Finished reading Doors of Perception from Aldous Huxley. Packs a lot to absorb in such a small amount of words, loved reading it. For me, this bit at the end sums it up well. "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 in the form of partial and fleeting realizations." The final nail to sum this up is the following, which also holds true to reading really good book. "the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend."
Posted on: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 21:53:49 +0000