COLIN WILSON

Of all the writers and researchers that have influenced me, none have been more important than Colin Wilson. Up to the age of 27 I’d never really thought of the paranormal, or writing, for that matter. But it all changed when I came down with chronic fatigue syndrome.
My life had to change, become slower, quieter, and I thought, for the first time, about being a writer. However, I’d left school at fifteen, and had little in the way of education. Hence, I decided to educate myself.

TOWARDS THE ALTERNATIVE

It wasn’t long before I was finding an interest in alternative ideas – after all I’d got an ‘alternative’ condition which no one understood. And one of the first books I picked up in this sphere was Wilson’s The Occult.
I was hooked. And over the following years, dozens of Wilson’s books were read by me. His sheer range of interests in itself sparked an early idea of my methodology for my own ideas on a variety of subjects, including the paranormal.

A SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Colin Wilson was born in Leicester, England, in 1931. Leaving school at 16, he did a variety of jobs, including factory work, and had a short stint in the RAF. During this time, his main fascinating was in reading.
He ended up living rough in London whilst he wrote. He was eventually scouted and his 1956 book, The Outsider, was published.
A study of literary and artistic figures as social outcasts, it was ground-breaking and became an immediate success, leading to his Outsider Cycle. As part of the ‘cafe society’, Wilson became one of the Angry Young Men, enjoying critical acclaim.
It wasn’t to last long, however. Critics soon turned on him, and following an altercation with an in-law that made the media, he fled to Cornwall, where he has lived ever since. And then, in the late sixties, he began writing The Occult (1971), the first of his amazing trilogy, including Mysteries and Beyond the Occult. Adding The Criminal History of Mankind (1984), these are the books any Wilson devotee should read – before descending into the eighty plus other tomes.

A CONSCIOUSNESS THING

Wilson explains paranormal abilities as being part of our real consciousness, which is usually not available to us. Often, children have it, seeing the world as a magical place. But adults let life get on top of them, turning their attitudes negative.
We fail to appreciate paranormality most of the time because we are infatuated by trivialities, wasting our mind on minor problems of every day life. And due to this our mind gives us a view of the world that is really a lie. We indulge in triviality because we are conditioned to fit into society, and it causes us to use our mind simply to scan things automatically.
It is as if a ‘robot’ inside us has taken over, making the world dull and boring. Wilson even wrote that he once caught the robot making love to his wife.

PERCEPTION AND PURPOSE

To Wilson, real consciousness understands that perception is intentional. Without this intentionality we view the world through a thin beam of light and are sucked of energy – we are like ‘a grandfather clock powered by a watch spring’.
The answer is to realise that this ordinary world is a delusion with no sense of purpose. We must grasp purpose by generating a more powerful imagination, like a child’s. In such a way we draw back the ‘curtains of everydayness.’
We cease to look at the world from the ‘worm’s eye view’ and see it from a ‘bird’s eye view,’ and suddenly everything is vibrant and real. And when we do this, even paranormal perception can open up to us and we feel alive and whole; as one with the world, which suddenly works for us, not against us – we become synchronous with reality.

IN CONCLUSION

Although Wilson’s ideas don’t explain the paranormal itself, it suggests what frame of mind is required for paranormality to occur. And more than that, he tells us there is so much wrong with the way we think and act. It is as if we are only partly in reality – and a part that only offers materialism, science and the consuming individual. He tells us there is so much more.
Insights such as this guarantee that Colin Wilson will always hold a place as one of the most exceptional writers on consciousness and paranormality. Sadly, though, he is not fully appreciated for his contribution to paranormal literature. One day I hope he will be.

(c) Anthony North, March 2008

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