Colin Wilson was an important thinker in my limited intellectual word. He took the existentialist crisis head on & sought tools against it. He understood Uncle Al’s declaration that “Know thee that existence is pure joy”, while embracing The Great Work as did Gurdjieff. His works explored both mysticism & deviant criminology in an effort to understand the vast possibilities that is human existence.
I was never the reader of novels that Colin was, I have no desire to tackle Proust & my one foray through Joyce’s Ulysses was enough. It was more his interpretations of his beloved reads that I found inspiring.
One of the great Silver keys given to Wilson by Abraham Maslow, who shared with the Colin the work he had done on “peak experiences” . Dr Maslow insisted that these “peaks” were spontaneous & beyond our control. Wilson begged to differ & in his 1971 opus “The Occult” postulated ‘Faculty X’, a superior sort of intuition that could be part of mankind’s next development.
Let us keep in mind that Mr. Wilson was not a scientist but a literary critic and armchair philosopher. Nevertheless I find his speculations absolutely fascinating.