Yeah, I've read pretty much all of Huxley. Used to read a lot of Alan Watts as well. When a lot of my contemporaries were cavorting with Leary or playing flower child in the Haight was I was reading Island living on the beach in Bali and going to Barong ceremonies on mushrooms. <s>
>>>>>>Interesting.....
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/science/12psychedelics.html>>>>>
>>>>>I've been reading about this with great interest as I am a long-time believer that psychedelics and psychotropics were a missed opportunity. If you've never read "Politics of Experience" by R.D. Laing who used LSD to treat schizophrenics at a UK facility ( Kingsley Hall) I recommend it. Definitely a product of its time but fascinating nonetheless.
>>>>>
>>>>>Not everyone interested in psychedelics was a follower of Leary and Alpert. Huxley's "Doors of Perception" was seminal.
Yeah, I've read pretty much all Huxley. When a lot of my contemporaries were playing chemistry set with their heads in the Haight or cavorting with Timothy Leary I was reading Island on the beach in Bali and going to Barongs on mushrooms <s>
>>>>
>>>>You probably know The Doors took their name from that phrase, although they took it from William Blake, not Aldous Huxley. (Presumably, so did Huxley). "If the doors of perception were wiped clean they would reveal life as it is, infinite."
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>>>I've just wiped my door clean and all I can see is a clean door. Maybe he meant windows
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>>I always thought it should be doors *to* perception. And good acid was called "windowpane" (though i think it lead to some nasty copyright stuff with MS)
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>>I've mentioned it here before but is worth repeating that as Huxley was dying (the day JFK was shot) he had Laura shoot him up (yes, my understanding is it was in fact intravenous) with Sandoz' best.
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>100 hits, is what I heard. That number is probably a myth.
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>Have you read "The Perennial Philosophy"?
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>It's become something of a Holy Book for me.
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>>( analogously I remember in my youth saying I liked to be at least as high as the plane when I flew so if something went wrong I could get out and walk )
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
