human potential

 

Not a great photo, but precious to me — taken the night I met Colin and Joy, 3-17-1995. Taped onto a divider in journal #52

Gary Lachman’s “Beyond the Robot: The life and work of Colin Wilson” really is a marvelous book.  I am only about half through it (reading as slowly as i can, to prolong it) but as I said elsewhere, it is such a pleasure to have an author take Colin’s work as seriously as Colin did, and not so much as writing as of solidified thinking.

Nobody’s life-work is obvious if seen in pieces, and it often isn’t obvious in mid-stream. But even after we have the possibility of a long look back,  that work may not be obvious. So much depends upon the preparation of those investigating.

Take Chapter Six, for instance, which is entitled “Peak Experiences, Intentionality, and Evolution.” Colin often wrote about intentionality, and the debt he owed to philosopher Edmund Husserl. But you will get a clearer, crisper understanding of his importance — at least I did — by reading Lachman’s discussion of “immediacy perception” and “meaning perception” (page 125) than in piecing it together yourself. And you will certainly get a better sense of the progression of Colin’s ideas over time.

Wonderful book.

As I think i said earlier, so refreshing to see someone take his ideas with the seriousness they deserve.

As I said elsewhere, reading Gary Lachman’s book “Beyond the Robot,” about Colin Wilson’s life and work, is bringing back active memories of a treasured friendship. Here’s one I don’t think I have ever shared.

How often does one of your literary heroes become a friend? During the 25 years between stumbling upon The Mind Parasites in 1970 and meeting Colin Wilson in 1995, my life changed many times, but I never suspected that one day he would write an introduction to one of my books. But that’s what he did, for Muddy Tracks, published in January, 2001, and here it is:

Foreword

by Colin Wilson

When Frank DeMarco told me he intended to write a book about his experiences of The Monroe Institute, I immediately offered to write this introduction, for I needed no convincing that Robert Monroe is one of the most important figures in modern paranormal research. What I had not expected was that the book I had so casually offered to introduce, sight unseen, would be itself as remarkable as any of Monroe’s books.

I met Frank on March 17, 1995, in the New York apartment of the distinguished paranormal researcher Alexander Imich. As it happens, it was the day Robert Monroe died. I remember the date because my taxi had got stuck in the Saint Patrick’s Day parade, and I was two hours late for the party. Fortunately, it was still going strong. But the only one of the guests I mentioned later in my diary was Frank DeMarco. And that was partly because he had sent me a novel he had written called Messenger, a sequel to James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, and that, unlike most sequels, it was totally absorbing. It was the story of a young American pilot whose spy plane crashes in Tibet in 1962, and who is taken to the monastery of Shangri-La. It was obvious that DeMarco had written it partly because he felt that James Hilton had missed some important opportunities. His young pilot attempts to escape, but is caught, then decides to make the best of it and begin to practice mental and spiritual disciplines. The book made it clear that DeMarco knew a great deal about such disciplines, and had practiced them himself. And I sensed this as I talked to him—mainly about Monroe—at the party.

Continue reading Colin Wilson’s preface to Muddy Tracks

Gary Lachman’s book is bringing back such fond memories of Colin. When I told him I was writing a book about my own explorations into consciousness, he offered, sight unseen, to write a preface. (I was to find that this kind of generous impulse was typical of the man.) When he had finished reading the manuscript of Muddy Tracks, he sent me an email saying that the last paragraph had him blushing.

Well, let’s assume that “blushing” was exaggeration. Still, clearly he was pleased.

This last paragraph was part of an appendix called “Mapmakers.” In it I listed “People you ought to know, and why. These are all authors unless otherwise noted. I count them as friends I never met—except that in a few cases, I have met them. These personal favorites of mine will lead you on to others, by their own reference and with a little help from your friends Upstairs.” Last on the (alphabetical) list:

Colin Wilson: novels and nonfiction. Colin Wilson can’t seem to write an unreadable sentence or a dull page. His lively mind moves from here to there and carries you with him. He lives in a wider world than most, which is a continual breath of fresh air. He has written eighty or so books, and I doubt there’s a used bookstore or a public library in an English-speaking country that doesn’t have at least one, and usually more. His newer books can be found in any bookstore of reasonable size. The Outsider is a classic, and a renewed delight whenever I reread it. Among my favorites of his novels are The Philosopher’s Stone, The Mind Parasites, and Necessary Doubt. But you can hardly go wrong anywhere.

 

Reading Gary Lachman’s book brings back how much Colin’s work meant to my life. A short excerpt from my book Muddy Tracks:

For more than forty years I endured the long, hard, solitary road. Yet I had gotten a startling glimpse of the existence of a better way of living one night late in February 1970, when I was a few months from turning twenty-four. I was in a drugstore checkout line when a strong impulse led me to pick up a paperback book off the rack. Oddly, for some reason the thought came to me that I might steal it. I still don’t know why that thought came across, unless merely to underline for me the importance of that book, a science-fiction novel called The Mind Parasites, by an author I’d never heard of named Colin Wilson. I bought it, and that moment turned my life.