Aldous Huxley Quote: How significant is the enormous heightening, under mescalin,...

How significant is the enormous heightening, under mescalin, of the perception of color! … Man’s highly developed color sense is a biological luxury—inestimably precious to him as an intellectual and spiritual being, but unnecessary to his survival as an animal. … Mescalin raises all colors to a higher power and makes the percipient aware of innumerable fine shades of difference, to which, at ordinary times, he is completely blind. It would seem that, for Mind at Large, the so-called secondary characters of things are primary.

— Aldous Huxley

Source: The Doors of Perception - 1954

difference characters aware survival luxury

Select Quotes by Aldous Huxley

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘try to be a little kinder.

— Aldous Huxley

Source: Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience - 1931 - 1963

I was sitting on the seashore, half listening to a friend arguing violently about something which merely bored me. Unconsciously to myself, I looked at a film of sand I had picked up on my hand, when I suddenly saw the exquisite beauty of every little grain of it; instead of being dull, I saw that each particle was made up on a perfect geometrical pattern, with sharp angles, from each of which a brilliant shaft of light was reflected, while each tiny crystal shone like a rainbow…. The rays crossed and recrossed, making exquisite patterns of such beauty that...

— Aldous Huxley

Source: The Doors of Perception - 1954