Reading The Work 4
At the moment, my book is telling me an anecdote of Dr. Andrew, one of the main founders of the island Pala, and also a practitioner of animal magnetism. In this anecdote, Dr. Andrew’s medical services are requested to remove a tumor from the Raja’s face. Huxley sets up the anecdote by explaining that with any usual, non metaphysical methods, this tumor would be impossible to remove. However, once Dr. Andrew puts his patient under a trance using “animal magnetism,” Dr. Andrew is able to perform the surgery and save the Raja’s life with ease.
Reading this I was very skeptical and confused, since I’ve never heard of animal magnetism in my life. Surely if this method was as powerful as Dr. Andrew claimed it to be, I would’ve heard of it in my lifetime. So I looked it up, to find Wikipedia defining animal magnetism as, “ also known as mesmerism, was the name given by German doctor Franz Mesmer in the 18th century to what he believed to be an invisible natural force (Lebensmagnetismus) possessed by all living things, including humans, animals, and vegetables.“ My first reaction was what the hell is this shit, this man Huxley is clearly insane. Why would he spend ten pages talking about some mystical practice? What is his motivation to insert this passage on animal magnetism with such an elaborate buildup?
I feel like to an extent, many of the practices, tenants, and characteristics of the ideal Palanese society, are implemented in the book because Huxley is an advocate of these methods himself. On a broad level, the society implements a systematic distribution of psychedelics. One instance of this is seen In the book, where Dr. Roberts explains a tradition in Pala as, “’An ordeal which is the first stage of their initiation out of childhood into adolescence. An ordeal that helps them to understand the world they’ll have to live in, helps them to realize the omnipresence of the death, the essential precariousness of all existence. But after the ordeal comes the revelation. In a few minutes these boys and girls will be given their first experience of the moshka-medicine. They’ll all take it together, and there’ll be a religious ceremony in the temple.”
Nathan,
I’m not going to lie to you, this book sounds awful. Just reading your posts makes me so confused. I am sorry that you have to read an entire book lie this. However, I am glad to see that you are taking the time to actually research the materials in your book that you don’t understand, rather that just skipping over and ignoring it.
As much as all of this is confusing, I find the material that you have explained in these posts very interesting. I don’t know very much on these theories and practices and it is cool to see how much there is in the world that I don’t even know about. I hope that you continue coming to a full understanding of all the allusions and other confusing material in your book.
















