An appreciation of the author Colin Wilson (1931-2013) - philosopher, critic, novelist

Imagination is the instrument of self-knowledge
It would be a different matter if the film had shown you
things about yourself that you had never realized before
told you that you were capable of things that you
wouldn't have dreamed of attempting
pointed out that all your conceptions of yourself and
everybody else were based on misunderstandings
and that you had only to shake off these conceptions to
begin to live for the first time
the artist's
miraculous power of
surviving a mental
earthquake
the intensity of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde
the ecstasy of an ancient Greek festival of Dionysus
or the Egyptian phallic God Menu
when wine and dancing bring about a temporary loss
of identity of individual worshippers in the identity of
the god
The life of everybody is a road to himself
Byzantine art
Super-prophet
Super-hero
truly
our misery proceeds ten times more from the outward bondage of opinion and custom than from any inward corruption or depravation of Nature
it is not our parents' loins so much as our parents' lives
that enthralls and blinds us
appetite for fruitful activity and a high quality of life
He does not want to set up another idol
nature
the life force
the mother figure
Lilith
in whom all opposites are resolved
Nature reflects what he sees inside him
When he sees nothing
the canvases are realistic studies that might be curiously brilliant photographs
At other times
they express a vision that is inexpressible in words becase it runs in a different
direction
words are horizontal
this is vertical
The point of intersection of the two planes can
be called Is-ness
(to borrow a phrase from Eckhart)
Compare Van Gogh's copy of the prison yard with Doré's original
Van Gogh's is more 'visionary'
there is more light
at the same time it is more real than Doré's
Van Gogh's chair is more than other chairs
his sunflowers are more than other sunflowers
When he saw a tree full of leaves
it existed so much for him that he could not paint it as a tree
(as Constable would)
or give the general impression of a tree with colours
(as Monet and the Impressionists did)
it explodes into life and looks more like a tree burning with Bengal fires
This is no literary trick
(any fool could paint a tree to look like a flame)
it is a way of seeing
it is built into his vision
and the proof of its sincerity lies in watching the development of the vision
through his painting
Or compare his canvas called 'Landscape near Auvers' with Cézanne's
canvas of the same name
(any of them)
the difference is more than a difference of technique
it is a completely different way of seeing
Cézanne rendered painstakingly
as Henry James rendered his pictures of European society
with innumerable small brush strokes
The final result has an orderliness that springs out of discipline
From Cézanne's painting
we learn a great deal about the surface of the object painted and its distance
from the eye
and a great deal about the will of the man who was determined to render it fully
We learn nothing of Cézanne's emotion
This is precisely what we do learn from Van Gogh's canvases
and the emotion is important
it is not just a sentimental gushing about nature
but an emotion that could only correspond to some recognized awareness of the
nature of life itself
great health
basic universal benevolence
complete health
free of the stupidity of personality and
thought
our language has become a tired and inefficient thing in the hands of journalists and writers who have nothing
to say
And so
at the age of twenty-eight
Nietzsche stood alone
except for the two men for whom he still felt respect
Schopenhauer and Wagner
the moon
the earth
the planetary bodies are living beings
towards the woods
the corn was ripe and I only had a summer dress and sandals on
I was able to touch the ears of corn and watched them swaying in the faint breeze
I looked to the end of the field
it had a hedge then 
and beyond that to some tall trees towards the village
The sun was over to my left
Everywhere surrounding me was this white
brilliant
sparkling light
like sun on frosty snow
light was everywhere
While he is the ordinary
once-born human being
he is not free but does not realize it
The stati c
personality is a
prison
the human soul?
shining ocean
night sky
in the Kabbala
chaos
―tohu bohu―
is simply a
state in which
order is latent
the egg is the
'chaos' of the
bird
an evening star
A refreshing laughter rose in me
It soared aloft like a soapbubble
and then softly burst
The golden trail was blazed and I
was reminded of the eternal
and of Mozart
and the stars
I could breathe once more
William James has observed that 'the power of alcohol
over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to
stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature
usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry
criticisms of the sober hour'
'Mystical faculties' here refers to that flood-tide of
inner warmth and vital energy that human beings regard as
the most desirable state to live in
The sober hour carries continuous demands on the energy
sense-impressions
thoughts
uncertainties
suck away the vital powers minute by minute
Alcohol seems to paralyse these leeches of the energies
the vital warmth is left to accumulate and form a sort of
inner reservoir
This concentration of the energies is undoubtedly one of
the most important conditions of the state the saints call
'Innigkeit'
inwardness
The saint achieves inwardness by a deliberate policing of
the vital energies
He comes to recognize the energy-stealing emotions
all the emotions that do not make for inwardness
and he sets out to exterminate them in himself
As he moves towards his objective
he increases steadily his supply of surplus vital power
and so increases his powers of foresight and hind-sight
the sense of other times and other places
there is a breaking-free of the body's sense of
imprisonment in time and a rising warmth of life-energy
that is spoken of in the Gospel as 'to have life more
abundantly'
he was no longer the same person
One day towards the close of May
having eaten a comfortable dinner
I remained sitting at the table after the
family had dispersed
idly gazing into the embers of the grate
thinking of nothing and feeling only the
exhilaration incident to a good digestion
some damned shape
squatting invisible to me within the
precincts of the room
and raying out from his fetid personality
influences fatal to life
The
'way of salvation'
is plainly implied
moments of insight into direction and
purpose must be grasped tightly
in these moments
formulate laws that will enable to move
towards
goal
love of the
earth
Each man is in his spectre's power
Until the arrival of that hour
When his humanity awakes
And casts his spectre into the lake
The dogma of Original Sin insists that man lost his visionary faculty
because he spends all his energy thinking about practical things
At least
that is the interpretation that the great religious teachers seem to put on it
Jesus telling the Jews not to waste so much time getting and spending
but to observe the lilies of the field
It seems to be written in the
language of a thawing wind
Gratitude continually flows
as if the most unexpected thing
had happened
―the gratitude of a
convalescent―
for convalescence was that most
unexpected thing
The whole book is
a long revel
the frolicking of returning energy
of newly awakened belief in a
tomorrow after tomorrow
Nietzsche was not an atheist, any more than the Buddha was
The centre that I cannot find
Is known to my unconscious mind.
I have no reason to despair
Because I am already there.
I wish to be at all times hereafter only a Yea-sayer
Calm and peace spread over the mountains and
the forests
The idea of the
Superman is a
response to the need
for salvation
I would hear of your master-thought
Free from what?
Free for what?
he dismisses all previous Western philosophers
whose 'systems' reveal at every turn their
limitations
These men exalted thought as if it could be separated from
life and instated in a superior order
Consequently
they de-valued life
failed to recognize that thought is only an instrument to
'more abundant life'
Man's way is the way of affirmation
Yea-saying
praise
These mere thinkers were poisoners
cheapeners of life
('professors of what another man has suffered'
Kierkegaard called them)
The greatest act man is capable of is to 'praise in spite of'
to become aware of the worst forms of the Eternal No and to
make the gigantic effort of digesting them and still finding
life positive
Suddenly this thought came into my head
What would happen if I were to take off my boots
and fling one at Mr
and one at Miss
?
Could I give my future life such settled purpose
that the act would take its place
not among whims
but among forms of intensity?
'You have not the courage,'
I said
speaking in a low voice
'I have,'
said I
and began unlacing my boots
What should we do with our lives?
(The phrase is the property of H. G. Wells.)
How must it be lived to bring the greatest
self-realization?
a flock of white cranes against a black thundercloud
other means
beside
reason
he lived too close to his
instincts to wander into such a
thinker's dilemma
He didn't think his existence
necessary with the complacent
conscious certainty of a public
benefactor
he felt it
Lack of appetite for life
that is his problem
Other people are the trouble
stand for truth
All great men are play
actors of their own ideal
self-realization
a sudden ecstasy
a 'timeless moment'
enthusiasm and life
raising earth up to heaven
When relaxed enoug h
every leaf of every tree in the world
every speck of dust
is a
world capable of producing infinite
pleasure
a beam of sunlight
came in through the
window
Nijinsky has his own terminology
there are 'feeling'
'wisdom'
'God'
and these are roughly synonymous
and then there are 'mind'
'death'
'stupidity'
the rhythmic
violent Dionysian
upsurge of the vital
energies
there is a higher power than
man in the universe
and man reaches his highest
purpose in serving it
At the same time
it is necessary to bear in mind
that
strictly speaking
there is no such thing as man
the cold dawn
the thin drizzle
the smell of wet garments in
the schoolroom
the difference between a religious concept and a superstition
is that one corresponds to psychological reality and the other doesn't
It does not deny the ideal
provided the ideal comes second and the will first
But if their roles get reversed
if the will to more abundant life is made the slave of
the ideal
(or if it becomes non-existent
as in most professors and professional philosophers)
then Nietzsche will have no more of it
body itself is vital and good
metaphysics
should be no more than glorified common sense
just as higher mathematics is only glorified arithmetic
to achieve glorified common sense
one would need to develop the 'glorified' sensitivity
All religious teaching is a plea for such development
more sensitive
one of those clear dawns that wake up the senses
with the sun
while the intellect
was yet abed
For an hour or two
on such a morning
the sounds
scents and colours of the world struck man
individually and directly
they seemed to exist sufficiently by themselves
the feeling I used to get as a child if I was on a day-trip to the
seaside
and the coach went over a river or past a lake
a curious
deep longing for the water
In the same way
C. S. Lewis has spoken of how he used to be convulsed with desire by
the idea of Autumn
―the brown leaves and the smell of smoke from garden bonfires
and that strange wet smell about the grass
selflessness
intimations of immortality
the sound of
approaching
hoofbeats
a hot summer day
felt something that opened up new possibilities
vision
aspiration to life
unless a man lives by a belief
then it is no more material to him than whether he believes that Mount Everest or Mount Meru is the highest mountain in the world
called 'back to earth' by
the Easter bells and
memories of pure
physical well-being in
childhood
she questions a lily
a cloud and a worm
certain Christian saints were concerned about the same
metaphysical problems that Sartre has produced
with the air of a conjurer flourishing a rabbit
as the latest development of twentieth-century thought
the universe is
making sense again
and he has a glimpse of purpose
that sense of accord is
a blazing of all the senses
and a realization of a condition of consciousness
The Christian might call it a sense of the Fatherhood of God
a Hindu would probably prefer to call it a sense of the Motherhood of God
and his symbolism would be more congenial to the artist
who can
find comparison for the feeling in a child's confidence in its mother
In any case
these are only symbols of a state
too little known to human beings for their descriptions of it to be accurate
When we turn to Van Gogh's canvases
we find attempts to express this sense in another medium than language
these attempts completely transcend most of their critics' knowledge of reality
and express an insight
In approaching the work of such a man as Van Gogh
an attitude of
uncritical acceptance
may be more rewarding than the intellectual-critical approach
What we are most aware of in Van Gogh is that the 'thought-riddled nature' has been very
decisively kicked-out
and the result achieved is Lawrence's 'immediacy of sense perception'
with the senses awakened
it becomes nonsense to talk about
misery
The canvases try to express it with light and form
fields of corn with colour that almost hurts the eyes
a starry night with the sky looking like water full of cross-currents
and the stars no longer pinpoints
but rings and circles of light
cypresses like green flames
This interior vision transfigured a chair
an old boot
a few onions
question of self-realization
It is not enough to accept a
concept of order and live by it
that is cowardice
and such cowardice cannot
result in freedom
Chaos must be faced
Real order must be preceded by
a descent into chaos
There exists a painting from the
last year of his life called
'Memory of the North'
A red winter sun sinks behind
masses of sludgy green-grey cloud
all the sky is full of dirty
twisted scraps of cloud
tinted with the sun
In the foreground
small grimy houses
trees and bushes
repeat the twisting
red-tinted lines of the sky

The whole picture is overcast with
a sulphurous light
life aims at more life
shooting
stars
the kinetic
nature of
the world
the kinetic
nature of
soul
mystical experiences
an exaltation of Life
In Blake's phrase
Energy is eternal delight
Those who follow that part of themselves
which is great are great men
those who follow that part of themselves
which is little are little men
they have no idea of their own real identities
nor of their possibilities
'I am God in a body
Everyone has this feeling
but no one uses it.'
'God is fire in the head.'
a drawing-room at the bottom of a lake
There is a way forward and a way back
cold water
If the end became to love other people and practical charity
its result could easily be a new form of self-love
'something about him'
They are not long, the days of wine and roses
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges
Within a dream.
breathes the air
hears music of the spheres
the eternal vine
Flourishes that he may receive the
grapes
look
And see
pass out
The Outsider wants to be free
he doesn't want to become a healthy-minded
once-born person because
such a person is not free
He is an Outsider because he wants to be free
And what characterizes the 'bondage' of the once-born?
Unreality
whatever the Outsider wants to become
that new condition of being will be characterized by a perception of
reality
intellectual discipline is not enough
intellectual
poet
nature mystic
a lover of the physical
the power of exciting
to direct sensation
The child's world is altogether cleaner
the air tastes of expectation
A big store at Christmas time is a new world
Its ground is the same as that of the universe
life-denial
This is the essential Van Gogh
All his faculties are exerted in a search for the Pro
for instinctive
absolute Yea-saying
Like all artists
he has moments when he seems to be in complete accord with the universe and himself
when
he feels that the universe and himself are of the same nature
then all life seems purposive
that insight
must be seeable
touchable
their minds are in bondage
love of the earth
love of life
affirmation of life
The last words of Nijinsky's Diary are an affirmation
My little girl is singing
'Ah ah ah ah.'
I do not understand its meaning
but I feel what she wants to say
She wants to say that everything
is not horror
but joy.
sings the body electric
Lightning and tempest are
different worlds
free powers
without the confusions of intellect
―how happy
how free
healthy and cheerful
The civilized man and the wolf-man
sometimes
make peace
and then a strange state ensues
a combination of the two makes him akin to the gods
moments of vision
suffering
reconciled
manifested as 'more abundant life'
When the Outsider becomes aware of his strength
he is unified and happy
possible development
looking at a canvas by Van Gogh
first business is self-knowledge
a grove with a reputation for being haunted
As a boy and adolescent he read a great deal
took lonely walks
wrote poetry
thought about himself and his possible destiny
the dynamic
His canvases were no longer realistic landscapes and interiors
influenced by Millet and the Dutch school
The colours and lines are bolder
and in some of them
a strange technique of distortion makes it appear that trees
cornfields
houses are all burning upwards like flames
In contrast to these 'brainstorm' canvases
others are calm
relaxed
full of light and silence
nothing is more natural than that the mind that has tired of its
reasoning faculty should turn to the areas of the being that lie
below consciousness
to the instincts and intuitions
self-revelation
they do great things for the world by subordinating themselves to that which they put above man
the cool shade of
the roseapple tree
having been completely taken 'out of himself'
Yeats even made preliminary steps to put the idea into practice
with his plans for a brotherhood of poets who would live in a 'Castle on the Rock' at
Lough Kay in Rosscommon
I planned a mystical order that should buy or hire the castle
and keep it as a place where its members could retire for a while for contemplation
and where we might establish mysteries like those of Eleusis or Samothrace
I had an unshakeable conviction that invisible gates would open
as they opened for Blake
as they opened for Swedenborg
as they opened for Boehme
and that this philosophy would find its manuals of devotion in all imaginative literature
the 'Yellow Chair'
of which Gauguin exclaimed delightedly
'No one ever painted a chair like that before!'
mountains
a sense of harmony
he was brilliant at subjects he cared about
and had no energy to spare for the others
In his early teens
he
cycled around Oxfordshire taking rubbings of church brasses
He cycled around in France looking at castles and cathedrals
later
he accompanied Leonard Woolley and the British Museum Archaeological
mission to Egypt
he
made plans to buy a disused windmill when he returned to England
and use its power to drive a printing press which would print books
on hand-made paper
they would then be bound with vellum that would be stained with
Tyrian dye
To believe your existence
necessary after some immense spiritual labour
is only common sense
Your world expands. You
become aware of the shapes
of trees and houses looming
in the darkness.
Your world expands
You become aware of the shapes of trees and
houses looming in the darkness
For moments together my heart stood still between delight and sorrow to find how rich was the gallery of my life
and how thronged the soul
with high eternal stars and constellations
My life
had laid up riches
riches to be proud of
It had been
a princely life
Let the little way to death be as it might
―the kernel of this life of mine was noble
It came of high descent
and turned
not on trifles
but on the stars
But if we choose dishonesty
what happens to our philosophers' desire to get at fact?
creative ecstasy
I want people to understand
I will tell the whole truth
and others will continue what I have begun
Novels prevent one from understanding feeling
I want to say so much and cannot find the words
I write in a trance
and that trance is called wisdom
I am not afraid of anything except the death of wisdom
wisdom is God
it is a realization that has come to
him many times while dancing
the self-transcendence
the
glimpse of a 'power within him'
start from grounds all can
understand and accept
the world and
life
If you don't like your life you can change it
the human race is implicated in some terrible
aboriginal calamity
not simply a will to truth
but a will to life
to consciousness
a pleasant forest grove and a
river of clear water flowing by
the intuitional thinker
immediacy of perception
detachment from himself which is the first condition of self-knowledge
the desperate clinging to the self
and the desperate clinging to life are the surest way to eternal death

The divided kingdom must be unified
distant horizons and water ribbed sand
not terms of doing but simply of being
pure possibility
The personality temporarily disappears
The body can be made drunk with its own vitality far more easily than the intellect or the emotions with theirs
beyond a certain point
problems will not submit to mere thought
they must be lived
Very few writers treat writing
as an instrument for living
not as an aim in itself
He was like a fine string that could resound sympathetically to the slightest vibrations of beauty or harmony in his surroundings
recognize
purpose
follow it with
whole being
I am a disciple of the
philosopher Dionysus
mental relaxation
His last canvas is the 'Cornfield with Crows'
the sky blue-black with a coming storm
a road that runs in from the left of the canvas
and shoots away through the middle of the ripe corn like a fast stream
There is a curious atmosphere of strain and foreboding
In proportion as an ideal has been falsely worshipped
reality has been robbed of its value
its meaning and its truthfulness
Hitherto the lie of the ideal has been the curse of reality
by means of it
the very source of mankind's instincts has become mendacious and false
so that the very values have come to be worshipped that are the exact opposite of
the one that would assure man's prosperity
his future and his great right to a future

There was a feeling like leaving harbour
the creak of a lumbering cart
splashing the wintry mould
The intellect climbed to great heights in his periods of good health and well-being
his sedentary way of life encouraged headaches
indigestion
mental and physical exhaustion
Freemason
the Buddhist idea of Nirvana is not simply negative
Sanity lay in creation
Ultimate Yes
being
Eternal life
triumph
fired
by youth and life

the vision of things as 'infinite ...' is
the perfectly normal emotional state
it is
our parents' lives that enthralls and blinds us
Blake
found no body-contempt in Christ
go out and do
something
Everything that lives is Holy
life delights in life

vital impulses
All appeared new and strange
inexpressibly rare and delightful and beautiful
The corn was orient and immortal wheat
The dust and stones of the streets were as precious as gold
And young men
were
glittering and sparkling angels
and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty
There were moments
a London bus on a rainy evening
its windows steamy with the breath
of its crowded passengers
splashing its way through the dark
space around Trafalgar Square
Well my dear friend
the sun of August shines on us
the year slips on
calm and peace spread over the mountains and forests
The intensity of my emotion makes me
burst out laughing
I was full of a new vision
the blissful ecstasy that arises from the innermost depths of man
ay
of nature
at this same collapse of the principium individuationis
and we shall gain an insight into the Dionysian
which is brought into closest ken
perhaps
by the analogy of drunkenness
It is either under the influence of the narcotic draught
of which the hymns of all primitive men and peoples tell us
or by the powerful approach of Spring penetrating all nature with joy
that those Dionysian emotions awake
in which the subject vanishes to complete forgetfulness
shining ocean
the universe is full of life
is nothing but life
infinite
corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away and
displaying the infinite that was hid.
If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, til he sees all things thro' chinks of his cavern.
intuition
free of the troubles and perplexities of intellect
an intuition which was release from the 'thought-riddled nature'
a man great enough to affirm
the prophet
the saint
the man of genius
the man of action
or
perhaps
a combination of all four?
without creation
the balance is gone
'If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise'
Blake wrote
It has always seemed to me that man has some sixth sense
or some faculty apart from sense
that must be satisfied before he can be completely happy
Clear is his eye
nor lurketh any loathing about his mouth
Goeth he not his way like a dancer?
He goes out
and
under the night sky
he is overwhelmed with 'universal consciousness'
The stars inspire him
'there seemed to be threads from all those innumerable
worlds
linking his souls to them
It was as if some idea had seized sovereignty in his mind.'
warm friendship
sat up talking until the early hours of the morning
optimism
tends to be self perpetuating
a continually healthy ecstasy of praise for being alive
most alive beings
The way to innocence
to the uncreated and to God
leads on
not
back to
the child
but
ever deeper into
life
Instead of narrowing your world
to take the whole world into your soul
a cleansing of the
senses
the striving to live more abundantly which is the ultimate aim of religion
Search for
strength
―which is not to be borrowed or bargained for
―it must spring from the secret life
it would not be so difficult after all
conception of themselves
Between two or three notes of the piano
the door opened suddenly to the other world
I sped through heaven and saw God at work
I affirmed all things and to all things I gave up my heart
Søren Kierkegaard
Put me in a System and you negate me
―I am not just a mathematical symbol―
I am
the ideal combination
a compound of
powerful intellect
mystical nature-love and
realization of
body's potentialities
life is far too full of exciting possibilities to narrow it down
appetite for a purpose and a direction
bird
sky
trees
ground
the emotion you get from it is not a pleasure in the reproduction of
human life
The times are ended
shadows pass
the morning 'gins to break
The fiery joy that Urizen perverted to ten commands
What night he led the starry host through the wide wilderness
That stony law I stamp to dust
and scatter religion abroad
To the four winds as a torn book
and none shall gather the leaves
What must I do to be saved?
a series of 'flats'
a Greek vase design
the 'pagan Existentialist' philosopher
Nietzsche
You are on a long train journey
at the beginning of the journey you watch the fields passing with interest
the new sights stimulate all kinds of thoughts and impressions
his conception of religion was always elastic
a tradition tells how he and his sister once built a makeshift altar on the site of an old pagan sacrificial altar in a churchyard
and then paced gravely around it
intoning 'Odin hear us' into the rising smoke
In Hindu and Buddhist scriptures
the word 'bondage' is the equivalent of the word 'sin' in the Christian
or at least bondage is regarded as an absolute and inevitable consequence of sin
The necessary basis for religion is the belief that freedom can be attained
James's vision
with its implication of absolute
final and irrevocable bondage can be called the essence of evil
a sense of purpose
His sanest and best-argued books provoked Germany's guardians of culture to accuse him of extravagant self-worship or insanity
Thoughts that seemed to him gigantic
world-shaking
were received without interest
The continued optimism of his letters is an amazing feat
Tat Tvam Asi
―That Thou Art―*
the formula from the Upanishads that denotes that in the heart of his own being man discovers the godhead
*
Chandogya Upanishad
VI
ii
3
Death is finished.
the Outsider's chief desire is to cease to be an Outsider
He cannot cease to be an Outsider simply to become an ordinary bourgeois
that would be a way back
'back into the wolf or the child'
this way is impracticable
is no true solution of the Outsider's problems
His problem is therefore how to go forward
They are not component parts of a system
they are rather parts of a continual self-revelation of Nietzsche the man
conscious direction where his own unusual powers are concerned
fresh
Greek culture
its apex had been the earlier worship of Bacchus
the god of raw
upsurging vitality
he
the young Count Axel
lives in his lonely castle on the Rhine
and studies the Kabbala and Hermetic philosophy in his oak-panelled study
'As for living
our servants can do that for us.'
most of these poets of the late nineteenth century were only 'half in love with easeful death'
the other half clung very firmly to life and complained about its futility
But follow their pessimism further
press it to the limits of complete sincerity
and the result is a completely life-denying nihilism that is actually a danger to life
When Van Gogh's 'Misery will never end' is combined with Evan Strowde's 'Nothing is worth doing'
the result is a kind of spiritual syphilis that can hardly stop short of death or insanity
Freedom posits free-will
that is self-evident
But Will can only operate when there is first a motive
No motive
no willing
But motive is a matter of belief
you would not want to do anything unless you believed it possible and meaningful
And belief must be belief in the existence of something
that is to say
it concerns what is real
So ultimately
freedom depends upon the real
It is as impossible to exercise freedom in an unreal world as it is to jump while
you are falling
an intellectual who discovers that he has neglected the body and the emotions
in love with life
Van Gogh's blazing canvases
instinctive certainty
meaning and purpose
Magic Theatre:
Not for everybody
drawing mountains
water and sky to his heart with outstretched arms
he knelt down and seemed to pay homage to the earth-mother and the wisp of mountain lake
offering as a ceremonious sacrifice to the powers his youth
freedom
and the life instinct that burned within him
One day in June or July
I was walking along a narrow path separating the paddy fields
eating some puffed rice
which I was carrying in a basket
Looking up at the sky
I saw a beautiful
sombre thundercloud
As it spread rapidly over the whole sky
a flight of snow-white cranes flew overhead in front of it
It presented such a beautiful contrast that my mind wandered to far-off regions
every man is potentially hero and genius
only inertia keeps men mediocre
wellspring
seated among silent trees and meads and hills
He bought the piano score of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and learnt it by heart
Maslow told me that he had got tired of
studying sick people because they
talked about nothing but their sickness

So he had the
idea of studying healthy people instead

Colin Wilson
Hermann Hesse
Thomas Traherne
William Butler Yeats
George Bernard Shaw
Meg Maxwell and Verena
Tschudin (eds.)
Anonymous
William James
Henry James, Sr.
William Blake
Friedrich Nietzsche
Wystan Hugh Auden
Herbert George Wells
Henri Barbusse
Thomas Edward Lawrence
Mencius
Vaslav Nijinsky
Arthur Rimbaud
Ernest Dowson
George Fox
Walt Whitman
Buddha
John Henry Newman
John William Navin Sullivan
Ramakrishna
Dr. Samuel Johnson
Fiodor Dostoevsky
Harley Granville-Barker
Søren Kierkegaard
Thomas Ernest Hulme
Alexei Tolstoy
Auguste, comte de Villiers
de L'Isle-Adam