Lo primero, disculparme porque la colección de frases seleccionadas está en inglés, pero es que en este idioma es como accedí a esta obra maestra de la literatura escrita por uno de mis autores favoritos, el británico Aldous Huxley. En este psicodélico libro se narran las experiencias del escritor con el consumo de mescalina, el principio activo y principal responsable de los efectos alucinógenos del cactus Peyote. Esta extraordinaria experiencia transporta a Huxley a un mundo desconocido, pero que siente como muy propio, ya que, según él, forma parte de todo ser humano, pero no lo sabe ya que nunca tiene acceso a esa parte de su ser. Huxley defiende que con el uso de esta droga se abrirán las puertas de la conciencia, y así podremos llegar a las antípodas de nuestro consciente, y ser testigos de un nuevo mundo que se esconde en nuestro cerebro, mundo que se nutre de las percepciones de otra manera inconscientes, las cuales se mezclan con nuestra experiencia normal. De indispensable y apasionante lectura, para reflexionar sobre lo que es nuestra identidad, nuestro yo, lo que es un ser humano. Mi selección de frases:
* Adrenochorme, that is a product of decomposition of adrenaline, can produce many of the symptoms observed in mescalin intoxication.
* Adrenochorme, that is a product of decomposition of adrenaline, can produce many of the symptoms observed in mescalin intoxication.
* The really important facts were that spatial relationships had ceased to
matter very much, and that my mind was perceiving the world in terms of other
than spatial categories.
* Visual impressions are
greatly intensified and the eye recovers some of the perceptual innocence of
the childhood.
* When the brain runs out of sugar, the undernourished ego grows weak.
* What the rest of us see only under the effects of mescalin, the artist
is congenitally equipped to see all the time.
* I realized that I was
deliberately avoiding the eye of those who were with me in the room.
* Vermeer is undoubtedly the greatest painter of human still lives.
* Was odd, of course, to
feel that “I” was no the same as these arms and legs “out there”.
* The percept had swallowed up the concept.
* If you started in the
wrong way, every that happened would be a proof of the conspiracy against you.
* But the man who comes
back the door in the wall will never be the same as the man who went out.
* And if you go to the antipodes of the self-concious mind, you will
encounter all sorts of creatures at least as odd as kangaroos.
* We entry in certain classes of mental events that are normally excluded,
because they posses no survival value.
* For a second or two, the
whole world appears to be a place of glory.
* The raw material for the
creations of the visions is provided by the visual experiences of the ordinary
life.
* The work of a very differentiated mental compartment, without any
apparent connexion, emotional or volitional, with the aims, interests, or
feelings of the person concerned.
* The transporting power of many works of art is attributable to the fact
that their creators have painted of they know, consciously or unconsciously,
about the Other World at the back of theirs mind.
* …now in the Ashmolean museum at Oxford.
* The negative experience
may be induced by purely psicological means.
* The abstinence provokes visionary experiences by the reduction of
vitamins in the brain.
