© Roger M Tagg 2010-2011
Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web" . This website is under continuing development.
Aldous Huxley never seemed afraid of tackling difficult issues, thinking the unthinkable, exploring things in detail and even trying to make something readable out of it all. I started at school with 'Brave New World' - "wonderfully pneumatic" was the phrase we all remembered.
I bought the book highlighted here in my "days of doubt", not long after graduating from Cambridge. In it Huxley took a step back from the agenda and language of any particular religious tradition or sect, and tried to follow up what it is that the deepest thinkers of all the great religions have converged towards. I didn't know it at the time, but my doubt was soon to be resolved, not by embracing one particular religious tradition, but by living abroad in a country with a tradition different to my own, and realizing that the good people there were just as good (and the bad people just as bad). That country was Iran and the tradition was Shi'ite Islam.
The concept of a "Perennial Philosophy" comes from Leibniz.
The chapters of the book are as follows.
| 1 That Art Thou | 2 The Nature of the Ground | 3 Personality, Sanctity, Divine Incarnation |
| 4 God in the World | 5 Charity | 6 Mortification, Non-attachment, Right Livelihood |
| 7 Truth | 8 Religion and Temperament | 9 Self-Knowledge |
| 10 Grace and Free Will | 11 Good and Evil | 12 Time and Eternity |
| 13 Salvation, Deliverance, Enlightenment | 14 Immortality and Survival | 15 Silence |
| 16 Prayer | 17 Suffering | 18 Faith |
| 19 God is not mocked | 20 Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum | 21 Idolatry |
| 22 Emotionalism | 23 The Miraculous | 24 Ritual, Symbol, Sacrament |
| 25 Spiritual Exercises | 26 Perseverance and Regularity | 27 Contemplation, Action and Social Utility |
| Chapter | Page | Highlight |
|---|---|---|
| Intro | 9 | "When there is a change in the being of the knower, there is a corresponding change in the nature and amount of knowing" - e.g. by growing up, using scientific instruments etc. "But these gains are offset by a certain deterioration in the quality of immediate apprehension, a blunting and a loss of intuitive power". [RT: this is surely natural for humans, and the offset is small compared with the gain.] |
| 10 | "What we know depends on what ... we choose to make ourselves." William James said "Practice may change our theoretical horizon". | |
| Jalaluddin Rumi said "The astrolabe of the mysteries of God is love". AH goes on "But the nature of this one Reality [which he hasn't defined yet] ... cannot be directly and immediately apprehended except by those who have chosen (to make themselves) loving, pure in heart and poor in spirit. Why should this be so? We do not know." [RT: Huxley doesn't clearly define "pure in heart" or "poor in spirit". The first of these one can understand, but why the second? To me, "poor in spirit" means 'disinterested', 'bored', 'unmotivated' or maybe 'nervous'. But I suspect he means 'not motivated by one's own desires'.] | ||
| 11 | "Unfortunately, familiarity with traditionally hallowed writings tends to breed ... a kind of reverential insensibility, a stupor of the spirit, an inward deafness to the meaning ...". [RT: if we ought to be "poor in spirit", is 'stupor' a bad thing?] | |
| AH distinguishes, in Hindu writings, 'Shruti' and 'Smriti'; the first is immediate insight, the second reflections and deductions. | ||
| 1 - That art Thou | 14 | The major sources AH uses for his ideas are: 1) Indian sages; 2) Islamic sufis; 3) Catholic mystics of the late Middle Ages (Aquinas, Eckhart and after); 4) early non-mainstream Protestants (Denk, Franck, Castellio), John Everard, John Smith (the Cambridge Platonists), the first Quakers (e.g. George Fox), and especially the Anglican William Law. [RT: AH also seems to use many quotes from sages of Mahayana and Zen Buddhism, and Taoism - the authors of the last 2 being mainly Chinese.] |
| [RT: What is the 'one Reality' that AH is talking about? Other terms he uses include 'spiritual Ground', 'eternal Self' ('Atman'), 'Absolute Principle of all existence' ('Brahman'), 'Universal Mind', 'eternal Logos', 'eternally complete Consciousness'. Tillich called it the 'Ground of our Being' (I've hereafter used 'GooB' for short). I personally have problems in understanding what all these mean, as well as deciding whether or not they are all the same. I suspect 99% of humanity is not much different from myself.] | ||
| 15 | The Perennial Philosophy (hereafter abbreviated to PP) "teaches that it is desirable - and indeed necessary - to know the spiritual Ground of things ...". [RT: I would have to suggest, though, that 99% of us can get by without. So 'necessary' in what sense?] | |
| 17 | Three ways "to know the 'That' which is 'thou' " (as in the chapter title) are 1) dying to self in reasoning, willing and feeling; 2) realizing the essential unity with everything and everyone outside us; and 3) a combination of the first two (AH suggests this is the best). [RT: following Frolio - and ontologies in general - we can relatively easily go along with number 2. Number 1 is harder, but many people have experienced a general benefit when they 'back off' from their own personal agenda.] | |
| 18 | Shankara: It (presumably the GooB) can only be known through one's own spiritual perception, not through others, nor by Yoga, speculative philosophy, religious ceremonies or mere learning. | |
| 19 | Shankara continued: "... the desire for personal 'separatedness' is deep-rooted and powerful ... It creates the notion 'I am the actor, I am he who experiences'. This notion is the cause of bondage to conditional existence, birth and death. ... The eradication of this notion ... is called Liberation". [RT: but 99% of us are probably not fazed by 'conditional existence' - and some not much by death either.] | |
| 23 | AH makes a play about the linguistic cognateness between dis or dys (bad) and di (two), as an argument in favour of a preference for 'oneness'. | |
| 25 | Eckhart: 1) "The soul ... has lost her nature in the oneness of divine essence" [RT: I'm not sure I really understand what the 'soul' is, let alone the rest of the sentence.] 2) "Simple people imagine that they should see God as if He stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge." | |
| 28 | Crude forms of the PP can be seen in some tribal cultures - AH instances Māori and Oglala Indians. | |
| 30 | But in primitive societies, the "born contemplative" has to struggle for existence and doesn't get any public protection or support. | |
| 32 | Paul Radin, in 'Primitive Man as Philosopher', deplored the application of Darwinism to "the facts of social experience". It's a "curious notion that everything possesses a history ... specific physiological reactions are ultimate for him (primitive man) as a biological being". | |
| AH hypothesizes that monotheism might be an example of "a dark and numinous Power" or something "genuinely ethical and spiritual". | ||
| 2 - | 33 | More names for the GooB: 'Spiritual Absolute', 'God-without-form', 'Inner Light'. |
| 33-36 | [RT: This section, on the 'personal' aspect of the GooB (e.g. Hindu deities, incarnations) seems to contradict Eckhart's number 2 on page 25.] | |
| 34 | Sufism has a concept 'Al-Haqq' ("the Real") underlying the more personal Allah. | |
| The Nature of the Ground | 35 | This page addresses sub-aspects of the 'personal' and their value to believers. AH discusses 1) the all-powerful ruler [RT: compare Flew's "oriental despot, cosmic Saddam Hussein".] - this carries the danger of entanglement in rites, sacrifices and legalistic observances; 2) the loving Father - can help some people at some stages, but is not enough on its own; 3) inner Light - carries the danger of quietism and antinomianism; and 4) supra-personal Being - too abstract. |
| 36 | "... it is easiest for us to reach our goal if we are not handicapped by a set of erroneous or inadequate beliefs about the right way to get there and the nature of what we are looking for." [RT: but who is to judge what is the right way and the nature?] | |
| It (the GooB) is not in a category of substance, activity or relationship, nor does it have qualities. [RT: like the root of an ontology like Frolio?] | ||
| 37 | Lao Tzu: If we don't rid ourselves of desire, we can't see the 'secret Essences', only the outcomes. [RT: isn't there a danger that we may under-value the outcomes, and thus bring trouble to more than just ourselves?] | |
| Eckhart separated 'the Godhead' from God [RT: like 'Al-Haqq', so presumably as an underlying concept]. "It has not, wills not, wants not, works not, gets not." [RT: this implies God does will etc - after all, we do say "God willing". But this distinction sounds a bit artificial to me]. | ||
| 38-39 | AH has a digression into the 'PK effect' (i.e. psychokinesis) and psychometric effects. He seems a keen believer that this can be scientific. | |
| 40-41 | He uses this digression to justify the possibility of a 'divine Mind' creating and sustaining the universe. | |
| 41 | AH digresses again into Eckhart's phrase "God becomes and disbecomes". [RT: I doubt if this is helpful.] | |
| 42 | Eckhart's idea is that the Godhead is above God. AH admits that Eckhart's style was confronting and exaggerating. [RT: so why drag it in?] | |
| 43 | J-J Olier's bombshell: "The holy light of faith is so pure that, compared with it, particular lights are but impurities; and even ideas of the saints, the blessed virgin and the sight of Christ in his humanity are impediments in the way of the sight of God in his purity." [RT: so why do we, or the churches, spend so much time and effort on them?] | |
| 45-46 | (Pseudo) Dionysius the Areopagite: "It is more fitting to praise Him (God) by taking away than by ascription." [RT: this is in the same vein as Olier - all the attributes we ascribe to God are impediments to understanding the fundamental GooB.] | |
| 46-47 | Languages (including mathematics) aren't really appropriate to capture what religious thinkers are trying to point towards. "Nobody has yet invented a "Spiritual Calculus". | |
| 3 - Person -ality | 48 | The word 'personality' has acquired "high class overtones" - some people think of it as "the highest form of reality with which we are acquainted". AH rather implies that 'personality' is a large cause of our separation from the GooB. [RT: Sure, the concept is over-used by advertising people and journalists to appeal to 'low' public tastes. People especially like to read about fallen personalities, e.g. Tiger Woods. But the word is surely still usable to describe the style a person projects.] |
| 48-49 | In talking about the cause of our separation from the GooB, AH thinks we should talk about 'selfness' [RT: I think 'self-concern' is better]. He talks about the "foul stinking lump of one's self". [RT: Notably, the USSR recognized (possibly too late) the dangers of 'personality cult'; Khrushchev denounced Stalin for this, then got accused himself.] | |
| 52-55 | AH quotes an 'aircrew keep cool in a crisis' story. The aircrew brought home the stricken plane through training - including team bonding. The crisis concentrates the mind, and removes distractions, so that they forget their personal desires. Maybe this is a lesson for our lives. | |
| 54 | One religious approach to training ourselves in 'de-selfing' is "fulfilling with love obscure and common duties" (de Caussade). | |
| 57 | AH introduces the phrase 'one-pointed' as a necessary attribute for a person wanting to approach the GooB. | |
| 57-8 | However 'discrimination' is also required. [RT: ironically, this is a 'dis-' word!] | |
| 58 | Literature about theocratic saints is too boring for most people. | |
| 59-61 | Reducing, downplaying or even getting rid of the 'I'. [RT: the last is surely way too hard for 99.99% - why not stick to just the first two?] | |
| 61 | For the saint [RT: now we see Huxley's drift!] the 'I' is "purged away so as to make room for the 'not-I' ". | |
| Incarn -ation | 61-68 | A doctrine of incarnation of the 'eternal Logos' appears in several traditions, but very variably (e.g. single (e.g. Christianity) or multiple (e.g. Hinduism), same as or separate from God etc). Of course some traditions get alone fine without any incarnation. [RT: so how important, in the PP, can incarnation really be?] |
| 63 | AH highlights the danger of "servitude to historic fact" - good religion should instead speak in terms of "processes forever unfolded". | |
| 65 | AH sees incarnations (including Christ) as models, patterns to follow, 'Avatars'. | |
| 4 - | 68 | We really need to perceive the divine Ground "simultaneously in the perceiver and in that which is perceived". |
| 70 | Zen saint: "... do not try to grasp reality by rejecting your senses and thoughts". We need to be "neither attached to, nor detached from them". | |
| God in the World | 71 | "Such symbols (i.e. sacramental objects, shrines etc) become the centres of a (psychic) field of force. The longings, emotions and imaginations of those who kneel and for generations have knelt ... create, as it were, an enduring vortex in the psychic medium ...". But this is not direct experience of the GooB, it's second-hand and may not be desirable. [RT: I'm not sure how many people can buy this "enduring vortex".] |
| 75 | "Zen has always specialized in nonsense as a means of stimulating the mind to go forward to that which is beyond sense." | |
| 79-88 | Here follows a long rambling section about the relationship between God (etc) and Nature. | |
| 89 | The 'imperialist' attitude of 'conquering' Nature; the false God of "inevitable progress". | |
| 90-91 | Progressiveness or non-progressiveness doesn't matter. [RT: sure, if it's for its own sake]. AH suggests that all that matters is whether it helps individuals in their advance towards man's final end (i.e. of reunion with the GooB). | |
| 5 - | 91 | "Love is a mode of knowledge" - and at its best, it "takes on the quality of infallibility". [RT: I'm not sure this last bit helps.] |
| Charity | 94 | St Bernard: "Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no fruit; it is its own enjoyment. Wm Law: "Love has no by-ends". |
| 95 | Love/charity is not an emotion - it starts as an act of the will and turns into a "purely spiritual awareness" (St Teresa). | |
| 97 | Emotions of sweetness and delight (or the opposite) don't mean we 'have' or 'don't have' God (St John of the Cross). | |
| 98 | One needs tranquility of mind [RT: difficult these days]. | |
| 99 | We need humility as well. | |
| 101 | "The slime of personal and emotional love" is not "the highest form of spiritual moisture". | |
| 103 | Love "cannot compel" (Denk), "so is a thing of perfect freedom". | |
| 104-6 | "Lovelessness" describes the situation in many modern societies. | |
| 104 | Examples of lovelessness are mass production, distribution and financing; coercive control by minorities (whether private capitalists or government bureaucrats); racialism, sectarianism; and nationalism. | |
| 105 | The PP counters the temptation to: idolatrous worship of things in time; church worship, state worship, worship of a revolutionary future, humanistic self-worship [RT: this presumably covers any form of millennialism]. Instead, AH advocates decentralization, widespread private ownership of land and means of production - on a small scale [RT: like EF Schumacher?], cooperatives, peoples' councils etc. | |
| 106 | Nations work up a spirit of "organized lovelessness" as preparation for war (which requires high mechanization and centralization). [RT: I guess the lead-up to WW2 was in AH's mind.] | |
| 6 - | 106 | "Our kingdom go" - the slogan for mortification? |
| 107 | "Self-naughting" is not an end in itself. | |
| Mortifi -cation | 108-9 | "... the mortified are ... often much worse than the unmortified (e.g. Pharisees, Puritans), while "the unmortified hedonist ... lacks the energy and the motive to do much harm." |
| 111 | We should just bear all the crosses, pain etc with patience or resignation, while eliminating self-will, self-interest, self-centred thinking, wishing and imagining. | |
| We should control our tongue and our moods, and avoid frivolity (which would cut out 50% of ordinary conversation). [RT: this is probably too hard for most, and maybe counter-productive to loving our neighbour.] | ||
| 112 | Rabi'a (a female Sufi saint): "God, if I worship Thee in fear of Hell, burn me in Hell; and if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise ..." - we should do it for God's own sake. | |
| AH's term for Pharisees is "egocentric piety". | ||
| 112-8 | We need to cultivate "holy indifference" and "non-attachment". | |
| 114 | We have to steer between the Scylla of "egocentric austerity" and the Charybdis of "uncaring quietism"; this is a permanent danger on the path of the PP. | |
| 118 | Mortification of the intellect? We need to resist the temptation to think in utilitarian terms [RT: why, if good for all is part of love?], to follow 'common sense', to over-simplify or to think conventionally. Another phrase for the GooB is 'the mysterious Fact'. | |
| Wm Law: "Man's intellectual faculties are by the Fall [RT: surely just a myth, hypothesis or model?] in a much worse state than his animal appetites." [RT: I don't think I agree.] | ||
| 119-20 | AH warns against an over-valuation of 'Culture'. | |
| 121 | "The relationship between moral action and spiritual knowledge is circular ... and reciprocal." | |
| 122-5 | We need to cultivate 'simplicity', here defined as "an uprightness of the soul" [RT: I'd say this definition is not ideal], "which prevents self-consciousness". People can be sincere but not simple. | |
| 124 | AH claims as fact [RT: I'd say, speculates]: 1) "that human nature is tripartite, consisting of a spirit as well as of a mind and a body"; 2) "that we live on the borderline between two worlds, the 'temporal' and the 'eternal', the physical-vital-human and the divine". [RT: number 2 involves accepting some concepts that most of us have no feeling about.] | |
| 125 | "... only that which is soft and docile is truly alive." [RT: sounds like nonsense - in what sense does AH claim 'truly'?] | |
| 126 | Life is also an art, and we should do as an artist does - through practice we can reach unselfconscious spontaneity. | |
| 127-9 | 'Right livelihood': some professions are "incompatible with the achievement of man's final end" (e.g. brothel-keeping, or soldiering - for Quakers). But AH says it is dangerous to take this too far. | |
| 130-4 | A digression about the problems for people who want to follow the PP but are in positions of power. | |
| 131 | 'His/Her Majesty's loyal opposition' is indeed the most loyal of all! | |
| 132 | Great men can be good, because they are not constrained by pleasing 'my boss' - especially if they regard themselves as servant to all. | |
| 133-4 | But very few people in power achieve this last state, so people with power are a big problem for societies. | |
| 7 - Truth | 135 | "Words are not the same as things"; knowledge of words about facts is not "equivalent to direct and immediate apprehension of the facts themselves". |
| There may be 3 meanings of 'truth', and we have to work out which is meant: 1) a synonym for 'fact'; 2) direct apprehension of the 'facts'; 3) correspondence to the 'facts'. | ||
| 137 | "... that self-satisfied complacency which is the original sin of the intellect." | |
| 140 | Logical theory and speculation in aesthetics and religion can only confirm that one's previous direct experience makes some sense; it can't provide a proof or explanation. | |
| 142 | Aquinas: We have to follow, then abandon, the rational and emotional path of "word and discrimination" to get to "realization". AH: "But organized Christian churches persist in the fatal habit of mistaking means for ends"; e.g. when the 'filioque' controversy caused a schism. | |
| 143 | A later Buddhist view: "... language is a main source of the cause of separatedness and the blasphemous idea of individual self-sufficiency", because people develop symbol systems. | |
| 143-4 | AH discusses the pros and cons of the concept of a 'network of causation'. [RT: I think AH confuses cause with correlation.] | |
| 148 | Chuang Tzu's dilemma: if I feel I know the true path, should I persist in forcing it on other people (even if I know I'll fail), or just give up [RT: and let them choose their own path]? | |
| 149 | "By its internecine quarrels over words, historic Christianity consummated the work of self-destruction, to which its excessive preoccupation with things in time had from the first so tragically committed it." [RT: True, but most persons - and groups - do seem to need simple slogans to get them motivated.] | |
| 150 | The "wearisome condition of humanity", i.e. we can't just rely on applying our animal instincts in the immediate present, we are concerned with the past and future as well - [RT: this isn't so wearisome for most of us nowadays - we have got used to it]. | |
| "At no time (before now) have intellectual vision and spirituality been less esteemed, or the End less widely and less earnestly sought for." [RT: I suspect it was worse in 1946 than now.] | ||
| "... we (humans) believe, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that we have only to go on being yet cleverer in a yet more systematic way, to achieve social order, international peace and personal happiness." [RT: maybe it's because we don't trust the other lot, and don't want to risk consigning ourselves and our neighbours to a tyranny that the others might force on us (e.g. in WW2); it's a bit like Chuang's dilemma.] | ||
| 153 | St Bernard: learning without love puffs itself up; love without learning goes astray. | |
| 153-4 | St Catherine of Siena: we should never judge others [RT: where does this leave a) any legal system; and b) the Inquisition?] | |
| Two new words/phrases in this chapter: 'pure Suchness' (the GooB again) and 'proximate' truth (getting near but not quite there). | ||
| 8 - Temper -ament | 155 | AH's 'horizontal' temperament plane [RT: should be a hyperplane!] covers "imbecility to genius, cruelty to Pickwickian kindliness, self-revealing sociability to taciturn misanthropy and love of solitude, frantic lasciviousness to untempted continence". The n'th (vertical) dimension is "selfhood and separateness" to "union with the divine Ground". |
| 156-7 | Christians have tended to favour Mary (contemplative) over Martha (active). This is probably an error - it's a matter of human differences. | |
| 158-60 | Sheldon's 3-way endomorph-ectomorph-mesomorph distinction is better than Jung's introvert-extravert one. AH also uses Sheldon's word 'somatotonic' - [RT: I nominate Dr Samuel Johnson, Jeremy Clarkson, Robert Maxwell and General Patton in this last category!]. | |
| 164 | "Violent conversions" can't happen to all types. | |
| 166 | The traditional Jesus Christ is usually depicted as an ectomorph - but that's an assumption. | |
| 167 | It's a good idea not to be at one of the 3 extremes; as in China, Confucianism counterbalances Taoism. | |
| 167-8 | The PP has been replaced (by many believing Christians) by a "metaphysics of inevitable progress" and an evolving God, and towards action as an end in itself. | |
| 168 | Happiness and moral progress depend on a higher standard of living [RT: that's inevitable - people with their backs to the wall will think differently to those in more comfortable circumstances]. AH says we want to 'love' and 'adore' things, and get 'thrills'. "The popular philosophy of life is now moulded by the writers of advertising copy. ... It is only the possessive, the restless, the distracted who spend money on the things the advertisers want to sell." | |
| 169 | "Mass production can only be kept going by persuading the whole population to accept the somatotonic Weltanschauung and act accordingly." | |
| Naziism encouraged somatotonia, whereas earlier societies discouraged it, to insure against society being hi-jacked by the aggressive, pushy, active minority. | ||
| 9 - Self knowl- edge | 170 | 'Ignorance of self' can be classed as a vice, since it is harmful to both the subject and his fellows. It is voluntary because we could be more sensitive to the reactions of others. "If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful, and we prefer the pleasures of illusion. ... (It) leads to unrealistic behaviour and so causes every kind of trouble for everyone concerned". |
| 172 | "Fear cannot be got rid of by personal effort, but only by the ego's absorption in a cause greater than its own interests." | |
| Lacordaire: "Humility does not consist in hiding our talents and virtues, in thinking ourselves worse and more ordinary than we are; but in possessing a clear knowledge of all that is lacking in us and not exalting ourselves ...". | ||
| 10 - | 173 | "We have been given free will, in order that we may will our self-will out of existence and so come to live continuously in a 'state of grace'." [RT: I think this is madness. Surely, it would be better to 'strike a good balance'?] |
| Free will | 174 | 'Psyche' can be used to mean both 'human personal consciousness' and 'the spirit' - we need to know which is meant by the speaker/author. |
| 175 | 3 types of grace: animal grace (in tune with nature); human grace (from other people or groups); spiritual grace (a return to animal grace, but with respect to the GooB). | |
| 177 | With the rise of human self-consciousness, animal grace is no longer sufficient for the conduct of life, so we need "conscious and deliberate choices between right and wrong, choices which have to be made in the light of a clearly formulated ethical code". [RT: this doesn't seem to follow, and doesn't sound like much free will. And where does it leave intelligent animals, like chimps, orang-utans, elephants, monkeys, magpies, dolphins etc?] | |
| 179 | High artistic achievement requires intellectual, emotional, physical and professional mortification [RT: I'd say this goes too far]. | |
| "Mechanisation is incompatible with inspiration." [RT: I'd say this is bullshit. We can still be inspired if we can regard the machine as our tool.] | ||
| 179-80 | "Sudden theophanies" and "gratuitous graces" - [RT: I'm not sure these are possible for the majority. Who is the PP intended for?] | |
| 180 | There can be two contrasting types of theophanies: 1) of Love, Light and Bliss; and 2) of mysterious Power. The latter (according to Kirkegaard) call for "teleological suspensions of morality, chiefly in the form of blood sacrifices, even human sacrifice". [RT: let's hope not too many people get these. It may be hubris on my part, but I'd say this last idea is bullshit.] | |
| 181 | F. de Sales: We have to consent to the inspiration [RT: I hope we are allowed to decline type 2!]. | |
| 182 | Wm Law: "All nature is continually at work to bring forth the great redemption." [RT: I'd say this is bullshit too. Redemption of what from what, and why does it matter?] | |
| This chapter seems very weak to me. | ||
| 11 - Good | 184 | We are called on to decide what is good and bad, but such decisions can themselves be good or bad. And it's not just a personal matter; societies evolve laws and norms. |
| and Evil | 185 | AH claims that the PP provides simple answers to decide between different norms and personal views. |
| 185-6 | He quotes some material by William Law, and wonders why he isn't widely taught [RT: reading the quotes in question, I can see why!]. | |
| 186 | The Devil is one's self [RT: widely accepted by modern Christian theologians]. | |
| 186-7 | It's how you 'are' that determines whether you do good or bad. | |
| 187-8 | Wm Law names the 4 elements of Hell as covetousness, envy, pride and (later) wrath. We need to have 'extremity of want' for some high good [RT: I don't agree, 99% of us manage without such an extreme]. Law says that if we don't find that good, we are stuck with a plague of covetousness-envy-pride and wrath when we don't get what we want. [RT: OK, there are some people like that, but not so many that I meet.] | |
| 188 | In the end, Law falls back on the threat of torment continuing for us after death. [RT: and that doesn't worry many people nowadays.] | |
| 189 | Law uses the analogy of fruit separating itself from the tree, after which it can't come to ripeness. [RT: but it could be a windfall. And we used to ripen plucked tomatoes on our windowsill.] | |
| He says there is "only one happiness and one misery". | ||
| 190-1 | AH says that the biblical Fall myth is not good enough [RT: I agree, but isn't it hubris to say so?], and that 'Creation itself is the Fall' (because it created the separateness of species and categories). He admits that some animals have free will [RT: so are they also fallen?]. | |
| 191 | AH expresses dismay that most life is satisfied with an appetite for matter. He then lapses into a 'no evolution for anything but man' theory, saying that anything sub-human is "a living fossil" in an "evolutionary blind alley". Also "Animals do not suffer (so much as humans). [RT: I think most of this is utter nonsense.] | |
| 191-2 | He says of animals "They are quite innocent of their literally diabolic wickedness". [RT: intelligent aliens might say the same about mankind!] | |
| 192 | He somehow draws the conclusion that there is an absolute divine law of right and wrong. | |
| This chapter seems even weaker than the previous one; pages 190 and 191 are particularly idiotic. | ||
| 12 - | 193 | Boethius (in Consolation of Philosophy) wrote about Providence and Fate - leaning towards predestination. |
| Time | 194 | AH argues "if humans can have ESP (which he assumes is a given), then an infinite Mind can certainly have pre-knowledge. |
| and | 195 | "The body is always in Time, the spirit is always timeless and the psyche is an amphibious creature ...". |
| Eternity | 196 | Rumi: "Past and future veil God from our sight." St John of the Cross: "Emptying of the memory is a great good." And Mahayana Buddhism sees memory as "a rather malevolent demiurge". |
| 197 | Eckhart: "Time is what keeps the Light from reaching us." | |
| 199 | A God 'in Time' tends to be of the awful sort that leads to things like human sacrifice, and the theory that we should be paying "a high price in human suffering". | |
| -200 | The theory of Atonement is a hangover from a 'God the Destroyer' religion. | |
| 200 | Haldane (Marxist): Christianity, when it stresses "historical or pseudo-historical facts ... becomes static and reactionary". [RT: just as happened to Russian communism.] | |
| 200-1 | Time-concerned philosophies look to either an ideal future or an ideal past, e.g. early days of Islam around Mecca, the Spanish Inquisition, millennialist sects, Jacobins, Bolsheviks, [RT: and Crusaders, Jihadists]. At the time AH wrote, the prime example was the Axis aim of "... perpetual co-prosperity and the 1000-year Reich". All these tend to bring large-scale violence. | |
| Epicureanism - "eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die" - is better than "die (and kill), for tomorrow someone else will eat, drink and be merry". | ||
| 202 | The non-Time-concerned religions have usually been the least violent and most humane, e.g. Buddhism, Quakers. | |
| 202-3 | Quakers were the first against slavery, but St Peter Claver (Jesuit), although sympathizing with the lot of the slaves, dared not raise a voice against the institution. [RT: as also with the Dutch Reformed Church with South African Apartheid.] | |
| 203 | Hinduism and Buddhism are more considerate to animals than Judaism and orthodox Christianity (even than St Francis). The Romantic movement improved things in the West a bit. Nazi children were told to be kind to animals (they were no threat) but not to Jews and dissidents. | |
| 204 | Partiality (i.e. defending our side, right or wrong - and railing against a perceived threatening opposition) is an inhuman and base quality. It also breeds a refusal to admit that our side could ever have been wrong, or the others right. [RT examples: the RC church and Giordano Bruno (at least they admitted their error with Galileo); Catholics and Protestants; Conservatives and Socialists; Established church and Non-conformists.] | |
| 205-6 | The 'catholic spirit' (not just RC!) is independent of religious tradition. The most enlightened ruler in this respect was the Emperor Asoka of India. | |
| 207 | An Indian convert to Christianity once said "The children of God are very dear but very queer; very nice but very narrow." There is still a lot of "I don't want to know about other approaches" in many religions. | |
| AH's wish: 1) some good basic philosophy for all humans; 2) the PP should be the "highest common factor"; 3) all should renounce idolatrous time-dependent philosophies; and 4) we should reject all political pseudo-religions. | ||
| Although he gets back to more sense in this chapter, AH's position on predestination and free will is still not very clear. | ||
| 13 - Salva- tion | 208 | "Salvation - but from what?" Deliverance - out of which situation into which other? Material salvation can be achieved by application of intelligence in an atmosphere of goodwill. But, AH claims, men are not content to leave it there [RT: I disagree, most people I know are!]. They want to relate their actions to a philosophy. He then claims that if this isn't the PP or nearby historical theologies, then it's "organized idolatry". |
| "The desire to escape from oppression and exploitation" leads to a "belief in apocalyptic revolutionism, combined ... invariably in practice, with the Moloch-worship of the nation as the highest of all goods". [RT: this is all a bit over the top.] | ||
| 209 | 'Ideal future state' millenialism is semi-official in the nominally Christian capitalistic democracies, pushed by the writers of advertising copy - who are the only authors who have ever been read by everyone every day. | |
| Theological salvation is "out of folly, evil and misery into 'heaven' ", which is either 1) posthumous (in most religions) or 2) in the present life (as with the PP). | ||
| 210 | He discusses the Buddhist 8-fold path to Nirvana. | |
| 214 | Wm Law: "In what does salvation consist? Not in any historical faith." Lutherans, Calvinists and Anglicans all chose to ignore or attack this idea. | |
| AH: Most of us take pleasure in being lazy ... consequently there has been a widespread wish for belief in 'Saviours' who will step into our lives ..." [RT: and fix things!] | ||
| 217 | Niffari's sea analogy: "Those who voyage are not saved. ... Those who cast themselves into the sea take a risk" and "Those who voyage and take no risk shall perish". | |
| 218 | "No saint or founder of a religion, no exponent of the PP, has ever been optimistic." "Partial salvation is the best that most people can hope for." | |
| 14 - Immor | 218 | AH distinguishes 'immortality' (union with the divine Ground) from 'survival' (partial deliverance into some temporal heaven or purgatory). [RT: there are some big assumptions here!] |
| -tality | 220 | A big difference between western and eastern religions is that the East 1) has 're-incarnation', and 2) may allow posthumous advance from survival to immortality. |
| 222 | In Buddhism (which denies the existence of a soul) it is one's 'character' that passes on to one's next incarnation. | |
| Such 'survival' ideas may tie in with spirits called up by a human 'medium', or with disembodied ghosts. AH uses the phrase "traces left by (the departed person's) thoughts and volitions in the psychic medium". [RT: of which AH is so wishfully fond!] | ||
| 15 - Silence | 223 | Wm Law: "Rhetoric and fine language about the things of the spirit is a vainer babble than in other matters." AH: "Unrestrained and indiscriminate talk is morally and spiritually dangerous." [RT: a lot may be so, but Law's targets are more specific.] |
| 223-4 | AH has 3 categories of idle talk: 1) malice and uncharitableness towards our neighbour; 2) greed and self-love; 3) "pure imbecility ... merely for the sake of making noise" [RT: but number 3 may be necessary to oil the social wheels]. Idle words outnumber those dictated by reason, charity or necessity. | |
| 225 | Molinos suggested that we need silence of mouth, mind and will. AH: "All the resources of our ... technology have been thrown into the current assault on silence." | |
| "The radio is nothing but a conduit through which pre-fabricated din can flow into our homes." [RT: That's very silly. A lot of it may be din, but there are at least some good things. And what would AH have said about television?] | ||
| "A Babel of distractions - news items, mutually irrelevant bits of information, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music, ... doses of drama that bring no catharsis, but merely a craving for daily or even hourly emotional enemas." [RT: I'd like to hear what he would have said about soaps or reality TV!] | ||
| 226 | "Advertising is the organized effort to extend and intensify craving ... (which is) the principle cause of suffering and wrongdoing ...". | |
| This chapter is great fun, but I suspect silence (like quietism) is a lost cause! | ||
| 16 - Prayer | 226 | There are 4 types of prayer: "petition, intercession, adoration and contemplation". AH claims it's psychologically "all but impossible ... to practice contemplation without preparing for it by some kind of adoration" (and maybe the other 2 as well). [RT: I disagree, from personal experience - it's hard to stop me contemplating!] |
| 226-7 | Too much petition is a form of hubris [RT: and can bring nemesis, as with King Midas]. It's indicative of too much desire and selfness. | |
| 230 | AH claims that, with PP, there is "no distortion of Reality, because there is no separate selfhood to obscure or refract", and one relies solely on the "white radiance of Eternity". [RT: this ties in with Olier's bombshell (p 43).] | |
| 231 | Augustine Baker said that we should annihilate "all creatures" as well as "the self". [RT: I don't pretend to understand this.] | |
| 233 | AH gives 2 or 3 quotes which suggest that thinking "what can I do to help" when praying, spoils it all - on the grounds that we should leave God to tell us. [RT: this doesn't make much sense for the majority of us that are never going to make saints.] | |
| 17 - Suffer -ing | 234 | AH claims suffering only happens through separation from the divine Ground (GooB) - no separation, no suffering. [RT: doesn't sound like a good model to me. Surely a better line to take is "my own suffering doesn't matter so much"?] Buddhism says much the same: "Deliverance from craving does away with pain" [RT: even with terminal cancer?] |
| 235 | AH claims that personal suffering results, sooner or later, in suffering for others. [RT: I'd say sometimes yes, but sometimes no.] | |
| Reprising his "Creation is the Fall" theory, he says "species choose specialization" [RT: that sounds ridiculous]. He goes on "The human species refrained from consummating the Fall on a biological level", so that we alone have the choice of reunion with God - as opposed to specialization and separateness. | ||
| 236 | "Man's capacity to crave more violently" causes, AH claims, a raft of diseases and conditions not suffered by animals. | |
| A crazy-sounding quote from 'The Following of Christ': "Each sin begetteth a special spiritual suffering ... This happeneth to sinners; the more they suffer through their sins, the more wicked they become." [RT: many sinners I know seem not to be suffering much in the first place!] | ||
| 238-9 | AH gives a questionable justification of "vicarious suffering", i.e. of saints standing in for the person due to suffer. [RT: It seems that AH is scratching round to make some sense of the doctrine of Atonement.] | |
| 239 | Hume conceived of events as "loose and separate" - which cannot be 100% true as there are usually some interactions. But AH's PP-based view is more strongly against Hume, i.e. that we are all organically related via the divine Ground or GooB. [RT: I think this is equally extreme.] | |
| 240 | AH puts down all ills like "wars, revolutions, exploitation, disorder, waste and exhaustion of resources, degenerative diseases ..." etc to our "overweening bumptiousness" and "wrong relationships". | |
| In summary, I think this is a pretty poor attempt to find some meaning for suffering. It's a bit like saying to people in the Black Death "it's all your fault for being sinful". Bubonic plagues may have some connection with human activity, but I don't believe this is true of earthquakes or meteorite strikes.] | ||
| 18 - Faith | 241 | We rely on faith a lot in ordinary life, as we can't prove everything directly for ourselves, so we have to rely on other people, experts, banks, organizations etc. Faith in the decency of the other fellow leads to a good society, mistrust to the opposite. |
| 241-2 | "Science and technology could not exist unless we had faith in the reliability of the universe." [RT: I'm not sure that's the right model - shouldn't it be "in the repeatability of observations and experiments"?] | |
| 242 | Faith - one's own working hypothesis? [RT: maybe sometimes we mean 'conjecture'.] Religious faith involves things that are known to be unverifiable. | |
| AH attacks Luther for his exhortation to "sin strongly" [RT: this reminds me of Romans 6v1: "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?"]. Luther also stirred up the Justification by Faith (alone) controversy that was a sticking point in the Reformation. | ||
| 242-3 | Luther said that the acme of faith is to believe God is merciful, even when he saves so few. AH argues that if he saves most of us, we wouldn't need faith so much. [RT: this all sounds hypothetical - and fairly silly - to me.] | |
| 243 | The PP requires us to have faith in authority (e.g. in saints) [RT: but they are usually too unworldly to help us through immediate worldly crises] and in "propositions about Reality enunciated by philosophers in the light of genuine revelation." [RT: "genuine" - who decides?] | |
| "Unverifiable propositions may become verifiable to the extent that intense faith affects the psychic substratum." [RT: AH seems determined to rely on the existence of a psychic world.] But he admits that it's better to stick to the PP in its essential simplicity. | ||
| 243-4 | Existences derived from mental activity can't be the GooB, because they are not 'selfless'. | |
| 244 | Karma (the supposed cycle of cause and effect) is a "causal sequence in time". FR Tennant said that the argument for existence of God as the 'first cause' in a chain of cause "is not adequate and contains a contradiction". | |
| 19 - | 245 | Even determinists act as if there is free will. |
| God is not | 245-6 | "All life [RT: presumably human only?] is in the nature of an intelligence test." If we do badly we get "self-stultification" - but not necessarily any immediate or serious disadvantages to the individual, but societies can decay. |
| mocked | 246 | "Karma exists" [RT: surely, this is a hypothesis?] but the "equivalence of act and award is not always obvious and material" (as simple earlier religions often supposed). |
| 246-7 | Spinoza: Sinning - because it is man's nature - is excusable, but someone who can't control his passions is lost. | |
| 247 | Answers to the "who did sin, this man or his parents?" (John 9:2) - asked of Jesus about a man born blind - could be: 1) it's neither, it's just God's will; 2) it's in the genes; 3) it's Karma. AH claims that these are not mutually incompatible, due to "teleological pull" [RT: sounds like prime bullshit to me. But see the 4th paragraph of this page on Free Will and Determinism.] | |
| 248 | Eternity can't intervene to fix things in the time-bound world without self-denial on the part of the individual. [RT: can it in any case?] | |
| "The collective conduct of a nation is a test of the religion prevailing within it." [RT: this is going to get difficult with multi-faith nations.] | ||
| 248-9 | In the past, religions failed the test because nations made war. Now, we only have "some brand of local idolatry such as nationalism, state-worship, boss worship and revolutionism." [RT: Maybe true in 1946, but I don't think we have this quite as bad now. We have more non-doctrinaire niceness among a majority of people. Yes, there are some ratbags, and greedy organizations limited by few checks and balances.] | |
| 20 - | 250 | The chapter title, "tantum religio potuit suadere malorum" means "The practice of religion leads people to practice evil." (Wiktionary) |
| "Turning to God without turning from self ... explains all the follies and iniquities committed in the name of religion" (Wm Law). People who do so, "because they believe themselves to have divine justification for their actions, proceed with a good conscience to perpetrate abominations". | ||
| 250-1 | "Throughout recorded history, an incredible sum of mischief has been done by ambitious idealists, self-deluded by their own verbiage and a lust for power into a conviction that they were acting for the highest good of their fellow men" [RT: i.e., for just a limited subset of mankind]. | |
| 251 | "In the past, the justification for such wickedness was 'God' or 'the Church' or 'the True Faith'; today, idealists kill and torture and exploit in the name of 'the Revolution', 'the New Order' ...". | |
| "Sacrifice, incantation and 'vain repetition' do produce fruits", e.g. Coué's auto suggestion. | ||
| 252 | Sacrificers prefer "the magical, God-constraining death" of other animals or other humans to "the death of their own passions and self-will". | |
| 253 | Denk: "Ceremonies in themselves are not sin, but whoever supposes that he can attain to life either by baptism or by partaking of bread is still in superstition." | |
| 253-4 | Zen is the mystical branch of Buddhism because it keeps itself apart from the written scriptures, and looks to get a more direct experience of the Truth. | |
| 254-5 | Castellio's analogy for the Duke of Wurtemburg: Christ asks us to be like X, but we all show up like Y, Z, W etc and fight between ourselves as to who is right - on matters that are not essential and which can't be known until our hearts are pure. | |
| 255 | It's a pity Protestants went with Calvin and Luther rather than Castellio and Denk [RT: I agree]. It happened because ordinary followers wanted something "less exacting, more clear-cut formulae, more exciting". [RT: That seems to be human nature!] | |
| "Waiting on God is a bore, but what fun to argue, to score off opponents, to lose one's temper; ... (and progress) from words to ... persecution and punishments." [RT: like Calvin's theocratic Geneva? Or the Ayatollahs' Iran?] | ||
| 256 | Dean Inge blamed Luther (more than Hitler, Bismarck or Frederick the Great) for "the miseries which Germany has brought upon the world". His reason: "Lutheranism worships a God who is neither just nor merciful" and that "the law of Nature" ... is identified ... with the existing order of society, to which absolute obedience is due". [RT: a big message here, too.] | |
| "The root and primal cause of bondage is wrong belief, or ignorance ... (which) is a matter of will. If we don't know, it is because we find it more convenient not to know." [RT: a bit hard on those that didn't have the chance of education, or on primitive tribes?] | ||
| 21 - | 256 | Old-style idolatry [RT: 'one-eyed yellow idol'?] is not common (at least in the west) nowadays, although there is still a lot of "fetishist superstition". |
| Idol- atry | 257 | Most "isms" are 'academic' idolatry. Technological idolatry means 'gadgets'. AH thinks these are all hubris, to be followed by inevitable nemesis, or at least by a downside. [RT: Brain disease from the radiation from mobile phones? Or is the downside just that of not talking to the person you are physically with? More likely, we just need to learn to keep our gadgets in their place, making good use of them, but not being ruled by them.] |
| 257-8 | Political idolatry is "the worship of redemptive social and economic organizations" - but people with free will can cause them not to work. | |
| 258 | Moral idolatry: worshipping a strict set of dos and don'ts as if that is all that is necessary for a good life and good society. [RT: law and order advocates, Pharisees (again)?] | |
| Thomas Arnold (Aldous Huxley's great grandfather): "Fanaticism is idolatry (he means fanaticism for something that is in our mind). ... Narrow-mindedness tends to wickedness", as it neglects many other sides of our nature. [AH should have taken note - some of his pronouncements on the PP seem a bit fanatical to me!] | ||
| 259 | AH hopes to exempt, from charges of idolatry or fanaticism, "those influences from the eternal into the temporal" (i.e. grace and inspiration). | |
| 22 - Emoti- | 261 | 'Experience' can be induced by "revivalist sermons, impressive ceremonials" and deliberate imagination. This excitement isn't good - we need quiet serenity instead. |
| onalism | 262 | The same goes for 'self-reproach' and the 'miserable sinner' feeling. |
| 263 | Fénelon: "Discouragement serves no possible purpose." AH says: "The emotion becomes an end in itself" but, "Religions that make no appeal to the emotions have very few adherents". [RT: so where does that leave the PP?] | |
| 264 | AH thinks some people may manage to graduate from emotional religion to the PP [RT: but more might prefer to bypass emotional religion and still adopt the PP]. "The rest, say the oriental exponents of the PP, earn themselves another chance ... to take the cosmic intelligence test". | |
| Emotion might have the benefit of encouraging people to be more intuitive and open-minded. | ||
| 23 - | 265 | Olier: "Revelations are the aberration of faith; they are an amusement that spoils simplicity in relation to God." |
| The | Garrigou-Lagrange: "Life restored to a corpse ... is low indeed in comparison with that of Grace." | |
| mirac- ulous | 266 | Of a reported levitation, Buddha said "This will not conduce to the conversion of the unconverted, nor to the advantage of the converted". [RT: I was sort of levitated myself once, at Homerton College in Cambridge. I think Buddha got it right.] |
| 266-7 | "The miracles which at present are in greatest demand, and of which there is the steadiest supply, are those of psychic healing." But such skill is usually inborn, otherwise the effect is "second-hand", via either the practitioner's institution or the sufferer's imagination [RT: the healed person might not be complaining]. AH admits that there can be 'unholy' faith healers, but he asserts [RT: wishful thinking?] that these leave a soul empty and open to other evils worse than the original problem. | |
| 24 - Ritual | 268 | Rituals, symbols, sacraments etc are just 'reminders'. Appropriate language is just whatever we are familiar with [RT: this suggests there is no place for Latin, classical Arabic or old English with 'thee' and 'thou']. |
| 269 | Some churchmen complained that church architecture, windows [RT: and music?] distract people from their words. AH thinks that the PP requires "imageless contemplation". | |
| 271 | AH is back to his psychic thing when saying of a ritual "a more or less enduring effect is made in the psychic medium" [RT: by 'medium' he means the aura or whatever, not the person]. | |
| 271-2 | Europe is full of old shrines whose relics have lost their power, e.g. Thomas a Becket [RT: but Walsingham's (Anglican and RC) are still going]. | |
| 272 | In some churches, mosques and temples "even the most irreligious and unpsychic tourist cannot fail to be aware of some intensely "numinous presence". [RT: wanna bet? I admit to being unpsychic, but not irreligious, yet I don't get this feeling. Maybe it's due to my passions for architecture and church music.] Anyhow, AH says this isn't the presence of the GooB, its something lower. | |
| 273 | AH says that mantras focus the mind on something 'out there', not 'in here', so are similar to the above. | |
| 273-4 | "A great deal of ritualistic religion is not spirituality, but occultism - a refined and well-meaning kind of white magic." This isn't the real end of the PP. | |
| 274 | "The Christ of the Gospels is a preacher and not a dispenser of sacraments or performer of roles; he speaks against vain repetitions ..." | |
| 275 | "Most people do not want spirituality or deliverance, but rather a religion that gives them emotional satisfactions, answers to prayers, supernormal powers and partial salvation in some sort of posthumous heaven." And some of those who do desire spirituality or deliverance find "the most effective means are ceremonies, vain repetitions and sacramental rites". [RT: that's why priests still have a role!] | |
| Rites can lead people away from the divine Ground because they invite aspiration to power and self-enhancement, as well as expectation of help from the "psychic universe". There is also the problem that the priestly caste often abuse their power [RT: as e.g. in recent child molestation cases]. | ||
| 277 | If there are to be sacraments, then all our actions should be performed sacramentally, because the GooB is in everything. [RT: see George Herbert's verse starting 'A servant with this clause makes drudgery divine'.] | |
| 278-9 | Obviously this doesn't apply to evil acts. AH then lapses into a sort of apologia for the Hindu caste system, and also blames the ills of the 14th to 17th centuries in Europe on religious leaders ('seers', 'Brahmins') "abandoning spiritual authority in favour of money and political power" [RT: one man's theory, I'd say]. | |
| 279 | Likewise he deplores "what happens when political bosses, businessmen or class-conscious proletarians assume the Brahmin's function of formulating a philosophy of life, when usurers dictate policy and the warrior caste's duty is imposed on all and sundry regardless ...". [RT: perhaps what you'd expect to hear from an Old Etonian?] | |
| Maybe cricket is a ritual - even more than a game! Its effects on the 'psychic medium' might include obsession with cricket statistics, 'barmy army' chanting - or just deep sleep. | ||
| 25 - | 279 | Spiritual exercises don't guarantee enlightenment, but total neglect of them is self-opinionated. |
| Spirit- | 282 | "The simplest and most widely practised form of spiritual exercise is repetition of the divine name or some phrase ...". |
| ual Ex- | 284 | This may "result in a kind of numbed stupefaction". |
| ercises | 285 | Intense concentration on an image may be helpful - or harmful. |
| 288 | Another idea is a sort of 'video' mental concentration, e.g. on scenes from Christ's Passion. But Eckhart says: "He who seeks God under settled form lays hold of the form, while missing the God concealed in it". | |
| 288-9 | Impediments in taking up 'mental prayer' are self-interest and a wish for 'a good time'. | |
| 289 | Benet of Canfield (mentioned in AH's 1941 book 'Grey Eminence'): "The more a man operates, the more he exists, and the less of God exists within him." [RT: I'd hardly call this good advice for the normal person facing everyday life. Anyhow, Benet's book was on the Vatican's index.] | |
| "We must give up the attempt to fight distractions ... we can simply 'look over the shoulder' of the malicious and concupiscent imbecile who stands between us and the object of our 'simple regard'." [RT: Old Etonian again!] | ||
| 290 | An Indian spiritual exercise: "dispassionately examining the distractions as they arise". | |
| 294-5 | Retire to a quiet place and think of nothing. | |
| 295 | If acting (i.e. doing something), concentrate on just the act itself. [RT: that's a message in Pirsig's 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'.] | |
| While on the topic of Zen, for a bit of light amusement, try http://www.do-not-zzz.com/. | ||
| 26 - | 298 | F de Sales: "Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself." |
| Persev -erance | A Baker: Yes, even if it's all "pain and contradiction". | |
| 27 - | 299 | Chapter title is 'Contemplation, Action and Social Utility'. |
| In the PP, it's axiomatic that, since the End of human life is contemplation, "a society is good to the extent that it renders contemplation possible for its members" - and that it should have "at least a minority of contemplatives". [RT: is that the End for everyone? Even if it were made possible, I suspect that a majority still won't bother. The everyday tasks and crises are too immediate and pressing.] | ||
| Shankara: "Work is for the perfection of the mind." [RT: How useful is this statement for most of us?] | ||
| 302 | "The assertion that all are called to contemplation seems to conflict with what we know about the inborn varieties of temperament [RT: too right], but AH claims that the conflict is only apparent [RT: I don't buy his argument]. | |
| 303 | "In cases where the one-pointed contemplation is of God, there is also the risk that the mind's unemployed capacities may atrophy." | |
| 304 | For proper enlightenment, we shouldn't overdo the contrast between time and eternity - we have to consider both. Mary and Martha are equally OK. | |
| 305 | "The goods of eternity cannot be had except by giving up at least a little of our time to silently waiting for them." [RT: like how much of our time? If it's a few minutes daily contemplation, then that seems fine.] |
One can't help feeling somewhat overwhelmed after reading this book. There are so many insights from so many angles. But also, how far can I, or the average western reader - or any other reader - take this all on board and use it to useful effect? And how, if adopted more widely, could it help nations and the world develop more stable and sustainable societies?
From what I have read, those who are already Buddhists would seem to have the lowest level of 'culture shock' in taking on the 'Perennial Philosophy' as outlined by Aldous Huxley. For westerners, it might be seen as tending too much towards Quietism, as well as suggesting a rather negative and an over-pessimistic attitude to mechanization. It might also seem to be a philosophy that only saints, sufis, hermits, fakirs etc could embrace whole-heartedly; it never seems to take the view "well, here we are in today's social and working environments, and we have to get on with life with its current constraints". Maybe it is a philosophy that we should just keep in mind, perhaps spend a few minutes each day thinking about it, the number of minutes maybe increasing as we approach our eventual death - when we are most likely to seek answers to the question "what's it all for?".
A way in which I think the PP can be valuable to those of us living in the frenetic west is along the lines of the 'Gospel of Relaxation', the first of William James's 'Talks to Students'. Too much of the time, we try too hard, think too much about our own desires and plans, regret the past and worry about the future. We can usually do better if we take a bit of time out first. I got my best marks in a Cambridge Tripos exam the day after my brother and I took a day trip to the beach at Great Yarmouth.
Returning to Buddhism, I quite like the tradition of boys spending time as monks before going into full working life (though girls ought to have a similar opportunity). In the west, some of us had something similar in boarding schools, or national (military) service. Many young people now take a gap year, doing voluntary work and/or travelling, although I'm not sure these activities always give much time for contemplation.
Huxley is pretty critical of Christian organisations. I wonder what he would have said if he had spent more time looking at Islam.
I have some criticisms of material in this book, in particular what I call the 4 idiocies:
Huxley is also mean on the amount of background he gives on some of the sages he quotes - it's as if he expects the reader to have read as widely as he had. I suppose the book is long enough as it is (although I reckon he could have made it quite a bit shorter). In my highlights above, I have the luxury of putting in links to web pages that give some of this missing background.
While most of the language he uses is OK, he has persisted in some quotes in using 'thou' and verb endings as in 'thinkest' or 'thinketh' - what I call the 'Authorized Version effect' - trying to give the words more sanctity. I guess this is permissible if the quote is an exact one from an old English language source, but surely not for words translated from French, Latin, Pali etc.
One angle I don't think he has addressed too well is the human psychology regarding risk. It seems pretty natural for most of us to be averse to risk (see e.g. p 150), so we do things like save for a rainy day, take out insurance policies, stay on the safe side etc. I guess this ties in with my complaint about the PP not caring about outcomes. OK, if we de-self, we should maybe not worry so much about our own suffering, but if we love our neighbour then surely we care about the outcomes for them.
I think that the philosophy we choose depends on the mental models we build in our minds about ourselves and the wider Reality. Some of the ones Huxley uses, he seems to take as given, although I would say they are a matter of choice, e.g.:
One could add - for the religious - 'God versus Satan dualism' and - for the techies - 'Geological time scale' (from the 'Big Bang', via the short span of Man's dominance, to the dying of the solar system and - beyond - the Big Freeze, Rip, Crunch, Bounce or whatever - take your pick). My favourite - similar to the intelligence test - is Sir Walter Raleigh's "A play of passion ...".
One might ask "Are there any real alternatives to the PP, assuming that we want to think for ourselves and not be over-constrained by the particular religious tradition in which we were brought up?" From my limited reading, I would say the alternatives are as follows:
and from the Classical past, I guess we should add Epicureanism and Stoicism.
I suspect that we will be "the best we can be" if we adopt our own mix of all these, including the PP, according to our inborn and acquired strengths and weaknesses. Which, of course, means that we need to first adopt the ancient Greek instruction to "know thyself".
Index to more highlights of interesting books
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 24th January 2011
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .