Access to Inner Worlds by Colin Wilson
Access to Inner Worlds: The Story of Brad Absetz (1983)
By Colin Wilson
Rider
143 pages
A thematic follow-up to Frankenstein's Castle, this short work by Wilson is partly based on an American he met at a retreat in Finland, though much of it departs from Absetz's story entirely, and just gets into Wilson's ideas. The two themes are connecting with the unconscious (also referred to as 'right-brain consciousness'), and engaging with the real world.
Absetz, through a series of personal events, began to feel 'another part' of himself, other than his conscious self, desire to take some action. This started with movements of his arms while he was lying still, and went on to things like choosing food from a buffet, drawing, making sculptures, and writing poetry. Absetz gave this submerged side of him expression, and the results were quite unlike what he would of consciously created. What was probably most characteristic was that its expression was odd, not linear, rational, or in any way signaled ahead of time -- the moment needed to reveal itself. Wilson's take on this is that it so happened that Absetz's personal circumstances at the time (spending long hours alert but inactive in bed, waiting for his ailing wife to snap out of fugue states) enabled these things to come to the forefront, where in most people they are constantly ignored or fought against. The advice for accessing these inner worlds is simply listening to their call; because they're always calling.
Interspersed with this are also some things about actively seeing the world, instead of passively doing so. As in other books, Wilson puts forward his belief that when we feel the world is devoid of meaning, it's because we think we should be passively taking in the world, instead of actively grasping it and then seeing and appreciating the 'more'. He describes a neat little concentration exercise where you hold up a pen in your hand against a blank wall, and then actively try to concentrate on *seeing* the pen as muck as possible. After a moment of doing this, switch back to just seeing the pen against the wall. Then go back-and-forth, and this does a fantastic thing to your ability to really grasp real things 'out there'.
At the same time, it's kind of a disordered book, and you need to sort of frame the argument yourself, though there's not really anything so complex or ephemeral about it that Wilson couldn't have summed it up concisely himself. He also gets into strange side-notes, and a little bit where he gives a short history of a few months of his writing work, taking on different projects, helps you understand how he's been able to write 100 books, and also why a lot of them are kind of shoddy in quality.
Still, a really good book for the sort of insights it provides and the directions it opens up for thoughts and experiences, which trumps any deficiencies in Wilson's style.
By Colin Wilson
Rider
143 pages
A thematic follow-up to Frankenstein's Castle, this short work by Wilson is partly based on an American he met at a retreat in Finland, though much of it departs from Absetz's story entirely, and just gets into Wilson's ideas. The two themes are connecting with the unconscious (also referred to as 'right-brain consciousness'), and engaging with the real world.
Absetz, through a series of personal events, began to feel 'another part' of himself, other than his conscious self, desire to take some action. This started with movements of his arms while he was lying still, and went on to things like choosing food from a buffet, drawing, making sculptures, and writing poetry. Absetz gave this submerged side of him expression, and the results were quite unlike what he would of consciously created. What was probably most characteristic was that its expression was odd, not linear, rational, or in any way signaled ahead of time -- the moment needed to reveal itself. Wilson's take on this is that it so happened that Absetz's personal circumstances at the time (spending long hours alert but inactive in bed, waiting for his ailing wife to snap out of fugue states) enabled these things to come to the forefront, where in most people they are constantly ignored or fought against. The advice for accessing these inner worlds is simply listening to their call; because they're always calling.
Interspersed with this are also some things about actively seeing the world, instead of passively doing so. As in other books, Wilson puts forward his belief that when we feel the world is devoid of meaning, it's because we think we should be passively taking in the world, instead of actively grasping it and then seeing and appreciating the 'more'. He describes a neat little concentration exercise where you hold up a pen in your hand against a blank wall, and then actively try to concentrate on *seeing* the pen as muck as possible. After a moment of doing this, switch back to just seeing the pen against the wall. Then go back-and-forth, and this does a fantastic thing to your ability to really grasp real things 'out there'.
At the same time, it's kind of a disordered book, and you need to sort of frame the argument yourself, though there's not really anything so complex or ephemeral about it that Wilson couldn't have summed it up concisely himself. He also gets into strange side-notes, and a little bit where he gives a short history of a few months of his writing work, taking on different projects, helps you understand how he's been able to write 100 books, and also why a lot of them are kind of shoddy in quality.
Still, a really good book for the sort of insights it provides and the directions it opens up for thoughts and experiences, which trumps any deficiencies in Wilson's style.