The Essential Colin Wilson (47 page)

I expressed it by saving that consciousness has a 'bass line' of subjectivity and an 'alto line' of objectivity. It could be compared to Brooklyn Bridge, with the roadway down below, and the superstructure soaring in a gigantic arch up above. It seems natural for human beings to follow the roadway. Yet in our moments of intensity, we see that this is laziness. If we want to understand what consciousness is
for
, we have to follow the superstructure.

The panic attacks made me understand that
'everyday consciousness' is a form of depression
. Because we accept its judgements as natural and inevitable, we drift along without making any real effort. But if we begin to question its judgements, to resist its moods, to reject its over-simplifications, we gradually begin to understand the kind of consciousness we were intended to experience.

Even a brief experience of objective consciousness brings a fascinating insight: that subjective consciousness is somehow
incomplete
. It never achieves its natural state of fulfilment. It could be compared to an engine that has been allowed to deteriorate until it works at only a fraction of its true efficiency. The washers are loose, the piston-rings are worn, the gaskets are burnt, the plugs are oiled-up. So most of the energy it produces escapes in leakages.

'But the odd thing about the engine called the human mind is that it is self-repairing. The moment some intense stimulus causes it to build up a higher pressure than usual, it seals its own leaks, and begins to work at a far greater level of efficiency. The result is a revelation. Quite suddenly, reality becomes more 'real'. There is a curious effect as if all the colours of the world have become deeper and richer, and as if everything had become somehow more solid, more hard and real. But what is most surprising is the sudden clear recognition that this 'ordinary' consciousness, which we have always taken for granted as the only kind of consciousness, is a poor substitute for the real thing. Mystics have always experienced this insight, and found it hard to put into words simply because all our language is based upon the premise that 'ordinary consciousness'
is
the real thing. A writer named R. H. Ward, who experienced a glimpse of this higher type of consciousness when lying in the dentist's chair, described the sensation as follows: ' . . . I passed, after the first few inhalations of the gas, directly into a state of consciousness already far more complete than the fullest degree of ordinary waking consciousness . . . '[1]

In my own experiences of these states—which, I hasten to add, have never achieved the intensity described here by Ward—there has always been a clear recognition that ordinary consciousness is limited by its lack of energy, like an electric light when the power is low. The sensation could also be compared to driving a car with a heavily frosted windscreen, in the centre of which you have scraped a circular hole that gives you a certain limited view. But until the heater has defrosted the windscreen, you are forced to lean forward, peering through the hole, driving at five miles an hour in low gear. The problem, of course, is that the small hole limits what you see, so you are only receiving enough information to stay on the road and avoid hitting something. Ordinary consciousness has this same narrow quality, so it can only offer us the most essential, basic information. Glimpses of Ward's 'completer' state of consciousness make us aware that they are not really 'higher' forms of awareness, but merely a step in the direction of true 'normality'—with the windscreen completely clear of frost.

This recognition about the nature of consciousness is in no way abstract or 'mystical'. It can be arrived at by reason. Consider what happens when I am faced with some problem or inconvenience. I am galvanized into brooding on how it can be solved; I concentrate my forces. This has the effect of switching on a kind of red light in my subconscious mind, an 'underground' sense of vigilance and anxiety. When I solve the problem, the red light changes to green, and I experience a sensation of relief and delight. If the red light has been on for a long time, then the relief and delight will also last a long time. I may wake up every morning for day after day with the feeling 'Thank God
that's
solved'. But sooner or later, the relief fades, and I take the solution of the problem for granted. What happens? I am not actually ungrateful for my new state of non-anxiety. But I 'put it into storage', so to speak. I consign it to the realm of the 'taken for granted', a kind of 'forgetfulness'. For I am already focusing on new problems and how to solve them. And in due course, my gratitude for solving them will also be put into storage in the realm of 'forgetfulness'.

Now in a sense, this seems absurd. If a threat is really overwhelming, I tell myself that 'if only' I can solve it, I shall never cease to feel relieved . . . And I can see that this
is
perfectly possible. A mother whose child is dangerously ill may tell herself that, if he recovers, she will never cease to offer prayers of thanksgiving. And she may well keep her promise. The fact remains that it is extremely difficult to keep a sense of relief and gratitude alive for a long period, simply because
we require our consciousness for other things
. So to some extent, 'forgetfulness' is a necessity of existence.

This means that all of us have a vast cupboardful of reasons for gratitude, all labelled and preserved, but out of sight. When a man owns his first car, he looks at it with pride every morning. By the time he buys his fourth car, he is taking it for granted; his gratitude is now packed away in the storage cupboard. But if he gets into debt, and has to contemplate selling his car, his sense of its value is once again reactivated. The storage cupboard is not a graveyard; all its contents can be taken out for inspection and 'reactivated'.

So in a perfectly logical sense, we have a thousand reasons for feeling relief and delight. Moreover, our species has accumulated another million. If we could look backwards through time and see our ancestors in the Pleistocene era, six hundred thousand years ago, crouching half-starved, in caves while the snowdrifts piled up outside, we would recognize just how many triumphs, how many conquests, how many problems solved, are represented by a modern city.

Yet clearly, it would be impossible for us to be 'mindful' of even a tiny percentage of these 'reasons for delight'. Is not this in itself a sufficient explanation for the narrowness of everyday consciousness?

The answer is no. For here we come to the most interesting part of the story. Again and again, these half-forgotten 'reasons for delight' emerge from the storage cupboard of their own accord, and 'reactivate' themselves. It happens most frequently when I solve another problem. The feeling of relief causes the 'green light' to glow in my subconscious mind, and quite suddenly, it has ceased to be a
particular
feeling of delight, and has turned into something far more broad and general. Suddenly,
all
life seems good—even a life crowded with problems. But there is even more to it than that. We experience a strange sense of excitement and optimism as we realize that this sense of delight is always accessible to consciousness. There is no need to wait for the solution of yet another problem.
We can do it ourselves
.

How? The answer becomes clear if we study the mechanism of the delight experience—what Maslow calls the peak experience. I have said that when we are confronted with some problem of anxiety, a 'red light' goes on in the subconscious. When the problem is overcome, a green light goes on. In fact, a whole range of coloured lights are switched on until the subconscious mind looks like the Blackpool illuminations. We might refer to this as 'underfloor lighting'.

What has happened? If we think in terms of the 'Laurel and Hardy theory of consciousness' (described elsewhere in this book), Ollie has passed on the good news to Stan—the right brain—and Stan switches on the underfloor lighting. Note that Ollie merely has to
tell
Stan. Or rather, Ollie tells himself ('Thank God, everything's all right after all!'), and Stan overhears. The moment the underfloor lighting is switched on, consciousness takes on a third dimension. Husserl says: 'The natural wakeful Me of the ego is a perceiving.' And this 'perceiving' consciousness is flat, two dimensional. The moment I am flooded with joy or relief,
everything
is affected. Reality becomes more real. Everything I look at is seen to be more meaningful, more interesting than I had realized when my consciousness was 'flat'. I see that I have a thousand reasons for delight and optimism.

As soon as this happens, I am struck by an exhilarating realization. If this is
true
, if reality is really 'three dimensional', then I do not have to wait for the solution of some problem, or the disappearance of some crisis, to feel delight. I have a permanent reason in the fact that reality is three-dimensional. If I can grasp this, I can get rid of two-dimensional consciousness once and for all.

But if two-dimensional consciousness is 'dispensable', then why do we have it? In the '3-D' states, the answer is quite plain. Because everyday consciousness is quite unnecessarily
negative
. It is almost entirely a matter of bad habits. We are always working ourselves up into states of anxiety about trivialities. So we spend a large part of our lives in an unnecessary state of 'discouragement' and disenchantment. The result is an effect of 'negative feedback', with discouragement producing a flat, bored state of perception, and this state of perception confirming us in the view that nothing is really worth the effort.

The source of this problem is the 'emotional body'. Anyone who pays attention to the ebb and flow of mood and feeling becomes aware that we possess an emotional as well as a physical body. But while the physical body reaches maturity at the age of twenty or so, the emotional body in most of us remains in a state of arrested development from about the age of ten. This is one of the penalties of civilization, which protects us from the cradle to the grave. Our ancestors had a far harder time of it, and had to acquire a far higher degree of self discipline, enabling the emotional body to reach a higher level of maturity (say, fifteen instead of ten years of age.) Prod most civilized men, and you find a child just below the surface.

All this explains why we have a craving for adventure, for excitement, even for danger and discomfort; we know instinctively that this is the most direct way of forcing the emotional body into some kind of maturity, and preventing it from ruining our lives.

But the insights of 'three-dimensional consciousness' are themselves a direct method of overcoming the problem. If we make the effort to grasp their meaning, the result is the flash of what is traditionally called 'enlightenment'. It suddenly becomes self-evident that knowledge itself can break this vicious circle of negativity. Once 3-D awareness has achieved even a toe-hold, it can gradually dislodge the old bad habit of 2-D awareness.

The chief danger here is failure to grasp exactly what is happening when we experience 3-D consciousness. If it comes as a result of a holiday, or some relief from anxiety, or a sudden reason for celebration, we may feel that it is merely a temporary break from 'normality', and that, like a pleasant weekend, it has to be followed by a return to the old dreary routine. Worse still, we may experience the feeling 'This is too good to last', and expect it to vanish like a dream. This, in fact, is how most of us tend to react to glimpses of 'completer consciousness'. This particular problem can be solved by thoroughly absorbing the arguments of the preceding pages. In a sense, that is the least of our problems.

'Completer consciousness' involves another insight that seems to contradict our everyday assumptions. When I open my eyes in the morning, it is natural for me to feel that I have emerged from an 'inner' world of unconsciousness into the 'real' world that I share with my fellow human beings. I am now, so to speak 'in' that external world, and shall stay in it until I close my eyes tonight and sink back into my inner world.

In flashes of objective consciousness, we can see that this is a misconception. There is a world 'out there', stretching around me as far as the eye can see; and there is an equally vast world 'in here'. In
Heaven and Hell
, Aldous Huxley pointed out that 'like the earth of a hundred years ago, our mind still has its darkest Africas and Amazonian basins'. He was discussing the strange insights that came to him as a result of taking the psychedelic drug mescalin. But this 'inner world' may be understood in an altogether more practical and down-to-earth sense. In 1933, Dr Wilder Penfield, a neurosurgeon, was performing a brain operation on a conscious patient, using only local anaesthetic, when he happened to touch the temporal cortex with an electric probe. The patient instantly recalled in detail an event from his childhood; in fact, he virtually re-lived the event. Penfield performed the same experiment over many years, and found that it always had the same effect; part of the vast memory archives of the brain suddenly disgorged their content.

As pointed out elsewhere in this book[1], Proust had the same experience when he tasted a cake dipped in herb tea, and was suddenly flooded with a sense of the reality of his childhood. Proust makes the interesting comment: 'I had ceased to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal . . . ' Three-dimensional consciousness had produced the 'god-like sensation', the sudden recognition that we
all
underestimate ourselves and our powers.

When some crisis had disappeared, and we heave a sigh of relief, the feeling of 'absurd good news' is accompanied by a sense of the reality of this world inside my head. In fact, when I relax deeply, I am aware of sinking
into
this world inside my head. Most children can do it easily: you can watch a child stick his thumb into his mouth, gaze into the fire, and float off into that inner world on a kind of magic carpet. Some adults retain this capacity. In his book on Shelley, Thomas Jefferson Hogg remarks that the poet was always reading—over meals, in bed, even walking along the street—and that he became totally absorbed in the book, to the exclusion to the outside world. He also had a capacity to fall asleep at any moment like a baby; he would often move from his chair to the floor, curl up like a cat and sleep deeply. Like most poets, Shelley was very much a 'right brainer', and 'access to inner worlds' came easily to him.