The Doors: Break on Through (To the Other Side) Meaning

Song Released: 1967

Break on Through (To the Other Side) Lyrics

You know the day destroys the night
Night divides the day
Tried to run
Tried to hide
Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side, yeah

We chased our pleasures here
Dug our...

1. 1TOP RATED

   #1 top rated interpretation:
   anonymous

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   Nov 27th 2007 !⃝

   This song reflects the way Jim lived, the way he felt, what he wanted. And he invited us all to follow him.Break on through to the other side! A demand, a dead end , a no-turning back road. Always living on the edge, always daring, he left us all back wandering what he wanted to say...A lonely soul,the soul of the Poet.

2. 2TOP RATED

   #2 top rated interpretation:
   anonymous

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   Dec 27th 2005 !⃝

   This song is about breaking through the "doors of perception"- what you see and think to be real, and what really is real- to the "other side", the side of life and everything you've never seen before. This means different things to different people. The gateway could be sex, drugs, or music, or just a personal revelation you have, but at some point in our lives, we have to "break on through to the other side" and find our own version of the truth in life.
   
   In Jim's case, he broke through the barrier with sex, drugs, and rock'n roll. Maybe not the best way to go, but that's how he widened his own perceptions. And in the end it killed him.
   
   But in a crazy world, we have to see through the lies and deceptions and find the truth... and break on through to the other side. That's what Jim was probably trying to say.

3. 3TOP RATED

   #3 top rated interpretation:
   anonymous

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   May 11th 2014 !⃝

   I personally believe it is about acid. "Breaking on through to the other side" is equivalent to experiencing what is known as "ego death." Look it up. It is an experience where one realizes the boundaries between himself and the universe do not exist. You learn that you ARE the universe. It is an immense experience.
4. anonymous

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   Nov 29th 2022 !⃝

   A door is a passage from within to open up. (Doors)…. Decorate the door from the outside is beautiful but behind the door may not be beautiful? It’s to break out to the beautiful side and be happy. Open that personal inner door and break it out. Admit it.
   
   
5. anonymous

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   Feb 24th 2020 !⃝

   Looking for utopia,ie,a better journey toward the ultimate truth. Leaving behind an unplanned existence for one of bbn our choosing. Existential being of our own choosing, not preplanned or random.
6. anonymous

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   Oct 24th 2017 !⃝

   I think Morrison is giving us hints about what he knew of the flat earth and the reality of the black hole sun at the center of the dish where what they tell us is the Northern Lights is actually the green astral jet of creation where all souls enter this plane. Its a plate with a hole in the center with a black sun underneath and our sun up top, but we're on the wrong side right now and we need to get on the other side for eternal life. Were in hell folks "Break on through"
   -+
7. anonymous

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   Apr 21st 2017 !⃝

   In my world - opening 2 lines stating a human truth.. day night.. light dark.. eternal mortal.. truth lie. However, after highlighting the 1960' version of Usa Mores, values, Jim seems to state that he and everyone else he can see around him has breached and corrupted them, he highlights his own foibles as microcosm.
   I take from the song that Jim Morrison is saying that from which everside of day night-right wrong-lies truth-wealth poverty-race gender-faith creed whatever our values and core beliefs' we're fucking it up for ourselves by not breaking on to the other side. Break on through to the otherside... see the big picture you thick Bastards.
   Personal note for 16 year old from Denmark - it's not all about you and your first lost love or you and any other personal experience you've had or will have- that's your creative input into the song.. as this is mine.. as you will see in time.
8. anonymous

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   Jul 15th 2016 !⃝

   He was killed because this song. He was saying way too much & trying to enlighten us. He realizes how he had to sell his sole to the devil and only after getting there, realizes he wants no part of it. He's speaking of America, the,harlot. Everyone is so blind,oblivious,to what's happening right before our eyes, to busy watching rigged sports instead of how we've literally lost our rights. But it's too late,I'll shut up bc the government will call me a terrorist. He had to word it perfectly and that's how everything we watch,music,tv, it's all controlled. The road is wide to evil, but very narrow to good. You notice how all these iconic musicians are mysteriously dying,the record companies stealing their royalties and the family's rights to it. They make more money off them dead. Michael Jackson was pimped out by his father as a boy,that's why he hated him and lived in paranoia, he didn't want to sing what the record companies demanded, that's why he was scared. He wasn't gay,he wanted to protect those huge little boy stars from being pimped out to the elite. Not to take light from Morrison, but so many like him, Kurt Cobain, Lenin. Poor Lindsay is being pimped out in London, Russians. If you really pay attention and are more aware of what these guys were saying, you'll get it.
9. kooljohn176

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   Jan 1st 2016 !⃝

   Read and heard all of the opinions about this song that are interesting in this great old song by JIM MORRISON and The DOORS that was also on the ''Weird scenes inside the Goldmine'' album that was awesome to influence many to get into it through the doors of perception or illusion if you wanna call it that. With Jim Morrison the poet, politically conservative at that time that loved to do psychedelics when many times in his mind he became the ''symbolic forms'' with the songs to be easily let into ''being possessed by them'' and the music like some kind of a shaman that was abducted by a alien force to brake on through the veil to see the other side of reality that is not so concrete and hard by melting into it to '' Break on through [to the other side]'' Now certain psychedelics could influence this perception, but also without them this is still a enjoyable song to get into by staying positive and persistent to make a breakthrough in life, whatever that is for you to understand yourself better by the experience. It could be as simple as like the first time you broke through by the intercourse with the opposite sex that could make you cry with your loved one to feel the oneness with the universe as a holy and a holistic feeling.
10. anonymous

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    Aug 11th 2015 !⃝

    I think Jim was talking about pain. Pain is the thing we all try to avoid. But pain sticks with you like magnets on a refrigerator.
    
    I feel Jim knew a thing or two about waking up, awakening. But the dealing with the pain he carried was not 'accepting' it, but to fight it. When you fight pain, you just feed it and it becomes heavier and heavier.
    
    Pain wants to be felt, experienced. Pain show us the way to a better life, a better world. Accept it.
    
    The fact is, be happy that you can feel pain. It makes you feel alive.
11. anonymous

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    Nov 4th 2014 !⃝

    It's about possession & the demons trying to break through to our side "The other side"
12. Dora Sue Lance

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    Aug 20th 2014 !⃝

    I totally think it's all about religion and LSD maybe for back in them days window pane. One reason being is the way it last how strong it is and individual visuals. Now Jim's visions on this drug was telling him and showing him so many things.. He was telling us get off the drugs (break on thro to the other side) jus saying
13. anonymous

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    May 26th 2014 !⃝

    I read that Jim's flat was a bit of a mess. It had bottles and cans and ashtrays and drug paraphernalia lying about and he hardly ever did the dusting and he did not change his bed linen very often, if at all, so his duvet was pretty much rigid with dirt, ketchup stains and bodily fluids. As we know, Jim was prone to depression and often spent many days in bed without getting up and maybe only rising now and then to write some poetry or something. So I imagine Break on Through is about Jim lying in his bed thinking 'If only I could break out of this stiff, stinky duvet and go down to Venice Beach and hang with the musclemen,' maybe?
14. anonymous

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    Jul 31st 2013 !⃝

    Actually, most of you are totally wrong. Ray Manzarek explained, the song is about breaking through from life to death (the other side). It's a song of transition to the spiritual world. He should know - so do some reading instead of making shit up lol
15. Coulditbe

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    May 31st 2013 !⃝

    Could be about just starting to hallucinate, or trying to get someone not to by telling them to hallucinate, by trying to control the words in their life. The night divides the day are the stripes on a zebra, and how they coincide with how night and day have a place constantly moving on this planet, 24 hours a day. Constantly where there is both a darkness, and the light, beside each other moving around the planet. Break on through also had a thing to do with virginity, and all the forms of breaking flesh. From carnivore teeth to knives and spears and all the forms of going to the other side which is killing and leaving the sunlight side to venture supposedly into the darkness side which is eating meat and killing. And how close they really always are, not only in thought but with the light chasing away the night and the night following behind the day or you could say the night is chasing away the day on the other end of the spectrum.
    Also the argument of who was first, black or white. The day destroying the night which would be interpreted as how white people were and still are interpreted by the anti-racists movement and black. And he is saying that black basically surround the light in another reference to how the argument against the white race evolved during those times, that they will have to bow to certain changes in interpretations of how white will not always get their way. How white and light are destroying and how black or night is surrounding.
    Chasing pleasures and digging treasures and not caring about the repercussions of the land being destroyed, and does anybody care about the planet or just their own pleasures and treasures.
    And how when you break through to hallucinate. Was there a conversation that could have been talked about right before you hallucinated. Was there anything that could have helped others realize instead of the words disappearing before their eyes. I think there was a time when he didn't want people to hallucinate and he was messing with them when he wrote this. He was trying to get them to talk instead of hallucinate, so to have something to write about. Because he can't write your hallucinations down. But he could write about something that you said instead of hallucinating because he was in control of you not hallucinating so to speak.
16. anonymous

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    Apr 29th 2013 !⃝

    Ok none of these interpretations are close. Jim saw the universe in a way not many ever see. Hes talking about a Dimension of reality Beyond any trip. Hes talking about what some would call the garden or heaven or a paradise. Just like most songs, movies it is about the universal truths of energy and what we call physics.
17. anonymous

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    May 16th 2012 !⃝

    I once heard this song was about vietnam and the bombing of cambodia.
    I found and island in your arms (South Vietnam wasn't yet a communist country surronded by communist countries)
    A country in your eyes (South Vietnam and Cambodia)
    Arms that chained us (Perhaps a glimpse into the future?)
    Eyes that lied (Denying that Vietnam was a war or that the US was bombing Cambodia)
    However I'm not sure that this album was out before or after the whole Cambodia debacle.
18. anonymous

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    Apr 30th 2012 !⃝

    Obey propaganda

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