REVIEWS OF COLIN WILSON’S WORK
by John Morgan
Colin Wilson’s two latest works are highly representative of the two primary strands (separate, but not unrelated) that his work has taken: the philosophical, and the "New Age" approach.
ALIEN DAWN
Fromm International
352 pages, $26.00 USD
Colin Wilson occupies a unique position in the history of ideas. Since Descartes, it has been posited that the world and the mind are completely separate, and that we can only know reality through the deductive laws of science. Then, after the psychological revolution heralded by Freud and Jung, there has been the school which claims that we cannot know objective reality at all, and that our view of the world is dictated by the nuances of our own psyche. Wilson takes a third approach: that both of these realities are different levels on the ladder of consciousness, equally valid as experiences and interdependent, and pointing the way to even higher levels which we can only glimpse.
This brings us to the substance of Alien Dawn. The book is primarily a compendium of information detailing what Wilson has perceived, through his extensive research, as the different types of contact experience with UFOs that has been reported. Wilson’s definition of the contact experience is quite unorthodox, however; he applies the term to a wide range of supernatural phenomena, including UFO sightings, abduction, poltergeists, telepathy, remote viewing, demonic possession, and even the Loch Ness monster – among others.
The main thrust of the work, and the way in which Wilson tries to place it in the context of his overall philosophy, is that the "UFOs" are not extraterrestrials, but rather agents from an alternate reality, attempting to advance the evolution of consciousness through their varied forms of contact. As evidence, Wilson points out the many instances in which those who claim contact with UFOs have returned with some sort of knowledge, or having manifested unusual abilities. In an original use of Jung, Wilson believes that these entities originate from the collective unconscious – but, rather than coming from within oneself, Wilson contends that this space is actually a separate reality of some sort. For him, the two realities are commingled in such a way that renders them difficult to distinguish. On this point, Wilson remains somewhat vague – although, to be fair, he has little choice, since he ends up grappling with the same problems that physicists such as David Bohm have addressed but left unsolved. This is the new branch of physics which poses questions that blur the distinction between observer and observed, the mental and the physical, and even time and space. Wilson delves into these issues and views UFOs as the latest in a long series of unexplained events which cross between these supposed boundaries, leaving questions about our understanding of reality that demands to be considered.
As always, Wilson’s coverage of his topic is thorough and direct, and he brings an interpretive depth to it that is lacking in most other books of its kind. He definitely expects a great deal of open-mindedness from his readers – more, perhaps, than some are prepared to give. I myself remain a skeptic about the whole UFO phenomenon. While I am willing to entertain the possibilities which he proposes, some events which he describes are, as he admits, too fantastic to believe. In particular, I found the accounts of Uri Geller’s contact experiences in the opening chapter to be rather off-putting, especially as Wilson had not yet provided any context for these fantastic accounts. In short, I don’t think that this book is likely to produce many new converts among those are skeptical to begin with (nor does Wilson ask the reader to believe), but it does provide considerable food for thought.
One thing that puzzled me about Alien Dawn was the fact that Wilson failed to mention the other thinkers who share his view of UFOs as heralds of consciousness evolution, particular by those experimenting with psychedelic drugs. While Wilson alludes to some of the LSD research done by Stanislav Grof, he makes no mention of the experimentation being done with drugs such as DMT or ketamine, experiments which have also yielded supposed "contact experience" with alien beings. Most conspicuously absent is Terence McKenna, whose DMT-inspired theories of a coming leap in evolution brought about by UFOs from hyperspace would seem to parallel Wilson’s ideas nicely. One can assume that this oversight is due to the understandable inability to include everything in a single book, although it would be interesting to hear Wilson’s views on these reports.
I would not recommend this book as a good starting point in Wilson’s corpus – unless one is already interested in the UFO phenomenon. Like his other recent book, From Atlantis to the Sphinx, one gets the sense from this book that Wilson is trying to unite his earlier philosophy of a "New Existentialism" and new consciousness with his more recent interests in science at the fringes. To what extent long-time readers of Wilson’s work will be persuaded will, I expect, be highly variable (and for them, I recommend chapters 6, 9 and 10 as the heart of the matter). As for myself, I see parallels between this project and Sartre’s later efforts to reconcile Marxism and existentialism, driven by a need to justify his ideas within the physical world. Still, I must say that I find this book, and From Atlantis to the Sphinx, to be much more interesting than Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason. At any rate, Alien Dawn cannot afford to be ignored by Wilson readers, for it is part of his attempt to answer the questions he has been raising since The Outsider.
Click here to read an excerpt from Alien Dawn.
THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE
Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.
311 pages, $15.95 USD
It is impossible to classify Colin Wilson as a writer. He has published something like one hundred books in his lifetime – on philosophy, literature, psychology, criminology, and the occult, primarily. Oh, yes, and there are a couple of dozen novels.
The one thing I can say about him with definite certainty is that, paradoxically to his output, hardly anyone reads him. I’ve met a few people who have heard of his first book, The Outsider, which catapulted him to a brief period of fame in 1956 at the age of 24. Until the critics took a dislike to this youthful upstart, that is. A few have heard of him as a writer on crime or mysticism. Fewer have actually read him.
Wilson has persevered, however, because he is one of those rare writers who writes out of a sheer enthusiasm for ideas. And despite the enormous range of topics he has written about, his entire body of work is unified by a group of themes, all pertaining to the present and future of consciousness and its role in society. This latest book is no exception.
The Books in My Life is the best book Wilson has written in many years. For some time, Wilson has chosen to focus on "New Age" themes, and while I recognize the connection between these and his earlier work, these books lack the breadth and appeal of his earlier works. Long-time readers of Wilson have also hungered for a return to the breathtaking philosophical speculations which he termed the "New Existentialism." This book is a return to that wellspring out of which his best work has flowed. It is written as a memoir of the books which have influenced his thinking. His choices are no surprise: Shaw, Nietzsche, Sartre, Dostoevsky, T.S. Eliot, and others whom he has been writing about for forty years. But this book is not a mere reiteration of his past writing. He now reflects on these authors with the experience of a lifetime behind him, and while he returns to many of the same motifs (freedom, sex, the fallacy of pessimism, and the power of imagination, for instance), he offers a number of fresh insights. He is also a firm believer in the value of genre fiction, and he intersperses sections on Sherlock Holmes, David Linsday, and children’s books among the literary heavyweights. The book is written in a conversational tone, with Wilson frequently relating the intellectual experience of his reading to the conditions of his life at the time. This offers the opportunity to feel the power of the books through the lens of the adolescent Wilson’s drive to find a meaning behind his (and perhaps everyone’s) melancholy teenage years.
But the real attraction of a book by Colin Wilson is always the ideas underlying it. He deserves to be read because he is one of the few thinkers in print today who is unafraid to transcend the fashionable pessimism of our age. He seeks to affirm the unexplored potentials of human life, and exposes, with penetrating clarity, many of the harmful assumptions on which many aspects of our culture are based. This examination is not performed using the academic jargon of many of our esteemed cultural critics – many of whom Wilson sees as being a part of the problem – but is founded upon a need to stay grounded in the realm of lived experience. As such, The Books in My Life offers an excellent introduction to the vision of a writer who stands outside the intellectual mainstream, not to stand above it, but to offer an honest perspective on the "big picture" of our culture. You may not agree with all of his conclusions, but you will find much to ponder.
Click here to go to the publisher's Web site.