In "Doors of Perception", Huxley recounts an experience he has while under the influence of mescaline. He has auditory and visual hallucinations, his perception is shifted, etc. In Coelho's "The Alchemist", an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago meets an old king while in Morocco with his sheep. The king teaches him about life and how a person's "Personal Legend" can be realized. The king tells the boy that "when someone truly needs, wants, and believes in something, the universe conspires with him to make sure he gets it." The boy's Personal Legend is to go to Egypt and see the Pyramids where he will find a treasure. Along the way he meets alchemists, crosses the desert, and falls in love about 30 times (as a young man should).
Now that the background is out of the way, I will begin to explain what this post is all about. In "Doors", Huxley speaks of how written and read language is terribly inefficient in relaying experiences. He basically tells the reader that writing about experiences will never allow the reader to truly understand the significance of an experience or situation. Huxley believes that written language is never as useful as the unwritten language of the Human Experience. (MIND=BLOWN)
In "The Alchemist", Santiago learns about the Language of the World. The following passage takes place when Santiago is reading into omens and meditating while crossing the desert: "Things have to be transmitted (by God in the form of omens) because they were made up from the pure life, and this kind of life cannot be captured in pictures or words. Because people become fascinated with pictures and words and wind up forgetting about the Language of the World."
I think the point both authors are trying to make is that personal experience, not written word, is much more essential to life than reading about experiences. This is more pertinent today than ever before. Watching television all day will never substitute the physical experience of being somewhere, meeting somebody, or learning something new through experience. Of course books and television have helped society become culturally richer and more dynamic. However, are we becoming dependent on these mediums to experience the world for us? Should we just revel in the escapism books, television, movies, and video games give us? I don’t think so. I’ve been to many places and experienced many things. Reading about a bullfight in a Hemingway novel is radically different than actually sitting in La Plaza de Toros, hearing the bull’s pants, seeing the bright crimson blood, and hearing the crowd shout “OLE!” with each pass of the bull. Hemingway would have merely written, “The bull panted. It bled. A lot. People were shouting”. Does this mean Hemingway’s experience of the bullfight was any different than mine? I wouldn’t know. I’m not Ernest Hemingway. I have, however, experienced a bullfight in Madrid and, to me, it was unlike any experience I’ve ever read about. In fact, I don’t think anybody can accurately convey a complete experience of a bullfight in written form no matter how descriptive the language is. At any rate, the human mind is only capable of perceiving so much from descriptive written language.
Huxley’s psychedelic experience and Santiago’s realization of how the universe communicates are essentially the same adventure. Santiago learns to perceive the world around him differently. He learns that the Language of the World is neither spoken nor written. It is felt. I’ve come to the conclusion that the Language of the World according to Coelho and Huxley is essentially the same thing. It is a statement that the human mind is capable of many things. However, perceiving through written and spoken language is not one of them.
I’ve heard “the book is better than the movie”, and vice versa, many times. Is it that the reader is better at perceiving the story any better than the person who saw the movie? No. It simply means that the reader’s perception of the story is different than the movie-goer’s. Seeing a film is not quite the same as reading the novelization. In active reading, the mind is creating it’s own experience through the written word. The viewer of the movie is simply an observer of the director’s experience and perception of the story. The world is full of varying opinions, different thinking and learning patterns, and altered perceptions of things. As responsible human minds, it is up to us to see things in an altered manner; not always through the use of drugs. One can alter one’s mind through varying mediums: meditation, sleep deprivation, caffeine, what have you. In order to truly be accurate perceivers of the human experience all around us, we must remember that we are not alone in this experience. We are all connected through the Language of the World. Written and spoken words simply cannot stimulate one’s ability to perceive this experience. Human beings need to be stimulated to experience and perceive. Humans must experience things for themselves. We cannot let ourselves be enslaved by the false idea that reading and watching can substitute being physically, mentally, and emotionally engaged in an experience. Books conjure up emotions and images in the mind. However, can we truly experience the story until we’ve actually lived it? Can we accurately say “Don’t go back to help your friend! Pick up the knife and kill Jason!”? Unless one has actually been in the situation where a deranged serial killer is about to take your friend’s life, and one has to make the choice between helping your friend and killing the serial killer, the movie-viewer cannot say these things veraciously. I’ve begun to rant. The point is, don’t think just because you tell an "awesome" story, that everyone is going to react the same way that you did when you experienced the situation. Spoken and written language will never substitute the physical, mental, and emotional act of perceiving an experience. “So, we were all hanging out watching Twilight at Becky's house and Jacob took his shirt off. Becky started laughing so hard and then she kicked me in the face! I laughed! It was like SSOO funny!" "..... okay." "You just had to have been there”. You shouldn’t have taken up that much of my time.
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