Watts
Laura, I’ve been reading your book This Timeless Moment with extraordinary fascination. I don’t think I’ve ever read a biography quite like that, because it’s not a complete biography, it’s the story of the last days, in a way, or the last years, of Aldous Huxley. But I can’t think of anybody else who has been written about by his widow, and a case where the book was so very largely concerned with the process of death, and with a highly intelligent form of dying.
There is, as I remember, a story which is supposed to have been told of Goethe, that when he was dying somebody called and wanted to see him, but the maid answering the door said, “But the master is busy dying.” And our culture is one in which death is invariably something swept under the carpet.
Huxley
Yes.
Watts
We pretend it doesn’t really happen. And therefore, there is no realization that dying is an art.
Huxley
And it’s an adventure, too, you know. I don’t know, but maybe it’s the only chance that we have, that one. We don’t know.
Watts
It is. And I think, as you tell the story, you acted as a marvelous high priestess in helping someone through this adventure.
Huxley
Well, Aldous had done the same thing for his first wife Maria, you see. And that of course gave me the inspiration. And he spoke very often of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, which I haven’t read completely, but I know the basic assumption. And throughout his work he spoke about this fact of paying attention. You remember, in Island—
Watts
Where the minor birds call out, “Here and now, boys! Attention!”
Huxley
Yes! You know, I love so much your seminar. You teach that, and that book. It’s the best presentation of that book that I could hope to hear.
Watts
Yes, I think that was a very great book, Island. The problem is that I’ve found, in giving lectures, if I announce a title for a lecture, and then give a lecture on a different subject—even though it may be a perfectly good lecture, people are somehow discombobulated, they’re somehow put out—
Huxley
I think you always give a lecture on a different subject, Alan! You always do that!
Watts
I can talk about the same thing in ever so many different ways. But the point is: when Aldous put out Island, he put it out in the form of a novel.
Huxley
That’s right, that’s right.
Watts
And people have very fixed ideas of what a novel is supposed to be, and they had identified Aldous to a great extent as a novelist. And then, when it so turned out that Island was a sociological textbook, almost, a sociological blueprint in the form of a novel, they said: well, he’s really sermonizing with a few entertaining bits added, just because of the novel form.
Huxley
Yes, I mean, it would really have been better if he would’ve written it strict as a manual for living and loving and dying. Because then the public would not have expected a novel—which, apparently, as a novel, it’s not his very best.
Watts
No. No, but that’s ridiculous. It’s quite obvious to anyone who reads it that it wasn’t really intended to be a novel. It was just put in that form, yes.
Huxley
Well, [???] Island. It’s different, you know? I mean, in conclusion, very few people have read it. And there are so many sequences, there are so many methods which are so practical for [???] now. It would be wonderful if we could apply only a few of them. We would all feel better. You know, I have really sort of a crusade against useless suffering. And in that book there is so much about suffering which is not necessary, it’s not creative, it’s just nothing. It doesn’t bring any enlightenment, any compassion. Man-made.
Watts
A great number of young people are reading this book today.
Huxley
Good. Yes.
Watts
And it’s become a sort of inspiration for many of them for experiments in forming new kinds of family, new communities, intentional communities. But I heard a story where Aldous was challenged about this book and said, “Now, did you mean this seriously?” And he said, “Oh no. It is purely an intellectual exercise.”
Huxley
Did he say that? I didn’t—
Watts
Well, he’s supposed to have said that. What do you think about that? You were with him while he was writing it.
Huxley
Well, I think exactly the contrary. I don’t think it was an intellectual exercise. I mean, he might have said that as a joke, but he really—every sequence in that book, every mettle, every recipe (if you like to call it that way) is something that—most of them, at least—he experimented himself in his own life. And he—I don’t know. It was not an intellectual exercise. The part of the novel, the writing the novel—it was probably an intellectual exercise, because he had to fit it.
Watts
And now I realize that. Aldous also once said: “When you’re with savages, don’t fool with them, because you will end up in the cooking pot.” And therefore he used to know how to be very perspicacious and tactful about his public relations. But, you know, a thing that has often occurred to me is that Aldous Huxley was one of the most highly educated men I ever ran into. When you study the field of his interests, the scope of his interests—especially as reveled in his essays—he knew a great deal about the history of art, an enormous amount about the history of science and technology. He was fond of the theater, he knew about music, he had an encyclopedic mind. And he carried all this with a lovely urbanity—so much so that I think a great many people simply didn’t know how to understand him, because they weren’t well educated enough.
Huxley
That’s right. The [???] was enormous. But, for instance, I can tell you about music. I am a violinist, I’ve been trained as a violinist. It has been the major work in my life. At one time he mentioned a concerto, a Viotti concerto, that no one knows except violinists who had to study it to work the technique. And he knew this Viotti concerto. It was absolutely extraordinary. He knew as much as a specialist, really, in their field. And then, of course, he could correlate all of this. And in this utopia, this Island, he wanted to put everything in, you know? All the chemical study, all the progress in pharmacology, and make it into a concrete mysticism.
Watts
Well, I think he—along with that, you see—had the difficulty of living in a country where that sort of highly cultured intellectuality is envied, and because it’s envied it’s put down. People used to circulate stories, for example, that before going to a party Aldous would read in the Encyclopedia Britannica. So everything that it had to say on the letter “P,” the origins of that. Then he would suddenly move the conversation around to where the letter “P” in some way became important, and then would proceed to be completely encyclopedic on the subject.
Huxley
When we were going to a party Aldous always discussed what I was going to wear, and I really liked it, and this and that.
Watts
Well, I think that sort of story expresses the envy and the resentment which people feel for such high culture.
Huxley
But I don’t think he was aware of that, really. He would be very amused.
Watts
No. I never saw—in all that I knew of him—any kind of awkward self-consciousness about these things. He had a kind of reserve, which is very natural to Englishmen of his upbringing. A lot of people—for example, I had a rather similar upbringing, and a lot of people think that I’m a bit isolated and difficult to reach, when it isn’t that at all. It’s really consideration for other people, fundamentally, which makes English people reserved. We don’t want to throw ourselves at everyone, and so it’s very difficult to transplant yourself to the United States where that’s more or less what you’re expected to do.
Huxley
Yes. And yet, with that upbringing, he would live very much in the American way and enjoy it. You know, I said in the book we were married in a drive-in chapel. Well now, less English than that and less Italian than that you can’t find it. And he enjoyed it, and I enjoyed it very much. And he did all the things that were done in America, you know? He didn’t try to transplant his old way of living here.
Watts
Yes. But of course there is still a fundamental style of life—
Huxley
Oh, a style of life; an inner style. Yes. Oh yes, very much so. But, I mean, if I was not there for lunch or something, he would make his own lunch very well. And this is rather more American.
Watts
You mean he was a good cook?
Huxley
Oh yes. He was a very nice cook. He particularly liked to make soups. He had a whole—once he even thought of writing a little book about making soups. How is your own book going, Alan?
Watts
Well, I never—oh, I tell you, I have abandoned that for the time being, because I felt that writing about gourmet cookery at this moment would be like fiddling while Rome burns.
Huxley
Well, so what are you doing about Rome?
Watts
I’m writing a book instead about ethics, called The Rules of the Game. And I think that’s an extremely important subject for young people. And as you see, in the same way you could say from a certain point of view that, as his life went on, all of Aldous’ books became more serious (or I would prefer to say sincere), and concerned with profound matters.
Huxley
And this is what you’re doing.
Watts
But, you know, critics have tended to say about the later work of Aldous Huxley, which begins with a book called Ends and Means—I remember reading an article by Charles Savage in the [???] Review some years ago discussing the change in his work, and saying that we are really seeing two different sides of the same man. He pointed out that Aldous is at his best when he is destroying, when he is satirizing, when he is poking fun and contempt at various things. And so in all his early satirical novels he proved himself to be a master of this.
“Now,” said Savage, “he shifts to a certain kind of mysticism. But the message of this mysticism is really the same as that of his earlier novels, namely, that the human world—the world of personalities, the world of differentiation, the world of multiplicity, of nature—is really fundamentally contemptible and should all be dissolved in the undifferentiated aesthetic continuum in the Brahman, in the Ungrund, in the what have you,” you know?
Huxley
Oh goodness, interpreting is a terrible [???]. It should be one of the great crimes.
Watts
Isn’t it? Because I was astounded when I read this.
Huxley
Really. I mean, how can one come to such a conclusion after all that he tried? Whenever he tried—the importance of each person, of each thing in nature. Even a thing, as such.
Watts
But he saw that. But these people can’t see that he saw it. You see, I had met Aldous just a little before I read that review. And that was back in, oh, 1947. And he had then written Grey Eminence and The Perennial Philosophy. And in Grey Eminence I feel that, at that time, Aldous was somewhat under the influence of Gerald Heard’s more ascetic period.
Huxley
Possibly, yeah.
Watts
That was when Gerald Heard was running the co-educational monastery at Trabuco, and they were trying to take the kingdom of heaven by storm, and they were all very much in a way mystically uptight. And I felt a little reflection of that in Aldous at the time. But then, when his attitude began to change, he became less and less the Manichean and more and more what I would call a tantric type.
Huxley
Yes. Completely the type. He wrote me a wonderful letter when he died about that; how he had felt this development in Aldous, especially in the later years—in Aldous’ way of being, even of dressing. And he knew the outer signs of [???] can be negative.
Watts
Well, to tell you the truth, Laura, when I first met him, it was in Hollywood, and he came out in the most decrepit old pants and a run-down shirt, and of course he was vastly entertaining but he was looking pretty shabby. And I met him again after he married you, and suddenly he was nattily dressed. He was wearing a beautiful tweed jacket with a handkerchief in the breast pocket just so. He looked beautifully groomed. Oh my goodness. [???]
Huxley
Oh, he had a wonderful collection of ties. I must send you one—but you don’t wear ties. But it was the most magnificent collection. And they would be called psychedelic ties, because—
Watts
Well, I wear ties when the occasion requires. You must remember, I’m a sort of joker or comedian who adopts the guise suitable to the occasion. But no, I always had the impression, you see, that this criticism of savages was absolutely ridiculous. Because I never met a man who had so many interests. In other words, he was profoundly interested in all the diversities.
Huxley
Yes, and he was so curious in everything, really. A timeless moment. I mean, still, he was living moment by moment. And he had, I suppose, disciplined himself to that. So maybe that was why he enjoyed life so much.
Watts
Yes.
Huxley
That was—and another thing. I mean, people think sometimes that he was a bit depressed man. He was hardly ever a depressed man. Very, very seldom. He was preoccupied, but he always tried to do something about this preoccupation—you know, the state of the world, and all that.
Watts
But I think all writers tend to get moods of preoccupation. You get completely fascinated with writing, and then you may suddenly have to have a meal, and you turn up and sit down and eat, and you can’t get your mind off the various ideas or themes you’re playing with, and your wife may say to you, “What’s the matter with you? Can’t you make any conversation? Are you angry with me?” Or something of that kind.
Huxley
No, I really only had that with Aldous when he was writing Island, because of this contrast. You know, the novel and the essay. Otherwise, his writing—yes, it fascinated him. But he was very ready to change the course of his thought. But with Island, two or three times, he was. And then, of course, when he was ill at the end. Because there were so many things still that he wanted to do, and he wondered how long a time would he have, how much energy. There was a period there, like that. And yes—
Watts
It took a long time to write Island, didn’t it?
Huxley
Yes, he really wrote it in two or three periods. He left it sometimes and then went back again.
Watts
Of course, that’s the hardest thing to do. In a way, it’s easy to write Brave New World, because there the point of view is, in a way, critical. But in Island, where you want to paint the vision of what you really believe in and what you would like to happen, that’s the hardest thing to do.
Huxley
Yes. And then, as you said, who is it that said that the movie, I believe, that sentiment make good novels? Yes.
Watts
Bad sentiments make good novels.
Huxley
Yes. Yes, because when everything is fine and nice, and everybody’s good and happy, it’s very difficult to write about it.
Watts
Yes. And in the same way, I think that the imagery of paradise in the history of Western art has been artistically inferior to the imagery of hell. If you take, for example, Gustave Doré’s illustrations to the Divina Comedia, those for hell and purgatory are fascinating. But the illustrations for the Paradiso are just these streams of angels in white nightiers flying around the sky, and they’re very uninspiring.
Huxley
Well, because that’s right. But then he should have seen that in different ways. Now there is all kind of different illustration, because the photography—for instance, the photography there is in your book, The Joyous Cosmology, and the photography of flowers or things of nature. It is so magnificent that I think that maybe this is changing now, don’t you think?
Watts
Yes, I think so. I think we are seeing the reemergence in Western art of sheer glory, which we haven’t seen since the stained glass and the illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages.
Huxley
And it is the same thing, the mystical experience, which brings this expression about.
Watts
I think that the best illustrations of paradise are to be found in Persian miniatures. Was Aldous interested in those?
Huxley
Yes, yes, we had some books. Yes, he was always looking with the enlarging glass to look at the details of this.
Watts
Now I must, to some extent, attribute the change in his attitude—and also in Gerald Heard’s attitude—to the time when they first encountered LSD. It seemed to me that in both of them there was a marked shift of attitude. I suppose that those who would be unfavorable to Aldous would say, well, that’s the time they got their brains damaged. But it was highly interesting damage for both of them, because I felt that the attitudes of both of them became somehow enriched.
Huxley
Oh yes, well, of course, I knew all this very little before. But, in fact, I only met him a few times. But when I saw him after that experience, which was in Rome, it was this tremendous vitality and this tremendous interest in looking and seeing and experimenting. Of course, he didn’t do this experimenting so often as people thought, you know. It was done very, very rarely.
Watts
Oh, well, that’s the way I think in any intelligent use of this kind of thing. A single experience gives you so much that it takes several months to digest it.
Huxley
Yes, exactly.
Watts
And, you know, to go on week after week—or worse, day after day—with this sort of thing is to give yourself a mystical indigestion.
Huxley
Yes, and all this had not happened, you see. By the time that Aldous died, it was just beginning in 1963. I remember in the last few months or even weeks of his life, he began to hear about abuses and so on. I think he would be horrifying to see what…. I wonder what he would have done, you know, to prevent this. Of course, he would have done all that he could. And I wonder how much he could have accomplished in preventing this misuse and abuse. There is so much sensation about this.
Watts
Well, all that kind of thing seems to me to be inevitable in a world where there are no secrets. In other words, scientific knowledge has to be public knowledge, because the community of scientists has to know all about it in order to work. And therefore there are no secrets, and therefore everything gets broadcast around. And I felt that when Aldous had let the cat out of the bag with The Doors of Perception, and later with Heaven and Hell, that I ought to write something about it, too. I was reserved about writing anything about it much before. But I felt that he had let the cat out of the bag, and that more needed to be said. Now, of course, the cat would have been let out of the bag eventually. There’s no doubt about it.
Huxley
Well, I think so. And probably not as well in such a good manner.
Watts
No, right. But now, when was it approximately that he first experimented with LSD?
Huxley
In 1953.
Watts
In 1953.
Huxley
53. That’s right. And The Doors of Perception came out in 1954.
Watts
As early as 54?
Huxley
Oh yes. Doors of Perception was 1954.
Watts
Oh, I had no idea it was that early.
Huxley
Wait a second. I was going to Italy, and I read it on the plane. No, it came out in 1955.
Watts
1955. Yes, that might be.
Huxley
No, no, no. 54. 54.
Watts
1954, still?
Huxley
It was in the summer of 54 that I read it. Yes, that’s right.
Watts
Because, you see, I didn’t run into this until 1958.
Huxley
Well, I think that we met here in San Francisco one time, yes.
Watts
Yes, that’s right. At the Tokyo Sukiyaki Restaurant. That’s right, yes. But I hadn’t encountered it until that time. You got married in what year?
Huxley
In 1956.
Watts
1956. Aha. Well, anyway, I felt that this had fully opened his eyes to see that the mystical world, or the mystical dimension, of unity behind the whole cosmos was no longer something that required for its vision a turning away from the diversity of the material world, but you could see this underlying unity right in the multiplicity of the material world.
Huxley
Yes. That’s what he said.
Watts
And he seemed to be feeling that more and more strongly as time went on.
Huxley
Yes, yes, yes, yes. I remember he was writing to me the summer before we were married. He was in New York, and he wrote to me that he went to see a musical comedy, and it was a very poor and vulgar thing. And he said: yet, even there, if one would look with attention and look deeply, one could find some kind of essence of beauty.
Watts
Well, I had exactly the same experience in listening to a terrible Baptist preacher on the radio.
Huxley
Well, that’s the same thing.
Watts
And it was really awful, and it was as phony as it could be. And it was concerned with money—send in your dollar, you know: “If you want a copy this address, be sure to send in your dollar!” But as I listened deeply into that voice, it sounded like someone saying: “Well, I’m just alive, and I’ve got to eat, too!” And it was a little baby calling for its mother in the dark. But it was coming on like, you know, all this God and Jesus and salvation and everything, and saying it as if it knew all about it. But you could see this was a big front on quaking terror underneath.
Huxley
Well, the same thing, you see, there was nothing that—Aldous, really, was a very fine musician. And musical comedy for him was not his type of music. And particularly this one—I don’t know which one it was—but it was particularly bad. And yet, and yet, you know, “If you listen,” he said, “you would find something in that.”
Watts
Did he ever discuss these experiences with Krishnamurti?
Huxley
He did. He told me that the very first time that he had it, with Maria and Dr. Osmond. Then he went up to Ojai and spoke about it to Krishnaji. And Krishnaji was very familiar with the whole thing. He said, “Oh yes, yes, yes. Oh yes, that’s right,” and so and so. He knew exactly what Aldous was speaking about. I have a feeling that Krishnaji is there all the time, except when he has to come back and talk a little bit. And I think that that is the merit of Krishnamurti—to do this speaking to people, because probably he would have a much better time not to.
Watts
Would you say that Aldous was greatly influenced by Krishnaji?
Huxley
Yes, I would say that he was influenced by Krishnaji probably more than by any other single religious man.
Watts
Well I, in a way, could say the same thing. Only, one is always very hesitant in acknowledging any debt to Krishnaji, because he so hates the idea of having any disciples.
Huxley
Yes.
Watts
But I, for my part, feel that he is one of the most original and profound thinkers in the world, because he’s always a bit unexpected. He’s never in the ordinary ruts of religious or psychotherapeutic thinking.
Huxley
Well, the trouble is that he—I mean, the trouble! It’s not the trouble, the point is that that is what he is. But he does not give any way to get there. And that is the great thing, you see. People say: well, why? How am I going to do that? And you know that he really was very, very angry at me when I wrote that book, you know—You Are Not The Target—with recipes of techniques. I thought that I was very innocent, and I told him about it with great pleasure. And, oh, he was quite violent about it.
Watts
Oh, you tell that story in your book then, don’t you?
Huxley
Yes, yes. Yes, because I spoke about this during lunch. And then we were alone, and he looked at me very, very intensely. And he said: “You know, all these people that go around helping other people, I think they are cursed!” Looking at me! I was so shaken. But after a few seconds I found myself, and I said, “What do you think you are doing?” And this answer was so delightful. He said, “Oh, but I don’t do it on purpose.” And that was something that Aldous just adored; this thing. “I don’t do it on purpose.” You know, it was so clear to Aldous what he meant. But it’s not clear to everyone because it’s not easy, really.
Watts
That was the conversation, wasn’t it, that—again, it’s reported in your book—where he ends up on this extraordinary note that the state of consciousness that he is trying to describe as in himself is one which has no center.
Huxley
No center. That’s right. And it is just so opposite of what we find, you know. We always try to find the center core of ourselves.
Watts
Yes.
Huxley
And go to the center, find it, be the center. And he said: no center.
Watts
Yes, that was very strange.
Huxley
Very strange. One can feel that, for him, it’s all so natural. For Krishnamurti all this is so natural, so obvious, that it seems to him preposterous even to have to say these things. But I must say, it’s not natural and easy for many people to find out. It’s not easy for me, certainly.
Watts
Did Krishnaji in any way disapprove of Aldous’ use of psychedelics to see these things?
Huxley
Well, this I don’t know. He never told me that, and I don’t think that he ever said anything like that to Aldous. No, I think the two men were so nice together. I don’t know, they didn’t speak much. You know, we once visited Krishnaji in India for three days, and I don’t think that they ever talked very much about all these deep philosophies or modes of existence. They just were very nice together. One felt a tremendous liking for each other. It was a very special atmosphere when they were together. But I don’t know that he told him, you know, the recreation, do this, or anything like that.
Watts
In other words, when they got together they didn’t discuss deep matters, they just enjoyed themselves.
Huxley
That’s right. As a matter of fact, I must tell you about these three days, because we were living in the house of this great mystic, and he had a marvelous cook. And we always looked forward to the next meal. It was the most refined food that you could imagine—without any animal food, you know? Completely vegetarian. And the variety of tastes and the delicacy—I mean, a great refinement, really, of the way that Krishnaji lives. He said, in a way, maybe he is a hedonist, you see, because he appreciates all the things of perception.
Watts
We say hedonist. Yes.
Huxley
Hedonist. I remember him once speaking of our materials. And everything, his perception, are so cleansed, you know? The doors of his perception are very, very clear. And it was marvelous, always waiting for the next meal.
Watts
You see this? This is fascinating, because this doesn’t come out in Krishnamurti’s lectures.
Huxley
No, I know, I know.
Watts
Nor does humor come out.
Huxley
No, and he has a [???]. Aldous is very, very preoccupied about the world. He was—I haven’t seen him lately. He was preoccupied about the world because the world has so many churches and priests and psychologists and all that. Which probably he equates in a way with politicians and all the rest of it—you know, people that are being followed, that have followers. But do you think that one can be without leaders? Do you really think that?
Watts
Well, I suppose you could argue that the presence of churches and priests and psychologists were like the presence of spots on a person who has chickenpox. Of course, these spots are, in a way, letting off infections inside the body, and therefore they fulfill some sort of functions. But they go with a diseased condition. After all, if we were living in harmony with the way of nature—the Tao, as the Chinese call it—we wouldn’t need churches and priests and psychotherapists.
Huxley
I know, but we don’t live in the Tao.
Watts
No. But perhaps… well, I think—you know, this is a bit off the subject—but when you get into a real jam and you realize it’s useless to call the psychiatrist, you’re undergoing a very creative experience.
Huxley
Yes, if you go all the way to the end, not if you stop it in the middle.
Watts
Yes, yes. And you don’t call the psychiatrist, you see? I have a kind of terror of calling a psychiatrist into any situation, because I know what it might lead to. And so I always try to leave it alone. And I don’t want to offend my psychiatric friends by saying this, but—I mean, some of them know how to handle things, and some of them, I did this just talking to one the other day, wouldn’t dream of getting one of these patients into a mental hospital. And—
Huxley
Who would not dream?
Watts
No, he wouldn’t dream of it. He does everything in his power to avoid that sort of a solution—or non-solution. But I think, in a way, this is Krishnaji’s attitude to all the people who are trying to help others: is that a lot of people are doing that kind of work to try and help other people. But I know, in my own case, I’m not really trying to help the world. And I think that’s what Krishnaji is saying when he says he doesn’t do it on purpose. And I think that Aldous had a very similar attitude; that he was writing about mysticism and philosophy and religion not because he was—or he was even writing about the alarming state of the world, but you never felt in him the fanatic.
Huxley
No.
Watts
He was so extraordinarily interested in what was going on, that that seems to me the primary reason why he wrote.
Huxley
Oh, yes. Well, that was his life, his way of living: to write, you know? But I asked Aldous when Krishnaji told me that, you know—and so violently—I said, “What do you think? Should I do this?” And he said, “No, everything should be done. What Krishnaji does is marvelous. But what you do, giving tools and giving recipes, that is also necessary.” I mean, he included everything. He didn’t think that, you know, only one thing, there was only one panacea. That, of course, was completely different from his way of being. He couldn’t have been so restricted. But what did you say just a minute ago about yourself? That you…?
Watts
Well, I often say half-jokingly, when I’m asked in a student audience “Why do you go around lecturing on these things?” I say, “Because I’m a philosophical entertainer.” After all, when you—not all entertainment is frivolous. You do pay entertainment stacks when you go to a concert by a pianist who’s going to play Mozart’s and Beethoven’s sonatas. You could hardly call that frivolous. And so there can be philosophical entertainment in the same spirit.
Huxley
And then also, I mean, everybody has to express himself the best way. And it seems to me you are such a marvelous virtuoso of words—like Aldous was—naturally, you must use your virtuosity. It would be bad for you and for everybody else if you wouldn’t.
Watts
Now, here’s the thing that’s fascinating. You see, I, in using words, I’ve been accused of being a word man.
Huxley
Well, of course, you would. But, I mean, that is beside the point. You can’t be [???] at everything.
Watts
Well, of course you can. But, you know, people in—especially when you get into this whole new domain of emphasis upon the experiential. Not ideas, not theories, but getting down to the nitty-gritty, the real experience. And so this is true with the encounter groups, with the tea groups, with all that kind of thing. And I remember once Fritz Perls saying to me, he said, “The trouble with you is: you’re all words. You are a dancer, you dance around with words.” And I said, “Now listen, Fritz, don’t you put down words.”
Huxley
No.
Watts
Words are a pattern of life, just like a fern, just like a snow crystal, just like a cloud. And if I play with that kind of a pattern, am I any really less experiential than the fern that plays with the chlorophyll and such things to become a fern?
Huxley
It’s marvelous when you think of words. If you just think of any one word, not just thinking about how it came about in the expression, but just what your mouth does to pronounce that word—it’s the most fascinating thing you can think of. I mean, just think of—
Watts
Oh yes, I love to write nonsense, you know, where the words don’t have any meaning.
Huxley
Yes, they are just the fact in the moment—
Watts
But it’s just: “I went to get the bucket of ducks, bucket of ducks, bucket of ducks. I went to get the bucket of ducks, all on a summer’s day. Ca-lackety bucket, lickity bucket, snippity, snappity, snickity bucket, cloppety-flippity, flippity bucket, all in the same old way.” You know? Things like that.
Huxley
Wonderful! You see, what your tongue and your mouth and your lips do through that is miracle, you know? It’s absolutely miracle. It’s like Apelle, figlio di Apollo, fece una palla di pelle di pollo i tutti i pesci vennero a galla, per vedere la palla di pelle di pollo fatta da Apelle, figlio di Apollo. that is an Italian one, you see?
But I know. I think that the only people that can do without words are people like yourself and Aldous. You know, Aldous began to speak about non-verbal education, and it has an enormous importance. And it’s just like, you know, like a millionaire that can say: “Well, money is not important because there is so much of it.” And you can say it, and others could say it. But for the rest of us, I think that we have to have the appropriate words. I know how difficult it is for me, you see, because words is not my mean of expression, you know. I like other things. And I know that it’s very good to have them. And I believe that I noticed very many young people here, they get in so much trouble just because they don’t express themselves right.
Watts
Oh, that’s true.
Huxley
They say the wrong words, you know. They just have never had either the thought or the opportunity—I don’t know which, you know. But they want to say something not very nice, like to say, you know, I would like to go away, I would like not to do this. And they said, well, what people would like to hear that?
Watts
Yes, I’ve been astounded at the inarticulateness of many young people today. And also it goes with a kind of strange, slightly dead sounding quality of voice, which I can immediately detect on the telephone.
Huxley
Yes, yes.
Watts
Somebody calls and says, “Uh, like, Mr. Watts, uh, I was just wondering if there’s any, uh, chance of, umm, you being so that I could come and rap with you,” you know. And there’s a sort of dead voice. And, you know, at once I’m inclined to reject such an encounter.
Huxley
Well, those are the people that must see you. You must see them. That is the very signal. Because, I mean, you might inspire them to get a little bit more alive. I think there are many people that are not quite alive. Do you find that?
Watts
Oh, sure. Zombies.
Huxley
Yes, but I mean, also, the people that have taken drugs and so on, that you expect them to be more here and now, and—
Watts
Yes, but they didn’t bring anything to it. You see, that experience with LSD doesn’t really do much for anyone who doesn’t bring something to it. But if you bring a lot to it, it enlivens all that you have. The people who have the best LSD experiences are those who say (before they take it): “Oh well, I don’t need that kind of thing. What you’re telling me about is the state of consciousness I’m in all the time.” They have the best results with it.
Huxley
Yes, that is very true. But those people sometimes are put in mental hospitals, too, you know, because they see too much.
Watts
Maybe. Yes, you can see too much.
Huxley
Yes. Well, the impression might be so overwhelming. I mean, I’m getting here—in your house, here in the boat—I’m almost getting in that place, you know? Because this water and these hills and the light changing, it’s so beautiful. Do you work here, right on this window? No?
Watts
No, I do sometimes.
Huxley
You do sometimes?
Watts
No, I usually work where the books are.
Huxley
It’s because here it’s very inducing to just be with it.
Watts
Well, you should see the changing quality of light when the dawn hits that mountain, Tamalpais. Even those Air Force radar domes get transformed, and they look like the domes of a mosque.
Huxley
I see.
Watts
And I feel I’m in some strange oriental world. And the way the house lights up all these houseboats across here—I mean, the sun lights up all these houseboats—they become rich and golden and bejeweled. And people would say, “Well, this is a dirty old slum,” but you should see it at dawn. It’s a paradise.
Huxley
Well, you see it. And this transformation is really the key now, isn’t it, to our living: to be able to transform.
Watts
Yes, well, it’s that sentence which Aldous Huxley uses for the doors of perception from Blake.
Huxley
Oh, yes.
Watts
“If the doors of perception were cleansed, we should see everything as it is: infinite.” Tell me, what was Aldous’s attitude in the whole process of delight in words? I mean, would you feel—while he was working on something—that he was completely delighted with the whole sort of triumph of being able to get some extremely subtle emotion or some personal attitude in a character, that he got just the mot juste, the right word for it?
Huxley
Yes, yes. Oh, yes. He was delighted in that way, and he was delighted with words of others. You know that he read poetry aloud. I have a lot of tapes, beautiful tapes, where he read poetry aloud in English and Italian and in French, just for the pleasure of hearing these words back again. Yes. Oh yes, he had this thing of the word. And then, when he helped me write—in You Are Not The Target, you know—I would read to him. He had such patience, you just have no idea! I would read to him these recipes. And once, if he ever changed a paragraph, my editor would reject this. Somehow, evidently, it was too good, you know? It was a different style. So that never went to the book. But one word here and one word there, he would just get that word or a quotation. The quotation was very extraordinary. Yes, well, he had this enjoyment of words. And at the same time, he thought that one should let them go, you know? They are not so important. What did he say? “Words are good servants, but bad masters.” That was his attitude.
Watts
Well, he had an astounding facility in getting the flavor of human character. This is a thing that I admire enormously, because I would never be able to write a good novel. I think people who write novels are absolute geniuses.
Huxley
He felt himself not to be a very good novelist.
Watts
Especially in delineating the characters of women. It’s so easy to make a rather stereotype of women when writing, and it’s very bad.
Huxley
I think that’s why he liked D. H. Lawrence so much, I suppose, because he does that so well.
Watts
But he could get, by a curious turn of phrase, he could get the sort of feeling about another person where you say, “Now, I want to tell you what kind of person this is, but I just somehow… they are very distinct, they are a very particular kind of person. I wish I could give you the flavor, but I just can’t find the word to pin down the kind of individual that is.” Like the story in which somebody was saying, “Well, I don’t know how to tell you what sort of person she is, but she’s the sort of person that would say serviette instead of napkin.” Somebody said (some other lady person), “Well, I always say serviette instead of napkin,” and then he said, “Well, you must know just the sort of person I mean!” But in the final stages of his life he was, wasn’t he, about to begin another novel, and had written some of it?
Huxley
Yes, he wanted to write a sort of a semi-autobiographical novel. Yes.
Watts
That’s what I gathered, yes, from reading as much as you published.
Huxley
Because he felt that there was so much intermingling, you know, intermingling his own life with the events of the century. It was so extraordinary what had happened since he was an adolescent or a child, that he thought it would be very—well, it would have been a very big work, you know, because that novel started in 1900, the first chapter that is in that book.
Watts
Yes.
Huxley
And about himself as a child. I think that he was very much like that child that he describes there. Remember he speaks, also in his lecture, he spoke about Queen Victoria riding on a carriage about two, three miles an hour. And now similar ladies of similar dignity and age go around the Cornish or in the highways here at 70 miles an hour. He used that to show how we can really develop our potentialities in so many different ways, in so many different directions. That was one of his constant thoughts: the development of human potentials.
Watts
Of course, his lifetime spans the most startling change of the speed of human history that has ever existed. And he simply, his lifetime, bridges it.
Huxley
Yes, exactly.
Watts
Because he’s got one foot in the Victorian era and one in the 1960s.
Huxley
That’s right, that’s right. That’s what he wanted to do.
Watts
Yes. I don’t think any other people at any time have spanned such enormous change.
Huxley
And he was so much with it all the time, all these changes in different fields.
Watts
Well, the critical period of change, you see, was just before the Second World War. You see, he published—yes, just before the Second World War—because, you see, he published Ends and Means just before he left England, didn’t he? That book comes about the same time as Eyeless in Gaza. And that was when he knew Gerald Heard first. Now, what prompted him to move to the United States?
Huxley
Well, he was traveling, you remember. First of all, he lived in Italy a long time. And then in Italy the fascist regime came about. And Gerald Heard moved to America. And somehow this whole group of Englishmen moved here. And then he was here, naturally, for his eyesight. They found a teacher that helped him a deal in overcoming this blindness. And [???] and they went to live in the desert. But I think that Gerald Heard gave the incentive to move here and leave Europe.
Watts
So it was primarily just his interest in Gerald Heard and the group around him?
Huxley
Yes. And no. And what was happening in Italy and in Germany and so on that many in England he couldn’t leave because of the climate. He would get bronchitis just like that. Oh yes.
Watts
Oh really? That’s interesting. I couldn’t live in England because I couldn’t make a living.
Huxley
Well, he lived there—you know, remember when he was a critic on some newspaper as a young man, but he never really wanted to live there. As soon as he could, he moved into Italy and then in France. And then he always went back. He liked to go there for a month or two every year.
Watts
Well, I do the same thing. But the trouble with England is that it pays very little for books and nothing at all for lectures, whereas the United States is quite different. I remember Aldous saying to me once, shortly after I came out to the West Coast (which must’ve been in about 1952), and he said—we were making an appointment—and he said, “Yes, we are all so busy these days.” He said, “It’s simply appalling.” He said, “Of course, nowadays it costs you $12,000 a year simply to breathe. And if you want to do something more than that it costs about $18,000.”
Huxley
Yes, I remember.
Watts
But why did he settle on Southern California? Do you know?
Huxley
Well, I think that, first, he and Maria went up to the desert because Maria had a touch of TB. I think that they thought that she might have TB. And then they went up there and they liked the desert. And they lived in the desert for several years, and then it became too difficult to live there, and they came down to Los Angeles.
Watts
Well, I was expecting in a way your answer to be: because California is the nearest thing in the United States to the Mediterranean.
Huxley
Well, I think California is everything.
Watts
Yes, I know. But if you are looking for sun and for cypress and palm trees, and also of course the Spanish flavor still lingers.
Huxley
And then he liked to walk. He took everyday long walks.
Watts
Yes. You see that kind of thing has a fascination for some kind of Englishman. There’s a saying, you know, that an Englishman Italianate is a devil incarnate. And this was originally said about Frederick Corvo, who wrote Hadrian the Seventh, remember. And Aldous, having spent many years in Italy, has the same feeling, you see, for that magic of the Southland of the Mediterranean that I have myself. And so the reason I came here was that I could sort of mix both worlds, and have a Mediterranean climate with a standard of living that I couldn’t possibly maintain in Italy since, well, I don’t speak Italian. I could learn, but it wouldn’t be the sort of place I could flourish economically without depending on outside things.
Huxley
No, we thought about moving back to Italy, but we went almost every year. And then the way that we lived here was very, very good, because it was very free on top of a hill, where there are deers and all kind of natural life. And yet, if you wanted to go to university or to go to New York, it’s so simple and so easy. It’s a very convenient place to live from any point of view.
Watts
Well, again, you know, those Europeans don’t pay for lectures.
Huxley
Yes. Oh yes, surely.
Watts
The economy of an author. Now, it’s a very curious thing about Aldous Huxley, because when I first knew him, he couldn’t lecture for love or money. He used to put his nose in a manuscript and mumble.
Huxley
Goodness, I’d never seen him do that.
Watts
But this is something you must be responsible for, because after he married you he turned into a fantastic lecturer.
Huxley
Fantastic lecturer. But I don’t know that I was connected in any way with that, but he was a fantastic lecturer. And in—
Watts
But it’s incredible. Because what happened was that, right when I first was out in California—let’s see, this was in 1951—at that time, Felix Greene arranged for him to give a lecture at a high school auditorium in Palo Alto. And he was still in the mumbling stage. Then after Maria’s death, he married you. I went down to Santa Barbara and there was a concert being given in which Stravinsky was interested of Gesualdo’s madrigals. And in the intermission he gave an extremely amusing talk.
Huxley
Yes, and he loved it. I mean, he really enjoyed doing that.
Watts
Well now, what had happened was that, always, he had been a fantastic conversationalist. Even though he was apt to sort of take over the conversation, nevertheless he was invariably fascinating. And he used to fill his conversation with the most amazing anecdotes. He was particularly fond of kind of horrendous happenings and details. Remember that time we were talking about when we had lunch at the Tokyo Sukiyaki Restaurant? There were four of us sitting at the table, and all the neighboring tables stopped talking. And they listened in because he was talking about subliminal advertising.
Huxley
Yes. Oh yes! Oh, that’s really interesting. How you could look at President Eisenhower, but it really was Marilyn Monroe [???].
Watts
Yes, exactly. So you associated the beautiful girl with General Eisenhower or with somebody’s toothpaste. And he was going on and enlarging on the horrendous possibilities of this. And I remember once the conversation going on in great length about the appalling nature of fashion in medicine. So that you would never really know at the present time whether it was as ephemeral as an operation he once described where they removed the long intestine. And he said it completely disappeared; that nobody ever had such operation. He said, “The only trouble about it was: people used to have to go to the bathroom like birds!” But then, you see, he started to get the idea of lecturing in just exactly the same tone of voice and spirit as he carried on ordinary conversation.
Huxley
It was absolutely like a conversation. I never saw it.
Watts
And suddenly he got released from the manuscript.
Huxley
Yes. And, well, he said to me, he said, “Well, I just decided that what I was saying was really not so important after all,” you know. “The world was not going to be changed by my lecturing.” And so it was, I mean, I’ve been with him, you know, before the lecture, and usually before someone goes on this stage there is all kind of little ritual and things. He never had anything like that.
Watts
No, all that’s a nuisance.
Huxley
Yes, all that’s a nuisance. He just would be at dinner with other people and then walk out on the stage. He would go sometimes and mumble and somebody’d say to him [???]. That was all that he asked.
Watts
No, well it was a very strange transformation, especially for somebody at that time of life.
Huxley
Yes, but he was changing all the time. I mean, after the fire, you know, we went to live with his friend of ours.
Watts
When the house was burned down?
Huxley
Yes. We went to live with this friend of ours who had two children and two little children. It’s a completely different ambience, you know, when there are two children. He never seemed to mind to make an effort to exercise patience. And one does need patience, you know, for children. But it was a natural thing for him, I guess, or maybe a training thing to take things as they came, moment by moment, without sort of referring to old experiences. I think that he had probably more than anyone else this paradox. You see, where he had this terrific amount of information, information on memory. And then it was free, though, of emotional conditioning from the past.
Watts
How so?
Huxley
Well, because the emotion of the past did not interfere with his present. In other words, he was present. He responded to the present with new reaction. I mean, he reacted to the present with fresh reaction, and not with a conditioned reaction from the past.
Watts
Do you think he was in some respect helped by the fire? After all, all his past, all the records of his past practically were wiped out.
Huxley
Yes, everything. No, I don’t think that the fire did that for him. I think more his meditation and his work with [???], and his constant vigilance in that sense. He was really very, very aware that that should be stopped, you know; that one should stop this reacting to the present in terms of the past. That was very much in his consciousness all the time.
Watts
Well, of course, that’s central to Krishnamurti’s whole presentation, yes. But that fire—I had a friend who underwent the same sort of experience, where she had luckily built herself a new smaller house. And just after she had moved into it, she kept a lot of records in the old house, and it was burned down. And they were all these souvenirs and letters and photographs and paintings and books, which were suddenly wiped out. And they’re ordinarily things you cling on to and you feel you really can’t do without that. And then suddenly it all goes.
Huxley
Oh, yes, we had several trunks and these things.
Watts
But he did rescue, didn’t he, the manuscript of Island?
Huxley
Yes, he rescued Island and his three best suits; the suits that we had made in Italy.
Watts
And three suits?
Huxley
Yes. He said, “Don’t you think we should take some suits?” I was in a completely useless state, because the fire had so fascinated me that I was just looking at the fire all the time. And I would not even have thought of that. And Aldous suddenly said, “Oh, I must take Island.” So he went upstairs and took Island. And then he said, “Shouldn’t we take some suits?” So I said yes.
Watts
But did he sort of risk his life doing this?
Huxley
No, no, no, because our house was not on fire yet, but all around.
Watts
Oh, I see. The fire was approaching at the time, yes.
Huxley
Yes, it was approaching. Yes, I saw it approach. I saw it approach from the garden. In fact, the walls were illuminated so beautifully, you have no idea. I was just the right illumination. But I was looking so much that I was not even taking the suits, you see?
Watts
Well, that’s certainly not reacting to the present in terms of the past!
Huxley
No, that’s right! It was past. I was just not reacting at all. It was just so beautiful, you know?
Watts
Yes, it’s so fascinating how, in moments of crisis, we do tend to become much saner than we are normally.
Huxley
Well, maybe that was sane. I don’t know.
Watts
I mean, people accomplish the most—we can become geniuses.
Huxley
Yes, but I didn’t accomplish anything, you see. I just—
Watts
Well, I know, but you were contemplative instead of inactive.
Huxley
Yes, exactly the contrary of my nature. Absolutely the contrary. I’m very active. And there it was, this fire all around. But who said that the fire—I remember Aldous saying in his lecture on visionary experience that—is it Plotinus?—that says the fire is the most beautiful thing in the world?
Watts
Yes.
Huxley
In connection with precious jewel, you know, which contains the fire.
Watts
Yes. Christians still worship fire, because for many people the most important time in a church service is watching the final extinction of the candles after the service is over. And they’ll all wait on their knees until that’s been done.
Huxley
Yes. It’s like seeing the sun going down in a moment, yes.
Watts
Yes, watching the sunset. Are there any materials of Aldous left over, which will yet see the light of publication?
Huxley
Well, the letters, Oh, that is going to be a marvelous volume, yes. it’s coming out next year. It’s coming out next year, and there are letters since the age of fourteen to the last days, you see. And there is really some marvelous biography there. You see all the passage in this man’s life.
Watts
So he wrote a great deal of letters? And was this true all through his life? Was it true after you got married?
Huxley
Oh, yes. He answered mail once a week, and he wrote an enormous amount of letters.
Watts
He’s writing letters and I always use the telephone!