Ci's Reviews > The Divine Within: Selected Writings on Enlightenment

Even though this is merely a collection of Huxley's essays on spiritual and religious topics, it still demonstrates the author's range and depth in history, theology, and literature. One key quote Huxley used to sum up the existential conditions of human, through Shakespeare's dying Hotspur in Henry IV - "But thought's the slave of life, and life time's fool,/ And time, that takes survey of all the world, /Must have a stop." Our humanly life experience is shaped by individual's living time and space, but not limited so. Huxley "We must not live thoughtlessly, taking our illusion for the complete reality, but at the same time we must not live to thoughffully in the sense of trying to escape from the dream state. " The searching of Divine is thus sourced from "within" but not limited in Self. Hence Huxley is more on pure Spirituality less on doctrinal religious practice.

Several essays hinted the practice of Huxley's searching for Divine. About drug use and other forms of "downward transcendence" are warned but not categorically objected (remember his "Doors of Perception"). There are also discussion about mystic practices, issues of distraction, ego and self.

In general, this book appears to be a modestly accessible collections of Huxley's spiritual ideas.