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4. Beyond Time
Having collected a remarkable sampling of reports of the unitive experience, Huxley sets about examining them for what they may reveal not only about the experience itself but also for what, by implication, they reveal about the nature, deficiencies, and shortcomings of organized religion as we know it. (His canvas is so broad that his findings also apply to most areas of society—philosophy, art, technology, business, etc. Adherents of any of those ideologies and habits will find much food for thought in Huxley’s pages, but for purposes relating to books of hours, the focus here will remain on religion.)

Assuming the validity of the unitive experience across the millennia, Huxley quickly derives one large division from the many different fingers pointing at the moon. The unitive condition is not only beyond words but beyond time itself. Which immediately casts the religions of the world into two camps: the time-based, and the eternity-based.

The time-based, such as received Christianity, are linear and purposive: The Christian God tells us this will happen, then this, then this, and only after some sequence of events do we enter into an ill-defined condition generally referred to as Heaven.

The eternity-based religions, such as Buddhism (in its purer form), attempt to take us outside such a narrative approach. If the ground of being is, as Huxley’s global reporters assert, timeless, it cannot be told but only told of. The finger pointing at the moon is only the finger pointing at the moon. The moon itself, outside of language, outside of time, can only be experienced directly, and that experience is necessarily unnameable.

To make a proper book of hours for the 21st century, I have taken many of the quotations from The Perennial Philosophy, prettified them somewhat in the manner of the old illuminators, and arranged them in a short calendar suitable, I hope, for latter-day pondering.

With one change. Throughout, where the G-word occurs in the original text, I have substituted "the Unnameable."

5. Using Les Heures du Mal
Each illuminated page of Les Heures du Mal has a music file attached. You can start and stop the music at will with a link beneath the each illustration. The pieces, by Williams Byrd and others, are from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, performed by John Sankey, Copyright © John Sankey 2000 (The Keyboard Music of William Byrd).

The calendar (see link below) shows the seven days of the week. Each day has eight meditations (Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, Compline) for various times of the day. In the search for balance, stability, compassion, hope, and patience, the words, pictures, and music may be of some help. Memorizing the words and using them silently at the appropriate hours of the day will help more.

Appended to the calendar are seven versicles, useful whenever and wherever needed.

                                                                                                     --Douglas Milburn
                                                                                                         Houston, 2004.

Go to Calendar of Les Heures du Mal >>

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