PEREN PHILOS PB

The title intrigued me that is why I bought this one...although i was a little sceptical about the review on the cover by New york times “the most needed book in the world...a masterpiece” but halfway through the book I reiterate the same...

Tremendous great work by Huxley. A must-read for anyone curious about life, living and the larger questions and issues that we all face. It is a veritable packaged thesis for students of religion, philosophy and great scholars.

An old classic summarizing the essence of all religious philosophies.

This is not a book intended to be a manual or an instruction guide but I am finding many insights that will help me in my spiritual growth. I particularly liked the way useful quotes from mystics are listed here. Based on what I have read I have decided to increase my dependence on good Karma, loving my neighbour and loving God to help me spiritually.The concept of self mortification was also particularly useful and I have been able to quit smoking partly because I was inspired by Huxley's description of this concept

Someone had marked and hilighted lines and passages from it.

Book was received damaged.

El libro llegó algo dañado, con una rasgadura de 1 cm aproximadamente en un lateral de la portada y las esquinas dobladas. Por lo demás, el libro cumple con las expectativas en cuanto a calidad/precio.

Ik kende het boek al – zowel in het Nederlands als in het Engels. Ik kocht een nieuw exemplaar voor een vriend. Huxley is ongekend diep en heeft ongelooflijk veel onderzocht. Hij is ook natuurlijk veelzijdig: denk aan zijn romans, zoals 'Brave New World'. Hoe en wat wij kennen, wat wij in wezen weten, komt van binnen naar ons toe in verschillende beelden en talen door de eeuwen heen.

Excelente, tanto este libro como las puertas de la percepción han sido muy gratos para los que quieran leer cosas interesantes respecto religión

I have read literally thousands of spiritual books. This one exceeds them all by orders of magnitude. I spent decades discovering (the hard way) stuff he clearly spells out here. A friend of Krishnamurti, who was extremely bright, I wish I'd been a fly on the wall in their conversations. Now, if you really care about the spiritual path - as I have - you will flip over this book. I've toured with mighty gurus. I've devoured mystical Christian organizations. I've visited Trappist Monasteries. Heck! I live directly across from a Tibetan Gonpa and have met all the really wonderful Rimpoches.This book can save you decades of hard earned, sometimes painful, crushing and difficult revelations. I bought it for each of my family members. It is a tour de force of everything from the fundamentals to the very highest level of spiritual information. It's kind of "The Whole Path For Dummies". Buy it. If you 'get it', you will never see the world the same way. I very strongly recommend it. Should I say that again?

The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley, Harper & Brothers, 1945; HarperCollins 2009, 324 ff.The perennial philosophy refers to the spiritual truths that underlie human existence in all cultures through all time, transmitted through Jungian archetypes, the `morphic field' and the wisdom philosophies. The term `perennial philosophy' seems to have been used first as long ago as 1540 by the Italian humanist Agostino Steuco, and then by German mathematician and philosopher G.W. Leibniz in the 18th century.Aldous Huxley is perhaps best known for his novels, Brave New World and The Devils of Loudun, but this work is a non-fictional survey of aspects of spirituality. I cannot do better than to reproduce the author's own definition of his subject matter: `the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality that is substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being - the thing is immemorial and universal'.This book is a collection of writings on this enduring mystical theme, joined together by a commentary from Huxley. He compares the extracts he has chosen with the Shruti and Smriti of the Hindu religion: the Shruti depend upon direct perception of these universal truths accessed transcendentally by the sages or rishis while the Shriti are myths and tales that illustrate the moral teachings of the Shruti. The whole book is much more oriented towards the spiritual Hinduism and Buddhism of the East than the doctrinal religion of the West.In Chapter IV, God in the World, Huxley specifically berates humankind for its lack of respect for, and its exploitation of, the natural world and endorses communing with God through Nature. Respect for the trees, rocks and streams around us that has long since disappeared from western capitalism, at least until quite recently, has remained very much alive in Chinese and Japanese society: where western religious art depicts characters from scripture, Eastern art is full of reverent nature-painting. Huxley was always a keen supporter of environmental preservation and deplored the Brave New World we were creating.Chapter VI is about Non-Attachment and Right-Livelihood - about not letting the quest for material acquisitions and comforts and the turbulence of our daily lives disturb our equilibrium: certainly a message for our times. Huxley maintains however that the worship of Culture, for its own sake, is overblown. Novelty in the arts has become almost a god in its own right. Having said that, many writers of plays and novels indicated that they understood human psychology long before Freud.Chapter VII deals with the issue of truth. Whatever we say of the material world can only be an approximation of truth because its essence we can never truly know. And the same is true of statements about God: Huxley records the sayings of many sages endorsing the via negative - that nothing we say of God can begin to describe the qualities of the divine.Chapter IX on self-knowledge opens with a quote from Boethius: `In other living creatures ignorance of self is nature; in man it is vice'. This echoes Socrates' maxim: `the unexamined life is not worth living'. Many sages have told us that the greatest challenge of human life is to understand oneself.Chapter XII is on Time and Eternity and opens with the statement: `The universe is an everlasting succession of events; but its ground . . .is the timeless now of the divine Spirit'. The extracts and commentary then elaborate on this theme.Space prevents my summarising the themes of all 27 chapters, but this will give readers a good feel for the content and spirit of the book. One critic says the book is not about philosophy - but it is precisely that - religious philosophy. It is also criticised for not being a 'self-help' book. If after reading this you do not think about the meaning of life in general, and your own in particular, you must have read it with eyes open and mind closed.The Phenomenon of Man by Teilhard de ChardinDr Howard A. Jones is the author of The Thoughtful Guide to God (2006) and The Tao of Holism (2008), both published by O Books of Winchester, U.K.; and The World as Spirit published by Fairhill Publishing, Whitland, West Wales, 2011.