Colin Wilson's 'Occult Trilogy': A Guide for Students (8 page)

“…life loses its savour; reality becomes unreal.
As a result …Ollie feels lower than ever and Stan sends up less energy than ever.
In this state a human being lives on a far lower level than he is intended for, and he
cannot escape
the vicious circle for he can see no reason for effort.
The result may be nervous breakdown, or paranoia, or even suicide.”
(68)

But the fact that this can work ‘in reverse’ when Stan sends up more energy in response to Ollie’s positive state of mind:

“…is perhaps the most important single insight that any human being could experience.
Peak experiences and mystical experiences are not glimpses of some ineffable, paradoxical
truth, but simply a
widening
of our ordinary field of perception.”
(70)

Wilson believes that this “constitutes a completely new theory of the nature of reality” (70):

“For as long as philosophy has existed, philosophers have been passing negative judgements on human life….
If we can once
grasp
…that our senses are so dull that we are little better than sleepwalkers …then we can also begin to see that when we experience a sense of meaning, it is because our senses have opened a little wider than usual, to admit a wider range of reality….
[Philosophers] insist that we should distrust our senses because their evidence is ‘relative’; therefore the statement that the universe (and human existence) is meaningless is just as valid—or as invalid—as the statement that it has an ultimate purpose and direction.
But if the insights of the mystics are valid then this ‘melancholy relativism’ …is quite simply a fallacy.”
(71-73)

The main problem is with the limitations of everyday consciousness: “…limitations that seem even more puzzling when we realise that they can vanish in a flash and leave us staggered and overwhelmed by a sense of infinite vistas of meaning”.
(73)

So what can we
do
to wake from this slumber?
Wilson is convinced that the key is
attention
:

“…exhaustion and fatigue can be reversed simply by becoming deeply
interested
in something and giving it full attention.
It is as if the vital energies, which had become scattered and diluted, are somehow
funnelled
into the object of attention.
The moment Ollie murmurs, ‘How fascinating!’
Stan immediately sends up a trickle of strength and vitality.”
(75)

Towards the end of the next chapter he introduces us to the important concept of ‘upside-downness’ and it is appropriate to jump ahead and discuss that here:

“…when we feel tired or depressed or bored—or simply passive and indifferent—it is because we are allowing our ‘trivial’ values to dominate our intellectual values.
In effect we are holding our values upside-down.”
(99)

In fact, most of us, by allowing our emotions to rule our intellect, spend most of our lives in a state of ‘upside-downness’:

“The chief problem of being ‘upside-down’ is that trivial values are so short sighted and tend to plunge us into a state in which the difficulties of life seem just not worth the effort …When I am driven by a powerful sense of purpose, my intellect tells me that it
is
worth making tremendous efforts and I summon my vital energies accordingly—or rather, Stan summons them for me.
When emotional values are allowed to dominate, my vitality sinks—for it is Ollie who suddenly feels that life is just not worth the effort and whose pessimism infects Stan.”(99)

Wilson claims that he has managed to produce these states of concentrated awareness on several occasions and that they: “lasted for a period of several hours, and on each occasion the first necessity was to convince myself (that is to say, my ‘other self’) that a continuous effort would produce worthwhile results …” (76).
This effort convinced Wilson that “…it
is
possible to push our minds up to a higher level of perception and keep them there for a long time.”
(78).
Put simply, we need to learn to raise ourselves “to a level of mental intensity where everything in the world …becomes fascinating.”
(78)

The remainder of Chapter Three: ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’
concentrates on authenticated instances of ‘time-slips’ and reports, from the likes of Arnold Toynbee, of ‘duo-consciousness’ (appearing to be in two places at once):

“…there are times when duo-consciousness becomes so intense that it ceases to be an exercise in imagination and takes on a compelling quality of reality….
It seems to be an unknown or unrecognised faculty, and as such I have suggested calling it Faculty X.”
(82)

These experiences invariably happen when the subject is in a relaxed, meditative state bringing about a “switch from left-brain consciousness to right-brain consciousness”.
(85) “Our left-brain perception separates us from reality as if we were enclosed by a wall of sound-proof glass” (88); it was “not made for grasping the living quality of experience; it keeps reducing the world to symbols and measurements.”
(87) By contrast right-brain consciousness “spreads gently ‘sideways’, taking in the present moment, looking
at
things instead of through them” (85).
Wilson reminds us, however, that we must not consider the left brain as the villain of the piece: “The left brain is, on the contrary, the key to our evolutionary destiny.
‘Vision’ is important, but control is even more important.”
(89) We should not therefore try to “escape the limitations of the left brain, but to put them to good use.”
(91)

Wilson believes that our tendency to ‘upside-downness’ devalues our everyday consciousness making it “subnormal”.
He sees ‘Faculty X’ as everyday consciousness “plus a dimension of meaning” making it “genuinely normal consciousness” (99) and is convinced that it is possible to achieve this at will:

“We must recognise
precisely
what is wrong with our subnormal everyday consciousness.
We must also recognise that our tendency to ‘upside-downness’ constitutes a major
obstacle to learning to achieve genuinely normal consciousness.
‘Upside-downness’ blinds us to reality….
The first steps towards achieving normal consciousness is to grasp the mechanisms of ‘upside-downness’.”
(100)

The final four chapters of Part One provide over 100 pages of recorded instances of time-slips, psychometry, clairvoyance, precognitive dreams, synchronicities and out-of-body experiences.
Wilson believes that there is such a huge body of evidence to support these phenomena that to dismiss them all as fancy or invention—as many academics, sceptics and scientists do—is, in itself, illogical and unscientific.
He is suggesting that there may indeed be more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies!

He concludes Part One by claiming that he was convinced that “the simple, straightforward answer to all the mysteries of the paranormal was the ‘hidden power’ inside all of us.”
(210) However, although he once
saw
this as a “comprehensive theory of the paranormal” (210) he now feels that it is “subject to certain qualifications” (210).
These are discussed in the more controversial Part Two of
Beyond the Occult
: ‘Powers of Good and Evil’.

In the opening chapter of Part Two: ‘The Search for Evidence’, Wilson reveals how the dawn of a new decade (the 1980s) caused him to re-think the conclusions reached in his two previous ‘Occult Trilogy’ titles by presenting the extraordinary poltergeist case of ‘The Black Monk of Pontefract’, a case he had personally investigated in 1980 and subsequently written an account of in his 1981 book
Poltergeist! a study in destructive haunting
(Sevenoaks, Kent: New English Library).
This was the case that changed his mind, convincing him that poltergeists are
not
products of the unconscious mind but, in fact,
spirits
:

“It was an embarrassing admission to have to make …there is
probably not a single respectable parapsychologist in the world who will publicly admit the existence of spirits….
Before that trip to Pontefract I had been in basic agreement with them [but that] case left me in no possible doubt that the entity …was a spirit….
And I must admit that it still causes me a kind of flash of protest to write such a sentence: the rationalist in me wants to say, ‘Oh come off it….’
Yet the evidence points clearly in that direction and it would be simple dishonesty not to admit it …the picture that now began to emerge made me aware of how far my preconceptions had caused me to impose an unnatural logic on the whole subject of the paranormal.
It was not so much that the conceptions underlying
The Occult
and
Mysteries
were wrong as that they were incomplete….”
(238)

[It has not been possible, in an essay of this length, to present the details of this case.
Readers who are interested should refer to the above mentioned book and decide for themselves whether Wilson’s ‘conversion’ was justified.]

This implies, of course, that there is life after death and Wilson went on to write
Afterlife: an investigation of the evidence for life after death
in 1985 (London: Harrap Ltd.) in which he concluded that evidence points unmistakably to survival.

In the light of these revelations, Wilson uses the next three chapters to take a ‘new’ look at witchcraft, magic, possession, multiple personality, astral projection and spiritualism, asking finally:

“…how far does it
matter
whether there is a ‘psychic world’, whether spirits exist, whether reincarnation is a reality, whether mediums really contact the dead?
….
What is interesting about the paranormal is its suggestion that we possess ‘hidden powers’.
Human beings tend to suffer from the
‘passive fallacy’, the notion that we are mere products of the material world and that the material world is the ultimate reality.
For a large proportion of our lives our consciousness is little more than a mirror that reflects this ‘reality’.
It is only in moments of concentration and excitement that we grasp that the real purpose of consciousness is to
change
the world.
Synchronicities, flashes of clairvoyance or precognition or mystical insight, make us aware that our power to change the world is greater than we imagine.
This is the most important insight to arise from the study of the paranormal; this is the essence of the ‘occult vision’.
By comparison ghosts and spirits seem interesting but not particularly important.”
(313)

Thus, having knocked himself off-course, Wilson steadies the boat somewhat and steers it back to more familiar waters.

In the penultimate chapter, ‘Completing the Picture’, Wilson returns to his concept of ‘upside-downness’, taking it a step further:

“…we accept the present moment
as if it were complete in itself
(327)…If I am bored, that is because life is boring.
If I am tired, that is because life is tiring (328-9)….
Our underlying, instinctive feeling is that life is grim and difficult and something awful might happen at any moment….
It is not simply that our emotions are negative, but that our intellect
agrees with them
.
Our judgement ratifies the ‘upside-down’ view of the world….”
(327)

But, says Wilson, the present moment almost always gives us an
incomplete
picture of life which is in need of ‘completing’:

“This ‘completing’ is the most basic activity of all intelligent beings….
But our ‘completing’ activities tend to vary from moment to moment.
When I am tired I may watch television
without taking it in: I cannot be bothered to ‘complete’ it.
On the other hand when I set out on holiday the world seems to me an extraordinary place….
My mind is now doing its ‘completing’ work with enthusiasm and efficiency.”
(328)

The result of this insight is not a state of constant euphoria but “…a calm recognition that life is
not
difficult …” and that most of our problems can be “…dealt with by using what might be called ‘constructive will-force’” (331):

“Whenever we experience delight we realize that the answer is simply to translate this delight into intellectual terms—words and ideas—
and then trust the intellect
.
From then on we must learn to carry out the act of ‘completing’ with conscious deliberation, with the unshakeable certainty that it is providing the correct solution….
We merely need to grasp this insight about ‘completing’ and ‘upside-downness’ to see that most human suffering is self-inflicted.”
(330-1)

Wilson believes that achieving this turnaround, and freeing-up vital energy, can also help produce the ‘occult vision’: mystical insights, clairvoyance, out-of-body experiences, telepathy, precognition etc.

In an important final chapter, Wilson delineates his ‘Seven Levels of Consciousness’.
In Levels 1 to 4, ranging from dream consciousness to everyday consciousness, we are heavily under the influence of ‘the robot’.
In Level 5, however, ‘spring-morning consciousness’, we experience moments of bubbling happiness: ‘peak experiences’.
Level 6, the ‘magical level’, is when life becomes a continuous ‘peak experience’.
Wilson calls Level 7 ‘Faculty X’: “There is an almost godlike sensation…[a] sense of
mastery over time …
” (348).
It should be emphasised, however, that Wilson is only delineating the seven levels of what he calls
‘normal’
consciousness:

“The most interesting thing about the levels beyond Level 7 …is that they seem to
contradict
the evidence of our senses and of everyday consciousness.
The inner becomes the outer, the outer becomes the inner, man is the whole universe and a mere atom, space and time are seen to be illusions …” (348)

In his autobiography
Dreaming to Some Purpose
(2004) he adds:

“…excluding the weird and paradoxical Level 8, I had worked out the basic normal levels of consciousness.
The interesting thing is that up to …Level 4½, consciousness is passive.
Beyond 4½, it is as if you have reached a mountain top, and the going is now all downhill; consciousness has become
active
.