McGilchrist Explains What Huxley Experienced

About this episode

The episode discusses how loosening the left hemisphere's grip on perception can lead to a deeper understanding of reality, drawing parallels to Huxley's experiences.

Show notes. If the left hemisphere's grip on people's minds can be loosened, McGilchrist says, their perceptions will change. They will see "into the depth of things . . . all at once [and] recognize them for what they are, no longer overlaid by our projections." When this happens, the conventional notions and mental clichés we live by in our everyday world get shoved aside, and the "hall of mirrors" (a favorite McGilchrist phrase to describe our left-hemispheric perception and experience) will come crashing down as we see things in their naked--beautiful--existence. We then get a taste of Huxley's experience with mescalin. We get a glimpse of what Thoreau saw at Walden. We become like those patrons at Alice's Restaurant. We start to break through that door to the other side.

Topics covered

• perception
• hemispheric dominance
• Huxley
• Thoreau

Keywords

• mescalin
• Alice's Restaurant
• depth of things

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