Doors of Perception

by Aldous Huxley

English language

Published Feb. 11, 2004

ISBN:: 978-0-09-945820-3

(40 reviews)

The Doors of Perception is an autobiographical book written by Aldous Huxley. Published in 1954, it elaborates on his psychedelic experience under the influence of mescaline in May 1953. Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, ranging from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision", and reflects on their philosophical and psychological implications. In 1956, he published Heaven and Hell, another essay which elaborates these reflections further. The two works have since often been published together as one book; the title of both comes from William Blake's 1793 book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.The Doors of Perception provoked strong reactions for its evaluation of psychedelic drugs as facilitators of mystical insight with great potential benefits for science, art, and religion. While many found the argument compelling, others including writer Thomas Mann, Vedantic monk Swami Prabhavananda, philosopher Martin Buber and scholar Robert Charles Zaehner countered that the effects of mescaline are subjective …

18 editions

Lucie Rage-Reading reviewed The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell (Perennial Classics) by Aldous Huxley

Interesting insights

3 stars

An interesting extended essay on the relationship between pyschedelics and the spiritual or mystic, informed by Huxley's first hand experience of mescaline use. He documents in detail the progression of his experiences, the fascination with pattern and detail and bending of time and emotion, and used this to explain his perspective on how psychedelics could be used to enhance one's insight.

I haven't tried psychedelics but this does relate to something else that I experienced, so it's interesting to see Huxley's perspective on this and his active promotion of mescaline as a tool in this way. Obviously this book is old as hell now (and sometimes that is quite plainly apparent) so it's an avenue for which it's probably worth looking into more modern literature, esp as modern substances such as LSD etc weren't even created until decades later.

Eduardo Santiago reviewed The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell (Perennial Classics) by Aldous Huxley

Review of 'The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell (Perennial Classics)' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Surprisingly insightful for the time; much holds true today. I loved this:

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.

Surprisingly insightful for the time; much holds true today. I loved this:

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.