Any short or long term stress or discomfort is handled by doses of soma. The famous philosopher and sociologist Karl Marx once called religion the “opium of the people.” And that is exactly what Huxley writes of. However, this drug may not represent a drug at all.
#SOMA BRAVE NEW WORLD FREE#
Huxley poses the question of how a drug would be used if it were to be seemingly free of drawbacks or side effects. And all at no physiological or mental cost.” (Huxley). In small doses it brought a sense of bliss, in larger doses it made you see visions and, if you took three tablets, you would sink in a few minutes into refreshing sleep. The soma of Brave New World had none of the drawbacks of its Indian original. For this privilege no price was too great. But the experience was so transcendently blissful and enlightening that soma drinking was regarded as a high privilege. Ordinary mortals might even die of an overdose.
Soma was a dangerous drug - so dangerous that even the great sky-god, Indra, was sometimes made ill by drinking it. Their bodies were strengthened, their hearts were filled with courage, joy and enthusiasm, their minds were enlightened and in an immediate experience of eternal life they received the assurance of their immortality. In the Vedic hymns we are told that the drinkers of soma were blessed in many ways. The intoxicating juice expressed from the stems of this plant was drunk by the priests and nobles in the course of an elaborate ceremony. In it, he states, “The original soma, from which I took the name of this hypothetical drug, was an unknown plant (possibly Asclepias aeida) used by the ancient Aryan invaders of India in one of the most solemn of their religious rites. We can see Huxley’s inspiration for this drug in Brave New World Revisited, a retrospective work he published almost twenty years later.
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