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The Perennial Philosophy

aldous huxley

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The Perennial Philosophy is defined by its author as "The metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds." With great wit and stunning intellect, Aldous Huxley examines the spiritual beliefs of various religious traditions and explains them in terms that are personally meaningful.

An inspired gathering of religious writings that reveals the "divine reality" common to all faiths, collected by Aldous Huxley

"The Perennial Philosophy," Aldous Huxley writes, "may be found among the traditional lore of peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions."

With great wit and stunning intellect—drawing on a diverse array of faiths, including Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Christian mysticism, and Islam—Huxley examines the spiritual beliefs of various religious traditions and explains how they are united by a common human yearning to experience the divine. The Perennial Philosophy includes selections from Meister Eckhart, Rumi, and Lao Tzu, as well as the Bhagavad Gita, Tibetan Book of the Dead, Diamond Sutra, and Upanishads, among many others.

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1945

This edition

Format
336 pages, Paperback
Published
April 13, 2004 by Harper Perennial Modern Classics
ISBN
9780060570583
ASIN
006057058X
Language
English

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About the author

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aldous huxley

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Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.
Huxley was a pacifist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism, as well as universalism, addressing these subjects in his works such as The Perennial Philosophy (1945), which illustrates commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticism, and The Doors of Perception (1954), which interprets his own psychedelic experience with mescaline. In his most famous novel Brave New World (1932) and his final novel Island (1962), he presented his visions of dystopia and utopia, respectively.

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Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 100 votes)
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Gabud873
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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"They who suffer for love, do not suffer, for all suffering is thus forgotten" -Meister Eckhart

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would be seen as it is, infinite" -William Blake

"There is this difference between spiritual and corporeal pleasures, that corporeal ones beget a desire before we obtain them and after we have obtained them, a disgust. Spiritual pleasures on the contrary, are not cared for when we have them not, but are desired when we have them" -St. Gregory the Great
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Patatita
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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A thorough explanation of the mystical quest pursued by contemplative men and women through the ages in all the major religious traditions. Huxley puts the reader in direct contact with the the accumulated wisdom of mystics through extensive quotations from their writings. We are reminded that God, or the Divine Essence, cannot be approached through language. He--It--is known only in the silence and emptiness of the deep self.
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-K0K0-
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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What a great work, Huxley did, in my opinion, to cull the consensus that appears among the world's great religions and especially the mystics among them. In this book he covers a broad range of topics, including charity, non-attachment, self-knowledge, grace and free will, silence, suffering, spiritual exercises, and contemplation. "Shows to go you," as my dad would say, that God is not without a witness! His willingness to reveal Himself and the timeless, cultural, and religious transcendence of His truth marches on!
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Jenncronchhh
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This book explain the ways in which ALL the world's religions, taken at their core, express the "Perennial Philosophy". He quotes at length from Catholic saints, Martin Luther, the Vedantas, the Tao te Ching, George Fox, the Upanishads, the writings of many Buddhists, and so on. I know I've left some out; I'm not looking at the book as i write, and it has been probably 10 years since I read it last.

Nonetheless, a major formative book for my life, which I discovered when I was 13 or 14 and have been rereading ever since.
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Profesor_Teto
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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في هذا الكتاب يبحث ألدوس هكسلي عن المعنى …
لا ادري ان وجد ضالته في ديانه ما ،لكن اجزم انه متيقن ان هناك اله و ان الانسان لا يستطيع العيش بدونه …
مقدمة المترجم بها الشرح الوافي عن الكتاب و هي مقدمة بارعه تهيأ فكر القارئ للكتاب و مضمونه و كيفية قرائته و هضمه …

الفلسفة الخالدة التي يقصدها ألدوس هي الدين …
كأنسان من الحضارة الشرقية قد ارى الكتاب "عادي" جداً لان معانيه قد سبق و تعرضت اليها في حياتي اليومية..

لكن الانسان الغربي بشكل عام و معظم قراء الكتاب منهم و قد قيموه تقيم من ٤ الى ٥ نجوم و تكلمو و علقو ان الدين يلعب دوراً اساسياً في حياة الانسان…. ف اعتقادي ان السبب لانه بشكل ما او بآخر ان الكتاب يستشعر و يشعل فتيل المعنى في عقولهم …

الفراغ المادي اهلك الانسان الحديث و جعله تائه يبحث عن المعنى!!!!!
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fubukishiroune
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Another book that's really beyond my area of interests, and, I confess, philosophy is pretty much at the bottom of my list of subjects to explore. On the other hand, this is a surprisingly intriguing overview of religious/philosophical works with excepts from some works I studied in Eastern Civilization (as opposed to the required Western Civ class) with Taoism, Buddhism, etc. and even selections from Master Eckhart, whom I've only heard of but not read. The book is organized by topic--Truth, Grace and Free Will, Good and Evil--and Huxley provides excerpts from these classics, connecting them with elucidating commentary. A good, though rather academic, overview for those interested in the topic.
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zhazha01
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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tl;dr A dense anthology of approaches for attaining unitive knowledge of the transcendent Ground of all being for the Universalists out there.

I originally approached The Perennial Philosophy because I saw a passage of it quoted in another book — it was a mini-rant that Huxley indulges in about the cultists for the religion of progress. He rails against the way that nationalism, revolutionism, and an obsession with technological progress (what he calls "acts of hubris directed against Nature) gets in the way of man's pursuit of God.

"Puffing Billy has now turned into a four-motored bomber loaded with white phosphorus and high explosives, and the free press is everywhere a servant of its advertisers, of a pressure group, or of the government. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, the travellers (now far from gay) still hold fast to the religion of Inevitable Progress -- which is, in the last analysis, the hope and faith (in the teeth of all human experience) that one can get something for nothing. How much saner is the Greek view that every victory has to be paid for, and that, for some victories, the price exacted is so high that it outweighs any advantage that may be obtained!"


Ker-POW! When I looked into the book further I found something that seemed to be to my taste.

To wit, Huxley is a Universalist. Citing philosophers in the Taoist, Buddhist, Islamic, Hindu and Christian faiths, he makes the case that all faiths are but human attempts to approach the same ultimate goal of humanity: knowledge of and unity with the divine Ground, which some might call God.

"The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute, ineffable in terms of discursive thought, but (in certain circumstances) susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being. This Absolute is the God-without-form of Hindu and Christian mystical phraseology. The last end of man, the ultimate reason for human existence, is unitive knowledge of the divide Ground—the knowledge that can come only to those who are prepared to "Die to self" and so make room, as it were, for God."


I don't know that I would quite call it anthology, because although it leans heavily on excerpts from philosophers to a great degree, Huxley is using them for a purpose. He wants to sweep away the legalism and idolatry that creep into established religions over time and lays out a road map for spiritual — instead of merely material — progress.

For Huxley, that means abolishing the ego to open one's mind to God. The approach to take is different for everybody, according to one's temperament. For born contemplatives like myself (a cerebrotonic in Huxley's reckoning), introversion can be helpful in trying to approach the infinite, but action is needed as well. Not just prayer, either, but acts of absolution that put moral belief into moral action. For others, it's the opposite — halting perpetual action to contemplate one's place in relation to the infinite of which we are all a part.

There are tons of great pearls of wisdom to be sifted through, and I look forward to going back and re-reading all the quotes I highlighted in my Kindle.

From a critical standpoint, I will say that the book does not read terribly smoothly. It took me six weeks to read 300 some odd pages. I suppose it's the nature of the problem — words are such inadequate symbols when you're trying to describe the soul's relation to the Godhead (even writing that now sounds ridiculous), that The Perennial Philosophy really requires your undivided attention to understand clearly. And even then, Huxley will occasionally move from reality-quaking truth to vague blathering about psychic energies and extra-sensory perception, so you have to remember to keep your skeptic hat on. This was written in 1944 after all.

I don't know whether and to whom I might recommend the book in the future, but I am definitely glad for having read it. At least for a little while, it might be the prod I need to emerge from my head a bit and experience the world in the moment. That may be endorsement enough.
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DltPROFILE742018
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Lettura impegnativa nei tempi delle feste, ha in realtà aperto praterie spaziose dietro la sua apparente complessità. Huxley scrive bene, in modo completo e documentato. In questo saggio si cercano di trovare i punti comuni nelle tradizioni secolari di spiritualità attraverso numerosissimi brani tratti da fonti cattoliche, protestanti, buddhiste, induiste e sufi - e forse mi sono dimenticato qualcosa. La cosa piu' degna di nota è la capacità del filosofo nel sapersi muovere a proprio agio in tutte queste scuole, mantenendo un sano distacco da ognuna di esse, abbracciando nel contempo e caldamente il Fondamento Perenne alla base di ciascuna.
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