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An inspired gathering of religious writings that reveals the "divine reality" common to all faiths, collected by Aldous Huxley. "The Perennial Philosophy," Aldous Huxley writes, "may be found among the traditional lore of peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions." With great wit and stunning intellect-drawing on a diverse array of faiths, including Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Christian mysticism, and Islam-Huxley examines the spiritual beliefs of various religious traditions and explains how they are united by a common human yearning to experience the divine. The Perennial Philosophy includes selections from Meister Eckhart, Rumi, and Lao Tzu, as well as the Bhagavad Gita, Tibetan Book of the Dead, Diamond Sutra, and Upanishads, among many others.… (more)
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a book that changes minds forever
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.’