The Divine Within is a fascinating, wide-ranging collection of Aldous Huxley’s essays. While Huxley is best remembered for Brave New World, as well as several other fiction works, he had an avid interest in mysticism and other forms of non-orthodox religious practice. Advaita Vedanta was a curiosity of his, and he was one of the developers of the “Perennial Philosophy” concept, which argues that there is one spiritual mountain with multiple pathways that can be climbed.

The whole collection is learned and written in a scholarly style. I read this after Ram Dass, Adyashanti, and Alan Watts, and Huxley writes far more like a classical academic than these other writers (although I do think that he and Watts share perspectives that diverge somewhat from Ram Dass and Adyashanti).

The most interesting aspects of Huxley’s writing is his contrast between what he calls “Immediate Experience Experience” and “Symbolic Religion.” I’ve traditionally called this “mystical” or “prophetic” religion, standing in opposition to “priestly” religion. In essence, “immediate experience” aims to reach the divine source directly and–in my opinion–often is a successful aim. “Symbolic religion,” on the other hand, is what happens after the experiences of prophets and mystics get transformed into religious texts, dogma, and ritual. Ultimately, religious practice calcifies, losing the divine spirit that had initially moved through it. This is something that occurs in all religious faiths, so far as I can tell: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism, at the very least, undergo this process.

Funnily, Huxley seems to have less patience for the paradoxes of Zen koans than I do. I find them fascinating, fun, and insightful. I suspect that he sees them as a turgid obstacle worthy of poking fun at, especially in his essay, “Notes on Zen.”

Unlike so many other charlatans, Huxley evenly balances critical thinking with credulity toward the divine, and I really appreciated his insight here.