"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."
William Blake
Was Aldous Huxley tall, godlike?
Did he walk across the bridge and into a field, talking aloud to himself, singing?
Born, 1884, stunning. Some things can’t be avoided. Exile.
“Spiritual progress. . . is always spiral and reciprocal.”
Huxley had a lover, made out, got tired, fled. --making out in the field--
trees water trench rake roots & seeds
He had poor eyesight, developed his imagination “with the lamp of the word.”
Stunning feature #2: heavy waves of hair, pretty boy and handsome, thin fingers, died in the desert, 1963. Jim Morrison was 15 years old. Strange days.
Spiritual mortification--is this the right prayer? (St. Teresa: “I have trouble eating the meat.”)
Less serene than surreal. Mystical, mysticality. Go figure.
How does one get to the heart of things? Not like that, he said, shading his eyes from the sun.
He wore a tie. Some carried his books in their pockets.
Swami Prabhavananda The Doors of Perception Christopher Isherwood
(b flat clarinet begins here, flute-like)
Nothing really ends with Emerson, but much begins.
Gerald Heard, Huxley’s good friend, mentor, crisis of faith, nervous breakdown.
Spanish Civil War Stalin southern California
Huxley: “It is because we don’t know who we are, because we are unaware that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, that we behave in the generally silly, the often insane, the sometimes criminal ways that are so characteristically human.”
The width of his cosmology, the psychology of the world.
Do we expect our gurus to be perfect? Celibacy suggests otherwise.
(clarinet fades)
Self-knowledge, spiritual pride, she had lovely skin.
The bridge he crossed was sincere. He becomes one with God in every thought.
Alone he possessed these prayers.
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