The cultural problem was ‘the fallacy of insignificance’, and it was a philosophical form of this fallacy that had somehow landed existentialism in a cul de sac.
Mind is not really ‘inside’ us in the same sense that our intestines are. Our individuality is a kind of eddy in the sea of mind, a reflection of the total identity of the universal humanity.
With the use of a map, I could walk from Paris to Calcutta; without a map, I might find myself in Odessa. Well, if we had a similar ‘map’ of the human mind, a man could explore all the territory that lies between death and mystical vision, between catatonia and genius.
I’ve read Joyce and Sartre and Beckett and the rest, and every atom in me rejects what they say. They strike me as liars and fools. I don’t think they’re dishonest so much as hopelessly tired and defeated.
Faculty X is the ability to grasp the reality not simply of other times and places, but of the present moment as well.
The evidence of paranormal research shows that there is a part of our being that knows far more than the conscious mind. And the evidence of mystics through the ages suggests that there is a part of our being that knows even greater secrets than this.
What if the ‘brutal thunderclap of halt’ takes the form of the choice, Dishonesty or insanity?
I love life and I want to live, to cry but cannot – I feel such a pain in my soul – a pain which frightens me. My soul is ill. My soul, not my mind. The doctors do not understand my illness... Everybody who reads these lines will suffer... My body is not ill, it is my soul that is ill.
A young farm labourer passed me. I suddenly understood what Traherne meant when he said that men looked to him like angels. Again, it was a matter of seeing through to the inward vitality, the essence – what Boehme called the ‘signature’. I smiled at the farm labourer, and he smiled back and said: ‘Mornin’ sir.’ I felt suddenly very happy.
The vitality of the ordinary members of society is dependent on its Outsiders. Many Outsiders unify themselves, realize themselves as poets or saints. Others remain tragically divided and unproductive, but even they supply soul-energy to society; it is their strenuousness that purifies thought and prevents the bourgeois world from foundering under its own dead-weight; they are society’s spiritual dynamos.
Man must believe in realities outside his own smallness, outside the ‘triviality of everydayness’, if he is to do anything worthwhile.
The Outsider’s case against society is very clear. All men and women have these dangerous, unnamable impulses, yet they keep up a pretence, to themselves, to others; their respectability, their philosophy, their religion, are all attempts to gloss over, to make look civilized and rational something that is savage, unorganized, irrational. He is an Outsider because he stands for Truth.
The Outsider is he who cannot accept life as it is, who cannot consider his own existence or anyone else’s necessary. He sees ‘too deep and too much’.
As to Gurdjieff’s power to renew his own energies, its essence had been understood by psychologists of the nineteenth century, decades before the age of Freud and Jung. William James speaks about it in an important essay called ‘The Energies of Man’.
Boredom, passivity, stagnation: these are the beginning of mental illness, which propagates itself like the scum on a stagnant pond.
The mentally healthy individual”, writes Wilson. “is he who habitually calls upon fairly deep levels of vital reserves. An individual whose mind is allowed to become dormant – so that only the surface is disturbed – begins to suffer from ‘circulation problems’. Neurosis is the feeling of being cut off from your own powers.
Man is as much a slave to his immediate surroundings now as he was when he lived in tree-huts. Give him the highest, the most exciting thoughts about man’s place in the universe, the meaning of history; they can all be snuffed out in a moment if he wants his dinner, or feels irritated by a child squalling on a bus.
If we force ourselves to press on, a surprising thing happens. The fatigue gets worse, up to a point, then suddenly vanishes, and we feel better than before.
During the course of an ordinary day, we are constrained by a kind of natural caution, an anticipation of possible difficulties and problems, which tint our consciousness a shade of grey. Talking and thinking about peak experiences makes us realize how lucky we are, and that we can dispense with the caution and constraint. It is like realizing that you have more money in the bank than you thought.
Man lives and evolves by ‘eating’ significance, as a child eats food. The deeper his sense of wonder, the wider his curiosity, the stronger his vitality becomes, and the more powerful his grip on his own existence.