Poetry and Mysticism

by Colin Wilson

The mystic's moment of illumination shares with great poetry the liberating power of the deepest levels of consciousness. In the words of William Blake, "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to a man as it is, infinite."

Poetry, Wilson argues, is a contradiction of the habitual prison of daily life and shows the way to transcend the ordinary world through an act of intense attention-and intention. The poet, like the mystic, is subject to sudden ""peak experiences"" when ""everything we look upon is blessed."" W.B. Yeats, Dostoevsky, Gautama Buddha, Kazantzakis, Van Gogh, Rupert Brooke, Arunja, Nietzsche, A.L. Rouse, Jacob Boehme, Suzuki, Edgar Allan Poe: their visionary understanding can generate an awareness in each of us of our potential to open the floodgates of inner energy that creates mystic experience.

Colin Wilson first received international acclaim in 1956 for The Outsider. ""Ever since I was thirteen, I have been obsessed by the question of the nature of mystical experience,"" he writes, and from that time he has been on a quest of the mystical in poetry, religion, and psychology.

Genres: Poetry, Philosophy, Mysticism, Religion, Nonfiction, Essays

227 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Colin Henry Wilson was born and raised in Leicester, England, U.K. He left school at 16, worked in factories and various occupations, and read in his spare time. When Wilson was 24, Gollancz published The Outsider (1956) which examines the role of the social 'outsider' in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures. These include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William James, T. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent Van Gogh and Wilson discusses his perception of Social alienation in their work. The book was a best seller and helped popularize existentialism in Britain. Critical praise though, was short-lived and Wilson was soon widely criticized.

Wilson's works after The Outsider focused on positive aspects of human psychology, such as peak experiences and the narrowness of consciousness. He admired the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow and corresponded with him. Wilson wrote The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff on the life, work and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff and an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian mystic in 1980. He argues throughout his work that the existentialist focus on defeat or nausea is only a partial representation of reality and that there is no particular reason for accepting it. Wilson views normal, everyday consciousness buffeted by the moment, as "blinkered" and argues that it should not be accepted as showing us the truth about reality. This blinkering has some evolutionary advantages in that it stops us from being completely immersed in wonder, or in the huge stream of events, and hence unable to act. However, to live properly we need to access more than this everyday consciousness. Wilson believes that our peak experiences of joy and meaningfulness are as real as our experiences of angst and, since we are more fully alive at these moments, they are more real. These experiences can be cultivated through concentration, paying attention, relaxation and certain types of work.

Reviews

[Randy Cauthen · Rating 5 out of 5]

"There is another reason for the crisis situation that has developed -- man's tendency to get bogged-down in triviality. Religion used to provide him with an arbitrary sense of purpose, of distant goals, to contrast with the triviality of everyday living. He has become intelligent enough to reject the paraphernalia of old religions without having achieved the sense of evolutionary purpose -- which is implicit in art and poetry -- to rescue him from the triviality. And since the immense effort of the 19th century, art has ceased to be a vehicle of heroic idealism, and is temporarily in a doldrums where it can only reflect the triviality, and take up an attitude of disgust and rejection toward it." (Gender [sic:] understood throughout.)

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

The sexism, arrogance and "First World" imperialism of the author's voice almost overpower his fascinating theories and beautiful insights about poetry, spirituality, humanity, and creativity. Almost, but not quite. Those are some insightful insights. I just let the other stuff slide.

[Cristina Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a deep influence on my as a teenage writer and poet. It gave words to what I was experiencing. Mystical experiences are hard to explain, especially in high school.

This book made me forever a fan of Colin Wilson's work. I was thrilled to spend a weekend with him at the Open Center in New York in the early 90s.

[Ron Record · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps the most important book ever written.

[L.J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-31...#

[Irene Vincent · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am reading it slowly. I really like his insights into different poet's consciousnesses. I like his insights into mysticism and the nature of man. I find it thought provoking and inspiring.

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 3 out of 5]

По завершении последней книжки в этом заходе отчего стало понятно, до чего вообще философия и художественное высказывание «сердитых молодых людей» устарели и провинциальны. Казалось-то это всегда, еще с университетского курса по зарубежной литературе, но тогда мнение мое было скорее интуитивным, а тут — конкретное подтверждение. Автор всеми своими ластами, правда, отпихивается от принадлежности к «течению», но ничего не поделаешь — оно его все равно уже утащило с собой. Поиски «сильной личности», «нового героя» — до чего они сейчас выглядят наивными и напыщенными. Даже стремление к свободе, личностному росту и совершенству — те же битники, английским изводом которых вроде как были СМЛ, те же Берроуз или Буковски, которые уж точно ни к какому «движению» не примыкали, — насколько у них этот вектор обозначен убедительнее и художественно целостнее, не говоря про достоверность. Да, мы делаем поправку на время, но не может сделать ее на географию: Англия в середине ХХ века была далеким клочком суши на этой карте, которого ветра эпохи не коснулись. Либо тщательно обогнули. Нет в СМЛ подлинной свободы и простора — некуда им податься со своего острова.

Потому-то этот очерк, написанный по заказу Ферлингетти для его издательства «Городские огни», и выглядит диковинным экспонатом в издательском портфеле. О поэзии и мистицизме в нем, на самом деле, тоже не очень много сказано.

[Janaka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part One of Wilson's Poetry & Mysticism should be considered required reading for any MFA course in creative writing (and I'm a little disappointed no one recommended it to me during mine); it carefully unpacks and de-mystifies the 'creative spark' by examining what Wilson calls the "intensity experience"--that revelatory moment when we transcend the mundane and see beyond our daily existence, across time and space. His writing on this subject is lucid and practical, without being dry. Part Two, however, one could probably skip almost entirely. It's broken up into five sections, the first four each deconstructing the life and work of a poet (all fairly stead choices of white men, though his readings on Yeats and Kazantzakis were interesting if one is interested in their work)--with the fifth section being a postscript that wraps up the book (and could almost be skipped to, after finishing Part One). Wilson's cultural experience is dated at times (45+ years later), and it's in these critical chapters where that becomes most apparent. There are moments of interest throughout, but it's Part One and the postscript that are what's essential, and which I would recommend for really anyone interested in the creative process.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Acquired 1987
The Word, Montreal, Quebec