"Aldous Huxley - The Doors Of Perception" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huxley Aldous)

not indeed the perception "of everything that is happening everywhere in the universe" (for the by-pass
does not abolish the reducing valve, which still excludes the total content of Mind at Large), but
something more than, and above ah something different from, the carefully selected utilitarian material
which our narrowed, individual minds regard as a complete, or at least sufficient, picture of reality.
The brain is provided with a number of enzyme systems which serve to co-ordinate its workings.
Some of these enzymes regulate the supply of glucose to the brain cells. Mescalin inhibits the production
of these enzymes and thus lowers the amount of glucose available to an organ that is in constant need of
sugar. When mescalin reduces the brain's normal ration of sugar what happens? Too few cases have
been observed, and therefore a comprehensive answer cannot yet be given. But what happens to the
majority of the few who have taken mescalin under supervision can be summarized as follows.
The ability to remember and to "think straight" is little if at all reduced. (Listening to the recordings
of my conversation under the influence of the drug, I cannot discover that I was then any stupider than I
am at ordinary times.)
Visual impressions are greatly intensified and the eye recovers some of the perceptual innocence of
childhood, when the sensum was not immediately and automatically subordinated to the concept.
Interest in space is diminished and interest in time falls almost to zero.
Though the intellect remains unimpaired and though perception is enormously improved, the will
suffers a profound change for the worse. The mescalin taker sees no reason for doing anything in
particular and finds most of the causes for which, at ordinary times, he was prepared to act and suffer,
profoundly uninteresting. He can't be bothered with them, for the good reason that he has better things
to think about.
These better things may be experienced (as I experienced them) "out there," or "in here," or in both
worlds, the inner and the outer, simultaneously or successively. That they are better seems to be self-
evident to all mescalin takers who come to the drug with a sound liver and an untroubled mind.
These effects of mescalin are the sort of effects you could expect to follow the administration of a
drug having the power to impair the efficiency of the cerebral reducing valve. When the brain runs out of
sugar, the undernourished ego grows weak, can't be bothered to undertake the necessary chores, and
loses all interest in those spatial and temporal relationships which mean so much to an organism bent on
getting on in the world. As Mind at Large seeps past the no longer watertight valve, all kinds of
biologically useless things start to happen. In some cases there may be extra-sensory perceptions. Other
persons discover a world of visionary beauty. To others again is revealed the glory, the infinite value and
meaningfulness of naked existence, of the given, unconceptualized event. In the final stage of egolessness
there is an "obscure knowledge" that All is in all - that All is actually each. This is as near, I take it, as a
finite mind can ever come to "perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe."
In this context, how significant is the enormous heightening, under mescalin, of the perception of
color! For certain animals it is biologically very important to be able to distinguish certain hues. But
beyond the limits of their utilitarian spectrum, most creatures are completely color blind. Bees, for
example, spend most of their time "deflowering the fresh virgins of the spring"; but, as Von Frisch has
shown, they can recognize only a very few colors. Man's highly developed color sense is a biological
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luxury - inestimably precious to him as an intellectual and spiritual being, but unnecessary to his survival
as an animal. To judge by the adjectives which Homer puts into their mouths, the heroes of the Trojan
War hardly excelled the bees in their capacity to distinguish colors. In this respect, at least, mankind's
advance has been prodigious.
Mescalin raises all colors to a higher power and makes the percipient aware of innumerable fine
shades of difference, to which, at ordinary times, he is completely blind. It would seem that, for Mind at
Large, the so-called secondary characters of things are primary. Unlike Locke, it evidently feels that
colors are more important, better worth attending to, than masses, positions and dimensions. Like
mescalin takers, many mystics perceive supernaturally brilliant colors, not only with the inward eye, but
even in the objective world around them. Similar reports are made by psychics and sensitives. There are