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    The Ultimate Colin Wilson: Writings on Mysticism, Consciousness and Existentialism
    The Ultimate Colin Wilson: Writings on Mysticism, Consciousness and Existentialism
    The Ultimate Colin Wilson: Writings on Mysticism, Consciousness and Existentialism
    Audiobook15 hours

    The Ultimate Colin Wilson: Writings on Mysticism, Consciousness and Existentialism

    Written by Colin Wilson

    Narrated by Liam Gerrard

    5/5

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    About this audiobook

    The best of Colin Wilson in one fantastic volume. Containing extracts from Wilson's work on existentialism, criminology, psychology, and the occult, this is an invaluable introduction to one of the late twentieth-century's most incisive thinkers.

    This is a new edition of the classic Colin Wilson collection The Essential Colin Wilson (first published in 1985), updated and introduced by Wilson's bibliographer Colin Stanley. It is the only book to contain extracts from Colin Wilson's most important work in one volume, including The Outsider, A Criminal History of Mankind, The New Existentialism, The Occult, New Pathways in Psychology, and Mysteries, as well as three of his novels and many other texts. Subjects covered include existentialism, criminology, psychology, consciousness studies, the occult, and much more. This second edition includes all of the original volume plus six essential post-1985 essays and chapters chosen by Stanley and other Colin Wilson experts including Gary Lachman. This is an invaluable introduction for those approaching one of the late twentieth century's most incisive thinkers for the first time and also a timely reminder, to Colin Wilson's many fans and scholars worldwide, of a unique and challenging body of work.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMay 14, 2019
    ISBN9781977342690
    The Ultimate Colin Wilson: Writings on Mysticism, Consciousness and Existentialism

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    • 4/5
      Colin Wilson was a sort of maverick philosopher. Born in 1931, to a working class family in Leicester, he left school at sixteen and didn’t attend university. He then worked in factories and warehouses, became a tramp, and lived in France for a while - all the time reading voraciously and writing.Wilson found himself famous overnight in 1956 with the publication of his first book, The Outsider, a study of social alienation. The leading British literary critics of the day, notably Philip Toynbee and Cyril Connolly, hailed the book as a masterpiece and Wilson as Britain’s very own homegrown existentialist - Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus rolled into one. The Outsider became a bestseller. Within months, however, the critics performed an extraordinary volte face and denounced Wilson as a charlatan. Wilson wasn’t entirely blameless in all this. He did have a tendency to declare his own genius and proclaim himself ‘the most important writer of the 20th century’. The sudden attention after years of obscurity seems to have gone to his head. But the viciousness with which he was attacked by the literary establishment is striking. Working class people in the Britain of the 1950s, even talented working class writers, were meant to know their place. Wilson clearly didn’t know his place. He saw no reason for false modesty. Wilson’s reputation never recovered but he continued to write. By the time of his death, in 2013, he had published 180 books. They cover a wide variety of subjects -philosophy, consciousness, psychology, the paranormal, crime, sexuality and literature - but the underlining themes running through all Wilson’s books are the paradoxical nature of freedom, the deceptive nature of everyday consciousness and the evolutionary potential of humanity. In addition to his non-fiction books he also wrote novels in which he explores his ideas through the vehicle of genre fiction, particularly sience-fiction and crime.This book is an expanded version of The Essential Colin Wilson, Wilson’s own selection of his work published in 1985. Wilson’s work addresses fundamental questions: Why do we waste our lives? How can we achieve authentic existence? In his Schumacher lecture Wilson asserts that the aim of civilisation is to promote creativity in the individual. Many of his theories are purely speculative and completely unproven which caused outrage in some quarters. But, as he notes, even mistaken theories can be stimulating. Wilson was rarely less than stimulating. Wilson was an extremely skilled and engaging writer. He wrote in a plain-speaking, unadorned style, which rarely fails to draw you in. He had the ability to make abstruse philosophical and scientific ideas accessible and exciting with skilful use of analogy and metaphor. His arguments are often illustrated by anecdotes taken from his life. He was, indeed, a superb autobiographical writer and this volume includes a long and fascinating account of his childhood and early adulthood The personality that emerges from the prose is warm, amiable and full of an endless curiosity about the world and the world of ideas. His philosophy was unfashionably optimistic. His central conviction is that ordinary consciousness is passive and superficial, but it is possible to achieve a higher state of consciousness, and full human potential, through intellectual disciplines. His interest in the occult and paranormal arose from his interest in the nature of consciousness. He argues that modern civilisation is a product of the formal, rational intellect and this has meant that other older and intuitive abilities (telepathy, second sight etc) have atrophied. Wilson’s interest in criminality, particularly murder and sex crimes, arose from the fact that the criminal demonstrates, in amplified form, faults common to everyone: lack of insight, a tendency to be overwhelmed by negative emotions, the decision to abandon control. The criminal, in a sense, shows us what is wrong with humanity. Many of the pieces in this book were originally introductions to other books by Wilson or lectures in which he was attempting to summarise his ideas. This results in a certain repetition of ideas throughout the book which makes it difficult to read straight through. But dipped into a chapter or two at a time it provides the very sort of mental stimulation Colin Wilson thought so vital for us all.

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