Huxley's Idea

The only problems I had (besides with the “divine/god” aspect) about Huxley’s ideas were dealing with humanity’s instinct to survive and what the problems of being on a continuous “trip?” But, he answers these problems at the end of his book, as follows:
“To be enlightened is to be aware, always, of total reality in its immanent otherness—to be aware of it and yet to remain in a condition to survive as an animal, to think and feel as a human being, to resort whenever expedient to systematic reasoning” (Huxley 78). This quote, towards the end of Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, sums up well all that he is trying to say. Reading it, I almost want to tell him, go take a vacation. Mescalin, alcohol, or whatever else you want to use take you on a vacation, a “trip,” from normal life, normal “systematic reasoning,” to a, hopefully, relaxed place of contemplation.

Huxley doesn’t want us to forego our normal everyday being, our instincts to survive, because after all if we were on a “trip” all the time we’d all eventually stop doing anything dealing with work or caring for survival. He says, “We can never dispense with language and the other symbol systems; for it is by means of them, and only by their means, that we have raised ourselves above the brutes, to the level of human beings” (Huxley 74). It is an interesting quote, since he has been talking more along the lines of things as “they are what they are.” Huxley is showing that it is only by our symbolic system that we have the ability to go on a “trip” and see things from a different perspective.

Huxley book, having answered my problems, now poses one question to me. Why do we need outside sources to reach this perceptive contemplation? Artists, as Huxley points out, have managed to do it without a stimulate such as mescaline or alcohol. It would seem a worthy life to pursue a heightened inward perception, as well as a safer way than using substances. Perhaps, if we desire to go on such a “trip” we should work towards opening our minds, instead of forcing it.