AT MINIMUM

Beginning in 1939 and continuing until his death in 1963, novelist Aldous Huxley was associated with the Vedanta Society of Southern California, headed by Swami Prabhavananda. Along with writer Gerald Heard and novelist Christopher Isherwood, he was taught Vedic meditation and spiritual practices.  From 1941 through 1960 Huxley contributed 48 articles to the Societies’ periodical Vedanta and the West.  From 1951 through 1962 he served on their editorial board, which included Isherwood, Heard, and playwright John van Druten.

In his essay "The Minimum Working Hypothesis," Huxley states the fundamental beliefs of Vedanta.  He wrote 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, and that it is possible for humans to know, and, from virtually to actually, to become identical with the divine Ground.

He stated 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 for humans to achieve this final objective.  And lastly, 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, and that the Dharma is a living law of mortification and self-transcending awareness. 

In THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY, Huxley's book of the same period, 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.