AT MINIMUM
Beginning in 1939 and continuing until his death in 1963, novelist Aldous Huxley had an extensive association with the Vedanta Society of Southern California, founded and headed by Swami Prabhavananda. Together with Gerald Heard, Christopher Isherwood, and other followers he was initiated by the Swami and was taught meditation and spiritual practices. From 1941 through 1960 Huxley contributed 48 articles to the periodical Vedanta and the West, published by the Society. He also served on the editorial board with Isherwood, Heard, and playwright John van Druten from 1951 through 1962.
In his essay "The Minimum Working Hypothesis," Huxley states the fundamental beliefs of Vedanta. That there is a Godhead, Ground, Brahman, Clear Light of the Void, which is the unmanifested principle of all manifestations. That the Ground is at once transcendent and immanent. That it is possible for human beings to love, to know, and, from virtually to actually, to become identical with the divine Ground. That to achieve this unitive knowledge of the Godhead is the final end and purpose of human existence. That there is a Law or Dharma which must be obeyed, a Tao or Way which must be followed, if men are to achieve their final end. And finally, that the more there is of self, the less there is of the Godhead; and that the Tao is therefore a way of humility and love, the Dharma a living law of mortification and self-transcending awareness.
In THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY, Huxley's book of the same period, 1945, he goes on to say that the Buddha, by contrast, declined to make any statement in regard to the ultimate divine Reality. All the Buddha spoke of was Nirvana, his term for the experience that comes to the totally selfless and one-pointed seeker. The Buddha talked only of the spiritual experience, not of the metaphysical entity presumed by the theologians of other religions, and also as it happened of later Buddhism, to be the object and at the same time the subject and substance of that experience, since in contemplation the knower, the known and the knowledge are all one.
In his essay "The Minimum Working Hypothesis," Huxley states the fundamental beliefs of Vedanta. That there is a Godhead, Ground, Brahman, Clear Light of the Void, which is the unmanifested principle of all manifestations. That the Ground is at once transcendent and immanent. That it is possible for human beings to love, to know, and, from virtually to actually, to become identical with the divine Ground. That to achieve this unitive knowledge of the Godhead is the final end and purpose of human existence. That there is a Law or Dharma which must be obeyed, a Tao or Way which must be followed, if men are to achieve their final end. And finally, that the more there is of self, the less there is of the Godhead; and that the Tao is therefore a way of humility and love, the Dharma a living law of mortification and self-transcending awareness.
In THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY, Huxley's book of the same period, 1945, he goes on to say that the Buddha, by contrast, declined to make any statement in regard to the ultimate divine Reality. All the Buddha spoke of was Nirvana, his term for the experience that comes to the totally selfless and one-pointed seeker. The Buddha talked only of the spiritual experience, not of the metaphysical entity presumed by the theologians of other religions, and also as it happened of later Buddhism, to be the object and at the same time the subject and substance of that experience, since in contemplation the knower, the known and the knowledge are all one.
posted by Donald L. Simons at
6:18 AM
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