#7: Read Brave New World (wherein the author blows her mind)

Nate has been on my case to read Aldous Huxley's "Doors of Perception" for quite some time, ever since he read it while writing his honours' paper last year and found it unbelievably profound and mind-altering.

I had tried to get a copy for myself in the summer, but when Chapters didn't have it in stock, I picked up Huxley's "Brave New World" instead, thinking it would be a good primer for "Doors".

It took me quite a while to get into, as I started and stopped reading it several times since then. But last week I decided to push myself and finally finish it (a clear influence of having this list, as I was driven mostly by wanting to find something easy to 'cross off').

I am so glad that I did. I don't think I have finished fully processing it yet, as there have been several times in the last week where I suddenly have a new thought or realization about the book's meaning.

But this is a truly staggeringly good book. Peeling back the onion-layers of its meaning, I find myself thinking and feeling about the various connections it has produced within my mind, as I find the articulation of thoughts that I have never myself been able to put into words.

The most obvious of these are the book's thoughts and implications about religion versus sprituality, and the human soul's need for a God. Huxley is able to so indirectly and without the usual self-consciousness of these type of futuristic, apocalyptic novels, make such piercingly honest statements about spirituality. One passage that almost literally knocked the wind out of me when I first read it was this:

"They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false–a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses."

If I'm not mistaken, the above passage was actually written by Cardinal Newman, and not Huxley. But the passage is so much more brilliantly underscored and heightened in its meaning by Huxley's narrative around it. The world that he creates, and its similarities and differences from our own, makes such a fertile ground for proving and disproving so many of our conceptions of God, spirituality, religion, love, society and government.

I can't imagine why this book is used in high-school curriculum though. I don't think I can truly appreciate its various messages at age 23 and after having already wrestled with some of these issues on my own; I can't imagine many 17 year olds who would do better.

I'd love to hear comments from anyone else who has read the book; as I said, I feel there's still a lot that I need to 'work through' in its meaning, and would love to hear others' takes on it.