Used Book – The Perennial Philosophy, Aldous Huxley

Huxley, the proponent of the Perennial Philosophy, who traveled the world as a skeptic and experimented with drugs as a documentarian, fended off pessimism through two forms of intelligence: irony and knowledge. This anthology of short texts by sages and saints from around the world, freely commented upon, is a fine example of this. From the Vedas to Zen patriarchs, passing through Saint Augustine and Muslim mystics, Aldous Huxley explains the words of men and women who gained immediate knowledge of reality and tried to attach to it a system of thought encompassing all other facts of experience. Thus, he explores with them the question of God, of charity, of self-knowledge, of grace and free will, of silence, of prayer, etc. – all themes of the philosophia perennis, the eternal philosophy.

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) An English novelist and essayist, his notable works include Brave New World and The Perennial Philosophy.

Translated from English by Jules Castier