As eternity changes him into himself, we don't have to wait for eternity. It is possible to become ourselves in the fullest ego-transcending form, even in this life.
~~ Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley woke up. We must do the same.
~~ Jean Houston

"This is not a proper documentary," director/producer Oliver Hockenhull explains at the beginning of Aldous Huxley: The Gravity of Light (1996). "The project is not about his chronological life, but about his ideas." Hockenhull's narrative traces Huxley's intellectual and spiritual development through a series of re-enactments, montages, archival footage and computer animation. The production design splinters Huxley's life into fractal recombinations of the ideas, experiences and influences that shaped his life.

The documentary charts Huxley's life from the publication of Crome Yellow: A Novel (London: Chatto & Windus, 1921) to Island (New York: Harper & Row, 1962). Even the titles are epithets (my favorite being "The Singularity of Mind"). The hidden thread that runs through Hockenhull's documentary are excerpts from Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interviews that Huxley did in 1957. Hockenhull offers viewers an Impressionist snapshot of the author best known for Brave New World (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co. Inc.,1932). A wake-up calling card rather than a dry instruction manual.

Jump cut to Jean Houston reminiscing about Huxley at a 1994 symposium. She reminds the audience of Huxley's passion for Homeric Greek and leads them in a call-refrain. Having summoned Huxley's creative daimon, Houston will later suggest that his life's turning point was Eyeless in Gaza (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1936), which was his first overt spiritual work. Huxley, anticipating James Hillman's archetypal psychology, observes: "The seed grows according to its own being."

Transition to sequence on social persona: What 'setting' created the 'set' for Aldous Huxley's gnostic voyage of inner discovery? Huxley identifies a period during the 1930s of depression and life-crisis. He writes pacifist articles and receives death-threats from patriotic English-men. He notes that war manifests as group intoxication and barbarian hysteria. He experiments with the Alexander Technique's psycho-physical exercises as a defense against body-military drills and punishment football. He records sermons for the BBC. It's not enough. The external world triggers internal dissonance. Huxley quotes a letter (21 October 1949) he wrote to George Orwell that conveys what he felt these trends would generate: "The nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four will modulate into Brave New World." This observation grew into Brave New World Revisited (New York: Harper & Collins, 1958), in which Huxley re-examined how his dystopian vision had come into being.

Hockenhull shows montages of boxers, gymnasts and yogis as Huxley presciently warns against the dark-side of the post-war boom. People are being socially conditioned through education that assails free will and encourages social trance. Science and technology accelerates the drive to efficiency. Hockenhull drives this point home in a sequence taken from Point Counter Point (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co. Inc., 1928) that captures the postmodern angst about the fragility of personal relationships. An ex-couple talk by phone: he is fractured and confused, she remains defiant and has moved on. When he evokes visions of Love, she turns this mirage into the sexual conquest by a 'fallen woman'. The tantric Dance of Shakti devolves into a consumptive flight from intimacy. "I'd rather be human," he replies. Faraway, she laughs. Hell is losing other people yet, in an inter-connected society, having them always near (just out of reach). In these moments, Huxley reminds us, "Nothing short of everything is ever enough."

Many would-be Seekers After Truth would turn to drugs and pre-egoic mysticism as an escape from this existentialist cul-de-sac. Author Thomas Mann replies that such strategies are scandalous and admonishes Huxley in correspondence for advocating experimentation with LSD, mescalin and peyote. Huxley replies that there may be a pharmacological substitute for alcohol in fifty years time. Hockenhull wryly notes Huxley’s interest in Spiritualism and his friendship with J.B. Rhine. The filmmaker remains detached and unconvinced: in a sequence where he visits a channeler to ask what Huxley thinks of his film, Hockenhull dismisses her performance as dramatic acting influenced by her unconscious mind. Our minds, Hockenhull reminds us, sometimes enlighten us with what we want to believe.

Huxley's self-quest to uncover the reality beyond vaguely-defined freedom reached its pinnacle with The Perennial Philosophy (London: Chatto & Windus, 1946) and The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954-56). Captions also quote from Moksha: Aldous Huxley's Classic Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience (New York: Stonehill, 1977). Hockenhull invokes the altered states of consciousness that Huxley experienced with LSD and mescalin through looking at flowers. Huxley developed cancer, and on his deathbed (22 November 1963), took LSD-25 while his wife Laura read passages from The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

The documentary, true to Hockenhull's vision, illustrates the contours of Huxley's life at the expense of biographical details. His exploration of philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti and flirtation with Zen, for example, are barely mentioned. Rather, Hockenhull evokes in the viewer a glimpse of the questions that Huxley wrestled with and the subjective nature of his explorations. As with Derek Jarman's sparse Wittgenstein (1993), Hockenhull relies on actors and the creative use of sparse sets. His camera tracks from phone to phone as Huxley's thoughts resonate on the soundtrack, the camera gliding over flickering film lights, melted ice creams and tables. By juxtaposing the focus of a yogi with flower petals, Hockenhull hints at the polarity of consciousness, will and emotions that are transmuted by personal alchemy. His own on-camera appearances are detached and ironic.