The Perennial Illusion

Perennialism promises a comforting kind of unity. At its core lies the claim that a single, universal truth underpins every orthodox religious tradition, acting as the hidden foundation for all their distinct doctrines. To its proponents, this is not a messy, syncretic mishmash of beliefs, but the affirmation of a common divine source.

Yet this grand harmonization comes at a steep price. Critics point out that the approach is fundamentally ahistorical, flattening the rich cultural, linguistic, and symbolic roots of mystical experiences in order to force them into a mold. When Aldous Huxley popularized the perennial philosophy, bringing texts like the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads into mainstream Western culture, his selection was deeply idiosyncratic, shaped more by his own design than by historical reality.

Historians of philosophy issue a similar warning about spotting parallels between disparate traditions, such as ancient Greek and Indian atomism. Assuming these similarities point to a hidden unity can easily slide into essentializing non-Western thought, treating entire intellectual histories as monolithic.

Beneath the quest for a universal philosophy often lies a more complicated reaction to colonial power. Intellectuals navigating the pressures of decolonization faced the heavy burden of reconciling their own traditions with Western ideals of universalism. In that light, searching for a single truth that unites the world can look less like an objective discovery and more like a defensive strategy—an attempt to claim a seat at a table built by the colonizer, using the colonizer's own language of absolute validity.