Love Is the Last Word: Aldous Huxley on Knowledge vs. Understanding and the Antidote to Our Existential Helplessness – The Marginalian
“All of us are knowers, all the time; it is only occasionally and in spite of ourselves that we understand the mystery of given reality.”
Opinion
Here's an article about Aldous Huxley from a popular blogger and established writer. At first glance, I thought it was interesting but on further inspection, I found it thought-provoking but essentially simplistic.
It's the kind of thing that attracts conventional "intellectuals" who skim over all the latest pap, listen to TED Talks and other tedious podcasts. It may be fitting for the Marginalian but is not marginal at all.
Why am I not enamored with Aldous Huxley?
Well, I looked at The Divine Within (which is online through our public library) and quickly noticed that Huxley advocates the quack theories of William Herbert Sheldon who associated body types with certain personality characteristics and behavioral tendencies.
Aldous Huxley took a considerable interest in and popularized knowledge of Sheldon's work, writing that "Sheldon has worked out what is, without question, the best and most adequate classification of human differences" ¹
Moreover, Huxley talks about a wide array of thinkers and mystics, but like so many who don't really know what they are talking about, he presents a good number of them as if the numinosity of their approaches and beliefs are all the same, and originate from God. Thus Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism, and Christianity are all lumped together as equivalents.²
By way of contrast, Rudolf Otto along with C. G. Jung talk about different types of numinosity coming from different places. They and other careful observers like Max Weber also note that ethics varies among world religions. In short, all religions are not the same. How Huxley can cast Buddhism in the same light as Christianity when the former does not even posit the existence of God is a mystery to me!
Bananas, Babes and Monkees
Grapes are not bananas. Nor are tomatoes cantaloupes. Anyone with healthy eyesight will notice this immediately upon entering the supermarket. But if someone is vision impaired they might mistake a bad apple, for instance, for a tomato. It's the same with mysticism. If a seeker is just starting out, they might assume all religions and their attendant mystical presences are equivalent and come from the same place. But if that person matures, they realize that the characteristics and dynamics of interior perception are far more complicated and nuanced than what is implied by the "all religions are the same" credo.
Like a baby whose understanding of the world and others steadily improves with age, so it is with mysticism---mature mysticism, that is. Mature mystics, however, are relatively few in number. So the vast majority of "Ted Talk intellectuals" peddling tedious, superficial stuff receive most of the acclaim.
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It's like this in any field. To the tin ear, Donny Osmond or the Monkees are just the same as The Beatles. But to those given to appreciate the complexities of music, the differences are clear.
All You Need Is Love?
There are many kinds of love, often overlapping. The true mystic of agape (selfless love) might experience lesser moments, for instance, where they are also sexually attracted to a "brother" or "sister." Is that lust? Romantic love? Friendship? C. S. Lewis might know but I'm not sure. And what of the mystical yet somewhat sexual love of Tantra? Here sexual organs are affected without physical touching.
In Hinduism, even Hindu demons love one another. The religion scholar Wendy Doniger makes that abundantly clear for non-Sanskrit readers. Meanwhile, some old-school Catholic priests maintain - although they probably won't publically say so - that the Hindu gods are "really demons" and Muslims are "kith and kin to Satan."³
With religion, it's tempting to say that love is the final word. And in a sense, it is. But here, like anywhere else, we find ambiguity, entanglement and hypocrisy, along with the reality of wolves in sheep's clothing.
Anyone who ignores the notion that "Sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace" is probably in for an unwelcome surprise.
² Huxley does take exception, not unlike Joachim Wach, to the occult, psi and individual spiritism. Like his conformist characters in Brave New World, he scorns the individual seeker yet uncritically accepts the herd definition of "sainthood."
Ironic?
³ One priest who said that about Hinduism has been suspended by the Church after doing an audit. Another who spoke harshly of Muslims said, "Don't quote me on this."
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