Phenomenological analysis of a psychedelic experience: An approach to Huxley's study The doors of perception (Part I)

Abstract

In the present study a phenomenological approach to the work of HuxleyThe doors of perception is attempted. Throughout its reading it is noticed that diverse elements considered manifestations of an illumination keep an analogy with psychopathological phenomena typical of the incipient schizophrenia, to the way in which it is described by Konrad in his work The Incipient Schizophrenia. The parallelism between the phenomenological descriptions of one author and the other, the similarities of the described phenomena and the possibility of considering Huxley's psychedelic experience more as a drug-induced psychosis than as a state of religious enlightenment, is really striking. This situation, which could be considered equivocal, is nothing more and nothing less than the root of one of the most striking religious movements of recent decades: it is the origin of the Hippie movement, based on the ritual use of mescaline. even so, the descriptive richness, the precision of the language, the elegance of the expressive ways, the weighting of the possible scope of the lived thing in that moment, give to this work a new and striking presence. The phenomenon initially interpreted as ecstatic thus acquires the edges of a manifestation of delirium, described and sustained by one of the most brilliants growers of word in history. The relationship with other related phenomena is discussed here at the end of this study.