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When I was a kid I was mercilessly mocked by bullies, because of my introspective passivity. When I was confined to a hospital in my early twenties, the doctors wanted to lift the rocks of my dozy subconscious to uncover my own nightcrawlers.

Trouble was, my only nightcrawlers were the bullies - among whose number these physicians were simply the latest professional examples. But they had blurred their confused ethical lines - and I just liked to be left alone to dream.

Dreamers are good for the soul of humankind. But nowadays, no one shows the slightest interest in dreamers' spiritual sides. Writers, doctors and scientists only want to show you how simple it is to find your spiritual happiness WITHIN the ersatz nirvana of our utopian world.

Nice try, guys. That utopia is glaringly dystopian.

Why even bother?

Such, however is Aldous Huxley in this book. Get this - he thinks nirvana is EASY with chemicals and clinical know-how. He's bought the whole bill of goods.
***

Laura Archera Huxley, Aldous' second wife, wrote a stunningly candid biographical study of their life together amid the coolly intellectual ambience of their South California Hollywood home. It's called This Timeless Moment, and it's revelatory.

She describes in it how she interested him in the supernatural and occult.

She was a firm believer, in her new-agey way, in the afterlife. So when Aldous received a shocking diagnosis of terminal throat cancer in the early sixties, they agreed to try an experiment:

Aldous would send a message, any message, after he passed away to let her know the afterlife was a fact.

And sure enough, shortly after he died, Laura received a personal message, to whit: go to the main bookshelf, third row from bottom, and take the second book from the right. Laura followed the instructions, and came to a book entitled Eternity is Real (or that’s the general idea, as my faulty memory now dictates).

And so what? We believers already knew our "hearts will go on."
***

Now, I said previously that I’m a dreamer. Like Huxley was becoming, too, under the warming influence of his new wife. A second childhood? Except he retained all his traditional intellectual pursuits: modern science, technology and medicine.

So what happens when you combine your playful dreaming with serious intelligence? Well, you get a mishmash - an intellectual smorgasboard of irrelevant arcane trivia, pop thinking, and new age religion - LIKE THIS BOOK.

You see, we can’t take this book seriously. The plot never really progresses, the characters possess no reality, and the religion is flakey and half-baked.
***

Back in the semester of 1972/73, I belonged to my university Choral Society, though I couldn’t sight-read. I needed the credit that went with the contribution of my feeble voice.

Anyway, my fellow singers were either college professors out to unwind a bit, music majors, or intellectual flyweights with golden voices. And I was none of the above. A misfit in the larger academic world, I would take books to our rehearsals.

This was the book I lugged with me that winter.

Quite frankly, I considered it an utter dud. It just didn’t work at any level. I had read Brave New World in high school, but Huxley seemed to have lowered the bar to ankle level with this one.

And now, fifty years later, I read other people’s reviews here on GR and find my discontent verified objectively.

It’s NOT among his best.
***

Did you know Huxley died of mouth cancer the same day C. S. Lewis died of his routine surgery?

Which man, you might wonder, was the wiser of the two?. In other words, which man died within sight of his eternal home in Heaven?

I'll let you guess.

Make believe and disingenuous guys must Face the Fire First!