Editing Aldous Huxley (section)

== Spiritual views ==
{{see also|Spiritual but not religious}}

For much of his life, Huxley described himself as agnostic, a word coined by his grandfather [[Thomas Henry Huxley]], a scientist who championed the [[scientific method]] and was a major supporter of Darwin's theories. This is the definition he gave, “…it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.”<ref>''Collected Essays of TH Huxley'' | ''Agnosticism and Christianity'', 1899</ref> Aldous Huxley's agnosticism, together with his speculative propensity, made it difficult for him fully embrace any form of institutionalised religion.<ref>[[Michel Weber]], "[https://www.academia.edu/1564486/_Perennial_Truth_and_Perpetual_Perishing._A._Huxleys_Worldview_in_the_Light_of_A._N._Whiteheads_Process_Philosophy_of_Time_2007_ Perennial Truth and Perpetual Perishing. A. Huxley's Worldview in the Light of A. N. Whitehead's Process Philosophy of Time]", in Bernfried Nugel, Uwe Rasch and Gerhard Wagner (eds.), ''Aldous Huxley, Man of Letters: Thinker, Critic and Artist, Proceedings of the Third International Aldous Huxley Symposium Riga 2004'', Münster, LIT, ''Human Potentialities'', vol. 9, 2007, pp. 31–45.</ref> Over the last 30 years of his life, he accepted and wrote about concepts found in [[Vedanta]] and was a leading advocate of the [[Perennial Philosophy]], which holds that the same metaphysical truths are found in all the major religions of the world.{{sfn|Sawyer|2002|pp=97-98, 114-115, 124-125}}{{sfn|Murray|2003|p=332}}{{sfn|Poller|2021}}

In the 1920s, Huxley was skeptical of religion, "Earlier in his career he had rejected mysticism, often poking fun at it in his novels [...]"{{sfn|Sawyer|2002|p=94}} [[Gerald Heard]] became an influential friend of Huxley, and since the mid-1920s had been exploring Vedanta,{{sfn|Sawyer|2002|p=92}} as a way of understanding individual human life and the individual's relationship to the universe. Heard and Huxley both saw the political implications of Vedanta, which could help bring about peace, specifically that there is an underlying reality that all humans and the universe are a part of. In the 1930s, Huxley and Gerald Heard both became active in the effort to avoid another world war, writing essays and eventually publicly speaking in support of the [[Peace Pledge Union]]. But, they remained frustrated by the conflicting goals of the political left – some favoring pacifism (as did Huxley and Heard), while other wanting to take up arms against fascism in the [[Spanish Civil War]].<ref>{{cite book |last= Mason |first= Emily |date= 2017|title= ''Democracy, Deeds and Dilemmas: Support for the Spanish Republic Within British Civil Society, 1936-1939'' |publisher= Sussex Academic Press |page= 65|isbn= 9781845198855}}</ref>

After joining the PPU, Huxley expressed his frustration with politics in a letter from 1935, “…the thing finally resolves itself into a religious problem — an uncomfortable fact which one must be prepared to face and which I have come during the last year to find it easier to face.”<ref>{{cite book |last= Smith |first= Grover |date= 1969|title= ''Letters of Aldous Huxley'' |publisher= Harper & Row|page= 398|isbn= 978-1199770608}}</ref> Huxley and Heard turned their attention to addressing the big problems of the world through transforming the individual, "[...] a forest is only as green as the individual trees of the forest is green [...]"{{sfn|Sawyer|2002|p=92}} This was the genesis of the [[Human Potential Movement]], that gained traction in the 1960s.{{sfn|Poller|2021|p=177}}<ref name="Kripal">{{cite book |last=Kripal |first=Jeffrey |title=Esalen America and the Religion of No Religion |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=2007}}[http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/453699.html excerpt].</ref>

In the late 1930s, Huxley and Heard immigrated to the United States, and beginning in 1939 and continuing until his death in 1963, Huxley had an extensive association with the [[Vedanta Society#Vedanta Society of Southern California|Vedanta Society of Southern California]], founded and headed by [[Swami Prabhavananda]]. Together with Gerald Heard, Christopher Isherwood and other followers, he was initiated by the Swami and was taught meditation and spiritual practices.{{sfn|Roy|Pothen|Sunita|2003}} From 1941 until 1960, Huxley contributed 48 articles to ''Vedanta and the West'', published by the society. He also served on the editorial board with Isherwood, Heard, and playwright [[John Van Druten]] from 1951 through 1962.

In 1942 ''[[The Gospel of Ramakrishna]]'' was published by the [[Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center]] in New York. The book was translated by [[Swami Nikhilananda]], with help from [[Joseph Campbell]] and [[Margaret Woodrow Wilson]], daughter of US president Woodrow Wilson. Aldous Huxley wrote in the foreword, "...a book unique, so far as my knowledge goes, in the literature of hagiography. Never have the small events of a contemplative's daily life been described with such a wealth of intimate detail. Never have the casual and unstudied utterances of a great religious teacher been set down with so minute a fidelity."<ref>[[Gospel of Ramakrishna]] page v</ref><ref>{{Cite book| author = Lex Hixon | title = Great Swan | chapter = Introduction | page = xiii}}</ref>

In 1944, Huxley wrote the introduction to the [[Bhagavad Gita - Song of God|''Bhagavad Gita – The Song of God'']],<ref name="Bhagavad Gita: The Song of God">{{cite book|last1=Isherwood|first1=Christopher|author2-link=Swami Prabhavananda|author1-link=Christopher Isherwood|last2=Swami Prabhavananda|last3=Aldous|first3=Huxley|title=Bhagavad Gita: The Song of God|year=1987|publisher=Vedanta Press|location=Hollywood, California|isbn=978-0-87481-043-1}}</ref> translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, which was published by the Vedanta Society of Southern California. As an advocate of the perennial philosophy, Huxley was drawn to the ''Gita'', as he explained in the Introduction, written during WWII, when it was still not clear who would win:

{{Blockquote|The Bhagavad Gita is perhaps the most systematic scriptural statement of the Perennial Philosophy. To a world at war, a world that, because it lacks the intellectual and spiritual prerequisites to peace, can only hope to patch up some kind of precarious armed truce, it stands pointing, clearly and unmistakably, to the only road of escape from the self–imposed necessity of self–destruction.<ref name="Bhagavad Gita: The Song of God">{{cite book|last1=Isherwood|first1=Christopher|author2-link=Swami Prabhavananda|author1-link=Christopher Isherwood|last2=Swami Prabhavananda|last3=Aldous|first3=Huxley|title=Bhagavad Gita: The Song of God|year=1987|publisher=Vedanta Press|location=Hollywood, California|isbn=978-0-87481-043-1}}</ref>}}

As a means of personally realizing the "divine Reality", he described a "Minimum Working Hypothesis" in the Introduction to Swami Prabhavananda's and Christopher Isherwood's translation of the [[Bhagavad Gita - Song of God|''Bhagavad Gita'']] and in a free-standing essay in ''Vedanta and the West'',<ref name="Minimum Working Hypothesis">{{cite journal |last1=Huxley |first1= Aldous| date=1944 |title= ''Minimum Working Hypothesis'' |journal=Vedanta and the West |volume= 7 |issue= 2|pages= 38}}</ref> a publication of [[Vedanta Press]]. This is the outline, that Huxley elaborates on in the article:

{{blockquote|For those of us who are not congenitally the members of an organized church, who have found that humanism and nature-worship are not enough, who are not content to remain in the darkness of ignorance, the squalor of vice or the other squalor of respectability, the minimum working hypothesis would seem to run to about this:

That there is a Godhead, Ground, Brahman, Clear Light of the Void, which is the unmanifested principle of all manifestations.

That the Ground is at once transcendent and immanent.

That it is possible for human beings to love, know and, from virtually, to become actually identical with the divine Ground.

That to achieve this unitive knowledge of the Godhead is the final end and purpose of human existence.

That there is a Law or Dharma which must be obeyed, a Tao or Way which must be followed, if men are to achieve their final end.<ref name="Minimum Working Hypothesis">{{cite journal |last1=Huxley |first1= Aldous| date=1944 |title= ''Minimum Working Hypothesis'' |journal=Vedanta and the West |volume= 7 |issue= 2|pages= 38}}</ref>}}

For Huxley, one of the attractive features of Vedanta is that it provided a historic and established philosophy and practice that embraced the [[Perennial Philosophy]]; that there is a commonality of experiences across all the mystical branches of the world's religions.{{sfn|Poller|2021|p=93}} Huxley wrote in the introduction of his book ''[[The Perennial Philosophy]]'':

{{blockquote|The Perennial Philosophy is primarily concerned with the one, divine Reality substantial to the manifold world of things and lives and minds. But the nature of this one Reality is such that it cannot be directly and immediately apprehended except by those who have chosen to fulfill certain conditions, making themselves loving, pure in heart, and poor in spirit.<ref>{{cite book|last=Huxley |first=Aldous |date=1946 |title=The Perennial Philosophy |publisher=Chatto & Windus| page=38}}</ref>}}

Huxley also occasionally lectured at the Hollywood and Santa Barbara Vedanta temples. Two of those lectures have been released on CD: ''[[Knowledge and Understanding]]'' and ''[[Who Are We? (album)|Who Are We?]]'' from 1955.

Many of Huxley's contemporaries and critics were disappointed by Huxley's turn to mysticism;<ref>{{cite journal |last1= Enroth |first1= Clyde | date=1960 |title= ''Mysticism in Two of Aldous Huxley's Early Novels'' |journal=Twentieth Century Literature |volume= 6 |issue= 3|pages= 123–132|doi= 10.2307/441011 |jstor= 441011 }}</ref> Isherwood describes in his diary how he had to explain the criticism to Huxley's widow, Laura:

{{blockquote| [December 11, 1963, a few weeks after Aldous Huxley’s death] The publisher had suggested John Lehmann should write the biography. Laura [Huxley] asked me what I thought of the idea, so I had to tell her that John disbelieves in, and is aggressive toward, the metaphysical beliefs that Aldous held. All he would describe would be a clever young intellectual who later was corrupted by Hollywood and went astray after spooks.<ref>{{cite book |last= Isherwood |first= Christopher |date= 2010|title= ''The Sixties - Diaries Volume Two 1960 - 1969'', Edited and Introduced by Katherine Bucknell |publisher= Chatto & Windus|page= 299|isbn= 9780701169404}}</ref>}}