Beyond the Occult

by Colin Wilson

  Other cases seem to suggest that human consciousness may be somehow ‘divided’. D. Scott Rogo has cited the case of a woman who was lying in bed, fully awake, when she saw a ‘roll of mist’ near the ceiling.

  I could feel its presence and its motion as though I, Helen, was the mist, and the knowledge came with the words, ‘Oh, I am up on the ceiling.’ I was not asleep. I was not dreaming. I could see it there, though not with my bodily eyes … . There was no fear, no questioning — simply a quiet acceptance of the fact that I was outside my body, hovering over it. There was a sensation of pushing against the ceiling, lightly, and of being stopped by it, as a toy balloon which has got away would be stopped … it ended when I was aware of being back in my body.*

  It seems that the centre of this woman’s consciousness remained in her body, although she was also aware that ‘the mist’ was herself. We should also note that she saw herself with ‘the eyes of the mind’ — as Goethe did — another shred of evidence to support Flammarion’s view that it is the mind that perceives ‘paranormally’, not the physical senses.

  In that case we would presume that Yeats’s friend saw him with ‘the eyes of the mind’, and that when he spoke to Yeats his mind was communicating directly with a subconscious level of Yeats’s mind — or as Hudson would say, with Yeats’s subjective rather than his objective mind.

  A glimmer of daylight begins to appear. In an earlier chapter we tentatively identified Hudson’s ‘two minds’ with the two hemispheres of split-brain physiology. (It should be emphasized that the identification itself is not important: what matters is the established fact that we have two ‘selves’, not whether they are really located in the left and right cerebral hemispheres.) We also concluded that in a certain sense, all human beings are ‘split-brain patients’ whose rational ego is out of touch with the intuitive non-ego. On this level at least it is an established fact that human beings experience ‘divided consciousness’. Rational consciousness is narrow and, as we realize in states of deep relaxation, only a fragment of our possible total consciousness. Pierre Janet observed that the consciousness of hysterical patients became increasingly narrow until in some cases they actually experienced ‘tunnel vision’. He also discovered that he could sit beside one of these hysterical patients and converse with both aspects of the patient’s mind. If he said in a low voice, ‘Raise your left hand,’ the patient would obey. If he then said, in his normal voice, ‘Why have you got your left hand in the air?’ the patient would look up in amazement. This phenomenon is no more mysterious than the fact that we can bruise ourselves when we are in a hurry and not even notice we have done it until later. ‘Divided consciousness’ is a matter of everyday experience. And if we consider that the rational ego is the product of millions of years of evolution, we can begin to understand why it has lost contact with the instinctive self and why our ‘normal’ human consciousness is little better than tunnel vision.

  Goethe’s vision of his own doppelgänger riding to meet him was an example of divided consciousness: his ‘other self’ apparently sent the image to comfort him in his misery. Helen’s vision of herself floating near the ceiling as a roll of mist is another example. One of the most amusing examples can be found in the autobiography of a remarkable English ‘psychic’, Rosalind Heywood. She describes how one sleepless night she lay beside her husband and decided to wake him up to make love to her:

  Before I could carry out this egoistic idea I did something very odd — I split in two. One Me in its pink nightie continued to toss self-centredly against the embroidered pillows, but another, clad in a long, very white, hooded garment, was now standing, calm, immobile and impersonally outward-looking, at the foot of the bed. This White Me seemed just as actual as Pink Me and I was equally conscious in both places at the same time [my italics]. I vividly remember myself as White Me looking down and observing the carved end of the bed in front of me and also thinking what a silly fool Pink Me looked, tossing in that petulant way against the pillows. ‘You’re behaving disgracefully,’ said White Me to Pink Me with cold contempt. ‘Don’t be so selfish, you know he’s dog-tired.’

  Pink Me was a totally self-regarding little animal, entirely composed of ‘appetites’, and she cared not at all whether her unfortunate husband was tired or not. ‘I shall do what I like,’ she retorted furiously, ‘and you can’t stop me, you pious white prig!’ She was particularly furious because she knew very well that White Me was the stronger and could stop her.

  A moment or two later — I felt no transition — White Me was once more imprisoned with Pink Me in one body, and there they have dwelt as oil and water ever since.

  A moment’s thought shows that this experience makes good sense. We all change through a number of levels of maturity from the cradle to the grave. ‘I’ am not now the person I was at six or twelve or eighteen, yet in a sense I feel that I am more ‘myself’ now than I was at eighteen. Past ‘selves’ have been discarded: yet at six and twelve and eighteen I was also quite convinced that the self I was aware of was the ‘real me’. It seems logical to assume that even at fifty-six the self I am aware of is not the ‘real me’. I am inclined to feel that if I could live to be two hundred and keep the full use of my faculties I might develop into something more like the ‘real me’, but the present ‘me’ is certainly not it.

  What seemed to happen to Rosalind Heywood was that as a psychic, she was able to separate momentarily into ‘present me’ and ‘real me’. Without the benefit of such an experience most of us assume that ‘present me’ is ‘real me’. We should note that Rosalind Heywood’s Pink Me was ‘a totally self-regarding little animal entirely composed of appetites’ — that is of emotions. She corresponds roughly to what in an earlier chapter we labelled ‘the emotional body’, while White Me was the mind or intellect.

  There are other such experiences of ‘separation’ in the literature of paranormal research. In The Personality of Man G. N. M. Tyrrell cites a number of cases, including one of a soldier in the Great War who, in a state of intense physical stress, separated from his physical body. He then watched his body go on talking to a companion who later said he had chatted with great wit and humour. This seems to be quite clearly an example of the ‘two selves’.

  Tyrrell also goes on to cite the case of Sir Auckland Geddes, already described (p. 268). And in this case we encounter another interesting clue to the nature of dual consciousness. As his body became paralysed Geddes felt that his ‘consciousness was separating from another consciousness which was also me’. One consciousness was attached to his body while the other was attached to his ego. He also noted that his body consciousness showed ‘signs of being composite, that is, built up of “consciousness” from the head, the heart and the viscera’. Then these various ‘organ consciousnesses’ became more individual as body-consciousness began to disintegrate and ego-consciousness found itself outside the body. Ouspensky made the same observation during his states of ‘experimental mysticism’ when he noted that each organ of his body seemed to have its own individual consciousness, with which he could communicate. We may also recall Jack Seale’s comment as the effects of his snake bite began to wear off: ‘normal consciousness returned in layers’ [my italics]. His body had been totally paralysed: in fact it was ‘dead’. It seems probable that the ‘layers’ corresponded to the various ‘organ consciousnesses’ described by Geddes and Ouspensky.

  It seems, then, that there is an overwhelming body of evidence for ‘divided consciousness’ or the existence of ‘two selves’. And this to a large extent undermines the objection that my everyday self has no experience of being independent of the body. If the consciousness of ‘real me’ is inextricably blended with the various ‘consciousnesses’ of the body and emotions, that is exactly what we would expect. It is admittedly difficult for me, as I sit in my chair, to grasp that the ‘me’ who looks out of my eyes is not the ‘real me’. But a little reflection shows me that I am mistaken. I experience a certain amount of eyes
train, the result of several hours’ typing, and some physical fatigue, and I look forward to taking my dogs for a walk in the woods and picking blackberries: my present consciousness is narrow and stressful and I am aware that my tiredness is turning me into a kind of robot. This is not real consciousness, and the ‘me’ I am aware of is not the real me.

  On the other hand the evidence presented in this chapter points to some strange conclusions. We talk about ‘my consciousness’ as if it were a unity, but if Geddes is correct it may actually be a whole collection of ‘consciousnesses’ including those from the head, the heart and the viscera. And ‘my’ consciousness may be capable of being present in more than one place at once — as Rosalind Heywood discovered. And what of those curious experiences of the ‘double’ described by Yeats and Beard and Carrington? Yeats’s double talked to his student friend while Yeats, several hundred miles away, was unaware of what was going on. But unless the double was some kind of psychic imposter we must presume that some level of Yeats’s mind knew what was going on and that it was only ‘everyday Yeats’, like Janet’s hysterical patient, who was unaware.

  In his last poem, ‘Under Ben Bulben’, Yeats wrote about how ‘when a man is fighting mad …’

  Something drops from eyes long blind,

  He completes his partial mind …

  We all know that sensation — the ‘holiday feeling’ — when ‘normal consciousness’ seems to expand to something far wider and richer, and our delight in the experience is undermined by a troubled recognition that we ought to be able to grasp this once and for all, and never again allow ourselves to be trapped in the poverty-stricken consciousness of everyday life. It is difficult to know exactly what we can do about it — except remain persistent and keep trying. But these insights at least make us aware that everyday consciousness is not ‘real consciousness’. The jazz musician Mezz Mezzrow said about the first time he smoked opium, ‘Lights came on all over my body where I didn’t even know I had sockets.’ And the same thing happens to consciousness in moods of optimism and intensity, when ‘lights’ come on in distant reaches whose existence we had not even suspected. If Yeats had been in this state when he ‘appeared’ to his fellow student he might well have been aware of the conversation. And this in turn suggests that the part of us that can gain access to the ‘information universe’ of psychometry or precognition is some aspect of us which is concealed from everyday consciousness.

  It should be possible to see that this theory covers every subject that has so far been discussed in this book: mystical experience, Faculty X, psychometry, ‘time-slips’, dowsing, precognitions (admittedly the most difficult topic considered), synchronicities, astral projection, doppelgängers and so on. It seems in fact to be the comprehensive theory of the paranormal that was so obviously lacking in the earlier researchers like Myers and Flammarion (although Myers made a very creditable attempt in Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death). This was my own view, as I saw it beginning to emerge in books like Mysteries, Frankenstein’s Castle and Access to Inner Worlds: that the simple, straightforward answer to all the mysteries of the paranormal was the ‘hidden power’ inside all of us. Civilization has in effect turned us all into ‘hysterical patients’ whose left hand is not aware what the right is doing and whose brains are equally divided. The recognition that we actually possess these powers is the first step towards developing them.

  Subject to certain qualifications, I still believe this to be true. But the qualifications — as will be seen — have turned out to be far more important than I originally expected.

  *Robert Cracknell, Clues to the Unknown.

  *Both cases are described more fully in Mysteries, pp. 486–8.

  *Quoted in The Unfathomed Mind: A Handbook of Unusual Mental Phenomena compiled by William D. Corliss, p. 571.

  Part Two

  Powers of Good and Evil

  1

  The Search for Evidence

  I have so far been able to present this material in a fairly impersonal and logical manner. Now it becomes necessary to speak again of my own involvement in the ‘search for evidence’.

  In the opening chapter I explained how my interest in the ‘occult’ was a natural development of an interest in mystical experience. And the interest in mystical experience was in turn a development of my interest in those curious states of happiness and affirmation that Chesterton called ‘absurd good news’. In this state one thing is fundamentally clear: that our ordinary consciousness is bedevilled with certain errors or fallacies that have the effect of making life seem dull and ordinary. The demon Screwtape told his nephew Wormwood, ‘Thanks to processes which we set at work in human beings centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing home on him the ordinariness of things … .’

  Now this inability to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is at hand is, quite simply, a form of hypnosis. ‘Familiarity’ makes a few mysterious passes in front of our eyes: our minds go blank, and the world is suddenly ‘ordinary’ and rather boring. And our response to ordinariness is to sink into a state of passivity: it seems self-evident that it is not worth making any effort. Most people spend their lives in the ‘hypnotized’ state, and die wondering why they were born in the first place.

  This explains why the romantics of the nineteenth century made such frenzied efforts to escape from ‘ordinariness’, even if it meant becoming alcoholics, drug addicts or suicides. Rimbaud wrote, ‘I say that one must be a visionary — that one must make oneself a VISIONARY.’ And he spoke of a ‘reasoned derangement of the senses’: ‘I accustomed myself to simple hallucination: I really saw a mosque in place of a factory, angels practising on drums, coaches on the roads of the sky, a drawing room at the bottom of a lake … .’

  But the real aim of all the romantics was to achieve those moments when consciousness seems to heave a sigh of relief and expand into a marvellous sense of the sheer richness of things: when it becomes aware — as Hesse’s Steppenwolf puts it — of ‘Mozart and the stars’. In this sense we are all romantics: the romantic impulse is one of the most fundamental drives of the human race. We make the mistake of thinking that we enjoy holidays because they allow us to recuperate, to recruit our energies. This is untrue. We enjoy holidays because they fill us with courage. They remind us that the world is a richer and more interesting place than we had come to believe, and that the stakes we are playing for are unbelievably high. Ordinary consciousness tends towards depression, which is another name for discouragement. By making us again aware of the sheer variety of the world, holidays fill us with new courage and determination. Whenever we experience this feeling it suddenly seems that it would be absurdly easy to use it to change our lives. It all seems so obvious that it is difficult to see where the problem lies. All we have to do is to remember this insight, to refuse to be taken in by the ordinariness which we now know to be a deception. Yet somehow this simple lesson is appallingly difficult to put into practice. A single snap of the hypnotist’s fingers and we are back in a state of yawning passivity.

  This was the problem at the heart of my first book The Outsider. People who have glimpsed this freedom are no longer contented to accept ‘ordinariness’ as inevitable. They struggle and worry and fret, and seem permanently dissatisfied with their achievement. Their friends and relatives find it hard to understand what is the matter with them; they seem determined to make themselves unhappy and uncomfortable. I pointed out that in earlier centuries such people were tolerated as religious ‘Outsiders’. St Augustine’s Confessions and the Journals of George Fox describe the same deep self-dissatisfaction that we find in more recent ‘Outsider’ documents like Amiel’s Journals and the novels of Dostoevsky. It also seemed clear that if some of the romantic ‘Outsiders’ had spent less time indulging in self-pity and more in trying to achieve some kind of self-discipline, they would have stood a better chance of surviving.

  By the
time I wrote Religion and the Rebel I had discovered the work of Arnold Toynbee, and it reinforced my conviction. Toynbee called the ‘Outsiders’ ‘the creative minority’ and spoke of a mechanism of ‘withdrawal and return’. The religious ‘Outsider’ used to retreat into the wilderness and emerge finally with his own ‘message from God’. Such men not only made an impact on their society; they often changed its entire direction. The gradual erosion of religious faith — due to the rise of science — meant that modern ‘Outsiders’ became more than ever a prey to ‘ordinariness’ and the lack of self-confidence it entails. Toynbee, who was deeply religious, hoped for some kind of great revival of Christianity; although he was realistic enough to recognize that it was unlikely. He concluded that all he could do was to ‘cling and wait’.

  To me, it seemed self-evident that some religious revival was not the answer. For better or for worse (probably for better) people have outgrown Christianity, and the movement of history suggests that the same will happen to the other major religions. But that is no cause for pessimism. The essence of religion has always been the feeling of ‘absurd good news’, not the dogmas of the theologians, so the essence of religion remains unaffected. The problem is how to grasp this essence. Besides, the decline of religion was not due to some demonic conspiracy but to the fact that human beings were learning to think for themselves. It would obviously be no solution to try to put back the clock. In which case the only clear alternative is to go forward in the same direction. We have to learn to think more, not less.

  The next major clue came in 1959 when I received a letter from the American psychologist Abraham Maslow. Maslow felt that Freud and his followers had ‘sold human nature short’, and his own investigations had led him to conclude that there were ‘higher ceilings of human nature’. His major key was the concept of the ‘peak experience’, by which he meant precisely what Chesterton meant by the feeling of ‘absurd good news’. Peak experiences, he insisted, were not ‘mystical’; they were simply a kind of bubbling-over of sheer vital energy and optimism and a recognition that the world is not ‘ordinary’ but exciting and strange. I was much impressed by his example — cited earlier — of the marine who had come back from years in the Pacific, and who had a peak experience when he saw a nurse back at base. He said that it suddenly struck him with tremendous force that women are different from men. He said that men take women for granted, as human beings like themselves, whereas the truth is that they are almost mystically different.