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Aldous
Huxley and the Perennial Philosophy, Part 2:
The Two Worlds
Considering all of this,
and broadening Huxley's already-broad statements beyond his
mystical and Eastern-leaning formulations, we come up with four
simple, inclusive principles of the relationship between That
and This:
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That is bigger than
This; specifically, there is Something bigger than me.
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It is possible for me,
through various methods, to come into relationship with
That.
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Until I attain a
relationship with That, I will experience a sense of
separation and loneliness.
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After I attain a
relationship with That, my life will be richer, fuller, and
more rewarding.
Note the complete absence
of any "theological" language in these statements.
They could apply as well to psychology as religion; in fact,
they could even accommodate sociological concepts of
"group." That is, I could say, "The gang is
larger than me; I can join the gang; until I do, I'll feel like
a loner; when I do, I'll find a sense of belonging." Thus
the "aberrations" of gang membership, premature sexual
encounters, drug abuse, etc., may be symptoms of the Search for
a Unitive Experience; it is simply a misdirected Search. The
longing for belonging can lead in unfortunate directions, but it
also allows for the possibility of redemption. Jungian Anthony
Stevens calls this yearning "initiation hunger," and
considers it to be "an archetypal need" (130-131).
The
Two Worlds: Western Concepts
Thus far, we have been
discussing the "divine Reality" as though it were a
person (or an impersonal entity of some sort). But there is an
equally strong trend in religious literature to talk of That as
a place, whether in this time, in a previous time, or out
of time. Let us turn then to a look at That World as opposed to
This World. Whether we call it Heaven, Paradise, Nirvana, a Pure
Land, Valhalla, or The Happy Hunting Ground, it is naturally
understood that That World symbolizes a state of mind.
But it is very effective to portray it as a place in our stories
and films, a place Over the Rainbow, a Laughing Place, a place
East of the Sun and West of the Moon, a Magic Kingdom, a place
in a dark wood, a place in the depths of our selves.
In the popular conception
of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, devotees speak less of
"salvation" or "justification" than they do
of "going to heaven." This may be a place above the
earth, or a future place ("the world to come"). The
nature of That World can be apprehended from a short passage
found in the Lord's Prayer, where the one praying requests that
"[God's] will be done on earth as it is in Heaven."
This is, not coincidentally, a prayer for the union of This
World and That; but it also says of That World that it is a
place where God's will is (presumably constantly) done, a place
that operates on a different set of rules than this one.
Looking deeper into the
Biblical story, we find that such a place is said to have
existed in the past--the Garden of Eden, or Paradise. There,
there was no duality: God and humans, humans and nature, God and
nature--all dwelt in harmony. Even the sexes were not
distinguished: Adam and Eve were naked and were not ashamed. The
Garden of Eden then represents the Union of Opposites, the
Oneness of all reality, which was not differentiated until after
the humans obtained the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Unlike the
East, from the very beginning it seems that the West has based
its loss of union with divine Reality on a moral lapse. (That it
was Knowledge of Good and Evil, however, leaves open the
possibility that we are dealing with a way of knowing in
addition to a moral condition.)
The state of
undifferentiated Oneness in the Garden of Eden is a reflection
of many stories of the "chaos" at the beginning. It is
even more clearly related to widespread legends of a
"Golden Age." The Greek version of this story, as told
by the later Latin writer Ovid, gives a good summary of the
general trend among world mythologies. According to Ovid, in the
Golden Age, the first age after the creation of humans, they
behaved perfectly "without coercion." There were no
armies, and the earth produced everything people needed
"freely, without the scars of ploughs, untouched by
hoes…" It was always Spring, and the weather was always
temperate. In the course of time, this happy state devolved into
the Silver Age which, while inferior to the Golden, was better
than the ages to come. The Silver Age was characterized by a
shift to four seasons, with a brief Spring. Extreme heat and
cold were first known; houses had to be built, and farming
began. The next age, the Bronze, is mentioned only briefly, when
the people had "fiercer natures, readier to indulge in
savage warfare, but not yet vicious." Finally came the
terrible Iron Age, when "every kind of wickedness erupted
into this age of baser natures…" Personal property was
held; ships sailed the seas to get more goods, and men
"entered the bowels of the earth, and excavating brought up
the wealth it had concealed in Stygian shade, wealth that
incites men to crime." There was war, and plunder, and
murder. "Piety was dead, and virgin Astraea, last of all
the immortals to depart, herself abandoned the blood-drenched
earth." And that terrible age, the Age of Iron, is the one
in which we now live. This Astraea is the Goddess of Justice,
the One with the scales; perhaps she wears a blindfold because
she can't bear to see what has happened?
That Time, then, and That
World, are typified by the Garden of Eden, representing the
Judeo-Christian "Golden Age" as well as a view of
Paradise. In the end, the Christian hopes to dwell in "a
New Heaven and a New Earth" that very much resembles the
state of existence portrayed in the Garden of Eden.
It would be incorrect to
assume that the West is strictly interested in Paradise as a
physical place or historical time, while the
"mystic East" apprehends it as a state of mind.
Even very scholastic Christian philosophers knew that the full
apprehension of God was internal, not external. We have, for
example, Augustine of Hippo's great statement concerning the
Christian's relationship with God: "restless is our heart
until it comes to rest in thee." More striking is the
experience of Thomas Aquinas. After a lifetime devoted to the
most minute of scholastic arguments, Aquinas had what the
Catholic Encyclopedia calls "an unusually long ecstasy
during Mass." Afterward, he stated, "I can do no more.
Such secrets have been revealed to me that all I have written
now appears to be of little value." Three months later he
was dead. And yet, despite this inner transformation, at his
death he affirmed the primacy of Jesus Christ and the power of
the sacrament of Communion.
The
Two Worlds: Eastern Concepts
Just as the West is capable
of viewing That World and That Time as a state of mind, so the
East sometimes talks of the transcendent state as though it were
a place. We often hear of Nirvana described as "the other
shore," and of "crossing over to Nirvana."
Heavens and Pure Lands abound; meditation is a "path";
and meditators are told that if they meet the Buddha "on
the road," they should kill him. The localization of an
abstract concept is useful for the practitioner; this may
account for its nearly-universal application.
The Buddhist concept of
This World and That is contained in the words samsara and
nirvana. Samsara is This World of change, condition,
contingency; Nirvana is That World of the absolute, unified,
undifferentiated. Though different in nature from the Western
"Heaven and Earth," the Buddhist idea shares a common
theme. Samsara, like Earth, is a place of suffering, a vale of
tears, and the realm of ignorance. Nirvana, like Heaven, is a
place of peace. As we examine the various conceptions of This
World and That World, we begin to see that This World embodies action
and That world, stillness. This idea of a stillpoint
resonates psychologically as well; the desire to look inward is
often motivated by a need to escape the tsuris of This
World. Not surprisingly, the person who has attained this state
of quietude is sometimes referred to as being
"centered."
The
Stillpoint
A model for all of this can
be found in a turning wheel (like the Wheel of Fortune), or an
old-fashioned phonograph turntable. The closer one is to the
outside of the wheel, the faster one moves. As one moves toward
the center, or hub, the motion slows down. Finally, there is a
theoretical point at the center that doesn't move at all: the
stillpoint. This represents That World, the place of peace; and
all the various endeavors to get to that center, whether
religious, psychological, or social, whether well- or
misdirected--all are represented by the summation of the
principles of the Perennial Philosophy detailed above.
What is the nature of the
stillpoint? And what have recent seekers offered to help us
understand it? Having discussed and expanded on Huxley's
paradigm of the spiritual quest, we now turn our attention to
three great 20th-century theorists of This and That. Each in his
own field addressed this seeming duality between the divine
Reality and the individual Soul, between That World and This
World. Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) addressed the psychological
paradigm in talking about the collective unconscious and its
archetypes on the one hand, and the conscious and personal
unconscious on the other. Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), although a
historian of religions, approached the question largely through
anthropological studies. And Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) looked
at the world's myths and literature to find the common features,
establishing a vocabulary of story patterns manifested in
various cultures. All three knew each other personally, and knew
each others' work. Inevitably, we will find their efforts
overlapping: both Jung and Eliade examined stories very closely;
Campbell dabbled in psychology and anthropology. But as I
describe the dichotomies they established, certain distinctions
in their views of This and That will emerge.
Contents
(C) 2006 James Baquet.
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