Island

by Aldous Huxley

What kind of religion is she supposed to be practising?” “She’s practising,” Vijaya explained, “the local brand of Mahayana Buddhism, with a bit of Shivaism, probably, on the side.” “And do you high-brows encourage this kind of thing?” “We neither encourage nor discourage. We accept it. Accept it as we accept that spider web up there on the cornice. Given the nature of spiders, webs are inevitable. And given the nature of human beings, so are religions. 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.