Jun 15, 2015 08:34 PM
(This post was last modified: Jun 15, 2015 08:36 PM by Magical Realist.)
"As anyone familiar with Brave New World will know, Huxley's most famous novel also shows the influence of drugs. The citizens of the future are nearly all hopped up on Soma, a powerful hallucinogen that allows "a holiday" from reality, imparts a tremendous feeling of well-being, softens up the mind and poisons the body. In the climactic scene in the book, when John the Savage rebels against Fordist society, his anger is concentrated on Soma, which has come to symbolise all that is rotten in this future-state.
It's fascinating to re-read this earlier book in the light of The Doors Of Perception – especially since, in it, Huxley frequently suggests that Soma is very similar to mescaline in its effects. Back in the 1930s, he even described mescaline as a worse poison than Soma, rendering poor Linda vomitous and even dumber than usual.
Clearly, in the 22 years between the publication of the two books Huxley revised his opinions about the drug. By the time he finally sampled mescaline he was convinced it would offer him insight rather than the distraction from reality offered by Soma. As The Doors Of Perception demonstrates the drug exceeded his expectations. Huxley was to remain a dedicated psychonaut for the rest of his life.
On Christmas Eve 1955, he took his first dose of LSD, an experience he was to repeat often and he claimed allowed him to plumb even greater depths than mescaline. The literary culmination of this self-medication can be seen in Island, the 1962 novel, which can be viewed as an answer to Brave New World. It describes a utopia rather than a dystopia, and this time around drugs perform an entirely beneficial function, providing serenity and understanding. They are as the book puts it, "medicine".
Ironically, Pala, Huxley's utopia sounds even worse than the alternative future Huxley describes in Brave New World. The Palanese are crashing bores. They are the kind of people who (in one of the most inadvertently hilarious passages I've read) think it's OK to rewrite the climax of Oedipus Rex with a lecture from some Palanese children, who inform the luckless mother-lover that he is being "silly" and ought to follow their philosophy rather than tear his eyes out … But never mind that. Although it is awful in many regards, Island still holds the charm of Huxley's cultured prose and fertile mind. The knowledge that he wrote the book shortly after his first wife died from cancer and he himself had received a terminal diagnosis also adds real poignancy to the book's many passages about coping with disease. One of his ideas is that tripping may ease the passage into that good night – advice he famously took on 22 November 1963 when he asked his wife second wife Laura Huxley to give him LSD. "Light and free you let go, darling; forward and up," she whispered to him as he drifted away. "You are going forward and up; you are going toward the light."
We'll never know how Huxley's final trip went, but we do know that his psychedelic experiments had a remarkable afterlife. (Psychedelic, incidentally, was a word Huxley helped coin along with Humphry Osmond. Huxley can lay considerable claim to kick-starting the 1960s revolution in the head. It wasn't just the fact that The Doors Of Perception was so influential. He was also personally instrumental in introducing luminaries like Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary to the possibilities of psychedelic experimentation (as described in the early pages of Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain's Acid Dreams, the definitive story of the way LSD swept through America in the 1960s – thanks to the many contributors Reading group who recommended that).
It's safe to say that Huxley changed the world. Without him there might have been no turn on, tune in, drop out, no Merry Pranksters, no Sergeant Pepper, no Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, no Focus.
I scoffed when I read JG Ballard's introduction to my edition of The Doors Of Perception and he said that the book was "even more prophetic" than Brave New World (and also, incidentally, that Brave New World is more prophetic than Orwell's 1984). As this Reading group month draws to a close, I can see that – as usual – Ballard was quite right. The book didn't just point the way to the future (or one potential version of it), it changed it. The big question now is whether it has opened any doors for you? Has Huxley changed your view of mescaline and/or reality? And are you tempted to follow in his footsteps?"====http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/ja...ding-group
It's fascinating to re-read this earlier book in the light of The Doors Of Perception – especially since, in it, Huxley frequently suggests that Soma is very similar to mescaline in its effects. Back in the 1930s, he even described mescaline as a worse poison than Soma, rendering poor Linda vomitous and even dumber than usual.
Clearly, in the 22 years between the publication of the two books Huxley revised his opinions about the drug. By the time he finally sampled mescaline he was convinced it would offer him insight rather than the distraction from reality offered by Soma. As The Doors Of Perception demonstrates the drug exceeded his expectations. Huxley was to remain a dedicated psychonaut for the rest of his life.
On Christmas Eve 1955, he took his first dose of LSD, an experience he was to repeat often and he claimed allowed him to plumb even greater depths than mescaline. The literary culmination of this self-medication can be seen in Island, the 1962 novel, which can be viewed as an answer to Brave New World. It describes a utopia rather than a dystopia, and this time around drugs perform an entirely beneficial function, providing serenity and understanding. They are as the book puts it, "medicine".
Ironically, Pala, Huxley's utopia sounds even worse than the alternative future Huxley describes in Brave New World. The Palanese are crashing bores. They are the kind of people who (in one of the most inadvertently hilarious passages I've read) think it's OK to rewrite the climax of Oedipus Rex with a lecture from some Palanese children, who inform the luckless mother-lover that he is being "silly" and ought to follow their philosophy rather than tear his eyes out … But never mind that. Although it is awful in many regards, Island still holds the charm of Huxley's cultured prose and fertile mind. The knowledge that he wrote the book shortly after his first wife died from cancer and he himself had received a terminal diagnosis also adds real poignancy to the book's many passages about coping with disease. One of his ideas is that tripping may ease the passage into that good night – advice he famously took on 22 November 1963 when he asked his wife second wife Laura Huxley to give him LSD. "Light and free you let go, darling; forward and up," she whispered to him as he drifted away. "You are going forward and up; you are going toward the light."
We'll never know how Huxley's final trip went, but we do know that his psychedelic experiments had a remarkable afterlife. (Psychedelic, incidentally, was a word Huxley helped coin along with Humphry Osmond. Huxley can lay considerable claim to kick-starting the 1960s revolution in the head. It wasn't just the fact that The Doors Of Perception was so influential. He was also personally instrumental in introducing luminaries like Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary to the possibilities of psychedelic experimentation (as described in the early pages of Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain's Acid Dreams, the definitive story of the way LSD swept through America in the 1960s – thanks to the many contributors Reading group who recommended that).
It's safe to say that Huxley changed the world. Without him there might have been no turn on, tune in, drop out, no Merry Pranksters, no Sergeant Pepper, no Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, no Focus.
I scoffed when I read JG Ballard's introduction to my edition of The Doors Of Perception and he said that the book was "even more prophetic" than Brave New World (and also, incidentally, that Brave New World is more prophetic than Orwell's 1984). As this Reading group month draws to a close, I can see that – as usual – Ballard was quite right. The book didn't just point the way to the future (or one potential version of it), it changed it. The big question now is whether it has opened any doors for you? Has Huxley changed your view of mescaline and/or reality? And are you tempted to follow in his footsteps?"====http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/ja...ding-group