The peculiarity of Aldous Huxley's methodological approach to understanding religious experience

Pozdnyakov Aleksey Vasiljevich ORCID: 0009-0007-7695-8943 PhD in Philosophy Member of the Academy of the Federal Security Service of Russia; Academy of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation 35 Priborostroitelnaya str., Orel, Russia, 302020 pozdnyakovav77@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. In his work, he combined science fiction and deep philosophical reflections. However, he gained worldwide fame thanks to his novel "Brave New World", which became a classic of dystopian literature and continues to remain relevant. But Huxley wasn't just a novelist. In his essays and popular science publications, he has explored a wide range of topics, from metaphysics and fiction to psychology and sociology.

Philosophically, Huxley showed great interest in spirituality and human development. Along with other researchers of the time, he drew special attention to religious experience as an important aspect of human existence. Focusing on the role of experiential knowledge, Huxley believed that it comes not only through everyday activities or scientific experiment, but also through special practices (mysticism, meditation and other spiritual techniques). He was one of the first to use psychotropic substances to study consciousness, which was later reflected in his works such as "Doors of Perception" (1954) and "Heaven and Hell" (1956).

Due to the great popularity of Aldous Huxley, his work has often been the subject of analysis by experts from different countries. Most of the research is devoted to Huxley's artistic legacy (D. Parsons, J. Meckier, M. I. Babkina, O. N. Redina, M. Shadursky, etc.). They analyze not only the development of O. Huxley's artistic style, but also how the artistic images of his works reflect the writer's worldview and his conceptual discoveries concerning science, art, philosophy, religion and mysticism.

There are also researchers who seek to study Huxley's work as a holistic phenomenon. It is important to note the biographical studies of R. Duval, A. Maurini, N. Murray, U. Rasch, D. Sawyer. Comprehensive studies of Huxley's philosophical legacy were also conducted by Russian researchers: I. V. Golovacheva, V. S. Rabinovich, S. S. Falaleeva, and others. In their works, these authors reveal different aspects of the English writer's life, his relationships with other prominent scientists, writers, political and spiritual figures of that time, as well as the influence of Huxley's ideas on the intelligentsia of that time. Such studies are important for their interdisciplinary analysis of aspects of the writer's multifaceted work: his criticism of politics, morality, scientific progress, his fascination with psychiatry and psychosomatic recovery techniques, esotericism, various religious traditions, etc.

There are many studies devoted to the analysis of the influence of psychiatric and psychological schools on the work of Aldous Huxley. Special attention is paid to the role of the writer's meditative and psychedelic experiences in shaping his worldview. Among the authors dealing with this topic, one can single out H. Smith, J. Poller, I. V. Golovicheva, A. A. Sukhova and Yu. V. Prokopchuk. The works devoted to Huxley's religious and philosophical views deserve special consideration. For example, the American religious scholar Jeffrey Kreipl examines the influence of neo-Vedanta and Tantric traditions on the writer's worldview in his research. Jake Poehler's book Aldous Huxley and Alternative Spirituality (2019) provides a detailed analysis of Huxley's spiritual interests, including Eastern mysticism (neo-Vedanta, Taoism, Mahayana, Zen Buddhism) and Western esotericism (mesotericism, spiritualism, the paranormal). Poehler explores how Huxley's changing spiritual beliefs were reflected in his fiction, influencing the depiction of physicality and love. He also analyzes how the psychedelic experience influenced the spiritual outlook of the writer, causing a Tantric turn in his later work.

However, Huxley did not limit himself to philosophical and religious beliefs. He sought to create his own methodology of cognition of reality, including the analysis of human consciousness as a key element of cognitive activity. Huxley devoted a significant part of his research to this problem. Among the famous philosophical works of Huxley available to the Russian reader, one can single out "Eternal Philosophy" (1945), "Doors of Perception" (1954) and "Heaven and Hell" (1956). However, a significant step in the development of his approach to the study of religious experience was the publication of his work "Ends and Means: An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals" ("Ends and Means: A study of the nature of ideals") in 1937. This work, which has not yet been translated into Russian, remains little known to the Russian audience. The key theme of this work is the crisis state of society, especially acutely felt on the eve of the new World War. It examines key issues of politics, war, education, science, religion, and morality. The author seeks to find ways to resolve the contradictions that threaten the development of civilization. At the same time, this work also raises questions of cognition and reflects the principles of research that Huxley followed at the time of writing this work. Russian researcher V. S. Rabinovich emphasizes the importance of this treatise for understanding Huxley's work of the 1930s ^{[1, p. 63]}. However, this work not only reveals the specifics of the author's work of this period, but also contributes to an in-depth understanding of the transformation of his scientific and philosophical views throughout his creative activity. Thus, the work is an important source for researchers seeking to comprehensively study Huxley's work and philosophical views.

The relevance of the analysis of the methodology of Aldous Huxley is due to the modern problems of knowledge of religion and religious experience. During the period of the formation of his ideas, religious studies was just beginning to establish itself as an independent scientific discipline. The lack of a clear methodology and an integrated approach to the study of religious phenomena has given rise to many discussions about methods of studying religious experience. This issue remains unresolved in religious studies and philosophy of religion to this day. Huxley's works reflect complex epistemological mechanisms that continue to evolve, defining a strategy for understanding and analyzing religious phenomena.

The study of Huxley's methodology helps to understand how the research framework was formed in the context of the interdisciplinary interaction of religious studies with philosophy, sociology and psychology. This knowledge is important not only for specialists in the field of religious studies, but also for anyone who seeks to better understand the nature of faith and its impact on modern society. Huxley's scientific and philosophical methodology, aimed at studying religious experience, has not been sufficiently studied by Russian scientists. This actualizes the choice of the topic and the purpose of this work.

The subject of the research is the origin and development of Aldous Huxley's approach to the study of religious experience.

The purpose of the study is to determine the methodological features of the study of the religious experience of Aldous Huxley and their significance for the philosophy of religion and religious studies.

The research material consists of philosophical essays and lectures by Aldous Huxley from various years of publication, which reflect methods and approaches to cognition of religious experience. Systematic biographical research was also involved, describing events from Huxley's life that influenced his creative path and worldview. Special attention is paid to little-known texts or unpublished in Russian: "Ends and Means: An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals", "The Human Situation. Lectures at Santa Barbara», «Drugs that shape men's minds», «Visionary Experience».

Research methods include: biographical and comparative historical analysis, the method of analytical research of sources and systematization.

Aldous Huxley was born into a family of English intellectuals. His father, Leonard, was the son of Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), a biologist, one of the founders of Darwinism and an outstanding scientist of the 19th century. The writer's mother, Julia, was the niece of Matthew Arnold, an English poet and cultural critic of the Victorian era, known for his criticism of material progress and an apology for humanitarian knowledge. This combination of influences within the family predetermined the peculiarities of the writer's thinking and cognitive activity ^{[2, p. 30]}.

Aldous Huxley was educated at Eton College, where he majored in biology and planned to become a doctor. However, his plans changed after suffering from keratitis, which led to vision loss. Despite this, he mastered the Braille system and continued his studies under the guidance of mentors. At Oxford, where he entered after partially recovering his eyesight, Huxley began studying English literature and philosophy and graduated in 1915. During World War I, most of Huxley's classmates and his brother Julian joined the armed forces. Aldous tried to enlist in the military twice, but was disqualified due to poor eyesight. After that, he decided to do alternative service at Garsington, the country estate of Philip and Lady Ottoline Morrell. The Morrells allowed many conscientious objectors to work on their estate to avoid prosecution. Here he met famous cultural figures such as Virginia Woolf, Thomas Eliot, Bertrand Russell, David Lawrence and others. Many of his classmates died in battle, which contributed to the formation of his pacifist views ^{[2, p. 34]}.

To understand Huxley's methodology aimed at the study of religious experience, it is necessary to take into account the cultural and historical context of its formation. The beginning of Aldous Huxley's writing career dates back to the 1920s, when Europe was experiencing significant socio-cultural changes after the First World War. This period was marked by a deep crisis of faith in progress, loss of ideals, and disillusionment with rationalist values. Huxley, influenced by Fabian socialism and the anti-war sentiments of the "lost generation", sought to find new spiritual guidelines ^{[3, p. 114]}.

Analyzing Aldous Huxley's approach to religious research, it should be borne in mind that he was primarily a free thinker and a writer, so his research is not always designed according to strict academic standards. Nevertheless, in his works it is possible to identify the key elements of the research methodology: the subject, principles, methods and results of the research, as well as to assess the degree of their elaboration and significance for modern science and philosophy.

Huxley considered religion as an integral phenomenon, paying special attention to the essence of religious experience. He considered it a central element of religious experience. Aldous Huxley develops a theoretical framework for the study of religion and religious experience based on a number of fundamental principles. He formulates these principles in his works "One and Many" (1929) and "Ends and Means" (1937).

In the essay "One and Many," he expresses an idea that will become the leading principle of knowledge of religious phenomena for many years to come: "It is inappropriate to talk about religion differently than from the point of view of human psychology" ^{[4, pp. 1-2]}. The central issue of this essay is the influence of personality psychotype on the formation of religious experience. The psychological state of a person determines the content and dynamics of his religious beliefs. According to Huxley's point of view, the pantheon of gods or the versatility of a single deity are projections of a wide range of inner human experiences, including virtues, mystical and aesthetic emotions, moral dilemmas, fantasies, fears and aggression.

If people were homogeneous by nature, they would probably worship the same deity. However, the diversity of the human inner world and the uniqueness of each individual determine the existence of many forms of religious experience. "Even the same person," Huxley argues, "is not a consistent worshipper of the one God" ^{[4, p. 2]}. This observation points to the incorrectness of comparisons between religions based on their truth. According to Huxley, monotheism arises from the perception of the wholeness and unity of the universe, whereas polytheism is formed on the basis of the perception of its diversity. Monotheism and polytheism are rationalizations of various psychological states, both indisputably existing as facts of experience. Belief in one or many gods is determined by the idiosyncrasies (genetically determined reactions of disgust) of the believer. There are people who are initially inclined to polytheism, and those who are predisposed to monotheism. There are also individuals who passively accept the religious views of the majority or charismatic leaders. Those in whom a unifying tendency prevails, whether in the form of a mystical gift to feel the unity of the world or a talent for generalization and abstraction, worship one god ^{[4, pp.11-12]}.

Huxley does not support the theory that monotheism is a more developed historical stage of religiosity than polytheism. The main arguments are data from ethnography and history. The Arabs and Jews created monotheism in a desert environment with a monotonous landscape and sparse vegetation, which influenced the creation of an incorporeal and abstract deity. However, they did not give anything of value to man except literature until they came into contact with polytheistic peoples and absorbed their culture ^{[4, p. 13]}. The heuristic model proposed by the writer focuses on the influence of genetic factors and the environment on the formation of an individual's mental structures. These structures, in turn, determine the content of religious experience, which is a cognitive response to external and internal processes. Huxley is not interested in the truth of the content of the experience, but in the fact of its presence in the consciousness of the subject and how the subject reacts to it. In his treatise "Texts and pretexts," Huxley formulates an important thought: "The experience is not that you swam across the Hellespont, danced with dervishes and spent the night in a flophouse. It's a matter of sensitivity and intuition, the ability to see and hear important things, pay attention at the right moments, understand and coordinate. Experience is not what happens to a person; it is what a person does with what happens to him" ^{[5, p. 5]}. In this context, he shares the views of W. James, who argued that religious experience does not provide comprehensive knowledge about the nature of the divine, but can provide access to aspects of the world that are inaccessible to most people in everyday life. Huxley adds to James' theory the idea that mystical experiences are not only valuable because they introduce us to unknown aspects of reality, but also because they positively affect both the person who experiences them and society as a whole. As will be demonstrated later, not all aspects of religious experience receive a positive assessment in Huxley's works.

Aldous Huxley's heuristic model combines the doctrine of psychotypes, M. Weber's theory of religious idiosyncrasy, and the landscape theory of the origin of monotheism, which was formulated in the 19th century by the semitologist E. Renan and reinterpreted by H. Chamberlain. However, it has its drawbacks: it does not reveal how the relationship between innate idiosyncrasies and acquired inclinations of the subject, which arise under the influence of the surrounding landscape, is formed. Other questions also remain unresolved: if the various forms of religiosity are based on objectified complexes of stable psychological states of people, then how and why is the transition of developed civilizations from polytheism to monotheism? Why don't people with a monotheistic worldview adopt a polytheistic worldview after leaving the desert for a more diverse landscape?

In the first half of the 20th century, religious experience was the object of research in various psychological and psychiatric fields: behaviorism, phenomenological psychology, psychoanalysis, body-oriented psychology. Remarkable research by I. Golovicheva shows that Aldous Huxley was well aware of the issues of psychiatry and psychology of that time ^[6-8]. In his essays, Huxley highly appreciated the works of W. Sheldon, C. Jung, J. Benoit, F. Alexander, K. Koffka, E. Jacobson, and others. The views of these scientists influenced Huxley's methodology in one way or another.

In the late 1930s, Aldous Huxley's work increased its emphasis on the bodily aspects of religious experience. In his treatise "Ends and Means", he uses the constitutional theory of temperament of the American psychologist and physician W. G. Sheldon to analyze religious experience. According to this theory, people's temperament is determined by their body type. Sheldon distinguished three types of physique: mesomorphic (characterized by strong muscles), endomorphic (has an excess of adipose tissue), ectomorphic (characterized by a fragile physique and long limbs). They form three types of temperament: somatotonic, viscerotonic and cerebrotonic. Somatotonics are endowed with energy, determination and general dynamism. Viscerotonics are good-natured, have a high degree of socialization and tend to seek comfort. While cerebrotonics, with their lean and long forms, are often characterized as sensitive, mysterious and introverted. Huxley considered himself to be the latter type. He believed that temperament is essential for the intellectual development of a person and his religious beliefs, focusing on the role of bodily factors in the formation of religious consciousness. The famous biographer N. Murray mistakenly believed that Huxley recognized Sheldon's concept in the 1940s ^{[9, p. 7]}. The very fact of using this concept in "Ends and Means" (1937) testifies to his earlier acquaintance with it, even before Sheldon published it in his work "Varieties of the Human Physique" in 1940. Aldous Huxley develops his study of religious experience based on the dichotomy of body and mind. "What happens in the body affects the mind," explains Huxley in Goals and Means ^{[10, p. 220]}. The body, in turn, is a tool used by the mind to establish contact with the outside world. "Any modification of this tool should, accordingly, change the relationship of the mind with external reality" ^{[10, p. 220]}. This point of view will not lose its relevance at a later stage of his work. Thus, in The Eternal Philosophy (1945), he notes the factors of the development of human cognition, among which are moral, intellectual and physiological. The very nature of human consciousness, in which religious experience is cultivated, can be understood only at the junction of moral and physiological experiments ^{[11, p. 10]}. In his lectures "The Human Situation" (1959), he expresses bewilderment at Freud and Jung, who paid almost no attention to the physical aspects of human nature and completely ignored the genetic side of psychological problems ^{[12, p. 52]}.

Among the important principles, the writer's special desire for objectivity should be highlighted, which was expressed in assigning them an important role of fact in the construction of a theory. This fact plays a fundamental role in understanding the world, including religion. It is impossible to talk about things or phenomena, ignoring the factual side of their existence. This fundamental principle can be traced in his other works. He is known for censuring T. S. Eliot for his ignorance of the facts about nightingales, which he demonstrates in his poem "Sweeney among the Nightingales." Carelessness about facts is unacceptable even in literature, because it can destroy the most perfect poetic structure ^{[8, p. 29]}. Huxley believed that science was having an increasingly significant impact on the spirit, consciousness, and absolutely all aspects of human and planetary life. Therefore, the writer simply cannot ignore it.

However, his understanding of the fact has a certain peculiarity. For example, while using the power of historical fact to understand the development of a particular religion, he is nevertheless critical of the absolutization of historicism as a principle of investigating phenomena. His criticism is based on the logic that if truth is universal, then it must be timeless, and therefore unchangeable in a historical and cultural context. Historical changes in the positions of religions, on the contrary, indicate their conventionality and even possible falsity. Historicism and anti-historicism in Huxley's heuristic model are two opposing and complementary research principles, each applicable to specific aspects of religious experience. Historicism is necessary when studying the external, social, side of experience, which may be subject to historical changes. Historicism is also important for analyzing the dynamics of mental processes among representatives of different generations, which is influenced by religious tradition. The antihistoric method, on the contrary, is necessary to study the fundamental structures of human experience that have remained unchanged for a long time. Huxley attempted to identify the invariant and universal elements of religious experience present in most religious traditions. As a result of a long study of various religious practices, he discovered that universalism is most clearly manifested in the mystical experience of followers of different religious teachings.

Another important principle of Aldous Huxley's research approach is the principle of rhythm, according to which all existing positions, whether scientific, religious or philosophical, should be subject to critical analysis. In the work "Goals and Means", a critical analysis is conducted in relation to several forms of knowledge at once. Criticism of the absoluteness of science becomes an important component of his methodology of cognition of religious experience.Natural sciences such as physics, chemistry, and biology deal with matter constructed in various degrees of structured complexity. Scientific research has clearly shown that the world of sensory experience and common sense is only a small part of the world as a whole. According to Huxley, our knowledge is negligible for two reasons. Firstly, a person is chained to a small point in space, and our direct experience is extremely limited. Even indirectly, through inference, we can hardly comprehend the conditions prevailing in the remote corners of the universe. Secondly, the senses through which we come into contact with the outside world are unable to perceive the fullness of reality. This second limitation is more important than the first one ^{[10, p. 255]}. However, unlike other living beings, humans have the ability to go beyond the limitations of their senses with the help of intelligence and conclude that there is a larger world encompassing their personal universe. An example is a person's awareness of the existence of ultraviolet radiation, despite the limited perception of color rays. A person is even able to use this radiation in practice, despite the data of feelings and common sense. Science does not have one complete picture of reality, but is represented by private scientific paintings. The scientific picture of the human mind is even less defined. During Huxley's creative career, there were several different irreconcilable interpretations of the human mind.

In his treatise, the author actively polemicizes with behaviorism, revealing its internal contradictions with the help of formal logic. Huxley believes that all scientists, regardless of their views, act as if they believe in the ability of intelligence and logical methods to make true judgments about the nature of the world. Behaviorists believe this way, despite their own theory. If the mind is just an epiphenomenon of matter, if consciousness is completely determined by physical reflexes, and intelligence is just a machine for providing food and sexual pleasure, then there is absolutely no reason to believe that any theory created by this tool can have universal significance. If behaviorism is correct, there is no reason to assume that reason can make any informed judgments about the world, including the mind of behaviorists.

The lack of a unified scientific consensus on the nature of the mind indicates the incompleteness of scientific knowledge about reality. This indicates that reality may contain hidden and unexplored aspects. Huxley's approach to this issue is close to the point of view of Max Scheler, Rudolf Otto and other phenomenologists, who did not reject the knowledge provided by religion, mythology and artistic creativity. Both religion and science are united by one side of the epistemological process — the expression of knowledge in symbolic language. But this symbolization has no force until it is tested by experience. For Huxley, this circumstance is enough to seek ways of reconciliation between religion and science, science and art.

The writer also examines the role of metaphysics in understanding reality. He does not agree with those scientists who see metaphysics as an outdated approach to cognition. "It is impossible to live without metaphysics. The choice that we are given is not between some kind of metaphysics and the absence of metaphysics; it is always between good metaphysics and bad metaphysics, metaphysics that closely corresponds to the observed and deduced reality and one that does not correspond" ^{[10, p. 252]}. For Huxley, metaphysics is a set of basic principles according to which a person organizes his activities. He borrows this idea from the work "Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science" by E.A. Burtt, which he enthusiastically talks about in "Goals and Means" ^{[10, p. 268]}.

However, there are still debates about Huxley's own first principles: which philosophical tradition are his ideas closest to — idealism or materialism, empiricism or rationalism, intuitionism or rational-logical discourse? He was often criticized for his increased interest in Eastern spiritual practices and philosophy, in particular meditation, but this fascination was not total. In his research, he always applied a critical approach to any religion. For example, he highlights not only the positive aspects of religious experience, but also the negative ones. He finds them even in those practices that are aimed at understanding the "nature of higher reality." Huxley focused not only on the methods of religious practices of believers, but also on the reasons behind their use. As an example, he cites the use of meditation techniques by the ruling classes of Japan to strengthen their will and support selfish militaristic goals ^{[10, p. 251]}. But Huxley's criticism of religion was not free of ideological cliches. His pacifist beliefs served as a yardstick for evaluating all spiritual phenomena. In relation to religions, which are a source of moral evil and intellectual obscuration, Huxley calls for uncompromising hostility ^{[10, p. 225]}. A historical analysis of various religious traditions led him to the conclusion that the lowest level of violence was observed in Indian religions. Indian philosophy and spiritual practice are attractive to him because they contain pacifist principles at their core.

As Uwe Rasch accurately noted, for all his philosophical idealism, Huxley remained a scientific materialist at the same time ^{[13, p. 54]}. This ambiguity is connected not only with his belief in pacifism, but also with an important epistemological problem: to find some consistency between scientific methods of cognition (i.e., knowledge of religious experience from the outside) and methods offered by a particular religious tradition (knowledge of religious experience from the inside). Later, in The Eternal Philosophy, he admits that if a researcher wants to discover the possibilities of consciousness, he "will need to fulfill certain conditions and obey certain rules, the effectiveness of which has been recognized experimentally" ^{[12, p. 11]}. In the first place in his pragmatic philosophy is always the fact of direct experience, and he does not distinguish between psychological facts and scientifically verifiable evidence. Huxley seeks to develop a concept of religious experience that would be able to reconcile the objective principles of cognition with the subjective heuristic abilities of the researcher. Therefore, he turns to the method of introspection, studying yoga, various meditation practices, dianetics and the influence of psychedelics on personal experience. The desire to learn about religious/mystical experience not only from books, but also by touching specific practices in person, explains his presence in various esoteric organizations. In the early 1920s, he became a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. In the 1930s, he and his older brother Julian, an evolutionary biologist, were involved in the experiments of the mediums of the Society for Psychic Research. In addition, Huxley was one of the first supporters of J. B. Rhine's views and wrote several essays on the topic of parapsychology — "Mind Reading" and "Science turns to the supernatural." In the early 1950s, when Huxley was living in Hollywood, he and his wife Maria held seances and informally explored other paranormal phenomena ^{[14, p. 4, 16]}. However, this does not indicate that Huxley was a religious man and believed in the supernatural, accepting on faith the provisions of esoteric and occult teachings. In his novels, he ridiculed the automatic writing of mediums and palmistry ^{[14, p. 16]}. And the contents of his letters from different years also confirm that Huxley rejected supernatural "nonsense about astral bodies, spiritual hierarchies, reincarnation, etc." ^{[15, pp. 136-137]}. "I am not a religious person — in the sense that I do not believe in metaphysical statements, do not worship or perform rituals, do not join churches — and therefore I do not feel competent or inclined to tell people in general what to think or do," Huxley writes in one of his later letters ^{[15, p. 811]}. It is known that Huxley had the opportunity to personally meet Aleister Crowley in 1930 and 1938 in Berlin, who practiced the use of peyote in occult practices. However, according to modern research, Huxley refused to experiment with hallucinogens at that time ^{[14, p. 279]}. Aldous Huxley's close relations with representatives of neo-Protestantism (D. Hurd and J. Krishnamurti), his membership in the Swami Prabhavananda community and participation in the activities of the Vedanta Society, as well as the inclusion of certain concepts and terminology of Hinduism in the works, serve as a reason for some researchers to overestimate the influence of Vedanta on his life and work.

The practice of Vedanta attracted him primarily for its method of developing intuition, which allows mystics to achieve special states of consciousness ^{[9, p. 346]}. The thinker attaches great importance to the intuitive form of cognition of the world. From Huxley's point of view, the devaluation of this method by scientists is an unjustified decision. Intuition is an integral part of any cognitive process. However, the experience of introspection, accompanied by free interpretation, can become a source of spreading false knowledge. Huxley emphasizes that history has repeatedly demonstrated how inner experiences, being distorted, were projected into the outside world, contributing to the emergence and spread of primitive superstitions ^{[10, p. 228]}. "There is a danger that the currently widespread interest in Eastern psychology and philosophy, due to misunderstandings, may lead to the re-spread of the grossest forms of superstition," Huxley writes in his essay. ^{[10, p. 228]}. He explains this by the difference between the psychological makeup of someone who has had a religious experience and those who interpret his experience, reinterpreting his words in the light of their own experience, knowledge, and prejudices. "The history of ideas," says Huxley, "is largely a history of misinterpretation of ideas" ^{[10, p. 227]}.

Another important aspect of the knowledge of religious experience is the principle of complementarity of rationalism and irrationalism. Huxley does not agree with the philosopher G. Hegel that the world is absolutely rational ^{[10, p. 253]}. One of the key ideas of the writer is the recognition of irrationality as an integral part of human experience. Irrationality is inherent in human nature from the beginning. In the "Human Situation" he writes: "We are both intelligence and passion; our minds have both objective knowledge of the outside world and subjective experience. I believe that the discovery of methods for combining these separate worlds, showing the relationship between them, is the most important task of modern education"^{[12, p. 10]}. By its very nature, religious experience does not have to be rational; rather, on the contrary, it must contain irrational elements such as emotions, intuition, and, of course, mystical states. Hence, Huxley has a great interest in altered states of consciousness, which he interprets as ways of knowing the world and self-development of personality. For Huxley, religion is closer to art: both "are not just sophistry or illusion, but those elements of experience that scientists decided not to take into account, for the good reason that they did not have intellectual methods to work with them" ^{[10, p. 268]}. In art, philosophy, and religion, people try to describe and explain immeasurable, purely qualitative aspects of reality ^{[10, p. 268]}.

Huxley's penchant for subjectivism was often the subject of criticism. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the scientific approach was a priority for him. This is reflected not only in the fact that he sought to make religious experiences the subject of rational study, but also in the call to measure religious practice with scientific achievements. As J. Deery notes, Huxley was one of the few literary figures who openly and repeatedly referred to scientific ideas in his works, both philosophical and artistic. There is not a single book in which he would not refer to science ^{[16, p. 18]}. This thesis is confirmed in an important episode of Huxley's biography: in order to achieve mystical experiences with the help of entheogens, he seeks help not from a shaman or occultist, but from scientists: psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond and psychotherapist Laura Archer, who used psychedelics to treat schizophrenia and other mental disorders ^{[7, p. 122]}. Religious experience is the existential experience of a single individual, it is built within the boundaries of human existence and can last his entire life, however, this experience has its own objective parameters: some regularity, practical orientation and experimentation. Thus, Huxley says that it is impossible to discuss the value of rituals and symbolic ceremonies of religions without addressing the issue of psychological types and degrees of mental development ^{[10, p. 226]}. Using Sheldon's scheme, the thinker juxtaposes mysticism and magic, the practice of meditation and ritualism. As he admits, working with consciousness through meditative practices is closer to him than magical rituals. Both techniques are related to the work of human consciousness, but their impact on the subject of experience is different. The difference will be discussed below. For now, it is worth noting the existing dialectical contradiction that Huxley highlights in religious experience. On the one hand, religious practice plays a major role in shaping a person's being and inner space, on the other hand, a subject's religious experience is determined by his psychotype. "Christianity is not one religion, but several, adapted to the needs of different types of people" ^{[10, p. 227]}. For Huxley, religious beliefs were as natural and inevitable a condition of human evolution as the natural inclination of all species to take measures necessary for physical survival.

The principles formed by Aldous Huxley influence his chosen system of research methods. He gives a critical assessment of the existing methods of studying religion at that time. Thus, for Huxley, all classification systems have a weak side, since they are to some extent capable of distorting reality and oversimplifying existing facts; but at the same time, he understands that without a classification method it is impossible to think clearly about reality ^{[10, p. 331]}.

Huxley shares religious practices and religious beliefs, but leaves a significant relationship between them. Incorrect metaphysical assumptions can lead to harmful religious practices. For example, the Aztecs believed that the sun was a living being that needed the blood of human victims as food. If it is not provided in sufficient quantity, the sun will die, and all life on earth will come to an end. Therefore, the Aztecs had to devote most of their energy to waging wars so that they would have enough captives to sacrifice. There are similar negative presuppositions in many religions of the world.

Classifying religious practices, the writer immediately applies a set of criteria (epistemological, moral and value), combining them into one — humanistic. "From a humanistic point of view, religious practices are valuable insofar as they provide methods of self-education, methods that people can use to transform their character and expand their consciousness" ^{[10, p. 331]}. Huxley talks about the varying degrees of value of practices. He identifies practices that are ethically neutral, but useless in epistemological and educational terms. The attitude towards ethically neutral customs, rituals and ceremonies of an organized religion should be determined solely by the nature of their impact: do they help maintain a satisfactory social order, facilitate and enrich relations between a person and a group, etc. Such practices, as Huxley assures, are the majority. The second type of religious practices includes those that are clearly morally evil and insane. Phenomena such as persecution, suppression of human will, or distortion of the truth are inherently wrong, and a reasonable person should have nothing to do with religious organizations that encourage such lawlessness.

Huxley analyzes in more detail the "useful practices" that can influence the development of an individual's consciousness. He classifies these practices based on their predominant use of physiological, emotional, or intellectual methods. Physiological methods include fasting, insomnia, dancing, rhythmic swaying, repetition of verbal formulas or musical phrases, and self-inflicted pain. According to the thinker, these practices are well mastered primarily by somatotonics. Control of physiological processes, austerity and pain tolerance are able to form discipline and will in a person. However, Huxley rightly points out the relative benefits of these methods. They can be dangerous both physiologically and morally. Excessive fascination with them leads to a disorder of the body, many bodies collapse under the stress imposed on them ^{[10, p. 333]}. On the moral side, these practices can arouse in a person "vanity and thirst for superiority, exclusivity and social recognition." "There are not many differences between Simeon Stylites and modern American six-packers, or between a fakir on a bed with nails and self-torturing participants in a dance marathon" ^{[10, p. 333]}. Moreover, in all but the most highly skilled, trained individuals, physical pain tends to enhance, rather than mitigate, natural body care. From this, Huxley concludes that a reasonable idealist should avoid such methods of self-torture until scientific knowledge allows them to be used more safely than is currently possible ^{[10, p. 234]}. A harmless method from this set of methods is dance. In many religious cultures (from primitive to modern), dance practices have always been widespread. It is important to note Aldous Huxley's remark about the Christian Church, related to her mistake when she refused to use dance as a method of achieving unusual states of consciousness.

In the second type of practices, Huxley includes those that basically contain the believer's emotional experiences of a personified deity. This type of practice is most common among people with viscerotonic habits, as their religious experiences tend to take on an emotional form. Culturally, these techniques are most clearly expressed in monotheistic religions, but they also have a formalization in national religious traditions. Huxley focuses on the Western Christian tradition and the Hindu bhakti marga (path of devotional faith). In different traditions, this method of working with consciousness is highly effective, as it often yields significant results in a short period of time. It's hard to disagree with Huxley that devotion and imitation of a personal deity gives worshippers more energy to change themselves and the world around them than any other form of religious self-development. But even so, the theology of bhakti marga may turn out to be false. For example, scrupulous devotion and imitation of the personality of Jesus, who, as is well known, was never engaged in philosophy, art, music or science, and almost completely ignored the problems of politics, economics and sexual relations, often led to a pernicious tendency on the part of sincere Christians to despise artistic creativity and philosophical thought, to despise the inquisitive mind, to avoid all long-term, large-scale problems of politics and economics, but at the same time consider themselves entitled to show anger, or, as they would undoubtedly prefer to call it, "just indignation" ^{[10, p. 238]}. At the same time, Huxley truthfully notes that the emotional method of secular self-education is no less effective than the religious one. To substantiate his judgment, he relies on research presented in the book "God or Man" by psychologist J. Leub. In it, Leuba points out that striking changes in an individual can occur without raising the question of religion; that imitation of human ideals and models can produce the desired character changes no less effectively than imitation of divine ideals ^{[10, p. 236]}. This allows Huxley to put the phenomenon of devotion to a personal deity (or saint) and a political idol on a par, as well as identify similarities in the consequences that may arise in both cases. "Faith in a personal, moral God has too often led to theoretical dogmatism and practical intolerance — to a consistent refusal to respect the individual and to commit all kinds of lawlessness on behalf of the divine personality" ^{[10, p. 301]}. Another example is the Hitlerite ideology, which claims that there is a Nordic race that is inherently superior to all others. With the "death of the old gods" and the demise of bhakti, the love of supernatural beings, people still have an inertial need for worship and religious expression. The masses continue to follow the path of devotion, but the objects of worship become a personified nation, class, or deified leader. Like Leuba, Aldous Huxley explains religious experiences with natural causes.

The third type of practice is based on meditation methods, working with one's own consciousness. At the same time, Huxley emphasizes that meditation is a technique of mysticism ^{[10, p. 286]}. Extreme asceticism, hatha yoga, or faith in the divine are not required to master it. Atheistic Buddhism is a good example. But this method is important for introverted cerebrotonics. The writer correlated this psychotype with such personalities as Jesus Christ and various ancient hermits, finding significant similarities in them and in himself. The value of these practices lies in the fact that a person can achieve detachment from "the things of this world" while strengthening the connection with the "integrating principle of all things" ^{[10, p. 233]}. However, improper use of these methods can also pose a danger to the practitioner.

Huxley, like most researchers, examines the components of religious experience using the classically established dichotomy of many traditions.: exoteric and esoteric levels. Within these levels, they are distinguished by ritual, contemplative practice, moral attitude, and theoretical understanding of the experience gained. However, the author observes antagonism between them. Ritual may conflict with contemplative practice and the moral side of an individual's religious experience. Huxley notes the social nature of rituals. At the societal level, the positive aspect of ritual is its ability to integrate members of society. However, the assessment of the integration of an individual in Huxley's words has a negative connotation: rituals are equated by the writer to "fetters that bind people to the body of Christian society" ^{[10, p. 330]}. Ritual for Huxley has a collective psychological nature and is associated with mass consciousness. "Rituals and ceremonies will arise almost spontaneously wherever masses of people gather to participate in any activity that affects them emotionally. These rituals and ceremonies will exist and develop exactly as long as the emotional level of people does not change" ^{[10, p. 229]} It is impossible to convince people of any particular idea or reverence for a person if they are not emotionally interested in them, and it is impossible to get into the habit of performing rituals and ceremonies related to by this idea or person. "Creating a ritual, as Comte did, in the hope that it will evoke religious emotions, is like putting a cart in front of a horse" ^{[10, p. 229]}.

Analyzing the religious situation of the industrially developed West in the 1930s, Aldous notes the crisis of the rituals and ceremonies of traditional Christianity. He attributes this to the poor effectiveness of rituals. "They do absolutely nothing to preserve the social structure of the Christian world and have proved their inability to resist the competition of new rituals and ceremonies of nationalistic idolatry" ^{[10, p. 229]}.

To describe the negative impact of rituals on an individual's consciousness, Huxley introduces the concept of "ritualism", which means "belief in the magical effectiveness of rituals" ^{[10, p. 226]}. Ritualism manifests itself in the illusory belief of people that strictly following prescribed actions, pronouncing prescribed phrases, making correct gestures and observing traditional taboos are sufficient for their spiritual development. Huxley believes that these people move away from the problems of real life to symbolic ceremonies and neglect their duties towards themselves, their neighbors and their god. For them, the performance of traditional rituals becomes a substitute for moral efforts and intelligence ^{[10, p. 331]}.

Huxley draws a distinction between magic and mysticism based on the juxtaposition of ritualism and mysticism. Mixing of the two is possible even in modern research. Huxley attributes this to the fact that being a non-mystical person does not allow one to understand the nature of a mystic's intuition ^{[10, p. 288]}. Therefore, non-mystics are convinced that symbolic descriptions of mystical experiences speak of alchemy or magical rituals. However, a mystical experience means something more. Huxley believes that properly practiced, with proper physical, mental, and moral training, meditation can lead to a state that has been called "transcendental consciousness." The basis of this state is direct intuition and unity with the ultimate spiritual reality, which is perceived both as being beyond the human self and, in a sense, inside it. In contrast to the developing phenomenological concepts that see something "sacred" in the structure of rituals, ceremonials, and objects of worship (R. Otto, G. van der Leeuw, J. Wah, and others), Huxley perceives any set of rituals and paraphernalia as an auxiliary tool devoid of a sacred component. At the same time, he notes the uselessness of most of them for the formation of mystical experiences. This circumstance fundamentally distinguishes Huxley's approach from another trend of that time — traditionalism, which focused on initiations or occult paraphernalia (R. Guenon, Y. Evola, G. Wirth, etc.). Huxley did not advocate the rejection of science and modern civilization, he consistently argued that humanity should extract "the best of both worlds", science and religion, quantum physics and mysticism, and conscientiously use the latest scientific achievements for the harmonious development of society ^{[14, p. 100]}. But while criticizing ritualism, he also notes that mysticism does not warn the adept against the same vices that ritualism produces, but it can enhance them if mystical practices are treated like magic. The theme of the ambivalence of religious components (their destructive and constructive properties) will become an important component of his philosophical analysis. In the "Human Situation" he draws attention to the ambivalence of faith, myth, and theological conceptual systems ^{[12, pp. 126, 130, 132, 153]}. Their ambivalence is directly related to the ambivalent nature of both man himself and language as a means of spreading tradition. However, the goal of the mystic is to go beyond grammar to address pure experience without any linguistic symbolization or religious concepts.

Through the indicated "mysticism-ritualism" dichotomy, Huxley analyzes the important question of the relationship between social and individual religious experience. Mystical experiences, unlike ceremonial ones, are always individual and take place most often in an intimate setting. Huxley distinguishes between two types of religions: the religion of direct experience (mysticism) and the religion of symbols (a religion that imposes order and meaning on the world through verbal or non-verbal symbols and their manipulation) ^{[12, p. 148]}. One of the sides of this problem is the confrontation between politics and mysticism. Huxley focuses on the fact that political leaders often use religion to control the consciousness of the masses and control. The monopoly of power on the worldview of its subjects has historically led to intolerance of dissent and mysticism on the part of the authorities and politically biased theologians. They saw non-traditional knowledge as a threat to the existing regime and traditional foundations. Huxley does not make a fundamental distinction between religions that have developed under the influence of politicians and newly emerged totalitarian ideologies, which he calls pseudo-religions or political idolatry ^{[11, p. 216]}.

However, as Huxley notes, the best mystics in the history of mankind transcend the boundaries of dogmatic ideas about the personified deities of their traditions and achieve direct interaction with the depersonified Absolute. At the same time, the ethics and spiritual values that they derive from this "integrating principle" are surprising in their identity. Huxley reveals this problem in more detail in his work "Eternal Philosophy" (1945). This book is an anthology of mystical texts from all religious traditions over two millennia, from the Bhagavad Gita (c. 500 BC ‒ 500 AD) and the Upanishads (c. 800 – 400 BC) to the Bardo Thedol (c. VIII century AD), The Clouds of Ignorance.(c. XIV century A.D.) and "Books of Common Prayer", including Christian saints (St. John of the Cross, William Lowe, St. Teresa of Avila), Taoist sages (Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu), Sufi mystics (Rumi), Hindu philosophers (Shankara) and Buddhist poets (Ashvaghosha). Huxley did a tremendous job of systematizing and synthesizing spiritual sources according to an important criterion — the "universal core" of any mystical experience. It includes the following elements: inexpressibility of experience, depersonalization of the deity, violation of the subjective perception of one's own personality in a state of ecstasy (depersonalization), a sense of unity with the impersonal Absolute. It is extremely important to understand that Huxley compiled The Eternal Philosophy during World War II and that the intention of the book was to promote a common mystical philosophy that transcended national and religious differences, which, in Huxley's opinion, could be the best guarantee against further wars and violence.

However, Huxley eventually comes to the conclusion that the experience of mystical union is possible only for a small part of people. He was disappointed by his failure to achieve this unity through meditation techniques. Huxley's frustration led to the decision to stop lecturing at the Vedanta Society of Southern California. In 1953, the writer began studying publications in medical journals on the effects of mescaline— the main alkaloid of the peyote cactus. He hoped that this substance would allow him to penetrate deeper into the nature of mystical perception of reality. In May of the same year, he took mescaline for the first time under the supervision of psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond. This experience, which he described as visionary, served as the basis for writing a study called "Doors of Perception." In this paper, the author has attempted to systematically describe and analyze his visual and cognitive experiences caused by exposure to mescaline. Under the influence of the psychedelic substance, the objects of the material world acquired increased brightness and significance, which caused the writer to feel their supernatural nature. Huxley argued that his mescaline experience was not identical to enlightenment or mystical union, but contained important similarities. According to Aldous Huxley, the structure of visionary experience may include the following elements: experiencing magnified light and color, vivid auditory experiences, a decrease in the level of generalization and a transition to preconceptional thinking, a decrease in the importance of space and time, depersonalization accompanied by loss of the will to act, increased attractiveness of visionary experience ^{[17, pp. 20-23]}. "At the last stage of the absence of the ego, there appears a "vague knowledge" that Everything is in everything; that everything is really everyone" ^{[17, p. 28]}. It is in contemplative practice that the writer sees an opportunity to prevent moral evil: the contemplative "refrains from doing much of what he should not do" ^{[17, p. 50]}.

In another essay, Heaven and Hell (1956), Huxley examines another facet of the mescaline experience, which is associated with visual experiences that occur with closed eyes. The described images are kaleidoscopic patterns characterized by high intensity of colors and light. Huxley argues that these visions are caused by the activation of the collective unconscious and carry a deep symbolic meaning. In this context, visionary experience is comparable to descriptions of heaven and magical lands in folklore and myths, such as the Garden of the Hesperides, Eden, Avalon, Elysium, and the Islands of the Blessed ^{[17, p. 119]}. An important point of the experiment is Huxley's conclusion about the dependence of the phenomenological characteristics of experience on various factors: idiosyncrasy of the subject's mental structure, temperament, habits, emotional and moral training ^{[17, p. 14]}. This was confirmed by other group experiments in which Huxley also participated ^{[18, pp. 183-184]}. In the lecture "Visionary Experience", Aldous Huxley argues that states of visionary experience can spontaneously arise in every person, especially in childhood and at the time of death ^{[18, pp. 193-194]}.

Huxley attaches great importance to the topic of biological factors of visionary experiences of mystics and their artificial evocation in laboratories. So he believes that going to deserts or caves of saints of different faiths contributes to the development of sensory deprivation, which was reproduced by neurophysiologists Donald Hebb and John Lilly. To change the chemistry of the body, you can use holding your breath or fasting (fasting), which again leads to a change on a psychological level. This has been empirically proven by American physiologist and nutritionist Ansel Keyes. Huxley also explains the reason for the wider spread of visionary visions in the ancient and Middle Ages. The dietary factor played an important role: a modest diet in early civilizations often caused certain types of visionary experiences, while modern food abundance, on the contrary, locks the "gates of perception" ^{[18, p. 197]}. Huxley also talks about the biochemical evidence for other methods of achieving mystical and mystical states: self-flagellation and reducing sleep time. But Huxley recognizes the use of psychoactive substances as the fastest way to change body chemistry and achieve visionary experiences. The use of psychedelics in some spiritual traditions and the similarity of subjective experiences with mystical states led Aldous Huxley to believe in his proximity to enlightenment. Nevertheless, the results of his experiments indicate that mystical experiences are of a physiological nature. In the last decade of his life, Huxley moved away from the idea of mysticism as a practice aimed at achieving mystical unity with the divine. Instead, he began to advocate worldly forms of mysticism, focusing on physicality and the world as embodiments of the divine ^{[14, p. 5]}.

It should nevertheless be noted that the writer does not advocate drug use, but in his other works directly points out the danger of abuse and dependence on them. "In their incessant search for self—transcendence, millions of potential mystics become addicted, commit tens of thousands of crimes and participate in hundreds of thousands of avoidable accidents," he warns in his essay "Drugs Shaping People's Consciousness" (1958) ^{[18, p. 155]}. I. Golovicheva rightly points out the difference the difference between the psychedelic experience of a drug addict (using the example of beat writer W. Burroughs) and the scientifically oriented experience of Huxley ^{[8, p. 130]}.

Aldous Huxley's knowledge of mystical experience in a similar form and its popularization in articles caused a lot of discussion. The famous religious scholar Houston Smith, who came to Vedanta thanks to Hurd and Huxley, spoke enthusiastically about the book "Eastern Philosophy" and wrote comments on one of its editions. Smith also had a positive attitude towards psychedelic experiments. Thanks to Huxley, he became a member of one of T. Leary's bands. However, he would write about the band's work almost forty years later in his work "Cleansing the Doors of Perception.": The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals» (2000). Nevertheless, many experts were skeptical about such experiments. Thinkers Arthur Koestler and Martin Buber have questioned the possible connection between the use of psychedelic drugs and mystical experiences. Carl Jung also sharply criticized. Disapproval was expressed by Swami as well. Prabhavananda, who considered the idea that psychedelic drugs could induce a state of samadhi to be a "deadly heresy" and accused Huxley and Hurd of spreading it. But Huxley's most ardent opponent was R. C. Zener, head of the Department of Oriental Religions and Ethics at Oxford University. In his book Mysticism, Sacred and Profane (1957), written as a refutation of the Doors of Perception, Zener insists that Huxley's mescaline experience is very different from genuine mystical experience, that is, "the direct experience of God in His ineffable holiness." In other words, Zener himself became the object of criticism from Houston Smith in the article "Do psychedelics have religious significance?" (1964), in which he was accused of subjectivism and inconsistency in understanding the mystical ^{[19, pp. 108-112]}. Despite contradictory assessments from experts, the significance of Huxley's experiments for philosophy and science was enormous. Subsequent generations of philosophers and scientists continued to actively study the biochemical basis of religious experiences in the laboratory (T. Leary, R. Metzner, S. Grof, R. Olpert, etc.), and from the mid-70s, neurophysiologists began to explore religious practices using special equipment (electroencephalograph, MRI, computed tomographs). Huxley's experiments and their popularization have exposed a whole range of pressing issues for religious scholars, philosophers, psychiatrists, and psychologists.: Are meditation practices and psychedelic substances capable of opening the gates to some hidden facet of reality? Is this reality divine or hallucinatory in nature? Are mystical and psychedelic experiences identical? Is mystical (religious) experience devalued because it is based on biochemical processes rather than metaphysical revelations and ethical imperatives?

Despite the fact that Huxley was primarily a writer, his importance to science cannot be overestimated. As I. Golovacheva notes, Huxley is almost the only writer who participated in professional symposiums and congresses on psychiatry, psychology, medicine, psychopharmacology and parapsychology ^{[6, p. 17]}. Not only philosophers, which is not uncommon in the history of literature, but also professional biologists, geneticists, physicians, pharmacologists, psychiatrists and psychotherapists with whom he exchanged opinions treated him extremely seriously, sometimes perceiving him as a colleague and involving him in innovative projects ^{[8, p. 26]}.

It is impossible to ignore how the interpretation of Huxley's experience influenced popular culture, shifting the emphasis in the understanding of the "spiritual", giving it new, sometimes unexpected shades. As noted by religious scholar Boaz Huss, if before that the adjective "spiritual" was originally an antonym for the word "secular", then since the 1970s it has been used in opposition to institutional religion and has culminated in a new category of "spiritual, but not religious" ^{[20, p. 50]}.

So, Aldous Huxley, as a methodologist and philosopher of religion, offers readers and the scientific community important ideas about the interaction of science and spirituality, as well as the importance of religious experience in human life. At the theoretical level, the influence of various scientific and philosophical approaches (psychological, phenomenological, historical, comparative) is visible. His view of religious experience is based on a methodology synthesized between science and mysticism, scientific apparatus and religious and philosophical metaphor. In his writings, he emphasizes the need for critical thinking in the study of religious experience. He assigns fundamental importance to facts and experience in his research, while he does not distinguish between psychological fact and scientific evidence. Since religious experience is rooted in the irrational depths of the unconscious, its comprehension requires a synthesis of rational research (analysis, synthesis, classification, structural analysis) and introspection — immersion in one's own spiritual experience bordering on mystical, followed by its comprehension. That is why Huxley chooses the widely known psychosomatic concept of temperament of the psychologist and physician William Sheldon as a theoretical support, which connected the physical structure of a person with his character and inclinations. Huxley used data from various experiments as an empirical basis. Initially, these were experiments related to self-hypnosis and meditation, and later he incorporated the results of experiments with psychedelic substances into his research. Thus, his work combined the theoretical foundation laid by Sheldon with the practical experience gained during various studies aimed at studying altered states of consciousness.

When analyzing religious experience, he uses a practical method based on the juxtaposition of paired categories: body-mind, ritualism-mysticism, religious experience-mystical experience, religious tradition-spiritual innovation. And if the body-mind dichotomy is dominated by organic natural unity and mutual influence, then there is a clear antagonism in the ratio of the poles of other dichotomies. Mysticism as a pure spiritual experience of perceiving the transcendent is opposed to institutional (organized) religion, ritualism, and even tradition. He understands religious experience more broadly than mystical experience. However, speaking of mystical experience, Huxley does not mean supernatural violations of physical laws, but, on the contrary, natural mechanisms integrated into the biological functions of the human body.

An important point in Aldous Huxley's teaching about religious experience is the ambivalence of religious phenomena: faith, myth, theological systems, rituals, and religious practices, which he analyzes pragmatically, applying a humanistic criterion for assessing their significance for the development of the individual and society. It should also be noted that until the end of his life, Huxley's methodology did not radically change, and his understanding of mystical phenomena became even more body-oriented.

The philosophical works of Aldous Huxley, thanks to his innovative view of religious experience, remain relevant and relevant to today's discussions about the impact of religion on society, spirituality and human existence. In an era of globalization and cultural diversity, his reflections and concepts remain essential for understanding ways to achieve harmony between different worldviews and traditions.