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Mind at Large – Aldous Huxley
Mind at Large is a concept detailed in “The Doors of Perception” and “Heaven and Hell”, written by Aldous Huxley, who experimented with psychedelic drugs extensively throughout his life. On one particular occasion, Huxley was administered mescaline and had an interviewer prompt him to make comments on various stimuli around him. These comments were recorded, and “The Doors of Perception” consists primarily of Huxley’s thoughts on what he said during these recordings.
In the book, Huxley explores the idea that the human mind filters reality ‒ partly because handling the details of all of the impressions and images coming in would be unbearable, partly because it has been taught to do so. He believes that psychotropic drugs can partly remove this filter, leaving the drug user exposed to Mind at Large. Huxley also observes that during a psychedelic experience everyday objects lose their functionality and suddenly simply exist “as such”. Space and dimension become irrelevant, and perceptions seem to be enlarged, and at times even overwhelming.
The following excerpts come from Aldous Huxley’s “The Doors of Perception”:
“Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the Universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful. According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large.”
“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.’”
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Source: http://philosophers-stone.co.uk/wordpress/2014/09/mind-at-large-aldous-huxley/
