The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley, Part 7

As someone who is pushed into the ocean over a ship in the midst of sleep is shocked out of unconsciousness, I came to my senses. I noticed that the scene was different than it was a moment ago, as if the environment morphed on its own, like a butterfly from its cocoon. I frantically searched for Huxley and found him about 20 feet away looking at me, as if waiting for me. I got to my feet and strolled over to him with a heaviness in my head, not like a hangover, but more like a drug-induced high. It felt natural, as if I got there without cheating, as natural as the feeling of fulness after a healthy meal.

Huxley: “Glad to see you’re ready. You already look changed, as the sea looks different in the evening than it does in mid-afternoon. Are you ready to find out how God is in the World? Remember throughout the day that He is not in the world like a beaver is in its dam. The world is not a greenhouse that makes the divine flowers blossom.”

This must be the mystery of Immanence and Transcendence, again. Our language is like a belt that is too tight for the waist of Reality. It is a funnel and we’re only allowed to see Reality come through the narrow end. We see the sheet music with its flute, clarinet, strings, drums, tuba, cello, and violin sections; but we’re only equipped with a piano. How Reality must squeeze through the tiny door of Reality as Alice did to enter Wonderland.

Huxley: “The best road to the Divine Ground is through your Self and that which your Self perceives. If she were conscious, the best way Mona Lisa could reach Da Vinci would be through her Self and the scenery in which she is placed. She would find Da Vinci’s character in her Self and in all the elements in her environment, just as we can find the character of the Divine in our Self and Nature.”

The Mona Lisa always existed as an idea in Da Vinci, just as we have always existed as an idea in the Divine. Before we were born, He knew us. Da Vinci’s mind was the habitation of all his ideas, just as in his loins each man carries in himself the future of posterity.

God is Spirit, and so He is simple, since He has no parts, and Spirit has no parts. He is everywhere, like a voice is everywhere in a room once spoken.

Huxley: “Matt. When do you see one thing separated from another? When are you above understanding, as a man is above a beast?” I answered: When I see God in everything, I am above mere understanding, just as when a man sees the personality of his favorite author strung like a common thread throughout his works, he is above merely understanding the content of what is written.

Huxley: “Each one of us is an atom in the divine body, an element of heat in a ray from the Divine Sun. In everyone, there is an essence in which the Godhead is there. We meet the Godhead in our essence, and our essence is like the spine that holds the pages of the book of our Selves together; it is that which is at the bottom of every page. The book of humankind is a thick tome; but there is no page that is not in perpetual contact with the spine. Because of this mutual contact, the page can come to know the spine. And let’s not forget about Nature. A tree has a form that reveals to us the Divine Ground. It is a symbol showing us Reality. The tree is a fed by the roots, which soak up the water; from the trunk the branches spring out, and from the branches we have twigs that give birth to foliage, all of which is given life by the sun. Everything in the life of a tree points to the Divine and its relation to us. We are a tree; we only grow if we’re rooted and rained on and given light by the sun.”

I saw clearer now. The poet tries to capture an image of the Divine and contain it like a photograph. But we can only see the image if the mode of our being changes. We’ll like the same song if the mode of our being is similar. No matter how much the song moves us, if we share with excitement the song with a friend whose mode of being is miles away from our own, they’ll meet the song with indifference. Faith, love, and hope prepare us to ‘see God’ like a microscope prepares us to see an atom. We’ll begin to feel the heat of the ray from the Godhead like we’d begin to see the pattern of an optical illusion if we look at it just right.

If I kneel when I pray, if I feel a reverence before a shrine (my stomach flutters), my imagination, my feelings, my emotions change, thus changing my mode of being. A vortex whistles down from the storm clouds of my consciousness and the vortex becomes a psychic medium, much like a channel for spiritual water, or an instrument for spiritual music. Through this medium, I interpret the prayer or the reverence. It is this medium that stamps my experience or the image with the Divine. This aspect of the Divine is the bridge to the Divine Ground. It is always possible, though, to hear the words, but not the music. But the music will always be there, waiting, like a buried treasure in a secret chamber on an uncharted island. The psyche must be tuned to see it, just as an instrument must be tuned to play the right notes: then the music will be right.

Huxley: “The way to the Divine outside yourself is harder than the way to the Divine within. The heights without are more arduous than the heights within. Without, temptations and distractions come like constant interruptions during a good conversation. But this must happen to find God not just in the Self, but in the World. Ironically, these distractions are the stepping stones, the rungs in your ladder. You must meet every temptation and turn it into a sacrament. It was designed for you and you alone because you were made for it. We must pay attention to our life like an artist pays attention to his masterpiece. Every element must be given attention.”

I saw now why the Far East was filled with landscape painting; it was a religious duty, to find God in the World. The Heavens declare the glory of God!

I heard the story of Li-lou, who could see a soft hair at a distance of a hundred paces. But when the Emperor dropped his precious jewel in the water, Li-lou couldn’t find it, despite his extraordinary eyesight. Yet Hsiang-wang found it! When Li-lou dove in the waves roared and the deep darkened. But when Hsiang-wang dove in, the sea calmed and the jewel shined! Li-lou could see but he could not see, for he did not walk in the higher spheres.

I then heard of those who saw God in Nature, but not in their Self. Wordsworth saw it in The Prelude, as did Byron. Pleasure rushes over them as if they were tingling. Though Wordsworth saw it, he did not take it in. He admired the beauty, but didn’t marry it. It didn’t transform him into a butterfly, but affected him from the outside, like the temperature. But St. Bernard scaled the heights of the Self and received the fulness of Nature. Nature became a patient teacher. St. Bernard: “Listen to a man of experience: thou wilt learn more in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach thee more than thou canst acquire from the mouth of a scholar.” Nature is a stepping-stool to God. We use it as we might use a pair of spectacles to see. Philo says: “Even though a man may be incapable of making himself worthy of the creator of the cosmos, yet he ought to try to form himself from being a man into the nature of the cosmos and become, if one may say so, a little cosmos.”

Our path converged onto an impasse. I looked over the edge and had a momentary fit of vertigo. The drop over the cliff swooped down into a canyon. The base of it must have been a couple of miles down. My foot accidentally must have pushed over some pebbles as I edged to the frontier because I heard a light echoing tumbling down the curvature of the canyon wall. I wondered how we were to get across. It was much too dangerous to try to climb down: we didn’t have the tools. I did see that the path broke into two opposite directions so that it looked like a ‘T’. But were we to go left or right? The canyon stretched beyond my sight so I couldn’t see if either path lead across or not. Huxley bid me to go right, so I went right. I peered over the edge of the canyon to my left and saw a river that looked like a long, blue stringy strand of silk, curving its way in the contours of the rock like a snake. The other side of the canyon was much too bright to make out anything distinctly. I thought it was the sun setting, but the sky was still blue, and I still saw the sun off-kilter above. It couldn’t be another sun. Maybe I’ll get to see more if we progress along this path.