Colin Wilson's 'Occult Trilogy': A Guide for Students (9 page)

To grasp this is obviously of immense importance, for once you know that a certain effort will take you to Level 5 and beyond, you become unstoppable.
There is a law of consciousness which states: the stronger it becomes, the stronger it is capable of becoming.
And the method involves focused attention.”
(Wilson (3), 354)

[The inadequacy of language (see below) becomes apparent when considering the levels above 7.
But Wilson has always been a great believer in elucidating his central ideas by incorporating them into his fiction and there is no better example than his 1967 novel
The Mind Parasites
(London: Arthur Barker).
Gilbert Austin’s ‘disappearance’ after his last great battle with the parasites, possibly to join the enigmatic ‘universal police’, appears to be an allegorical reference to his elevation above Level 7.
The battle against the parasites had apparently “…geared him to a faster rate of evolution….”
(Wilson (4), 191)]

So, in order to transform our lives we need to: “…grasp that the apparent ‘ordinariness’ of the world is a delusion created by the robot …” (359).
The key is the ‘peak experience’:

“…a feeling that life is full of marvellous possibilities.
This happens when the subconscious mind is in a positive mood—in which state it is as if we had switched on a kind of rose-coloured underfloor lighting….
The peak experience is a perception that all is well and that the ‘upside-downness’ which usually fills us with mistrust is a misunderstanding, a childish delusion.”
(359-60)

Wilson is convinced that these glimpses of our “hidden powers” are a sign of our evolutionary potential: “Our chief problem is to interpret these glimpses in terms of reason and logic …” (361).
Thus the message delivered in
Beyond the Outsider
(1965), at the conclusion of his ‘Outsider Cycle’: “The way forward lies through the development of language” (Wilson (2), 183), is repeated here at the conclusion of his ‘Occult Trilogy’: “The basic weapon in this evolutionary struggle is language” (354).
As we learn the method of putting these moments of vision into words “…we become aware that there is a vital link between mystical experience, paranormal experience and the unexplored powers of the imagination.”
(361)

In conclusion, Mankind has:

“…climbed the world’s highest mountains and explored its most inhospitable wildernesses, yet where consciousness is concerned he has hardly ventured beyond his own backyard….
he accepts peak experiences as a pleasant kind of bonus instead of recognising their implications: that all life could be a kind of continual peak experience….
He accepts stagnation as a norm (for that is what ordinary consciousness amounts to)….

As long as this remains true man will continue to mark time at this present stage of evolution.
The moment it ceases to be true, the next stage of human evolution will commence.”
(362)

Once again, as with most of Wilson’s output, reactions to
Beyond the Occult
were mixed.
Since the publication of the first book in his ‘Occult Trilogy’
The Occult
, in 1971, he had accepted many commissions for ephemeral works and published copious popular volumes on the subject.
As a result of this, the serious critics deserted him again and he laid himself open to the criticism of fanatical sceptics like Martin Gardner.
When Wilson provided two articles for
The Oxford Companion to the Mind
(Oxford: OUP, 1987) on ‘Astrology’ and ‘Paranormal Phenomena and the Unconscious Mind’, Gardner unleashed a scathing attack: “Colin Wilson invades an Oxford Companion” (Gardner, 155-57) in which he lambasted the editors for commissioning articles from, in his opinion, such an unreliable source!
[Students are referred to Howard F.
Dossor’s comments about Gardner’s criticism of Wilson on pages 213-215 of his study
Colin Wilson: the man and his mind
and Damon Wilson’s Foreword to
The Mammoth Book of the Supernatural
.
London: Robinson Publishing, 1991.]

George C.
Poulos, in his essay for
Around the Outsider
, provides his objections to the book, singling out the spirit hypothesis to explain poltergeists and The Laurel and Hardy Theory of Consciousness as its weak points and asks:

“Is
Beyond the Occult
Wilson’s best book?
The detracting elements …would lead me to say definitely not.
Nor does it possess the driven inspiration of
The Occult
or
Mysteries
.
It has the feeling of a mopping-up operation, a farewell to the subject.
You gain the impression that after 20 years ‘in the cycle’, Wilson has said enough about the occult….
Creatively and philosophically, Wilson had already moved
beyond the occult
, at the time he wrote the book …” (
Around
, 236)

David Tame, in his review for
Critique
(no.
31, June-Sept 1989, p.
86-88) disagrees: “In this reviewer’s opinion it is Wilson’s most important book to date …”.
Howard F.
Dossor, in his review for
Resurgence
(Issue 136, Sept./Oct.
1989, p.
50-51) concurs.
It is, however, significant that Dossor concentrates fully on the first half of the book citing Wilson’s important theories of ‘Faculty X’, ‘peak experience’, ‘upside-downness’, ‘completing’ and the ‘seven levels of consciousness’ as the book’s strengths, making no mention of the ‘spirit hypothesis’:

“Wilson’s study of the occult is profoundly important.
In an age dominated by an intellectual persuasion that resists even an invitation to explore the totality of the evidence to hand, his work constitutes a major challenge.”
(Dossor, 213)

Whatever the critical response, there can be little doubt that, when considering Wilson’s work as a whole, the three solid books that make up the ‘Occult Trilogy’ form an important and imposing edifice.

*All page numbers refer to the first edition of
Beyond the Occult
(London: Bantam Press, 1988).

References:

Around the Outsider: essays presented to Colin Wilson on the occasion of his eightieth birthday
(edited by Colin Stanley).
Winchester: O-Books, 2011.

Dossor, Howard F.:
Colin Wilson: the man and his mind
.
Shaftesbury: Element Books, 1989.

Gardner, Martin:
On the Wild Side
.
Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1992.

Wilson, Colin (1):
Beyond the Occult
.
London: Watkins Publishing, 2008.

Wilson, Colin (2):
Beyond the Outsider
.
London: Arthur Barker Limited, 1965.

Wilson, Colin (3):
Dreaming to Some Purpose
.
London: Century, 2004.

Wilson, Colin (4):
The Mind Parasites
.
New York: Monkfish Book Publishing Company, 2005.
(This edition contains a new Preface by Wilson-scholar Gary Lachman and a new Afterword by Wilson himself.)

Bibliographical details:

Beyond the Occult.

a.
London, New York: Bantam Press, 1988, 381 p., cloth.

b.
London: Guild Publishing, 1989, 381 p., cloth.

c.
London: Corgi Books, 1989, 524 p., paper.

d.
New York: Carroll & Graf, 1991, 381 p., paper.

e.
[Japanese edition] Tokyo: Atelier Teyotl, 1993, 549 p., cloth.
ISBN: 4-89342-189-1.

f.
London: Caxton Editions, 2002, 381 p., cloth.

g.
London: Watkins Publishing, 2008, [xxxvii, 505 p.], xxxvii, 524 p., paper.
[Contains a new 21-page Introduction by Wilson]

h.
[Russian edition].
Kharkiv, Ukraine: nk, 2005, 478 p., cloth.
[ISBN 966-343-116-4]

ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Part 1: Hidden Powers.

Introduction: Why man has lost his ‘occult faculties’.
How to gain control of our ‘hidden powers’.
Chapter 1: Mediums and Mystics.
Lawrence Lesham studies Eileen Garrett.
Mystical experiences.
P.D.
Ouspensky’s experiences.
The mind’s inability to grasp reality.
Anne Bancroft’s experience.
Split-brain psychology.
Mathematical prodigy.
Chapter 2: The Other Self.
Thomson Jay Hudson.
The subjective and objective minds.
The Laurel and Hardy theory of consciousness.
The ‘Robot’ and negative feedback.
Pessimistic philosophies.
The importance of ‘attention’.
Wilson’s own attempts to raise his consciousness.
Chapter 3: Down the Rabbit Hole.
Arnold Toynbee’s ‘visions’.
‘Faculty X’
and Proust.
Sartre and ‘nausea’.
‘Upside-downness’.
Chapter 4: The Informative Universe.
‘Time-slips’.
The ‘tape-recording’ theory.
Psychometry.
Dowsing.
Is reality ‘out-there’?
The hologramatic universe.
David Bohm’s theory of reality as ‘implicate order’.
Chapter 5: Intrusions?
Hypnagogic states.
Rudolf Steiner, Carl Jung and ‘occult’ phenomena.
Synchronicity.
Can the human mind ‘make things happen’?
Chapter 6: Memories of the Future.
Precognitive dreams.
Time.
J.W.
Dunne.
J.B.
Priestley’s theories of time.
Is the future predetermined?
Glimpses of the future.
The paradoxes of quantum physics.
Time-slips.
Do human beings possess freedom?
Chapter 7: Minds Without Bodies?
Out-of-body experiences.

Part 2: Powers of Good and Evil.

Chapter 1: The Search for Evidence.
Multiple personality.
Spiritualism.
Poltergeists.
Chapter 2: The Truth about Magic.
Allan Kardec.
Spirit healers.
Guy Playfair’s investigation.
Witchcraft—Wilson’s assessment of Stan Gooch’s theories.
Chapter 3: The World of Spirits.
Ghosts.
Spirit possession.
Multiple personality.
Chapter 4: Visions.
Eileen Garrett.
Daskalos.
Chapter 5: Completing the Picture.
The leakage of energy.
Freedom and the ‘Peak Experience’.
Sex and the ‘Peak Experience’.
The problem of ‘upside-downness’.
The concept of ‘completing’.
Development of the ‘completing’ faculty.
Chapter 6: Towards the Unknown Region.
The ‘connectedness’ of everything.
The 7 levels of consciousness.
Psychic powers are evidence of man’s evolutionary potential.

Bibliography.
Index.

COMMENTS:

Although this book, designed to bring together all of Wilson’s twenty years of research into the paranormal, is largely repetitive, it does contain some of his most profound work to date.
The final two chapters are particularly important.
Wilson introduces us to the concept of ‘upside-downness’—the tendency to
allow negative emotional judgments to usurp objective rational judgments.
Chapter 1 of Part 2 contains some important ideas on how to overcome defeat and pessimism.
As always, examples from his own experiences give his theories credibility and establishes a rapport with his readers.

“What attracted me about ‘occultism’ was the same healthy element that lies at the heart of religion—that obsession with the mystery of human existence that created saints and mystics rather than ‘true believers’.”

The 2008 Watkins edition (‘g’ above) contains a new Introduction by Wilson between pages xvii-xxxvii in which he states: “This is my most important non-fiction book.”
The pagination, as with the Watkins reprints of
Mysteries
and
The Occult
, is rather eccentric: the preliminaries having roman numerals up to xxxii, whereafter the text commences at
page 19
!

An extract, ‘The Seven Levels of Consciousness’, appeared in
Colin Wilson: philosopher of optimism
by Brad Spurgeon.
(Manchester: Michael Butterworth, 2006), p.
113-116

SECONDARY SOURCES AND REVIEWS:

1.  Dossor: Chapter 6.

2.  Dossor, Howard F.
“Faculty X” in
Resurgence
, 136 (Sept/Oct 1989), p.
50-51.

3.  
Kirkus Reviews
, vol.
57 (Oct 15, 1989), p.
1522.

4.  Lint, Charles de.
“Researching the Paranormal” in
The Report: Premier Issue
, vol.
2, no.
1, (1991), p.
23-25.

5.  Shearing, David.
“Energy for Life” in
Yorkshire Post
, (Dec.
29, 1988): nk.

6.  Tame, David.
Critique
, no.
31 (June-Sept.
1989), p.
86-88.
“In this reviewer’s opinion it is Wilson’s most important book to date …”

7.  Around: 217-241.

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

Colin Wilson on the occult: a checklist

This lists printed books only.
In addition, Colin Wilson has written many articles on the subject.
Students should consult my
The Colin Wilson Bibliography, 1956-2010
(Nottingham: Paupers’ Press, 2011) for details of these items.