Mind At Large

each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system.

Campbell transmits and amplifies Huxley’s thesis that the brain functions as a reducing valve restricting universal consciousness to a biologically serviceable trickle, while certain individuals — through by-passes innate or acquired — access Mind at Large more directly.

Campbell, Joseph, Myths to Live By, 1972thesis

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spatial relationships had ceased to matter very much and that my mind was perceiving the world in terms of other than spatial categories… The mind does its perceiving in terms of intensity of existence, profundity of significance, relationships within a pattern.

Huxley documents the phenomenological signature of consciousness liberated from the reducing valve — a shift from spatial-utilitarian perception to qualitative, significance-saturated awareness consistent with the Mind at Large condition.

Huxley, Aldous, The Doors of Perception, 1954supporting

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large quantities of adrenalin may cause hallucinations, and some of the products of its decomposition are known to induce symptoms resembling those of schizophrenia… these upset the enzyme systems regulating the brain, and lower its efficiency as an instrument for getting on in a world where the biologically fittest survive.

Huxley maps the biochemical mechanisms by which the brain’s filtering efficiency can be reduced, situating mystical and pathological alterations of consciousness within the same neurochemical framework underpinning the reducing-valve hypothesis.

Huxley, Aldous, The Doors of Perception, 1954supporting

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the stroboscope tends to enrich and intensify the visions induced by mescalin or lysergic acid… abstract geometry was transformed into what my friend described as ‘Japanese landscapes’ of surpassing beauty.

Huxley presents phenomenological evidence that external rhythmic stimuli can interact with pharmacologically altered neural filtering, suggesting that access to Mind at Large is mediated by complex, multi-modal neurophysiological conditions.

Huxley, Aldous, The Doors of Perception, 1954aside

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