List Price: $13.99Amazon.com's Price: $10.07 You Save: $3.92 (28%)as of 11/22/2009 23:06 EST
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping.
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 100
EAN: 9780061729072
ISBN: 0061729078
Label: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 208
Publication Date: August 01, 2009
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Release Date: July 28, 2009
Studio: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Features:
Related Items:
Alternate Versions: Click to Display
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com Review:
Sometimes a writer has to revisit the classics, and here we find that "gonzo journalism"--gutsy first-person accounts wherein the author is part of the story--didn't originate with Hunter S. Thompson or Tom Wolfe. Aldous Huxley took some mescaline and wrote about it some 10 or 12 years earlier than those others. The book he came up with is part bemused essay and part mystical treatise--"suchness" is everywhere to be found while under the influence. This is a good example of essay writing, journal keeping, and the value of controversy--always--in one's work.
Product Description:
Half an hour after swallowing the drug I became aware of a slow dance of golden lights . . .
Among the most profound explorations of the effects of mind-expanding drugs ever written, here are two complete classic books—The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell—in which Aldous Huxley, author of the bestselling Brave New World, reveals the mind's remote frontiers and the unmapped areas of human consciousness. This new edition also features an additional essay, "Drugs That Shape Men's Minds," which is now included for the first time.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
I have read the contents several times. I think this book should be read understanding that the author was encountering something fairly new and devoid of a complicated modern culture (unlike we have now). This is well written, but at time drags on with detail that perhaps needs some shared perspective to appreciate.
This is NOT a how-to book or a guide. It is an example of personal experiences.
Rating: -
A classic for decades, I recommend this to anyone interested in the effects of psychedelics. Not only is Doors of Perception included in this book, but also Heaven and Hell, and other Huxley essays.
Rating:  -
From /Wikipedia
"Following his education at Balliol, Huxley was financially indebted to his father and had to earn a living. He taught French for a year at Eton, where Eric Blair (later known by the pen name George Orwell) and Stephen Runciman were among his pupils, but was remembered by another as an incompetent and hopeless teacher who couldn't keep discipline. Nevertheless, Blair and others were impressed by his use of words."
Although "By the end of his life Huxley was considered, in some academic circles, a leader of modern thought and an intellectual of the highest rank," after taking a quick overall look at his life, I feel he was a limp sort of intellectual full of himself, his words, and his thoughts. I perceived this in the off topic ramblings and flowery prose that is interspersed between a few valid insights in "The Doors of Perception".
"Heaven and Hell" has even fewer and weaker insights. (I swear if he referred to the "antipodes of the mind" or "preternatural light" one more time I would've screamed.)
He was apparently born into a rich, privileged family and in fact he doesn't seem much different than the current generation of bored, aimless, youth that have everything handed to them and so turn to drugs as an antidote to their meaningless, apathetic existences.
I also don't think he lived long enough to gain perspective on the pros vs. cons of using "mind altering" drugs. And as with other drug deluded personalities clung to his artificially induced enlightenment above all else.
A much more modern look at psychedelic drugs and their overall effects on the body, mind, and spirit is documented in Jost Sauer's "Higher and Higher". A fascinating and compelling drug use odyssey.
One of the main problems with using drugs is that the user looses his ability to glean pleasure and joy from the mundane because he has tasted an artificial pleasure and so always yearns for that level of pleasure. I imagine it is hard to find that level of pleasure without the substance. Better to never have tasted it and to learn to find comparable levels of joy, peace and contentment in the world as it is.
Drugs are so like a mirage. The pleasure they bring is artificial and drains away as soon as the effects wear off. Wereas if a person learns to find joy and the profound in simple, utterly simple, everyday things there is no need for drugs. THIS IS A LEARNED THING, you learn it as you go through life and once you do drugs you stop learning this and go straight for the drug instead.
Rating: -
Our understanding of psychedelics is a reaction. We call it a drug and classify it as illegal. As humanity we slowly develop and take a very long time to be free from our old conditions while creating new ones.
Aldous Huxley is sharing, from his own experience, a way to understand these chemicals and the potential they hold as magnifying glass to the conditioned reality of self center and the truth of total union and realization.
I recommend this book to any one who feels courageous enough to take a step aside from the old taboo and travel.
Rating: -
One of the most articulate descriptions of the 'psychedelic' experience, (which is notoriously difficult to describe). I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in this subject.
|
