Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
New York, Harper & Row, 1970 [c1945].
Description
The Perennial Philosophy is defined by its author as "The metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds." With great wit and stunning intellect, Aldous Huxley examines the spiritual beliefs of various religious traditions and explains them in terms that are personally meaningful.
User reviews
LibraryThing member TakeItOrLeaveIt
documented brilliance. this is a wandering intellects encyclopedia that embodies all the Eastern religions and critiques most of the Western ones to in a way only the great late Mr. Huxley could do.
a book that changes minds forever
a book that changes minds forever
LibraryThing member qgil
What have all the mystics of all times and all religions in common? What are all of them telling and doing with their lives? Mr Huxley goes find about and tell you in this masterpiece, that happens to be double masterpiece for the fact of being published in the most atheist period of Humanity, and
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not even in a way that would fight such atheism. Because the book is not trying to bring you to any religion. In fact, religions are presented as obstacles to reach the total knowledge (and the total love, which for a mystic I guess is just the same). Precious. Show Less
LibraryThing member Adrianesc
This book brought all spiritual and religious thought down to several basic commonalities. These are the tenets, then that have more likelihood of real truth.
LibraryThing member Princesca
It's a good book in principle, but rather repetitive, and a touch too religious in its own way, rather than philosophical. I am not sure of the value of transcending the illusion of "I", in favour of being "nothing", or "everything", according to the book. I leave you with a quote I liked at p.83,
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"Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no fruit; it is its own fruit, its own enjoyment. I love because I love". Show Less
LibraryThing member jasoncomely
Agnostic quasi-religious treatise on how to realize divinity (a.k.a. reality). It seems Huxley's The Divine Within was more than enough for me.
LibraryThing member smallself
This is a great example of why I don’t assign number ratings to books.
I mean, he’s excessively fearful of conformity; he talks about Luther the way that I talk about Emerson.... Nobody seems to talk smack about Emerson, so I’m not worried about him. And anyway, he was a veneer of
Christ said to make disciples in every nation, (maybe not setting up empire in order to do it, right), but I don’t think that every nation stands in equal need, despite the fact that a universal message should be universally available. But Hinduism and Taoism and most of the Asian religions, at least in their most pure forms—and who knows what impure forms of Christianity would look like to a Muslim missionary— are the higher religions of mankind, and not less developed than Catholicism and Calvinism. They’re not like the sex cults of paganism, which magnify sex-violence and diminish the poor, and from which Europe and Africa have stood in such need of saving.... Paganism is the stuff of desire, but I would have had far less love in me had the gospel of Jesus Christ not restrained, with my co-operation, my desire.
So Huxley gets some things right and some wrong. “Everyone should be perfect if I’m going to let them on Team Perennial, so Calvin is out because he’s a murderer like David, and anyway the Bible is rot because people like it too much.” Nirvana shirts, only ten dollars, right.
“And we really all need the higher life, and we should quit persecuting each other, especially because of the pettiness that’s in it.” How to add to that, right.
.... Huxley is a little too cerebral, in that he thinks he’s going to say just the right thing and give everybody exactly what they deserve, you know. I don’t think I could do that. I fuck up my reviews all the time. So who’s Huxley? I mean, don’t you have to reach out into the darkness, and accept that you’ll see the outlines but not the whole thing? It’s the heart that does it; a mental production is a very mixed bag.
*British accent* ‘So that’s why I don’t do no bloody number ratings, love.’
I mean, he’s excessively fearful of conformity; he talks about Luther the way that I talk about Emerson.... Nobody seems to talk smack about Emerson, so I’m not worried about him. And anyway, he was a veneer of
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respectability and manliness (which I don’t much like anyway, the manly type) over a sewer of self-concern and self-glorying. Luther would have ranted about the devil the way I’m ranting now and lacked charity the way I lack it now, but at least he would have understood. But I digress. Christ said to make disciples in every nation, (maybe not setting up empire in order to do it, right), but I don’t think that every nation stands in equal need, despite the fact that a universal message should be universally available. But Hinduism and Taoism and most of the Asian religions, at least in their most pure forms—and who knows what impure forms of Christianity would look like to a Muslim missionary— are the higher religions of mankind, and not less developed than Catholicism and Calvinism. They’re not like the sex cults of paganism, which magnify sex-violence and diminish the poor, and from which Europe and Africa have stood in such need of saving.... Paganism is the stuff of desire, but I would have had far less love in me had the gospel of Jesus Christ not restrained, with my co-operation, my desire.
So Huxley gets some things right and some wrong. “Everyone should be perfect if I’m going to let them on Team Perennial, so Calvin is out because he’s a murderer like David, and anyway the Bible is rot because people like it too much.” Nirvana shirts, only ten dollars, right.
“And we really all need the higher life, and we should quit persecuting each other, especially because of the pettiness that’s in it.” How to add to that, right.
.... Huxley is a little too cerebral, in that he thinks he’s going to say just the right thing and give everybody exactly what they deserve, you know. I don’t think I could do that. I fuck up my reviews all the time. So who’s Huxley? I mean, don’t you have to reach out into the darkness, and accept that you’ll see the outlines but not the whole thing? It’s the heart that does it; a mental production is a very mixed bag.
*British accent* ‘So that’s why I don’t do no bloody number ratings, love.’
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Language
Original publication date
1944
Physical description
xi, 312 p.; 20 cm
Local notes
Notes in pen by Greg Stafford.
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