Subject: Aldous Huxley
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Wed Apr 19 2000 - 11:30:33 EDT
Paul writes of a '... a WONDERFUL Huxley book
on mysticism, called, I think, THE MYSTIC EXPERIENCE ...'
I don't know this one but that's not surprising since
it's not years but decades since I was a Huxley reader.
Apart from his mescalin books which I took as a guide
when we were experimenting (medically)with lysergic acid
in the mid-50s, the great vogue some years earlier had
been for his sort-of-Buddhist doctrine of the Non-Attached
Man - as set forth in 'Ends & Means' & 'The Perennial
Philosophy.'
The message I took - no doubt mistakenly - from these
books concerned the blessings which were said to bathe
those who had freed themselves from the entanglements
of possessions & worldly aspirations.
This teaching seemed to fit very well with the rather
ascetic image I had of the man - a hyperintellectual
who wrote chilly novels about chilly cleverboots
copulating in chilly weekend mansions.
I find it hard to think of him tolerating the melting
desperation which seems to me to lie at the heart
of sexual passion.
Scottie B.
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