Super Consciousness by Colin Wilson
Review of Wilson's Book on the Quest for the Peak Experience
The 'peak experience' is the joyous state of mind when one becomes at one with the word, wholly absorbed and engaged with the present activity. The phrase was coined by Abraham Maslow when, rather than studying psychiatric pathologies, he chose to focus on mentally healthy people to see if he could discover commonalities.
Colin Wilson first popularised the peak experience in the 1960s with his first book, The Outsider, and it similar to what athletes call being 'in the zone' when their entire being melds with the immediate goal, or the concept of 'flow' in creative activities.
As described by Colin Wilson, "the peak experience was not necessarily 'mystical' in the religious sense - just a sudden overflowing feeling of sheer joy and vitality."
How to Achieve the Peak Experience
Wilson holds that this state of mind can be achieved regularly and repeatedly by most people. Drawing on his own lifetime of research into the subject and many examples of how creative people such as Sartre and William Blake achieved peak experiences, Super Consciousness takes the reader into how to achieve the peak experience for themselves.
The author's passion for his subject comes through clearly, and he develops his theme with his characteristic incisiveness.
The modern world presents a huge range of different stimuli which means this state of mind can be surprisingly hard to achieve. Engaged in any one activity there is always the clamour of many other things that have to be attended to, diluting the focus on the present experience.
Other writers such as Eckhardt Tolle have written on the need to focus on the now rather than losing energy to regrets about the past and worries about the future. What comes through clearly in Super Consciousness is the need to focus one's whole attention on an experience, to bring enough consciousness to bear on the here and now in order to have a good chance to achieving a peak experience.
Religion and the Peak Experience
Although the peak experience is not necessarily religious, many religious traditions make it more likely, simply because they encourage adherents to focus their attention on God. Indeed, many have rites of passage, rituals and places of retreat from the bustle of the everyday world, all of which facilitate concentration and paying attention.
Super Consciousness - Summary
Colin Wilson's Super Consciousness is a timely reminder that many of these techniques have a validity outside religion to raise consciousness and enhance the quality of life.
For readers who may not have read any of the author's other books, Super Consciousness is a good distillation of Wilson's decades of study into heightened states of consciousness and how to achieve them.
Resources:
- Super Consciousness, Colin Wilson, Publ Watkins May 2009, ISBN 1906787093
- Dreaming To Some Purpose (autobiography), Colin Wilson, Random House 2004, ISBN 1844131882
Super Consciousness, Colin Wilson
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