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Aldous Huxley: The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell (Paperback, 1960, Penguin Books) 5 stars

The Doors of Perception is an autobiographical book written by Aldous Huxley. Published in 1954, …

From the french window I walked out under a kind of pergola covered in part by a climbing rose tree, in part by laths, one inch wide with half an inch of space between them. The sun was shining and the shadows of the laths made a zebra-like pattern on the ground and across the seat and back of a garden chair, which was standing at this end of the pergola. That chair — shall I ever forget it? Where the shadows fell on the canvas upholstery, stripes of a deep but glowing indigo alternated with stripes of an incandescence so intensely bright that it was hard to believe that they could be made of anything but blue fire. For what seemed an immensely long time I gazed without knowing, even without wishing to know, what it was that confronted me. At any other time I would have seen a chair barred with alternate light and shade. To-day the percept had swallowed up the concept. I was so completely absorbed in looking, so thunderstruck by what I actually saw, that I could not be aware of anything else. Garden furniture, laths, sunlight, shadow - these were no more than names and notions, mere verbalizations, for utilitarian or scientific purposes, after the event. The event was this succession of azure furnace-doors separated by gulfs of unfathomable gentian. It was inexpressibly wonderful, wonderful to the point, almost, of being terrifying.

The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell by  (Page 44 - 45)

Huxley, Aldous, ‘The Doors of Perception’, The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, Penguin Books, 1960, p44/45