The Perennial Philosophy by Huxley

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The Perennial Philosophy (1945)
by Aldous Huxley
312 pages - Perennial Library

'To find or know God in reality by any outward proofs, or by anything but by God Himself made manifest and self-evident in you, will never be your case either here or hereafter. For neither God, nor heaven, nor hell, nor the devil, nor the flesh, can be any otherwise knowable in you or by you but by their own existence and manifestation in you. And all pretend knowledge of any of these things, beyond and without this self-evident sensibility of their birth within you, is only such knowledge of them as the blind man hath of the light that hath never entered into him.' - William Law (quoted on pg. 130)

In this book Huxley examines the writings of all the major monotheistic religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, etc.) to draw a unifying picture of what he terms a 'Perennial Philosophy', as all these testimonies describe a 'divine Ground' with similar characteristics. This is a God that is both immanent and transcendent, a Creator who is the source of all things, but primarily love, and the experience of which is open to everyone be they willing to undertake the proper physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual steps. Indeed, Huxley's view of the material world is that it is entirely supported by God, and that the purpose of everyone's existence is to arrive at a union with Him.

It's a very impressive book in terms of its scope and depth, but I have to say that it takes a lot of work to get through - I've probably been reading this in bits for a few months, and that's after it's been on my shelves for years. The only things I'd read previously from Huxley were Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited so it was a bit surprising to discover how intensely religious he was. The book is somewhat a product of its time and, written right after the Second World War, Huxley directs a lot of blame at technology and the march of 'progress' - something I don't entirely agree with.

He does make an interesting comment near the end about how one of the utilitarian goals that we should have in creating the society we live in is to minimize the influences that 'lead us into temptation,' which take advantage of people's weaknesses and distractibility; and so with those negative influences minimized, increase the possibility of every person realizing their potential. This is almost entirely opposite to the society we're living in now, which seems to prize and honour the person who can create things which other people buy into by thoughtless reflex, and which eat up hours and hours of the limited time they have on earth.

I guess a one-word summing-up of what this book is about is 'mysticism'. But Huxley does take pains to state again and again that this isn't something just for a chosen few or the specially gifted, but available to everyone who wishes to glimpse the way things really are; to let God's presence grow within themselves. It made me think that one of the unfortunate aspects of the modern world's gradual drift away from religion (even though I feel that the pervasiveness of religion in the past is way overstated, because of the type of record it's based on) is that by exiling God from life in the community people grow ignorant of even the potential of any supernatural assistance (I'm not talking about physical miracles exclusively). The book ends thus: "It is they [mystics] who, dying to themselves, become capable of perpetual inspiration and so are made the instruments through which divine grace is mediated to those whose unregenerate nature is impervious to the delicate touches of the Spirit."