Inspired by the poetry of William Blake, Heaven and Hell delves into the murky topic of human consciousness through a discussion of religious mystical perception, biochemistry and psychoactive drug experimentation. Heaven and Hell explains how science, art, religion, literature, and psychoactive drugs can expand the reader’s everyday view of reality, offering a more profound grasp of the human experience. Like his earlier essay, The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley’s Heaven and Hell exerted a tremendous influence on the counter-culture movement of the 1960s, inspiring the imaginations of an entire generation of artists and revolutionaries like Jim Morrison and Jackson Pollack. HarperTorch brings great works of non-fiction and the dramatic arts to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperTorch collection to build your digital library.

Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality offers an incisive analysis of the full range of Huxley’s spiritual interests, spanning both mysticism (neo-Vedanta, Taoism, Mahayana and Zen Buddhism) and Western esotericism (mesmerism, spiritualism, the paranormal). Jake Poller examines how Huxley’s shifting spiritual convictions influenced his fiction, such as his depiction of the body and sex, and reveals how Huxley’s use of psychedelic substances affected his spiritual convictions, resulting in a Tantric turn in his work. Poller demonstrates how Huxley’s vision of a new alternative spirituality in Island, in which the Palanese select their beliefs from different religious traditions, anticipates the New Age spiritual supermarket and traces the profound influence of Huxley’s ideas on the spiritual seekers of the twentieth century and beyond.

This volume of essays, written with the authors trademark elegance and wit, tackles subjects such as Action and Contemplation, Religion and Time, Reflections on the Lord's Prayer, and Notes on Zen.

Welcome to New London. Everybody is happy here. Our perfect society achieved peace and stability through the prohibition of monogamy, privacy, money, family and history itself. Now everyone belongs. You can be happy too. All you need to do is take your Soma pills. Discover the brave new world of Aldous Huxley's classic novel, written in 1932, which prophesied a society which expects maximum pleasure and accepts complete surveillance - no matter what the cost.

Part coming of age, part call to action, this fast-paced #ownvoices novel about a Deaf teenager is a unique and inspiring exploration of what it means to belong. Smart, artistic, and independent, sixteen year old Piper is tired of trying to conform. Her mom wants her to be “normal,” to pass as hearing, to get a good job. But in a time of food scarcity, environmental collapse, and political corruption, Piper has other things on her mind—like survival. Piper has always been told that she needs to compensate for her Deafness in a world made for those who can hear. But when she meets Marley, a new world opens up—one where Deafness is something to celebrate, and where resilience means taking action, building a com-munity, and believing in something better. Published to rave reviews as Future Girl in Australia (Allen & Unwin, Sept. 2020), this empowering, unforgettable story is told through a visual extravaganza of text, paint, collage, and drawings. Set in an ominously prescient near future, The Words in My Hands is very much a novel for our turbulent times.

Church-state relations have always been important but the need for an historical re-evaluation has been heightened by recent developments in the relations between governments and religious bodies. Drawing on a wide range of historical case-studies this book focuses particularly on the way in which the traditional European Old World fusion of church and state was reshaped in the New World of European settler colonies of the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Its analysis illuminates both the historical dynamics of such changes and the way in which such developments continue to influence the conduct of church-state relations in both the Old and the New Worlds.