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01 – Introduction02 – Notes On Abraham Maslow – The Peak Experience03 The Self-Image Concept – Conclusion—————————————————————————————Colin Wilson is a thinker who, perhaps more so than any other writer working today, embodies the true spirit of what is called the “Renaissance man.” Wilson’s work has taken him through the entire spectrum of human knowledge, unafraid to examine subjects which are deemed unworthy of study by mainstream academics, while at the same time remaining undaunted by those areas which are normally staked out by career specialists. As a result, Wilson’s pursuit of his ideas have led him, over the course of more than forty years of intensive labor, to critique and formulate new ideas in a broad range of subjects, ranging from the works of the Romantics, the existentialists and split-brain psychology to criminology, science fiction, mysticism and revolutionary archaeology.Wilson was born and brought up in Leicester. He left school at 16 and worked in factories and numerous other jobs while reading in his spare time. In 1956, at the age of 24, he published The Outsider, which examines the role of the social “outsider” in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures (notably Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, T.E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent Van Gogh) and aspects of alienation in their works. The book was very successful and was a serious contribution to the popularisation of existentialism in Britain. Its welcome by leading figures of their day was shortlived and Wilson was subsequently vilified.Wilson was labelled as an Angry Young Man: he did contribute to Declaration, an anthology of manifestos by writers associated with the movement, and a chapter of The Outsider was excerpted in a popular paperback sampler, Protest: The Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men. Wilson, along with his friends Bill Hopkins and Stuart Holroyd , was viewed as forming a sub-group among the “Angries”, a group more concerned with “religious values” than liberal or socialist politics. Critics on the left were swift to label them as fascistic; commentator Kenneth Allsop called them “the law givers”.Wilson’s works include a substantial focus on positive aspects of human psychology such as peak experiences and the narrowness of consciousness. Wilson admired, and was in contact with, for example, humanistic psychologist, Abraham Maslow. Wilson also published in 1980 The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff, a text concerned with the life, work and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff, which forms an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian mystic. Wilson essentially argues throughout his whole work that the existentialist focus on defeat or nausea is only a partial representation of reality and that there is no particular reason for accepting it. In his view normal everyday consciousness buffetted by the moment is blinkered, and should not be accepted as necessarily showing us the truth about reality. This blinkering has some evolutionary advantages in that it stops us being completely immersed in wonder or in the huge stream of events, and hence unable to act. However, to live properly we need to access more than this everyday consciousness. To Wilson our peak experiences of joy and meaningfulness can be seen to be as real as our experiences of angst, and indeed as we seem more fully alive at these moments, they can be said to be more real. Furthermore these experiences can be cultivated, as a side effect, through concentration, paying attention, relaxation and certain types of work. Wilson tends to argue that compulsive criminality is a manifestation of a pathological attempt to gain peak experiences through violence. This effort is bound to fail in the long run, leading the criminal to greater extremes of violence or to a desire to be caught.Wilson has also explored his ideas through fiction, including many novels, mostly detective fiction or horror fiction, the latter including several Cthulhu Mythos pieces. On a dare from August Derleth, Colin Wilson wrote The Mind Parasites, as another tool to take a look at his own ideas (which suffuse all of his works), putting them in the guise of fiction. One of his novels, The Space Vampires, was made into the movie, Lifeforce, directed by Tobe Hooper.Wilson has also written extensive non-fiction books about crime and various metaphysical and occult themes. In 1971, he published The Occult: A History featuring exegesis on Aleister Crowley, Gurdjieff, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Kabbalah, primitive magic, Franz Anton Mesmer, Gregor Rasputin, Daniel Dunglas Home, and Paracelsus among others. He has also written biographies of Crowley and C.G. Jung, called Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast and C.G. Jung: Lord of the Underworld, respectively. Wilson’s initial theories of the occult focused on the cultivation of what he called “Faculty X” which leads to an increased sense of meaning and possibly to effects akin to telepathy or awareness of other energies. In his later work on this subject he seems to accept the possibility of life after death and the existence of spirits.Not that Wilson only directs his work to would-be supermen, or even “outsiders.” Wilson is no tenured academic spouting drivel which he has long since lost any interest in (with apologies to those academics who do not match this description). He has been hardened by his decision to live by his pen alone, being forced to maintain a link back to the world the rest of us inhabit for the sake of his own survival, rather than escaping into a sheltered surrogate womb of abstraction. Wilson’s readers are frequently those who have a sense that there is a possibility for something greater in the nature of our existence, but who also recognize that theorizing alone achieves nothing, particularly when theories ignore the realities known to those of us who must interrupt our questing with the facts of functioning within society. Rather than painting a portrait of utopia which his readers can dream themselves into without needing to lift a finger, Wilson contends that there are many paths to conscious living, but all of them relying upon a constant exertion of the will. The challenge of balancing one’s efforts at true consciousness against the requirements of daily life is a prominent feature of Wilson’s thought, although he also avoids reducing his ideas to the level of populist comforting like so many would-be gurus of today. Rather than dodging the issue by resolving to despise the world of the herd, as is so stylish in the world of academia, Wilson is out there with us, rendering this reality as an integral part of his work.Nor does Wilson claim to have all the answers. He is not the figurehead of a cult. Wilson deals in possibilities: he provides a compass, but he leaves it to you to find a route of your own choosing. This may be why popular success has eluded Wilson while many lesser thinkers have skyrocketed to fame with name-brand reassurances and ego-stroking — or worse, neurosis-feeding despair — disguised as philosophy. Not that this bothers him. As Wilson has said, the individual who wishes to embark on a truly conscious life must do so alone, and not fall victim to the endless parades of “knowers.” The individual who has a sense of detachment from the norms of his or her society must not fall prey to cynicism or hero-worship, but instead use this sense of alienation as the starting point for values and myths of one’s own invention, the true “outsider” of which Wilson speaks. And Wilson has had to live by his own dictum, becoming one of the most intriguing “outsiders” of all.ENJOY!