. Which one is legal again?

7.) Mescalin heightens the intensity of colours, making the percipient aware of innumerable finer shades undetectable by the naked human eye.

Definitely recommend!

[Sangeeta K · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that is profound without tipping over into clichéd. I wasn't sure of what to expect from Huxley, who wrote a very pivotal book still used in Media Practice studies, Brave New World. I expected a bigot spewing bigotry - and he writes as though he is - but this book is eye-opening. The perpetual shift of ideology that marks Huxley's first tryst with Mescalin bring to him a sort of intellectual magnanimity. He describes this as 'opening the Door in the Wall', as we often, resulting of our own arrogance, tend to create brick walls around our mind. The Doors of Perception has inspired artists like The Beatles and even The Doors, the namesake band of the book. This, along with Huxley's gripping yet light (to me, light) text makes me want to grab my own copy, too. Read it if you are a verbalist looking for a challenge of thought or someone just curious about the effects of drugs on humans and their study.

[Suad Shamma · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting read, as Aldous Huxley takes us on his 8 hour long journey of basically being high on four-tenths of a gram of mescalin. Some parts were boring - for me - since, really, he's just high and looking at things from a child's perspective, such as the crease of his pants or the legs of his bamboo chairs. For the most part though, I found it fascinating and enlightening.

I especially liked the fact that he neither encouraged nor dissuaded against the use of recreational drugs. He did not take a side, he simply documented his supervised use and what taking substance - occasionally - can do to the mind and the self.

[Lana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically Huxley is tripping on mescaline and writing about everything he sees and feels. Some parts are kinda slow or overly detailed, but others are weirdly beautiful and made me stop and think. Overall, it’s a chill, thoughtful read if you’re into that kind of experience.

[Alex :P · Rating 5 out of 5]

extremni vibe a hezky napsany absolutely loved ts

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had been aware of Huxley’s The Doors of Perception for a long time without any particular desire to read it. When I happened upon this cheap version, I picked it up out of interest, not expecting very much.

I was greatly impressed that it wasn’t the tiresome “artist takes chemicals then waxes intellectual about it interminably” kind of thing that came after this landmark piece.

Huxley makes a reasonable case that life and survival force mental filters on us and that responsible, supervised use of substances may temporarily break down these filters for enlightenment and escapism.

Having had a profound experience with mescalin, he is neither an evangelist for nor opponent of chemical use in this essay. He acknowledges all the dangers, both physical and psychological, of drug use, but also suggests there can be better and safer forms of chemical recreation than alcohol and tobacco.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super quick read.
I really enjoyed this short piece and is an interesting work on psychedelics. You can see how Huxley influenced the 1960s counter cultural movement and has made me excited to pick up Brave New World.

[Jelmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

over psychedelica lezen is altijd fijn

[Satyaki Dutta · Rating 3 out of 5]

The world as seen by the author after a dosage of mescalin. How clouds parted for him. It might be a little difficult to appreciate it completely without having mescalin in your system too.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite satisfying to get a perspective on psychedelic experience from an intellectual mind rather than from a completely 'new age spiritual kind' that tends to be more common these days.
A legendary piece regarding timing and influence on popular culture. (The Doors band actually taking the name of their band from the original essay called "The Doors of Perception")

Essentially Huxley is bringing our attention to how we constantly use symbols to interpret the world around us, yet how easily we can get lost within them -for symbols being representational code for the subject, not the subject itself. Thus we are constantly being restricted by a filter of symbols and models while observing the world - the most common of them being the human language itself. While transcendent experience being a gateway of getting out of the maze of our everyday perception - and in this mentioned piece the author tries to attain it through a dose of mescalin.

Some of the things regarding the description of visual form I did not actually find that surprising. The author refers to different everyday objects as seen through a new prism after having the dose - referring either to shape, color or form of them. This is actually quite common way to approach drawing or painting in general - to look and to see and then, ironically - break it down into symbolic marks on paper or canvas.
The same applies for just pure observation - with out trying to find symbols with in language to interpret, judge or describe the subject. It is a masterful task - to maintain the transcendence of the matter with out loosing it in translation.
Linguistics is a tool at hand to analyse work or problems at hand, but quite frequently it is counter productive to use, for it being a distraction to the process of observation itself.

The book also offers excellent pieces of reference from fine art to classic literature. Tons of things to research later on. Also seeing the actual references of the author during the psychedelic experience definitely gives the essay a more intimate outlook to jump into the shoes of the other... or should I say - open the door in the wall - that leads to the perception of an experience of a fellow man. Long may you run, Huxley! Loved the piece! Thanks!

[Giulia Yoko Galbarini · Rating 4 out of 5]

The urge to transcend self-conscious selfhood is a principal appetite of the soul.

[Dane Cobain · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay, so here’s why I’m upset about this one. I was super excited to read this because I’ve historically been a fan of Huxley’s, but then it turned out to literally just be the unabridged text of The Doors of Perception. Yeah, I’ve already read that multiple times. It just felt like a cop out. Disappointing stuff.

[Irene Founti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being someone that has had some psychedelic experiences, this book has truly put into words things I have felt and could not explain.

"... I had returned to that reassuring but profoundly unsatisfactory state known as 'being in one's right mind'..."

[Argho Sinha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only if someone gave this man DMT!!

[Willa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like psychedelic trips are one of those things that’s profound to you, but not anyone else. Kind of like going travelling to “find ourself” and everything feels really profound — and it is! But like… only to you haha. And all the things you’re discovering aren’t as new as you thought… that’s kind of what the first part of the book read like to me. If you don’t have experience with psychedelics and want to know what it’s like a bit before trying yourself/have reservations, this will give you a snapshot of the reality of it.

The latter half of the book was much better! I loved how he talked about human suffering and how things like tobacco, marijuana, alcohol, hash, opium, etc have been normalized in different parts of the world as vices to soothe said suffering and how prohibition historically never works; he used this as a sort springboard for advocacy for psychedelics as being a better choice for policy focus. “The only reasonable policy is to open other, better doors in hope of inducing men and women to exchange their old bad habits for new and less harmful ones.” This is super interesting to have been written in the 80’s. 40 years later and in some ways, we’ve socially decriminalized heroin and fentanyl more than we have opened the doors for psychic transformation and integration via psychedelics… not to mention, social media is probably one of the biggest escapisms from suffering that keeps us away from that kind of inner work.

I also liked his emphasis on the value of imagery and symbolism and how we miss a lot of information by prioritizing verbalizable tangible concepts over the former. Reading this in conjunction with some jungian analysis books really highlighted how true this is. “In a world where education is predominantly verbal, highly educated people find it all but impossible to pay serious attention to anything but words and notions.” He talks about how this is a barrier for psychedelics finding their place in society (where does it fit in to our existing systems? Not religion, not neurology). I find this interesting because the field of psychology and psychotherapy is really into psychedelics these days and sometimes it fits but other times I have a hard time imagining how something so deeply spiritual fits into a regulated profession. I personally think people may be better off exploring this realm outside f a healthcare professional’s guidance and then perhaps coming to therapy to unpack after. I would hate to see psychedelics legalized but only accessible under the “permission” of a healthcare professional or with the need for a pathology/diagnosis (like marijuana was when it became government managed).

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

A re-packaged copy of The Doors of Perception (unabridged), this is Huxley’s exploration of mescaline and its effects from…well, firsthand experience. Famously inspiring bands like The Beatles and The Doors, it feels like talking to your friend that got just a little too high at the party and is being pretentious, but in a lovable way. It’s a little insufferable at times, but by and large it offered decent insight into the mind of someone on psychedelics. I was interested by his argument that alcohol and tobacco are less eco-friendly due to how much agricultural space they take up in comparison to peyote — I went down a rabbit hole mentally wondering about access to these non-essential vices when climate change has flooded many of our coasts and people are forced to move inland.

I’d recommend this to those interested in works about substance use and personal perspectives.

[Jelena · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very disappointing. Perhaps retrospective look at Huxley’s experiences from today’s standpoint is unfair.

He hopes to open the doors of his mind at large with mescalin, yet fails to observe that his mind is closed when entering this experience, within the realm of notions, culture and beliefs one holds true. Then perceives this experience as ego-less, where it comes across as severely ego-centric.

He builds an argument for mescaline, upon what he believes is ethical and best in “superior” societies and cristianity, and fluffs it up with selected features of other cultures and mysticism. Not to mention the white man’s snobbism, by especially forseeing benefit in intellectuals, artists, writers… And women, out 4-5 times being mentioned in 60 pages, 3 times were described as either brainless, girlish or mad. Pity that mescaline couldn’t disclose to him his own incapability to perceive women in different light, or fathom female experiences on mescaline.

In brief, the book was probably extremely brave when Huxley wrote it, but today falls short. Psychedelics does not survive the test of time, in my opinion.

[Hubert RvR · Rating 4 out of 5]

Huxley manages to exhaustively report on his personal supervised 0.4g mescaline-taking session (from early 1953) that opens up a discussion on what it really means to transcend the everyday perception of one's life. He convincingly justifies that, quite naturally on occasion, any human brain needs to lose the shackles of brain distractor blockers to gain a deeper, richer lense into life and its meaning. He goes even further suggesting that proliferation of mescaline adoption would help resolve severe issues that societies are facing because of overuse of alcohol and more harmful drugs than e.g. mescaline. He states that humans cannot just refrain from substances that allow them to pass "the Doors of perception", which actually makes them more self-realized human beings.

An interesting read indeed.

[Charlotte Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

*** A quick heads up: This book is the unabridged text of Aldous Huxley’s ‘The Doors of Perception’***

“Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be.”

This is a mind blowing piece of literature. It is more than just an account of Huxley’s experience, it’s a deeply inspiring plea for mindfulness and a beautifully written account of how we as human beings can open our minds and feel at one with the universe.

[Elyas · Rating 3 out of 5]

تجربه‌ی آلدوس هوکسلی از مصرفِ مسکالین(نوعی ماده‌ی مخدر طبیعی)
اوایلِ کتاب تجربه‌های ادراکی ناشی از مصرف این ماده رو روایت می‌کنه، این بخش از کتاب رو من خوب متوجه نشدم، نمی‌دونم که عیب از ترجمه‌ بود یا سختیِ مطلب یا به‌احتمال زیاد ترکیبِ هر دو عامل.
نیمه‌ی دومِ کتاب رو راحت‌تر فهمیدم. اینجا هوکسلی سعی می‌کنه به سوالاتی از این دست جواب بده که:
«ریشه‌ی علاقه به مواد مخدر چیه؟»
«چرا علی‌رغم آگاهی از ضررهای مواد مخدر، الکل و سیگار از اون‌ها استفاده می‌کنیم؟»
«دراگِ ایده‌آل چه دراگیه؟» :))

[Marika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interessant die psychedelische Mescalinerfahrung von einem wortgewandtem Intellektuellen zu lesen.
Erinnert an ein Ayahuascaerlebnis, von daher nachvollziehbar (weniger die Farben als die Erkenntnis, die Welt zu verstehen)

[Lieke Norder · Rating 4 out of 5]

But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out.

[But_i_thought_ · Rating 4 out of 5]

In "Brave New World", Aldous Huxley famously explored the idea of a drug called soma to facilitate social equilibrium. In this Vintage Mini, extracted in full from "The Doors of Perception", he describes his one-time experience of taking the drug mescaline (a psychedelic cactus-derived agent traditionally used in Native American sacred ceremonies) as a means of contemplating the riddles of the universe.

While on his mescaline high, the author notices objects with the perceptual innocence of a child. A vase of flowers becomes "a bundle of minute, unique particulars in which, by some unspeakable and yet self-evident paradox, was to be seen the divine source of all existence."

Next he marvels at the miracle of his bamboo chair:

"I spent several minutes – or was it several centuries? – not merely gazing at those bamboo legs, but actually being them – or rather being myself in them; or, to be still more accurate (for "I" was not involved in the case, nor in a certain sense were "they"), being my Not-self in the Not-self which was the chair."

Huxley describes this state, which lasted roughly 8 hours, as a complete sense of egolessness, an experience of time abundance in a "perpetual present", and a sense of "being-awareness-bliss", released from the throttling embrace of his brain.

This book was no doubt highly influential in the 1960s. On a more philosophical level, however, it is an invitation, to artists, writers and thinkers, to see our accepted notions of reality as just the tip of the iceberg. Huxley argues against the current tyranny of the world of logic and abstractions, and calls for the development of a sort of non-verbal Humanities (the art of being directly aware of inner and outer realities) and a return to a new kind of sensorial nakedness.

This provocative, fascinating read pairs well with the non-linear, mind-bending fiction of Haruki Murakami!

Mood: Eye-opening
Rating: 9/10

Also on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BYfiGZ_Hd...

[Hestia Istiviani · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read in English but this review is in Indonesia

From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universe

Sekali lagi, Vintage Minis menjadi sebuah jembatan yang apik untuk pembaca awam yang ingin mencicipi terlebih dahulu tulisan dari penulis besar. Tidak terkecuali tulisan Aldous Huxley dalam serial Vintage Minis. Diambil dari The Doors of Perception, Huxley lebih banyak bertutur mengenai bagaimana pengaruh zat kimia terhadap kinerja biologis tubuh. Dari efek-efek sampingnya hingga kemungkinan-kemungkinan lain jika zat kimia tersebut ditambahkan atau dikurangi dari tubuh manusia.

Namun, Huxley tidak berhenti pada hal itu. Huxley juga menyinggung sedikit tentang pendidikan dan rasa-rasanya masih saja relevan untuk didudukkan dalam konteks di zaman sekarang.

In a world where education is predominantly verbal, highly educated people find it all but impossible to pay serious attention to anything but words and notions.

[Samantha Doughty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have you ever been at a party and got stuck in a conversation with your hyper-intelligent but undeniably super high friend?
That's what the first half of this book felt like to me. Honestly, on retrospect, why did I expect any different?

It was fascinating hearing the experiences of being on mescalin described so vividly, but the tone of preachy enlightened high person really grated on me. Perhaps I'm ruined by past personal experience but who the heck knows, it bugged me.

This was still a really interesting read. I preferred the style, pace and overall content of the second half of this a lot more. I found the insights into human nature and the need for transcendence really poignant. The whole second half resonated a lot more positively with me than the first.

This is my third vintage mini (the first being Murakami on Desire, second Xiaolu Guo on Language) and I will definitely be reading more.

[Cătălin · Rating 4 out of 5]

For someone who wrote Brave New World, Huxley really, I mean really, enjoys being high.

An hour later, with ten more miles and the visit to the World's Biggest Drug Store safely behind us, we were back at home, and I had returned to that reassuring but profoundly unsatisfactory state known as "being in one's right mind."

[Fernando Bajo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great piece and great portrait of how drugs were perceived among the intelligentsia of the early XX century. Includes some great pearls of wisdom about consciousness and perspective and the need to expand those to reach greater stages of civilisation and compassion. Enjoyable.

[Sean Finn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ramblings of a high person.

[Istiningdyah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wrap up review