In Aldous Huxley’s final novel, The Island, the Ultimate Revolution and predictive programming guru presents a subtly different and more nuanced version of the original Soma culture depicted in his Brave New World.

While Huxley’s earlier novel presented a culture in which a magical drug called “Soma” was used to chemically regulate people’s inner worlds to keep them “happy,” Huxley’s last novel presents a more mature vision in which the earlier system of psycho-chemical control evolves into a much subtler system of psycho-spiritual manipulation.

While the Brave New World’s “Soma” culture dulled the pain of an unfulfilled and innate longing within human beings, which the true philosophers, Saints, poets and theologians across the ages have always embodied, The Island offers a clever imitation in the form of a magical substance: “Moksha.” Huxley’s island thus presents a “spiritual” medicine capable of meeting a human being’s most innate and deepest desires for transcendence.

Not surprisingly, the invariant in both Huxley novels is a culture of diverse eugenic practices, sex cults and mass drug use. In the case of the latter novel, the essence of control is based on offering something which imitates genuine transcendence and gives people the feeling of having attained their higher self-actualized self.

As we approach a new critical juncture in the history of Western civilization, which involves regularly priming individuals with the idea of an end to the “age of abundance” and constant doomsday predictions warning of biblical floods and fires unless mankind repents for its sins against “Mother Nature,” we should give careful consideration to the latest fad of psychedelic-infused “spirituality” currently being presented to Western audience. Perhaps there’s more than meets the eye?

Lecturer: David Gosselin, Editor in Chief of Thechainedmuse.com and newlyre.com / subscribe to Gosselin’s substack at https://davidgosselin.substack.com/