A classic psychedelic text that I have wanted to read ever since learning it is where "The Doors" came up with their name.

It can be fairly dry, and academic at times, but throughout are some incredible moments of insight and philosophy. A few moments diverge to talk far too long about art, or religion. Just when you start to tune out, Huxley will drop a bomb on you (like one of the following quotes as example, to bring you back and make you think.

Here were some of my favorites that I had to read multiple times to appreciate.

"My actual experience had been, was still, of an indefinite duration or alternatively of a perpetual present made up of one continually changing apocalypse."

"When we feel ourselves to be sole heirs of the universe, when "the sea flows in our veins...and the stars are our jewels," when all things are perceived as infinite and holy, what motive can we have for covetousness or self-assertion, for the pursuit of power or the drearier forms of pleasure?”

""The schizophrenic is like a man permanently under the influence of mescalin, and therefore unable to shut off the experience of a reality which he is not holy enough to live with, which he cannot explain away because it is the most stubborn of primary facts, and which, because it never permits him to look at the world with merely human eyes, scares him into interpreting its unremitting strangeness, its burning intensity of significance, as the manifestations of human or even cosmic malevolence"

"But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend." ( )

Nën ndikimin e meskalinës, aftësia e tij për të kujtuar dhe "gjykuar drejt" zbehet pak, syri rimerr diç nga pafajësia perceptuese e fëmijërisë, interesi për hapësirën bie, ndërsa interesi për kohën shkon drejt zeros. Kauzat për të cilat do të ishte i gatshëm të vuante, në kushte normale, tani i duken jo interesante. Huxley tregon se gjatë këtij eksperimenti percepton përjetësinë në një lule, pafundësinë në katër këmbë karrigeje dhe absoluten në palosjen e një palë pantallonash fanellatë. Meskalina e kishte çliruar nga bota e vet, e kohës, e gjykimeve morale dhe vlerësimeve utilitare, e fjalëve të mbivlerësuara dhe pikëpamjeve të dyzuara. Gjatë kësaj kohe Huxley çohet të vizitojë depon farmaceutike më të madhe në botë dhe gjendet përballë pikturave, librave, veprave muzikore më të famshme për të cilat ai shpreh kritikat, admirimin dhe vizionin e tij. Kjo është dëshira për t'u arratisur nga vetvetja dhe nga mjedisi përreth që i çon njerëzit qetësisht drejt përdorimit të narkotikëve bimorë apo haluçinogjenëve. Në fund të librit autori kthehet përmes derës së perceptimit. Por ai nuk është më i njëjti njeri.

“The effective object of worship is the bottle and the sole religious experience is that state of uninhibited and belligerent euphoria which follows the ingestion of the third cocktail.”

To put it bluntly, The Doors of Perception is a first-hand account of Brave New World author Aldous Huxley's documented experience of tripping balls on mescaline. I've always found it telling how high schools (at least in the eighties and nineties when I attended) would eagerly lead students through an anti-drug perspective of Brave New world without bothering to mention Huxley's later experimentation and promotion of hallucinogenics as positive tool towards psychological and philosophical growth.

The Doors of Perception is probably one of the most scholarly and grounded first-hand accounts of a hallucinogenic journey you'll ever read, as Huxley takes periodic breaks to expound upon drugs (not all, mind you) as a tool to aid in understanding the perceptions of those suffering from metal illnesses and seeing how the "genius" sees the world, as well as the religious connotations in and human necessity towards chemically aided transcendence.

Huxley would later experiment with LSD and continue to support the clinical and societal benefits of hallucinogenics, and would receive injections of LSD on his deathbed at his request. This book is an a must read for anyone interested in the scholarly pursuit of better living through chemistry, or the history of the modern approach and examination of such drugs. ( )

And... I'm done with this author. His non-fiction is less interesting than is fiction. Who would have thought that a book about one's personal experience with drug use could be so boring? I can't believe that members of The Doors found this drivel so intriguing that they would use part of the book title for the name of the band. What a serious time waster! ( )

Absolutely profound. The most intellectual and yet simultaneously immanent account of altered perception I've ever read. The first piece of gonzo journalism. He captures the way empathy and love are the means through which we conduct our doomed quest to assuage the inescapable solitude of life. The revival of Bergson that forms the backbone of this piece insists on an understanding of the mind that, if accepted, is transformative, bursting with the potential for new ways of life, and disturbing. I find his meditations on art reassuring; perhaps my philistine disinclination towards art and preference for the art of being itself is not so philistine after all. ( )