by Colin Wilson
The real trouble is the passivity of human consciousness. We are like cows standing around in a field, accepting whatever happens as inevitable. Of course, as soon as some crisis arises, it has the effect of shaking the mind awake, and we respond magnificently. Suddenly, we recognise that we are free, and that we can change our lives. But as soon as the crisis is over, we go back to sleep again, and to chewing the cud.
To explain why this happens, I have to repeat a point I made in the first chapter. We have to recognise that we all have a robot inside us, whose job is to do things for us. I learn to type slowly and painfully; then the robot takes over and does it twice as fast as I could. He also drives my car and talks French for me. The problem is that he not only does the things I want, but also the things I would rather do myself. If I go for a walk with my robot switched on, I don’t enjoy the walk; if I eat a meal robotically, I don’t enjoy the food. Although the robot was intended to make our lives more easy and pleasant, he often goes too far and lives them for us.
When this happens, we sink to a lower level of consciousness. What is more, we assume that this lower level of consciousness is telling us the truth about the world. In fact, it is telling us lies, because it is so dim and dull. Once we begin to see this, we can also grasp that there are a number of distinct levels of consciousness that every one of us experiences during the course of a lifetime.
Let us, simply as an exercise, see if we can recognise the most fundamental of these levels. Let us start off with the basic state of non-consciousness that we experience in very deep sleep, and call this Level O. In that case Level 1 is the level we experience as we dream, and which persists in hypnagogic experiences.
Level 2 is the most basic level of waking consciousness: that is mere awareness. A child experiences this when he is too tired to take any interest in anything. He may be on his way home from a party but he gazes blankly at the passing world. If you were to ask, ‘What have you just seen?’ he would reply, ‘I don’t know.’ His consciousness is merely a mirror reflecting the outside world. Nietzsche once said that we envy the cows their placidity, but it would be no use asking them the secret of their happiness for they would have forgotten the question before they could give the answer. This is Level 2.
At Level 3 consciousness has become self-aware but it is still dull and heavy—so heavy that we are only aware of one thing at a time: everything seems to be ‘merely itself’, utterly without meaning, and your own reflection in a mirror seems to be a stranger. This is the level that Sartre calls nausea.
Level 4 is the normal consciousness we experience every day. It is no longer too heavy to move: it has learned how to cope with existence yet it tends to think of life as a grim battle—possibly a losing battle. Consequently it tends to sink back easily towards Level 3 and to find experience meaningless and boring.
So far the one thing the levels all have in common is a basically passive attitude towards life and experience. At Level 5 this ceases to be so. This is a level that I have labelled provisionally ‘spring morning consciousness’ or ‘holiday consciousness’. It is characterized by that bubbling feeling of happiness we experience when life suddenly becomes more interesting and exciting and all kinds of prospects seem to be opening up in front of us. Quite suddenly caution and doubt disappear; life becomes self-evidently fascinating and delightful. This is the feeling that Hesse’s Steppenwolf experiences as he tastes a glass of wine and is reminded of ‘Mozart and the stars’.
Level 6 could be labelled the ‘magical level’. It is what happens to a child on Christmas Day, when everything combines to make life seem wonderful. Or imagine the consciousness of two honeymooners on their wedding night looking down from a balcony on to a moonlit lake, with the dark shapes of mountains in the distance. In such states we feel a total reconciliation with our lives. ‘For moments together my heart stood still between delight and sorrow to find how rich was the gallery of my life,’ says Steppenwolf. Problems seem trivial; we see that the one real virtue is courage. Consciousness has become a continuous mild peak experience, what J. B. Priestley calls ‘delight’.
Level 7 is the state I have called (in The Occult) Faculty X – the odd ability to sense the reality of other times and places Proust says in Swann’s Way I had ceased to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. . . .’ This is more than a peak experience: it is an odd sense of mastery over time, as if every moment of your life could be recalled as clearly as the last ten minutes. We suddenly realise that time is a manifestation of the heaviness of the body and the feebleness of the spirit. We can also see that if we could learn to achieve this condition of control permanently, time would become, in a basic sense, non-existent.
The most interesting thing about the levels beyond Level 7—the levels explored by Ouspensky and other mystics—is that they seem to contradict the evidence of our senses and of everyday consciousness. The inner becomes the outer, the outer becomes the inner, man is the whole universe and a mere atom, space and time are seen to be illusions and so on. Yet we can see that these contradictions are already inherent in everyday consciousness. At Level 2 consciousness has no kind of ‘connectedness’; it is merely a flow of meaningless impressions. Level 3—nausea—starts to arrest this flow, to connect things together, but it keeps collapsing into a sudden perception that the world is after all quite meaningless and futile. Level 4—ordinary consciousness—’connects’ things to a far higher degree, yet it still takes it for granted that life is an endless uphill struggle and that we have to make a continuous effort to see any meaning in it. At Level 5—’holiday consciousness’—all this changes: there is a sense of being able to see to distant horizons, of becoming aware of ‘Mozart and the stars’. We suddenly realize that the world around us is so fascinating in itself that no effort is required. Everything makes us think of something else and so we are kept in a continuous state of interest and excitement.
At Level 6—’magic consciousness’—we seem to be floating in a sea of meaning and find it hard to understand how we could ever have been unhappy, or how anyone else could be. Even the worst experiences of the past now seem deeply interesting attempts to teach us something, essential steps on the upward path to this sense of optimism and control. The only tragedy in the universe seems to be that so many people lack the courage and sheer dogged stubbornness to keep going and so miss this literally ‘heavenly’ sense of wonder and reconciliation.
Level 7, with its sense of freedom, of mastery over time, is only a short step from the mystical level, just as Level 6—’magic’—is only a short step from Faculty X. A sudden additional effort can carry the mind over the threshold into that strange realm where ‘separateness’ is seen to be a delusion caused by fatigue and everything is seen to be connected. One of the most encouraging things about this insight into the levels is that each level is only a short and easy step away from the previous one.
Now if you look at this list you will notice an interesting thing about Level 4—our ordinary everyday consciousness. At the ‘bottom end’ it is still dull and heavy, like waking up with a hangover. Life is no longer horrible and meaningless, as it is in Level 3 (‘nausea’), but it is still an uphill struggle. But as you continue to fight back, your ‘engine’ warms up, and you begin to experience an increasing sense of optimism, a feeling that obstacles are being overcome. ‘Three down, seven still to go.’ And a point comes—about halfway—when suddenly you are enjoying life, and even the struggle gives you pleasure, like a strong swimmer who enjoys battling against a powerful current.
The turning-point is Level 3½. And three and a half is precisely half of seven. Until you reach 3½, life is an uphill struggle. After 3½, it is all downhill. And at the top end of Level 4, we are bubbling with optimism, and what Maslow calls the peak experience, the experience of overflowing happiness, carries us up to Level 5, ‘holiday consciousness’. You could say that the peak experience is a spark that leaps the spark-gap between levels 4 and 5.
In other words, below 3�
� you are toiling uphill; beyond Level Level 3½, it is all downhill. The odd thing is that most healthy people spend their days fairly close to Level 3½. If they made a slightly larger effort, they would be over the top of the hill.
Let me put this another way. You could say that, for practical purposes, you are normally 50% robot, and 50% what you might call ‘real you’. When you feel tired, you sink to 51% robot, and 49% ‘real you’. On the other hand, when you feel cheerful and optimistic, you are 49% robot and 51% real you. In moods of great optimism—setting out on holiday, for example—you become 52% real you and only 48% robot.
That ‘turning point’—the 50/50 level—is also what we have called ‘Level 3½’.
And now it should be possible to see the answer to what I called ‘the Outsider problem’ (in the first chapter of this book). Those 19th-century Outsiders had marvellous glimpses of sheer delight, when it seemed self-evident that the whole universe is marvellous. Then they woke up the next morning, and the old depression was back again. They told themelves that the ‘moments of delight’ were an illusion, or that they are bound to disappear as the ‘shades of the prison house begin to close’ around us. This is why so many of them committed suicide or died of wasting diseases that were caused by discouragement.
What we can see clearly is that they were making a simple mistake. The ‘moments of delight’ are not an illusion. They are a perfectly normal consequence of raising consciousness above level 3½.
But how do we do that?
The answer is obvious. The romantics were defeated by their sense of gloom, by their conviction that life is a trap and that ‘you can’t win’. It was this conviction that kept them below Level 3½. Notice that as soon as you feel optimistic, your energy levels rise. And if you were in a 50/50 state, the optimism has the effect of pushing you up to 51% ‘real you’ and 49% robot. The mere knowledge that we are so close to the ‘turning point’ is enough to push us ‘over the top of the hill’. Maslow noticed that people who constantly had ‘peak experiences’ were all cheerful and healthy people. The peak experiences made them cheerful and healthy, and the health made them have peak experiences. The romantics, on the other hand, were convinced that life is one long defeat, so they immersed themselves in gloom and self-pity. There is no better formula for remaining below Level 3½. They were in a state of ‘negative feedback’.
This is the fundamental reason that I am convinced that the human race is on the point of an evolutionary leap to a higher stage. Our evolution has been brought about by the long, slow acquisition of knowledge, from the moment one of our ape-like ancestors learned to use a sharp stone as a hatchet. Now we have acquired the most important piece of knowledge of all: the knowledge of how close we are to Level 3½. What it means, in effect, is that human beings are close to the level at which they will recognise that they possess the power to remain above Level 3½.
And precisely how do we do this—in terms of everyday living? Again, we all know the answer without realising that we know it. When I walk out of my room and into a busy street, I am inclined to wince at the impact of ‘everyday reality’. I am, in effect, 49% ‘real me’. But I can make that small additional effort to cope with reality, to expect positive instead of negative things to happen—in short, to push myself up that extra 1% that will make all the difference and, having achieved it, to push myself up another 1%, beyond Level 3½.
At this point a personal experience may help to make my point. In 1987, I was on a lecture tour in Japan. I do not enjoy travel—I have the natural Outsider’s preference for my own home—and I found that it was important to make a conscious effort not to allow myself to slip into a state of boredom and indifference in the crowded streets of Tokyo or Hiroshima. One evening, after a particularly crowded day, my wife and I were being taken to a theatrical performance by our interpreter. I would greatly have preferred to stay in my hotel room and rest, and have to admit that I had allowed myself to lose interest in the evening ahead. I had slipped, without noticing it, into a state of ‘upside-downness’.
The theatre was in a very long street, with metal barriers on either side to force pedestrians to cross at the traffic light. But the traffic light was several hundred yards away. The street was empty, and our interpreter ducked underneath the barrier, and beckoned us to follow her. As we started to cross, the lights changed, and a sports car roared towards us at 50 miles an hour. I jerked myself out of my state of indifference, grabbed my wife’s arm, and hauled her across the road as fast as I could. And that ‘awakening’ made me aware that I had permitted myself to slip into a state of upside-downness. As I sat in the theatre a few minutes later, I reflected that if my boredom had resulted in my wife being struck by a sports car, I would never have forgiven myself. My ‘indifference’ vanished, and I made a determined attempt to give my full attention to the play.
Early the next morning, we were on our way out of Tokyo, being taken to some distant place in the country; and roaring along the crowded freeway at 70 miles an hour, I reflected on the incident of the evening before, and on my recognition that it is of vital importance never to allow ourselves to sink into states of bored resentment. And now I recalled an image that I had used in the final chaper of my book The Quest for Wilhelm Reich. It had struck me that ‘ordinary consciousness’ has a substratum of boredom. It is disorganised, like billiard balls spread at random over a billiard table. As soon as something arouses our interest, we make a mental effort which pulls all the billiard balls together into the centre of the table. When we lose interest, or become tired, they spread all over the tabletop again.
If we become deeply absorbed, we make an additional effort of concentration, and this seems to have the odd effect of compressing the billiard balls still further, so they seem to climb on top of one another, forming a second tier. And at this point, I become aware of the power of my own mind. I realise that if I made a still greater effort of concentration, I could make the billiard balls climb up into a third layer, and even a fourth. What is so interesting about this procedure is that as I become increasingly ‘absorbed’ (T.E. Lawrence once remarked ‘Happiness is absorption’) my mental power seems to increase, and I can see that if I could maintain this level of energy, it should be possible to make the billiard balls form into a pyramid. It is a process of ‘positive feedback’, where interest releases further energy and excitement, and the excitement deepens our interest. And, that being so, the pyramid need never collapse. The billiard balls ‘spread out’ only because we lose vigilance. We forget. And if we could once achieve that intense level of excitement and interest, the universe would be so obviously fascinating that we would never be tempted to allow our attention to lapse.
As we drove along the Tokyo freeway, I experienced a state of intense excitement. I felt that I had achieved a ‘bird’s eye view’ of the problem of human existence—what I sometimes call ‘a hole in one’. (I do not play golf, but the analogy seems apt.) This, I saw, was the answer, the key to the next phase of man’s evolution. And because I was able to formulate that insight so clearly in words, it has remained with me ever since. I recognise that this is the solution of the ‘Outsider problem’ that preoccupied me throughout my teens.
You may feel that this problem hardly concerns the average ‘insider’ who goes about his daily business. This is untrue. The Outsider problem permeates our civilisation. Every serious thinker and artist in the world has to struggle with it to some extent. And most of them are still trapped in the pessimism that led so many of the romantics to despair. Think of any ‘serious’ writer of the 20th century, and you will immediately recognise that basic pessimism—Proust, Joyce, Eliot, Musil, Valery, Hemingway, Sartre, Camus, Greene, Beckett, Derrida and the rest. It permeates the attitudes of philosophers, painters and musicians. When our ancestors look back on the 20th century, they will shake their heads and say: ‘They lived in a negative culture’.
Consider again what happens when you have been threatened by some crisis, which is
then averted. You not only experience a sense of relief. You also experience a curious sense of insight, of what G.K. Chesterton called ‘absurd good news’. Hans Keller, the director of BBC music programmes, described how he had been in Germany during the late 1930s. As a Jew, he was in danger of disappearing into a concentration camp. He records that he prayed: ‘O God, let me escape from Germany and I promise I will never be unhappy again for the rest of my life.’ It suddenly seemed to him that it would be so easy to remain ecstatically happy for the rest of his life, if only he could escape from the Nazis. In fact, he did not keep his promise—he was generally known as a rather touchy and oversensitive little man. But then, human beings have never learned to keep that particular promise—not because they are lazy, but because they don’t yet know how.
But think what happens when you are in some situation of crisis. Suddenly, you are giving your full attention to the crisis. And you feel that, when the crisis is over, you will continue to give the same full attention to life without crisis. This is why Keller thought it would be ‘so easy’ to be happy for the rest of his life.
Think of being in bed on a freezing winter morning, when you have to get up in ten minutes. The bed has never seemed so warm and comfortable. Yet on a Sunday, when you can stay in bed as long as you like, you can no longer re-create that feeling of comfort and warmth. Why?
Because when you have to get up in ten minutes, it is as if you are looking in a mirror, conscious of yourself and of your situation. It is the same for a man standing on the scaffold, waiting to be hanged. He is paying total attention to his situation.
We have returned to John Cowper Powys and the subject of Chapter One. As Wolf Solent sits in the railway carriage, he is paying total attention to his situation—to the seaside posters with their fly spots, to the telegraph poles flashing past the window. Yet he is also totally aware of himself, like a man relaxing in a warm bath.