thoughts and quotations from Huxley, A. 1954, "Doors of perception."

Huxley, A. 1954, "Doors of perception." Chatto & Windus ltd, Great Britain.

Aldous huxleys account of his experience using peyotl/mescaline and the effect on consciousness and perception. 

Is peyotl a source of releasing ones conscious, the pharmacology suggests similarities between it and adrenalin, also supposing a possible link with schizophrenia as a chemical disorder, Chemical disorder due to psychological distress affecting the adrenals.

Are all psychological disorders similarly chemical based? Depression could be a chemical imbalance hence  the use of reuptake  serotonin inhibitors. Adrenochrome and serotonin both naturally occurring chemicals. Is consciousness merely chemical? I hope not! 

"We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, in communicable......" Huxley, A. 1954. Pp3.

I myself have felt this urge and unhappiness at the impossibility at transcending the limitations of the physical, I deeply wish to break out of myself, the isolation of being trapped inside my mind causes suffering to the extent that I have to rely on two different antidepressants. Which in itself helps but also mutes me. 

Istigkeit "isness" the being of platonic philosophy. Except that Plato seperating being from becoming. 

"Roses iris... Signified nothing more nothing less than what they were- a transience that was yet eternal life, a perpetual perishing that was at the same time pure being, a bundle of minute particles, unique particulaurs in which, by some unspeakable and self evident paradox was to be seen the divine source of all existence." Pp8

Beatific vision

Sat chit ananda 

Being awareness bliss

Braque and juan Gris

Still life. 

C d broad quote. Pp11

When you paint or carve drapery, you are painting or carving forms which for all practical purposes, are non-representational - the kind of of unconditioned forms on which artists even in the most naturalistic tradition like to let themselves go."Continues.

Pp18

Reflections on drapery page 17 to 21

"For the artist as for the mescaline taker, draperies are living hieroglyphs that stand in some perculiaur expressive way for the u fathomable mystery of pure being.

In reference to Judith's skirt(Botticelli) 

And his flannel trousers, 

"Enough to delight generation after generation of beholders, enough to make them understand at least a little of the true significance of what in our pathetic imbecility we call "mere things" and disregard in favour of television."

(Raphael notes.)

"These are the things one should look at. Things without pretentions, satisfied to be merely themselves, sufficient in their suchness, not acting a part, not trying, insanely to go it alone, in isolation of the dharma body, in luciferian defiance of the grace of God."

Vermeer, artist

On reflection of what was seen when Huxley closed his eyes " and as I looked, it became very clear that this five and ten cent ship was in some way connected with human pretentions. This suffocating interior of a dime store ship was my own personal self; these gimcrack mobiles of tin and plastic were my personal contributions to the universe." 

Pp29 

"What it had allowed me to perceive, inside, was not the dharma body in images, but my own mind; not archetypal suchness, but a set of symbols- in other words, a home made substitute of suchness.

Page 31 reflection on landscape painting. Tao, Buddhist, zen. 

Christian as portrait

Seurat landscape but adiantum on being of the system not poetry. 

Blake and constable drawing response. 

Is focusing on the inner or subconscious limiting. By observing the outward world can a sense of whole and suchness be revealed? Page 32.

Where do the observations come from? 

In my work, do I focus on the inner self? Does the art work function as a documentation of a process of interaction of the physical. Is it better directly observe the world and respond (life drawings) iis the literal non-pretence of mark making without subject matter a form of my own physical reaction to the environment/nature/reality. By recording things such as date, time location express that experience? 

This increases my interest in duration, labour and enviromental effects. For example. If you were to make a series of works, using the same formula, like in 35 000 events but done in various locations or over certain time frames, one drawing every hour in a day have recognisable effect? Also a further version, by not using formula but instead using a freer form of painting but using similar enviromental effects like largely different locations the decisions made within those varying places would cause varying results? 

Page 43, discussing restrictions on the natural bounty of concioussness altering pharmacology, only alcohol and tabbacco unrestricted. 

"The urge to escape from selfhood and the enviroment is in almost everyone almost all the time."

Links;

The ordinary

George perec exhausting a place.