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Huxley's education began in his father's well-equipped botanical laboratory, after which he enrolled at Hillside School near Godalming. [20] [21] He was taught there by his own mother for several years until she became terminally ill. After Hillside he went on to Eton College. His mother died in 1908, when he was 14 (his father later remarried). He contracted the eye disease Keratitis punctata in 1911; this "left [him] practically blind for two to three years" [22] and "ended his early dreams of becoming a doctor". [23] In October 1913, Huxley entered Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied English literature. [24] He volunteered for the British Army in January 1916, for the Great War; however, he was rejected on health grounds, being half-blind in one eye. [24] His eyesight later partly recovered. He edited Oxford Poetry in 1916, and in June of that year graduated BA with first class honours. [24] His brother Julian wrote: William Sargant, the controversial British psychiatrist, reviewed the book for The British Medical Journal and particularly focused on Huxley's reflections on schizophrenia. He wrote that the book brought to life the mental suffering of schizophrenics, which should make psychiatrists uneasy about their failure to relieve this. Also, he hoped that the book would encourage the investigation of the physiological, rather than psychological, aspects of psychiatry. [58] Other medical researchers questioned the validity of Huxley's account. According to Roland Fisher, the book contained "99 percent Aldous Huxley and only one half gram mescaline". [59] Joost A.M. Meerloo found Huxley's reactions "not necessarily the same as... other people's experiences." [60]

Huxley's mother Julia Huxley died when he was ten and she was 46. She wrote a letter to Aldous as she was dying and he carried this with him for the rest of his life. It included the thought "Judge not too much and love more". Scholars of Aldous's works see his mother's death in his cynical attitude and his books including Brave New World and the utopian Island. [4] The Burning Wheel (1916), collection of 31 poems: [18] "The Burning Wheel", "Doors of the Temple", "Villiers de L'Isle-Adam", "Darkness", "Mole", "The Two Seasons", "Two Realities", "Quotidian Vision", "Vision", "The Mirror", "Variations on a Theme of Laforgue", "Philosophy", "Philoclea in the Forest", "Books and Thoughts", "Contrary to Nature and Aristotle", "Escape", "The Garden", "The Canal", "The Ideal found wanting", "Misplaced Love", "Sonnet", "Sentimental Summer", "The Choice", "The Higher Sensualism", "Sonnet", "Formal Verses", "Perils of the Small Hours", "Complaint", "Return to an Old Home", "Fragment", "The Walk" goldfinches and chiff-chaffs! What presumption! Why couldn’t he have kept his mouth shut and let the birds preach to him? And now,” he added in another tone, “you’d better start listening to our friend in the tree.” … Huxley, Laura (1968). This Timeless Moment. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. ISBN 978-0-89087-968-9.As the descriptions of naturally occurring and drug-stimulated mystical experiences cannot be distinguished phenomenologically, Huston Smith regards Zaehner's position in Mysticism Sacred and Profane, as a product of the conflict between science and religion – that religion tends to ignore the findings of science. Nonetheless, although these drugs may produce a religious experience, they need not produce a religious life, unless set within a context of faith and discipline. Finally, he concludes that psychedelic drugs should not be forgotten in relation to religion because the phenomenon of religious awe, or the encounter with the holy, is declining and religion cannot survive long in its absence. [76] Later experience [ edit ] Huxley later wrote that the "things which had entirely filled my attention on that first occasion [chronicled in The Doors of Perception], I now perceived to be temptations – temptations to escape from the central reality into false, or at least imperfect and partial Nirvanas of beauty and mere knowledge." Boyce, Barry (3 January 2017). "Huston Smith's Fifty Years on the Razor's Edge". Lion's Roar . Retrieved 13 May 2020. The Gioconda Smile" (novelette), "Permutations Among the Nightingales" (play), "The Tillotson Banquet", "Green Tunnels", "Nuns at Luncheon" The book met with a variety of responses, both positive and negative, [22] from writers in the fields of literature, psychiatry, philosophy and religion. These included a symposium published in The Saturday Review magazine with the unlikely title of, Mescalin – An Answer to Cigarettes, including contributions from Huxley; J.S. Slotkin, a professor of anthropology; and a physician, Dr. W.C. Cutting. [52] Literature [ edit ] Dana Sawyer in M. Keith Booker (ed.), Encyclopedia of Literature and Politics: H-R, Greenwood Publishing Group (2005), p. 359

Spies, Claudio (Fall–Winter 1965). "Notes on Stravinsky's Variations". Perspectives of New Music. 4 (1): 62–74. doi: 10.2307/832527. JSTOR 832527. . Reprinted in Perspectives on Schoenberg and Stravinsky, revised edition, edited by Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972. Birnbaum, Milton (1971). Aldous Huxley's Quest for Values. University of Tennessee Press. p.407. ISBN 0-87049-127-X.

Aldous Huxley Quotes

A Woman's Vengeance (1948), film directed by Zoltan Korda, based on novelette " The Gioconda Smile" Works of this period included novels about the dehumanising aspects of scientific progress, (his magnum opus Brave New World), and on pacifist themes ( Eyeless in Gaza). [33] In Brave New World, set in a dystopian London, Huxley portrays a society operating on the principles of mass production and Pavlovian conditioning. [34] Huxley was strongly influenced by F. Matthias Alexander, on whom he based a character in Eyeless in Gaza. [35] Aldous Huxley by Low (1933) The book finishes with Huxley's final reflections on the meaning of his experience. Firstly, the urge to transcend one's self is universal through times and cultures (and was characterised by H. G. Wells as The Door in the Wall). [49] He reasons that better, healthier "doors" are needed than alcohol and tobacco. Mescaline has the advantage of not provoking violence in takers, but its effects last an inconveniently long time and some users can have negative reactions. Ideally, self-transcendence would be found in religion, but Huxley feels that it is unlikely that this will ever happen. Christianity and mescaline seem well-suited for each other; the Native American Church for instance uses the drug as a sacrament, where its use combines religious feeling with decorum. [50]