by Colin Wilson
Now that I have tried to explain my attitude to Lovecraft, it should be easier to understand what I tried to do in writing The Mind Parasites. There are obvious profound differences between my own temperament and Lovecraft’s. I am an Englishman; I was born into a working class background in the midlands—the English equivalent of America’s midwest. At the age of ten, I found my outlet in science, and then, later, in the plays of Bernard Shaw and the work of T. S. Eliot and Joyce. I started writing horror stories—much influenced by Poe and Hoffmann—at the age of fourteen. I had no alternative but to work in factories or offices after the age of sixteen. I much preferred factories—they left my mind free to think—and later on, farm labouring or ditch digging. All this, I suppose, toughened me and freed me from the outsider’s greatest enemy—his tendency to morbid self-pity. I was always as voracious a reader as Lovecraft, but my training in science—I meant to go into atomic physics at one time—gave me a tendency to look for essentials in the books I read, and to retain these in memory. The problem that interested me mainly was the problem of the outsider-artist in the 20th century, and of the violence that results when a stupid and materialistic society denies outlet to such men—and sometimes even the right to live. There were also deeper aspects of the problem that intrigued me: for example, the strange weakness of the human mind that means that although the outsider-artist longs for freedom, he often doesn’t know what to do with it when he gets it. In fact, undiluted freedom is one of the most destructive corrosives ever known; it can eat away a soul in months. Spengler was right when he called our age Faustian.
I brought together all my researches in The Outsider, and was lucky enough to make enough money and reputation to be able to devote my full time to writing, with a certainty of an audience. This made no kind of difference to my basic obsessions. In books like Religion and the Rebel and Beyond the Outsider I continued to explore the question of the outsider-artist in the 20th century, and the deeper philosophical implications of the problem. And my novels have continued to show what my critics sometimes call my ‘unhealthy preoccupation with violence’. My first, Ritual in the Dark, was a study of a sadistic killer based on Jack the Ripper and Peter Kurten. A more recent one, The Glass Cage, deals with the confrontation of a Blakeian mystic and a murderer whose crimes are based on the Cleveland Torso murders of 1935-37, and our own Thames Nude Murders of the past three years.
I have always believed that a good serious writer can use any convenient form to express his ideas. Shakespeare could write popular comedies; Dostoievsky produced romans policiers; Balzac launched his career with a series of crude ‘shockers’. I have used the crime novel—Ritual and The Glass Cage—the detective story—Necessary Doubt—science fiction—The Mind Parasites—and even the spy story in my latest novel The Black Room. In every case, it has been my aim to raise the form to a level of intellectual seriousness not usually found in the genre, but never to lose sight of the need to entertain. (I have even written a volume of tongue-in-cheek pornography and diabolism—The Sex Diary of Garard Sorme—which embodies, in fictional form, the ideas I expound in my phenomenological study, Origins of the Sexual Impulse.)
All of this should make clear why I feel such affinities with Lovecraft, and why the present volume contains my own partly tongue-in-cheek, partly affectionate tribute to him. It so happens that the Lovecraft tradition is largely my own. I feel more at home with books than with people. I take a great delight in adding authenticity to my fiction by piling—in the results of my reading, and by working out elaborate myths of metaphysical systems. So in this book I have combined Lovecraft’s preoccupation with strange unknown forces with my own interest in the problem of why the human race suddenly began to produce ‘outsiders’ in such quantity after the French Revolution.
I also realised, after I had finished the book, that I had stolen its central idea—of mind parasites—from a science fiction story I once read. In this story, the first man to travel to Mars suddenly has an experience of some strange creature wrenching itself out of his mind, and hurtling itself back screaming towards the earth, which is its home. Unfortunately, this story ended, in the rather ‘smart’ manner so characteristic of pulp science fiction, with the man landing on Mars, and immediately being possessed again by the same parasites. For some reason, writers of science fiction take a delight in pessimistic endings. (My friend A. E. Van Vogt is a remarkable exception; this is because he never ceases to be preoccupied with the problem of the superman which, like myself, he inherited from Nietzsche and Shaw.) And while I am admitting to theft (something that never bothers me since I feel that, like Shakespeare, I improve everything I steal), I may as well mention being impressed by a film called Forbidden Planet, which I saw in 1956, in which a scientist, (played by Walter Pidgeon) conjures up—without knowing it—monsters from his ‘id’, which destroy every expedition that tries to land on the planet and ‘rescue’ him. Anyone who wishes to understand phenomenology without effort should go and see this film.
The present novel has one passage to which I would draw your attention: the description of Austin’s night-long battle with the mind parasites. This scene—I say with all modesty—is a tour de force, since it spends several thousand words describing a battle that takes place entirely in the mind, and in which, therefore, none of the usual cliches of battle scenes can be called upon.
I should also add that the ghastly, flaccid writing of the opening pages was supposed to be a parody of the Stevenson-Machen type of narrator, with perhaps a touch of Serenus Zeitblom from Mann’s Doktor Faustus. It didn’t come off; but what the hell. I’d rather get on with another book than tinker about with it. I have also cut out a fifty thousand word extract from Karel Weissman’s Historical Reflections from the middle of this novel; my wife felt that it slowed down the narrative. I may later publish it as a separate volume.
—COLIN WILSON
Hollins College, Virginia
Christmas, 1966
THIS EDITION OF THE MIND PARASITES CONTAINS THE
COMPLETE TEXT OF THE ORIGINAL HARD-COVER EDITION.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED…
PREFATORY NOTE
WE MAKE NO APOLOGY for devoting Volume III of the Cambridge History of the Nuclear Age to this new edition of that important document known as The Mind Parasites by Professor Gilbert Austin.
The Mind Parasites is, of course, a composite document made up from various papers, tape recordings, and verbatim reports of conversations with Professor Austin. The first edition, which was only about half the size of the present one, was published shortly after Professor Austin’s disappearance in 2007, and before the Pallas had been found by Captain Ramsay’s expedition. It consisted mainly of the notes made at the request of Colonel Spencer, and of the tape recording numbered 12xm, in the library of London University. The later edition that appeared in 2012 included the transcript of the shorthand conversation taken down by Leslie Purvison on 14 January, 2004. Inserted into these transcripts was material from two articles written by Austin for the Historical Review, and from his preface to Karel Weissman’s Historical Reflections.
This new edition retains the old text in toto, and includes completely new material from the so-called Martinus File, that was for many years in the possession of Mrs Sylvia Austin, and that is now in the World Historical Archive. The editors have made clear in the footnotes 2 the sources from which various sections have been drawn, and haveutilized the still unpublished Autobiographical Notes written by Austin in 2001.
No edition of the Mind Parasites can claim to be definitive. It has been our aim to arrange the material in such a way that it forms a continual narrative. Where it was thought to be strictly relevant, material from Austin’s philosophical papers has been added, and one short passage from the introduction to Homage to Edmund Husserl, edited by Austin and Reich. The resulting narrative seems, in the opinion of the editors, to support the views they advanced in New Light on the Pallas Mystery. But it should be emphasized that
this was not their aim. They have tried to include all relevant material, and believe that the justice of this claim will be demonstrated when Northwestern University completes its edition of the Complete Papers of Gilbert Austin.
—H.S. W.P.
St. Henry’s College, Cambridge,
2014
(THIS SECTION IS TRANSCRIBED FROM A TAPE RECORDING MADE BY DR. AUSTIN A FEW MONTHS BEFORE HIS DISAPPEARANCE. IT HAS BEEN EDITED BY H. F. SPENCER.3 )
A STORY AS COMPLEX AS THIS has no obvious starting point; neither am I able to follow Colonel Spencer’s suggestion of ‘beginning at the beginning and going on to the end’, since history has a habit of meandering. The best plan is probably to tell my personal story of the battle against the mind parasites, and to leave the rest of the picture to the historians.
My own story, then, begins on the 20th of December 1994, when I returned home from a meeting of the Middlesex Archaeological Society, before whom I had delivered a lecture on the ancient civilizations of Asia Minor. It had been a most lively and stimulating evening; there is no pleasure more satisfying than discoursing on a subject that is close to your heart in front of a completely attentive audience. Add to this that our dinner had finished with an excellent claret of the 1980’s, and it will be understood that I was in a most cheerful and agreeable frame of mind when I inserted my key in the front door of my flat in Covent Garden.
My telescreen was ringing as I came in, but it stopped before I reached it. I glanced into the recording slot; it registered a Hampstead number that I recognized as that of Karel Weissman. It was a quarter to twelve, and I was sleepy; I decided to ring him back in the morning. But somehow, I felt uncomfortable as I undressed for bed. We were very old friends, and he frequently rang me up late at night to ask me to look something up in the British Museum (where I spent most mornings). Yet this time, some faint psychic alarm bell made me uncomfortable; I went to the screen in my dressing gown and dialled his number. It rang for a long time; I was about to hang up when the face of his secretary appeared on the screen. He said: ‘You have heard the news?’ ‘What news?’ I asked. ‘Dr. Weissman is dead.’ I was so stunned that I had to sit down. I finally mustered the wit to ask: ‘How should I have known?’ ‘It is in the evening papers.’ I told him I had only just come in. He said: ‘Ah, I see. I’ve been trying to ring you all evening. Could you possibly come up here right away?’
‘But why? Is there anything I can do? Is Mrs. Weissman well?’
‘She is in a state of shock.’
‘But how did he die?’
Baumgart said, without changing his expression: ‘He committed suicide.’
I remember staring at him blankly for several seconds, then shouting:
‘What the devil are you talking about? That’s impossible.’
‘There can be no possible doubt. Please come here as soon as you can.’
He started to remove the plug; I screamed:
‘Do you want to drive me mad? Tell me what happened!’
‘He took poison. There is almost nothing else I can tell you. But his letter says we should contact you immediately. So please come. We are all very tired.’
I called a helicab, and then dressed in a state of mental numbness, telling myself that this was impossible. I had known Karel Weissman for thirty years, ever since we were students at Uppsala. He was in every way a remarkable man: brilliant, perceptive, patient, and of immense drive and energy. It was impossible. Such a man could never commit suicide. Oh, I was fully aware that the world suicide rate had multiplied by fifty since the mid-century, and that sometimes the most unexpected people kill themselves. But to tell me that Karel Weissman had committed suicide was like telling me that one and one made three. He had not an atom of self-destruction in his composition. In every way, he was one of the least neurotic, best integrated men I had ever known.
Could it, I wondered, have been murder? Had he, perhaps, been assassinated by an agent of the Central Asiatic Powers? I had heard of stranger things; political assassination had become an exact science in the second part of the eighties, and the deaths of Hammel-mann and Fuller had taught us that even a scientist working under high security conditions is not safe. But Karel was a psychologist, and he had, as far as I knew, no connection of any kind with the government. His main income came from a large industrial corporation, who paid him to devise ways of combating dyno-neuroses and generally increasing productivity.
Baumgart was waiting for me when the taxi landed on the roof. The moment we were alone, I asked him: ‘Could it be murder?’ He replied: ‘It is not impossible, of course, but there is no reason to think so. He retired to his room at three this afternoon to write a paper, telling me that he was not to be disturbed. His window was locked, and I was sitting at a desk in the anteroom during the next two hours. At five, his wife brought tea, and found him dead. He left a letter in his own handwriting, and had washed down the poison with a glass of water from the toilet.’
Half an hour later, I was convinced that my friend had indeed committed suicide. The only alternative was that Baumgart had killed him; yet I could not believe this. Baumgart had the control and impassiveness of a Swiss, but I could tell that he was deeply shaken, and on the point of an emotional breakdown; no man is a good enough actor to simulate these things. Besides, there was the letter in Karel’s handwriting. Since Pomeroy produced the electro-comparison machine, forgery had become the rarest of crimes.
I left that house of gloom at two in the morning, having spoken to no one but Baumgart. I had not seen my dead friend, and neither did I want to, for I am told that the face of one who dies from cyanide is horrible. The tablets he had used had been taken from a psycho-neurotic patient only that morning.
The letter in itself was strange. It offered no word of regret for the act of self-destruction. The handwriting was shaky, but the wording was precise. It stated which of his possessions was to be left to his son, and which to his wife. It asked that I should be called as soon as possible to take charge of his scientific papers, and mentioned a sum of money that was to be paid to me, and a further sum that was to be used, if necessary, in their publication. I saw a photostat of the letter—the police had taken the original—and I knew that it was almost certainly genuine. Electronic analysis confirmed my view the following morning.
Yes, a most strange letter. Three pages long, and written with apparent calm. But why had he suggested that I should be contacted immediately? Could it be that his papers contained the clue? Baumgart had already considered the possibility, and had spent the evening examining them. He had found nothing there to justify Karel’s demand for haste. A large proportion of the papers concerned the Anglo-Indian Computers Corporation, his employer; these would naturally be made available to the firm’s other research officers. The remainder were various papers on existential psychology, Maslovian transac-tionism and the rest. An almost completed book dealt with the uses of psychedelic drugs.
Now, in the last named work, it seemed to me that I had found a clue. When Karel and I were at Uppsala, we spent a great deal of time discussing problems of the meaning of death, the limits of human consciousness, and so on. I was writing a thesis on the Egyptian Book of the Dead, whose actual title, Ru nu pert em hru, means ‘the book of coming forth by day’. I was concerned only with the symbolism of this ‘dark night of the soul’, of the perils encountered by the disembodied spirit on its nightlong journey to Amentet. But Karel had insisted that I should study the Tibetan Book of the Dead—an entirely different cup of tea—and compare the two. Now, as any student of these works knows, the Tibetan book is a Buddhist document whose religious background bears no resemblance whatever to that of the ancient Egyptians. I felt that to compare the two would be a waste of time, a mere exercise in pedantry. However, Karel succeeded in stimulating in me a certain interest in the Tibetan book for its own sake, with the consequence that we spent many a long evening discussing it. Psychedelic drugs were at the time almost unobtainable, since Aldous Hu
xley’s book on mescalin had made them fashionable among addicts. However, we discovered an article by René Daumal describing how he had once made similar experiments with ether. Daumal had soaked a handkerchief in ether, which he then held to his nose. When he lost consciousness, his hand dropped, and he would quickly recover. Daumal attempted to describe his visions under ether, and they impressed and excited us. His main point was the same as that made by so many mystics: that although he was ‘unconscious’ under ether, he had a sense that what he experienced was far realler than his everyday experience of the world. Now, both Karel and I agreed on one thing—no matter how dissimilar our temperaments might be in others—that our everyday lives had a quality of unreality. We could so well understand Chuang Tzu, who said that he had dreamed he was a butterfly, and felt in every respect exactly like a butterfly; and that he was not certain whether he was Chuang Tzu dreaming he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Tzu.
For a month or so, Karel Weissman and I tried to ‘experiment with consciousness’. Over the Christmas holiday, we tried the experiment of staying awake for three days on black coffee and cigars. The result was certainly a remarkable intensity of intellectual perception. I remember saying: ‘If I could live like this all the time, poetry would become worthless, because I can see so much further than any poet’. We also tried experiments with ether and carbon tetrachloride. In my own case, these were altogether less interesting. I certainly experienced some enormous feeling of insight—of the kind that one occasionally gets on the point of sleep—but it was very brief, and I could not remember it afterwards. The ether gave me a headache for days, so after two experiments I decided to give it up. Karel claimed that his own results corresponded to those of Daumal, with certain differences; I seem to remember he found the idea of rows of black dots extremely significant. But he also found the physical aftereffects unsettling, and gave it up. Later, when he became an experimental psychologist, he was able to get mescalin and lysergic acid for the asking, and suggested several times that I should try them. But by this time I had other interests, and refused. I shall speak of these ‘other interests’ presently.