In every region and at every period of history, the problem has been repeatedly solved by individual men and women. Even when they spoke or wrote, these individuals created no systems-for they knew that every system is a standing temptation to take symbols to seriously, to pay more attention to words than to the realities for which the words are supposed to stand. Their aim was never to offer ready made explanations and panaceas; it was to induce people to diagnose and cure their own ills, to get them to go to the place where man’s problem and its solution present themselves directly to experience.
-Aldous Huxley excerpt foreword from The First and Last Freedom