Back
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, …

Systematic reasoning is something we could not, as a species or as individuals, possibly do without. But neither, if we are to remain sane, can we possibly do without direct perception, the more unsystematic the better, of the inner and outer worlds into which we have been born. This given reality is an infinite which passes all understanding and yet admits of being directly and in some sort totally apprehended. It is a transcendence belonging to another order than the human, and yet it may be present to us as a felt immanence, an experienced participation. 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. Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be. Unhappily we make the task exceedingly difficult for ourselves. Meanwhile, however, there are gratuitous graces

The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell by  (Page 63 - 64)

Huxley, Aldous, ‘The Doors of Perception’, The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, Penguin Books, 1960, p63/64