"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

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.

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!

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.

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!!!!!

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.

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.

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.

This is a book that I think I will be referencing back to for the rest of my life. If you basically want to understand the entire perspective of a Western thinker on the commonalities of Eastern religion and mysticism as well as Christian mystic thought, this is the book. Think of it as the complete tutorial on what people *think* they're saying when they utter the cliche "I'm not religious but I'm spiritual." Now if a person were truly that, and very intelligent as well, then this book explains how they might think about God, self, universe, time, idolatry, salvation, truth, good, evil, immortality, mortification, charity, prayer... yeah, you name it everything you've stuffed in a closet in the back of your mind and called it 'religion' is presented here from the mystic point of view and collected wisdom of multiple 'religions'.

This might properly be called, at least I will, the set of ultimate goals for the self, or perhaps the self-less perfection of the realization of the divine in the individual and the purpose of all human consciousness. I'm not used to speaking this way, it will take me some time to get through all of the material in this course of study, but I can feel it working on me.

Several years ago I wrote that all I care about is wisdom. This is true. But one tends to think of wisdom as an attribute of the self. The Perennial Philosophy extends that challenge beyond the self (and yet within the self) towards the human infinite. So instead of the pursuit and capture of wisdom like a trophy to put on your mantle and show off, the Perennial Philosophy explains that this is an attainment of psychic, spiritual as well as intellectual dimensions.

There's some speculation in this which is especially clunky in the dated volume which contemporaries more well versed in psychology will easily spot. Also Huxley had been taken in by claims of faith healing and ESP that should not be taken seriously, but he seems to understand this. Also the book gets a bit murky in dealing with the concepts of time vis a vis Time and Eternity. And yet the book becomes quite persuasive in describing how nations and religions and philosophies that deal with reality in progressive time rather than in eternal timelessness, inevitably make bloody violent sacrifices to time (God the destroyer of all things, in time).

Huxley presents a convincing case for the unification of purposeful thought in this volume by taking contextualized quotes from a variety of wise ancients and mystics. It puts, for me, God back where God should belong in all thought, and the discipline of finding God central in human moral purpose.

I am convinced that this is the kind of material that is central to the human experience. It clears up a lot of things.

Perennialism is the belief that all religions share a common, overlapping core in all religions and philosophies across history. This book is basically a primer on Perennialism, covering a lot of topics with reference to religious thinkers and spiritual masters across history.

The number quoted throughout this book is impressive, though a few key figures are returned to often. Huxley says that he is not going to quote Christian scripture, as it is the most familiar to his readers. But he quotes Meister Eckhart, William Law, Francis de Sales, John of the Cross and Fenelon over and over. He also refers to the Bhagavad Gita and other Hindu writings as well as Taoist, Buddhist and Confucian texts. It’s not just religion as he also references ancient Greek philosophers, though back then the divide we imagine between religion and philosophy did not really exist. Or more precisely, what we think of as “religion” they thought of as “philosophy” - more a way of life than cultic practices.

Which, I suppose, is why this book is called The Perennial Philosophy. I categorize it as religion and spirituality, not philosophy, on my shelves. But that’s more a commentary on how those subjects are understood…

Anyway, this book was deeply enlightening as well as quite challenging. That is, coming from a conservative evangelical background, any hint that God can be discovered outside of Christianity (or, our specific branch of Christianity) was anathema. But I’ll admit that I’ve always been some sort of inclusivist, even in my more dogmatic days, recognizing that the institution of Christianity does not have the market cornered on God. Of course, this sort of thinking is not unheard of. It was CS Lewis’s The Last Battle, the final book in the Narnia series, where an enemy soldier who worships the god Tash is welcomed by Aslan, the Christ-figure. Aslan declares that this soldier may have thought he was on Tash’s side, but all goodness and truth belongs to Aslan.

Likewise, I believe a lot of Christians recognize that God is good and all good points to God. Even if people do not use the name Jesus, they can still know God for all true worship goes towards Jesus.

That said, Perennialism is a step further. Here it’s not that all these other religions are actually worshiping Jesus. Instead, they are all valid paths on their own. But it’s not a pluralism, as if they’re all separate paths that are in contradiction with one another. Rather, there is a lot of overlap in these religions at their core. But on the surface, they are still unique. There’s no erasure or effort to pretend all are the same through and through.

As I wrestle with these ideas, what sticks with me, as a lifelong Christian, is that Christians are diverse and disagree on much. When I imagine the God of some forms of Christianity, I see little to no overlap. For example, the idea that God predetermines everything, forever choosing some for unending bliss and some for unending torture, is revolting. Such a malicious tyrant is nothing like the God of self-sacrificial, unending, noncoercive love I believe in. I see more in common when I read the Tao Te Ching or Bhagavad Gita then I do when I read the way some Christians describe God.

Here at the end, I am a Christian. I am a follower of Jesus and, if you asked, I’d say I believe the creeds and (what I think) are core doctrines. But it makes complete sense, in reason and experience, that God’s Spirit is found across all religions and in all cultures. I’m more interested in learning from my fellow travelers as we journey towards the divine than I am in converting anyone. Add that to my Christian Universalist beliefs, and I suppose that makes me a Perennialist.

I have read many authors and books of the "perennialist" school but until now, not the book that formed the movement. It's remarkably brilliant in that Huxley manages to clearly identify the insights into the call of the mystical life present in the form of all traditional faiths without attempting to form any type of religious syncretism. Huxley doesn't make excuses for any of the excesses of any religions, and he has his particular disdains for certain worldly aspects of them all, but the contemplations here can help a Catholic become a better Catholic, the Hindu a better Hindu, a Buddhist a better Buddhist, and any seeker more honest in his search.

With the Perennial Philosophy Huxley attempts to explain "the core and spiritual heart of all the higher religions." He examines Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, Islam, Judaism, etc. to find a universal truth about humanity and the nature of reality. The result is a comprehensive system of mysticism in which "the aim and purpose of human life is the unitive knowledge of God" (242). For Huxley, the major world religions offer unique insight into human spirituality and its relation to divine transcendence. However, because religions focus too often on temporal concerns and follow inadequately enlightened leaders, those faiths undervalue the "everlasting, timeless fact of eternity" and lose sight of the real 'divine Ground.' The Perennial Philosophy, on the other hand, claims to offer an ultimate truth uncorrupted by politicization and human selfishness. Moreover, Huxley's vision of spirituality emphasizes the virtue of selflessness and the significance of knowledge of the unitary Self/consciousness that underlies all existence. In the end, I think The Perennial Philosophy is a great book, but I'm still skeptical about Huxley's supposedly empirical evidence of supernatural/super-human phenomena. Regardless, considering it was published in the immediate wake of WWII, it works as a sort of spiritual response to existentialism and asserts an absolute value for ethics in a morally ambiguous world.