I chose to buy a second-hand copy of a book called ‘The Choice is Always Ours’ partly because of the title – taken from a line written by Aldous Huxley. The book is mostly a collection of writings, an anthology, edited by Dorothy Berkley Phillips and originally published in 1948, then republished with later editions up to 1975.

In the general introduction, Phillips writes of ‘the Way’ as being more a walk rather than a state. One to which many are drawn, few people enter and even fewer continue on it. There are no particular set of outcomes that we might expect, as everyone who enters goes at a different pace and with their own individual characteristics. Whilst there are different stages it essentially involves what regular readers of these posts will be familiar with, which is reaching beyond the conscious to the unconscious, and acceptance and experiencing of the ‘suprapersonal reality’ which transforms the individual, and yet is strangely found to be universal across cultures and societies. The philosophic premise to the book is that:

‘All results at every stage of the Way are releasing of the real and expanding self, as opposed to the false and constricting self. They are Life-giving. … there exists an ultimate Reality that is by nature both transcendent and imminent. The immanent aspect “this something of God in every person” traces its ancestry to early Hindu sources, thence to the Socratic movement in philosophy, and on to the teaching of Jesus.’

One universal characteristic found in all religions, in the arts and philosophy is our wish to pass beyond ourselves as we are now, this is about the search for meaning, of purpose, of reality, and Phillips adds of eternity. The difficulty is in mistaking the outcomes of the way for the actual Way – outcomes such as living for certain ideals, or for others, or imitating the virtues of the saints. She sees these as half-truths, and in a sense to what the Way is not. ‘They are “outer”, or imitative, or ends of a process, rather than “inner”, and creative, and means to an end’.

And the way is not to do with any specific religion, as it cuts through any accumulation of dogma and creeds. There are many paradoxical expressions of the Way stressing the negative requirements for becoming free in spirit. They point to the necessity ‘losing of life’, ‘dying to self’ (meaning letting go of egocentric goals), and where the Ground of the Soul becomes transformingly effective in the individual life.

I liked Phillips’ inclusion of this paradox from the poet W.H. Auden:

‘For the garden is the only place there is, but you will not find it

until you have looked for it everywhere and found nowhere that is not a desert;

the miracle is the only thing that happens, but to you it will not be apparent,

until all events have been studied and nothing happens that you cannot explain;

and life is the destiny you are bound to refuse until you have consented to die.’