The Essential Colin Wilson (48 page)

Once we have grasped this concept of an 'inner world', we can see that we
always
inhabit it, even when we feel most trapped in external reality. And when I intensely enjoy any experience, it is because I am simultaneously in two worlds at once: the reality around me and the reality inside me. When a man deeply enjoys a book, it is as if he has taken the book into a cave inside himself, where he can be free from interruption. When he is absorbed in playing golf, he has taken the golf course inside him. When he is absorbed in making love, he has taken the girl inside him. The deeper he can retreat into that inner world, the more he can enjoy his experience of the outer world. Conversely, when he feels trapped in the outer world by boredom or tension, all his experience becomes unsatisfying and superficial. In order to begin to understand the mechanism of 3-D consciousness, we need to recognize the independent reality of that inner world, and to grasp the error of the view that we are creatures of the physical world around us.

We should also note that Shelley's capacity for 'absorption' meant that he could 'enter into' a book and abandon himself to its reality. When a man is in a state of boredom of tension, he cannot 'enter' the book, and so cannot experience its reality. What do I
do
if I read some description by Dickens or Balzac and feel so absorbed that I actually seem to be there? I somehow add my own experience to the description, so it 'becomes real'. This is what Proust did spontaneously as he tasted the cake dipped in tea. This is what Arnold Toynbee did spontaneously as he sat in the citadel of Mistra and became aware of the reality of its destruction. In short, we are speaking of the capacity I have labelled 'Faculty X'.

As soon as we experience the flash of 'three-dimensional consciousness', we recognize that this
is
'normal' consciousness—or at least, a step in the right direction. Ordinary consciousness is a mistake. It is an error that has been created by our 'intermediate' stage of evolution. Left-brain awareness—the ability to examine the world through a magnifying glass—is essential, but its 'close-upness' has deprived us of meaning. We are stranded in an oversized world of magnified objects, and we can see the trees but not the wood. And at this point, the emotional body intervenes, with its negativity and self-pity and mistrust, and turns the wood into a forest of nightmare. This is the state that Sartre calls 'nausea', and that I have called 'depression'. It can be overcome only by recognizing that it is a mistake. And the 'absurd good news' is the recognition that this insight, it itself, can transform subjective into objective consciousness. The bogies created by the mind can be destroyed by the mind.