You know, Bodvar has me intrigued and I am going out tomorrow to get Pirsig's "Lila". I have read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" long ago, and perhaps it needs another go.
It is interesting that I chose to read the "Tibetan Book of the Dead," again at this time because it always puts me 'in my place' in the world. Also, "The Secret of the Golden Flower" does this immensely. I highly recommend these books to any interested in a 'greater' view of mind/body consciousness.
Colin Wilson amazes me, I think, (and I have mentioned this before) because he has summarized and compiled a few centuries of scattered, pell-mell, Western thought succinctly into a diciplined work of enlightenment of meaning. He is, to me, the Western Buddha. Well... pretty darn close, anyway. But I yearn to know his peace of mind at his current age. What ontological conclusions has he come to in a very personal manner? Is he 'spiritually' happy?
Does anyone know of any works that may answer these questions?
Gerald James
The work by R. Pirsig is very interesting, and his method and means of explaining his ideas is wonderfully effective. This is one area where I feel Colin Wilson falls a little short-- the conveyance of philosophical ideas via fictional writing. I have read much of C.W.'s fiction and found it dry to my tastes. I get more excited reading his straightforward non-fiction.
Pirsig's novel approach (forgive the pun) to explaining the zen state of things is wonderful. I think the idea of Dynamic Quality is great and opened up much of my thoughts on the mentally ill, with whom i work.
Since the mind/matter dilema seems closed here, I would like to continue exploration of the positive continuums. One question I have in the study of the 'occult' is why Colin Wilson got suckered into the antics of Uri Geller? Was he not an obvious fraud, even from the beginning?
Gerald James
In response to Gerald James:
I have been reading May's discussion items on John Morgan's CW page, and I very much identify with your thoughts on language.
Being an artist I am no expert with words, but I do see the letters of the alphabet as 'colours' of sound - colours which we combine and contrast into patterns of meaning. You mentioned E.F. Schumacher's "Guide for the Perplexed" - that book left a deep impression on me, especially the chapter on the many ways to look at a book!
Language detrimental to action - yes! What I sense (and I say 'sense' because I don't 'know') is that we are taking words, like everything else in our world, for granted. Their meanings have become conditioned and automatic, inherited from other places instead of being created inside ourselves through individual attention and awareness.
This is why I see Colin Wilson's central theme of 'paying attention' as so important to our evolution, both as social animals and individual beings. Even that phrase, p a y i n g a t t e n t i o n , the word 'paying' implies action - a giving of energy in some way, and 'attention' - we cannot attend without some kind of energy output, 'action'.
When I was a teenager my father gave me a Teach-Yourself book on "Reading and Writing Japanese" and it was the first time that I became aware of the distance between our sound symbols and their visual ones. Perhaps because I am better at producing paintings than poems, I related better to the Japanese language. Even so, when I write, or even speak, I tend to visualise words as a meaningful sounds, 'soundshapes', intending attention onto them as if I was looking at a picture. It is amazing how meanings then flow into them. People have forgotten how to 'act themselves on to' words.
Recently Colin's biographer, Howard Dossor, made such a simple statement which has changed my life. He said we don't 'discover ourselves' so much as 'create our selves' as go through life. Every morning I awake now and ask 'What am I going to MAKE of myself today?' I am nothing until I make something, and words are like the pencils and paints we use.
Am I coming through this noosphere (this global nothingness) as 'weird' too?
Yes, I agree that this virtual reality internetting can be the ultimate emptiness UNLESS it leads people to act in physical reality (or psychological or spiritual reality) towards better understanding. (Look at that word 'understanding' - standing under something means you have to look upwards to see it!) Evolution HAS to involve transfer of energy in some way, and I glean from Colin's writings that it is this fundamental fact he trying to get us to 'real ise'.
Like you, I have also experienced the dancing Shiva vision of Fritjof Capra's, and many other visions since. But all of them have been intended in some way, probably related to a very deep personal (or universal?) need.
Anyway, I just wanted to reach out tentatively with one of my mental tentacles so see if it can touch yours!
Joanne Taylor
Knysna, South Africa