Book Review: "Doors of Perception" by Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley is probably best known for his controversial, but brilliant book Brave New World which in some ways, rivals George Orwell's 1984 in its depiction of dystopia. I have enjoyed other works by Aldous Huxley and I have to admit it, I've read Doors of Perception before. I just found a free copy of it and made the snap decision to give it a reread. I was always quite surprised by this book because it seems so different to the usual requests of Huxley's works. Instead of it being a probably future or a social commentary, this is an actual experience. This is an observation of a whole different kind. It is fantastic.

The author starts by describing and explaining his motivation for going under the drug 'mescaline' - a psychedelic, under the supervision of a doctor named Dr. Humphry Osmond. He wants to understand how psychedelic substances alter consciousness, particularly visual perception and the relationship between mind and reality. This might be something that the reader would find short, but if I could possibly make a recommendation of reading before the reading. Recently, I read a book called How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan which is all about the motivations for psychedelic research. Perhaps that book might be a good idea to understanding some background to the 'why'.

Our author then reports the first effects: everyday objects lose their practical identity and appear instead as pure shapes, colours, and forms. A simple chair or flower becomes a luminous, transcendent object. He becomes absorbed in looking rather than thinking. This is quite an interesting observation because he's doing it under the supervision of a doctor and yet, he seems to still be getting the full unfiltered experience. Another interesting thing is that he is 'looking' rather than 'thinking' which perhaps links to the ideas in How to Change Your Mind when Michael Pollan looks to the research claims that psychedelics can help people with mental health conditions and addictions. It can quite literally change their brains to make them think about it less.

Huxley sees that surfaces, draperies, and textures become intensely beautiful. He experiences the world as a series of revelations, objects radiate significance independent of use or symbolic meaning. Art becomes not representation but a mirror of visionary experience. I'm not going to lie, this sounds like lots of fun but of course, I'm not going to take psychedelics. For some reason, I'm sure that you could achieve this another way though I'm not sure any of the other ways could be so controlled (I've often heard of a 'suffocation high' in which people suffocate themselves to get high. Please do not do this at all).

Huxley also describes a softening of the sense of self. He feels no urge to judge, categorise, or organise; instead, he passively perceives. This ego-dissolution leads him to think that normal consciousness is narrow, utilitarian, and impoverished. I'm not going to lie, I could have told him this without the drugs. But I digress, there is something really fantastical and interesting about the way in which Huxley describes the experience because he acknowledges how much it changes him. Many people tend to forget experiences or they seem like they are skewed reports of what actually happened. Huxley does not do this - he acknowledges the change and also seems pretty surprised at himself from time to time.

He links the mescaline-induced state to descriptions by Christian mystics, Vedantic philosophers, and Sufi poets. He argues that visions of unity, radiance, and timelessness recur across cultures and may share neurological foundations. This is something that I found in How to Change Your Mind as well. In many books about psychedelics we often find them to be known as the foundations for mysticism, religion and these strange hallucinations of 'gods' that people have throughout the years. It doesn't sound that far-fetched when you realise how commonplace these natural psychedelics were back in these times but then again, it is a strange thing that is very consistently stated throughout psychedelic research. I've always been interested in how true that might be. Is all religion just based on a bunch of people who got high and imagined things?

Huxley admits that language is inadequate to describe the experience (it's also probably why the book itself is so short). He doesn't think there's enough you could say about it and yet, he doesn't go on and on about his own experience. He looks at artists like Vermeer, religious mysticism, and the way in which things change. Upon a second read, and after reading How to Change Your Mind, this book made a lot more sense. You can definitely draw parallels between the two.