The Perennial Philosophy was Aldous Huxley’s attempt to unify the major world religions. The premise of the book is that they are all talking about the same thing and the differences are illusory. He relies heavily on mystics from some of the main traditions (Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Zen). It is clear that Huxley has done an immense amount of research into all these traditions and is able to pull out some fascinating quotes from each. Here are some interesting thoughts:

  • Times of crisis tend to pull people out of the selfulness and raise their personality to an advanced but equal level of being. He uses an example of airplane pilots in a war zone all acting with identical courage and adeptness even though on the ground they had very different personalities.
  • In regard to the former point “saints” live their entire life in this crisis mode, that is in an elevated state of self-emptiness.
  • In Eastern art landscape paintings arose out of their religious tradition, whereas it took secular thought in western art to inspire landscape paintings.
  • The command to “become like a child” is essentially equivalent to the command to “lose yourself” (wonder what old Rollo Mays would think about this one)
  • When property ceases to exist, all can be yours
  • Love of power is worse than debauchery because debauchery is tempered with age, while the temptations of power are stronger when one is older
  • Jesus treated lawyers as if there was no way they could get his teachings, but they ended up being the ones who have framed his religion.
  • Huxley believed that with intense faith coupled with austerity one might get petitions answered through some opaque psychic means. -10 out 10 mystics agree miracles hinder the process of salvation from the self.
  • Huxley also held that things like relics, places, saints, etc could hold some amount of psychic power depending on if they were still actively venerated by many people. The goal of finding who one really is, leads to the knowledge that you are all. This realization leads to an emptying of self. Or put another way a journey back to the garden of Eden and once again losing the individual “I”. Huxley argues that the main function of humans is knowledge of “god” or the “ground” which by this is meant something like eternal infinite suchness, which is the essence of everything. While interesting, this book reinforces this feeling I’ve been having, that mystics are some sort of genius, like mathematicians, virtuoso musicians, or rocket scientist, meaning that not everyone can be one. Huxley, I believe, knew this, but believed similarly to the believers in reincarnation that it could take a soul many, many tries to get right. That seems a little more difficult to swallow for those who don’t believe in reincarnation. This book also throws some shade at the folks who look to technology to save them. Huxley was a firm believer that every advance comes with some sort of cost that may be hidden at the start. He argues that it, like austerity, spiritual discipline, and charity should be considered means and not ends in themselves. There is much to learn from this book. The reading was dense the first time through. I am sure I’ll read this again sometime in the future to learn more from this genius. Aldous Huxley