The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley, Part 5

The rain stopped and the sun peaked through the clouds like a mother peaks at her baby. The clouds receded and the gray made way for the blue. We were to talk about sanctity today. I didn’t know much about it. I do think I understood the points about personality. The sages walked by me like the figures you see in a marble urn. It was movement to be sure; but the grace was like the gallop of a stallion, yet quiet as a gazelle. My own movement was almost a shadow. I felt like I was melting wax before the purity of fire. I was in a nest without any wings. Everywhere in the wood seemed like a dim dream. The scene looked like a painting. The vestiges of the rain padded the turf like sweet tears.

If I could only describe the grass: it was like our flowers. They were soft as silk, and to lay on it felt as gentle and passionate as a kiss. It seemed to breathe. When the wind swirled through the treetops like a comb through a woman’s hair, it sounded like a virgin choir. The sound was teeming with silent music. The leaves fluttered and the branches sang and my soul moaned. It was like a distant hive of bees, and yet the buzzing was like the stream of a brook. I had mentioned the many trees that were here; looking out on them was almost like looking at a bookshelf. Your eye scans the shelf, sees one spine jump out, and scans the rest. Huxley put his hand on my shoulder and I was out of my trance. I had the feeling that sanctity would be a mountain of its own, with ridges wild, cover in clustered pines with the thick aroma of sap. Huxley would be my torch on this knotty path. My ear will be a conch shell; if you listen you can hear within the salty waves clashing and raging against the reef of my consciousness, as relentless as a swarm of locusts and as ferocious as a lion chasing a wildebeest. I will ascend to the calm floor of the ocean: it is calm no matter how high the waves on the surface.

I saw an Asian man sitting Indian-style at the base of a sequoia. He was as still as a stonefish. We walked over to him to ask him what he was doing. I felt like I was in an empty concert hall mounting a stage to talk to the conductor. I felt like if I talked my voice would echo. We asked: “Are you a ‘deva’?” A deva is a divine being or superhuman being. “No.”, he replied. “Are you a ‘yaksha’?”, we asked. A ‘yaksha’ is a nature spirit. “No. But I am not a man either.”, he added. “I am nothing. I have been annihilated. I have neither craving, desire, or evil influence. I am Buddha.”

Huxley: “This is a case of one-pointedness. Only one-pointedness can merge with God, just as a sword can pierce a man’s flesh and not a feather. You are to be One, not Legion. But there is also the lonely isthmus connecting the country of theory to that of practice. A man need not read a book on how to love his wife: his heart is the sheet music. One-pointedness also requires monotheism; for if there were many gods, the knower would be many-pointed. The mode of the knower determines the knowledge known. We can begin to see why Buddha is inadequate. There is no Divine Ground: only Nirvana. Nirvana correctly points to the not-Self, but doesn’t notice that in doing so, the Divine Ground is noticed. It would be like the lover noticing his love but paying no attention to the beloved. His love only exists as it pertains to the beloved.”

Huxley: “Consider hagiography, biography of the saints. It is unpopular today and this is not surprising. The mass of men have minds full of distraction; their appetite for novelty is ravenous, like the fury of an anthill bombarding an intruder. But the saints are obsessed about one topic only: God, the Divine Reality or Ground - like a wonderer in the desert is obsessed with finding water. Their acts are all as monotone and predictable as the chime of a clock: all selfless. It is no wonder no one wants to read a chronicle of their lives: it would be as banal as reading a history of every tree that grew out of the ground. Boswell’s biography of Johnson is a box-office smash: but who was William Law? Johnson - until his death bed - spread his brilliant tentacles to all kinds of subjects, rendering his personality Legion. Law was as simple as a child.”

Huxley: “The saint is absorbed into God like a drop of water in the ocean. He neglects his personality as a hinderance. This concentrated force is then made to move and influence societies and people. It is like the musical dabbler, who can play a little violin, a little cello, a little piano. But the man who is obsessed with the piano! In the saint, the Logos lives untamed like a jungle. St. Paul: ‘It is not I, but Christ who lives in me.’ Christ is the ‘not I’. Christ’s influence spread like a contagion, not because of his personality, but because He was ‘not I’. Christ was the perfect conduit for the super-personal life, and the supernatural life roared into others like Niagara. The I must undergo a controlled demolition to make way for the ‘not I’.”

I began to think of the Incarnation in general. It seemed to be a common element in nearly all religions, like paint is the common element in all painting, like a musical scale is common to all instruments. This will be the next topic. I wondered away from Huxley like a lonesome cloud. A shadow was beginning to cast on my mind. It was like the cloud-cover of the moon in the night. It was bright enough to be seen through the clouds, but not bright enough to cast any shadows. I sat on a large stone at the bottom of a hillside to think. I thought about how the moon is locked in its dark vault and how its brightness is derivative like a mirror. I thought about how the moon might in some sense incarnate the sun’s luminosity. But that can’t be right. A blasting whirl of wind came from behind me. The leaves swirled upward like my thoughts and settled down again like freshly fallen snow. Huxley beckoned me to come and learn about Incarnation.