The Doors of Perception (1954) [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

The Doors of Perception (1954) [pdf]

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105 pointssturza33 comments

"I am and, for as long as I can remember, I have always been a poor visualizer. Words, even the pregnant words of poets, do not evoke pictures in my mind. No hypnagogic visions greet me on the verge of sleep. When I recall something, the memory does not present itself to me as a vividly seen event or object. By an effort of the will, I can evoke a not very vivid image of what happened yesterday afternoon, of how the Lungarno used to look before the bridges were destroyed, of the Bayswater Road when the only buses were green and tiny and drawn by aged horses at three and a half miles an hour. But such images have little substance and absolutely no autonomous life of their own. They stand to real, perceived objects in the same relation as Homer's ghosts stood to the men of flesh and blood, who came to visit them in the shades. Only when I have a high temperature do my mental images come to independent life. To those in whom the faculty of visualization is strong my inner world must seem curiously drab, limited and uninteresting. This was the world - a poor thing but my own - which I expected to see transformed into something completely unlike itself"

I couldn't comprehend the meaning of "pregnant words of poets". Can someone explain this to a non-native english speaker?

Poets pack a lot of meaning / emotion into their words — you could think of them as “full” of the stuff that makes up life, like a pregnant woman is more literally filled with another life.

Probably the most common use of this meaning for "pregnant" in English is a "pregnant pause"; which are the points during speech where you pause for effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_timing#Pregnant_pause

(Although I've also heard it used for pauses outside of comedy)

There are apparently two independent derivations of the word "pregnant" (though the roots may join), confusingly, both adjectives. Other than "with child", there is:

"convincing, weighty, pithy," late 14c., "cogent, convincing, compelling" (of evidence, an argument, etc.); sense of "full of meaning" is from c. 1400. According to OED from Old French preignant, present participle of preindre "press, squeeze, stamp, crush," from earlier priembre, from Latin premere "to press, hold fast, cover, crowd, compress" (from PIE root per- (4) "to strike").*

https://www.etymonline.com/word/pregnant

(TIL, for those who'd suspect otherwise. I'm quite a fan of etymology, and Etymology Online in particular.)

I think it has multiple intended meanings. They give life to others. They also carry ideas which implant themselves into others' minds.

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.”

- William Blake

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour

Please watch the movie Dead Man with Jonny Depp.

I had never heard of this movie, but it looks great. Thanks for the suggestion!

If you're in London you can buy the book (comes with Heaven and Hell) for £4 at the Old Spitalfields Market. Tell the guy "the one in the yellow jacket sent me".

I will be in London next month. What exactly should I expect the sales person to say when I tell them who sent me. Sounds covert. :)

He will be prompted to say something along the lines of "sorry feller, I don't know who you mean". This will mark the completion of his assignment as it was intended. What is expected from you as the participant will be to nod along and move on, after completing the monetary transaction, of course. This way he will know that you have completed your part too. Otherwise there is a chance to set off a sequence of events that may be most full of misfortune for anyone involved.

Nothing. You are supposed to just go home and lick the pages.

A civilised person will know to lick the fingers instead as they touch to turn the pages.

Relatedly, I just finished reading How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan, which does a great job of detailing the fascinating history of psychedelics and the current very promising resurgence of scientific research. It also does as good a job as one can expect at actually explaining what they are like, including descriptions of his own personal trips.

After reading the book, I wouldn't be surprised to see legal clinics open to the public in the US in the next 10-15 years.

Sam Harris does quite an impressive job articulating what a recent 5 gram mushroom trip was like, worth a listen.

https://bullhorn.fm/makingsensewithsamharris-subsc/posts/177...

Thanks for the recommendation! I just listened to the entire podcast, very interesting and exciting stuff.

Brings back memories of the college days... not a single care in the world but expanding horizons.

It's never too late to re-expand them :)

The Doors (the band) got their name from this book's title.

Yes, I'd seen this claim once before. The original quote was "There are things known, and things unknown, and in between are the Doors", yet a quick search led to this explanation: "QI hypothesizes that this quotation was streamlined and then the words were reassigned to more prominent figures such as Jim Morrison, Aldous Huxley and William Blake" on https://quoteinvestigator.com/tag/the-doors.

[2011] Aldous Huxley, Dying of Cancer, Left This World Tripping on LSD (1963)

http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/aldous_huxleys_lsd_death_...

As an aside: The Doors (the band), in addition to being named after the book and having a classically-trained pianist, basically delved into a different genre with each album. The Electra label also had their albums put on early CDs in 1980/1981 made in West Germany.

I always thought this book pretty dull. Different topic, but if you want to read Huxley, Brave new world is great. Alternatively if you want to read about the experiences of early psychedelic users, Leary's psychedelic experience is better.

Amazing read so far, very gripping! (Page 5)

Yeap. I read it in high school many moons ago. I should probably read it again, before and after dropping acid, just to understand the context. With each year and season of our lives, we see the world through different, hopefully wiser yet still youthfully-enthusiastic, eyes.

Was expanded to perfection by Douglas Adams with the bird.

What is the copyright status of this?

Learned something new:

> In some other countries, including Canada, copyright term is life plus 50 years, and in those countries C.S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley, Robert Frost, Jean Cocteau, and the famous poet Sylvia Path, who all died in 1963, enter the public domain in 2014.

https://klminc.com/intellectual-property/peter-rabbit-loses-...

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