February 27, 2006

THE HIMALAYAS OF THE SOUL

AND THE RELIGION OF TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS

PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS

Definition: The Perennial Philosophy is:

1. The metaphysic which recognizes one divine Reality that is substantial to the manifold world of things, lives and minds.

2. The psychology which finds in the soul something identical (or similar) to divine Reality.

3. The ethic which declares that the final purpose of man is the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being (p. vii).

The nature of the one Reality is such that it cannot be directly and immediately apprehended, except by those who have chosen to make themselves loving, selfless and humble. The first-hand exponents of the Philosophy have generally been given such appellations as Asaint,@ Aprophet,@ Asage,@ and Athe enlightened one@ (pp. viii and ix).

Autology: Autology is the study of the eternal Self which is in the depth of individual selves, and is identical (or akin) to the divine Ground (p. 1).

History: In its rudimentary form, the Perennial Philosophy is found in the traditional lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world. Fully developed, it is the spiritual heart of every one of the world=s great religions. It was first committed to writing somewhat earlier than 500 B.C.E. (pp. vii and 236).

The Numerical Paradox: One world crystallizes out of what appears to be many minds. Many conscious selves construct one world from their mental experiences. The several domains of Aprivate@ minds partly overlap, and the region which is common to them all, where all minds overlap, is the construct of the Areal world around us@ (QQ pp. 86 and 89).

To resolve what physicist Erwin Schroedinger (1887-1961) called this Anumerical paradox,@ the Perennial Philosophy offers the Doctrine of Identity B the proposition that there is only one supreme mind (consciousness), identical in us all, which transcends and includes the material world. The multiplicity of minds is only apparent (QQ pp. 86-87).

Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), German mathematician and rationalist philosopher, coined the phrase, APerennial Philosophy,@ and in opposition to it, offered the Doctrine of Monads, the proposition that there are many minds (Amonads@), each perceiving different aspects of one real world, the agreement between the monads being due to Apre-established harmony@ (p. vii; Wilber, QQ, pp. 86-87).

That art Thou: (Sanskrit: tat tvam asi). The central tenet of the Perennial Philosophy is that there is an eternal Self in the depth of individual selves, which is identical (or akin) to the divine Ground (p. 1).

* One: Kabir (1440-1518), Indian mystic and poet, warned:

ABehold but One in all things. It is the second that leads you astray@ (p. 10).

* Not Two: In the Indo-European languages, the root meaning Atwo@ connotes badness. The prefixes dys- (dyspepsia) in Greek, and dis- (dishonorable) in Latin, are both derived from Aduo.@ The cognate bis- gives a pejorative sense to such modern French words as bevue (blunder, literally Atwo-sight@). Traces of that Asecond which leads you astray@ can be found in Adubious,@ Adoubt@ and Adivision.@ Language confirms the findings of the mystics in proclaiming the essential badness of division (pp. 10-11).

* The Eternal Ground: We do not know who we are, and are unaware that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us. This is why we behave in ways that are generally silly, often insane, and sometimes criminal. We are saved, liberated, enlightened by perceiving the good that is already within us B by returning to our eternal Ground, and remaining there B where, without knowing it, we have always been (pp. 14-15).

* No Separate Selves: Man=s obsessive consciousness of, and insistence on being a separate self, is the final and most formidable obstacle to the unitive knowledge of God (p. 36).

* Idolatry leads to Evil:

C Idolatry of Time: The politics of those whose goal is beyond time are always pacific. It is the idolaters of past and future B reactionary memory and Utopian dreams B who do the persecuting and make the wars (p. 10).

C Idolatry of Man-made Ideologies: Whatever the official religion of particular politicians and war makers, philosophies which rationalize power politics and justify war, are always unrealistic doctrines of national, racial or ideological idolatry, which have, as their inevitable corollary, notions of lesser breeds to whom the Law does not apply. The First and Second World Wars displayed the consequences of political idolatry without any mitigation by either humanistic honor or transcendental religion (pp. 44 and 140).

The Nature of the Ground: The Ground of being is:

* Ineffable: The Ground of all existence is a divine, spiritual Absolute which, while ineffable in terms of discursive thought, under certain circumstances, can be directly experienced and realized. This Absolute is the God-without-form of the Hindu and Christian mystics. The ultimate purpose and reason for human existence, is unitive knowledge of this divine Ground B a knowledge available only to those who are prepared to Adie to self@ and to Amake room@ for God (p. 21).

* Timeless: A simple, timeless awareness is the Ground in which our multifarious and time-bound psyche is rooted. By making ourselves loving, selfless and humble, we can discover and identify with this awareness. In the spirit, we not only have, but are, the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground (p. 29).

* The Third Element in a Trinity: Man is a trinity. He is composed of three elements B body, mind and spirit. Personality (selfness) is a product of the first two. The third is identical (or akin) to the divine Spirit which is the Ground of all being. Most contemporary thinkers describe human nature in terms of only two elements B a dichotomy of interacting mind and body, or an inseparable wholeness of the two within particular embodied selves (p. 38).

Psychologists of the 20^th century have chosen to ignore that:

C Human nature is tripartite, consisting of a spirit as well as of a mind and body.

C The mind lives on the borderline between two worlds, the temporal and the eternal, the human and the divine.

C Though nothing in himself, man is surrounded by God, indigent of God, and, if he so desires, filled with God (pp. 114-115).

Gautama Buddha (563-483 B.C.E.); Saint Augustine (354-430), bishop of Hippo; Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), Italian statesman; Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680), French writer (AThe virtues join self-interest as the rivers join the sea@); Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), French scientist and religious philosopher; and Francois de Fenelon (1651-1715), French theologian and writer, a leader of the Quietism heresy, archbishop of Cambrai, were all well aware of rationalizations of discreditable subconscious motives, and of the fact that sexuality and the will to power are all too often the effective forces underneath the polite mask of the persona. All of them also knew that human nature is tripartite, a fact that modern psychologists do not understand (pp. 114-115).

God in the World:

* Within and Without: To discover the Kingdom of God exclusively within oneself is easier than to discover it, not only within, but also in the outer world of things, living creatures, and minds (p. 61).

* The Use of Distractions: It is by a process of inclusion that we come to know the fulness as well as the heights of spiritual life. When the hope is to know God inclusively, to realize the divine Ground in the world as well as in the soul, temptations and distractions must not be avoided, but submitted to and used as opportunities for advance. There must be no suppression of outward-turning activities, but a transformation of them so that they become sacramental (pp. 61-62).

* Taming the Ox: The pattern which characterizes the life of many sages (for example, Jesus), is traced in the AOx-herding Pictures,@ popular among Zen Buddhists. The wild ox, symbolizing the unregenerate self, is caught, made to change its direction, then tamed and gradually transformed from black to white. Regeneration goes so far that for a time, the ox is completely lost, so that nothing remains to be pictured but the full-orbed moon, symbolizing Suchness, the Ground. But this is not the final stage. In the end, the herdsman comes back to the world of men, riding on the back of his ox (p. 71).

* Living with Awareness: The world inhabited by nice, ordinary, unregenerate people is mainly dull B so dull that they have to distract their minds from being aware of this fact by all sorts of artificial Aamusements,@ sometimes brief and intensely pleasurable, often disagreeable and even agonizing. Seen through the dung-colored glasses of self-interest, the universe looks singularly like a dung-heap. For those who have deserved the world by making themselves fit to see God within it, as well as within their own souls, the world wears a very different aspect (pp. 75 and 107).

* The Sacredness of Nature: The doctrine that God is in the world has an important practical corollary B the sacredness of Nature, and the sinfulness and folly of man=s overweening efforts to be her master rather than her intelligently docile collaborator. Sub-human lives and even things are to be treated with respect and understanding, not brutally oppressed to serve our human ends (p. 76).

Chuang Tzu (Chuang Tze, c.369-c.286 B.C.E.), Chinese Taoist writer, told the following parable in which Chaos is Nature in the state of wu-wei (Anon- assertion,@ equilibrium). Shu and Hu are devotees of the apocalyptic religion of Inevitable Progress. Their creed is that the Kingdom of Heaven is in the future, and outside oneself.

AThe ruler of the Southern Ocean was Shu, the ruler of the Northern Ocean was Hu, and the ruler of the Center was Chaos. Shu and Hu were continually meeting in the land of Chaos B who treated them very well. They consulted with one another as to how they might repay his kindness, and said, >Men all have seven orifices for the purpose of seeing, hearing, breathing and eating. This ruler alone has not a single one. Let us try to make them for him.= Accordingly, they dug one orifice in him every day. At the end of seven days, Chaos died@ (pp. 76-77).

Shu and Hu are the living images of those persons who:

C Thought they would improve on Nature by turning dry prairies into wheat fields B and produced deserts.

C Proclaimed the Conquest of the Air B and saw their airplanes used to destroy civilization.

C Cut vast forests to provide the newsprint for a universal literacy which was to make the world safe for intelligence and democracy B and produced wholesale erosion, pulp magazines, and the organs of Fascist, Communist, capitalist and nationalist propaganda (p. 77).

Charity:

Characteristics: Charity is:

* Disinterested: Charity is disinterested. It seeks no reward, nor does it allow itself to be diminished by any return of evil for its good. God is to be loved for Himself, not for his gifts, and persons and things are to be loved for God=s sake, because they are temples of the Holy Ghost. The disinterestedness of charity makes it also universal (p. 83).

* First in the Will: Unlike the lower forms of love, charity is not an emotion. It originates in the will and is consummated in a purely spiritual awareness, a unitive love-knowledge of the essence of its object (pp. 85 and 89).

Saint Francois de Sales (1567-1622), French Roman Catholic preacher, Doctor of the Church, and a key figure in the Counter Reformation in France, called this act of will Aholy indifference.@ We have to will the peace, tranquillity, non-attachment that is within our power to obtain for ourselves and others. We will then be fit to receive the Apeace that passes all understanding@ which is the fruit of liberation into eternity, the condition of the unitive knowledge-love of God. In contrast, for the majority of those involved in them, wars have the effect of eclipsing God (pp. 86-87 92, 98, 103, 104, 155 and 194).

* Humble: Humility is a necessary condition of the highest form of love, and in turn the highest form of love makes possible the consummation of humility into a total self-naughting (p. 88).

The Opposite of Charity:

* Mammon, Mars and Priapus: The word Acharity@ originally meant the highest and most divine form of love. In modern English (perhaps as an expression of man=s deep-seated will to ignorance and spiritual darkness), it means Aalmsgiving.@ Ambiguity in vocabulary leads to confusion of thought, and, in the case of love, the confusion serves the purpose of an unregenerate and divided human nature which is determined to make the best of both worlds B saying that it is serving God, while in fact, serving Mammon (Aramaic term meaning worldly riches; in the New Testament, AYe cannot serve God and mammon@), Mars (in Roman religion, god of war) and Priapus (in Greek religion, god of fertility, represented as a little man with an enormous phallus) (p. 83).

* Lovelessness: Charity is the root and substance of morality. Little charity means much avoidable evil. In large measure, our present social, economic and international arrangements are based upon organized lovelessness. We are loveless toward Nature, art (replacing it by mass production), other people, and other sovereign states. Our lovelessness toward other states expresses itself in the assumption that it is right and natural for national organizations to be armed to the teeth and ready, at the first favorable opportunity, to steal and kill. By definition, a sovereign national state is an organization that has the right and duty to coerce its members to steal and kill on the largest possible scale. Our increasingly efficient technology dedicated to war, provides an ever more powerful temptation for societies to reinforce their present God-eclipsing arrangements (pp. 92 and 94-96).

Non-attachment:

* Self-effacement: The more there is of self, the less there is of God B AOur kingdom go@ is the necessary and unavoidable corollary to AThy kingdom come.@ The divine eternal fulness of life can be gained only by those who have deliberately lost the partial, separative life of craving, self-interest, and egocentric thinking, feeling, wishing and acting. A love which shines equally upon the just and the unjust, is impossible to a mind imprisoned in private preferences and aversions. It is by losing the egocentric life that we discover the latent life which we share with the divine Ground in the spiritual part of our being (pp. 96 and 105-106).

Mortification (self-naughting, the deliberate dying to self) is emphasized with uncompromising firmness in the canonical writings of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, the other major religions and most of the minor ones, every saint, and every spiritual reformer who has ever lived out and expounded the principles of the Perennial Philosophy (p. 96).

The Theologia Germanica, written by an anonymous author, Teutonic AFriend of God@ (c.1350), declares:

ANothing burns in hell but the self@ (p. 177).

* Self-knowledge: Without self-knowledge, there cannot be adequate knowledge of God. Without a constant recollectedness, there can be no complete deliverance. The man who has learnt to regard things as symbols, persons as temples of the Holy Spirit, and actions as sacrament, is a man who has learned to remind himself constantly of who he is, where he stands in relation to the universe and its Ground, how he should behave toward his fellows, and what he must do to come to his final purpose (p. 271).

Thomas Traherne (?1636-1674), English metaphysical poet, expressed:

AHe knows nothing as he ought to know, who thinks he knows anything, without seeing its position in relationship to, and the manner in which it relates to God, angels, men, all the creatures on earth, and all those in heaven, hell, time and eternity@ (p. 110).

* Scylla and Charybdis: Progress in self-effacement is along a knife edge. On one side lurks the Scylla (Greek, sea monster) of egocentric austerity, on the other the Charybdis (whirlpool) of an uncaring quietism. The Aholy indifference@ propounded by the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy, is an active resignation. It is neither stoicism nor passivity (p. 104).

Kabir (1440-1518) expressed it thus:

AThe devout seeker is he who mingles in his heart the double currents of love and detachment, like the mingling of the streams of the Ganges and the Jumna@ (p. 105).

* Forms of Idolatry: The goods of the intellect, the emotions and the imagination are real goods, but they are not the final good, and when we treat them as ends in themselves, we fall into idolatry. Mortification of will, desire and action is not enough. There must also be mortification in the fields of knowing, thinking, feeling and fancying (p. 109).

The most important varieties of modern idolatry are technological (redemption through material objects), political (redemption through social and economic organizations), and moral (redemption through following the person=s ethical ideals, treating virtue as an end in itself, and not as the necessary condition for the knowledge-love of God) (pp. 251-252).

* AL=Etat c=est Moi@: The tyrant says, AI am the State,@ and it is true, not only of the autocrat at the apex of the pyramid, but of the members of the ruling minority through whom he governs and who, in fact, are the real rulers of the nation. As long as the policy which gratifies the lust for power of the ruling class is successful, and so long as the price of success is not too high, even the masses will feel that Athe state is themselves,@ projecting their own ego onto the state. The little man can satisfy his lust for power vicariously through the activities of the imperialistic state, just like the big man does. The difference between them is one of degree, not of kind (pp. 121-122).

* The Organized Churches: Current religious jargon reserves the word Aimmoral@ almost exclusively for the carnally self-indulgent. Representatives of the organized churches put haloes on the heads of the people who do most to make wars B the covetous, the ambitious, the respectable toughs who cloak their lust for power under idealistic cants B not only are these not blamed, but they are held up as models of virtue and godliness (p. 99).

Truth:

* Words and Facts: Words are not facts. Theory is not practice. Words are not the things for which they stand. Intellectual consideration of truths about God is not equivalent to a direct and immediate apprehension of Him (pp. 126, 128-129 and 130).

Meister Eckhart (c.1260-c.1328), German theologian and mystic, exclaimed:

AWhy do you praise God? Whatever you say about Him is untrue@ (p. 125).

* Paradoxes: The language in which eternal, spiritual Reality must be described, was developed to deal with phenomena in time. All descriptions of this Reality, therefore, have an element of paradox. God cannot be described by means of verbal symbols. At best, He can be hinted at in terms of non sequiturs and contradictions (p. 128).

* Historic Christianity: It is by following and then abandoning the rational and emotional path of Aword and discrimination@ that one can enter upon the intuitive Apath of realization.@ And yet, the organized Christian churches have persisted in mistaking means for ends. The over-valuation of words and formulae by historic Christianity may be a special case of its general, characteristic and fatal over-valuation of the things of time (pp. 133-134).

* The Intellect: The use and purpose of reason is to create the internal and external conditions favorable to its own transcendence by and into Spirit. It is the lamp by which it finds the way to go beyond itself (pp. 141-142).

C Only a Means to a Means: As a means to a proximate means to an End, discursive reasoning is of enormous value. But if, in our pride, we treat it as a proximate means to the divine End, or if we regard it as the means to Progress and its ever-receding goal in time, cleverness becomes the enemy, a source of spiritual blindness, a moral evil, the root of social disaster. At no period in history as much as in our time, has cleverness been so highly valued and so widely and efficiently trained B at least in certain directions. And at no time as much as in ours, have intellectual vision and spirituality been less esteemed and the End to which they are proximate means, less widely and less earnestly sought (p. 142).

C Power: The power of modern states is limited only by the power of other states, not appeals to morals and spirituality. Interest in religion has declined. The Perennial Philosophy, with its concern about eternity, has largely been replaced by a metaphysic of Inevitable Progress, and a passionate concern with future time (p. 159).

C The Popular Philosophy of Life: In our time, the popular philosophy of life is no longer based on the classics of devotion, but rather on the messages of advertisements, the sole purpose of which is to persuade us all to be as uninhibitedly greedy as possible. Only the possessive, the restless and the distracted spend money on the things advertisers are selling (p. 160).

C Technology: Seeing technology improve, we fancy that we are making corresponding progress in all aspects of life. Our considerable power over inanimate nature convinces us that we are the self-sufficient masters of our fate, the captains of our souls. Enthralled by the power which cleverness has given us, we believe, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that we have only to go on being yet cleverer, in a yet more systematic way, to achieve our goals of social order, international peace and personal happiness (p. 142).

* Technological Imperialism: Alfred de Vigny (1797-1863), French poet, novelist and dramatist, wrote the following poem about the steam engine, the new technological marvel of his day. Its tone is very different from that which characterizes the writings of his contemporary, Victor Hugo (1802-1885), French poet, dramatist and novelist. Hugo was one of the most eloquent Agay travelers.@

Sur le taureau de fer, qui fume, souffle et beugle, On this iron bull, which smokes, puffs and moos

L=homme est monte trop tot. Nul ne connait encor Man climbed too early. No one yet knows

Quels orages en lui porte ce rude aveugle B What storms within him carries this rude blind B

Et le gai voyageur lui livre son tresor. And the gay traveler delivers him his treasure

. . . . . .

Tous se sont dit, AAllons,@ mais aucun n=est le maitre They all said, ALet=s go,@ but none is master

D=un dragon mugissant qu=un savant a fait naitre, Of a howling dragon a scientist has brought to life,

Nous nous sommes joues a plus fort que nous tous. We played a game, and the other is the stronger. (pp. 78-79).

The gay travelers were convinced that the first steam engine was hauling them at full speed toward universal peace and the brotherhood of man. This Utopian destination was claimed to be not more than fifty years away, and the newspapers, which the travelers read proudly as the train rumbled, were the guarantee that liberty and reason would soon triumph everywhere.

The steam engine has turned into a four-motored bomber loaded with white phosphorus and high explosives. And the Afree press@ everywhere is the servant of advertisers, pressure groups and the government.

And yet, the travelers still hold fast to the religion of Inevitable Progress, which, in the last analysis, is the hope that one can get something for nothing. The spoils of recent technological imperialism have been enormous. But to the human race as a whole, has the ability to travel in a few hours from New York to Los Angeles, given more pleasure than the dropping of bombs and fire has given pain? (p. 79)

The focus of the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy is that individual men and women should come to the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground. Their interest in the social environment centers on the degree to which it helps or hinders individuals in their advance toward man=s final destination (p. 80).

* The Monkey Mind: Wu Ch=eng-en (c.1500-c.1582) wrote The Monkey (also known at Journey to the West), the re-telling of an ancient Chinese story, an allegory, in which Monkey, the incarnation of human cleverness, urinates triumphantly on the proffered hand of wisdom.

Indeed, full of bumptious confidence in our own omnipotence, we set out to re-fashion the world of men and things into something nearer to hour heart=s desire. But, whatever our intentions may be, the results of actions undertaken by even the most brilliant cleverness, unenlightened by the divine Nature of Things, un-subordinated to Spirit, are generally evil (pp. 142-144).

Monkey has gotten to heaven, and there causes so much trouble that Buddha has to be called in to deal with him.

AI=ll have a wager with you,@ said Buddha. AIt you are really so clever, jump off the palm of my right hand. If you succeed, I=ll tell the Jade Emperor to come and live with me in the Western Paradise, and you shall have his throne without more ado. But if you fail, you shall go back to earth and do penance there for many a kalpa before you come back to me with your talk.@

AThis Buddha,@ Monkey thought to himself, Ais a perfect fool. I can jump a hundred and eight thousand leagues, while his palm cannot be as much as eight inches across. How could I fail to jump clear of it?@

AYou=re sure you=re in a position to do this for me?@ he asked.

AOf course I am,@ said Buddha. He stretched out his right hand, which looked about the size of a lotus leaf. Monkey put his cudgel behind his ear, and leapt with all his might.

AAll right!@ he said to himself. AI=m right off it now!@ He was whizzing so fast that he was almost invisible, and Buddha, watching him with the eye of wisdom, saw a mere whirligig shoot along.

Monkey came at last to five pink pillars sticking up into the air. AThis is the end of the World,@ said Monkey to himself. AAll I have got to do is go back to Buddha and claim my forfeit. The Throne is mine.@

AWait a minute,@ he said presently. AI=d better just leave a record of some kind, in case I have trouble with Buddha.@ He plucked a hair and blew on it with magic breath, crying, AChange!@ It changed at once into a writing brush charged with heavy ink, and at the base of the central pillar, Monkey wrote, AThe Great Sage Equal to Heaven reached this place.@ To mark his disrespect, he relieved nature at the bottom of the first pillar, and then somersaulted back to where he had come from. Standing on Buddha=s palm, he said, AWell, I=ve gone and come back. You can go and tell the Jade Emperor to hand over the palaces of Heaven.@

AYou stinking ape,@ said Buddha, Ayou=ve been on the palm of my hand all the time!@

AYou=re quite mistaken,@ said Monkey. AI got to the end of the World, where I saw five flesh-colored pillars sticking up into the sky. I wrote something on one of them. I=ll take you there and show you, if you like.@

ANo need for that,@ said Buddha. AJust look down.@

Monkey peered down with his fiery, steely eyes, and there, at the base of the middle finger of Buddha=s hand, he saw written the words, AThe Great Sage Equal to Heaven reached this place.@ And from the fork between the thumb and first finger, came a smell of Monkey=s urine (pp. 142-143).

Time and Eternity:

* The Eternal Now: According to the Perennial Philosophy, the universe is an everlasting succession of events whose Ground is the timeless now of the divine Spirit. Ever since Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), English philosopher, the enemies of the Perennial Philosophy have denied the existence of an eternal now (pp. 184 and 186).

Jalal ad-Din Rumi (1207-1273), Islamic Persian mystic poet and sage, expressed:

AThe Sufi is the son of time present@ (p. 187).

A life lived in the moment is that of a being in whom charity has cast out fear, vision replaced hope, and selflessness stopped all egotism B both in its positive aspect of complacent reminiscence and its negative aspect of remorse (p. 188).

The present moment is the only aperture through which the soul can pass out of time into eternity, grace out of eternity into the soul, and charity, in time, from one soul to another (p. 188).

* The Mind: AAt one time I am Eternal, at another, I am in Time,@ says our mind. The body is always in time, the spirit always timeless. The mind is amphibious, associating itself to some extent with its body, but capable, if it so desires, of identifying with its spirit, and through it, with the divine Ground (p. 187).

* Death: The completely spiritualized mind-body is a Tathagata (AThe one thus gone,@ the one who has reached enlightenment, Buddha=s description of himself). Upon death, a Tathagata goes nowhere, because he is already, actually and consciously, where everyone, without knowing it, always is (p. 214).

* The New Interest in Nature: The modern movement in favor of kindness to animals is compatible with intolerance, persecution and systematic cruelty toward human beings because it is not founded upon an eternity philosophy, a doctrine of divinity dwelling in all living creatures. Nazism, for instance, is a typical time philosophy, which regards the ultimate good as existing, not in eternity, but in the future. Young Nazis were taught to be gentle with dogs and cats, but ruthless with Jews B dogs and cats did not represent obstacles to the realization of the supreme good, but Jews did (p. 196).

Good and Evil:

* Mechanization: Among the many and enormous advantages of efficient automatic machinery is that it is completely fool-proof. But every gain has to be paid for. The automatic machine is also grace-proof. The man who tends such a machine is impervious to every form of aesthetic inspiration, whether human or genuinely spiritual in origin. Mechanization is incompatible with inspiration (p. 171).

* Hubris: So whole-hearted is the modern faith in technological idols that despite all the lessons of mechanized warfare, popular thinking contains no trace of the ancient and profoundly realistic doctrine of hubris and inevitable nemesis. The belief is that, where gadgets are concerned, we can get something for nothing B enjoy all the advantages of an elaborate, top-heavy and constantly advancing technology, without having to pay for these by any compensating disadvantages (p. 251).

* Mass Production: The condition of an expanding and technologically progressive system of mass production is universal craving. Advertising is the organized effort to extend and intensify craving B that same force which all the saints and teachers of all the higher religions have always taught, is the principal cause of suffering and wrong-doing, and the greatest obstacle between the human soul and its divine Ground (p. 219).

* Suffering: In one way, suffering is entirely private. In another, it is fatally contagious. No living creature is able to experience the suffering of another creature, and in this sense, suffering is private and cannot be shared. However, the craving for separateness which invariably results, sooner or later, directly or indirectly, in some form of suffering for the craver, also invariably results, sooner or later, directly or indirectly, in suffering for others. In this sense, suffering is contagious (p. 228).

Suffering and moral evil have the same source B a craving for the intensification of the separateness which is the primary datum of all beings (p. 228).

* Education: Educators of the 20^th century are not concerned with questions of ultimate truth or meaning. With the exception of training for specific vocations, they are interested solely in the dissemination of a culture which is rootless and irrelevant, and the fostering of scholarship for scholarship=s sake, which is a solemn foolery (p. 177).

MY CONCLUSIONS

A Static View of Spirituality: Aldous Huxley conceives of the Perennial Philosophy as static. Among others, Georg Hegel (1770-1831) saw its evolution over time, espousing, therefore, a Aneo-perennial philosophy.@

Ken Wilber (1949-) describes:

During the modern era, the idea of history as devolution (a fall from God) has been slowly replaced by the idea of history as evolution (a growth toward God). This is explicit in Georg Hegel (1770-1831), Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854), Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), Charles Darwin (1809-1882), Aurobindo Ghose (1872-1950), and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). The One, timeless and absolute Spirit of which the entire universe is but a manifestation is still there, but that world of manifestation is now evolving toward Spirit, not devolving away from Spirit. God lies in our collective future, not in our collective past. This neo-perennial philosophy is the best and most appropriate from of Truth we now have. A humanistic-scientific-rational stage is one of the stages that Spirit, as Spirit, takes, in its return to Spirit (Wilber, EoS pp. 55-59).

Georg Hegel (1770-1831) summarized:

AThe history of the world, with all the changing scenes which its annals present, is the process of development and the realization of Spirit. Only this insight can reconcile Spirit with the history of the world, [and see] that what has happened, and is happening every day, is not only not >without God,= but is essentially the work of God@ (Wilber, HE p. 301).

No Four Domains of Being: Huxley does not conceptualize the four domains of being which Ken Wilber first described in 1995, and which are so useful in understanding the evolution of consciousness. Each domain contains a necessary, partial truth, and no domain is reducible to another. The four domains consist of two that are interpretive B the individual (AI@) and the culture (AWe@), and two that are empirical B the individual as a thing (AIt@) and the techno-economic environment in which this individual lives (AIts@ B AIt@ in the plural). (See Wilber, SES).

A Romantic: Huxley is somewhat of a Romantic, often (not always) thinking of the Garden of Eden as behind us, not ahead of us.

The Pre-/Post- Fallacy: Huxley tends to make the pre-/post- fallacy, confusing the pre-ego and post-ego levels of consciousness.

Not a Comprehensive Explanation of War: Huxley explains the causes of modern war only, and even these causes seem only partial. His principal emphasis is on the Areligion of technology@ B that is, in terms of the domain of the empirical plural (AIts@). Consideration of the other domains would explain why, in the hands of people with a higher level of consciousness, present technology might not necessarily lead to war.

Angry: Huxley is more angry than Wilber. Wilber is more integrative.

The AFemininity of the Soul@: Huxley describes the soul as Afeminine@ in relation to Spirit B thereby reinforcing the unfortunate stereotype of Afemininity@ (see p. 166).

Body Types: Huxley puts a lot of credence on the influence of body types on temperament, as described by American psychologist William Sheldon (1898-1977), and, as a corollary, on the type of religion a person might preferentially espouse. To my knowledge, the conclusions of Sheldon have been discredited. They certainly contains an element of truth, but provide a very inadequate explanation for the way people think (see pp.146-161).

REFERENCES

All page numbers refer to:

Huxley, Aldous. 1944/2004. The perennial philosophy B an interpretation of the great mystics, East and West. New York: HarperCollins/ Perennial Classics.

Except for:

Wilber, Ken.

1996. A brief history of everything. Boston: Shambhala. (Abbreviated as HE).

Summarized: Francoise Hall, AA Transpersonal View of War B War as a Substitute for Cosmo-centrism and Immortality during the Egoic Stage in the Development of Consciousness,@ November 5, 2005, 103 pages.

1995/2000. Sex, ecology, spirituality B the spirit of evolution. 2^nd edition, Revised. Boston: Shambhala. (Abbreviated as SES).

2000/2001. The eye of spirit B an integral vision for the world gone slightly mad. Boston: Shambhala. (Abbreviated EoS).

Wilber, Ken. Editor.

1984/2001. Quantum questions B mystical writings of the world=s great physicists. Boston, MA: Shambhala. (Abbreviated as QQ).

Summarized: Francoise Hall, AMysticism and Science,@ February 11, 2006, 10 pages.

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