A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO COLIN WILSON'S THOUGHT
by John Morgan
Colin Wilson is a thinker who, perhaps more so than any other writer working today, embodies the true spirit of what is called the "Renaissance man." Wilson's work has taken him through the entire spectrum of human knowledge, unafraid to examine subjects which are deemed unworthy of study by mainstream academics, while at the same time remaining undaunted by those areas which are normally staked out by career specialists. As a result, Wilson's pursuit of his ideas have led him, over the course of more than forty years of intensive labor, to critique and formulate new ideas in a broad range of subjects, ranging from the works of the Romantics, the existentialists and split-brain psychology to criminology, science fiction, mysticism and revolutionary archaeology.
But one should not assume from this wide-ranging list of topics that Wilson is a mere dilettante, or that his work lacks a unifying focus. All of his research and literary work has had one primary goal: to test the limits and possibilities of human consciousness. As Wilson himself has said, everything he has done can be reduced to one simple mystery: when a child being reared in Christendom wakes up on Christmas morning, why does the world seem so much more vibrant and exciting, more "real," to the child than it usually does during the remaining 364 days of the year? And, even more to the point, why isn't this the way we feel all the time?
This question may seem to be a rather absurd cause to devote one's entire life to at first glance, but, as Wilson constantly reiterates, the reason it seems absurd is that we live in a culture which is saturated with pessimism. To the cynic, the solution to the above problem is simple: the Christmas-morning sensation of childhood (what Wilson and others have named "peak experiences," and which G. K. Chesterton called "absurd good news") is an illusion caused by seeing beyond the plain, immediate facts of existence which constitute our everyday reality into another world that has been invented by overactive glands and imaginations. Wilson's contention, however, is the exact reverse: it is the peak experience which gives us a brief moment of clarity about the surrounding world, and the drabness of our everyday perceptions is the illusion.
Along with psychologists such as Dr. Abraham Maslow, Wilson has studied the lives of healthy individuals and discovered that they constantly have peak experiences. For me, this contention is supported not only by my own personal experience (who isn't occasionally thrown into peak experience by a great piece of music?) but by countless works of literature: James Joyce describes what is clearly a peak experience at the moment when Stephen Dedalus discovers that he wants to be an artist in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; Nietzsche details the characteristics of such an experience in his description of inspiration in Ecce Homo; William Butler Yeats is swept up into one in a cafe in " "; Dr. Albert Hofmann, the inventor of LSD, describes a peak experience which he had as a child in his book LSD: My Problem Child (his only precedent for the psychedelic experience); the novels of Ernst Juenger are filled with such moments.
During these moments, the world seems renewed, revealing itself to be infinitely complex and beautiful in all its aspects. Sights which have been viewed a thousand times before suddenly seem rediscovered as if for the first time; the endless bounds of possibility open before oneself; everything is suddenly understood as being part of the song of the universe and one is filled with the desire to experience everything, building one's own bar of the music to a glorious crescendo. One greets the world with a child-like sense of wonderment. Routines and neuroses are banished and objects become categories no longer...a chair or a tree, for instance, but regain their existence in your eyes as real things with unique and complex characteristics. Nothing can be done wrong since all is understood, and the air seems to become filled with an almost visible energy which every sense organ can feel washing over you. (The best musical analogy I have ever discovered for this experience is the mad overture to Wagner's Tannhauser - a slow, quiet build, gradually going into a wild frenzy of barely controlled energy, until finally subsiding into a dream-like peace with all that exists.)
But, inevitably, this feeling subsides. We find ourselves back in the accumulated muck of our daily lives, with all of the problems which, briefly, seemed so insignificant and soluble growing back into threatening towers looming above our egos. We find ourselves again performing the same routines, and the objects which surround us become dull and uninteresting, unworthy of our attention. Life seems to be an endless drudgery, and we feel buffeted by powerful (if not vindictive) forces beyond our control, our desires forever unsatisfied. Life seems like "a poor player," and an absurd tragedy. It is as if we had briefly returned to Eden and relived the Fall, and find ourselves perhaps feeling even worse than we had before. We shake our heads and wonder what came over us, feeling cheated and jilted. If we are lucky, we recognize that we will experience this state again, and use this knowledge to soothe the pain.
As Wilson has attempted to prove again and again in his writings, when looked at rationally, cynicism (or "reality" as some would have it) is false, while the sense of wonder represented by the peak experience is true. When one truly concentrates on the surrounding world, opening rather than dampening the senses, it is immediately obvious that even the most commonplace surroundings are brimming with beauty, complexity and meaning. It is only because we are forced to "put the blinders on," so to speak, as we must in order to maintain the routines of our workaday lives, that life begins to seem repetitious and dull. A good illustration which Wilson has used to make this point is the existence in the course of Van Gogh's lifetime of both the painting, "Starry Night," and a suicide note. When one looks at the painting, one is awestruck by the sight of such an ordinary scene depicted through eyes of such wonderment. It gives the impression of an overflowing of the senses, of gifted perception made permanent. And yet the man who was capable of seeing the world in this way was also capable of despising life to the extent that he could destroy himself.
The explanation for this paradox, according to Wilson, is that humans have advanced to the point at which we can glimpse, for brief periods, the world as it is, but that we have not yet reached the stage at which we can maintain this reality throughout our lives. As a result, cynicism frequently wins out over more life-affirming views of the world because our perception of it is incorrect. And, indeed, even a brief look at the state of our culture is evidence enough to see that cynicism is the fashion of our time. Our literature, philosophy, music, films and TV programs are full of expressions of hopelessness and despair. And surely if we examine our own attitudes, most of us will admit to finding it much easier to believe in failure than in success. After all, it's much easier to justify apathy by assuming that a cause is hopeless than it is to battle it out with a sense of what is possible. (Wilson has said that the fact that a writer like Samuel Beckett, the ultimate expressor of inertia, is capable of winning the Nobel Prize is a clear sign of the troubled times we live in.) It is as if all of humanity, collectively sensing that we are on the cusp of a breakthrough into a new kind of living, has sunk to the ground in exhaustion just before reaching its long-sought goal. As Nietzsche has said, much in us is still like the worm that we evolved from, and the comfort of the muck is still more tempting than a transcendent future which we know not of, and which we will have to strive to attain. In short, cynicism is a devolutionary trait.
Not that Wilson only directs his work to would-be supermen, or even "outsiders." Wilson is no tenured academic spouting drivel which he has long since lost any interest in (with apologies to those academics who do not match this description). He has been hardened by his decision to live by his pen alone, being forced to maintain a link back to the world the rest of us inhabit for the sake of his own survival, rather than escaping into a sheltered surrogate womb of abstraction. Wilson's readers are frequently those who have a sense that there is a possibility for something greater in the nature of our existence, but who also recognize that theorizing alone achieves nothing, particularly when theories ignore the realities known to those of us who must interrupt our questing with the facts of functioning within society. Rather than painting a portrait of utopia which his readers can dream themselves into without needing to lift a finger, Wilson contends that there are many paths to conscious living, but all of them relying upon a constant exertion of the will. The challenge of balancing one's efforts at true consciousness against the requirements of daily life is a prominent feature of Wilson's thought, although he also avoids reducing his ideas to the level of populist comforting like so many would-be gurus of today. Rather than dodging the issue by resolving to despise the world of the herd, as is so stylish in the world of academia, Wilson is out there with us, rendering this reality as an integral part of his work.
Nor does Wilson claim to have all the answers. He is not the figurehead of a cult. Wilson deals in possibilities: he provides a compass, but he leaves it to you to find a route of your own choosing. This may be why popular success has eluded Wilson while many lesser thinkers have skyrocketed to fame with name-brand reassurances and ego-stroking -- or worse, neurosis-feeding despair -- disguised as philosophy. Not that this bothers him. As Wilson has said, the individual who wishes to embark on a truly conscious life must do so alone, and not fall victim to the endless parades of "knowers." The individual who has a sense of detachment from the norms of his or her society must not fall prey to cynicism or hero-worship, but instead use this sense of alienation as the starting point for values and myths of one's own invention, the true "outsider" of which Wilson speaks. And Wilson has had to live by his own dictum, becoming one of the most intriguing "outsiders" of all.
For those wishing to expose themselves to Wilson's ideas, the best idea would be to work one's way through Colin Stanley's list of Suggested Books. But, as even this list demands quite a bit of reading, the best single-volume introduction to Wilson's ideas is still The Outsider. Apart from this, his later book Introduction to the New Existentialism provides the best summation of his philosophy. But perhaps the best thing you can do is to go down Wilson's bibliography and find a book that is close to your existing interests. Given the range of subjects he has written about, you are bound to find something intriguing. The subjects he has focused on in his work are:
Philosophy: Wilson spent most of the early part of his career developing what he terms a "New Existentialism," in which he proceeds from many of the same assumptions of the classic existentialists but rejects their focus on alienation in favor of a more life-affirming conception of existentialism which will allow the individual the freedom to forge meaning for him- or herself. All of the books in the "Outsider cycle" are essential reading, although his Introduction to the New Existentialism offers a brief overview.
Literary criticism: These writings are difficult to distinguish from his philosophical writings, as he brings the same concerns to his study of literature. When discussing literature, Wilson always attempts to determine the world-view from which a work stems, emphasizing the breadth of vision an author expresses over the specific content or style of a work. As a result, his criticism tends to be highly opinionated (he dismisses Shakespeare as a pessimist), as he brings very definite ideas to bear, but the result is always interesting. The Craft of the Novel is a good summation of Wilson's critical ideas, revealing the basis with which he judges works, although probably the best summary is his essay "Existential Criticism," originally published in the Chicago Review of Summer 1959 and then republished in Eagle and Earwig.
Fiction: Wilson has written fiction in genres of all types, from "novels of ideas" to mysteries, science fiction and Lovecraftian homages. The same basic ideas which are present in his nonfiction are always in the background of his fiction. I have yet to read much of it, but my personal favorite so far is his first novel, Ritual in the Dark. Many people have also spoken favorably of his "Spider World" trilogy.
Criminology: In addition to his other achievements, Wilson is renown as being one of the world's leading criminologists, and he has written many noted books and articles on the subject. His primary motivation in his criminological works is in examining those criminals who are "outsiders gone wrong," and what significance their actions have for our understanding of human behavior. I have yet towade through the enormous body of work he has produced in this field, although A Criminal History of Mankind is fascinating.
The “Occult:” Wilson's overview of this subject, appropriately entitled The Occult, is still recognized as being a classic in the field. Many of Wilson's books deal with mysticism in its many forms, particularly in how the mystical experience and the peak experience relate to each other. As Wilson has observed, "Any system of values must ultimately be mystical." In terms of the broader range of paranormal experience, Colin’s two recent Atlantis books, From Atlantis to the Sphinx and The Atlantis Blueprint, are among his most important works.
Psychology: Wilson has been developing his ideas about psychology throughout his career, and all of his work deals with it in some way. He has made much of the parallels between his own thinking and that of Dr. Abraham Maslow, and his book, Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution, is often cited as his best work on the subject.
Readers new to Wilson may also want to look at Howard Dossor's survey of his life and work, Colin Wilson: The Man and His Mind, or Wilson's own selection of his most important writings, The Essential Colin Wilson, which includes excerpts from all of these subject areas.