Las puertas de la percepción

When I read The Doors of Perception, I felt as though I were being asked to slow my attention to an unfamiliar degree. Aldous Huxley describes his experience under the influence of mescaline not as an escape from reality, but as an intensified encounter with it. From the opening pages, I sensed that the book was less about drugs and more about perception itself. That focus made me curious rather than skeptical.

Huxley examines how the mind usually filters the world, reducing experience to what is practical and manageable. As I followed his reflections, I felt my own habits of seeing come into question. Ordinary objects, flowers, furniture, light, suddenly become overwhelming in their presence. I was struck by how calmly Huxley narrates these moments. There is no hysteria, only careful observation. That tone made the experience feel thoughtful rather than sensational.

What affected me most was the idea that beauty is usually ignored not because it is rare, but because it is too abundant. Reading this, I felt a quiet discomfort. I began to notice how often I move past things without really seeing them. Huxley’s writing pushed me to consider how perception is shaped by language, habit, and survival. His references to art, religion, and mysticism gave the experience a wider context that made it feel intellectually grounded.

By the final pages, I did not feel tempted or alarmed. I felt reflective. The book does not argue that altered perception is superior, only that it reveals something usually hidden. Closing the book, I felt a lingering calm mixed with curiosity. The Doors of Perception left me wondering how much of the world I habitually overlook, and whether paying closer attention might be its own quiet form of transformation.

I enjoyed the Heaven and Hell more than The Doors of Perception. While an interesting take on the psychedelic experience, it was the the ponderings about religion, of aesthetics like stained-glass windows of the cathedrals, the incense, the ritual chants that transfer us into different realities, that I found thoroughly enlightening.

There are a lot of cultural references here, and having read into Joseph Campbell's work, Zen and Meister Eckhart made this much more easily approachable than what it would've been without that pre-existing knowledge.