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Aldous Huxley and T. S. Eliot: A Study in Two Types of Mysticism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2024
Extract
What are the differentia of distinctively Christian mysticism ? This is a question which poses itself with especial urgency at the present time, for two reasons. There is first the strong polemic against mysticism in the works of Reinhold Niebuhr and Emil Brunner—'anglo-saxon’ and continental’ theology agreeing, for the moment, on this point— and second the fascination for some literary figures of an orientalised gnostic type of mysticism (Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Gerald Heard, etc.). Niebuhr and Brunner make no attempt to distinguish between the various types of mysticism; for them its only authentic form would seem to be the nonhistorical, non-incarnational vedantic’ mysticism which attracts Huxley. Mysticism, for Brunner, means Eckhart; the mystic, he Writes, is always to be linked with ‘his revered Meister Eckhart and his Indian and Chinese prototypes'.
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- Copyright © 1951 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 E- Brunner, The Mediator (translated by Olive Wyon, 1934), p. 109.
2 Ibid., p. 110.
3 Ibid., p. III.
4 A. Huxley, Ends and Means, 1937, p. 225 (my italics).
5 The Perennial Philosophy, New York 1945, p. 203.
6 Cf. Cuthbert Butler, Western Mysticism, 1922, p. 189: ‘Mysticism finds its Working expression, not in intellectual speculation, but in prayer.'
7 F. von Hiigel, The Mystical Element of Religion, Vol. II, p. 266.
8 Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means, 1937, pp. 270, 273.
9 Do What You Will (Thinker's Library edition), p. 43.
10 Point Counter Point, 1928, p. 576.
11 Do What You Will, p. 81.
12 Point Counter Point, p. 33.
13 T. S. Eliot, The Rock, Chorus ix (Collected Poems, 1909-193 5, p. 178).
14 Cf., for example, how, in East Coker, the rhythm of the country dances tekes on a sacramental character, as expressing in significant form man's status 131 creation: ‘The association of man and woman In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie— A dignified and commodious sacrament. Two and two, necessarye coniunction, Holding eche other by the hand or the arm Which betokeneth Concorde.'
15 The Rock, Chorus vii, p. 173.
16 The Perennial Philosophy, p. 184.
17 Ends and Means, p. 286.
18 Ibid., p. 233.
19 from The Dry Salvages.
20 from Little Gidding.
21 Cf., The Utters of Evelyn Underhill (Ed. by C. Williams), p. 273: ‘The Church must provide for all her children at every level of culture and this is a discipline which it is often hard for the educated to accept! It provides splendid training in charity and humility.'
22 The Idea of a Christian Society, Appendix, p. 93.
23 Notes towards the Definition of Culture, pp. 28-9.
24 Vedanta for the Western World, Essay by Huxley on The Magical and the Spiritual, p. 114.
25 The Rock, Chorus i.