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Navigating Huxley’s ‘other shore’
Aldous Huxley: Acid Charms to the Other Shore aldous Huxley called himself “an agnostic trying to become a Gnostic,” (page 9). He wanted to fulfil the dream of grandfather, T.H. Huxley, who made an effort to reconcile science and religion as a scientist. Religion transcends the limits of the ephemeral world. Science, on the other hand, can solve problems of the empirical world, but problems of life are beyond its comprehension.
The title refers to the “Other Shore” of the transient spirituality with the help of a drug. Only a mystic can realise the “Other” with spiritual discipline (sadhana) that encompasses the phenomenal world and the other world. This is the central quest of philosophy and religion. The author, on the lines of Huxley, thinks that “scientific analysis” is based on the assumption that scientific tools and intellect can take the truth seeker to the heart of reality. Professor Gill pondering on, “the wisdom of the Other shore,” tries to justify Huxley’s chemical mysticism with scientific tools. Genuine mysticism will not agree to this quest because science can’t go beyond space and time. “Science and religion momentarily coalesce to provide the integral view of the nature of things, (page 10). The mystic continuously and simultaneously visualises the holistic view of life and nature, and stretches the phenomenal world into eternal reality. This is the miraculous feat of human creativity. However, there is the possibility of taking a mystic flight if the scientist develops his consciousness from chaos to chasms with spiritual discipline and takes it to the apex of cosmic consciousness.
With a view to determining human capability and limitations of rational understanding, Gill traces philosophy of modern Western theological thought starting with Descartes. David Hume in his treatise, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, concludes that rational theology, cosmology, and psychology are impossible. And Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) ended in agnosticism. Huxley’s approach is scientific. “Huxley’s interpretation of the mystical experience in terms of biology, psychology, philosophy and science shows his keenness to discover an underlying principle that could provide man the synoptic view of reality…” (pages 35-6). As a matter of fact, mystic experience is distinct in which the psychological nature of consciousness is transformed and it merges with the cosmic reality. Huxley’s excursion could not go to the “other.” He ended his journey as an agnostic. Professor Gill raises two questions: “Can we equate the mystic experience with that induced by the drug…? Second: Can an agnostic be a mystic and still retain his agnostic stance? (page 37). Genuine mystic experience can’t be equated with alchemical experience. Mystic and agnostic can’t go together because both are self-contradictory concepts. Agnosticism is the limitation of human reason and mysticism is a state of attunement with the supreme reality. One can conclude that Huxley’s Weltanschauung (world-view), however, was his own: It neither corresponded to the West nor to the East… (page 152). He always remained on the threshold of this world and could not leap to the other shore. Though he had an extensive association with the Vedantists’ Society, he could not fulfil his grandfather’s dream of becoming a Gnostic.
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Medieval scientists, say, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Keller eroded the Biblical myth of divine creation of man after his image and revolutionised the medieval Christian orthodox thought. Copernicus’s heliocentric cosmology radicalised the Aristotelian earth-centric cosmology. Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859) questioned the make-belief that God is creator of man rather than the fact that man’s ancestry can be traced from an ape. 