Different Roads, One Path

AS THE WAR AGAINST FASCIST IMPERIALISM REACHED ITS CLIMAX around the world in 1944-45, Aldous Huxley was in southern California publishing The Perennial Philosophy. The book, still in print and now a popular classic in the comparative study of religion, spells out what Huxley called the “highest common factor” in the world’s religions.

While differences in myth and ritual between the major religious traditions are obvious to all who look, Huxley’s engagement with the Vedanta Society (Hindu) and several teachers from India led him into a surprisingly comprehensive exploration of the spiritual practices and teachings found in a range of traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Protestant and Catholic Christianity, and the Sufi tradition in Islam.

In a word, the book is a comparative study of mysticism. Each religion, Huxley argues, has a mystical tradition at its heart. Some of those traditions are more esoteric, more isolated from the mainstream, more cloistered than others, but they are all in remarkable agreement through time and around the world.

The core elements of this highest common factor in the world’s religions are relatively easy to outline, even as they are undoubtedly difficult to understand and realize in practice. Here are brief descriptions of a handful of doctrines I think are fundamental to Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy.

The most essential of the Perennial spiritual teachings comes from the Vedanta tradition in Hinduism, especially as it is expressed in the sixth chapter of the Chandogya Upanishad, where a father repeatedly tells his son, “Thou art that.” With his simple declaration, the father is pointing his son toward the realization that his “true self” is in fact the godhead, the ultimate ground of being. For Hindus, this is the identity of Atman (the self) and Brahman (the godhead).

In Buddhism — which says all deities are impermanent and lacking ultimate reality — an analogous Mahayana doctrine is found in the perfection of wisdom tradition where samsara (this world of birth and death) is nirvana (the end of suffering) and form is emptiness. The Daoist sages tell us the Dao flows through all of the ten thousand things, including each of us.

The Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), which are focused more on devotion to God in a personal form (as YHWH, the Father, or Allah) than are the Asian traditions, teach about the indwelling of God mostly in the relatively obscure writings of contemplative saints and mystic theologians. Even so, the Gospel of John hints at a doctrine of God within, when it shows us Jesus speaking about his mutual indwelling with the Father and with the disciples (see, for example, Jn. 15).

The fundamental realization that the individual’s innermost self is the transcendent godhead leads naturally to the Perennial insistence on the essential nature of true self-knowledge, and to the equally essential insistence on the need to surrender one’s ego, one’s self-will, as a prerequisite for realizing one’s true identity. Ego surrender, then, opens a channel for the inflow of grace, through which the Divine “pulls” us toward “salvation” (deliverance, enlightenment).

Thus, the ultimate goal sought by those who practice one of the Perennial traditions is mystical union in which the identity of one’s self with the godhead is not only experienced, but also realized, actualized and brought to expression in one’s now transformed life.

The Perennial traditions agree, however, that as easy as it may be to outline these doctrines in rational terms like I’ve done here, it is at least as difficult in practice to come to the experience of realization and transformation. Just making the commitment to start walking the spiritual path is all but impossible, never mind mustering the dedication to remain on it.

There is good news here, however. Prayer, meditation and contemplation are relatively straightforward practices that, when pursued consistently and persistently, can lead one through the stages of spiritual development to the ultimate goal. Love, devotion and surrender likewise provide us with a relatively accessible series of attitudes that with grace will lead us progressively along the spiritual path until we reach its fulfillment.