Heaven and Hell

1. The Mind's Uncharted Territories: Visionary Experience

Like the earth of a hundred years ago, our mind still has its darkest Africas, its unmapped Borneos and Amazonian basins.

Unexplored inner realms. Aldous Huxley proposes that the human mind contains vast, unexplored regions, akin to the unmapped continents of the physical world. These "New Worlds" of the psyche—including the personal subconscious, collective unconscious, and the world of Visionary Experience—exist beyond our everyday consciousness.

Autonomous inhabitants. Within these mental antipodes reside "creatures" and phenomena that are exceedingly improbable yet exist as observable facts. These psychological entities live their own autonomous lives, independent of individual control, much like unique species in remote geographical locations.

Beyond invention. We do not invent these inner landscapes or their inhabitants; rather, we discover them. The primary task for the "naturalist of the mind" is to find safe, easy, and reliable methods to journey from the "Old World" of familiar consciousness to these remote, self-sufficient continents of the psyche.

2. Gateways to the Antipodes: Chemical & Psychological Means

The two vehicles carry the consciousness to the same region; but the drug has the longer range and takes its passengers further into the terra incognita.

Diverse access points. Huxley identifies several methods for transporting consciousness to the mind's antipodes. The most reliable include chemical agents like mescalin or lysergic acid, and psychological techniques such as hypnosis, both leading to similar visionary regions.

Altering brain efficiency. Mescalin, for instance, is believed to interfere with the brain's enzyme system, lowering its "biological efficiency" as an instrument for focusing on survival. This reduction allows biologically useless, yet aesthetically and spiritually valuable, mental events to enter consciousness.

Asceticism and environment. Similar visionary intrusions can be induced by physical conditions like illness, fatigue, fasting, or sensory deprivation (confinement in darkness and silence). These practices, historically used by ascetics, reduce the brain's normal filtering capacity, opening doors to both heavenly and infernal visionary realms.

3. Hallmarks of Vision: Light, Color, and Significance

Everything seen by those who visit the mind's antipodes is brilliantly illuminated and seems to shine from within.

Praeternatural brilliance. A defining characteristic of visionary experience is the perception of intense, self-luminous light and colors. Objects appear to glow from within, with hues far beyond normal perception, and the mind's capacity to discern subtle distinctions is greatly heightened.

Beyond ordinary dreams. Unlike most dreams, which are often uncolored or feebly so, visionary experiences are always intensely and "praeternaturally brilliant." This distinction suggests that while dreams are fabricated by the personal subconscious, visions are "given" and possess the hallmark of reality.

Intrinsic meaning. Along with light and color, visionary objects carry a heightened significance. Their meaning is identical with their being; they do not symbolize something else but are intensely themselves, manifesting the "essential givenness" and "non-human otherness" of the universe, unclouded by verbal notions.

4. Art as a Mirror of the Other World

Whatever, in nature or in a work of art, resembles one of those intensely significant, inwardly glowing objects encountered at the mind's antipodes, is capable of inducing, if only in a partial and attenuated form, the visionary experience.

Vision-inducing power. Certain natural objects and works of art possess the power to transport the beholder towards the mind's antipodes. This occurs when they resemble the intensely significant, inwardly glowing objects experienced in visions.

Materials and forms. This transporting power is often found in materials like polished metals, precious stones, and glass, which intrinsically reflect the praeternatural brilliance of the Other World. When combined with noble forms and artful blending, they become genuine talismans.

Sacred art's purpose. Religious art across cultures, from ancient Egypt to modern Europe, consistently utilizes these vision-inducing materials—gold shrines, jeweled statues, glittering altars—to evoke the numinous and facilitate a connection to the transcendental.

5. Cultural Echoes: Paradises and Sacred Objects

To acquire such a stone is to acquire something whose preciousness is guaranteed by the fact that it exists in the Other World.

Universal paradises. Descriptions of "Other Worlds" in cultural traditions—heavens, fairylands, primal states of innocence—closely mirror induced visionary experiences. These realms are consistently depicted with praeternatural light, intense colors, and profound significance.

Gems and glowing objects. A common feature across these paradises, from the Garden of Eden to Buddhist heavens, is an abundance of precious stones or gem-like objects. These "stones of fire" are valued not merely for rarity, but because they faintly resemble the self-luminous marvels seen in visionary states.

Horticulture's divine source. Similarly, the presence of praeternaturally brilliant flowers in many paradises suggests that horticulture, and the offering of flowers at altars, stems from an obscure feeling that these are indigenous to heaven, a return to the divine source.

6. Modernity's Paradox: Devaluation of the Visionary

Familiarity breeds indifference. We have seen too much pure, bright colour at Woolworth's to find it intrinsically transporting.

Over-saturation's effect. While past ages experienced a scarcity of bright, pure colors and glittering materials, modern technology has made them ubiquitous. This profusion, from flags and comic strips to neon signs and chrome, has led to a devaluation of their intrinsic power to induce visionary transport.

Loss of numinous quality. What was once a rare, awe-inspiring sight—like city illumination or a polished metal object—is now commonplace. The "fine point of seldom pleasure has been blunted," transforming what was once a "needle of visionary delight" into something disregarded.

Nostalgia for primeval night. The constant presence of artificial light, glass, and shiny metals means they no longer evoke the "unearthly significance" they once did. This over-familiarity can even lead to a nostalgic longing for the boundless darkness of primeval night, where any island of brightness held magic.

7. Artistic Techniques for Transfiguration

The meditating philosopher sits there in his island of inner illumination; and at the opposite end of the symbolic chamber, in another, rosier island, an old woman crouches before the hearth.

Darkness and light. Artists employ specific devices to create vision-inducing works. One powerful technique is to present light and color against a background of environing darkness, as seen in Fra Angelico's Crucifixion or Goya's etchings, intensifying their praeternatural quality.

Chiaroscuro and inner worlds. The development of chiaroscuro in the 16th and 17th centuries brought this interplay of light and darkness into the picture itself, creating a Manichean struggle. Masters like Caravaggio and Rembrandt used light to reveal the "living mystery" and "inexplicable marvel of mere existence," often depicting inner illumination.

Symbolic representation. Rembrandt's "Méditation du Philosophe" exemplifies how art can transmit messages from the Other World through archetypal symbols. It portrays the human mind with its darknesses and moments of visionary illumination, illustrating the paradox that perception can be revelation, and reality shines through every appearance.

8. The Stillness of Visionary Beings

His personages are essentially static. They never do anything; they are simply there in the same way in which a granite Pharaoh is there, or a Bodhisattva from Khmer, or one of Piero's flat–footed angels.

More-than-human inhabitants. The "Cherubim" or heroic figures encountered in visionary experience are characterized by a profound stillness; they "never 'do anything,'" but simply exist. This static quality is a fundamental aspect of their being in the mind's antipodes.

Art's reflection of stillness. Religious art across diverse cultures—Egyptian gods, Byzantine Madonnas, Chinese Bodhisattvas, Khmer Buddhas—captures this essential stillness. These static masterpieces possess a numinous quality, transporting the beholder out of everyday experience towards the visionary depths of the psyche.

Beyond action. When artists force these serene figures into human dramas or actions, they are being "false to visionary truth." The most transporting representations show them in their native habitat, doing nothing in particular, allowing their inherent "thereness" to convey divine omnipresence.

9. Landscape as a Path to Otherness

This revelation of the wilderness, living its own life according to the laws of its own being, transports the mind towards its antipodes; for primeval Nature bears a strange resemblance to that inner world where no account is taken of our personal wishes or even of the enduring concerns of man in general.

Distant and proximate views. The most transporting landscapes in art are those that depict natural objects either very far off or at very close range. Distant scenes, like Sung paintings of mountains, evoke the boundless expanses and luminous skies of the mind's antipodes.

Non-human perspective. Close-ups of leaves or flowers reveal living patterns reminiscent of the visionary world's endless proliferations. These extreme perspectives force a non-human point of view, allowing the viewer to perceive nature's autonomous "otherness," mirroring the alienness and unaccountability of the inner visionary world.

Samsara and Nirvana. Eastern art, particularly Zen-inspired landscape painting, excels at rendering nature at the near-point, often isolating objects against a blank background. This technique invests transient appearances with an "absolute Thing-in-Itselfhood," illustrating the metaphysical truth that the Absolute is manifest in every appearance.

10. The Dual Nature of Vision: Heaven and Hell

Visionary experience is not always blissful. It is sometimes terrible. There is hell as well as heaven.

Bliss and terror. Visionary experience is not uniformly blissful; it possesses a dual nature, encompassing both heavenly and hellish realms. Like heaven, visionary hell has its praeternatural light and significance, but the light is "smoky" or "darkness visible," and the significance is intrinsically appalling.

Infernal illumination. For individuals experiencing negative visions, such as schizophrenics, the world becomes a "country of lit-upness" where intense, shadowless glare is infernal. Objects become sinister or disgusting, charged with hateful significance, manifesting an "Indwelling Horror" that is infinite and all-powerful.

Physical sensations of hell. Negative visionary experiences are often accompanied by bodily sensations of increasing density and constriction, reducing consciousness to an "agonized lump of matter." This aligns with descriptions of hellish punishments involving pressure and confinement, suggesting a psychological truth to such depictions.

11. Mindset Shapes Vision: Faith vs. Fear

Fear and anger bar the way to the heavenly Other World and plunge the mescalin taker into hell.

Psychological determinants. The quality of visionary experience—whether heavenly or hellish—is profoundly influenced by the individual's psychological state. Negative emotions like fear, anger, hatred, or malice are powerful determinants that can transform a potentially blissful vision into an appalling one.

Theology and psychology. This psychological reality underpins the theological doctrine of "saving faith" found in many religions. While rationalists might link heaven to virtuous behavior, psychologists recognize that virtue alone is insufficient; it is faith, or loving confidence, that guarantees a blissful visionary experience.

State of mind at death. The enormous importance placed on one's state of mind at the moment of death across religious traditions reflects this understanding. A repentant sinner with faith is more likely to experience blissful visions than a self-satisfied individual consumed by negative emotions, anxieties, and judgments.

Last updated: December 31, 2025