[I am re-reading Colin Wilson’s autobiography, Dreaming to Some Purpose and it came to me that he and I were connected in some way that wasn’t obvious. So I thought I would ask the guys, in a private session, and as usual things took their own course.]
Friday, January 12, 2024
8:10 a.m. I look forward to learning how Colin and I are really connected. Clearly, somehow we are. Shared thread? I read of his life and I see my life in – what shall I call it? – not in a distorted mirror, not in a sort of opposition, but sort of a “transpose the same qualities into a different time/place starting point, and change a few other things.”
I have just gotten to where he has become an overnight sensation at 24, and his reaction to it.
Now, I find I cannot say – really cannot think – just what I’m groping for. A little help, my friends? Only, not for publication.
Unless you change your mind. The same ground rules as always.
Yes.
Colin and you, Colin and Robert Clarke and you, Colin and Chris Nelson and you – variations on a theme, with the added nuance of taking care of one another. Colin came first and established a position. Robert came next and worked in obscurity all his life. You came next and were sort of between the two, and Chris Nelson will be seen to be between Colin and you, and of course the chain doesn’t end.
If you were to write your life-memoir – for that is what it would amount to, certainly not a conventional autobiography –
Lost it.
Your story would be written as the cooperation (and interference) of strands, not as a unitary being which none of you are. That in itself would be a different take on things. But also, your concentration on your inner life and your relative helplessness in steering your outer life would be very different. You think of yourself as a failure externally and perhaps a tentative success internally, but this is just lazy thinking. How can one side of the duct tape be in different sync [I would have said “out of sync”] with the other? External is internal, as you know.
Perhaps making that clear would be achievement enough.
It can’t be proved. It can be intuited or not. Or rather, let’s say that to the extent it can be proved, it will be done by a new science scarcely nascent yet, combining physics and psychology, seeing gravity and love as equivalents, but demonstrating it mathematically, as that is the only language some people can believe in. (They don’t have to be able to follow the mathematics, only be able to believe in it. This is true of most science, of course, even among scientists outside their own subspecialty.)
I’m going to send that graf to Dirk.
By all means. It is more his tasks than yours, and more his task than more conventional explorations taking physical and non-physical to be separate things.
But to return to Colin and me.
Were you not sustained – shaped, almost – by his presence for a full 25 years before you met? Do you still think that was merely external?
Hmm.
So now reconfigure it and see you and him – and Robert and Chris and others – as branches of the same plant, connected at the stem if branching at the top. He nourished you all, you all nourished him, and you all nourished and nourish each other even now by a form of invisible support, just by living in the world – concentrating your essence in one moment – and retaining the unknown link. It is a powerful organizing force that is not widely realized, but universally experienced.
Another way in which we are less individual than we think.
Let’s say, another aspect of your lives that is not obvious. And this is worth a few words:
- You as an individual tip of the plant, inhabiting one body, forming one surface-mind.
- You as an extension of the plant, one more organ of perception for the non-3D larger being.
- Between the two, you as one of a cluster of beings sharing certain characteristic and (usually) values.
You see our point, here? All of these, not just one, or two. You all function in just this triplicate way, whether or not you are aware of it.
So, Colin and Robert and Frank and Chris – and many others, known to you or not – share a cluster and instinctively, intuitively, naturally, recognize that you belong together. You function smoothly together – and most of your joint functioning is not visible to yourselves, let alone to others. Your lives do not need explaining, though for comfort and out of curiosity you would like the explanation. All you ever need is to follow the deepest impulses and you will do all right.
Our individual foibles don’t really matter, in this context.
Remember, everyone is functioning in three roles. Number one has all the quirks and surface eccentricities. Number two has all the deepest purpose and sureness. And number three (that Carl Jung did not iterate when he talked of his awareness of a number one and number two personality) has the sureness of common goals and opportunities and needs. You all play all these roles all the time. How could you not? It would be like opting out of one dimension.
Well, as usual this has grown beyond my personal question.
That’s the trip you signed up for.
Agreed. What of people with whom we share an affinity but don’t quite mesh? I’m thinking of John Nelson, here.
You and he worked together just enough to do a couple of things. You got him into the publishing mainstream; he got Hampton Roads into the same mainstream. But you and he needed room from each other even though the personal chemistry was good.
So our somewhat wistful distance – wistful distance on my end, anyway – is appropriate.
What can happen in one’s life that is not appropriate? What you expect, or desire, or even fear, is one thing: What is appropriate may or may not be any or all of these.
In short, “all is well.”
Do you have any reason to doubt it?
Often enough we are inclined to say, “It could be better.”
Certainly. So could you yourselves.
This is a bit of a sidetrack, but how should I answer people who point to all the pain and suffering and injustice in the world?
Do you expect to convince them?
No, but it seems to me we ought to have a better answer than, “It just is.”
This is like assuming that sickness or injury is “bad” because you don’t want them. It is Lucy in “Peanuts” saying she doesn’t want life’s ups and downs, she just wants up and up and up.
It is a form of fixed vision, isn’t it? I mean, one can get to see only the bad and forget that it is balanced by the good.
Assuming you wish to continue seeing things as bad or good, yes. No picture can be all light and no dark. Even a very light picture has areas that are relatively darker. Even a dark picture has areas relatively lighter. If all the world looks dark to you because it has dark patches, adjust your vision or rather, adjust your expectations, so that your vision can readjust. The world is not getting worse all the time. People are not sinking deeper and deeper into poverty. Violence and injustice are not increasing all the time. Pain and suffering are not as bad as – let alone worse than – 100 years ago, let alone 200. But you have to be able to admit the data. If you concentrate on darkness, what should you expect to see but confirmation of your bias?
I suppose it is a form of extremism: “If everything isn’t the way I want it, nothing is right with the world.”
And of course the opposite (if similar) extremism would say something like, “If all is well, there is nothing that could be better, or that needs fixing.” You all know that real life is between the extremes. It is mostly words, and the ideas stemming from words, that lead to extremism of either sort.
Well, the exposition of our three roles was helpful, and I’ll find a way of sending it out while preserving people’s privacy. Thanks as always.
I need to print this one. Thanks.