Reflections on the Theravada Tradition | Nibbana and Other Experiences of the Absolute

“He turns his mind away from those states and directs it towards the deathless element thus: ‘This is the peaceful, this is the sublime, that is, the stilling of all formations, the relinquishing of all attachments, the destruction of craving, dispassion, cessation, Nibbana.’”

– Siddhartha Gautama, Majjhima Nikaya 64

“There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned.  If, monks, there were no unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, no escape would be possible from what is born, become, made, conditioned.  But since there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, therefore an escape is possible from the born, become, made, conditioned.”

– Siddhartha Gautama, Udana 8:3

"Those who aspire to the state of yoga should seek the Self in inner solitude through meditation. With body and mind controlled they should constantly practice one-pointedness, free from expectations and attachment to material possessions. Select a clean spot, neither too high nor too low, and seat yourself firmly on a cloth, a deerskin, and kusha grass. Then, once seated, strive to still your thoughts. Make your mind one-pointed in meditation, and your heart will be purified. Hold your body, head, and neck firmly in a straight line, and keep your eyes from wandering. With all fears dissolved in the peace of the Self and all desires dedicated to Brahman, controlling the mind and fixing it on me, sit in meditation with me as your only goal. With senses and mind constantly controlled through meditation, united with the Self within, an aspirant attains nirvana, the state of abiding joy and peace in me. Arjuna, those who eat too much or eat too little, who sleep too much or sleep too little, will not succeed in meditation. But those who are temperate in eating and sleeping, work and recreation, will come to the end of sorrow through meditation. Through constant effort they learn to withdraw the mind from selfish cravings and absorb it in the Self. Thus they attain the state of union. When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering like the flame of a lamp in a windless place. In the still mind, in the depths of meditation, the Self reveals itself. Beholding the Self by means of the Self, an aspirant knows the joy and peace of complete fulfillment. Having attained that abiding joy beyond the senses, revealed in the stilled mind, he never swerves from eternal truth. He desires nothing else, and cannot be shaken by the heaviest burden of sorrow. The practice of meditation frees one from all affliction. This is the path of yoga. Follow it with determination and sustained enthusiasm. Renouncing wholeheartedly all selfish desires and expectations, use your will to control the senses. Little by little, through patience and repeated effort, the mind will become stilled in the Self. Wherever the mind wanders, restless and diffuse in its search for satisfaction without, lead it within; train it to rest in the Self. Abiding joy comes to those who still the mind. Freeing themselves from the taint of self-will, with their consciousness unified, they become one with Brahman.”

– The Bhagavad Gita 6:10-27

“…in that unitive state all desires find their perfect fulfillment.  There is no other desire that needs to be fulfilled, and one goes beyond sorrow…where there is unity, one without a second, that is the world of Brahman.”

– Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

“To study the nature of this experience is rather a difficult matter. All that one can hope to do is to set down a few general impressions. It is a type of experience which is not clearly differentiated into a subject-object state, an integral, undivided consciousness in which not merely this or that side of man’s nature but his whole being seems to find itself. It is a condition of consciousness in which feelings are fused, ideas melt into one another, boundaries broken and ordinary distinctions transcended. Past and present fade away in a sense of timeless being. Consciousness and being are not there different from each other. All being is consciousness and all consciousness being. Thought and reality coalesce and a creative merging of subject and object results. Life grows conscious of its incredible depths. In this fulness of felt life and freedom, the distinction of the knower and the known disappears. The privacy of the individual self is broken into an invaded by a universal self which the individual feels as his own. The experience itself is felt to be sufficient and complete. It does not come in a fragmentary or truncated form demanding completion by something else. It does not look beyond itself for meaning or validity. It does not appeal to external standards of logic or metaphysics. It is its own cause and explanation. It is sovereign in its own rights and carries its own credentials. It is self-established (svatahsiddha), self-evidencing (svasamvedya), self-luminous (svayamprakasa). It does not argue or explain but it knows and is.”

– Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, An Idealist View of Life

“Yoga is the stilling of the changing states of the mind.  When that is accomplished, the seer abides in its own true nature.”

– Patanjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

"According to Patanjali's definition in the second sutra, yoga is the cessation of the activities or permutations (vrttis) of the citta. The vrttis refer to any sequence of thought, ideas, mental imaging, or cognitive act performed by the mind, intellect, or ego as defined above – in short, any state of mind whatsoever. It cannot be overstressed that the mind is merely a physical substance that selects, organizes, analyzes, and molds itself into the physical forms of sense data presented to it; in and of itself it is not aware of them. Sense impressions or thoughts are imprints in that mental substance, just as a clay pot is a product made from the substance of clay, or waves are permutations of the sea. The essential point for understanding yoga is that all forms or activities of the mind are products of prakrti, matter, and completely distinct from the soul or true self, purusa, pure awareness or consciousness. The citta can profitably be compared to the software, and the body to the hardware. Neither is conscious; they are rather forms of gross matter, even as the former can do very intelligent activities. Both software and hardware are useless without the presence of a conscious observer. Only purusa is truly alive, that is, aware or conscious. When uncoupled from the mind, the soul, purusa, in its pure state, that is, in its own constitutional, autonomous condition – untainted by being misidentified with the physical coverings of the body and mind – is free of content and changeless; it does not constantly ramble and flit from one thing to another the way the mind does. To realize pure awareness as an entity distinct and autonomous from the mind (and, of course, the body), thought must be stilled and consciousness extracted from its embroilment with the mind and its incessant thinking nature. Only then can the soul be realized as an entity completely distinct from the mind (a distinction such cliches as "self-realization" attempt to express), and the process to achieve this realization is yoga... Through grace or the sheer power of concentration, the mind can attain an inactive state where all thoughts remain only in potential but not active form. In other words, through meditation one can cultivate an inactive state of mind where one is not cognizant of anything. This does not mean to say that consciousness becomes extinguished, Patanjali hastens to inform us (as does the entire Upanishadic/Vedantic tradition); consciousness is eternal and absolute. Therefore, once there are no more thoughts or objects on its horizons or sphere of awareness, consciousness has no alternative but to become conscious of itself. In other words, consciousness can either be object-aware or subject aware (loosely speaking). The point is that it has no option in terms of being aware on some level, since awareness is eternal and inextinguishable. By stilling thought, meditation removes all objects of awareness. Awareness can therefore now be aware only of itself. It can now bypass or transcend all objects of thought, disassociate from even the pure sattvic citta, and become aware of its own source, the actual soul itself, purusa. This is self-realization (to use a neo-Vedantic term), the ultimate state of awareness, the state of consciousness in which nothing can be discerned except the pure self, asamprajnata-samadhi. This is the final goal of yoga and thus of human existence."

– Edwin Bryant, Commentary on The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali liii-lvii

“Stop searching for phrases and chasing after words.  Take the backward step and turn the light inward.  Your body-mind of itself will drop away and your original face will appear.  If you want to attain just this, immediately practice just this.”

– Dogen, Recommeding Zazen to All People

“The uniqueness of zazen lies in this: that the mind is freed from bondage to all thought-forms, visions, objects, and imaginings, however sacred or elevating, and brought to a state of absolute emptiness, from which alone it may one day perceive its own true nature...”

– Philip Kapleau, The Three Pillars of Zen

“In Zen training we seek to extinguish the self-centered, individual ego, but we do not try to do this merely by thinking about it.  It is with our own body and mind that we actually experience what we call ‘pure existence.’ The basic kind of Zen practice is called zazen (sitting Zen), and in zazen we attain samadhi.  In this state the activity of consciousness is stopped and we cease to be aware of time, space, and causation.  The mode of existence which thus makes its appearance may at first sight seem to be nothing more than mere being, or existence.  However, if you really attain this state you will find it to be a remarkable thing.  At the extremity of having denied all and having nothing left to deny, we reach a state in which absolute silence and stillness reign, bathed in a pure, serene light.  Buddhists of former times called this state annihilation, or Nirvana...”

– Katsuki Sekida, Zen Training

“...with enlightenment, zazen brings the realization that the substratum of existence is a Voidness out of which all things ceaselessly arise and into which they endlessly return, that this Emptiness is positive and alive and in fact not other than the vividness of a sunset or the harmonies of a great symphony.  This bursting into consciousness of the effulgent Buddha-nature is the ‘swallowing up’ of the universe, the obliteration of every feeling of opposition and separateness.  In this state of unconditioned subjectivity I, selfless I, am supreme.”

– Philip Kapleau, The Three Pillars of Zen

“...let us remind ourselves that another, metaphysical, consciousness is still available to modern man.  It starts not from the thinking and self-aware subject but from Being, ontologically seen to be beyond and prior to the subject-object division.  Underlying the subjective experience of the individual self there is an immediate experience of Being… It has in it none of the split and alienation that occurs when the subject becomes aware of itself as quasi-object.  The consciousness of Being is an immediate experience that goes beyond reflexive awareness.  It is not ‘consciousness of’ but pure consciousness, in which the subject as such disappears.  Posterior to this immediate experience of a ground which transcends experience emerges the subject with its self-awareness.”

– Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite

“We are each like a well that has a source in a common underground stream which supplies all.  The deeper down I go, the closer I come to the source which puts me in contact with all other life.”

– John Welch, Spiritual Pilgrims

“As for the prayer of the heart, it is associated in Sufism with dhikr, or invocation of God’s Names.  This quintessential form of prayer begins with invocation of the tongue, then with the mind and with our imaginal faculty, and finally with and in the heart, where the Divine Spark has always resided… The dhikr is in the final analysis the act of God Himself within us.  In reality only God can utter His Name, and in the dhikr we become simply the instrument through which God utters His own sacred Name… In ordinary prayer men and women address God in an I-Thou relationship.  In the prayer that is intertwined with love, the I and the Thou melt into each other.  In contemplative prayer, the inner intellect or spirit, which is itself a Divine Spark to which Meister Eckhart refers when he says that there is in the soul something uncreated and uncreatable…is able to transcend the I-Thou dichotomy altogether.  This faculty is able to plunge into the Supreme Reality and, in drowning in the Ocean of Divinity, to know it.  It is to these realities that Plotinus was referring when he spoke of the flight of the alone to the Alone…As human beings, we have the ability to reach the state of extinction and annihilation and yet have consciousness that we are nothing in ourselves and that all being belongs to God.  We can reach a state of unitive consciousness prior to bifurcation into object and subject.”

– Seyyed Hossein Nasr, The Garden of Truth

“This is fana: that a man be extinguished from himself.”

– Ibn Ata Allah Al-Iskandari, The Key to Salvation and the Lamp of Souls

“…here it is like rain falling from the heavens into a river or a spring; there is nothing but water there and it is impossible to divide or separate the water belonging to the river from that which fell from the heavens. Or it is as if a tiny streamlet enters the sea, from which it will find no way of separating itself, or as if in a room there were two large windows through which the light streamed in: it enters in different places but all becomes one.”

– St. Theresa of Avila, Interior Castle

“When individuals have finished purifying and voiding themselves of all forms and apprehensible images, they will abide in this pure and simple light and be perfectly transformed in it.”

– St. John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book 2 15:4

“A book on Contemplation called The Cloud of Unknowing, which is about that cloud within which one is united to God.”

– Anonymous, The Cloud of Unknowing (Title)

I think we’re all talking about the same thing.

Introvertive and Extrovertive "Mystical Experience"

Within the study of world mysticism, there is debate over what bounds to put around the topic. What do we mean by “mystical” experience? What experiences count, or don’t count?

The content on this site mostly revolves around the form of contemplative experience typically meant by the Christian term contemplation. Contemplation, in the Christian context, refers to an experience of Absolute or Pure Consciousness, most often interpreted as “Union with God.” It is “beyond thought” – a place in which the self disappears into Being, into God.

St. Theresa describes it as “water in water,” or light which enters a room from different windows and becomes one.

St. John of the Cross calls it “abiding in a pure and simple light” – beyond image and form.

It seems to me that this experience not only exists within each contemplative tradition, but also that what we might call Unitive Consciousness is the apex of the journey. Its ongoing experience is that which ultimately and fully transforms a soul.

Another class of experience which often falls within the bounds of world mysticism we might classify as the experience of “God as the Ground of the world.” In his Mysticism and Philosophy, W. T. Stace contrasts introvertive mysticism (i.e. Unitive Consciousness in the Ground of the soul) with extrovertive mysticism (an experience of the Unity and Beauty of all things in the world, United in God so to speak).

Examples of this extroverted mysticism (in various degrees) might be a sudden intuitive flash while in nature, the Zen experience of Satori, or something along the lines of Aldous Huxley’s description of his mescalin experience in The Doors of Perception; the temporary and sometimes unexpected experience of the sacredness and oneness of all things.

I tend to see introvertive experience – Pure Consciousness in the Ground of the Soul – as somehow more fundamental and agree with Stace when he says:

“…it looks as if the extrovertive mysticism were a sort of incomplete version of the completeness realized in the introvertive kind.”

But extrovertive forms of mystical experience also exist, and are often described as overwhelmingly powerful. In our modern Western culture, the term “mysticism” typically evokes ideas related to various forms of extrovertive mysticism.

F. C. Happold, in his Mysticism, discusses as follows:

“Thus our study is concerned with a form of experience and a type of consciousness, which can not only be approached from different angles but also be given different interpretations. We can put aside immediately all those false types of so-called mysticism such as spiritualism, occultism, and the like, which have been referred to above. We may also dismiss as inadequate and misleading such phrases as ‘All religion is mystical.’ Mystical experience may take more than one form. It is, however, a quite different and recognizable form of experience. Not need we concern ourselves with visions and states of ecstasy. Accounts of them are found in the writings of contemplatives; they are, however, usually regarded with some suspicion and are in no way an essential element in mystical experience. Nor shall we regard all psychical experience as necessarily mystical…

We shall, however, regard as falling within the scope of our study a range of experience, which we shall maintain may rightly be called mystical, which extends far beyond that advanced and rare state which medieval writers call Contemplation. While few attain to that high state of mystical experience when it becomes a distinct form of consciousness, there is a wide range of spiritual and aesthetic experience which, I would maintain, is of the same character and proceeds from the same source. A man may be a mystic who is not, and never could be, a contemplative. There come to many the sudden moments of intuitive perception, elusive, fading quickly, but of deep significance, illuminations which they feel reveal to them new facets of reality. Perhaps only once or twice in a lifetime may come an experience more profound, of the sort which came to Warner Allen, and which he described in The Timeless Moment, or to Blaise Pascal, which he recorded on the scrap of paper found sewn up in his doublet after his death:

From about half past ten in the evening to
about half an hour after midnight.
Fire.
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,
Not the God of philosophers and scholars.
Absolute Certainty: Beyond Reason. Joy. Peace.
Forgetfulness of the world and everything but God.
The world has not known thee, but I have known thee.
Joy! joy! joy! tears of joy!

Such experiences, when they happen to a man, revolutionize his outlook, often change his life. He may carry on with his normal occupation as before. To his friends and acquaintances he may seem to be the same as he always was. But in himself he is changed. He feels that he has received a pure, direct vision of truth. Nothing can be the same again. These may not call themselves mystics, but in a lesser degree they have known something that the true contemplative knows in a more intense and continuous form. Their contact is with the same Reality as his.”

And so the comparison between introvertive and extrovertive experience has become one way of classifying forms of mystical experience within the field.

It is debated whether or not traditional visionary experiences (or perhaps visionary experiences achieved through the use of chemical induction) should fall within the scope of the field.

A (Possible) Definition of Spirituality

“Our experiential connection to the Source and through the Source to all things.”

Spiritual Training

“Paradoxical as it may seem, it is, for very many persons, much easier to behave selflessly in a time of crisis than it is when life is taking its normal course in undisturbed tranquility. When the going is easy, there is nothing to make us forget our precious selfness, nothing (except our own will to mortification and knowledge of God) to distract our minds from the distractions with which we have chosen to be identified; we are at perfect liberty to wallow in our personality to our heart’s content. And how we wallow! It is for this reason that all the masters of the spiritual life insist so strongly upon the importance of little things…

The saint is one who knows that every moment of our human life is a moment of crisis; for at every moment we are called upon to make an all-important decision – to chose between the way that leads to death and spiritual darkness and the way that leads towards light and life; between interests exclusively temporal and the eternal order; between our personal will, or the will of some projection of our personality, and the will of God.

In order to fit himself to deal with the emergencies of his way of life, the saint undertakes appropriate training of mind and body, just as the soldier does. But whereas the objectives of military training are limited and very simple, namely, to make men courageous, cool-headed and co-operatively efficient in the business of killing other men, with whom, personally, they have no quarrel, the objectives of spiritual training are much less narrowly specialized. Here the aim is primarily to bring human beings to a state in which, because there are no longer any God-eclipsing obstacles between themselves and Reality, they are able to be aware continuously of the divine Ground of their own and all other beings; secondarily, as a means to this end, to meet all, even the most trivial circumstances of daily living without malice, greed, self-assertion or voluntary ignorance, but consistently with love and understanding. Because its objectives are not limited, because, for the lover of God, every moment is a moment of crisis, spiritual training is incomparably more difficult and searching than military training. There are many good soldiers, few saints…

What is true of soldiers is also true of saints, but with this important difference – the aim of spiritual training is to make people selfless in every circumstance of life.”

– Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy

Seyyed Hossein Nasr | In The Beginning Was Consciousness

Although he doesn't use the term "Perennial Philosophy," the worldview presented in this lecture is representative of the Perennial Tradition.  This is a fascinating lecture regardless of your religious viewpoint; it's worth listening to the whole thing if you have the time.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr is an Islamic Philosopher.  He teaches at George Washington University.
 

James Cutsinger on The Perennial Philosophy

James Cutsinger is a professor of Theology and Religious Thought at the University of South Carolina.  This is a longer interview in which he "talks around" a lot of different topics regarding the Perennial Philosophy.  

I don't know that he ever gives a hard, propositional definition (the closest he probably gets is at 4:00 where he talks about a fundamental unanimity of thought of many philosophers throughout time about transcendent reality, something which is "transcendent and saving"), but this is a good introduction to the ideas that come out of the Perennial Tradition.   

I think the discussion at 27:25 regarding religious relativism vs. what might be called "absolutism" is helpful and the interview also turns towards how perennialism can be understood from an orthodox Christian perspective in the second half (39:50). 
 

Shinzen Young on World Mysticism

This is Shinzen Young giving a somewhat winding talk about world mysticism from a Buddhist perspective.  I find his contrast (at 9:00 and following) between pseudo-mysticism – the experience of "weird stuff" (gods, ghosts, ancestors, acquisition of powers, etc.)  – and Mysticism with a Capital M – which he defines as "touching the Formless Source" – to be helpful in understanding what people mean when using the term.  

Most of this talk compares Eastern systems (Buddhist, Yogic, etc.), but at 40:30 he also addresses major Western traditions.

Salvation over Philosophy

The mystical writers are, in some sense, philosophers.  They are trying to understand the world as it is.  But they are generally concerned with "knowledge" only to the extent that it leads to what they deem to be "salvation."  The mystics are sometimes contrasted with the great Greek philosophers – the pure philosophers are concerned with only the head, while the mystics are concerned with the liberation of the heart and soul.

In Mysticism: East and West, Rudolph Otto compares the lives and thought of two representative mystics – Meister Eckhart of the West and Sankara of the East.  In his chapter Not Metaphysics but a Doctrine of Salvation, Otto discusses these two mystics in comparison to philosophers:

"Sankara is usually regarded as the greatest philosopher of India, and Meister Eckhart in the history of philosophy as the creator of an original philosophical system. Yet both are at bottom alike in that they are not so much philosophers as theologians. They are indeed metaphysicians, but not in the sense of the metaphysics of Aristotle or of the philosophical schools. Their impelling interest is not 'science' as a theoretical explanation of the world...Neither of them is concerned for 'knowledge' out of curiosity to explain the world, but each is impelled by a longing for 'salvation.' ...

The 'Being' of which they speak is to be a 'salvation.' That that Being is one, without a second, that it is undivided, without apposition or predicate, without "How" or fashion, these are not merely metaphysical facts but at the same time 'saving' actualities. That the soul is eternally one with the Eternal is not a scientifically interesting statement, but is that fact upon which the salvation of the soul depends."

Eknath Easwaran on the Perennial Philosophy

This is Eknath Easwaran speaking on The Perennial Philosophy using Hindu terms ("the Atman").  Eknath founded the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation in 1961 in Berkley, California and also taught as a professor at UC Berkley. 

In his most well known series of translations, he defines the Perennial Philosophy as follows:
 

"(1) There is an infinite, changeless reality beneath the world of change; (2) this same reality lies at the core of every human personality; (3) the purpose of life is to discover this reality experientially; that is, to realize God while here on earth."

His series Classics of Indian Spirituality is a fantastic place to start exploring Eastern spirituality.  I'd recommend the Bhagavad Gita to begin...

The Perennial Philosophy Review

Drawing from primary texts across the spectrum of the world's religious traditions, in The Perennial Philosophy Aldous Huxley synthesizes mystic thought in a variety of areas.  Beginning with what the mystics believe about the nature of reality, Huxley goes on to show how this "Perennial Philosophy" plays itself out in their lives.  A fantastic springboard for exploring primary contemplative texts, there is no better book for an introduction to world mysticism.  

Overview:  Huxley begins by defining the "philosophy of the mystics," what has been called, since Gottfried Leibniz, the Perennial Philosophy because it shows itself in religious traditions across the ages.  In Huxley's words:
 

"Philosophia Perennis – the phrase was coined by Leibniz; but the thing – the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being – the thing is immemorial and universal."

Huxley's definition brings together Western personal/theistic thought and Eastern, mostly non-personal, thought into one statement.  To speak roughly in the languages of West and East: 

In Western terms: (1) There is a God who is the Source of existence, (2) God dwells at the core of each human soul, and (3) our ultimate destiny, if we choose it, is union with God.  
In Eastern terms: (1) There is a Spiritual Ground of existence, (2) the core of each human soul is identical with the Spiritual Ground, and (3) our ultimate destiny, if we choose it, is absorption in the Ground.  

Huxley spends his first two chapters, That Art Thou and The Nature of the Ground, expanding on this definition.  In true mystic form, the nature of the Spiritual Ground which lies at the core of each created being is a mystery.  
 

"What is the That to which the thou can discover itself to be akin? To this the fully developed Perennial Philosophy has at all times and in all places given fundamentally the same answer. The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute, ineffable in terms of discursive thought, but (in certain circumstances) susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being."

In other words, God can't be defined, He can only be experienced directly.  That, my friends, is mysticism.  The God whom the worshipper may have "known" through their religious texts, doctrine, and faith tradition, suddenly becomes "unknowable."  The mystics are concerned almost exclusively with direct experience of God and how that experience transforms them; theology becomes a secondary matter.  This has, historically, often put them at odds with the official religious institutions they come from.  

After defining and expanding on the core philosophy of the mystics, Huxley spends the rest of the book looking at how this plays out in their lives.  I'll briefly look at three of these chapters:
 

Mortification, Non-Attachment, Right Livelihood:  The way to find God is to die to self.  The goal of the mystic is simply to become an empty vessel through which God may work.  Instead of identifying with the ego, the "I", the normal sense of self, the contemplative identifies with the divine "not-I," what is called the "Higher Self" in some traditions.  The life of the contemplative is thus a life of self-denial, not because self-denial is a good in and of itself, but because it is the ego, our self-will, that separates us from a life of union with God.

The Miraculous:  Here Huxley explores the existence of "miraculous events" and their connection to the mystics.  These type of events – supernatural healings, psychic powers, etc. – are often associated with contemplatives.  Surprisingly, their attitude towards the miraculous is one of indifference and can be summed up by a quote with which Huxley introduces the chapter:
 

"Can you walk on water? You have done no better than a straw. Can you fly in the air? You have done no better than a bluebottle. Conquer your heart; then you may become somebody."

– Ansari of Herat

It is salvation, deliverance, nirvana and how that experience can be lived out in the world that the contemplatives are interested in, not the cultivation of supernatural powers.  

Contemplation, Action and Social Utility:  The contemplatives believe that contemplation, the direct experience of God, is the ultimate end for which humanity is designed.  Action in the world (good works, etc.) may prepare the soul for contemplation, but action is not an end in itself.
 

"In all the historic formulations of the Perennial Philosophy it is axiomatic that the end of human life is contemplation, or the direct and intuitive awareness of God; that action is the means to that end; that a society is good to the extent that it renders contemplation possible for its members; and that the existence of at least a minority of contemplatives is necessary for the well-being of any society."

Ironically, it is also the contemplative, the one who has purified himself of self-will, that will naturally perform true positive action in the world:
 

"...action that is 'taken away from the life of prayer' is action unenlightened by contact with Reality, uninspired and unguided; consequently it is apt to be ineffective and even harmful."

In other chapters, Huxley delves into personal temperament and how it affects religious action, spiritual exercises, the role of ritual and sacrament, and various related topics.  

Personal Reflections:  Some critics think that Huxley finds too much commonality and not enough diversity in world mysticism, that he "makes the pieces fit" what he believes is a common core.  While there is certainly diversity in these traditions, I think Huxley does show that, while the mystics might not speak with one voice, they do often speak in harmony.

This book was life-changing for me.  As I was coming out of conservative religion, it helped me hang on to the belief that religion may, in fact, point to something real.  That even if all of my tightly held theology had been stripped away, I might still find God.  Nihilism works for some people, but it clearly wasn't going to work for me.  And that's where I would be if I hadn't found the contemplative versions of faith that are represented in this book.   

One of the more fascinating ideas that I come back to from The Perennial Philosophy is the idea that "knowledge is a function of being."  If we change ourselves by consciously "dying to self" and becoming selfless, we can change our "knowledge" or experience of the world.  Instead of interpreting the world through the tainted lens of our own needs and wants, our self-interest, we begin to see the world with different eyes.  And the mystics insist that if we can truly cleanse ourselves of our self-interest, the fruit will be a life of love, joy, and peace.  

I can't recommend this book, or Huxley as an author, enough.  If you are interested in world mysticism, start here.