Aldous Leonard Huxley, whose biography began in the UK, is the continuer of the genus, famous for talented people. Aldous Leonard Huxley, in whose biography you can find many interesting things, is the son of the writer Leonard Huxley. And the biography of his grandfather, Thomas Huxley - is a biography of a talented biologist. In addition, among the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of Huxley, there are also many scientists, artists and writers. For example, if you take the line of Huxley's mother, whom Leonard married at the time, she was the granddaughter of the historian and educator Thomas Arnold and the niece of the writer Thomas Arnold. As we see, Leonard chose himself the same educated wife from a good intelligent family, as he was himself. Aldous also had two uncles, Julian and Andrew, who were famous biologists.
Childhood Aldous was quite light-hearted. In his family, among the minds of Britain, he learned to read good books, listen to good music and understand art. As a child, Aldous was gifted enough. The first black spot that Huxley's biography received was the death of her mother. Then the future writer was barely thirteen years old and this, of course, was a tragedy for him. The second unpleasant mark that the writer's biography received was an eye disease that began to develop when Aldous was sixteen. She led to a noticeable impairment of vision, so the guy was released from military service during the First World War. By the way, Aldous himself was engaged in the correction of his vision and even described it in a pamphlet published in 1943, which was called "How to fix vision."
If we talk about the writer's creative path, it is worth noting that the first novel was written by Aldous at the age of seventeen. At that time, he studied literature at the Balliol College in Oxford. This novel was not published, but at the age of twenty Huxley knew for sure that he wanted to become a writer and no other activity interests him.
All the novels written by Aldous unite one thing - the lack of humanity in a progressive society. Many people know and love his book "Oh Brave New World! ". But not everyone read another book of the writer, which he created twenty years after the first saw the world. This book was called "Return to a beautiful new world." In it, Huxley says that the events described in the first book are not so terrible. In fact, everything can be much worse and more tragic. All the anti-utopian stories of Huxley boil down to the fact that the more mankind develops technically, the more it loses heart and soul. People can no longer perceive and pass through everything as they did before. On the contrary, feelings become something terrible and forbidden. They spoil the ideal society, because they make them feel individual, think about their actions, and do not do as the authorities say, unconditionally carrying out all orders and regulations. In a marvelous new world, there is no such thing as friendship, love and sympathy. More precisely, it should not be. If someone still tries to show emotions, this person must be neutralized or destroyed. In fact, Huxley perfectly reflects the world to which we all, in fact, strive. After all, there is no disease and warrior in it, because people no longer want to conquer and share something. But also there are no more emotions and attachments in it. Reading the work of Huxley, everyone involuntarily thinks about how he would like and could he live in such a world, and what is the sense of such utopian existence for ordinary people, and what for those who have power over them and always try to get their profit from everything , than they can somehow take advantage of.
But, back to the biography of Huxley. In 1937 he came to Los Angeles with his mentor Gerald Gerd. At that time, Aldous again began to deteriorate eyesight and he very much hoped that the warm climate of the state of California will help him at least a little to stop the course of the disease. It was while staying in Los Angeles, Aldous began his new literary period. He more and more in detail and considers the human essence and character. In addition, it was during this period that Huxley met Jeddah Krishnamurti. Together with him, the writer begins to actively engage in self-knowledge, to study the various teachings of wisdom and mysticism. It is under the influence of studying such works and directions that Aldous writes such works as "Eternal Philosophy", "Through Many Years". In 1953, Huxley agrees to take part in a rather risky experiment, through which Humphrey Osmond wanted to reveal how mescaline affects human consciousness.
Incidentally, it was in the correspondence with Humphrey that the word "psychedelic" was first used. He described the condition that occurs in a person who is under the influence of mescaline. Then the writer described all his feelings in two stories. This essay "The Door of Perception" and "Paradise and Hell." In them he wrote about everything that he felt during the experiment, which, incidentally, was held ten times. By the way, it was from the title of the essay "the door of perception" that the cult group Dors was called. Drug use influenced the writer's work. He seemed to have reconsidered his views and from anti-utopia began to move towards a positive utopia. For example, in the novel "Island" a utopian society is not depicted as so negative and cruel. On the contrary, it is quite acceptable and is a convenient length of life.
Last years Huxley suffered from a terrible disease. He had a throat cancer. After his death, no manuscripts were left, because, shortly before this tragic incident, the house burned down and all manuscripts and records burned with him. Huxley died in 1963. Sensing the approach of death and not wanting to suffer, he asked his wife to inject LSD into him intramuscularly. It was too high a dose, but his wife agreed to this and injected a hundred milligrams of LSD. After that, Aldous Leonard Huxley passed away.