Notes toward a pragmatic "Perennial Philosophy" (part 1): The conscience of Arjuna

In his elegantly written Introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, and published in 1944 by the Vedanta Society of Southern California, Aldous Huxley provided a concise statement of his understanding of the “Perennial Philosophy” (the term philosophia perennis dates to the 16^th century). The following year, his influential book on the subject – entitled, unsurprisingly, The Perennial Philosophy – appeared. As I said, the essay Huxley penned for the Gita translation is elegantly written (I never find Huxley dull), and I tend to agree with much of it. He is a perceptive reader of the classic. For instance, he writes insightfully: “Self-abnegation, according to the Gita, can be achieved by the practice of two all-inclusive virtues – love and non-attachment.” “Love and non-attachment” are, it must be stressed, moral qualities (hence, virtues) — a point to which I will return. Huxley continues this thought by discussing briefly (referencing the moral perspectives of Albert Camus and the saintly Quaker, John Woolman, in the process) the principles integral to what he means by the “Perennial Philosophy”: “the unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground” which is “fundamental in all the higher religions.” Huxley, with the Second World War still raging, concludes his short essay – in words just as pertinent today as they were eighty years ago – with what amounts to a plea for universal human sanity: