Island

by Aldous Huxley

And why would a beech tree send its roots elbowing up like this above the surface of the ground? And those preposterous wooden buttresses, on which the pseudobeech supported itself—where did those fit into the picture? Will remembered suddenly his favorite worst line of poetry. “Who prop, thou ask’st, in these bad days my mind?” Answer: congealed ectoplasm, Early Dalí. Which definitely ruled out the Chilterns. So did the butterflies swooping out there in the thick buttery sunshine. Why were they so large, so improbably cerulean or velvet black, so extravagantly eyed and freckled? Purple staring out of chestnut, silver powdered over emerald, over topaz, over sapphire. “Attention.”

The bird cocked its head and looked at him first with the right eye, then with the left. After which it opened its orange bill, whistled ten or twelve notes of a little air in the pentatonic scale, made a noise like somebody having hiccups, and then, in a chanting phrase, do do sol do, said, “Here and now, boys; here and now, boys.” The words pressed a trigger, and all of a sudden he remembered everything. Here was Pala, the forbidden island, the place no journalist had ever visited.

“Attention,” the articulate oboe was calling. “Attention.” “Attention to what?” he asked, in the hope of eliciting a more enlightening answer than the one he had received from Mary Sarojini. “To attention,” said Dr. MacPhail. “Attention to attention?” “Of course.” “Attention,” the mynah chanted in ironical confirmation. “Do you have many of these talking birds?” “There must be at least a thousand of them flying about the island. It was the Old Raja’s idea. He thought it would do people good. Maybe it does, though it seems rather unfair to the poor mynahs. Fortunately, however, birds don’t understand pep talks. Not even St. Francis’. Just imagine,” he went on, “preaching sermons to perfectly good thrushes and goldfinches and chiff-chaffs! What presumption! Why couldn’t he have kept his mouth shut and let the birds preach to him? And now,” he added in another tone, “you’d better start listening to our friend in the tree. I’m going to clean this thing up.” “Attention.” “Here goes.”

Young Murugan evidently had his reasons for not wanting it to be known that he had been in Rendang. Boys will be boys. Boys will even be girls. Colonel Dipa had been more than fatherly towards his young protégé, and towards the Colonel, Murugan had been a good deal more than filial—he had been positively adoring. Was it merely hero worship, merely a schoolboy’s admiration for the strong man who had carried out a successful revolution, liquidated the opposition, and installed himself as dictator? Or were other feelings involved? Was Murugan playing Antinoüs to this black-mustached Hadrian? Well, if that was how he felt about middle-aged military gangsters, that was his privilege. And if the gangster liked pretty boys, that was his.

“May I drive the Mercedes?” Murugan had asked. The dictator had smiled indulgently and nodded his sleek black head. And that was another reason for thinking that more than mere friendliness was involved in that curious relationship. At the wheel of the Colonel’s sports car Murugan was a maniac. Only an infatuated lover would have entrusted himself, not to mention his guest, to such a chauffeur.

“What were you doing in Rendang?” Dr. Robert asked, breaking a long silence. “Collecting materials for a piece on the new regime.” “I wouldn’t have thought the Colonel was newsworthy.” “You’re mistaken. He’s a military dictator. That means there’s death in the offing. And death is always news. Even the remote smell of death is news.” He laughed. “That’s why I was told to drop in on my way back from China.”

Officially, Will had come to Rendang to sniff the death in its militarized air; but he had also been commissioned to find out what the dictator felt about foreign capital, what tax rebates he was prepared to offer, what guarantees against nationalization. And how much of the profits would be exportable? How many native technicians and administrators would have to be employed? A whole battery of questions. But Colonel Dipa had been most affable and co-operative.

With a sudden rattle of quills a flock of pigeons broke out of one of the towering peepul trees. Green-winged and coral-billed, their breasts changing color in the light like mother-of-pearl, they flew off towards the forest. How beautiful they were, how unutterably lovely! Susila was on the point of turning to catch the expression of delight on Dugald’s upturned face; then, checking herself, she looked down at the ground. There was no Dugald any more; there was only this pain, like the pain of the phantom limb that goes on haunting the imagination, haunting even the perceptions of those who have undergone an amputation. “Amputation,” she whispered to herself, “amputation…” Feeling her eyes fill with tears, she broke off.

“How lovely it was,” she went on, “and how marvelously peaceful!” The voice, it seemed to Will Farnaby, had become more musical and in some strange way more remote. Perhaps that was why he no longer resented its intrusion. “Such an extraordinary sense of peace. Shanti, shanti, shanti. The peace that passes understanding.” The voice was almost chanting now—chanting, it seemed, out of some other world.

Through the confused chorus of bird cries and insect noises, a mynah was chanting, “Karuna. Karuna…” “Karuna,” Lakshmi repeated. “Compassion…” “Karuna. Karuna,” the oboe voice of Buddha insisted from the garden. “I shan’t be needing it much longer,” she went on. “But what about you? Poor Robert, what about you?” “Somehow or other one finds the necessary strength,” he said. “But will it be the right kind of strength? Or will it be the strength of armor, the strength of shut-offness, the strength of being absorbed in your work and your ideas and not caring a damn for anything else? Remember how I used to come and pull your hair and make you pay attention? Who’s going to do that when I’m gone?”

Will held up the Notes on What’s What. “Does this give the history of the reforms?” Dr. Robert shook his head. “It merely states the underlying principles. Read about those first. When I get back from Shivapuram this evening, I’ll give you a taste of the history. You’ll have a better understanding of what was actually done if you start by knowing what had to be done—what always and everywhere has to be done by anyone who has a clear idea about what’s what. So read it, read it. And don’t forget to drink your fruit juice at eleven.” Will watched him go, then opened the little green book and started to read. I Nobody needs to go anywhere else. We are all, if we only knew it, already there. If I only knew who in fact I am, I should cease to behave as what I think I am; and if I stopped behaving as what I think I am, I should know who I am. What in fact I am, if only the Manichee I think I am would allow me to know it, is the reconciliation of yes and no lived out in total acceptance and the blessed experience of Not-Two. In religion all words are dirty words. Anybody who gets eloquent about Buddha, or God, or Christ, ought to have his mouth washed out with carbolic soap.

Knowing who in fact we are results in Good Being, and Good Being results in the most appropriate kind of good doing. But good doing does not of itself result in Good Being. We can be virtuous without knowing who in fact we are. The beings who are merely good are not Good Beings; they are just pillars of society. Most pillars are their own Samsons. They hold up, but sooner or later they pull down. There has never been a society in which most good doing was the product of Good Being and therefore constantly appropriate.

Murugan walked to the window and looked out. Turning back after a moment of silence, he confronted Will with a face transfigured by its new expression into an emblem, exquisitely molded and colored, of an all too familiar kind of psychological ugliness. “I’ll show them who’s the boss around here,” he said in a phrase and tone which had obviously been borrowed from the hero of some American gangster movie. “These people think they can push me around,” he went on, reciting from the dismally commonplace script, “the way they pushed my father around. But they’re making a big mistake.” He uttered a sinister snigger and wagged his beautiful, odious head. “A big mistake,” he repeated. The words had been spoken between clenched teeth and with scarcely moving lips; the lower jaw had been thrust out so as to look like the jaw of a comic strip criminal; the eyes glared coldly between narrowed lids.

“My mother’s all for Southeast Asia Petroleum. She knows the Chairman of the Board, Lord Aldehyde.” “She knows Lord Aldehyde? But how extraordinary!” The tone of delighted astonishment was thoroughly convincing. “Joe Aldehyde is a friend of mine. I write for his papers. I even serve as his private ambassador. Confidentially,” he added, “that’s why we took that trip to the copper mines. Copper is one of Joe’s sidelines. But of course his real love is oil.” Murugan tried to look shrewd. “What would he be prepared to offer?” Will picked up the cue and answered, in the best movie-tycoon style, “Whatever Standard offers plus a little more.” “Fair enough,” said Murugan out of the same script, and nodded sagely.

“Be an angel,” she said, “and go and fetch the car. My Little Voice doesn’t say anything about walking back to the bungalow. It’s only a few hundred yards,” she explained to Will. “But in this heat, and at my age…” Her words called for some kind of flattering rebuttal. But if it was too hot to walk, it was also too hot, Will felt, to put forth the very considerable amount of energy required for a convincing show of bogus sincerity.

They tried to destroy the whole edifice of Moral and Spiritual Values which I had so laboriously built up over the years.” Somewhat maliciously (for of course he knew what the woman was talking about), Will expressed his astonishment. The whole edifice of moral and spiritual values? And yet nobody could have been kinder than Dr. Robert and the others, no Good Samaritans were ever more simply and effectively charitable. “I’m not denying their kindness,” said the Rani. “But after all kindness isn’t the only virtue.” “Of course not,” Will agreed, and he listed all the qualities that the Rani seemed most conspicuously to lack. “There’s also sincerity. Not to mention truthfulness, humility, selflessness…” “You’re forgetting Purity,” said the Rani severely. “Purity is fundamental, Purity is the sine qua non.” “But here in Pala, I gather, they don’t think so.” “They most certainly do not,” said the Rani.

“They teach…” The Rani hesitated. “They teach Special Techniques.” “What sort of techniques?” Will enquired. But she couldn’t bring herself to go into the repulsive particulars. And anyhow it wasn’t necessary, for Murugan (bless his heart!) had refused to listen to them. Lessons in immorality from someone old enough to be his mother—the very idea of it had made him sick. No wonder. He had been brought up to reverence the Ideal of Purity. “Brahmacharya, if you know what that means.” “Quite,” said Will.

“I know exactly what you’re thinking,” she said to Will. “You’re thinking I’m much too young to do a good job.” “I certainly think you’re very young.” “You people go to a university at eighteen and stay there for four years. We start at sixteen and go on with our education till we’re twenty-four—half-time study and half-time work. I’ve been doing biology and at the same time doing this job for two years. So I’m not quite such a fool as I look. Actually I’m a pretty good nurse.” “A statement,” said Mr. Bahu, “which I can unequivocally confirm. Miss Radha is not merely a good nurse; she’s an absolutely first-rate one.” But what he really meant, Will felt sure as he studied the expression on that face of a much-tempted monk, was that Miss Radha had a first-rate midriff, first-rate navel, and first-rate breasts. But the owner of the navel, midriff and breasts had clearly resented Savonarola’s admiration, or at any rate the way it had been expressed. Hopefully, overhopefully, the rebuffed Ambassador was returning the attack.

Both of us victims of the same twentieth-century plague. Not the Black Death, this time; the Gray Life. Were you ever interested in power?” he asked after a moment of silence. “Never.” Will shook his head emphatically. “One can’t have power without committing oneself.” “And for you the horror of being committed outweighs the pleasure of pushing other people around?” “By a factor of several thousand times.” “So it was never a temptation?” “Never.” Then after a pause, “Let’s get down to business,” Will added in another tone.

“You’ve never seen Murugan in white satin pajamas,” she said. “Have I missed something?” “You’ve no idea how beautiful he looks in white satin pajamas. Nobody has any right to be so beautiful. It’s indecent. It’s taking an unfair advantage.” It was the sight of him in those white satin pajamas from Sulka that had finally made her lose her head. Lose it so completely that for two months she had been someone else—an idiot who had gone chasing after a person who couldn’t bear her and had turned her back on the person who had always loved her, the person she herself had always loved. “Did you get anywhere with the pajama boy?” Will asked. “As far as a bed,” she answered. “But when I started to kiss him, he jumped out from between the sheets and locked himself in the bathroom. He wouldn’t come out until I’d passed his pajamas through the transom and given him my word of honor that he wouldn’t be molested. I can laugh about it now; but at the time, I tell you, at the time…” She shook her head. “Pure tragedy. They must have guessed, from the way I carried on, what had happened. Precocious and promiscuous girls, it was obvious, were no good.

“Keeping babies alive,” he said, “healing the sick, preventing the sewage from getting into the water supply—one starts with doing things that are obviously and intrinsically good. And how does one end? One ends by increasing the sum of human misery and jeopardizing civilization. It’s the kind of cosmic practical joke that God seems really to enjoy.” He gave the young people one of his flayed, ferocious grins. “God has nothing to do with it,” Ranga retorted, “and the joke isn’t cosmic, it’s strictly man-made. These things aren’t like gravity or the second law of thermodynámics; they don’t have to happen. They happen only if people are stupid enough to allow them to happen. Here in Pala we haven’t allowed them to happen, so the joke hasn’t been played on us.

Will shook his head. “Making twenty families grow where only one grew before.” “But what grew before was your kind of family. The twenty are all our kind.” As though reading instructions from a cookery book, “Take one sexually inept wage slave,” she went on, “one dissatisfied female, two or (if preferred) three small television addicts; marinate in a mixture of Freudism and dilute Christianity; then bottle up tightly in a four-room flat and stew for fifteen years in their own juice. Our recipe is rather different: Take twenty sexually satisfied couples and their offspring; add science, intuition and humor in equal quantities; steep in Tantrik Buddhism and simmer indefinitely in an open pan in the open air over a brisk flame of affection.”

So there we were, at the end of every crisis, back at the beginning of the old drama—the drama of a love incapable of sensuality self-committed to a sensuality incapable of love and evoking strangely mixed responses of guilt and exasperation, of pity and resentment, sometimes of real hatred (but always with an undertone of remorse), the whole accompanied by, contrapuntal to, a succession of furtive evenings with my little curlyheaded painter.” “I hope at least they were enjoyable,” said Susila. He shrugged his shoulders. “Only moderately. Rachel could never forget that she was an intellectual. She had a way of asking what one thought of Piero di Cosimo at the most inopportune moments. The real enjoyment and of course the real agony—I never experienced them until Babs appeared on the scene.”

It was on the plane, flying home from Nairobi. I found myself sitting next to her.” “Next to the young woman you couldn’t have liked less?” “Couldn’t have liked less,” he repeated, “or disapproved of more. But if you’re an addict you’ve got to have your dope—the dope that you know in advance is going to destroy you.” “It’s a funny thing,” she said reflectively, “but in Pala we have hardly any addicts.” “Not even sex addicts?” “The sex addicts are also person addicts. In other words, they’re lovers.” “But even lovers sometimes hate the people they love.”

“Look at this Italian Style Motor Scooter!” And while Will looked, Murugan read aloud. “‘This sleek Speedster gives up to 110 Miles per Gallon of Fuel.’ Just imagine!” His normally sulky face was glowing with enthusiasm. “And you can get up to sixty miles per gallon even on this 14.5-hp Motorcycle. And it’s guaranteed to do seventy-five miles an hour—guaranteed!” “Remarkable!” said Will. Then, curiously, “Did somebody in America send you this glorious book?” he asked. Murugan shook his head. “Colonel Dipa gave it to me.” “Colonel Dipa?” What an odd kind of present from Hadrian to Antinoüs! He looked again at the picture of the motorbike, then back at Murugan’s glowing face. Light dawned; the Colonel’s purpose revealed itself. The serpent tempted me, and I did eat. The tree in the midst of the garden was called the Tree of Consumer Goods, and to the inhabitants of every underdeveloped Eden the tiniest taste of its fruit, and even the sight of its thirteen hundred and fifty-eight leaves, had power to bring the shameful knowledge that, industrially speaking, they were stark-naked.

And now shut your eyes and see them again—shining, alive, glorified. How beautiful! And in their tenderness what depths of meaning! What wisdom beyond all spoken wisdoms in that sensual experience of spiritual fusion and atonement! Eternity in love with time. The One joined in marriage to the many, the relative made absolute by its union with the One. Nirvana identified with samsara, the manifestation in time and flesh and feeling of the Buddha Nature.” “Shivayanama.” The old priest lighted another stick of incense and softly, in a succession of long-drawn melismata, began to chant something in Sanskrit. On the young faces before him Will could read the marks of a listening serenity, the hardly perceptible, ecstatic smile that welcomes a sudden insight, a revelation of truth or of beauty. In the background, meanwhile, Murugan sat wearily slumped against a pillar, picking his exquisitely Grecian nose.

Shrugging his shoulders, Will turned back to the Notes on What’s What. What else was there to do? Dualism…Without it there can hardly be good literature. With it, there most certainly can be no good life. “I” affirms a separate and abiding me-substance; “am” denies the fact that all existence is relationship and change. “I am.” Two tiny words, but what an enormity of untruth! The religiously-minded dualist calls homemade spirits from the vasty deep; the nondualist calls the vasty deep into his spirit or, to be more accurate, he finds that the vasty deep is already there.

Spiders can’t help making flytraps, and men can’t help making symbols. That’s what the human brain is there for—to turn the chaos of given experience into a set of manageable symbols. Sometimes the symbols correspond fairly closely to some of the aspects of the external reality behind our experience; then you have science and common sense. Sometimes, on the contrary, the symbols have almost no connection with external reality; then you have paranoia and delirium. More often there’s a mixture, part realistic and part fantastic; that’s religion. Good religion or bad religion—it depends on the blending of the cocktail. For example, in the kind of Calvinism that Dr. Andrew was brought up in, you’re given only the tiniest jigger of realism to a whole jugful of malignant fancy. In other cases the mixture is more wholesome. Fifty-fifty, or even sixty-forty, even seventy-thirty in favor of truth and decency. Our local Old-Fashioned contains a remarkably small admixture of poison.”

“Is there any connection,” Will asked, “between what you’ve been talking about and what I saw up there in the Shiva temple?” “Of course there is,” she answered. “The moksha-medicine takes you to the same place as you get to in meditation.” “So why bother to meditate?” “You might as well ask, Why bother to eat your dinner?” “But, according to you, the moksha-medicine is dinner.” “It’s a banquet,” she said emphatically. “And that’s precisely why there has to be meditation. You can’t have banquets every day. They’re too rich and they last too long. Besides, banquets are provided by a caterer; you don’t have any part in the preparation of them. For your everyday diet you have to do your own cooking. The moksha-medicine comes as an occasional treat.”

People like Dr. Robert and Vijaya and my darling Ranga—we recognize their superiority, we know very well that their kind of intelligence is enormously important. But we also know that our kind of intelligence is just as important. And we don’t envy them, because we’re given just as much as they are. Sometimes even more.” “Sometimes,” Vijaya agreed, “even more. For the simple reason that a talent for manipulating symbols tempts its possessors into habitual symbol manipulation, and habitual symbol manipulation is an obstacle in the way of concrete experiencing and the reception of gratuitous graces.”