The Essential Colin Wilson

by Colin Wilson

  (I made a special note of this sentence. It was something I had always felt instinctively.)

  What it amounts to is this. For more than two centuries now, the human mind has been constantly a prey to these energy vampires. In a few cases, the vampires have been able completely to take over a human mind and use it for their own purposes. For example, I am almost certain that de Sade was one of these 'zombis' whose brain was entirely in the control of the vampires. The blasphemy and stupidity of his work are not, as in many cases, evidence of demonic vitality, and the proof of it is that de Sade never matured in any way, although he lived to be 74. The sole purpose of his life work is to add to the mental confusion of the human race, deliberately to distort and pervert the truth about sex.

  As soon as I understood about the mind vampires, the history of the past two hundred years became absurdly clear. Until about 1780 (which is roughly the date when the first full-scale invasion of mind vampires landed on earth), most art tended to be life-enhancing, like the music of Haydn and Mozart. After the invasion of the mind vampires, this sunny optimism became almost impossible to the artist. The mind vampires always chose the most intelligent men as their instruments, because it is ultimately the intelligent men who have the greatest influence on the human race. Very few artists have been powerful enough to hurl them off, and such men have gained a new strength in doing so—Beethoven is clearly an example; Goethe another.

  And this explains precisely why it is so important for the mind vampires to keep their presence unknown, to drain man's lifeblood without his being aware of it. A man who defeats the mind vampires becomes doubly dangerous to them, for his forces of self-renewal have conquered. In such cases, the vampires probably attempt to destroy him in another way—by trying to influence other people against him. We should remember that Beethoven's death came about because he left his sister's house after a rather curious quarrel, and drove several miles in an open cart in the rain. At all events, we notice that it is in the nineteenth century that the great artists first begin to complain that 'the world is against them'; Haydn and Mozart were well understood and appreciated by their own time. As soon as the artist dies, this neglect disappears—the mind vampires loosen their grip on people's minds. They have more important things to attend to.

  In the history of art and literature since 1780, we see the results of the battle with the mind vampires. The artists who refused to preach a gospel of pessimism and life devaluation were destroyed. The life-slanderers often lived to a ripe old age. It is interesting, for example, to contrast the fate of the life-slanderer Schopenhauer with that of the life-affirmer Nietzsche, or that of the sexual degenerate de Sade with that of the sexual mystic Lawrence.

  Apart from these obvious facts, I have not succeeded in learning a great deal about the mind vampires. I am inclined to suspect that, in small numbers, they have always been present on earth. Possibly the Christian idea of the devil arises from some obscure intuition of the part they had played in human history: how their role is to take over a man's mind, and to cause him to become an enemy of life and of the human race. But it would be a mistake to blame the vampires for all the misfortunes of the human race. Man is an animal who is trying to evolve into a god. Many of his problems are an inevitable result of this struggle.

  I have a theory, which I will state here for the sake of completeness. I suspect that the universe is full of races like our own, struggling to evolve. In the early stages of its evolution, any race is mainly concerned to conquer its environment, to overcome enemies, to assure itself of food. But sooner or later, a point comes where the race has progressed beyond this stage, and can now turn its attention inward, to the pleasures of the mind. 'My mind to me a kingdom is', said Sir Edward Dyer. And when man realizes that his mind is a kingdom in the most literal sense, a great unexplored country, he has crossed the borderline that divides the animal from the god. Now I suspect that these mind vampires specialize in finding races who have almost reached this point of evolution, who are on the brink of achieving a new power, and then feeding on them until they have destroyed them. It is not their actual intention to destroy—because once they have done this, they are forced to seek another host. Their intention is to feed for as long as possible on the tremendous energies generated by the evolutionary struggle. Their purpose, therefore, is to prevent man from discovering the worlds inside himself, to keep his attention directed outwards. I think there can be no possible doubt that the wars of the twentieth century are a deliberate contrivance of these vampires. Hitler, like de Sade, was almost certainly another of their 'zombis'. A completely destructive world war would not serve their purposes, but continual minor skirmishes are admirable.

  What would man be like if he could destroy these vampires, or drive them away? The first result would certainly be a tremendous sense of mental relief, a vanishing oppression, a surge of energy and optimism. In this first rush of energy, artistic masterpieces would be created by the dozen. Mankind would react like children who have been let out of school on the last day of term. Then man's energies would turn inward. He would take up the legacy of Husserl. (It is obviously significant that it was Hitler who was responsible for Husserl's death just as his work was on the brink of new achievements.) He would suddenly realize that he possesses inner-powers that make the hydrogen bomb seem a mere candle. Aided, perhaps, by such drugs as mescalin, he would become, for the first time, an inhabitant of the world of mind, just as he is at present an inhabitant of earth. He would explore the countries of the mind as Livingstone and Stanley explored Africa. He would discover that he has many 'selves', and that his higher 'selves' are what his ancestors would have called gods.

  I have another theory, which is so absurd that I hardly dare to mention it. This is that the mind vampires are, without intending it, the instruments of some higher force. They may, of course, succeed in destroying any race that becomes their host. But if, by any chance, the race should become aware of the danger, the result is bound to be the exact opposite of what is intended. One of the chief obstacles to human evolution is man's boredom and ignorance, his tendency to drift and allow tomorrow to take care of itself. In a certain sense, this is perhaps a greater danger to evolution—or at least, a hindrance—than the vampires themselves. Once a race becomes aware of these vampires, the battle is already half won. Once man has a purpose and a belief, he is almost invincible. The vampires might serve, therefore, to inoculate man against his own indifference and laziness. However, this is no more than a casual speculation . . .

  The next problem is more important than all this speculation: How is it possible to get rid of them? It is no answer simply to publish 'the facts'. The historical facts mean nothing at all; they would be ignored. In some way, the human race has to be made aware of its danger. If I did what would be so easy -arranged to be interviewed on television, or wrote a series of newspaper articles on the subject—I might be listened to, but I think it more probable that people would simply dismiss me as insane. Yes, indeed, this is a tremendous problem. For short of persuading everyone to try a dose of mescalin, I can think of no way of convincing people. And then, there is no guarantee that mescalin would bring about the desired result—otherwise, I might risk dumping a large quantity of it in some city's water supply. No, such an idea is unthinkable. With the mind vampires massed for attack, sanity is too fragile a thing to risk. I now understand why my experiment at Trans-world ended so disastrously. The vampires deliberately destroyed those people, as a kind of warning to me. The average person lacks the mental discipline to resist them. This is why the suicide rate is so high . . .

  I must learn more about these creatures. While my ignorance is so complete, they could destroy me. When I know something about them, perhaps I shall also know how to make the human race aware of them.

  VISION ON THE EIGER

  From The Black Room, 1971

  The Black Room is a spy novel, about the attempt of a group of scientists to find a method of preventing brain-wash
ing through sensory deprivation. In this extract, the hero, Kit Butler, has just emerged from his own experience of the black room.

  Butler said: 'What time is it?'

  'A quarter past six on Saturday morning.'

  'Saturday! I must have slept for about forty-eight hours!'

  Gradwohl was tall and bony, about sixty years old. He wore a light grey suit that hung limply on him, giving the impression that it had been made for a much broader man. The height of the domed forehead was emphasized by the almost complete baldness of his head. He reminded Butler of his former house master. He said: 'Come and have some coffee. Let me say first that it is a great privilege to meet you.' His handshake was jerky, like a man tugging impatiently at a bellrope.

  Butler followed him out, and down the ladder. The gunmetal door was wide open, and the smell of the morning was intoxicating. Gradwohl asked: 'How much longer do you think you could have stayed in?'

  'I'm not sure. Quite a while, I think.'

  'I think so too.'

  'Why did you fetch me out?'

  The sunlight dazzled him, so that he stumbled on a rut in the mud. Gradwohl took his elbow.

  'I myself arrived only two hours ago. I drove straight up from Edinburgh. And since I was not tired, I went into Colonel Sampson's office and checked on the black rooms. I heard everything you said about false fatigue. Very important. I had come to similar conclusions myself. You are also right when you say that you all need more discipline before you can stand the black room for a long period.'

  They walked around the side of the building—the back door was locked—and in through the main entrance. The smells of the morning seemed unnaturally sharp and sweet. When his eyes adjusted to the sunlight, it seemed as cold and fresh as a waterfall of snow. In comparison, the main lounge, with its dead fire and smell of stale tobacco, seemed strange and lifeless. On the table, an electric coffee percolator was bubbling; when he came close to it, the smell of coffee seemed to assault his senses, flooding his mind with memories of Paris and Berlin. He went to the window, opened it, and looked down at the loch.

  'Black or white?'

  'White, please.'

  Gradwohl's movements amused him. They were all sudden and sharp, like those of a puppet. When he poured the coffee, he kept his heels pressed tightly together, as if afraid they might run off in opposite directions. His speech, like his movements, was jerky and spasmodic, and this effect was increased by the strong German accent, that pronounced all d's as t's.

  He handed Butler his coffee in a large cup, and the basin of lump sugar. Butler said: 'I'm told that you managed to stick the black room for twelve days. How did you manage that?'

  Gradwohl sat down, stirring his coffee.

  'That is not easy to explain. Partly by various disciplines—working out problems and so on. Partly because I have a naturally healthy subconscious mind . . . do you understand?'

  'I think so.'

  'And you know how I got it? By climbing mountains.'

  'But how?'

  'I can't explain how. But I can tell you about it. You know that in the thirties, Hitler's followers used to set out to climb impossible mountains?'

  'No, I didn't. You mean as propaganda?'

  'Quite. They developed a cult of physical courage that was sometimes stupid. They would deliberately choose almost impossible routes up mountains, and then climb them with the help of pitons—steel spikes that can be hammered into the rock—and karabiners, which are steel snaplinks that fit on the spikes. The major school of these Nazi daredevils lived in Munich, where my brother and I were also living. And so we began deliberately challenging them, just to prove that you didn't have to be a Nazi to climb a vertical rock face. We were both, of course, violently anti-Nazi, although we are not Jewish.' Gradwohl's accent made his words difficult to follow; it sounded almost as if he were speaking German. By concentrating hard, Butler was able to follow what was being said.

  'Well, one day we heard that some of this Munich School had succeeded in climbing the north face of the Matterhorn, which rises like a wall for several thousands of feet. So Otto and I decided to go a step further, and attempt the Eigerwand—the north face of the Eiger, which is a six thousand foot wall, which had never been climbed, although several climbers had died in the attempt. Wulffian Gartner, the most daring climber in the Munich school, heard about our preparations and decided that he would do it first. So when we set up our camp in the meadows at the foot of the wall, we heard that four men had set out two days ago, and had climbed up to the third ice field. But before we had time to set out, the weather changed into ice and sleet. After another day, they decided to turn back—one of them had been injured by falling ice. On the fourth day, a thick cloud came down over the mountain, and a rescue party set out to try and reach them. We decided to join it—for although we disagreed with them politically, we didn't want to see them destroyed. We all went by train to the Eigerwand Station, then started to move across the ice by means of pitons. By the time we came close to them, only one of the four was still alive—Wulffian Gartner. But it was too dark to get to him. We had to return, and leave him there all night. We expected him to die, but when we reached him again the next morning he was still alive. But he was up above us, and his rope was too short to reach us. There was a great projecting rock between us, so we could get no higher. We told him to climb up to the body of one of his companions, and let it fall; then unravel the rope from the body into strands and lower it to us, so we could send him up another tope. It took him five hours and we thought he would never make it. But he did, and finally climbed down to within ten feet of us. Then the knot joining two ropes jammed in the karabiner, and he hung there, trying to free it with his teeth. There was nothing we could do—just stand there and watch him. Then suddenly, he looked down into my face. He said: 'Thanks for trying, anyway. I'm finished.' And I watched him die—quite suddenly, as if be had been shot.' Butler tried to disguise the shiver that passed over him. Gradwohl said: 'I watched him decide to die.'

  'I suppose his strength was at an end.'

  'What you call his strength had been at an end since the previous day. But he did not die, because he had decided there was still hope. And if he had reached our party, he would have found still more strength to make his way back to the station. No. It is what you were saying in the black room. Your will-power sustains your body from a subconscious reservoir. But if you get very exhausted, only a tremendous sense of purpose can sustain you. He had been making tremendous efforts for days, and now he suddenly decided it wasn't worth it any more.' Gradwohl sipped slowly at his coffee. 'That taught me the first lesson: that man is as strong as his sense of purpose—no more and no less. We don't notice this normally because we never see people pushing themselves to their limits.'

  Butler helped himself to more coffee, and poured in cold milk. 'And did you climb the Eigerwand?'

  'We did, but not that year—1935. We decided to wait for the next year, and make the attempt just before the Olympic Games.' He paused, staring into the fireplace with its charred logs. 'We were lucky. If the weather had changed, we would have died too. And it was there that I learned the second lesson.' Butler waited for him to go on. Gradwohl seemed in no hurry. He said finally:

  'We set out by night, because during the day, the sunlight causes the ice to melt, and rocks and chunks of ice keep falling down. We climbed this with pitons and karabiners, and reached the top at about eleven in the morning. Before evening, we had reached the foot of the second ice field, where we camped for the night. The mist had come down, and we were afraid that the weather would get worse. Before dawn the next day we started on again. Here we had to leave behind some of our rope and two pitons and steel links—we had to hammer pitons into a vertical wall of ice, and then swing across it on ropes to reach a ledge. It took us all day to reach the third ice field, and we decided to try to cross this before we camped for the night. This was a mistake, because we were very tired, and there is only one way off the
ice field, up a kind of ramp. When we were halfway up, the wind began to rise, and I knew that we had been foolish. We couldn't go back now. We could only go on. But if the darkness came before we found a ledge, it was the end of us—because although we were used to climbing in the dark, this was a vertical wall of ice, like the side of a sky-scraper. Then, just as we were at the end of our strength, Otto saw a ledge about twenty feet to the right—which was the opposite direction from the one we wanted to go. It took us an hour to reach it, and at one point, Otto slipped and I had to haul him back up—luckily, the rope was fixed to a piton. The ledge was three feet wide, and had a steep slope. It was also covered with ice to a depth of six inches. It was just large enough for the two of us. We hammered pitons into the ice, and tied ourselves to them. We could not sleep, of course—it was too cold, and we might accidentally tear out the pitons. So we sat there, looking into the clouds, and praying that there would be no storm. And then, suddenly, the clouds all drifted away, and we could look down at the lights of Grindelwald, thousands of feet below. And suddenly, Otto laughed, and said: "Why are we doing this, Franz? Are we both mad?" I said: "No, we are not mad." And I began to think about it. Why did I suddenly feel so happy, hanging there like a fly and looking at the lights? I was thinking: Thousands of comfortable people are lying down there in their beds, and they are not particularly happy, because they take their beds for granted. They are all suffering from what you call false fatigue—a mistaken feeling that life is not really worth living. And then I thought: But now I know, beyond all shadow of doubt, that life is worth living. Tomorrow, I shall be climbing up the most dangerous part of the mountain, the White Spider, and for every foot of the way, I shall be concentrating, determined not to slip, determined to reach the exit cracks. And then the absurdity of it struck me. I said to Otto: "We have climbed this mountain to remind ourselves of something we ought to know anyway—that life is only worth living when the will is concentrated." You see what I mean? Why do I need to set myself a difficult obstacle to concentrate my will? For two million years man has been climbing a mountain of evolution, and his will is so weak that he dies when he is less than a century old. That is all very well for most people, because they are so stupid. But you and I ought to know better, because our business is evolution. You are a composer, I am a philosopher. We can look back on the civilizations of the past and see how far we have climbed up the mountain. We shouldn't be drifting like the rest of the fools.'