Authenticity of Kartarpuri Bir - Global Sikh Studies

99
ALDOUS (with emphasis) : Exactly! I mean this is why
it is wrong.
As I was saying, this illustrates that you mustn’t make ice cubes
out of a Flowing River. You may succeed in making ice cubes…
this is the greatest ice cube in the world. But you can probably
go on for — oh, you can’t go on forever-but for enormous
eons-for what appears (this word is greatly emphasized) to be
eternity, being in light.
In his later years Aldous put more and more emphasis
on the danger of being addicted to meditation only, to
knowledge only, to wisdom only-without love. Just now he
had experienced the temptation to an addiction of an even
higher order: the addiction of being in the light and staying
there. “How, I can if I want to,” he had said. Staying in this
ecstatic consciousness and cutting oneself off from
participation and commitment to the rest of the world -this is
perfectly expressed today, in powerful slang, in the phrase
“dropping out.”
ALDOUS (continuing): It completely denies the facts:
it is morally wrong; and finally, of course, absolutely
catastrophic. “Absolutely catastrophic.” Those two
words are said with the most earnest and profound
conviction. The voice is not raised, but each letter is
as. sculptured on a shining block of Carrara marbleand
remains sculptured on the soul of anyone who hears
it. It is a definitive statement: one cannot isolate oneself
from one’s fellows and environment, for there is no
private salvation; one might “get stuck” even in the
Pure Light instead of infusing it in “Love and Work”,
which is the direct solution for everyone’s life, right
here and now. Love and Work-if I should put in a
nutshell the essence of Aldous’s life. I could not find a
more precise way of saying it.” 49
In the above passages Huxley makes the distinction
between the two kinds of contrasted religious experiences very
clear. One he calls ‘private salvation’ and compares it