The critically acclaimed novelist and social critic Aldous Huxley, describes his personal experimentation with the drug mescaline and explores the nature of visionary experience. The title of this classic comes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."
1 of 1 copy available
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
June 10, 2009 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780792758815
- File size: 65365 KB
- Duration: 02:16:10
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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In his later years as a British novelist living in California, Aldous Huxley became involved in several dubious enterprises and quack cures. His experimentation with drugs led to the treatise THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION, here read by his sometime collaborator Rudolph Schirmer, a musician. Huxley interpreted his mescaline trip in terms of spiritual awareness and religious mysticism. Maybe he was still high while writing because some passages seem like gobbledygook. In a hybrid British-American accent, Schirmer does his best to phrase and cadence the text for clarity. His approach is clinically dry and professorial, a tone that serves to dispel any sensationalism and to imbue the author's mystical speculations with an air of science that they may or may not deserve. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine
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