Aldous Huxley is best remembered for his chilling depiction of a totalitarian state in Brave New World. I’ve long thought that Huxley’s vision was in many ways more accurate than Orwell’s, at least as far as the West is concerned. We seem more likely to fall for a spiritually dead consumerist dystopia than a boot-on-the-neck Stalinist one (though one shouldn’t be overly optimistic!).
This article, however, makes the case that Huxley’s later writings that set out his positive spiritual, philosophical, and social vision deserve consideration. His mature philosophy appears to have been an attempt at synthesizing Eastern thought with an appreciation for modern science, and the author suggests that it can speak to many of our current social and spiritual problems.
I remember reading Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy years ago and I still have a certain affinity for that outlook. (I’d identify E.F. Schumacher, especially in his Guide for the Perplexed, and Huston Smith as other proponents.)
Huxley defined the perennial philosophy as
the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man’s final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being. (The Perennial Philosophy, p. vii)
This philosophy, in Huxley’s view, underlies the great religious traditions of the world, especially in their more mystical forms. Thus the differences between traditions are somewhat relativized.
Christianity, of course, contains a certain tension between the universal and the particular: the logos is the light that enlightens every person, but that logos became incarnate in a particular human being with a particular culture and history. Some versions of Christianity emphasize the universal to the detriment of the particular, seeing the historical Jesus mainly as a symbol of a universal truth. However, there’s also a danger–or so I’d argue–in the opposite view. Some schools of Christian theology posit a sharp discontinuity between Christian revelation and all other perceptions of the divine, whether they belong to other religious traditions or to “natural” reason.
I don’t think any version of Christianity that wants to lay claim to orthodoxy can sever the religious life from the particular history of Jesus; Christians believe that God was manifested in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus in a way that makes a permanent difference for the life of the world. And yet, an important tradition in Christianity–represented, for instance, by several of the early church fathers–holds that non-Christian wisdom points to the same “divine Reality” that became incarnate in Jesus. Moreover, the Bible itself often portrays “outsiders”–people who not only existed before Jesus, but were outside the chosen people–as knowing God and offering him true worship.
This position is basically sound in my view, but there is a fine line between affirming that knowledge and true worship of God is possible outside of Christ and dismissing the importance of the Incarnation. After all, if God can be known apart from special revelation, why is it necessary for God to become man? Is the knowledge of God available to non-Christians saving knowledge, or does it have the status of a “preamble to faith” as natural knowledge of God is referred to in some Catholic theology? What exactly is it that God achieves for us in Jesus that wasn’t possible otherwise?
A Thinking Reed 
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