2. The Unitive
Experience
Provincially, that urge 600 years ago was Christian, specifically
Roman Catholic. Less provincially now, after the passage of centuries and the
investigation of other religions, we can see this odd urge as an often-distorted version
of a universal human need which Aldous Huxley in The Perennial Philosophy described
as the impulse toward the unitive state. Beneath the trappings, however ornate, and the
rituals, however rigid, of every major religion Huxley descried a deep bedrock of
belief based not on institutional or textual orthodoxy but on experience. Namely,
the uncommon but constantly recurring transcendent experience of unity with All That Is.
Everywhere—East, west, north, south,
in primitive and advanced cultures—Huxley looked in the world of the past he found
primal reports of this experience.
Improbably, beyond words and against all
reason, the reporters used many names for the unnameable: unio mystica, enlightenment,
samsara, illumination, satori, etc., and of course "God".
