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Aldous Huxley 1894-1963 |
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Aldous Huxley’s Visiting Professorship was one of the most-publicized Big Deals that the Institute mounted for its Centennial, as this very professional flyer would indicate.
Wikipedia says that “…by the end of his life, Huxley was considered, in many academic circles, a ‘leader of modern thought’ and an intellectual of the highest rank.”
In preparation for this big deal, I read a fair amount of Huxley, even venturing into the writings of his brother Julian. It probably indicates a second-rate intellect on my part that I’ve retained rather little of that, and that what stuck really didn’t persuade me very strongly. Right at the outset of the Sixties, I reaffirmed my misfit status by wondering why, if this guy was so damn bright, he had to jerk his brain around with chemicals whose side effects he surely apprehended only dimly… I do still use one word that his book The Doors of Perception taught me: numinous. It seems to me to apply to experiences, particularly of the spiritual sort, which I prefer to approach without recourse to drugs, thank you. |
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