Why the brain of an artist feels like drugs for the mortals
“Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful. According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large.”
— Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley proclaims in his book “The Doors of Perception”(which gave the band ‘The Doors’ their name) that artists are using their “Mind at Large” constantly. It sounds pretty cool to know that when you have an artistic brain you are using a larger particle of your brain. But what does Huxley mean when he talks about Mind at Large?
Huxley says that the Mind at Large gives a person the ability to open his thoughts for his conscious brain. It especially focuses on the visual perception of objects. Think of the water lilies of Claude Monet and how he perceives the surroundings. He sees certain visuals that arbitrate a completely different visual than a normal human being would envision. Huxley concludes that this is the power of an artist and he found this revelation during a test in which he used a dose of Mescaline (psychedelic drugs). It gives a person the ability to open a wider spectrum of thoughts that are usually blocked by the brain.
But the main question is how this phenomenon could be implemented and what does this tell us about our principles of reasoning? In general we conceive the world at a perceptional level in which we are capable of sufficient reasoning with the knowledge we have perceived during our live. Our brains are capable of giving meaning to a certain object due to our parents, society, ethics, education, books, etc. The more we know the more complex a representation of an object becomes. Think of the following: For you as an individual, an iPhone can be a just a simple phone. Nothing special, just an object that brings you in contact with the world. For Johnathan Ive it is more than a machine, it resembles his ethics and knowledge. He knows every bolt, every edge and every decision that made it into today’s iPhone. Therefore Schopenhauer, Nietzsche & Kant(philosophers) argue that each representation of a piece of reality(object) by the subject(you or Johnatan Ive) is unique and only on a high level of reasoning has the same principles. The iPhone would be represented on a high level with a phone that is made by Apple.
But in order to get the Mind at Large working, there is a deeper layer of representation for the brain to be perceived: The perception of the unknown. In general our brain is hardwired to collect only within our realm of reason. A biased opinion is easily given and information that is apprehended the brain will only capture information that is in our thought of reasoning. We rarely collect information that is out of our realm of reason. If we follow Huxley’s insights on the Mind at Large we need to absorb all the given information represented to us. A person needs to get caught in the act of the unconcealing. Martin Heidegger a german philosopher defined unconcealment as followed: “what appears from out of itself, in appearing shows itself , and in this self-showing manifests.”
This all seems pretty poetic and it is. What he is trying to say is as followed. In a normal situation a person lets himself be distracted by all the blur and fuzziness when they want to gather information about a given object. They let their emotions get involved or they are getting distracted by other peoples opinion. However Heidegger tells in his theory that we need to rely on our conscious state of mind that can help us to clear all our distraction and focus on what is really there. If we go back to Huxley and his Mescaline experience, the Mescaline was the enabler to truly focus on his conscious strain of thinking.
If we ever want to be an artist or let our creative outputs come to live we need to let our conscious understanding of the brain do all the work. We do not need Mescaline in order to get the Mind at Large working. What we truly need is patience and let the representation of objects be as open as possible. Cut the crap and do not stop when things are weird and unknown. As said previously we need to step out of our realm of reasoning and start embracing the fuzziness! I want to end this article with the wise words of Federico Fellini, one of the best directors known for Otto e Mezzo & La Dolce Vita. He explains his thoughts on the subject presented above.
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