Fully Human Being

Aldous Huxley's Island, Tantra, and Human Potential

Authors

  • Jake Poller Queen Mary, University of London

Keywords:

Aldous Huxley, human potential

Abstract

In Island (1962), Aldous Huxley presents a utopian community in which theinhabitants aim to become "fully human beings" by realizing their "potentialities."I demonstrate how Huxley's notion of the "human potentialities" havebeen misrepresented, both by scholars and by the founders of the Esalen Institute.Huxley's focus on human potentialities arose from a shift in his thinkingfrom the other-worldly mysticism of The Perennial Philosophy (1945) to thelife-affirming traditions of Tantra, Zen and Mahayana Buddhism. In Island,the population attempt to realize their human potentialities and engage in anexperiential spirituality that celebrates the body and nature as sacred throughthe use of the moksha-medicine and the practice of maithuna. I argue thatwhereas Tantric adepts practised maithuna as a means to acquire supernormalpowers (siddhis), in Island the Palanese version of maithuna is quite differentand is used to valorize samsara and the acquisition of human potentialities.

References

Anderson, Walter Truett. 2004 [1983]. The Upstart Spring: Esalen and the Human Potential Movement; The First Twenty Years. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse.

Bradshaw, David. 2005. “Aldous Huxley (1894–1963).” Introduction to Island, v–xiv. London: Vintage.

Chandos, John. 1961. Interview with Aldous Huxley recorded on 7 and 11 July 1961, in the Huxley archive of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin.

Darwin, Charles. 1859. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: John Murray.https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.68064

Falby, Alison. 2008. Between the Pigeonholes: Gerald Heard, 1889–1971. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Hammer, Olav. 2006. “Human Potential Movement.” In Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, edited by Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 572–579 Leiden: Brill.

Heard, Gerald. 1929. The Ascent of Humanity: An Essay on the Evolution of Civilization from Group Consciousness through Individuality to Super-Consciousness. London: Jonathan Cape.

Huxley, Aldous. 2016 [1961]. “Podcast 454 – Aldous Huxley: ‘Human Potentialities’.” Psychedelic Salon. https://psychedelicsalon.com/podcasts-454-aldous-huxley-human-potentialities/. Accessed 29 September 2019.

———. 1951 [1937]. Ends and Means: An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals and into the Methods employed for their Realization. London: Chatto & Windus.

———. 1961. “Human Potentialities.” In The Humanist Frame, edited by Julian Huxley, 415–432. New York: Harper & Brothers.

———. 1977 [1954]. The Doors of Perception; Heaven and Hell. London: Grafton.

———. 1982 [1944]. Time Must Have a Stop. London: Triad Granada.

———. 1994a. “Latent Human Potentialities.” In The Human Situation, edited by Piero Ferrucci, 223–240. London: Flamingo.

———. 1994b. “More Nature in Art.” In The Human Situation, edited by Piero Ferrucci, 27–39. London: Flamingo.

———. 1994c. “Population Explosion.” In The Human Situation, edited by Piero Ferrucci, 40–55. London: Flamingo.

———. 1994d [1942]. The Art of Seeing. London: Flamingo.

———. 2002a [1956]. “Domesticating Sex.” In Aldous Huxley Complete Essays, edited by James Sexton and Robert S. Baker, 450–456. Vol. 5. Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee.

———. 2002b [1956]. “The Education of an Amphibian.” In Aldous Huxley Complete Essays, edited by James Sexton and Robert S. Baker, 191–209. Vol. 5. Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee.

———. 2002c [1963]. “Education on the Nonverbal Level.” In Aldous Huxley Complete Essays, edited by James Sexton and Robert S. Baker, 303–17. Vol. 6. Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee.

———. 2004 [1945]. The Perennial Philosophy. New York: Perennial Classics.

———. 2005a [1952]. The Devils of Loudun. London: Vintage.

———. 2005b [1962]. Island. London: Vintage.

Huxley, Laura Archera. 1968. This Timeless Moment: A Personal View of Aldous Huxley. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

King, Richard. 1999. Orientalism and Religion: Post-Colonial Theory, India and “The Mystic East.” London: Routledge.

Kripal, Jeffrey J. 1998. Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna. 2nd edition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

———. 2002. “Seeing Inside and Outside the Goddess: The Mystical and the Ethical in the Teachings of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda.” In Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism, edited by G. William Barnard and Jeffrey J. Kripal, 230–264. New York: Seven Bridges Press.

———. 2007. Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

———. 2008. “Brave New Worldview.” Chronicle of Higher Education 55(16): B7–B9.

———. 2010. Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226453897.001.0001

———. 2014. “An Island in Mind: Aldous Huxley and the Neurotheologian.” In Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Religions: Essays in Honour of Sudhir Kakar, edited by Dinesh Sharma, 28–49. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Isherwood, Christopher. 1981 [1980]. My Guru and His Disciple. London: Magnum.

Murphy, Michael. n.d. “Totally on Fire.” Gerald Heard Official Website. https://www.geraldheard.com/writings-and-recollections/2017/8/2/totally-on-fire. Accessed 29 September, 2019.

Pavey, Alex. 2019. “‘The Prophetic Discernment of What Is Possible’: Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception and Bergsonian Mysticism.” In Altered Consciousness in the Twentieth Century, edited by Jake Poller, 203–218. Abingdon: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429061196-11

Poller, Jake. 2019. Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004406902_007

———. 2018. “‘Under a Glamour’: Annie Besant, Charles Leadbeater and Neo-Theosophy.” In The Occult Imagination in Britain, edited by Christine Ferguson and Andrew Radford, 77–93. Abingdon: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351168328-5

———. 2015. “Beyond the Subliminal Mind: Psychical Research in the Work of Aldous Huxley.” Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 15(2): 247–266. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700593-01502003

Powers, John. 2007. Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism. Rev. ed. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications.

Reps, Paul, ed. 1989 [1957]. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.

Sawyer, Dana. 2002. Aldous Huxley: A Biography. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company.

———. 2010–2011. “Huxley, Heard, and Huston: The Perennial Philosophy and the Future of Religion.” Aldous Huxley Annual 10–11: 317–330.

Shipley, Morgan. 2015. Psychedelic Mysticism: Transforming Consciousness, Religious Experiences, and Voluntary Peasants in Postwar America. New York: Lexington Books.

Stevens, Jay. 1987. Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream. New York: Grove Press.

Thody, Philip. 1973. Aldous Huxley: A Biographical Introduction. London: Studio Vista.

Taylor, Mark. 2018. “Aldous Huxley’s Late Turn to Bergson and Island as Bergsonian Utopia.” Utopian Studies 29(3): 362–379. https://doi.org/10.5325/utopianstudies.29.3.0362

Tillett, Gregory. 1982. Elder Brother: A Biography of Charles Webster Leadbeater. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Urban, Hugh B. 2012. “Tantra, American Style: From the Path of Power to the Yoga of Sex.” In Transformations and Transfer of Tantra in Asia and Beyond, edited by István Keul, 457–494. Berlin: De Gruyter.

———. 2003. Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press.

White, David Gordon. 2000. “Introduction.” Tantra in Practice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

———. 2003. Kiss of the Yogin?: “Tantric Sex” and its South Asian Contexts. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226027838.001.0001

———. 2012. “Yoga, Brief History of an Idea.” In Yoga in Practice, edited by David Gordon White, 1–23. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400839933-004

Zimmer, Heinrich. 1967 [1951]. Philosophies of India. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Published

2020-02-20

Issue

Section

International Journal for the Study of New Religions

Categories