LIVING IN A TECHNICOLOR DREAM WORLD
BY: Ruby Warrington · Healing
IF the following passage from Aldous Huxley’s seminal work, The Doors of Perception: Heaven and Hell, in which he quotes mystical Irish poet George Russell, doesn’t give you chills, then this blog probably isn’t for you. But if you find yourself there on the sand with Russell, feeling like a Goddess and getting down to some serious business with Mama Nature and her technicolor crew, then welcome. Sit back and enjoy the ride. This is The Numinous.
“FOR most of us most of the time, the world of everyday experience seems rather dim and drab. But for a few people often, and for a fair number occasionally, some of the brightness of visionary experience spills over, as it were, into common seeing, and the everyday universe is transfigured. Though still recognisably itself, the Old World takes on the quality of the mind’s antipodes (those far reaches we have yet to fully explore – ed). Here is an entirely characteristic description of this transfiguration of the everyday world:
‘I was sitting on the seashore, half listening to a friend arguing about something which merely bored me. Unconsciously to myself, I looked at the film of sand I had picked up on my hand, when I suddenly saw the exquisite beauty of every little grain of it; instead of being dull, I saw that each particle was made up of a perfect geometrical pattern, with sharp angles, from each of which a brilliant shaft of light was reflected, while each tiny crystal shone like a rainbow. The rays crossed and recrossed, making patterns of such exquisite beauty that they left me breathless. Then, suddenly, my consciousness was lighted up from within and I saw in vivid how the whole universe was made of particles of material which, no matter how dull and lifeless they might seem, were nevertheless filled with this intense and vital beauty. For a second or two the whole world appeared as a blaze of glory. When it died down, it left me with something I have never forgotten and which constantly reminds me of the beauty locked up in every speck of material around us.’”
See you there, Numi x
