For the next several weeks, we will be discussing Aldous Huxley’s Island. Click here for all the book club posts.

As Will Farnaby rests up, he begins to read Notes on What’s What, and on What It Might be Reasonable to Do about What’s What, a short book written by the Old Raja of Pala, laying out some of the ideas behind the design of Pala’s culture.

As he turns the pages, a poem written by the healer Susila, who has recently lost her husband in a mountain climbing accident, falls out. It’s a lovely piece of writing about accepting one’s life, loves and losses included, as it is, then, having accepted it, seeing it all as part of a larger, impersonal process. Here is a part of it:

Somewhere between seeing and speaking, somewhere
Between our soiled and greasy currency of words
And the first star, the great moths fluttering
About the ghosts of flowers,
Lies the clear place where I, no longer I,
Nevertheless remember
Love’s nightlong wisdom of the other shore;
And, listening to the wind, remember too
That other night, that first of widowhood,
Sleepless, with death beside me in the dark.
Mine, mine, all mine inescapably!
But I, no longer I,
In this clear place between my thought and silence
See all that I had and lost, anguish and joys,
Glowing like gentians in the Alpine grass
Blue, unpossessed and open.

What Susila, and Huxley, are pointing to here is a way of looking at life in which we see our parts in it not only as distinctly individual roles in an unending drama, but also as something that simply happens as part of the universe’s unfolding, like flowers happen in a meadow.

Looking at our experience in this way allows us to see the beauty in all of it as Susila describes, without feeling victimized or trapped by it. We can see that losing a loved one is a universal experience, as are falling in love, feeling happy with the sun on our faces, and feeling sad at the end of a long winter. This can help us view our experiences, and our selves, as part of something larger, to take a bigger view of our thoughts and feelings, and to appreciate them and the process which creates them rather than feeling trapped.

Does the ant get upset that its lot in life is to carry heavy loads and live in a hill of dirt? Does the sunflower feel victimized by its destiny to grow taller than the other flowers, then fall away in the frost? Why then should we despair that our lot in life is to perceive, to love, to lose, and to know that someday it will all come to an end?

There is no doubt that it’s hard to be a human being. Sorting through the millions of pieces of information we take in every day, deciding which are important and which are not, taking action on some, choosing to let some lie—this is not an easy path. Let alone making the larger decision to step out of the personal experience of our experiences—to decide to see our sorrows and our joys as flowers in the Alpine grass.

But it is a choice we can make and, if one agrees with Huxley, one that the fact of being human compels us to make. For how can we live and grow and be open to our fellow human beings and life itself if we are trapped in our own thoughts and emotions, feeling tossed about by a cruel world in which we have no agency?

Will Farnaby is remembering his father’s cruelty when Susila comes upon him. “I was trying to think of my father as a gentian,” he says. “But all I get is the persistent image of the most enormous turd.”

“Even turds,” she assures him, “can be seen as gentians.”

“But only, I take it in the place you were writing about—the clear place between thought and silence?” Susila nods. “How do you get there?” Farnaby asks.

“You don’t get there. There comes to you. Or rather there is really here.”

I think what Susila means is that looking at the world and ourselves in this way is a choice. It’s a shifting of internal perspective rather than an external mountain to be climbed. When the I becomes no longer I, we can see the beautiful impersonality of the life process, and we gain the strength to handle ourselves with compassion and care regardless of what the little I is going through.

This is something I have experienced for myself. In the past, it happened spontaneously, arising from the situation I found myself in. For instance, nine years ago when my father lay in the hospital for a month before dying, I was able to see his decline and his passing as precious and natural and I was full of awe and gratitude for the fact that I was there, witnessing. Of course I missed him, and I still do, but the impersonal perspective that I took helped me get through my sadness and to see the beauty in it at the same time. I cannot take credit for having wisely taken this perspective; I’m not sure where it came from. But I am grateful that losing my father did not also have to mean losing myself to despair.

More recently, I have been practicing meditation in order to cultivate this perspective as a regular part of my life. I cannot say I’m always successful, but I have seen growth in my ability to get to the clear place between thought and silence, where I can see my life as mine and not mine, unpossessed, glowing like flowers in the grass.

I believe this perspective is absolutely key to the success of a place like Pala. For how can we want for shiny cars and handbags when we have peace within ourselves, and understanding shared with our fellow humans?

Huxley’s views on cultivating this perspective include the practice of meditation and the judicious and respectful use of hallucinogens, both of which help us see that largest-possible view. More on this in the coming weeks ...