Bruce Charlton's Notions

Over at The Notion Club Papers blog; I discuss the life-transforming effect that reading The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings had upon me; such that, from then onward, there was always a strong underlying element or Romanticism in my nature - something that made me identify most with those individuals that Colin Wilson famously termed The Outsiders. 

  

 

I have just read Colin Wilson's The Mind Parasites - the first of his three Lovecraftian novels, and a book which I thought that I had already read - but (for forgotten reasons) had not. 

I have owned the book for some nine years, and I have certainly read the two "sequels" (The Philospher's Stone, and The Space Vampires) and found them both enjoyable; but it turned out I hadn't read the MPs, as became apparent after I had finished a few pages. 

I found the Mind Parasites book not-particularly enjoyable, and not at all gripping - since it seemed rather long-winded and was hardly a story at all - being more like an account of some science fiction type happenings set in "the future". But, as nearly always with Colin Wilson, the book was nonetheless well worth reading, and provoked a lot of thinking, note taking, "philosophizing".

What it made me realize was that Colin Wilson, at this point in his life and work, was convinced that the problem of life (this mortal life, as I nowadays term it) would be solved if Man lived up to his highest levels, broke through the trammels on his thinking, gained absolute confidence; and thereby developed undying life (death being, as Bernard Shaw also believed, due to "discouragement" which he would deploy in largely creative and increasingly abstract mental activities.  

In the meanwhile - the Main Problem (the most urgent difficult and constraint) was that Men of genius (or potential genius) were thwarted by the oppressive and onerous conditions of modern life: this was the theme of his first book The Outsider and many more afterwards.

A theme that I first encountered in Wilson, and which continues to this day (i.e. with Romantic Christianity), was that mankind reached a point of development in the late 1700s in Europe that changed his spontaneous relationship with the world - the Romantic Era began. 

Wilson was fascinated by the ways in which various people (especially creative people, "artists" in the broadest sense) had tackled the problems of Romanticism - how all had ultimately failed, but how some might use their experiences to succeed... 

In other words, at this point, CW believed in the possibility of a satisfactory mortal life - at least for some people, if only XYZ were allowed them and if only they had the right attitude. 

I now feel that Colin Wilson failed to acknowledge, or really to grasp, the problem of death - and the phenomenon of "entropy" which pervades this world - failed to realize the limits this places upon all possible schemes of amelioration and improvement. 

I now firmly believe (what the ancients knew clearly) that Men literally cannot win in this-world: all lives are failures if we draw the line at death. 

Later Wilson seemed also to grasp this, at least implicitly - although he did not follow it through; by his belief that there is an Afterlife (the title of his 1987 book, which detailed his increasing conviction that psychical research proved that there was an existence beyond death). 

As I wrote earlier today (stimulated by reading Mind Parasites); my own conviction that it is specifically and necessarily the infinitely-wide frame of the Christian belief in an afterlife that makes it possible to live a truly successful mortal life - and which (potentially) uniquely solves the problem of Romanticism - and any other actual problem of any person's actual life.   

I am re-reading Colin Wilson's last substantive book - Super Consciousness: the quest for the peak experience (2009) - which serves as a summation of this area of his interest that began with The Outsider (1956). Wilson cites and describes a 'variety of religious experiences' - or Peak Experiences, in Abraham Maslow's terminology - in which there was an alteration of consciousness and a feeling of well-being, elevation, understanding. 

Looking at Wilson's accounts of these experiences through the perspective on the evolutionary-development of consciousness that I have derived from Owen Barfield; I see the reports can be understood as beginning with our normal, everyday, mundane, socially-functional "Consciousness Soul" state of feeling cut-off from reality, alienated and trapped in superficiality. 

Consciousness Soul is the implicit baseline from-which Peak Experiences/ religious-mystical experience emerge. 

From this baseline, and despite that Wilson did not recognize this distinction; these mystical/peak experiences of positive 'Super Consciousness' can be understood as falling into Barfield's two categories of Original Participation and Final Participation.  

Most of the mystical experiences described can be regarded as a kind of functional impairment, and these seem like a reversion to the Original Participation of early childhood and tribal-Man, by a selective suppression of those (more recently developed) parts of the body (especially brain) needed for the manifestation of self-awareness in the Consciousness Soul stage. 

In other words, this kind of mystical experience deletes consciousness of 'the self' as a separate entity from 'reality'. 

Examples include those reported experiences of William James and Ouspensky which were triggered by nitrous oxide (laughing gas); and the same applies to other consciousness-altering drugs. 

Others were associated with dream-like passivity; stasis of the body, fainting, or sleep - and mentally there are descriptions of  becoming blissful in emotion yet unaware of any thinking (stopping the exhausting and futile treadmill of thoughts, worries, plans...); the apprehension of Time is suspended or deleted. 

The kitchen and garden were filled with golden light. I became conscious that at the centre of the Universe, and in my garden, was a great pulsing dynamo that ceaselessly poured-out love, This love poured over and through me, and I was part of it, and it wholly encompassed me. (Cited pages 54-5)

In this Original Participation mystical state; problems are not solved so much as dis-solved; it is not a matter of 'knowing everything' so much as recognizing that knowledge does not matter. 

Other, less common, reports of higher consciousness states sound more like Final Participation. In this state, the description is of thinking not stopping, but conversely having vastly greater power and comprehensiveness, such that the experience is one of 'knowing everything' - of direct-knowing without need for perception or for reasoning.

My train of thought accelerated and vastly improved in quality... New and convincing ideas came into my mind in a steady torrent, flaws in my existing ideas were illuminated, and as I made mental corrections to the the diminishing gaps in the logical sequence were filled by neat, brand-new linking concepts which made a beautiful logical pattern. (Cited page 56)

I interpret this difference as being due to the Original Participation being what Rudolf Steiner called an 'atavistic' state, that is a reversion to an earlier developmental-state (childhood, 'tribal' Man) which is being-induced by a lowering of consciousness,; resulting in a temporarily 'delirious' impairment of brain function (by drugs, drowsiness, hypnosis, illness etc). 

While Final Participation is an enhancement of consciousness, the next 'evolutionary step' towards a more-divine, and more free and independent, mode of thinking; in which thinking is clarified and strengthened; and increases in scope and validity. 

This relates to the 'flow state' Wilson describes earlier from the work of Csikczentmihalyi; which is associated with increased, indeed the highest, levels of functionality.

For instance; when people such as creative artists, artistic performers, athletes, and craftsmen sometimes attain their supreme performance. Sometimes called being 'in the zone' - they find themselves unerringly doing things they could not usually achieve, and with total confidence. 

Thus Original Participation reduces functionality, and constitutes 'time out'; whereas Final Participation is associated with the highest, most creative and adept, levels of functionality. 

Yet these two Super Conscious states - Final and Original: the one thinking, the other a cessation of thought; the one knowing without constraint, the other an indifference to knowledge; the one a flow, the other a suspension of time and movement; the one cognitive, the other contemplative... these states are not usually distinguished, are indeed generally conflated.  

I do, however, regard Original Participation as potentially-valuable - but mainly as a glimpse of alternatives, a 'holiday', a recharging process, a therapeutic rest. 

While Final Participation is - I hope - the ultimate state of God-like, Christ-like, divine consciousness in which - eventually - Christians will spend most of our post-mortal resurrected lives. 

As for the Consciousness Soul in which we Modern Men spend most of our mortal lives, trapped and cut-off form living and reality - I regard it as merely a transitional phase between Original and Final Participations - much as adolescence should be a swift transition between childhood and maturity; therefore I expect that 'mundane' consciousness will very seldom be experienced in Heaven - although it may be normal, or at least common, in Hell. 

The prolific author Gareth Knight (a pen name of Basil Wilby) died recently at the age of 91; and this was one of his earlier books. I found it very enjoyable, and spiritually stimulating. 

Knight was himself a Christian ritual magician (initiated in The Society of Inner Light - which was founded by Dion Fortune; and his Christianity is foundational to the argument of this book. It takes a very broad view of 'magic' to include imagination generally, the development of human consciousness; and is indeed a history of these matters from a Romantic perspective. 

Structurally, the book is woven around summaries of a very large number of authors and religious/ spiritual movements across a span of history from the ancient Hebrews and Greeks; through the transformative coming of Christianity, the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and the 18th and 19th centuries; right up to some significant books of the middle 1970s such as Robert M Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. 

Throughout, and particularly in the closing chapters, Knight makes thoughtful analyses and commentaries, in pursuit of a thesis concerning the proper and desirable nature of Good/ White/ Christian magic - and the pitfalls of other kinds. 

In this respect, AHOWM reminded me of Colin Wilson's Outsider series, and his books on the Occult/ Mysteries theme. Anyone who likes Wilson's style of writing philosophy, will probably enjoy this in a similar fashion.  

As I have said elsewhere, reflecting on Knight's and other accounts, I think that ritual magic had been a valid mode of Christian life from the late 19th century and up to the middle of the 20th - but that from around the 1980s it began to cease to 'work'; in a fashion that parallels (and ultimately has the same causes as) the decline in all forms of positive and desirable groups and institutions (including the churches). 

I mean that the rituals of White Magic seemed to lose objective efficacy, and became instead essentially psychological (therapeutic, or creative-stimulating) in nature - and often explicitly so. The ability of magicians to work formally, and reliably, in institutional groups, and by organizational rules, began to dwindle considerably. 

In his later life, it seems that Knight's 'magical' practice became something ever-more individual, improvisatory, and like meditation - when compared with the formal rituals of his early training. 

As such, this history of magic is a fascinating instance of the 'evolution of consciousness', the innate development of Man's thinking and relationship with the divine - as described by Owen Barfield - who gets a single mention here for Saving the Appearances. 

Indeed, Gareth Knight's The History of White Magic could be regarded as one man's account of the genealogy of Romantic Christianity. 

Note: Later Knight came to know Barfield personally, and wrote insightfully about his ideas in The Magical World of the Inklings (1990, 2010.) 

Not many books have affected me more than Walden by Henry David Thoreau - for me, it is one of the great essayistic prose works to which I return recurrently.  

But it is also a book that helped create and reinforce a delusion in my life - and it seems to be a common delusion in many Western lives for more than a century: the idea that each of us can and should be able to live a life that is both continually-rewarding and objectively-satisfactory. Each of us ought to be able to find and make an earthly paradise...

In Walden, Thoreau uses his personal experience and writerly gifts to create a masterly and evocative account of one year in what seems to be an almost wholly-satisfying life - a life well-lived. And, what is more, this account went on to become a highly-respected and frequently read classic (albeit, Thoreau died before this happened). 

As a young, romantic and alienated atheist, this was what I wanted to hear and needed to believe; that this mortal life could be made self-justifying - both on a moment-by-moment basis and overall. It seemed that Thoreau had 'proved' this. The next question was how to do this for myself, in my own life. 

Such was the expectation - and I embarked on a simultaneous exploration of my own 'inner' needs and abilities on the one hand; and the 'outward' side and exploration of the world of music, literature and the arts for further ideas and possibilities. 

When I discovered Colin Wilson's The Outsider just a few years later, I realized that here was another man on this same quest - since this book surveyed many lives in the same spirit of looking for examples of a life-well-lived; and Wilson announced himself as trying to complete in his own life what these had attempted in theirs. 

But after the first flush of excitement; I gradually realized that Wilson's verdict on the lives and works of his exemplars was negative. And I gradually realized, from my own studies in biography - including Thoreau - that this was always the case. 

A genius like Thoreau could create an artistic expression of the life-well-lived in this earthly paradise of Walden Pond; but he could not and did not himself actually lead such a life. 

The paradise was an artistic artefact - not a human possibility; an illusion which led to a delusion.

And all this is very obvious to most people - I am unusual in that it took me much longer to come to such a conclusion (perhaps due to my unusual capacity for absorption in art, and my personal need); and I only reached it after extensive exploration and years of increasingly-failed attempting.  

As is usual, the problem was my faulty metaphysical assumptions. I did not believe in God or a created world, I did not believe in Heaven. Hence I was engaged in the attempt to discover meaning, purpose, coherence and permanent value in a world that I had already decided could have none of these.

The ideal of a life-well-lived could only be a delusion because it could only, at best, last for the period while I was absorbed in a world where the artist was (in effect) God. So long as I dwelt imaginatively inside Walden; for so long I inhabited a purposive and meaning-laden world that the creator (Thoreau) had made - with relevance for my condition and addressing my needs. 

But whenever I left this world, I would return to a 'real life' in which I had decided there was no real point or purpose. So the attempt at paradise became an attempt to fool-myself, to make myself feel as if my life was self-justifying; even though I knew (i.e. had decided) it could not be.  

This is why I think it is so vitally important for us to recognize that this mortal life is not an end in itself but an education; mortal life is experiences of relevance to life eternal in Heaven, if we learn rightly from them. 

As such a life-well-lived is a matter of learning from experience, we can and should set-aside the ideal of constructing for our-selves an earthly paradise. 

That such is impossible was, indeed, the wisdom of the most ancient philosophers and theologians who have left records. They knew that this world was intrinsically one of disease, decay and death - a world of evanescence, imperfection and un-satisfactoriness; and that therefore its reason must be sought in its relation to some external world where 'entropy' (as we would call it) does not rule.

For Christians; this external world has been revealed as resurrected eternal life in Heaven; and it is this which gives real and permanent value to this transitory mortal life. 

Thus we can recognize our imaginations of living an ideal life in an earthly paradise as delusional; yet we shall not despair! 

But instead see life as experience and learning and therefore always be full of hope... and indeed eager anticipation. 

Unlike the earthly paradise; such is a wholly realistic and attainable ideal. 

A key moment in my life - a fork in the road - seems to have happened in the high summer of 1978; on a day when I was lolling on the bed and reading William Arkle's A Geography of Consciousness, which I had borrowed from the Edinburgh City Library. 

I had read, and been really gripped by, the Foreword - which is a kind of prose poem concerning the various phases of consciousness, how it changes (and in many ways declines) from childhood to adulthood; and what may be hoped from future developments in consciousness. I assumed this Foreword reflected the views of Arkle, but I now believe this Foreword to have been significantly revised and edited by Colin Wilson.

I was also very interested by the Introduction by Colin Wilson, in which he described Arkle's 'lifestyle' (which very much appealed to me), and interpreted Arkle's views; but primarily (as I now see) in terms of Wilson's own vocabulary and intellectual project.  

In other words, this Foreword presented an a-theistic (non-God) perspective on the modern problem (my problem) of alienation, and how it might be tackled. It presented and continued and this was exactly the approach Colin Wilson himself had taken from The Age of Defeat (1959) onwards; and I found myself optimistic that it might provide exactly the answers I sought. 

Within a few days I had borrowed and read Wilson's The Outsider (1956) - and had the strong feeling that this was what I has been waiting for! 

This, then, was The Road Taken - the decision to follow Colin Wilson. But The Road Not Taken was to fully engage with William Arkle himself, to accept Arkle's primary assumptions... and this (as I retrospectively realize) was the fork in the road. 

As I read on into A Geography of Consciousness, beyond the Introduction and Foreword, I realized thta Arkle believed in God. That was an immediate block - since I would not take such an idea seriously, regarding it as an obvious error. Then again, Arkle was explicit that human life had transcendent meaning; that the specifcis our our actual lives were entwined with divine purposes and meanings...

In other words, Arkle struck me (and - it was implied in the Introduction - also Colin Wilson) as being a victim of Wishful Thinking; of a constitutional optimism about the significance of life (rooted in God and eternity) that was something that struck me as 'obviously wrong'. 

My interpretation of Arkle's  exemplary (and, to me, enviable) lifestyle was that it was rooted in this wishful-thinking-unrealistic-optimism. And that, while Arkle himself must be 'made that way' (perhaps due to upbringing?), these were ultimately assumptions which were 'nice for him', but could not provide a model for somebody like myself. 

So as I read Arkle talking about things such as God, eternal human purposes, life beyond death; and about getting to know and communicating with God - I just Blocked.   

All such passages were a solid block, I would not (felt I could not) take such things seriously. If I was 'honest' they seemed childish, silly, naïve, self-deluding...

I also thought such 'hypotheses' unnecessary; and that I could (following Colin Wilson) get 'what I wanted' without the absurdity of Believing in God.

As it turns out - I could not and I did not. 

But it was another thirty years before I finally acknowledged my failure and went back to re-examine Arkle's metaphysical assumptions (not 'hypotheses') of a real God; who is creator, and who loves his children in a personal relationship; and who is involved in the minute details and large strategies of every human life. 

Eventually, in the autumn of 2008 (and, inter alia, having rediscovered Arkle online, and especially his Letter from a Father) I then took The Road Not Taken.

I remember reading The Outsider in the summer of 1978, and realising that all of the 'Great Men' surveyed in that book were - at least according to Colin Wilson's exacting criteria - A Failure. 

That is, Wilson argued that their lives - when viewed overall and by the highest standards - had failed to a greater or lesser degree. 

I vacillated about this matter, through the years. Sometimes I felt that most people had a successful life when judged by appropriate criteria, sometimes I felt that very few did; and nowadays I would say that hardly anybody does. 

In essence: everybody is a failure, every life is a failure. 

 

This has been perhaps more evident to me than to most people; since a pretty large number of people I have known or worked with have been very successful - by the usual, mainstream standards with which such things are measured. 

I, on the other hand, have not! - although I have been fairly-widely notorious from time to time, in my professional circles (which is, for example, presumably why I have a Wikipedia page). At times I too sought mainstream success, and got some way up the slippery pole; but I was always sabotaged either by my scruples or my defects, or both. Mostly I tried to plough my own unique furrow, sui generis; and again succeeded for periods of time.  

But I have seen success from both sides in my own life, and in the lives of friends and colleagues - and have felt compelled to make evaluations on the subject.

It has, in fact, been one of the most painful experiences of my life to observe the corruption of so many people I have known. (This has, indeed, accelerated in 2020.)

Sometimes people were like that from the beginning - and were strategic in their esteem-seeking; sometimes they sold-out at a specific point, over a specific issue -- But mostly the process seems to have occured smoothly and seamlessly (with no discernible struggle) as a consequence of doing what was needed for jobs, promotions, money, status etc - or just through hard-work combined with obedience to authority.

One of the most startling observations is that all, and I mean all, of the people who I knew as a young man that were notably cynical or radical (in a leftish way) about class, money, status, professionalism, croneyism, careerism, honours or The Establishment - have ended up as high-level bureaucrats: as managers. 

 

This seems an interesting and significant phenomenon; although I have not properly analysed it. 

The only reference to this I have come across was in a book (Critique of Cynical Reason, 1983) by the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk; when he termed this mind-set enlightened false consciousness - which I take to mean something like being cynical about being cynical, in such a way as to retain self-esteem while selling-out.

Or perhaps it is adopting a false careerist persona while acknowledging its falseness, while also regarding the whole thing as somehow inevitable. This strikes me as typical of the most successful Establishment characters.

Certainly, once a person has got-into this mind-set, it is rare from them ever to get out from it; since he is cynical about anything that might disturb his selfish well being, while feeling morally superior for explicitly acknowledging his own selfishness. 

A wry smile and a shrug of the shoulders restores the sealed-off equilibrium in the face of any challenge.

 

When I was a young adult, it was my firm intention to buck the trend of Wilson's Outsiders; and to be one of the tiny minority who really succeeded in having a genuinely successful Life. 

I would have to regard this as a fundamental error. Because I now regard mortal human life as just not being designed to be 'a success' (whatever that might mean). Life is not aimed at some end-state of success. 

Especially since it seems very obvious that we as individual people, and the world itself, are not susceptible of perfection (whatever that might mean). For a start, once I get to know people, no two are alike - indeed no two people are genuinely similar! 

Similarity is an illusion of ignorance. 

So, if we are all one-off, then the concept of 'success' already seems dubious; since there seems no objective way of measuring it. Yet, we can objectively fail - and I regard corruption of the kind I described earlier as genuine failure. 

Corruption is a failure - not because of what is is, some much as because of where it leads-to. 

The real success or failure of life seems to be related to what happens after death, and to what we learn through living. 

1. Do we choose Heaven after death?

2. Do we learn from our experiences in ways that are relevant to eternal resurrected life? 

 

The corruption that has so dismayed me does so because, by my judgment, it is associated with a refusal to learn from living; and with what seems to be an anti-salvation attitude; an attitude of rooted and vehement hostility towards, and therefore rejection of, the possibility of resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

While I know that repentance is possible to anyone at any time, in the sense that it is allowed and effective; I cannot ignore that most people do not want repentance. 

In fact, 'not want' is misrepresenting a visceral and invincible opposition to the very idea of repentance and salvation.   

My conclusion is that every 'mortal life' is a failure, when judged by the standards of mortal life. 

But any life may potentially be a real success - in an eternal perspective. 

And that (as of recent decades) there has been an extreme, albeit not complete, opposition between the attempt to succeed in This Life, and the attempt to live well in context of the Life to Come.  

This very interesting passage comes from Poetry and Mysticism by Colin Wilson (1970) which was developed from an earlier, smaller book named Poetry and Zen. It has apparently never been reprinted but so far (I am on page 80) it seems to be one of Wilson's best books in the Outsider series - with a likable freshness and urgency about it.

This energetic quality probably derives from it being written in the era when Wilson was stimulated by several stints as a visiting professor in American colleges. This led to some interesting experiences and meetings - this book was written for City Lights press - the 'Beat' bookstore in San Fransisco after Wilson had met its owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti (who is, remarkably, still alive - aged 100!).

What makes the book significant is that it was his first exposition of the 'robot' idea, which featured strongly in his work from that point. The robot is the idea (which he shares with William Arkle, under a different name) that modern consciousness gains efficiency from the way that so many skilled and difficult tasks (like typing, driving a car - even basic abilities like walking and talking) become automatic; allowing us to focus attention on other matters.

But the robot also takes-over the things that most interest and satisfy us - like reading novels, listening to music, talking with friends... In the end, life becomes merely automatic - the robot does everything - unless we are shocked out of this comfort zone by some emergency, when we may come-alive again for a while.

Because it was Wilson's first discovery of the idea, there is an enjoyably exploratory feel about the book. Also, it has more detail about Wilson's evaluation of 'Eastern religions' than I have seen elsewhere. This following passage about Buddhism struck me as insightful - and there are several other similar sections which seem to bring out truths that seem valid (From page 30.):


Buddhism is an extremely positive religion. Its world rejection is quite unlike the Christian 'renunciation'. You wouldn't call it renunciation if you rejected cold tea for champagne.

This also explains why exponents of Buddhism feel only a patronising contempt for Christianity - as well as for Judaism, Mahommedanism and the more traditional forms of Hinduism. 

The basic Buddhist belief is identical with the basic vision of science; it has no use for 'belief' or dogma; it aims at pure contemplation, as detached and unprejudiced as a scientist examining an unknown virus under the microscope. 


But anyone who has fallen under the spell of Buddhism - or other eastern religion, for that matter - will have discovered the drawback. You can determinedly withdraw your mind from the objects of sense, assure yourself that you are free of all desire - and nothing whatever happens. 

You cannot 'contemplate' merely by wanting to contemplate. In fact, you soon realise that contemplation is closely bound up with desire. 

When you first perform that mental act of rejecting your desires and obsessions, the feeling of freedom is magnificent, and the mind is launched like a rocket, powered by the desire you are rejecting. That is why religious conversions are such violent experiences. 

[However,] When there is nothing more to reject, the mind becomes static. And there is a world of difference between serenity and mere lack of emotion. 


I would not go so far as to reject the whole Buddhist concept of contemplative objectivity; it can be achieved in flashes. But I am inclined to believe that when the aspirant sits cross-legged and concentrates the gaze at the end of the nose, his immediate aim should not be a state of contemplation. It is too negative. The mind requires a more positive aim. 

This interests me, because I was one of them.

The question was triggered for the nth time, when reading Colin Wilson; who does this in the space of a couple of paragraphs in Poetry and Mysticism (1970) - one of his Outsider series of books that I am currently reading for the first time (it's hard to find, usually expensive to buy).

Plenty of people have made an accurate diagnosis of the problem of Modern Man - because nearly everybody suffers from it, after all. The diagnosis is followed by a rapid, almost cursory, dismissal of Christianity as The Answer.


Why is it so easy for people to reject Christianity? When by contrast the same people will be prepared to put immense time and effort into (for example) trying to rehabilitate some version of Leftist politics as a possible answer; or paganism, Hinduism or Buddhism as a possible answer?

With Christianity it is a case of glancing briefly in the general direction of whatever preconception of Christianity that one has imbibed, then... Well, I don't like the look of that - straight down the plug-hole with it!

Yet with with anything else other than Christianity it is - let's find-out more, give it some serious work, and see what can be discovered...


There are several reasons. First, that the powers of darkness increasingly rule this world; and so Christianity is subjected to By Far the most pervasive and venomous smear campaign of any ideology or religion.

(Not even excepting 'fascism' - since what people now mean by that term bears near-zero relationship to the Socialist Workers Party of Germany, nor to any other of actual various supposed-fascisms. Fascism is just a Boo word used expediently against any opposition; such that real-life actual fascists such as the black-shirted Antifa, paid for by multinational money, are exempted from criticism.)

Christianity is continually under siege from combination of Global and Western National institutions (governments, politicians, large corporations, law, science, education, the mass media - and most mainstream self-styled Christian churches).

The accusations include extreme opposites (Christian churches are a living tomb inhabited by sentimental old women; yet also highly-organised patriarchal nests of fanatical white nationalist terrorists); but one or another criticisms will strike home for someone who is looking for a convenient excuse to reject Christianity. 

Second is sex. Sex is probably the second-most-powerful mass motivator, after religion; absent religion, sex assumes primacy.

There is a strong and correct assumption that Christianity places restrictions on sexual activity; and for many people that is sufficient reason to reject it as evil. (Modern people regard any restriction of their own sexual desires as an evil of the worst - most fascist - type.)

Whatever excuse is used to reject Christianity as an answer - the real reason is very often something to do with sex. Sexual revolutionaries (of all types) have been, for more than two hundred years (starting with Byron, Shelley and their clique), at the forefront of atheism, apostasy, secularisation, Leftism. This continues post 1960s, with each successive sexual/ identity phase picking up the anti-Christian agenda. 


Since Christianity is in fact The Answer - or, more exactly, contains the answer; this means that there are many people who, for many generations, have lived and died unsatisfactory lives (and perhaps gone to a post-mortal destination other-than Heaven) because of a hasty, ill-considered, and dishonest rejection of Christianity.  

Well, it's their choice...

Colin Wilson published his first book, The Outsider, in 1956: it was an international sensation and best-seller, and it was about the alienation of modern man.

The Outsider was a deep analysis; and in his second book, a year later, Religion and the Rebel; Wilson completed his argument and outlined what must be the solution: this solution was Romanticism and Religion (specifically a Romantic Christianity).

Although Wilson was far from the first to reach this conclusion - for example Owen Barfield had been absolutely explicit about it in Romanticism Comes of Age a decade earlier - but accessible to only a tiny audience of Anthroposophists...

My point is that by the middle 1950s we knew what was the fundamental problem with our Western Civilisation and what to do about it; and we also knew what would not work.

What has happened over the past 60 years is that we now no longer know what is wrong with our civilisation, and all the ideas of what to do about it that have occupied so many people for the past two generations have been wrong and harmful.

We have spent decades of a vast and thousand-fold enlarged and still-amplifying realm of public discourse in the mass media; in analysing, discussing, debating, implementing and resisting stuff that cannot possibly work - even if it was perfectly implemented in an ideal world.

This applies without exception to the entirety of mainstream political, social and academic discourse - it has been a truly colossal... what? Waste of Time? Displacement activity? Deliberate harm?

And still it goes on! Truth and True-Motivation recede further and further from consciousness. And in this respect the opposition are no better than The Establishment; since the opposition spend all their time analysing, debating and resisting the Establishment agenda - and remain utterly indifferent to the fact that even-if the world was remade in the way they aspire-to; it would only get us back to where we were in the 1950s...

- which we know (from Colin Wilson, at least) was intrinsically intolerable to the human spirit.

In the summer and autumn of 1978, I discovered several people and themes that have remained with me over the past four decades; and which have interacted in some of my deepest and most intense concerns.

Perhaps the first was coming-across the composer Michael Tippett's volume of essays called Moving into Aquarius, which I found in an English bookshop in Athens. This really fascinated me, and I read and re-read it - eventually writing a fan letter to the author, to which I received a nice reply from his assistant.


Tippett's writing (and, of course, some of his music - especially the oratorios and operas) was about the division between science and technics on the one hand, and the imagination and art on the other - he classical 'Romantic' problem, in other words. I had already been primed for this, both from my own experiences as a scientist/ medical student who was also active in music and drama; and from reading RM Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in August 1976.

Over the summer vacation I made another discovery of William Arkle's Geography of Consciousness in the Edinburgh city library, with its introduction by Colin Wilson - leading onto my first reading of CW's The Outsider. Again the Romantic theme; but this time addressed in terms of the states of consciousness. The idea was that we actually solve the Romantic problem - albeit intermittently and for short periods of time - when we attain to certain, higher states of consciousness. And, of course, this has remained central to my thinking ever since.


During the Edinburgh Festival Fringe of that year, I attended a comedy review during which some intermission music was provided by a pianist and double bassist playing Bach, slightly 'jazzed'. This led first to Jacques Loussier, and then to Bach played 'straight' on piano; that is, to Glenn Gould - initially his LPs of The Well-Tempered Clavier, then to the Goldberg variations and the Partitas. Over the next months; I found a few articles and interviews on Gould and recognised that he was a player of exceptional intensity and inspiration: that he played-in and communicated that same state of 'ecstatic' consciousness which was discussed by Arkle and Wilson.


So I began to brood on these matters, and on the way of life of these living geniuses; and tried to move my own life in the same direction - in my leisure from a pretty intensive course of study at Medical School. I began to think along mystical lines, including notions such as special times of magical being, the possibility of remote empathic contact, and the 'touching' of minds - these being another kind of that 'alienation-healing' consciousness.

Of course much else was happening during this eventful era; but this Romantic theme (which nowadays makes up the bulk of my blogging) was firmly established at that time.

I don't like reading lists and seldom respond-to or benefit-from those of other people - because for me it has always been the Right Book at the Right Time... and reading lists don't take account of that timing element...

Also, the list needs to be short.

This is a short list for the un-awakened - to try and get somebody from mainstream modern madness to... somewhere near where they ought to be, and with a clear idea of where to aim-at and how...

That Hideous Strength (1945) by CS Lewis. This sets out the whole sweep of the thing, provides a kind of symbolic vocabulary (and tropes for situations encountered) - and inspiration of what to do and how...  It isn't really A Novel, nor is it really SciFi or Fantasy - just read it for what It Is.

The Outsider (1956) and (even more importantly) Religion and the Rebel (1957) (which constitute a single book between them) - by Colin Wilson. these set-out the problem and point-towards the solution. It en-courages each individual for what needs to be done.

Letter from a Father by William Arkle, published in The Great Gift (1977) and I have put a text version online. This is a 10,000 word 'essay' which gives the metaphysical understanding we need. It repays close attention and repeated reading.

Philosophy of Freedom by Rudolf Steiner (1894). This needs slow and care-full reading. It describes the fundamental nature of coherent reality in philosophical terms - and the nature of Real Thinking.

That'll do for now - thus equipped, you should be able to get the rest of the way by-yourself - indeed, that is the only way to get where you need to go.

Everything is not enough is the core insight of the post 1945 radicalism beginning with the Existentialists and Beats of the 50s, the Hippies of the 60s, and the Small is Beautiful movement of the mid 70s...

There was (among some people, for some time) a clear recognition that even-if modern society had everything that people aspired-to - abundance of stuff, ideally-distributed, advanced capability... peace, prosperity, comfort and adventure... It would not be enough. It would indeed be entirely, qualitatively inadequate.

This was a spiritual, a religious insight - and the insight and its nature can be seen in Colin Wilson's first two books - The Outsider (1956) and (even better) Religion and the Rebel (1957). Another example was the widely known and influential work of psychologist Abraham Maslow, and his increasing focus on spirituality and religion in later years.

Everybody knew that everything was not enough...


This core insight was not new - since it was essentially the same insight as Romanticism, almost 150 years before - but in the post-war period the insight became widely appreciated because the problem of production had been solved, poverty had been abolished (insofar is it could be), the nature of the situation was being experienced by many people for themselves, played out in their own lives and lives around them.

In the period since, the core insight has been lost and buried. The Left was turned from a concern with poverty mutating to existentialism - over to an envy-fuelled concern with inequality, a resentment-fuelled concern with identity, and an ever-mutating sexual hedonism rationalised by inequality and identity...

The mainstream secular 'Right' (including free marketeers and libertarians) was weaned-off religion and instead focused the on status-fuelled need for ever-more stuff, but stuff of the right kind; and the pride-fuelled need for domination at home and abroad.

The really-religious acted tactically (assuming the problem would be temporary) and doubled-down on the traditional and/or legalistic aspects of their churches - asif the Romantic insight had never happened, asif the existentialist insight into the human condition of modernity wasn't real.


To a truly amazing extent, half-a-century-plus since the existential unsatisfactoriness of modernity became a solid insight in the minds of modern people - the mainstream public official world continues asif the problems were still the same. There is an unreleting focus on poverty, hazards, lack - the world is depicted asif it was the pre-industrial world...

(And, indeed, such conditions are actively 'created' in the minds of people by a combination of dishonesty and active problem creation.) 

By means of the ubiquitous mass/social media and the ubiquitous linked-bureaucracy, minds are kept firmly off the real problem - and fake priorities are substituted.

Yet normal Life is more Existentially Desolate then ever - as Thoreau said, but to a far greater extent: the mass of Men continue to lead lives of quiet desperation...  But this time (because our metaphysical assumptions absolutely exclude it) with no hope, and no possibility of hope.


All this distraction, displacement, death of soul is no accident; all this was and is being strategically implemented; all this could swiftly be overturned in the minds of millions, If Only...

At long last, Colin Wilson's completion of The Outsider, his second and probably the deepest of his books - Religion and the Rebel (1957) has been republished; with the Kindle edition at the affordable price of ten pounds.

I have written about RatR; and John Fitzgerald has been reading it recently, for the first time - both of us rate it highly and place it as one of Wilson's very best.

The very first point made by Colin Wilson's The Outsider (1956) is that sex is not the answer to the problem of existential alienation. He hammered home the point in many further books, including Origins of the Sexual Impulse (1963).

Right up to his last books (such as The Angry Years, 2007) CW made clear how sexual obsession had often ruined the motivation, focus, creativity and integrity of genius-Outsiders (with tragic results for those of us who were depending upon such individuals to point the true way ahead).

Sex (as such, in isolation from married love) leads merely to the desire for more sex. Sex is  - like many intense pleasures, such as heroin - addictive. Furthermore, also like heroin, sex induces tolerance, requiring escalation of dose. In those in whom frequency has reached a maximum, there develops a decadent need to push boundaries and transgress - in order to maintain the desire and the response.

Yet sex is a sufficiently plausible delusion that it has captured and redirected the entirety of Western civilization - especially since the middle 1960s.

Sex (often explicitly, often covertly) has displaced and destroyed religion and politics - both of which are vestigial compared with 50 years ago.

Yes, sex cut-loose really is an addiction - and has the same propensities. It does not solve the problems of life, but shoves them aside and implies that sex is the problem instead, and this rapidly becomes a truth.

By becoming a society of sex junkies, the West has dispensed with Christianity, and with Thinking.

Instead of meaning, purpose, fulfilment, and family - we have a vicious cycle of delusional fantasies and brief ecstasies... always receding in power and duration; satisfaction always just out of reach.

Sixty years ago - Colin Wilson published The Outsider (1956) then Religion and the Rebel (1957) - and at that time everybody recognised what he was talking about: these existentially-overwhelmed outcasts who saw the mainstream world as meaningless and pointless, who felt alienated, and who lacked a place in society.

Wilson gave a name to something everybody knew, something that (under various terms) had been a feature of The West since the dawn of Romanticism (in the late 1700s); and he provided numerous examples of more-or-less famous and accomplished Outsiders - analysis of what had been tried as solutions, and suggestions of what might be done in future...

But here-and-now, Outsiders are not merely socially invisible; but also people don't feel like Outsiders anymore: these are no longer the difficulties people express - the Romantic Outsider has disappeared.

Has the species gone extinct, has the Outsider somehow been 'cured' - is he now integrated into society? Of course not! Everything which caused the Outsider's alienation is now 100... no 10,000 times worse than it was in 1956...

He is still present, he has neither been cured nor integrated; but nowadays he no longer realises he is an Outsider, he no longer feels existential pain, he is outcast but indifferent; because the Outsider is now so rapidly, pervasively and persistently doped and distracted by the pervasive mass media as to be a person who never thinks consecutively for long enough to recognise his situation - never mind to raise objection or do anything effective.

The slightest glimmering degree of becoming existentially alienated, bored or aware; is now almost-instantly extinguished in one or another virtual-reality before it can have any effect.

The Outsider now has zero time to think or feel 'outside' of anything - or inside for that matter.

The cause of the Outsider was human consciousness; the cure would have been a development of consciousness - but what has instead-happened has been the all-but obliteration of consciousness.

In the sixty years since Colin Wilson published The Outsider - describing the state of sociological, psychological and spiritual alienation characteristic of the past couple of centuries - the situation has changed.

In 1956 it was possible to regard the Outsider as being rescued from his predicament by external change - but now he can only rescue himself. The current Outsider has only one place to look for help: within himself.

Thus - in politics and sociology there are no utopias, and all large institutions are thoroughly corrupted including the main churches. The intellectual elites are dishonest and incompetent. Science in 1956 was overwhelmingly successful - but has become a careerist bureaucracy. The universities seemed like a haven of privilege and leisure; but they are now the habitus of petty officials, dishonest spinners and box tickers.

We have no leaders - only middle managers and psychopaths - therefore, we must rely on ourselves. There is nobody else to turn-to. We must find what we need in our-selves - because it will not be supplied by any person or institution.

We, here and now, are the ultimate Outsiders because we have nowhere to turn - indeed, there are very few other people even to talk with about such matters. We are fortunate indeed if we have a marriage and family to sustain us - because these too have been destroyed over the past 60 years.

We are forced either to seek oblivion in distraction and intoxication or suicide - to escape alienation by escaping consciousness; or else to look within. We we cannot trust anybody, we must trust ourselves.

But looking within is the answer! It always was - if only the Outsider had allowed himself to acknowledge the reality of God!

When we look within, and begin to dismantle the false selves and automatic thinking, we find God.

The old Outsiders such as Nietzsche regarded the God-within (the Self) as an alternative to God; but we know that the God within is God. Since we are God's children we ourselves are divine, which means we have 'inherited' divinity. God is within us as well as without - the external God is denied us but God within is undeniable.

We can, should and will find Christianity within us - we can find Christianity despite being denied true and valid scriptures, tradition, legitimate religious teaching, rituals... we can find Christianity within us with total confidence because we know our loving God who created and sustains reality would not leave us unprovided for.

If within is the only place left to us; then within will suffice - we will find there everything we need.

We will find faith, courage, and motivation; we will find love.

We are in a situation where - if we honestly seek to answer the condition of alienation, nihilism and despair - there is no alternative to doing what we should anyway be doing: looking within - to find not only our true selves, but God and all the necessities that only God can provide.

We have the possibility of a degree of spiritual agency, freedom and autonomy seldom seen in the history of the world. And everything is channelling us towards exactly that.

We are fated to be the Ultimate Outsiders - like it or not. But we can solve the problem of alienation by willingly becoming the Ultimate Outsiders indeed! By embracing, rather than avoiding, reality - we can become free, true and live from our divinity (albeit partially, with frequent errors and sins - but that is enough).

We cannot be made to make the right choice - we might instead contiue to choose oblivion and the destruction of consciousness... drugs, social media, transgressive sex - even the destruction of our own persons by transhumanist technologies.

However, that choice is becoming clearer and clearer, more and more conscious - to the point of being unavoidable.

Yes indeed, things are 'coming to a point'...


Note: The crux of my point is that God (as Christians understand God: creator, loving, and a personal God - concerned by every individual) would not leave anybody, at any time or in any place, bereft of spiritual necessities. The world, as we experience it, is adeqaute. Indeed, since life is not a random accident; in some vital sense you and I personally (and everybody else) have been placed into mortal life in a time and at a place suited to our individual needs for experiencing and learning. 

If you wish to attain a higher 'consciousness' in life - by which I mean to experience, perceive and understand more than the five senses 'reality' of mainstream modern materialism; then you will already know that while higher consciousness is attainable in moments (aka 'peak experiences'), these moments tend spontaneously to be infrequent and last only seconds; and trying to make such moments longer and more frequent, and ideally continuous, is very difficult indeed.

(This goal of enhanced being was the major focus of Colin Wilson's thought; throughout dozens of books from The Outsider of 1956 to Super Consciousness in 2009, at the beginning and end of his publishing career.)

Another thing you might realise is that what works for one person seems seldom to work for another person. The history of those who have (apparently) attained higher consciousness is a history of different individuals with different experiences.

The lesson is that There Are No Shortcuts - the path is usually long, and each person seems to need a different path (presumably because each is, in fact, starting somewhere different).

To illustrate this, you may wish to give an hour and a half of intense attention to this recording of one of the most 'enlightened' men of whom I am aware - William Arkle.

http://www.wessexresearchgroup.org/digital_08.html

Near the end, he responds to some questions from the audience (from the well known investigator Nigel Blair, who was the host of these proceedings) concerning whether meditation was necessary for everyone and beneficial for everyone. Arkle is very definite, even somewhat harsh, in refusing to make universal recommendations or even 'hints' or 'tips'; or to imply that there are quicker and easier ways to get where you need to go.

Each of us has to struggle, because these things are difficult to learn, because they are meant to be difficult to learn.

Because without the struggle we will not really learn them.


Note: To clarify, for new readers: Arkle is a spiritual Christian - not a New Age writer. His understanding is based upon God as Creator and Loving Father, we being his children; creation being for the purpose of raising us - like Jesus Christ - to ultimate full divinity of the same kind as God. Unorthodox Christian elements in Arkle include that - as with Mormonism - Arkle envisages a Heavenly Mother consort with the Father, and human divinity as potentially rising to the same nature and level as that of the divine parents, But unlike Mormonism; Arkle also includes a scheme of incremental reincarnation (whereas Mormonism achieves much the same explanatory function by positing a significant and evolutionary pre-mortal spirit existence for all men and women).
http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk