The Divine Within: Selected Writings on Enlightenment

by Aldous Huxley

Dionysius, in his Mystical Theology and in his other books, had constantly insisted upon the fact that in order to know God, to become directly acquainted with God rather than knowing about God, one must go beyond symbols and concepts. These are actual obstacles, according to him, to the immediate experience of the Divine. And empirically, this is found to be true by all the spiritual masters, both of the West and of the Oriental world. The religion of direct experience of the Divine is usually regarded as the privilege of a very few people. I personally don’t think this is necessarily true at all. I think that practically everybody is capable of this immediate experience, provided he sets about it in the right way and is prepared to do what is necessary about it. But, in fact, this has been taken for granted, that the mystics represent a very small minority among a huge majority who must be content with the religion of creeds and symbols and sacred books and liturgies and organizations and, of course, with beliefs. This is faith in the form of belief.