Thank you for the Colin Wilson Web page. It is about time someone gave web acknowledgment to a very important thinker. I have been reading Colin for about 30 years and have him to thank for much of my intellectual growth, what ever that might be! No other writer I know of can make ideas as exciting as he. His plain style and his amazing ability to recount his own research into readable, almost anecdotal, language is a great asset. I wish more writers would take the hint and write to be clearly understood, not to impress with arcane language and dense prose style. His lack of a university training has been totally to his benefit in this regard. (As a personal observation, I feel that university training can be a detriment to independent thought and certainly to a readable writing style. Almost any doctoral dissertation paper will bear this out.) To Mr. Goldbarger, who seems to think less of Colin because he is a synthesizer. I will agree with Mr. Goldbarger only if he puts the word "great" in front of synthesizer. Our greatest thinkers always are those who see the bigger picture, understands it better than most of the rest of us, then presents it to us in understandable form and with their own particular insight. I know of no one who gives more credit to his influences than Colin Wilson! All of his writing is replete with the sources of his ideas. What Colin does with those ideas is then his contribution to the intellectual climate of the 20th century. The last truly independent thinker I can think of is a fellow sometimes called Jehovah. Mr. Goldbarger, we all stand on the shoulders of giants.
Not only is Colin Wilson a great thinker, he is a great soul as well. I have often thought of Thoreau in connection with Colin in that Thoreau's greatest acclaim did not come in his own lifetime; it took later and perhaps wiser generations to more fully appreciate him. I think this will be true with Colin Wilson as well.
David Rose
drose@kih.net
Hello,
I was wondering if you knew what Colin Wilson's thoughts were on holographic theory -- a theory developed by physicist David Bohm & psychologist Carl Pribram.
The simplest way to explain holographic theory is to say that teh universe is like a hologram -- not photo of a hologram which you've seen but like a real hologram (Princess Leah's message which R2-D2 projects in Star Wars). If you split a hologram into several pieces you don't get several pieces of a hologram you get several whole holograms. The theory says that every part of the universe is connected to the rest of and is in some sense the whole universe. It also says that what we see was created by us (we see a table because we expect to see a table, if we thought that a table was a woodchuck than it would really be a woodchuck). It takes elements of Buddhism & Phenomenology and winds them into a quantum physics theory. A guy named Michael Talbot saw the theory, exagerrated it a bit and wrote a book called The Holographic Universe in which he uses the theory to explain everything from how memory works to ESP, poltergeists, past lives, etc... That book should be in your local book store. The Talbot book isn't too technical, it's a quick read. Its one of those things that's hard to describe briefly without it sounding silly.
The reason it would be of interest to Colin is because of its use of phenomonology. Its says literally that we create our own universe. Bohm, creator of the theory, was a well respected physicist. Pribram, the psychologist who independantly came up with the theory, I know little about. He's at Stanford -- or was. Bohm is dead. The theory came about in early eighties. The Talbot book has been out since 1992. Bohm's best known for his book Wholeness & the Implicate Order which deals with what would become Holographic Theory. I haven't read that one, its a bit too daunting. I can give you more info on it, if you'd like.
Eric
I came across an excerpt from one of Wilson's pieces. It discusses "The World of Objective Thoughts" and what he refers to as "World Three" I have no way of knowing what this is taken from, but would very much like to read more about it.
If anybody knows where this is from, please e-mail ne at
jlowry@lynx.neu.edu
Thank you
Jed
Like the other comments on this page, I would like to say a few words about Mr. Wilson and his impact on my life.
From a young age, I was attracted to certain authors: Hermann Hesse (Steppenwolf was a bible of mine for a long time), Sartre, Camus.
Then, one day, quite by accident, I received a copy of The Outsider. Imagine my surprise when all of my favourite others were discussed in detail and a common thread exposed. I remember my excitement. It felt as though this book was written specifically for me (of course, it is this type of feeling that soon leads to mental problems i.e. Manson and the White Album.) :)
This leads me to my next comment, and that is my interest (as well as Mr. Wilson's, although I didn't find out until later) in crime and serial murder. After reading the Outsider, I often thought of the Serial Killer as a type of Outsider, although a particularly childish and cowardly one that destroys rather than creates. I then became introduced to several of Wilson's books on murder.
In all of the reading I've done of Mr. Wilson's work, I've found a fresh and fascinating mind, and a man who often has told me the things I knew all along, but just never realized on my own.
Congratulations on your work in setting up the Colin Wilson Home Page. Thank you also for your acknowledgement of my book "Colin Wilson: The Man and His Mind" at the begining of the page. Should you, or any other Wilson readers, be interested in contacting me, I am available at hfdsor@starnet.com.au
Warm regards
Howard F Dossor
Hi---I am happy to find a forum for discussing Colin Wilson and his work. I felt all alone with my connection to his work until I got on the Internet.
I am currently writing my thesis for the MA in Literature . . . on archetypal criticism of poetry. I formerly taught Creative Writing---for the last five years---at the community college level, but have taken a break from teaching to work on my thesis and to concentrate on writing.
I have been reading Wilson since the early 80s, beginning with The Outsider. I collect his books when I can find them and have about two dozen, including the Sorme novels and a critical work by Howard Dossor. I think that A Criminal History of Mankind has had the most profound effect on me so far.
As a poet, I'm interested in Faculty X and Wilson's thoughts on the bicameral mind.
The bibliography from The Outsider served as my reading list for a couple of years.
Something that seems to be overlooked in the postings for this forum: Wilson's writing style. His use of metaphors is wonderful. He presents his ideas and perspectives by comparing, illustrating over and over again in plain words what anyone could understand ...."it's like we are caught in the groove of phonograph record" and "there are some things that cannot be seen in daylight, but only at night" (a candle flame). These examples have both meaning and implication. His writing engages metaphorical thought to achieve understanding.
Some of other writers in whom I'm interested and of whom I have read a good deal: WB Yeats, Robert Graves, William Blake, Jack Vance, John Crowley, Gene Wolfe, Herman Hesse.
can be reached at bdorman@juno.com, if you'd like to correspond.
To The Colin Wilson Discussion Page.
The originality of Colin Wilson as a thinker has come up in this forum too - naturally, that discussion is as old as his authorship. After the first acclaim of the "Outsider" the boomerang reviews, and this has gone on ever since. Looking back at the said book it is mostly an assembly of quotations, but not jumbled at all. It was highly relevant for us - uh - "angry young men" at that time, and this has been Wilson's force ever since; always sensing what ideas and/or scientific findings would become decisive for our outlook. The motivating factor for this "drowsing" has always been his own unquenchable thirst for increased consciousness or, more fundamentally; Mind over Matter control.
I find it clearly stated in his early novels, which is what made them so yearned for by one like myself, who had become a Wilson addict in the early sixties. Having just finished rereading "The World of Violence" I must also add that this is simply a good book. To give an outline there is the young Hugh Greene (16) living in an English industrial town where the postwar Teddy-boys are terrorizing the streets. This is unbearable for him, but his reaction is not all of the law-abiding citizen; he is also fascinated by violence, and has a certain contempt for his newfound author/composer friend Jeremy's otherworldliness. To prove his ability to strike back he arranges his own membership in a pistol club, buys a gun and provokes a confrontation - while maintaining a friendship with the local police chief, and with a petty crook as well.
Along with this goes Hugh Greene's acquaintance with an ex-army officer Monty (much related to James of "Adrift..."?) - and his takeover of Monty's girlfriend Patricia. The novel contains all the elements that later came to dominate Wilson's authorship, particularly the said "Mind over Matter". This control has been achieved by Hugh's uncle Sam (a forerunner for "The Dark Room" idea?) who obviously is Wilson's mouthpiece here. I find the essence of the novel in the last part when young Greene takes an excursion to a nearby village and has a macabre encounter at a street work site, but also in the epilogue where he airs his credo.
I am now into his "The God of the Labyrinth": a book I must admit I haven't read before, but this far it bears all the Wilsonian hallmarks. To get an overview of Wilson's authorship I recommend Howard F Dossor's "Colin Wilson: the Man and his Mind"
I thoroughly enjoy your page and the interesting links-- it seems if I follow one link I find 10 more afterward.
I have read so many books in the past few years, my mind is reeling, however Colin Wilson's work stands out in clarity from the fog. I admire him for crystalizing his thought in words-- something that is an art and many have had trouble with, even Nietzsche and Sartre.
I think Colin Wilson belongs with those of clear thought such as Alan Watts, D.T. Suzuki, Maslow, Frankl, Frijof Capra, Rollo May, Ouspensky, Jung, and (few) others.
I also believe Colin Wilson has brilliantly written about Zen in a manner of Western-thought. But his striving for that elusive horizon of the noosphere is too intense. Perhaps he should study Zen-Buddhism in a deeper manner.
However, his search for the control of "attitude" is quite on the mark. I only wish he'd write about it in a direct manner, now that he's spent a lifetime with phenomenological ontology.
Thank you, Gerald James.