Colin Wilson's 'Occult Trilogy': A Guide for Students (7 page)

COMMENTS:

A sequel to
The Occult
which attempts “to place the world of the ‘unseen’ in a scientific framework,” and to point a way towards “a new stage in the history of the planet earth.”
Wilson begins with an account of his experiences when he came close to a nervous breakdown; his subsequent self-examination led to the discovery of a higher self which could take control in an internal emergency.
But should we be able to call upon these higher selves
at will, and if so, how?
Wilson’s answer, as always, is positive and encouraging.
A refreshing antidote to the popular school of thought which sees little or no future for the human race.

The 2006 Watkins reprint (‘f’ above) contains a new Introduction between pages xxiii-xxvi.
The pagination of the book is confusing, however: the preliminaries have roman numerals to xxvi, whereafter the text commences at
page 23
.

Two chapters ‘The Ladder of Selves’ and ‘The Mechanisms of Enlightenment’ were reprinted as part of the e-book
The Ladder of Selves
and
The Search for Power Consciousness
(Berkeley, CA: Maurice Bassett, 2002).

SECONDARY SOURCES AND REVIEWS:

1.  Benson-Gyles, Dick.
“It’s All in the Mind,” in
Western Morning News
(Oct.
13, 1978): 7.

2.  Bird, C.
Washington Post Book World
12 (Dec.
24, 1978): E3.

3.  Celebration: Chapter 21.

4.  
Choice
16 (May, 1979): 372.

5.  Dingwall, J.
British Book News
(Jan.
1, 1979): 20.

6.  Dossor: Chapter 6.

7.  Hudnall, Clayton.
Best Sellers
38 (Mar., 1979): 403.

8.  
Illustrated London News
266 (Oct., 1978): 121.

9.  
Kirkus Reviews
46 (Dec.
1, 1978): 1348.

10.  Martin, Vernon.
Library Journal
104 (Feb.
1, 1979): 410.

11.  McNeil, Helen.
“A Severed Head.”
New Statesman
96 (Dec.
22-29, 1978): 885.

12.  Merchant, Norris.
Christian Century
96 (July 4-11, 1979): 712-713.

13.  
National Review
31 (Nov.
9, 1979): 1448.

14.  Pedlar, Kit.
New Scientist
79 (Sept.
28, 1978): 956-957.

15.  
Publishers Weekly
214 (Nov.
6, 1978): 67.

16.  
Publishers Weekly
217 (Mar.
7, 1980): 88.

17.  
Times
(Sept.
28, 1978): 8.

18.  Walton, Alan Hull.
“Colin Wilson’s Magnum Opus.”
Books & Bookmen
24 (Mar., 1979): 41-43.
(Reprinted in Celebration, p.
130-136.)

19.  
Writer’s Review
(Feb./Mar., 1979): 4.

20.  
Material for Thought
(San Francisco) (Spring 1982): 72-74.

21.  Around: 160-173.

22.  Stanley:
Literary Encyclopedia
http://www.litencyc.com
/

Book 3:
Beyond the Occult

Beyond the Occult
, the third book in Colin Wilson’s ‘Occult Trilogy’, was published late in 1988, both in the UK and the US, by Bantam Press.
It was the culmination of twenty years’ research into the paranormal which commenced with the publication of a huge volume,
The Occult
, in 1971 and was followed by the equally bulky
Mysteries
in 1978.
The decision to write a book about the occult, against the advice of Robert Graves, turned out to be advantageous to Wilson as the books were, mostly, well received and spawned many popular spin-offs [see following checklist].
Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how he could have supported himself and his growing family, post-1970, without undergoing more arduous lecture tours of the United States, if he had not taken this bold step.

Some readers, however, had been alienated by this seemingly new direction in Wilson’s work, but a careful examination of many of his previous books reveals, at the very least, a passing interest in the subject.
Wilson himself has always considered his ‘serious’ occult books—i.e.
the ‘Occult Trilogy’—to be a logical extension of his ‘new existentialism’, providing evidence that man possesses latent powers which, if tapped and harnessed, could lead to hugely expanded consciousness and potentially even an evolutionary leap.
In a lengthy Introduction to the new edition of
Beyond the Occult
, published in 2008, Wilson writes:

“When
The Occult
appeared in 1971, it soon became apparent that many people who had regarded me as a kind of maverick existentialist now believed that I had turned to more trivial topics, and abandoned the rigour of my ‘Outsider’ books.
To me, such a view was incomprehensible.
It seemed obvious to me that if the ‘paranormal’ was a reality—as I was increasingly
convinced that it was—then any philosopher who refused to take it into account was merely closing his eyes.”
(Wilson (1), xxviii)

Beyond the Occult
: “unites two main currents in my thinking: the ‘existentialist’ ideas developed in
The Outsider
, and the ideas that developed from my study of ‘the occult’.”
(Wilson (1), xvii)

He may have left
some
readers behind but during the 1970s and 1980s he gained many, many more.
Wilson was, as always, confident and upbeat, describing
Beyond the Occult
, in the first sentence of that same Introduction as “…my most important nonfiction book.”
(Wilson (1), xvii)

The book is divided into 2 sections: Part One: Hidden Powers; Part Two: Powers of Good and Evil.
In the introductory chapter to Part One, Wilson attempts to answer those critics who had accused him of gullibility: “When I began systematic research for my book
The Occult
, I must admit that my attitude was basically sceptical” (27*).
As his research progressed, however, he became impressed by the consistency of reports of telepathy, ‘second sight’ and precognition:

“…in deciding what to believe and what not to believe I applied exactly the same standards that I would apply in science.
If something had been observed independently by a number of trustworthy observers, then I was inclined to accept it as fact …” (28)

As a result of all this research: “I arrived at the reasonable conclusion that human beings possess a whole range of ‘hidden powers’ of which they are usually unaware, and that these include telepathy, ‘second-sight’, precognition and psychometry” (29-30).
But although the unconscious mind seemed to Wilson to provide a “fairly convincing” explanation for some of these phenomena it could not explain some of the “highly
convincing” evidence for life after death, reincarnation and precognition.
He writes: “There can be no ‘scientific’ explanation for precognition because it is obviously impossible to know about an event which has not yet happened.
Yet my reading revealed that there are hundreds of serious, well-documented cases.”
(31) He considers that maybe the part of the ‘non conscious self’ which has paranormal powers is not Freud’s unconscious mind “but some kind of
superconscious
mind …as much above ‘everyday awareness’ as the subconscious …is below it.”
(36)

In Chapter One: ‘Mediums and Mystics’, Wilson refers to a recent survey, in which it was revealed that 36 per cent of human beings have had a mystical experience:

“One thing seems clear: the world glimpsed in these moments of insight is
more
real than the world of everyday reality….
But the main insight of all mystical experiences is obviously a sense of
meaning
…the mystic feels—or rather ‘sees’—that the whole universe is a gigantic pattern….
Mystical experiences invariably seem to instil courage and optimism.”
(42-3)

The mind, however, despite being a marvellously powerful instrument, “is no more capable of
grasping
reality than I can eat gravy with a fork.
It was not made for the job.”
(45) So how can we build a bridge between everyday experience and mystical experience?
The answer lies in split-brain psychology, the discovery that we have literally two people living inside our heads:

“…we …have to understand that we have two instruments for grasping the world around us, not—as we naturally tend to assume—just one.
One part of the mind has the power to encounter reality …simply and directly….
The other part can only come to terms with reality by strapping it into a kind of
rigid iron framework and measuring it with rulers and clocks.”
(45)

Wilson is referring to the right and left hemispheres of the brain: “The left brain is a kind of microscope whose purpose is to examine the world in detail; the right is a kind of telescope whose purpose is to scan wide vistas of meaning.”
(52)

[Wilson seems to have ‘discovered’ the results of split-brain research (which was carried out in the 1960s) in the mid-1970s and first made mention of it in the second ‘Occult Trilogy’ book
Mysteries
(1978).
He then went on to apply this to his ideas on human consciousness in a book entitled
Frankenstein’s Castle: the right brain: door to wisdom
(Bath: Ashgrove Press) in 1980.]

But it is also important to realise that perception is intentional.
In other words:

“…we control the amount of energy we put into perception…Our minds have a ‘concentrative faculty’, a certain power of intensifying our power of ‘focusing’….
This faculty has the power of suddenly increasing our sense of reality; in fact, it might be labelled…‘the reality function’.
The ‘reality function’ is undoubtedly one of the major keys to the problem of mystical experience.”
(52)

In Chapter 2: ‘The Other Self’ Wilson traces the ‘discovery’ of the double brain back into the nineteenth century when Thomson Jay Hudson wrote his
Law of Psychic Phenomena
(1893) in which he suggested that we possess an ‘objective’ and a ‘subjective’ mind:

“…the most exciting idea was that the subjective mind has incredible powers—of memory, of invention, of power over the body—and that we
all
possess a subjective mind.
Then
why are we not all geniuses?
Because our objective minds
cramp the powers
of the subjective mind.
We
would
be geniuses if we could release these powers.”
(59)

[In fact the double brain theory is much older than this.
In 1836, the phrenologist, biologist and evolutionary theorist Hewett Watson [1804-1881] published a paper in the
Phrenological Journal
entitled ‘What is the Use of the Double Brain?’
in which he speculated about the differential development of the two human cerebral hemispheres.
Eight years later Arthur Ladbroke Wigan [c1785-1847] published his
The Duality of Mind
(London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1844).
Double brain research was well established in the latter half of the 19
^th
century, as the philosopher of science Anne Harrington makes clear in her
Medicine, Mind, and the Double Brain: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Thought
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).]

These theories anticipated the experimentation conducted on humans, by the Nobel laureate Roger Sperry, Joseph Bogen, Michael Gazzaniga, and their associates and students, in the early 1960s.
Double Brain research became
the
fashionable field in neuroscience, and the number of laboratories focusing in this area of research, proliferated around the world.
Wilson’s discovery of their work led to him formulating his own ‘Laurel and Hardy Theory of Consciousness’.
This theory first appeared in print as an essay entitled ‘Consciousness and the Divided Brain’, published in the journal
Second Look
(volume 1, no.
12) in October 1979.
It was reprinted as ‘The Laurel and Hardy Theory of Consciousness’ in
The Essential Colin Wilson
(London: Harrap, 1985) and eventually as a booklet in 1986 (Mill Valley, CA: Robert Briggs Associates).
In it he likens the ‘two selves’ to: “Laurel and Hardy in the old movies: Ollie, the dominant, bossy type, and Stan, the vague and childlike character.”
(66) Stan always takes his cues from Ollie.
If Ollie is cheerful, Stan is ecstatic; if Ollie is feeling gloomy, Stan becomes depressed (he always over-reacts).
It is Stan, however, who controls our vital energy which he provides in abundance when Ollie is in a positive state of mind.
But when Stan becomes depressed, the energy is blocked, Ollie becomes even gloomier, and we find ourselves caught in a downward spiral of negative feedback.
“This,” writes Wilson, “explains a wide range of psychological states and mechanisms, from clinical depression and neurosis to the peak experience and states of mystical affirmation”.
(67) This is not, however, the complete story: “There is a third person involved—the entity I have called ‘the robot’.”
(67) Regular Wilson readers will know that ‘the robot’ is a term he coined for that part of the unconscious mind that performs everyday tasks for us without us having to think too much about it: “The robot halves our work for us.
But he also has one great disadvantage.
He tends to ‘switch on’ like a thermostat whenever we feel tired, and literally take over our lives.”
(68) We sometimes catch it performing tasks that we previously found pleasurable with the result that “experience suddenly loses its freshness” (68) and when Stan and Ollie have got themselves into a state of negative feedback ‘the robot’ “becomes downright dangerous” (68):