We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the… - Aldous Huxley

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We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies — all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.

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About Aldous Huxley

Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was a British author known for his novel Brave New World. He was the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley and younger brother of Julian Huxley.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Birth Name: Aldous Leonard Huxley Arnold
Alternative Names: Aldous Leonard Huxley

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We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. [...] By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable.

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Additional quotes by Aldous Huxley

You're assuming,' said Dr. Robert, 'that the brain produces
consciousness. I'm assuming that it transmits consciousness. And my
explanation is no more farfetched than yours. How on earth can a set of
events belonging to one order be experienced as a set of events belonging
to an entirely different and incommensurable order? Nobody has the
faintest idea. All one can do is to accept the facts and concoct hypotheses.
And one hypothesis is just about as good, philosophically speaking, as
another. You say that the moksha-medicine does something to the silent
areas of the brain which causes them to produce a set of subjective events
to which people have given the name 'mystical experience.' I say that the
moksha-medicine does something to the silent areas of the brain which
opens some kind of neurological sluice and so allows a larger volume of
Mind with a large 'M' to flow into your mind with a small 'm.' You can't
demonstrate the truth of your hypothesis, and I can't demonstrate the truth
of mine. And even if you could prove that I'm wrong, would it make any
practical difference?

No man can concentrate his attention upon evil, or even upon the idea of evil, and remain unaffected. To be more against the devil than for God is exceedingly dangerous. Every crusader is apt to go mad. He is haunted by the wickedness which he attributes to his enemies; it becomes in some sort a part of him.
Possession is more often secular than supernatural. Men are possessed by their thoughts of a hated person, a hated class, race or nation. At the present time the destinies of the world are in the hands of self-made demoniacs - of men who are possessed by, and who manifest, the evil they have chose to see in others. They do not believe in devils; but they have tried their hardest to be possessed - have tried and been triumphantly successful. And since they believe even less in God than in the devil, seems very unlikely that they will ever be able to cure themselves of their possession. Concentrating his attention upon the idea of a supernatural uncommon among secular demoniacs. But his idea of good was also supernatural and metaphysical, and in the end it saved him.

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