The Essential Colin Wilson (14 page)

Another interesting point arose when I was lecturing to Maslow's class at Brandeis University in early 1967. I was speaking about the peculiar power of the human imagination. I can imagine trapping my thumb in the door, and wince as if I had actually done it. I can go to see a film, and come out of the cinema feeling as if I have been on a long journey. Even so, it must be admitted that imagination only provides a dim carbon copy of the original experience. I may try to recall a particularly happy day, and even re-experience some of its pleasures; but compared to the original experience, it is like paste jewellery compared to the real thing. The hero of Barbusse's novel
Hell
, trying to recall the experience of watching a woman undress, admits: 'These words are all dead. They leave untouched, powerless to affect it, the intensity of what was'. Proust, tasting a madeleine dipped in tea, recalls with sudden intensity the reality of his childhood: but that is a fluke. He cannot do it by an ordinary act of imagination.

Yet the matter of sex appears to be an exception to this rule. A man can conjure up some imaginary scene with a girl undressing, and he responds physically as if there
were
a girl undressing in the room: his imagination can even carry him to the point of a sexual climax. In this one respect, man has completely surpassed the animals: here is a case where the mental 'act' needs no object . . .

At this point, Maslow interrupted me to point out that this is not quite true; monkeys often masturbate. I asked him if he had ever seen a monkey masturbating in total isolation, without the stimulus of a female monkey anywhere in the vicinity. He thought for a moment, then said he hadn't.

Even if he had, it would not have basically affected my point. If monkeys can do problems for fun, perhaps they have more imagination than we give them credit for. But the interesting point is that in the matter of sex, man can achieve repeatedly what Proust achieved momentarily tasting the madeleine: a physical response
as if
to reality. Absurd as it sounds, masturbation is one of the highest faculties mankind has yet achieved. But its importance is in what it presages: that one day, the imagination will be able to achieve this result in
all
fields. If all perception is 'intentional', due to a 'reaching out', a 'focusing', on the part of the perceiver, then it ought to be possible to reconstruct any reality by making the necessary effort of focusing. We have only been kept from this recognition by the old, false theory of 'passive perception'.

Anyone who did chemistry at school will recall what happens if you mix sulphur and iron filings, and then heat them in a crucible. A small area of the sulphur melts and fuses with the iron. At that point, you can remove the flame of the Bunsen burner; the reaction will continue of its own accord; the glow slowly spreads throughout the mixture until the whole crucible is red hot, and the end result is a chunk of iron sulphide. The same process goes on in the mind when we become deeply interested in anything. The warm glow produced by favourite poetry or music is often the beginning of this fusing process.

We are all familiar with the process of a wider glimpse of 'meaning' leading to the revitalising of the will. This, in fact, is why people need holidays. As life drags on repetitively, they get tired; they stop making effort; it is the
will
that gets run down. The holiday 'reminds' them of wider meanings, reminds them that the universe is a vast spider's web of meaning, stretching infinitely in all directions. And quite suddenly they are enjoying
everything
more: eating, reading, walking, listening to music, having a beer before dinner. The 'meaning' sharpens the appetite for life—that is, the will to live.

It is our misfortune that we are not equally familiar with the reverse process: that a deliberate increase in willed concentration can
also
start the 'fusion' process working. This is, in fact, common sense. The deeper my sense of the 'meaningfulness' of the world, the fiercer and more persistent my will. And increased effort of will leads in turn to increased sense of meaning. It is a chain reaction. So is the reverse, when 'discouragement' leads me to stop willing, and the passivity leads to a narrowed sense of meaning, and the gradual loss of 'meaning' leads to further relaxation of the will. The result is a kind of 'down staircase' of apathy. On the other hand, any intense glimpse of meaning can cause a transfer to the 'up staircase'. This is most strikingly illustrated in an experiment that Maslow's colleague, Dr. A Hoffer, carried out with alcoholics.[1] Hoffer reasoned that alcoholics may be people of more-than-average intelligence and sensitivity. Because of this, they find that life is too much for them, and they drink because at first it produces peak experiences. But as often as not it doesn't; then they drink more to increase the stimulus, and become involved in guilt and depression. Hoffer tried giving these alcoholics mescalin—producing a far more powerful 'lift' than alcohol—and then deliberately induced peak experiences by means of music, poetry, painting—whatever used to produce P.E's before the subject became alcoholic. The startling result was that more than 50 per cent were cured. The peak experience is an explosion of
meaning
, and meaning arouses the will, which in turn reaches out towards further horizons of meaning. The alcoholic drinks because he wants peak experiences, but he is, in fact, running away from them as fast as he can go. Once his sense of direction had been restored, he ceased to be alcoholic, recognising that
peak experiences are in direct proportion to the intensity of the will
.

And what should be quite clear is that there is no theoretical limit to the 'chain reaction'. Why does a man get depressed? Because at a certain point, he feels that a certain difficulty is 'not worth the effort'. As he becomes more discouraged, molehills turn into mountains until, as William James says, life turns into one tissue of impossibilities, and the process called nervous breakdown begins. Having recognised that the cause of the trouble lies in the collapse of the will, there is no theoretical reason why the ex-alcoholic should come to a halt with the achievement of 'normality'.

There is, of course, a practical reason. The will needs a
purpose
. Why do we feel so cheerful when we are planning a holiday—looking at maps, working out what to pack? Because we have long-distance purpose. One can understand how Balzac must have felt when he first conceived the idea of creating the
Comédie Humaine
, the excitement of working out a series of novels about military life, a series about provincial life, a series about the aristocracy . . . 'Building castles in the air', this activity is called; but with a little effort, they actually get built. Man seems to need long-range purpose to get the best out of himself. And once the alcoholic has achieved 'normality' again, he may well say: 'All right, where do I go from here?'

If this were true, it would represent a kind of dead end. For undoubtedly, our civilisation tends to deprive us of the kind of long-range purpose that our pioneer ancestors must have enjoyed. But it provides us with something else: the ability to live on the plane of the mind, the imagination.

And there is a still more important matter we have over-looked: the mind's capacity to
reach out
for meaning. This is perfectly illustrated by a story told in Romain Gary's novel
The Roots of Heaven
. In a German concentration camp during the war, the French prisoners are becoming increasingly demoralised: they are on a down-staircase. A man called Robert devises a way to arrest the decline. He suggests that they imagine an invisible girl in the billet. If one of them swears or farts, he must bow and apologise to the 'girl'; when they undress, they must hang up a blanket so she can't see them. Oddly enough, this absurd game works: they enter into the spirit of the thing, and morale suddenly rises. The Germans become suspicious of the men, and by eavesdropping they find out about the invisible girl. The Commandant fancies himself as a psychologist. He goes along to the billet with two guards, and tells the men: 'I know you have a girl here. That is forbidden. Tomorrow, I shall come here with these guards, and you will hand her over to me. She will be taken to the local brothel for German officers.' When he has gone, the men are dismayed; they know that if they 'hand her over', they won't be able to re-create her. The next day the Commandant appears with his two soldiers. Robert, as the spokesman, says: 'We have decided not to hand her over'. And the Commandant knows he is beaten: nothing he can do can force them to hand her over. Robert is arrested and placed in solitary confinement; they all think they have seen the last of him, but weeks later, he reappears, very thin and worn. He explains that he has found the way to resist solitary confinement—their game with the invisible girl has taught him that the imagination is the power to reach out to
other realities
, realities not physically present. He has kept himself from breakdown by imagining great herds of elephants trampling over endless plains . . . The irony, in the novel, is that it is Robert who later becomes a hunter of elephants. But that is beside the point. The point is that the will
can
make an act of reaching towards meaning, towards 'other realities'.

In phenomenological terms, what actually happened when the prisoners began apologising to the imaginary girl? First of all, they threw off their apathy and entered into a communal game. It was like a coach-load of football fans whiling away a tedious journey with community singing. But having raised their spirits by entering into the game, they also
reminded themselves
of circumstances in which they would normally be 'at their best'. Gorky's story
Twenty Six Men and a Girl
may be regarded as a parable about the same thing: the twenty-six over-worked bakers keep up their spirits by idealising the girl, treating her as a goddess . . . And thereby
reminding themselves
of the response appropriate to a goddess.

And this leads naturally to a concept that has become the core of my own existential psychology: the Self-image. A man could not climb a vertical cliff without cutting handholds in the rock. Similarly, I cannot achieve a state of 'intenser consciousness' merely by wanting to; at least, it is extremely difficult without training. We tend to climb towards higher states of self-awareness by means of a series of self-images. We create a certain imaginary image of the sort of person we would like to be, and then try to live up to the image. 'The great man is the play-actor of his ideals,' says Nietzsche.

One of the clearest expositions of the self-image idea can be found in a story called
The Looking Glass
by the Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis. A young man who has lived all his life in a small village in Brazil is called up for military service. In due course he becomes a lieutenant. When he returns home in his uniform he is the envy of the village; his mother calls him 'My lieutenant'. One of his aunts is particularly delighted with him: she invites him to her remote farm, and insists on addressing him as 'Senhor Lieutenant'. Her brother-in-law and all the slaves follow suit. At first, the youth is embarrassed; he doesn't
feel
like a lieutenant. But gradually he gets used to the idea. 'The petting, the attention, the deference, produced a transformation in me . . . ' He begins to feel like a lieutenant. But one day, the aunt goes away to the bedside of a sick daughter, and takes the brother-in-law with her. The lieutenant is left alone with the slaves. And the next morning, they have all deserted, leaving him alone.

Suddenly, there is no one to feed his ego. He feels lost. In his room there is an enormous mirror, placed there by his aunt. One day he looks in the mirror—and his outline seems blurred and confused. The sense of unreality increases until he is afraid he is going insane. And then he has an inspiration. He takes his lieutenant's uniform from the wardrobe and puts it on. And immediately, his image in the mirror becomes solid and clear. His feeling of sanity and self-respect returns.

Every day thereafter, he puts on the uniform, and sits in front of the mirror. And he is able to stay sane through the remaining week before his aunt returns . . .[1]

Machado subtitles his story 'Rough draft of a new theory of the human soul'. And so it is, for a story written in 1882. His hero explains to his auditors that he believes man has two souls: one inside, looking out, the other outside, looking in. But this is crude psychology. He means that the subjective 'I' gains its sense of identity from actions and outward objects. But this implies that the 'inner me' remains unchanged. This in turn implies that the shy, nervous 'inner self is the permanent substratum of one's more confident layers of personality, and this is obviously untrue. Shyness is simply a disinclination to express oneself out of fear that it will turn out badly; confidence—such as he gained through the petting and admiration—is the ability to act decisively.

The key sentence is: 'The petting, the attention, the deference, produced a transformation in me.' For this type of transformation, I coined the word 'promotion'. It is, in effect, a promotion of the personality to a higher level. All poetic experience is a 'promotion' experience, since it raises the personality to a higher level. One has a sense of becoming a stronger, or more mature, or more competent, or more serious person.

If he had been a lieutenant for several years, being alone in the house would not have eroded his sense of identity. The trouble is that he is young, and that he is only just trying-on a new personality, the 'Senhor Lieutenant'. The image of himself in the looking glass provides the reinforcement he needs.

The resemblance between this story and Romain Gary's story of the prison camp need hardly be pointed out. In both cases, moral decline is arrested by
reminding oneself
of something that re-creates the self-image. The weakness of Machado's theory of two souls becomes clear when we consider that Robert keeps himself sane in solitary confinement by an effort of inner-strength, of imagination, not by evoking a more 'successful' level of his personality. The elephants are an image of freedom. The sensation of freedom is always accompanied by a feeling of
contraction
of one's inner-being. Such a contraction occurs when we concentrate intently upon anything. It also occurs in sexual excitement, and explains why the orgasm is perhaps the most fundamental—at least the most common—'promotion' experience.