Program Notes
Guest speaker: Aldous Huxley
[NOTE: All quotations are by Aldous Huxley.]
I don’t think there are any sinister persons deliberately trying to rob people of their freedom. But I do think, first of all, that there are a number of impersonal forces which are pushing in the direction of less and less freedom, and I also think that there are a number of technological devices which anybody who wishes to use can use to accelerate this process of going away from freedom, of imposing control.”
“I mean, what I feel very strongly is that we mustn’t be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology. This has happened again and again in history with technology’s advance and this changes social condition, and suddenly people have found themselves in a situation which they didn’t foresee and doing all sorts of things they really didn’t want to do.”
“That if you want to preserve your power indefinitely, you have to get the consent of the ruled, and this they will do partly by drugs as I foresaw in “Brave New World,” partly by these new techniques of propaganda. They will do it by bypassing the sort of rational side of man and appealing to his subconscious and his deeper emotions, and his physiology even, and so making him actually love his slavery. I mean, I think, this is the danger that actually people may be, in some ways, happy under the new regime, but that they will be happy in situations where they oughtn’t to be happy.”
“Democracies are based on the proposition that power is very dangerous and that it is extremely important not to let any one man or any one small group have too much power for too long a time.”
“Ulysses is obviously a very extraordinary book. I mean, I don’t exactly know why he wrote it, because I mean, a great deal of Ulysses seems to me to be taken up with showing a large number of methods in which novels cannot be written.”
The complete recordings
of the Aldous Huxley
1961 London interview
may be found at:
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Transcript
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Greetings from cyberdelic space.
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This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.
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Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
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And I guess you could say your
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additional hosts are
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three fellow saloners who made donations
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to help offset the expenses
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associated with these podcasts.
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And these wonderful people are
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Nicholas R., Howard H.,
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and Amy W.
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And I thank you all
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very much for your very generous
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donations.
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And I also would like to thank two other people who have been more than instrumental in not just the salon,
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but in many other phases of my life.
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In the 15th century, I’d probably call them my patrons,
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and in truth, I have no idea how my wife and I would have managed over the past decade without their help.
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While I’ve said this in private on many occasions, I also want to publicly thank our dear friends
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Ron and Claudia, for without them, there may never have been The Psychedelic Salon, my
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books, and for sure the worlds of fun we’ve all had in the process.
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So to Ron, Claudia, Nicholas, Howard, Amy, and all of the other supporters of the salon,
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including our fellow salonners who have linked to our website,
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burned copies of programs and given them away,
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or who simply told a friend about these podcasts.
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Well, thank you one and all.
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You know, we’re all in this together, as they say.
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And from where I sit, it looks to me like everyone is doing everything they can
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with the resources at their disposal to help in the great work of spreading the word
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about the value and importance of our sacred medicines
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and the profound thoughts that they often inspire.
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And speaking of profound thoughts,
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I return once again to that giant of 20th century literature, Aldous Huxley.
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Ever since I began rereading Sybil Bedford’s wonderful biography about him, I’ve been wanting
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to hear more of him in his own voice. However, it seems that the recordings of Aldous are few and
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far between. So I’ve pulled together a few soundbites from a couple of YouTube videos,
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along with his very famous Brave New World interview with Mike Wallace in 1958, along
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with one other collection of soundbites, in order to give you a little better idea of
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a man who far too often, I think, is only mentioned in passing as the author of The Doors of Perception and Island.
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Now, the first clip I’m going to play is about two minutes long,
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and although it’s a bit overly dramatic for my taste,
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I think it does a good job to set the tone.
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Dr. Humphrey Osmond of Saskatchewan, Canada.
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During the late 40s and early 50s, his experiments with mescaline
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gained wide attention. One of those closely following Osman’s work is the celebrated author
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of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley. Although nearly blind, Huxley compensates for this
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handicap with his extraordinary intelligence. His life seems dedicated to a continuous quest
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for knowledge. And he was considered by European
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intellectuals probably the brightest young literary man of his generation in any of the
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western countries. Huxley is fascinated with the possibility of expanding his consciousness
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through the use of drugs such as mescaline. He has studied cultures whose members ingest
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plants with hallucinogenic properties to stimulate godlike visions. He has studied cultures whose members ingest plants with hallucinogenic
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properties to stimulate god-like visions. He theorizes that there is a mechanism in
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the brain that can open a door to a higher realm of consciousness. Humphrey Osmond is
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stunned when Huxley volunteers to be a guinea pig in his mescaline experiments. By using
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mescaline as a spiritual seeker, not a scientist,
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Huxley enters the surreal world of spiritual imagery.
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Everything he looked at was transfigured.
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When he looked at plants, he could just see them,
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rather like Albert Hoffman before him, you know, bursting with life, bursting with color.
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After his experience with mescaline, Huxley begins encouraging others to try it as well.
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In essence, what Huxley was saying was that drugs like LSD should be seen as a potential boon for
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mankind, for humankind, that they can be used not simply in a scientific context, but they could be
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used by normal people to study themselves,
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to investigate themselves as a tool of self-exploration and self-discovery.
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Huxley writes a book about the experience in 1954. It is titled The Doors of Perception,
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after the observation by poet William Blake that if the doors of perception were cleansed,
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everything will appear to man as it is, infinite.
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Aldous Huxley, whose early experiments with mescaline
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influenced popular interest in LSD,
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never lost faith in the value of psychedelic drugs.
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On the day he died from cancer in 1963,
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Huxley asked his second wife, Laura, to inject him with LSD.
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It was the same day that President Kennedy was assassinated.
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And we were right here in this room.
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It was in this room, and he was getting very weak. And he said to me, give me a big, big piece of paper. And he wrote intramuscular, 100 microgram of LSD
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intramuscular. And I filled the syringe with it and I gave it to him. It was very quiet. At a certain point I said if you hear
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me squeeze my hand and he did very quickly. Then I thought I had the impression that maybe
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it was necessary to give a second shot and I asked him, he indicated. So I gave him a second shot and that
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well then it was about four or five hours where there was absolutely no jolt, no agitation,
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nothing except this very, very quiet, like a music that becomes less and less audible,
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like fading away.
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There was no jolt when he died.
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It was just that the breath stopped,
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and there was a beautiful expression in the face.
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There was a very beautiful expression in the face.
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the face. It was a very beautiful expression in the face.
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The main thing that I’d like you to take away from that little clip is the fact that Huxley was considered one of the Western world’s leading intellectual
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lights. And so when he became involved in investigating
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psychedelics, it gave a significant amount of legitimacy to
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moving these substances out of the
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medical laboratories and into creative settings, such as the institute that Myron Stolaroff and
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others established in Menlo Park. Now, this is just my opinion, but I think that Huxley’s
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involvement with and support of psychedelics was one of the most important features of the rediscovery of these sacred
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medicines in Western culture. Now, let’s get on to the next clip, and it’s quite a famous one.
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I’m talking about his May 1958 interview on the Mike Wallace television show, and at least two of
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our fellow salonners sent me copies of this audio clip, but shame on me. I’ve misplaced the note I made to thank you both.
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So please excuse my sloppy record keeping and know that I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to send this audio to me for use here in the salon.
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I’ll let you come to your own conclusions about the focus of this interview.
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But do keep in mind that the discussion we are about to hear
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took place a little over 50 years ago,
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and to me its relevance today is more than a little spooky.
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So let’s see what you think.
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This is Aldous Huxley,
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a man haunted by a vision of hell on earth. A searing social critic, Mr. Huxley, a man haunted by a vision of hell on earth.
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A searing social critic, Mr. Huxley, 27 years ago, wrote Brave New World,
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a novel that predicted that someday the entire world would live under a frightful dictatorship.
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Today, Mr. Huxley says that his fictional world of horror is probably just around the corner for all of us.
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We’ll find out why in a moment.
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The Mike Wallace Interview, presented by the American Broadcasting Company,
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in association with the Fund for the Republic,
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brings you a special television series discussing the problems of survival and freedom in America.
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Good evening, I’m Mike Wallace.
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Tonight’s guest, Aldous Huxley, is a man of letters as disturbing as he is distinguished.
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Born in England, now a resident of California,
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Mr. Huxley has written some of the most electric novels and social criticism of this century.
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He’s just finished a series of essays called Enemies of Freedom, in which he outlines
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and defines some of the threats to our freedom in the United States. And Mr. Huxley, right off the
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bat, let me ask you this, as you see it, who and what are the enemies of freedom here in the United
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States? Well, I don’t think you can say who in the United States. I don’t think there are any sinister persons deliberately trying to rob people of their freedom. But I do think,
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first of all, that there are a number of impersonal forces which are pushing in the direction of less
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and less freedom. And I also think that there are a number of technological devices which anybody who wishes to use can use
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to accelerate this process of going away from freedom,
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of imposing control.
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What are these forces and these devices, Mr. Hudson?
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I should say that there are two main impersonal forces.
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The first of them is not exceedingly important in the United States at the present time,
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though very important in other countries.
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This is the force which in general terms can be called overpopulation, the mounting pressure
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of population pressing upon existing resources.
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This, of course, is an extraordinary thing. Something is happening
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which has never happened in the world’s history before.
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I mean, let’s just take a
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simple fact that between the time
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of the birth of Christ and the
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landing of the Mayflower,
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the population of the Earth doubled.
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It rose from 250 million
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to probably 500 million.
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Today, the population of the
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Earth is rising at such a rate
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that it will double in half a century.
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Well, why should overpopulation
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work to diminish our freedoms?
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Well, in a number of ways.
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I mean, the experts in the field,
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like Harrison Brown, for example,
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pointed out that in the underdeveloped countries,
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actually, the standard of living
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is at present falling.
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The people have less to eat and less goods per capita than they had 50 years ago.
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And as the position of these countries, the economic position, becomes more and more precarious,
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obviously, the central government has to take over more and more responsibility for keeping the ship of state on an even keel.
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And then, of course, you’re likely to get social unrest under such conditions
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with, again, an intervention of the central government.
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So I think one sees here a pattern which seems to be pushing very strongly towards a totalitarian regime.
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And unfortunately, as in all these underdeveloped countries,
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the only highly organized political party is the Communist Party,
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it looks rather as though they will be the heirs to this unfortunate process,
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that they will step into the position of power.
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Well, then, ironically enough, one of the greatest forces against communism into the power, the position of power. Well, then, ironically enough,
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one of the greatest forces against communism in the world,
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the Catholic Church, according to your thesis,
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would seem to be pushing us directly into the hands of the communists
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because they are against birth control.
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Well, I think this strange paradox probably is true.
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There is…
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It’s an extraordinary situation actually. I mean, one has to look
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at it, of course, from a biological point of view. The whole essence of biological life
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on Earth is a question of balance. And what we have done is to practice death control in a most intensive manner without balancing this with birth control at the other end.
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Consequently, the birth rates remain as high as they were
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and death rates have fallen substantially.
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All right then, so much for the time being anyway for overpopulation.
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Another force that is diminishing our freedoms.
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Well, another force which I think is very strongly operative in this country is the
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force of what may be called overorganization. As technology becomes more and more complicated,
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it becomes necessary to have more and more elaborate organizations, more hierarchical organizations.
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And incidentally, the advance of technology has been accompanied by an advance in the science of organization.
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It’s now possible to make organizations on a larger scale than was ever possible before.
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And so that you have more and more people living their lives out as subordinates in these hierarchical systems controlled by bureaucracies, either the bureaucracies of big business or the bureaucracies of big government.
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Now, the devices that you were talking about, are there specific devices or methods of communication
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which diminish our freedoms in addition to overpopulation and overorganization?
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which diminish our freedoms in addition to overpopulation and overorganization?
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Well, there are certainly devices which can be used in this way.
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I mean, let us take, after all, a piece of very recent and very painful history,
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is the propaganda used by Hitler, which was incredibly effective.
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I mean, what were Hitler’s methods? Hitler used terror on the one kind, brute force on the one hand,
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What were Hitler’s methods?
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Hitler used terror on the one kind, brute force on the one hand,
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but he also used a very efficient form of propaganda,
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which he was using every modern device at that time. He didn’t have TV, but he had the radio, which he used to the fullest extent,
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and was able to impose his will on an immense mass of people.
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I mean, the Germans were a highly educated people.
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Well, we’re aware of all this, but how do you equate Hitler’s use of propaganda with
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the way that propaganda, if you will, is used, let us say, here in the United States?
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Are you suggesting that there is a parallel?
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Needless to say, it’s not being used in this way now.
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No, it’s a parallel.
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Needless to say, it’s not being used in this way now.
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But the point is, it seems to me, that there are methods at present available,
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methods superior in some respects to Hitler’s methods,
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which could be used in a bad situation.
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I mean, what I feel very strongly is that we mustn’t be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology. This has
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happened again and again in history. Technology has advanced, and this changes social conditions,
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and suddenly people have found themselves in a situation which they didn’t foresee and
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doing all sorts of things they didn’t really want to do.
00:16:19 ►
Well, now, what do you mean? Do you mean that we develop our television, but we don’t know
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how to use it correctly?
00:16:25 ►
Is that the point that you’re making?
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Well, at present, the television, I think, is being used quite harmlessly.
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It’s being used, I think…
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I would feel it’s being used too much to distract everybody all the time.
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But, I mean, imagine, which must be the situation in all communist countries,
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where the television, where it exists,
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is always saying the same thing the whole time.
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It’s always driving along.
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It’s not creating a wide front of distraction.
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It’s creating a one-pointed drumming in of a single idea all the time.
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It’s obviously an immensely powerful instrument.
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So you’re talking about the potential misuse of the instrument.
00:17:01 ►
Exactly.
00:17:01 ►
We have, of course, all technology is in itself
00:17:05 ►
morally neutral.
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These are just powers
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which can either be used
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well or ill.
00:17:10 ►
It’s the same thing
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with atomic energy.
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We can either use it
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to blow ourselves up
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or we can use it
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as a substitute
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for the coal and the oil
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which are running out.
00:17:17 ►
You’ve even written about
00:17:18 ►
the use of drugs
00:17:19 ►
in this light.
00:17:21 ►
Well, now,
00:17:21 ►
this is a very interesting subject.
00:17:24 ►
I mean,
00:17:26 ►
in this book which you mentioned, this book of mine, this is a very interesting subject. I mean, in this book,
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which you mentioned,
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this book of mine, Brave New World,
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I postulated a substance called Soma,
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which was a very versatile drug.
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It would make people feel happy in small doses.
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It would make them see visions
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in medium doses,
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and it would send them to sleep
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in large doses.
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Well, I don’t think such a drug exists now,
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nor do I think it will ever exist,
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but we do have drugs which will do some of these things,
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and I think it’s quite on the cards
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that we may have drugs
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which will profoundly change our mental states
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without doing us any harm.
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I mean, this is the pharmacological revolution
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which has taken place,
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that we have now powerful mind-changing drugs,
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physiologically speaking, are almost costless.
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I mean, they are not like opium or like coca,
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cocaine, which do change the state of mind,
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but leave terrible results physiologically and morally.
00:18:25 ►
Mr. Huxley, in your new essays, you state that these various enemies of freedom are
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pushing us toward a real-life brave new world, and you say that it’s awaiting us just around
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the corner. First of all, can you detail for us what life in this brave new world which
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you fear so much, or what life might this brave new world which you fear so much,
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what life might be like?
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Well, to start with, I think this kind of the dictatorship of the future,
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I think would be very unlike the dictatorships which we’ve been familiar with in the immediate past.
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I mean, take another book prophesying the future,
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which was a very remarkable book, George Orwell’s 1984.
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This book was written at the height of the Stalinist regime and just after the Hitler regime.
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And there he foresaw a dictatorship using entirely the methods of terror, the methods of physical violence.
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Now, I think what is going to happen in the future is the dictators will find, as the
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old saying goes, that you can do everything with bayonets except sit on them.
00:19:30 ►
But if you want to preserve your power indefinitely, you have to get the consent of the ruled.
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And this they will do, partly by drugs, as I foresaw in Brave New World, partly by these
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new techniques of propaganda.
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They will do it by bypassing the sort of rational side of man and appealing to his subconscious
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and his deeper emotions and his physiology even, and so making him actually love his slavery.
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I mean, I think this is the danger, that actually people may be in some ways happy under the new regime,
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but they will be happy in situations where they oughtn’t to be happy.
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But let me ask you this.
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You’re talking about a world that could take place within the confines of a totalitarian state.
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Let’s become more immediate, more urgent about it.
00:20:28 ►
We believe, anyway, that we live in democracy here in the United States.
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Do you believe that this brave new world that you talk about
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could, let’s say, in the next quarter century, the next century,
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could come here to our shores?
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I think it could.
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I mean, that’s why I feel it’s so extremely important here and now to start thinking about these problems,
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not to let ourselves be taken by surprise by the new advances in technology.
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I mean, for example, in regard to the use of the drugs,
00:21:03 ►
we know there’s enough evidence now for us to be able, on the basis of this evidence and using a certain amount of creative imagination, to foresee the kind of uses which could be made by people of bad will with these things and to attempt to forestall this and in the same way I think with these other methods of
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propaganda
00:21:26 ►
we can foresee
00:21:28 ►
and we can do
00:21:29 ►
a good deal
00:21:29 ►
to forestall
00:21:31 ►
I mean after all
00:21:32 ►
the price of freedom
00:21:34 ►
is eternal vigilance
00:21:35 ►
you write
00:21:37 ►
in enemies of freedom
00:21:38 ►
you write specifically
00:21:39 ►
about the United States
00:21:40 ►
you say this
00:21:41 ►
writing about
00:21:42 ►
American political campaigns
00:21:43 ►
you say all that is needed is money and a candidate who can be coached to look sincere the United States. You say this, writing about American political campaigns. You say, all
00:21:45 ►
that is needed is money and a candidate who can be coached to look sincere. Political
00:21:51 ►
principles and plans for specific action have come to lose most of their importance. The
00:21:55 ►
personality of the candidate, the way he is projected by the advertising experts, are
00:22:01 ►
the things that really matter. Well, this is, during the last campaign, there was a great deal of this kind of statement
00:22:09 ►
by the advertising managers of the campaign parties, this idea that the candidates had
00:22:16 ►
to be merchandised as though they were soap or toothpaste, and that you had to depend
00:22:21 ►
entirely on the personality.
00:22:24 ►
I mean, the personality is important,
00:22:26 ►
but there are certainly people with an extremely amiable personality,
00:22:30 ►
particularly on TV,
00:22:31 ►
who might not necessarily be very good in positions of political trust.
00:22:38 ►
Do you feel that men like Eisenhower, Stevenson, Nixon,
00:22:41 ►
with knowledge of forethought,
00:22:43 ►
were trying to pull the wool over the eyes
00:22:45 ►
of the American public?
00:22:46 ►
No, but they were being advised by powerful advertising agencies who were making campaigns
00:22:55 ►
of a quite different kind from what had been made before.
00:22:59 ►
And I think we shall see probably all kinds of new devices coming into the picture.
00:23:07 ►
I mean, for example, this thing which got a good deal of publicity last autumn,
00:23:12 ►
a subliminal projection.
00:23:14 ►
I mean, as it stands, this thing I think is of no menace for us at the moment.
00:23:20 ►
But I was talking the other day to one of the people
00:23:23 ►
who has done most experimental work in the psychological laboratory with this, who was saying precisely this, that it is not at the moment a danger, but once you’ve established a principle that something works, you can be absolutely sure that the technology of it is going to improve steadily.
00:23:42 ►
technology of it is going to improve steadily.
00:23:50 ►
And his view of the subject was that, well, maybe they will use it to some extent in the 1960 campaign, but they will probably use it a good deal and much more effectively in the 1964 campaign,
00:23:54 ►
because this is the kind of rate at which technology advances.
00:23:58 ►
And we’ll be persuaded to vote for a candidate that we do not know that we are being persuaded to vote for.
00:24:03 ►
Exactly. I mean, this is a rather alarming feature, that you’re being persuaded below
00:24:06 ►
the level of choice and reason.
00:24:08 ►
In regard to advertising, which you mentioned just a little ago, in your writing, particularly
00:24:14 ►
in Enemies of Freedom, you attack Madison Avenue, which controls most of our television
00:24:18 ►
and radio, advertising, newspaper advertising, and so forth. Why do you consistently attack the advertising agency?
00:24:26 ►
Well, no, I think that advertisement plays a very necessary role,
00:24:30 ►
but the danger, it seems to me, in a democracy is this.
00:24:35 ►
I mean, what does a democracy depend on?
00:24:37 ►
A democracy depends on the individual voter
00:24:41 ►
making an intelligent and rational choice
00:24:43 ►
for what he regards as his enlightened self-interest in any given circumstance.
00:24:48 ►
But what these people are doing, I mean, both for their particular purposes,
00:24:52 ►
the selling goods and the dictatorial propagandists are doing,
00:24:58 ►
is to try to bypass the rational side of man
00:25:01 ►
and to appeal directly to these unconscious forces below the surface so that you are in a way making nonsense of the whole democratic
00:25:09 ►
procedure which is based on conscious choice of on rational ground of course
00:25:15 ►
well maybe maybe I you have just answered this this next question because
00:25:19 ►
in your essay you write about television commercials not just political
00:25:23 ►
commercials but television commercials as such and and how, as you put it, today’s children walk around singing beer
00:25:29 ►
commercials and toothpaste commercials, and then you link this phenomenon in some way
00:25:34 ►
with the dangers of a dictatorship. Now, could you spell out the connection, or how do you
00:25:39 ►
feel that you have done so sufficiently? Well, I mean, this whole question of children, I
00:25:43 ►
think, is a terribly important one, because
00:25:45 ►
children are quite clearly much more suggestible than the average grown-up. And again, suppose
00:25:53 ►
that for one reason or another all the propaganda was in the hands of one or very few agencies,
00:26:02 ►
you would have an extraordinarily powerful force
00:26:06 ►
playing on these children,
00:26:07 ►
who, after all, are going to grow up and be adults quite soon.
00:26:11 ►
I do think that this is not an immediate threat,
00:26:15 ►
but it remains a possible threat.
00:26:18 ►
You said something to the effect in your essay
00:26:20 ►
that the children of Europe used to be called cannon fodder,
00:26:23 ►
and here in the United States they are television and radio fodder. Well, as I’ve told you,
00:26:28 ►
you can read in the trade journals the most lyrical accounts of how
00:26:34 ►
necessary it is to get hold of the children because then they will be loyal
00:26:37 ►
brand buyers later on. But I mean, again, you just translate this into
00:26:43 ►
political terms. The dictator says they will be loyal ideology buyers when they’re grown up.
00:26:49 ►
We hear so much about brainwashing as used by the communists.
00:26:54 ►
Do you see any brainwashing other than that which we’ve just been talking about
00:26:58 ►
that is used here in the United States?
00:27:00 ►
Other forms of brainwashing?
00:27:02 ►
Not in the form that has been used in China and in Russia
00:27:06 ►
because this is
00:27:07 ►
essentially the
00:27:10 ►
application of propaganda methods
00:27:12 ►
of the most violent kind to individuals.
00:27:14 ►
It’s not a shotgun method like the
00:27:16 ►
advertising
00:27:18 ►
method. It’s a way of
00:27:20 ►
getting hold of the person and playing
00:27:22 ►
both on his physiology
00:27:23 ►
and his psychology
00:27:25 ►
until he really breaks down, and then you can implant a new idea in his head. I mean,
00:27:30 ►
the descriptions of the methods are really blood-curdling when you read them. And not
00:27:35 ►
only the methods applied to political prisoners, but the methods applied, for example, to the
00:27:40 ►
training of the young communist administrators and missionaries, they receive an incredibly tough kind of training,
00:27:48 ►
which may cause about 25% of them to break down or commit suicide,
00:27:52 ►
but produces 75% of completely one-pointed fanatics.
00:27:58 ►
The question, of course, that keeps coming back to my mind is this.
00:28:02 ►
Obviously, politics in themselves are not evil.
00:28:05 ►
Television is not in itself evil. Well, and yet you seem to fear that it will be used in an evil way.
00:28:12 ►
Why is it that the right people will not, in your estimation, use them? Why is it that
00:28:18 ►
the wrong people will use these various devices and for the wrong motives? Well, I think one of the reasons is that these are all instruments for obtaining power,
00:28:30 ►
and obviously the passion for power is one of the most moving passions that exist in man,
00:28:37 ►
and after all, all democracies are based on the proposition that power is very dangerous and that it’s extremely important not to let any one man or any one small group
00:28:49 ►
have too much power for too long a time
00:28:51 ►
after what are the British and American constitutions except devices for limiting power.
00:28:57 ►
And all these new devices are extremely efficient instruments
00:29:02 ►
for the imposition of power by small groups over larger masses.
00:29:06 ►
Well, you ask this question yourself.
00:29:10 ►
In Enemies of Freedom, I’ll put your own question back to you.
00:29:14 ►
You ask this.
00:29:15 ►
In an age of accelerating overpopulation,
00:29:20 ►
of accelerating overorganization,
00:29:23 ►
and ever more efficient means of mass communication,
00:29:27 ►
how can we preserve the integrity and reassert the value of the human individual?
00:29:34 ►
You put the question, now here’s your chance to answer it, Mr. Huxley.
00:29:39 ►
Well, this is obviously, first of all, it’s a question of education. I think it’s terribly important to insist on individual values.
00:29:50 ►
I mean, there is a tendency, as you probably read a book by White,
00:29:56 ►
The Organization Man, a very interesting, valuable book, I think,
00:30:00 ►
where he speaks about the new type of group morality, group ethic,
00:30:05 ►
which speaks about the group as though the group was somehow more important than the individual.
00:30:10 ►
But this seems, as far as I’m concerned, to be in contradiction with what we know about the genetical makeup of human beings,
00:30:18 ►
that every human being is unique.
00:30:20 ►
And it is, of course, on this genetical basis that the whole idea of the value
00:30:25 ►
of freedom is based, and I think it’s extremely
00:30:29 ►
important for us to stress this in all
00:30:32 ►
our educational life, and I would say it’s also
00:30:34 ►
very important to teach people to
00:30:37 ►
be on their guard against the sort of verbal booby traps
00:30:41 ►
into which they’re always being led,
00:30:43 ►
to analyze the kind of things that are said to them.
00:30:47 ►
Well, I think there is this whole educational side, and I think there are many more things that one could do
00:30:52 ►
to strengthen people and to make them more aware of what was being done.
00:30:57 ►
You’re a prophet of decentralization.
00:31:00 ►
Well, yes, if this is feasible. It’s one of the tragedies, it seems to me. I mean, many people have been talking about the importance of decentralization in order to give back to the voter a sense of direct power.
00:31:24 ►
quite impotent and his vote seems to count for nothing. This is not true where the electorate is so small and where he is dealing with a group which he can
00:31:30 ►
manage and understand and if one can, as Jefferson after all suggested, break up
00:31:36 ►
the units into smaller and smaller units and so get a real self-governing democracy. Well, that was all very well in Jefferson’s day, but how can we revamp our economic system and
00:31:51 ►
decentralize and at the same time
00:31:53 ►
meet militarily and economically the tough challenge of a country like Soviet Russia?
00:32:00 ►
Well, I think the answer to that is that it seems to me that the production, industrial production, is of
00:32:07 ►
two kinds. I mean, there are some kinds of
00:32:09 ►
industrial production which obviously need the most
00:32:12 ►
tremendously high centralization,
00:32:14 ►
like the making of automobiles,
00:32:16 ►
for example. But there are many
00:32:17 ►
other kinds where you could
00:32:19 ►
decentralize quite easily and
00:32:21 ►
probably quite economically.
00:32:24 ►
And that you would then have this kind of decentralized life.
00:32:28 ►
After all, you begin to see it now if you travel through the South,
00:32:32 ►
this decentralized textile industry which is springing up there.
00:32:38 ►
Mr. Huxley, let me ask you this, quite seriously.
00:32:42 ►
Is freedom necessary?
00:32:45 ►
As far as I’m concerned, it is, yes.
00:32:48 ►
Is it necessary for a productive society?
00:32:51 ►
Yes, I should say it is.
00:32:53 ►
I mean, a genuinely productive society,
00:32:56 ►
I mean, I think you could produce plenty of goods
00:32:58 ►
without much freedom,
00:32:59 ►
but I think the whole sort of creative life of man
00:33:04 ►
is ultimately impossible
00:33:06 ►
without a considerable measure of individual freedom.
00:33:10 ►
The initiative, creation, all these things which we value,
00:33:14 ►
and I think value properly, are impossible without a large measure of freedom.
00:33:20 ►
Well, Mr. Huxley, take a look again at the country which is in the stance of our
00:33:25 ►
opponent anyway it would seem to be there, Soviet Russia. It is strong and getting stronger
00:33:33 ►
economically, militarily. At the same time, it’s developing its art forms pretty well.
00:33:49 ►
It seems not unnecessarily to squelch the creative urge among its people. And yet it is not a free society.
00:33:51 ►
It’s not a free society, but here is something very interesting.
00:33:54 ►
That those members of the society, like the scientists who are doing the creative work,
00:34:01 ►
are given far more freedom than anybody else.
00:34:04 ►
I mean, it’s a privileged aristocratic society
00:34:06 ►
in which, provided that they don’t poke their noses into political affairs,
00:34:12 ►
these people are given a great deal of prestige,
00:34:15 ►
a considerable amount of freedom, and a lot of money.
00:34:18 ►
I mean, this is a very interesting fact about the new Soviet regime,
00:34:24 ►
And this is a very interesting fact about the new Soviet regime.
00:34:33 ►
And I think what we’re going to see is a people on the whole with very little freedom,
00:34:40 ►
but with an oligarchy on top, enjoying a considerable measure of freedom and a very high standard of living.
00:34:44 ►
And the people down below, the Epsilons down below enjoying very little.
00:34:46 ►
And you think that that kind of situation
00:34:48 ►
can long endure?
00:34:49 ►
I think it can certainly endure much longer
00:34:52 ►
than a situation in which everybody
00:34:53 ►
is kept down.
00:34:55 ►
They can certainly get
00:34:57 ►
their technological and scientific results
00:35:00 ►
on such a basis.
00:35:01 ►
Well, the next time that I talk to you
00:35:04 ►
then, perhaps we should investigate further the possibility of the establishment of that kind of a basis. Well, the next time that I talk to you then, perhaps we should investigate further
00:35:06 ►
the possibility of the establishment
00:35:08 ►
of that kind of a society,
00:35:10 ►
where the drones work for the queen bees up above.
00:35:16 ►
Well, yes, but I must say
00:35:18 ►
I still believe in democracy.
00:35:20 ►
If we can make the best of all the creative activities of the people on top plus those of the people on the bottom so much the better
00:35:30 ►
Mr. Huxley, I surely thank you for spending this half hour with us and I wish you Godspeed sir. Thank you
00:35:38 ►
Aldous Huxley finds himself these days
00:35:40 ►
in a peculiar and disturbing position a quarter of a century after prophesying
00:35:45 ►
an authoritarian state
00:35:47 ►
in which people were reduced to cyphers,
00:35:51 ►
he can point at Soviet Russia and say,
00:35:52 ►
I told you so.
00:35:54 ►
The crucial question, as he sees it now,
00:35:56 ►
is whether the so-called free world
00:35:58 ►
is shortly going to give Mr. Huxley
00:36:00 ►
the further dubious satisfaction
00:36:03 ►
of saying the same thing about us.
00:36:08 ►
And so now some 50 years later, what do you think? Can we now say the same thing about
00:36:15 ►
our current situation? I’ll let you answer that question from your own perspective.
00:36:22 ►
Now, the final clips I’d like to play for you right now come from a recorded
00:36:26 ►
interview that Aldous Huxley gave
00:36:28 ►
in 1961 on a visit
00:36:30 ►
to England. The complete
00:36:32 ►
interview runs almost two hours, and
00:36:34 ►
I’ll provide a link to the full recording
00:36:36 ►
along with the program notes for this podcast.
00:36:39 ►
But I want to
00:36:40 ►
thank the Grey Lodge
00:36:42 ►
Occult Review, on whose website
00:36:44 ►
I found this interview,
00:36:50 ►
and it was posted under the same Creative Commons license that we use for these podcasts.
00:36:54 ►
So thank you to the Gray Lodge for posting this interview in its entirety,
00:36:56 ►
and I’ll link to you with program notes here.
00:37:02 ►
What I’m going to play right now, however, are just a couple of segments of that interview that I think will help round out the picture of this important man of letters
00:37:06 ►
and whose writing has done so much for the worldwide psychedelic community.
00:37:11 ►
The topics I’ve selected to play include a discussion of the arts in general, James Joyce,
00:37:18 ►
the best method for discussing philosophy, including an example of how he went about creating some of his work,
00:37:25 ►
what he thinks about the supernatural, our lack of great symbols right now, and his involvement
00:37:31 ►
with psychedelic substances, all of which I hope will maybe nudge you along a little
00:37:36 ►
bit in your own creative thinking.
00:37:38 ►
On the Grey Lodge Occult Review site on which I found this recording, there is a short blurb
00:37:44 ►
about it from Sybil Bedford, who was not only a close friend of the Huxleys, but is also his principal biographer.
00:37:51 ►
In part, Sybil says,
00:37:54 ►
The interview took place in the London summer, two long afternoons, punctuated by tea and sherry, in Aldus’s sitting room with the view of the trees in Ennismore Gardens.
00:38:06 ►
The great point of it all is that it has left us with such a characteristic record not only
00:38:11 ►
of Aldous’s thought, but of Aldous’s way of expressing it, more spontaneous, more informal
00:38:17 ►
than his writing, more informal still than his lectures and broadcasts.
00:38:22 ►
This record comes as near as anything to the way Aldous talked to his
00:38:26 ►
friends. This was
00:38:28 ►
his conversation.
00:38:30 ►
I suppose I’ve
00:38:32 ►
always had a passion
00:38:34 ►
for knowledge
00:38:36 ►
and a certain gift for
00:38:38 ►
coordinating facts. I mean, this
00:38:40 ►
is what interests me
00:38:42 ►
in writing,
00:38:44 ►
in expression, in thought,
00:38:46 ►
is the attempt to coordinate different fields,
00:38:51 ►
the attempt to say many things at the same time,
00:38:53 ►
the attempt to bring together into a single coherent and meaningful whole
00:38:59 ►
a great many apparently disparate events and data.
00:39:07 ►
This has been the ideal of writing that I’ve always had,
00:39:13 ►
and I think I have a certain gift for it.
00:39:16 ►
And this is what interests me.
00:39:21 ►
But I’ve always, I mean, I really don’t like the very bare, bold, classical style
00:39:30 ►
because it’s much, to my mind, hopelessly oversimplified and therefore not true.
00:39:36 ►
I mean, life in its reality is incredibly complex and very, very subtle
00:39:41 ►
and therefore I would think that any form of art which is was able to do,
00:40:06 ►
this seems to me intrinsically a superior form of art.
00:40:10 ►
And I would say this is true of any kind of art.
00:40:13 ►
I mean, isn’t this the distinction in the pictorial arts
00:40:19 ►
between what is technically known as fine art and the crafts?
00:40:27 ►
what is technically known as fine art and the crafts.
00:40:35 ►
Joyce, it seemed to me, seemed to think that words were omnipotent. I mean they are not omnipotent. He was a very strange man. I used to see him sometimes in Paris.
00:40:39 ►
This extraordinary,
00:40:44 ►
what may be called his magic view of words.
00:40:50 ►
I mean, you should never forget sitting next to him once at dinner
00:40:55 ►
and mentioning to him, which I thought would have given him pleasure,
00:40:59 ►
and it did, that I’d just been rereading The Odyssey.
00:41:03 ►
And his immediate response was, he said,
00:41:07 ►
now do you realize what the derivation of Odysseus,
00:41:11 ►
the name Odysseus is?
00:41:13 ►
I said, no, I don’t.
00:41:15 ►
And he said, well, it really comes from the two words,
00:41:19 ►
Oudais, meaning nobody, and Zeus, meaning God.
00:41:23 ►
And that Odysseus is really a symbol of creation of
00:41:28 ►
man out of nothing. I mean this is exactly the sort of etymology which would have been
00:41:35 ►
made by Albertus Magnus in the 13th century. I mean it was absolutely no relation, of course, to anything which we would regard as realistic etymology.
00:41:47 ►
But this completely satisfied Joyce’s mind,
00:41:51 ►
and this curious sort of magic approach to words
00:41:54 ►
as having some sort of intrinsic value apart from their references
00:42:00 ►
was a very characteristic thing in him.
00:42:06 ►
Ulysses is obviously a very extraordinary book. I mean, I don’t exactly know why he wrote it, because I’m in a great
00:42:12 ►
deal of Ulysses. It seems to me to be taken up with showing the large number of methods
00:42:19 ►
in which novels cannot be written. I suppose it’s a great book.
00:42:26 ►
To me, it remains a little bit too static,
00:42:29 ►
the whole character of Bloom.
00:42:31 ►
I mean, there are splendid passages.
00:42:34 ►
I don’t think it’s a success as a whole.
00:42:40 ►
How do you approach general ideas? I mean, is the best way of expounding general ideas to expound them in abstract terms, which is, of course, the philosophical method? try to write one’s philosophy through the medium of individual case histories.
00:43:07 ►
This is what I have more and more tried to do. I mean, for example, in the few
00:43:13 ►
historical, three historical pieces I’ve ever written, these were essentially
00:43:20 ►
attempts to express general, in the widest sense, philosophical ideas
00:43:28 ►
in terms of particular case histories.
00:43:31 ►
I mean, there’s this book I wrote about Father Joseph, The Grey Eminence,
00:43:35 ►
the book I wrote about the derrills of Loudun,
00:43:38 ►
and then this long essay I wrote on Maine de Biron.
00:43:42 ►
I would like very much to find another good sort of
00:43:46 ►
biographical historical episode, such as I dealt with in the Grey Eminence and the Devils
00:43:54 ►
of Loudun. That turned up, I mean, years and years ago I read the account in Michelet’s
00:44:00 ►
Boclassoff’s Sierre of the Loudun case, and was interested and incidentally found when I came to look into
00:44:08 ►
the documents that it was extremely inaccurate. I mean, this great historian was very slapdash
00:44:16 ►
about the way he handled his account of the case. Well, then I thought no more about it for many years and then quite by chance
00:44:25 ►
picked up in a second hand bookshop
00:44:28 ►
the 19th
00:44:30 ►
century reprint in a limited
00:44:31 ►
edition of the
00:44:33 ►
autobiography of the Prioress
00:44:35 ►
and one of
00:44:37 ►
Surin’s autobiographical
00:44:39 ►
things
00:44:41 ►
and the late 17th
00:44:44 ►
century book by Aubert on the which is an account of the whole episode
00:44:49 ►
and reading those I was so fascinated I mean there was such extraordinary material there
00:44:56 ►
that I began collecting it and found that in fact I don’t think any historical episode has ever had so much documentation.
00:45:05 ►
There are autobiographical statements by Prioress, by Father Seurat,
00:45:12 ►
great many letters, all the exorcisms were taken down in shorthand,
00:45:18 ►
great many of them were printed, and of course a vast number still remain unprinted,
00:45:22 ►
but probably I never read any of the unprinted material
00:45:25 ►
because I just can’t manage those things.
00:45:27 ►
But I don’t think they would have contributed anything
00:45:29 ►
because most of the exorcisms were very like one another,
00:45:33 ►
so that a reasonable cross-section of them
00:45:36 ►
probably represented the whole fairly clearly.
00:45:39 ►
Then there were a great many accounts by outsiders
00:45:43 ►
who come to look at the possessions. It became
00:45:46 ►
one of the popular tourist resorts in 17th century Europe, and people went from all over
00:45:52 ►
the continent to see these nuns rolling about on the floor and screaming obscenities. It
00:45:58 ►
was obviously the greatest fun. These nuns were their own lunatic asylum and the whole convent was a lunatic asylum
00:46:09 ►
with the screaming and with these exorcists deliberately keeping the thing up. I mean
00:46:17 ►
the behaviour of the exorcists, this degree of revoltingness and bad faith which is absolutely
00:46:25 ►
his degree of revoltingness and bad faith,
00:46:26 ►
which is absolutely appalling.
00:46:30 ►
After Grandier had been burned,
00:46:33 ►
they sent for the Jesuits to go,
00:46:38 ►
because the nuns remained just as much possessed and hysterical as ever,
00:46:44 ►
and as the Capuchins had failed completely in their efforts at exorcism,
00:46:47 ►
they called for the Jesuits,
00:46:51 ►
and among whom was this remarkable, very, very able man,
00:46:56 ►
but very unstable, psychologically unstable man,
00:46:58 ►
Cyril, who came from Bordeaux,
00:47:09 ►
and he undertook not merely to dispossess the prioress, but also to raise her to the highest pitch of mystical perfection.
00:47:16 ►
And in the process, himself became psychologically infected and fell into a state of complete insanity
00:47:21 ►
in which he remained for twenty years,
00:47:24 ►
finally emerging in the last remained for 20 years finally emerging
00:47:25 ►
in the last 7 or 8 years of his life
00:47:28 ►
becoming one
00:47:30 ►
of the major figures
00:47:32 ►
in the
00:47:32 ►
French 17th century mysticism
00:47:36 ►
and even while he was
00:47:38 ►
insane when he couldn’t
00:47:39 ►
he was so hopelessly
00:47:41 ►
down that he couldn’t read
00:47:44 ►
or write or he could hardly even move.
00:47:47 ►
He was able to dictate a work on the spiritual life, which I’ve read. It’s in three duodecimal
00:47:56 ►
volumes of about 1,200 pages, admirably well organized, with copious quotations from the
00:48:04 ►
Gospels and from the Fathers.
00:48:07 ►
This man couldn’t read or write.
00:48:09 ►
I mean, showing that the whole of his intellectual faculties
00:48:11 ►
were completely intact,
00:48:13 ►
while his emotional and physiological condition
00:48:18 ►
was absolutely disastrous.
00:48:20 ►
I mean, this man was completely incapable of doing anything at all
00:48:24 ►
and was, in fact, a raving lunatic,
00:48:27 ►
which is, of course, one of the strangest facts about mental illness,
00:48:31 ►
that you can have these cases.
00:48:34 ►
I mean, I’ve seen them in contemporary life
00:48:35 ►
of people whose intellectual faculties are perfectly sound
00:48:41 ►
and yet whose emotional life is so disturbed
00:48:44 ►
that they have to remain locked up in institutions
00:48:47 ►
for years at a stretch. It’s one of the oddest paradoxes I find. The whole business of the
00:48:57 ►
legal and psychological aspects of witchcraft in the 17th century, very very interesting.
00:49:05 ►
I read a lot about it at the time.
00:49:08 ►
It’s very interesting to see how if you don’t have a theory of the unconscious,
00:49:17 ►
you’re virtually forced into the idea of possession.
00:49:22 ►
I mean, I think all the exorcists were convinced that this was a genuine diabolic possession
00:49:30 ►
and of course they were being paid by the government.
00:49:35 ►
They were all getting salaries. When the publicity wore off and people got bored with it
00:49:41 ►
the whole possession disappeared. I mean, the nuns were under pressure from
00:49:45 ►
the exorcists to go on performing. And when the money ran out, because they were being
00:49:52 ►
paid a subsidy by Richelieu, and they cut the subsidy off after a time, and the public
00:50:00 ►
opinion got bored, and they all got well. And then the extraordinary thing, the Paris then made this tour of France
00:50:08 ►
exactly like a movie star, because she fabricated false stigmata on her hand,
00:50:14 ►
which she showed, she used to sit in a window with her hand hanging out,
00:50:19 ►
and thousands of people would come and examine these letters,
00:50:23 ►
which were written on their hands,
00:50:27 ►
supposedly by supernatural means.
00:50:30 ►
And she went to visit the king and queen and had a wonderful time.
00:50:31 ►
And then again, that was all over.
00:50:33 ►
It was like a sort of Marilyn Monroe procession
00:50:37 ►
through the country.
00:50:39 ►
And then, very pathetically,
00:50:41 ►
I mean, she became convinced
00:50:43 ►
that she was a sort of second St. Teresa
00:50:45 ►
and was going to be a great mystical saint, but of course in fact she wasn’t,
00:50:51 ►
and was sort of acting the part of a great mystical saint,
00:50:53 ►
but in the end she developed cancer,
00:50:58 ►
and a laywoman came to live in the monastery, was a genuinely spiritual person,
00:51:03 ►
came to live in the monastery, was a genuinely spiritual person.
00:51:05 ►
And it’s very touching.
00:51:12 ►
I mean, she ended up as quite a humble, genuinely Christian figure in the end. I mean, she made a good ending in the language of the church.
00:51:19 ►
I mean, she really understood her own defects
00:51:23 ►
and this endless play-acting which she’d been doing
00:51:28 ►
all her life. But the really strange thing about this whole story is that the whole Loudun
00:51:35 ►
affair is interesting only if you take the two sides together. If you take the case of Grandier and then the case of Sirin, between them, the two episodes describe the religious life on every level,
00:51:52 ►
from the most horrible to the most sublime.
00:51:54 ►
I mean, the whole gamut of religious life is set forth in a kind of parabolic form in these two episodes.
00:52:02 ►
Now, the really extraordinary thing is is that as far as I know,
00:52:07 ►
I was the first person to bring these two episodes together in a single volume. Plenty
00:52:14 ►
of French people have written about Grandier, and in recent times plenty of people have
00:52:18 ►
written about Surin, but nobody has thought fit to put the two cases together in a single volume and illustrate
00:52:25 ►
this fantastic spectrum of the religious life, from the most revolting through the most equivocal
00:52:38 ►
to the most sublime. I mean, this is the whole sort of message of this extraordinary episode,
00:52:45 ►
that religion is infinitely ambivalent.
00:52:48 ►
I mean, that it has these wonderful sides to it and these appalling sides to it.
00:52:54 ►
And the interesting thing to do in discussing it, of course,
00:52:56 ►
is to bring out both aspects.
00:52:59 ►
And here is a story which is strictly historical,
00:53:03 ►
and I really never departed from the historical documents,
00:53:07 ►
which is at the same time a parable.
00:53:10 ►
And this is what I’m looking for, is a historical or biographical medium
00:53:15 ►
in terms of which I can think about all sorts of general subjects and philosophical subjects,
00:53:26 ►
because I do strongly feel that philosophical and religious ideas
00:53:31 ►
are much better expressed not in abstract terms,
00:53:35 ►
but in terms of concrete case histories,
00:53:38 ►
biographical or historical,
00:53:40 ►
and if you can find the right kind of case histories,
00:53:44 ►
you can find means of writing what may be called philosophy.
00:53:49 ►
I mean, this perhaps is too presumptuous a term for what I’ve written,
00:53:55 ►
but I mean, it does permit the expression of general ideas
00:54:00 ►
in a much more powerful and penetrating way
00:54:04 ►
than would be possible if you were just
00:54:06 ►
writing about the same things in abstract terms.
00:54:11 ►
What part has the supernatural in your life?
00:54:15 ►
I don’t exactly know what people mean by the supernatural.
00:54:17 ►
In practice, I would say that what people call the natural in our Western tradition is in fact our projection
00:54:29 ►
of concepts upon the world. I would say this is, the natural is our tendency to project
00:54:38 ►
our notions and concepts upon the outer world. I mean, to see the outer world not as the immediate datum of experience,
00:54:48 ►
but as an embodied label,
00:54:51 ►
as the illustration of some generalization
00:54:54 ►
already pre-existing in our skulls.
00:54:57 ►
This is what we call the natural world.
00:55:00 ►
The supernatural world, as far as I’m concerned,
00:55:03 ►
is in effect the genuinely natural world,
00:55:06 ►
which is the world of immediate experience without all these concepts imposed upon it.
00:55:12 ►
I mean, anyone who has ever had the experience of seeing the world without labels and concepts
00:55:20 ►
immediately has the impression of its being supernatural.
00:55:24 ►
and concepts immediately has the impression of its being supernatural.
00:55:27 ►
And I mean, in a curious paradoxical way,
00:55:31 ►
nature as it is in itself,
00:55:33 ►
in as much as we can ever know it in itself,
00:55:34 ►
is supernatural.
00:55:39 ►
The all-too-natural is this all-too-human world of concepts which we impose upon nature.
00:55:42 ►
And this, as far as I’m concerned,
00:55:43 ►
is the difference between the natural and the supernatural.
00:55:46 ►
The natural is what we…
00:55:48 ►
is our picture of the world
00:55:50 ►
with its names and its labels imposed upon it,
00:55:54 ►
the utilitarian and scientific
00:55:56 ►
and generally day-to-day picture.
00:56:01 ►
And the supernatural is the world
00:56:03 ►
as it comes to us in its profoundest
00:56:06 ►
mystery.
00:56:09 ►
One is sometimes suddenly aware of this bottomless mystery of existence.
00:56:15 ►
I mean, suddenly you identify this thing.
00:56:17 ►
If you choose to call this the supernatural, I don’t know what other sense it has.
00:56:21 ►
I mean, I don’t believe in mysterious beings
00:56:25 ►
going around and arranging things,
00:56:27 ►
but I do believe in the profound, unfathomable mystery of life,
00:56:33 ►
which I think has a sort of divine quality about it.
00:56:37 ►
I think there is a mysterious being,
00:56:39 ►
but whether he goes around arranging things is another question.
00:56:44 ►
I don’t know.
00:56:46 ►
I mean, I think one can be complete agnostic
00:56:51 ►
and a complete mystic at the same time.
00:56:53 ►
I don’t see any incompatibility with mysticism
00:56:56 ►
and the most sceptical scientific approach.
00:56:59 ►
I mean, there’s no incompatibility.
00:57:01 ►
There’s no incompatibility between being a biochemist and having a taste for music.
00:57:09 ►
I’m entirely on the side of the mystery.
00:57:12 ►
I mean, any attempt to explain away the mystery is ridiculous.
00:57:18 ►
This fundamental everyday mystery of our existence is something which we mustn’t try to avoid
00:57:26 ►
through intellectual
00:57:27 ►
explanation. We have to have intellectual
00:57:30 ►
explanations, but we have to be
00:57:31 ►
perfectly clear that they’re not
00:57:33 ►
completely satisfying, that we
00:57:35 ►
must never take these words too seriously.
00:57:38 ►
Words are very important,
00:57:40 ►
but if we take them too seriously,
00:57:41 ►
we destroy everything.
00:57:43 ►
But if we can somehow learn to make the best of both worlds,
00:57:47 ►
the world of conceptual explanation,
00:57:51 ►
the world of immediate experience,
00:57:53 ►
the world of the mysteries it’s actually given,
00:57:55 ►
then we have a full and complete life.
00:57:59 ►
Otherwise we have either the life of the sort of savage
00:58:04 ►
without any intellectual side at all, or else
00:58:07 ►
the so-called life of reason which is wholly unsatisfactory. We have to have both, we must
00:58:13 ►
make the best of both worlds.
00:58:18 ►
We have such bad symbols, I mean we have really no great symbols now. All that we have are these ridiculous nationalist symbols
00:58:27 ►
like flags and swastikas and whatnot.
00:58:30 ►
But there are no sort of great cosmic symbols.
00:58:33 ►
I mean, when you think of the staggering symbols that the Indians produced,
00:58:38 ►
I mean, the dancing Shiva, for example,
00:58:41 ►
we’ve never produced anything as comprehensive as this.
00:58:46 ►
The dancing Shiva, those example, we’ve never produced anything as comprehensive as this. The dancing Shiva,
00:58:53 ►
those little bronze statues, it is the Shiva with four arms dancing with one foot raised.
00:59:00 ►
And, well, I mean, I go into the details already, quite extraordinary. It’s, the figure stands within a great circle, a sort of of halo which has flames going out
00:59:05 ►
I mean the symbols of flames
00:59:07 ►
and this is the circle of
00:59:09 ►
mass, energy, space, time
00:59:11 ►
and this is the material world
00:59:13 ►
this is the great world
00:59:15 ►
all embracing material world
00:59:19 ►
with its flames
00:59:19 ►
within this Shiva dances
00:59:23 ►
he’s called Nataraja, the lord of the dance
00:59:26 ►
and he dances
00:59:29 ►
he’s everywhere in the universe
00:59:31 ►
this is his dance
00:59:33 ►
the manifestation of the world is called his lila
00:59:36 ►
his play
00:59:37 ►
he sends his reign upon the just and the unjust
00:59:42 ►
he’s beyond good and evil of course
00:59:47 ►
it’s all an immense manifestation of play
00:59:49 ►
he has this long hair
00:59:53 ►
which is the hair of the yogi
00:59:54 ►
contemplative
00:59:56 ►
and it streams out to the limits of the universe
00:59:58 ►
therefore this sort of yogic knowledge
01:00:02 ►
of this contemplation includes everything.
01:00:05 ►
He has four arms.
01:00:08 ►
In the upper right arm he holds a little drum,
01:00:12 ►
which is the drum which summons things into creation.
01:00:15 ►
You beat upon this drum, things come into existence.
01:00:18 ►
In his left arm he holds a fire,
01:00:21 ►
which is what destroys everything.
01:00:23 ►
He both creates and destroys. His lower right
01:00:28 ►
hand is held up in this attitude, which means be not afraid in spite of everything, it is
01:00:35 ►
all right. The other hand points down at his feet and one foot is planted squarely on the back of a repulsive dwarf, this infinitely
01:00:49 ►
powerful dwarf called Mujalaka, I think his name is, who is the ego and he has to break
01:00:58 ►
the back of the ego, you see. What he’s really pointing at is the other foot which is raised and this means
01:01:06 ►
this foot is raised
01:01:07 ►
against gravitation
01:01:08 ►
and is the symbol
01:01:10 ►
of
01:01:11 ►
spiritual contemplation
01:01:13 ►
the whole thing
01:01:16 ►
is there
01:01:16 ►
you see
01:01:17 ►
I mean
01:01:17 ►
the world of space
01:01:18 ►
and time
01:01:19 ►
and matter
01:01:20 ►
and energy
01:01:20 ►
the world of
01:01:22 ►
creation
01:01:23 ►
and destruction
01:01:24 ►
the world of psychology I mean how do you
01:01:29 ►
get out of this?
01:01:30 ►
I mean if you don’t break the back of the ego you’re lost and if you don’t practice
01:01:36 ►
contemplation there will be no liberation for you.
01:01:41 ►
I mean we don’t have anything remotely approaching such a comprehensive
01:01:46 ►
symbol which is both cosmic and psychological and spiritual. I mean, it is really most unfortunate
01:01:53 ►
that we have such miserable symbols, but it’s a shame we don’t have any good symbols like
01:02:01 ►
this to remind us of who we are and what we can do about it if anything
01:02:12 ►
we have to make the best not only of both worlds but of all the worlds we man is a multiple
01:02:19 ►
amphibian who lives in about 20 different worlds at once, and if anything is to be done with him
01:02:25 ►
to improve his enjoyment of life,
01:02:29 ►
to improve the way he can realize his desirable potentialities,
01:02:34 ►
to improve his health,
01:02:35 ►
to improve the quality of his relations with other people,
01:02:38 ►
to improve his morality,
01:02:40 ►
we have to attack on all the fronts at once.
01:02:44 ►
And we have the greatest, what may fronts at once and we have the greatest
01:02:46 ►
what may be called the original sin of the human mind
01:02:49 ►
is sloth, is oversimplification
01:02:52 ►
we want to think that there is only one cause
01:02:56 ►
for any given phenomenon
01:02:57 ►
therefore there is one cure
01:02:59 ►
there is not
01:03:00 ►
and this is the trouble
01:03:01 ►
that no phenomenon on the human level,
01:03:07 ►
which is a level of immense complexity,
01:03:09 ►
can ever have a single cause.
01:03:12 ►
We must always take at least half a dozen
01:03:14 ►
conspiring causal factors into consideration,
01:03:19 ►
and any attempt to improve human life
01:03:23 ►
has to take into account the psychological factors,
01:03:26 ►
the sociological factors, the physical factors, the chemical factors, all of them.
01:03:34 ►
How often have you taken mescaline yourself?
01:03:38 ►
I’ve taken mescaline twice, and by surgical acid about five times, I suppose.
01:03:43 ►
I would like to take it about once a year, I think.
01:03:48 ►
But one doesn’t…
01:03:49 ►
Most people that I know who take it
01:03:52 ►
have no desire to sort of fool with it and take it constantly.
01:03:55 ►
I mean, the thing…
01:03:56 ►
You take it too seriously to behave in this way towards it.
01:04:01 ►
You wouldn’t want to wallow in it.
01:04:04 ►
I mean, you need a good deal of time to digest this, I think.
01:04:07 ►
I mean, I don’t know.
01:04:08 ►
Most people I know who feel it don’t have any special desire to go on taking it.
01:04:14 ►
I mean, they would like to take it every six months or every year or something of that
01:04:19 ►
kind.
01:04:20 ►
But I still have to meet one who wants to take it constantly.
01:04:24 ►
But isn’t it a condition one would want to be in all the time?
01:04:28 ►
You couldn’t be in it all the time
01:04:30 ►
because it is, so to say,
01:04:34 ►
beyond the level of biological efficiency.
01:04:38 ►
The world becomes so extraordinary and so absorbing
01:04:42 ►
that you couldn’t cross the street
01:04:44 ►
without considerable risk
01:04:45 ►
of being run over. You wouldn’t want to do anything else because just experiencing this
01:04:54 ►
thing is so extraordinary.
01:04:56 ►
Is the effect the same on everyone?
01:04:59 ►
Statistically about 70% to 75% probably get a good and positive happy result from it
01:05:10 ►
a certain percentage get no results and certain percentage get very unpleasant and hell-like results out of it
01:05:17 ►
get very frightened
01:05:19 ►
mine were always positive
01:05:22 ►
I didn’t have what some people have, which is a great elaborate vision with
01:05:27 ►
the eyes closed. Some people have the most elaborate and circumstantial visionary experiences.
01:05:36 ►
With the eyes closed I merely see sort of living geometries, but never any of these
01:05:42 ►
great landscapes and figures and architectures that some people see.
01:05:47 ►
Do you sit or do you move about?
01:05:50 ►
You spend a lot of time sitting quietly looking at things
01:05:54 ►
and getting these sort of strange metaphysical insights into the world.
01:06:04 ►
Is it a habit-forming drug?
01:06:06 ►
In most cases, it has no more hangover than two cocktails,
01:06:11 ►
and some people feel actually much better the next day.
01:06:14 ►
It’s being used to some extent in therapy.
01:06:18 ►
There’s a man here called Sanderson who uses it a lot.
01:06:21 ►
There are several people in America.
01:06:24 ►
In Canada, several groups have had
01:06:27 ►
very, very good results with alcoholism using LSD. There’s a new drug now, the Psilocybin,
01:06:36 ►
which is derived from the Mexican mushroom, which is the same effect but doesn’t last
01:06:41 ►
quite so long, and that is being used in France therapeutically
01:06:47 ►
with some success.
01:06:49 ►
You take a capsule of 400 milligrams and the lysotic acid, you take this incredibly small
01:06:57 ►
dose of 100 gamma, which is one hundred millionths of a gram, ten thousandths of a gram,
01:07:05 ►
tenths of a milligram,
01:07:07 ►
which is a homeopathic dose.
01:07:09 ►
It’s a perfect extraordinary that should have an effect.
01:07:11 ►
And in fact it has an effect
01:07:13 ►
long after all traces of it have gone out of the body.
01:07:18 ►
It has an effect by triggering some,
01:07:21 ►
nobody knows exactly what,
01:07:23 ►
it probably inhibits one of the 27 enzymes
01:07:28 ►
which control the functioning of the brain.
01:07:32 ►
Either inhibits one or stimulates one,
01:07:34 ►
and I don’t think anybody quite knows what it does.
01:07:37 ►
The intensity of the experience is entirely unlike any ordinary experience.
01:07:46 ►
But on the other hand, it quite obviously resembles spontaneous experiences
01:07:52 ►
certain artists and religious people have unquestionably had.
01:07:57 ►
It’s an immense intensification of the world,
01:08:01 ►
the transfiguration of the external world
01:08:04 ►
into incredible beauty and significance.
01:08:10 ►
It’s also beyond this kind of aesthetic experience.
01:08:14 ►
There may be other experiences,
01:08:16 ►
a sense of solidarity with the universe,
01:08:21 ►
solidarity with other people.
01:08:28 ►
Understanding of such phrases as you read in the book of Job, yea, though he slay me, yet would I trust in him,
01:08:31 ►
becomes quite comprehensible.
01:08:34 ►
This thing opens the door to these experiences,
01:08:38 ►
which can be of immense value to people
01:08:40 ►
if they choose to make use of them, if they don’t choose to.
01:08:44 ►
I mean, this is what
01:08:45 ►
the Catholics call a gratuitous grace. It doesn’t guarantee salvation or it’s not sufficient
01:08:55 ►
and it’s not necessary salvation, but if it can be collaborated with and used in an intelligent
01:09:03 ►
way, it can be be immense help to people.
01:09:06 ►
The sense that in spite of everything, which of course is the ultimate, I suppose, the ultimate mystical conviction,
01:09:13 ►
in spite of pain, in spite of death, in spite of horror,
01:09:18 ►
the universe is in some mysterious sense all right write capital A, capital R.
01:09:32 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,
01:09:34 ►
where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
01:09:39 ►
And I guess what Aldous just said
01:09:41 ►
is actually the ultimate teaching we receive
01:09:44 ►
through the use of our sacred medicines.
01:09:46 ►
And that is the
01:09:47 ►
fact that our universe
01:09:49 ►
and ultimately the essential
01:09:51 ►
core of our own being is
01:09:53 ►
doing just fine.
01:09:56 ►
Well, I hope that
01:09:57 ►
this little audio collage of the
01:09:59 ►
words and wisdom of Aldous Huxley
01:10:01 ►
was not only interesting for you
01:10:03 ►
but that he may also inspire you to expand your own horizons
01:10:08 ►
and make this your most creative year yet.
01:10:11 ►
Whether it’s starting your own podcast, blogging, painting, playing music,
01:10:15 ►
or simply keeping a journal of the progress of your thoughts throughout the year,
01:10:20 ►
it really doesn’t matter what you create as long as you are following your own bliss
01:10:24 ►
and not the orders of somebody else.
01:10:28 ►
In other words, hey, be sure to set aside a little time for yourself this year.
01:10:33 ►
You deserve it.
01:10:35 ►
And I guess I should also mention, if you deserve a little credit, that if you sent me some audio to play here in the salon, I’ll eventually get to it.
01:10:46 ►
The response to my request for audio material that isn’t easily found on the net
01:10:51 ►
was more successful than I imagined it would be,
01:10:54 ►
and so I’ve got a lot of previewing and sorting out to do in the weeks ahead.
01:10:58 ►
But from what the accompanying emails had to say about some of the material that was sent to me
01:11:04 ►
leads me to believe
01:11:05 ►
that we’re going to be treated to some very interesting new gems this year, and not all of
01:11:11 ►
them are going to be from people we already know about. Now, while I normally would have a few more
01:11:16 ►
comments or an email to read today, I’m going to cut this a little short. The first reason being my
01:11:23 ►
hope that you will spend a little time thinking about
01:11:26 ►
some of the things Huxley had to say in this podcast
01:11:28 ►
that may in some way have a bearing
01:11:31 ►
on the future of the creative side of your life.
01:11:34 ►
The other reason is that I’m about to
01:11:36 ►
head up to L.A. right now in order to
01:11:38 ►
attend one of the lectures that my fellow podcasters
01:11:42 ►
KMO and Neil Kramer are giving on the West Coast leg of their transitional alchemy tour.
01:11:49 ►
And I’m sure I’ll have more to say about that in my next podcast from here in the salon.
01:11:54 ►
But for now, I’ll just close today’s podcast by once again reminding you that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon
01:12:02 ►
are freely available for you to use in your own audio projects under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 3.0 license.
01:12:11 ►
And if you have any questions about that, just click the Creative Commons link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage, which you can find at psychedelicsalon.org.
01:12:20 ►
And if you are interested in the philosophy behind the psychedelic salon,
01:12:29 ►
you can hear all about it in my novel, The Genesis Generation,
01:12:35 ►
which is available as an audiobook that you can download at genesisgeneration.us.
01:12:40 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from cyberdelic space.
00:00:00 ►
Be well, my friends.