Aldous Huxley's Deep Reflection | Hacker News Reader

Aldous Huxley's Deep Reflection

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

109 pointstorritest63 comments

This is an especially interesting read given that Huxley described his own apparent aphantasia - lack of mental visual imagery - in "The Doors of Perception":

    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, or 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.

Because of the lack of inner images (I thought everyone had this) in retrospect I was particularly drawn to exploring altered states of consciousness watching my mind in awe creating the utmost realistic scenes (lucid dreaming in REM sleep) or completely lose myself in ever complex imagery even on mild doses of psychedelics. So, I slowly learned to bypass my aphantasia by entering a trance state in a similar fashion as described here but through long meditations (>30mins).

Because I'm not distracted by mental images popping up, its only a function of slowly watching your thoughts pass by in complete blackness (normal for me). When talking to fellow meditators without aphantasia I feel it makes it easier for me (once I learned not to control those images) to enter those stages quicker and more reliably by taking a shortcut through the realm of visual blackness ;)

Since I don't know how it is to be able to conjure up mental images at will in the ordinary state of mind I tend to be more verbose and exact in describing my experiences to others who in turn can be more easily triggered by that - I suspect through the help of their mental images now popping up. I find it fascinating that I can literally evoke elaborate pictures in most people minds by just talking to them with attention to more detail (which I can only abstractly conceptualize).

Mental images in everyone are hazy and fuzzy and undetermined compared to what we perceive via sense perception.

I have doubts about the existence of aphantasia in the strict sense. While I can agree that different people indulge in greater or lesser day dreaming or imagination or pay greater or lesser attention to mental imagery or remember and recall images better or with greater precision than others, I don't think aphantasia as the total absence of images (where "image" is understood as a hazy sense impression) is real. I suspect that whose who claim to have this condition falsely believe that others have images that are of the same "resolution" and vividness of sense experience, but this is not the case, certainly not in most people.

That could be the case to a degree -- it's likely very hard to rule out simple miscommunication in general as a part of the equation here. But I have a friend who administered this test (to be spoken to its subject):

Close your eyes. Imagine a ball resting on a table. The ball begins to roll, quicker now, and it goes over the edge of the table. It bounces, once, twice, three times, and rolls along the floor, then comes to a stop again.

What color was the ball?

Did you have to make that detail up just now when I asked you, or was that what you saw?

This last question is the decider: a visual detail like that is very difficult to omit while _picturing_ the situation, but is very easy to leave out if your brain doesn't work that way. If you had to choose a color at the end, you may have the true "no picture at all" form of aphantasia, as opposed to just failing to understand that other people don't see a real, solid image.

I just tried this - even after reading your comment - and my ball was more of an empty space with no color, if that makes sense. So I can see how someone when picturing the scene can still “see” a ball and “see” it rolling, falling, and bouncing but since the prompt never asked about color they simply didn’t choose one and focused on the shape itself.

Exactly. I was more focused on visualizing accurate physics about the object. In that sense it was "vivid". Color simply didn't factor in since it wasn't in the prompt. I can, at this moment visualize complex scenes with color without much issue. Especially after looking up aphantasia more closely, I'm highly skeptical of this test. With that said, I do think I tend to think _without_ color for practical purposes--most of the time I'm just interested in the kinetics of things I'm working through. Otherwise I'm very apt to feel like things have colors about them (my daughter, for instance, has a burnt orange personality; "cosmic" is a yellow word; serene is blue; 118 is red)--so it's not simply having a propensity for not thinking or, more importantly, _feeling_ in color.

My experience exactly.

Couldn’t disagree more. I have aphantasia and can’t conjure up a mental image of any sort.

Why do you doubt it? When you talk to someone with aphantasia, one of most people's first questions is something like "sometimes my mental images are pretty fleeting and indistinct, is that what you mean?" and they'll say "no, I don't even understand what 'mental image' means". It's possible they're all lying or very confused but it seems unlikely.

A friend with this condition also told me that growing up, people would often say "picture x in your mind" and he always assumed it was a figure of speech for "think about a description of x" because he couldn't imagine what else "picturing" could mean.

See: "The pupillary light response as a physiological index of aphantasia, sensory and phenomenological imagery strength."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9018072/

This study had participants imagine a bright scene, which triggers a physiological pupil response similar to the response of actually walking out into the bright sun. Those who self-reported aphantasia had no physiological pupil response.

Aphantasia is not a "false belief", and I assure you that those with aphantasia find it just as hard to understand mental visual imagery as you find it hard to understand a lack of mental visual imagery.

I suffered from panic attacks in my youth. Mindfulness meditative practice enabled me to breathe in a such a way that I could stop the panic attack in its tracks. I further extended this breathing pattern to enter a state of deep calm on command.

It drives my wife crazy, but if I so choose, I can completely zen out within 30 seconds and enter a state of total relaxation. In this state I may acknowledge her talking to me but have little or no memory of any conversations after.

Finally, I’m a religious person and prayer is a mechanism for me to communicate with God. Combining transcendental meditation with my communications with the higher power is a very mind blowing experience for me.

This sounds like spiritual bypass, which is a failure mode of mindfulness a lot of people can fall into. You say it drives your wife crazy, so it seems that being in this state doesn't actually help you resolve issues between you and your wife. It only numbs you to the conflict and puts the whole burden on your wife.

> You say it drives your wife crazy, so it seems that being in this state doesn't actually help you resolve issues between you and your wife. It only numbs you to the conflict and puts the whole burden on your wife.

I don't understand why you're saying this. The technique wasn't primarily to resolve issues with spouse; it was to fight panic attacks.

If the OP needs to zone-out to avoid a panic attack when talking with his wife, it sounds like they have some serious marital problems, and this is just a way of avoiding dealing with them.

Read this:

> I suffered from panic attacks in my youth.

Does it now make sense?

> If the OP needs to zone-out to avoid a panic attack when talking with his wife

He didn't said that. His wife his just frustrated that he can do this, I'm pretty sure he never told us he did this to annoy his wife on purpose or escaping.

> In this state I may acknowledge her talking to me but have little or no memory of any conversations after.

He tunes out his wife

> if I so choose

Willfully

> It drives my wife crazy

And often enough that it’s an issue.

He hasn’t shown up again in this bizarre thread, heck he’s probably doing it right now!

Don't build scenarios out of aligned facts :

> but if I so choose, I can completely zen out within 30 seconds and enter a state of total relaxation.

Sometime peoples just want to have own time and relaxing in their own preferred way

> In this state I may acknowledge her talking to me but have little or no memory of any conversations after.

It happened to his wife to come and start talking to him in this state, but him being able to acknowledge her without remembering the conversation causes her great frustration.

>> He hasn’t shown up again in this bizarre thread, heck he’s probably doing it right now!

Given the number of totally unjustified judgmental, misread based responses, no wonder one would shy out. Assuming that checking for answers it the sane behavior in the first place.

Well, OP could have framed his description a lot better since its easy even for native speakers to come up with conclusion he acts like an a-hole towards his wife and avoids conflicts. This is internet, folks don't re-read some anonymous comments 5 times to grok what was actually meant.

Good for him if he managed to get serious crippling condition under control, that's a hard feat deserving respect.

Not a fan of self-illusion claims about talking to god, that's not even how major religions are made from scratch (communication with God in my view is 2-way process, and no judaism/christian/muslim god ever talks back, but I get that it was probably not meant literally), but that's just an agnostic's nitpick when seeing righteous religious folks who claim weird stuff in my view.

You're blaming the poster for judgmental people snapping at him ? It's one thing to wish people being more articulate, it's another to use it as an excuse for 0 thought patronizing.

If someone has to refrain from express themselves or taking better care of what and how they say it, it's moralists reframing words of other people, without even thinking of asking questions beforehand.

> Not a fan of self-illusion claims about talking to god

> no judaism/christian/muslim god ever talks back

Agnostic: One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.

Houston, we have a problem: faith is a fundamental aspect of consciousness and culture, not just religion.

> Well, OP could have framed his description a lot better since its easy even for native speakers to come up with conclusion he acts like an a-hole towards his wife and avoids conflicts

Definitely not - it was completely clear from the start that OP had panic attacks since childhood.

I went to sleep - but all of these responses and conjecture amuse me greatly, so I shall let it continue without comment.

Sorry, did you say something? I was meditating.

You're blaming one person's emotional and physical experience on two people for some reason. One thing that is important in a healthy marriage is that people's feelings vs their actions are separate entities, and that one person's feelings shouldn't affect someone else's in an unhealthy fashion (enmeshment). A panic attack is unhealthy and unhelpful - if there's a conflict, one party going into a panic will not resolve the conflict.

TL;DR, being able to stop a panic attack or otherwise unproductive emotional response is a great skill to have. If the other party takes that personal then that's something they need to work on themselves.

"It only numbs you to the conflict and puts the whole burden on your wife."

Or it prevents the conflict from escalating. Panic and anger are connected, so if he found a way to be calm and stop the conversation, I guess this is way better than having the conflict in a mode of distress. So later, when both are calm, the issues can get resolved.

Persistent antagonists and provocateurs tend to become antagonised and provoked when their attempts to antagonise and provoke fail.

That is a secondary consideration to preventing further antagonisation, provocation, and escallation of the situation itself.

That said, there seems to be an underlying interpersonal conflict, and possibly incompatibility, here.

"That said, there seems to be an underlying interpersonal conflict, and possibly incompatibility, here."

Possible, but I would not judge so much, from the little that was shared. Op just shared what worked for him, to prevent panic attacks. And he shared that their are downsides as well, that frustrates his wife. The rest is speculation.

Which is why I wrote the more suggestive "seems to be" rather than the declarative "is". "Might be" could also have been used.

Much of that depends on what is read into "drives my wife crazy", which could range from mild or even humorous response to scales far more irrational and concerning. My own experience over multiple relationships and time is that small irritations have a profound tendency to grow, and that as people age they become more of who they are, psychologically, much as other patterns of aging etch the same lines ever deeper.

It's an experientially-informed observation and caution, not a diagnosis. But it's something I'd suggest putting some consideration to for anyone noticing similar trends in their own relationships. The most glaring warning sign is a loss of respect by one, both, or all parties within a relationship, familial, social, business, or otherwise.

I noted your "seems to". I just wanted to point out, that it could be seen as overstepping a line, to suggest that the whole marriage is possibly incompatible, because of that little shared info. I mean, of course it does not sound ideal. But I would not dare to judge the whole relationship because of it.

That is an absolutely fair point.

OP never mentioned conflict. He just said he zones out and ignores his wife.

You say "failure mode", but it sounds like a superpower to me.

Please don't "you're doing it wrong" with mindfulness. Mindfulness has become almost a religion for some people who want it to be more than a pragmatic tool with various consumption styles.

The whole thing has been oversold in the same way that cannabis, etc. were. It's just a thing, utterly detached from artificial spiritual goals, and we should let people use it how they want.

This is textbook spiritual bypassing. You are misusing Buddhist teachings in order to run away from your life. Buddhism especially (but also related religions) is about facing the difficulty in your life as it is, not "blissing out for 30 minutes while you wife is talking to you"

Oh no! If Buddha said so then it must be true.

Why are you putting words in my mouth? I never said that. I'm sure you can manage to refute me without lying.

Why did you bring up your religion in the first place? OP said that he found this cool technique for instant relaxation, and then you started talking about whatever religious bullcrap.

Because mindfulness meditation is taken from a specific religion.

Also, is "facing your suffering" really "religious bullcrap"?

I'm saying that using techniques taken from religions to avoid your suffering is spiritual bypassing. Please explain how that is "religious bullcrap"

> is taken from a specific religion.

It hasn't been only "discovered" there, definitely not... and even if so, religion or whatever is the truth and noone dare to use it differently ( what OP even not said), bad cultural appropriation or what?

Religions have a history of making up bullshit reasons why suffering and being unhappy is the righteous path. Christianity promises you a happy afterlife for suffering in real life, Hinduism tells you that you're getting karmic credit points for your next life, etc. "facing your suffering" is just another iteration of this.

A more rational take on these teachings is that historically they were a tool of pacifying the masses to accept their abject poverty and squalor without revolting and imploding the social hierarchy. They make no sense in a post-scarcity world.

This is what I mean by religious bullcrap.

I didn't mention any of that stuff though.

Facing your suffering is the only way to understand truly how to solve it.

You can keep running from it if you want but it will just catch up to you.

Says who?

Me.

Hinduism doesn’t have “karmic credit points” and this is a misconception. Karma is the output of the totality of your life and its measurement is cosmically obscured. You can, however, be granted awesome boons by the various deities for extreme selfless acts of devotion —- demons included.

I think you misread the comment and he doesn't do this to escape his wife. You should reflect on yourself to understand what mechanism makes you jump head on on a (illegitimate) patronizing opportunity.

Do Buddhist teachings not talk about passing judgments? OP provided an anecdote which makes no claims about "running away from life".

No, they do not talk of that

Highly recommend Huxley's Doors of Perception and The Divine Within.

I found a first edition copy of the Doors to Perception in a Newcastle, Australia used bookstore in ~2006-2008 for tens of Australian dollars. Not sure if it had any value, but I (naively I now realize) loaned it to my then-wife’s therapist who then stole it and lied by saying his dog ate it. I asked for the remainder. He again lied and said he already threw it away.

Joke is on him cos my now ex-wife had him dead to rights. He propositioned my then-wife multiple times and hired a former and later current female client he was in a relationship with as his secretary. (Just one person, not two different women.)

My then wife reported him and he lost his license to practice.

I consider his karmic debt still owes me a dogeared book lol

This was a roller coaster

Huxley was a very persuasive writer, witty and engaging, with good insights. But I doubt that making an already unreliable pattern recognition apparatus go haywire can produce anything useful. Entertaining, maybe, useful, no.

Do you speak from experience? Lots of people who do disagree with you substantially.

You mean an experience which categorically compels individuals to be kinder, more gentle, and less selfish in pursuing genuinely altruistic ends is not useful? Often times as a result of (their ego) thinking they were going to die.

Entertaining, not really, useful, most certainly.

> Because Huxley’s own notes were lost in the tragic brush fire that later destroyed his home and library

me spidey sense is tinglin again, if anyone is aware of more info surrounding this, please share

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