Island

J.W.K

Four Hundred Milligrams of Revelation

"Huxley's novel is set on the "forbidden" island of Pala, somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Some one hundred years before the novel begins, a doctor was called to Pala in an effort to cure the local King of cancer. He ended up staying permanently, and therewith influencing Pala's social evolution. As fate would have it, the good doctor was blessed with an open mind, and so the distinctly Western influences he brought to Pala were benign - in fact helpful. Between his New Age science and the King's Tantrik Buddhism, the island maintained a stunning balance between the Eastern and the Western. Everything clicked. Utopia. On the island, education is biological, spiritual, and deeply psychological. Teachers start with ecology, and gradually "bridge" to every other area of thought - even metaphysics. Although children are given all the time in the world to use their imagination, Pala's teachers "never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very first that all living is relationship. Show them the relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village, in the village and the country around it. Rub it in." Religion on Pala was pantheistic and pagan in nature. Lots of references to Buddhism, Taoism, chanting, and inner spirituality. In fact, the book itself is a sort of spiritual tour de force, wherein Huxley promulgates another beautiful version of his Mind with a capital M theory. Industrialization of the island never really occurred as such. Instead, Palanesians embrace selective industrialization (no motor scooters, no Sears and Roebuck) and import certain technologies to meet daily needs - like massive refrigeration units to keep crops from rotting between seasons, and a small degree of electricity to support scientific research and whatnot. Pala's sociological structure is strange strange Huxleyan strange. A mixture of social parenting, fertility control, and religious ceremonies involving "moksha-medicine" - "the reality revealer, the truth-and-beauty pill" - "four hundred milligrams of revelation" - the best way to keep the islanders from biting into the "Tree of Consumer Goods." (Why chase the Western god of innovation when you can chase the dragon?) As one of the natives, Dr. Robert, points out, "We don't give ourselves coronaries by guzzling six times as much saturated fat as we need. We don't hypnotize ourselves into believing that two television sets will make us twice as happy as one television set. And finally we don't spend a quarter of the gross national product preparing for World War III or even World War's baby brother, Local War MMMCCCXXXIII." Instead the conduct more research on maksha, hone educational techniques, and make lots and lots war oldest enemy, love. Like any good utopia, a number of critical issues must be addressed head-on. The reality issue is one. On this note, Huxley scores a perfect ten. The book is very realistic; so much so, in point of fact, that he drags the reader to the bottomless depths of "Pure and Applied Pointlessness" and the "Essential Horror" (the omnipresence of death, the precarious of all existence) before building and bridging into Pala's social philosophy of "Pure and Applied Mahayana" Buddhism and "Pure and Applied Science" - a religious and practical science of optimism and wellbeing. It is only after diving and climbing out of these incredible depths solitude and despair that one learns to see again. "Liberate your selves from everything you know and look with complete innocence at this infinitely improbable thing before you. Look at it as though you'd never seen anything of the kind before, as though it had no name and belonged to no recognizable class. Look at it alertly but passively, receptively, without labeling or judging or comparing. And when you look it, inhale its mystery, breathe in the spirit of sense, the smell of the wisdom of the Other Shore." Nor does Huxley reconfigure human nature with a literary sleight of hand, making everyone good little boys and girls. Every society has the possibility of creating a Hitler, a Tito or a Stalin, and so does Pala. But it doesn't. The Palanesians employ therapy "on all fronts at once" with an eye toward prevention over treatment. With detection, prevention, and four hundred milligrams of revelation, all problems are curable. Not the mention the love - which this island has in spades. All told, Huxley has given us a wonder utopia and, perhaps more importantly, a thoroughgoing critique of Western Civilization. A must read for anybody who wants to discover their inner "suchness" and reach the Other Shore, where all is illuminated. "Sunsets and death; death and therefore kisses; kisses and consequently birth and then death for yet another generation of sunset watchers." ["

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August 12, 2002 Verified Purchase

Political Pen

Island as in Individual

""Attention!" cries the talking bird at the end of the book when tiny Pala, the island utopia its inhabitants have tried so diligently to perfect and stay apart from the world, is finally overrun via military intervention and a sellout within. The references to the birds, probably mynas or macaws in a tropical setting, screeching this admonition occurs throughout the plot and usually occurs as part of spiritual exhortations. But it was this final exhortation that woke me up at the end of the book, at the culmination of the final chapter which is one of the most beautifully written conclusions I have ever read. It was as if Huxley was saying to the reader "wake up!!!" before our own personal island, i.e. ourselves, our souls, our identities, etc. are overtaken by a ravenous and consuming outside world. This is what I take Island to really mean: as a metaphor for the person as individual. We each are islands in the vast ocean of life; we should take very good care of ourselves and intentionally preserve and enhance our freedom, morality, spirituality and our autonomy lest we be consumed and overrun, a la Pala, by an uncaring, spirituality bankrupt and pillaging world without. Some reviews have suggested Pala as Huxley's depiction of a utopia counterposed against Brave New World. That is all well and good but, in the end, the utopia of Pala doesn't make it either. I believe Huxley was too cynical and suspicious of modern life to ever suspect a utopia could long survive en masse. What he did promote, in various forms of expression, was a profound concern for individual freedom in a world populated by tyranny, totalitarian forces in varous shapes and mass market commercialism collectively sucking all the vitality and beauty out of human existence. Huxley was a great humanist and proponent of extending human freedom and potential wherever possible and combating any force arrayed against that effort. He early on experimented with drugs as a means, I believe, of expanding human experience and expression. In many respects he was the precursor to Timothy Leary and the LSD movement, the hippie generation, the New Agers, the green movement in general and other groups concerned with the human condition arrayed against tyranny, dogmatism and capitalism run amok. Island is the literary culmination of his lifelong work and is a profound, astute and deeply mystical book. Easily one of the best I have ever read. It is little noted that Huxley, prior to his serious writing career and Brave New World, once taught French to English schoolboys. One of his students was none other than Eric Blair, aka George Orwell, the future author of 1984. It is one of the great ironies of modern life that one English classroom could have housed at one time the two great geniuses of the twentieth century, in terms of political satire, whose combined dystopias portrayed a future world so nightmarish and inhumane that it jolted humankind into thought and action, providing inestible service. Did Huxley inspire Orwell in his thought at that early stage or with Brave New World later? Who knows, nonetheless Huxley was a magnificent thinker and profoundly influential figure of the twentieth century. His Island, equal to Brave New World in my opinion, fittingly crowns his eventful life prior to his death a year later. Other reviewers have more than adequately summarized the plot. For me, the talking birds say it all. ["

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June 30, 2012 Verified Purchase

James Ramsey

For philosophers and Huxley fans only

"If you are not familiar with Huxley's other works, this book may not be the best place to start. Don't get me wrong, this book is a VERY intriguing examination of what sort of social structure would constitute a human utopia, and also of the sorts of human attitudes that tend to prevent this utopia from coming about. Taken as a work of philosophy, it is a definite winner. This book has a story, complete with characters, motivations, and plot. However, the story is quite thin, and serves largely as a hypothetical background setting for the illustration of some of Huxley's reflections on human nature. The story is not exactly gripping, and won't provide the sort of entertainment value that some may want. This book is written, in my opinion, for people who are familiar with the study of philosophy. Philosophers always tend to be a bit long-winded, and frequently make use of analogies (complete with characters and plots) to try to illustrate a lofty and perhaps complicated point. In this book, the characters (and the narrator) spend the vast majority of their time in the exact sorts of long-winded speeches one would expect from a philosopher. If you are expecting another "Brave New World," you will be disappointed. If, however, you just want to have your imagination stimulated, and to provide yourself with food for thought, then I whole-heartedly recommend this book. ["

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October 29, 2004 Verified Purchase

Bugs

Aldous Huxley's Last, But Best Novel

"It is a fitting tribute to the great thinker that his last novel was his best and it gave him a lasting legacy to honor, as I see it, his long lived hope of a better world by presenting the human condition in all of it's fine and/or hideous attributes and motivations. A good summation of the overall picture that Huxley is painting in Island, is right on the back cover of the book although to make it more accurate, I`ve added the missing words in the bracket: "A mirror in which modern man can see all that is rotten [and good] in his society and himself... Should be read and reread." (Saturday Review of Literature) To emphasize the various personalities, the main characters are either protracted, conniving greedy bums or thinking, sensitive intellects; the rest are on the fence and waiting to see which way the wind blows and when presented with contrasting, colliding circumstances, which emotions will pull them in which ultimate, life altering direction? I have read this book a few times now and it is always thought provoking and engaging. Huxley's prose are flowing and captivating, leaving one with a sense of longing for an undisturbed version of Huxley's Island to move to with it's beautiful, conscious inhabitants and their intriguing, life enhancing, experimental social structure lived in a harmonious, loving and literate by choice social setting. Unfortunately, they are under siege by forces beyond their control- we think, for had Huxley lived, he might have followed this book with a sequel that ultimately had the "Islanders" triumph over their greedy, evil opposites. As it stands, we're left with an apparent sense of impending doom for the island paradise- an attempt to "civilize" it with a new, materialistic society based on competition and greed. Gee, sounds like the real world! Those who love a well crafted, moving story line will appreciate Island just for the intrigue and flow of a good novel, regardless of the socio-psychological ramifications involved. A note of interest on alternative, experimental communities is that B.F. Skinner's block-buster book, "Walden II" was possibly, as many people believe, the inspiration for Huxley`s Island and there are many parallels in their respective story lines. Dialogue in Island mentions alternative communities such as Oneida. The famous "Twin Oaks Community" was designed around Skinner's fictional Walden II utopian farm. ["

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April 28, 2005 Verified Purchase