Raghu’s original Mindrolling partner, David Silver, returns for a beautiful homage to the genius of Aldous Huxley.
Learn more about Aldous Huxley HERE
“I didn’t really believe that such a thing existed, that anyone could write like that and prophesize something. Now, all those years later, decades and decades, we are living in a society that is absolutely dominated by consumerism and productivity and that whole thing, advertisements and propaganda and all kinds of ways of brainwashing people. So Brave New World really gave me an insight into that.” – David Silver
This week, David and Raghu talk about:
- How Aldous Huxley showed Ram Dass and Tim Leary the Tibetan Book of the Dead
- David Silver’s initial reading of Brave New World and the prophecy it held
- Aldous Huxley’s background
- Huxley’s Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell
- Huxley’s perspective on non-dualism and children
- Ram Dass’ and Aldous Huxley’s friendship
- Aldous Huxley’s end-of-life experience with entheogens
- Systematic reasoning versus direct perception
- The fear that can arise when we have a mystical experience
- The transformational power of psychedelics in the field of mental health
- Jim Morrison, The Doors, and Ram Dass
“I think the greatest compliment that Ram Dass gave him, and it wasn’t an exclamation of any sort, he said Aldous Huxley had a very great relationship with the mystery” – Raghu Markus
About David Silver:
David Silver is the former co-host of the Mindrolling podcast. He is a filmmaker and director, most recently coming out with Brilliant Disguise. Brilliant Disguise tells the unique story of a group of inspired Western spiritual seekers from the 60s, who in meeting the great American teacher, Ram Dass, followed him to India to meet his Guru, Neem Karoli Baba, familiarly known as Maharaji. Two days before he left his body, Maharaji instructed K.C. Tewari to take care of the Westerners, which he did resolutely until the day he died in 1997. K.C. Tewari—in the guise of a headmaster of a boys school in the foothills of the Himalayas—was secretly a High Yogi, frequently able to go into altered states of trance, known as Samadhi, at any moment.