@dom

I'd never heard of this book until your post. If anyone would "box off" sitting still as asana then they would in my opinion be incorrect. In terms of Liber E, asana is a specific position held for a period of time; "sitting still" is usually a relaxed posture, the antithesis surely of asana.

I'd agree that the publisher's blurb is perhaps misleading, but then these people are in the business of selling as many books as they can. I've yet to come across a publisher's blurb which is understated - apart from the books published by Starfire Publishing, of course, who I would argue are a paragon of virtue in this regard.

Personally I consider "super-consciousness" a misnomer. It's more a case of weakening the constraints of what is considered "normal" consciousness or that strange term "consensus reality". Faculty-X is at the base of much of Colin Wilson's work, both fiction and non-fiction.

@michalestaley

i’d never heard of this book until your post. If anyone would “box off” sitting still as asana then they would in my opinion be incorrect

get a perspective. What point was I making? The point was that CW's "methods for 'super consciousness'" are covered in Liber E/O give or take a few pedantic details.

37 seconds in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArEAz2r01Nk CW describes one pointedness and it's effects.

Personally I consider “super-consciousness” a misnomer. It’s more a case of weakening the constraints of what is considered “normal” consciousness or that strange term “consensus reality”. Faculty-X is at the base of much of Colin Wilson’s work, both fiction and non-fiction.

I assume that CW gave his book that title?

@dom

I assume that CW gave his book that title?

Yes, probably. And your point is?

Yes, probably. And your point is?

Well it's unlikely to be a misnomer if he gave the book that title.

CW's Faculty X, isn't it just another way of describing the activation of Leary-RAW's neurosomatic circuit?

@dom

Well it’s unlikely to be a misnomer if he gave the book that title.

I wasn't suggesting that Colin Wilson chose the wrong title for his book. I was giving my opinion on the term "super-consciousness" in general.

CW’s Faculty X, isn’t it just another way of describing the activation of Leary-RAW’s neurosomatic circuit?

I've read little of Leary, and even less of Robert Anton Wilson, so couldn't say. There's probably been many terms terms for similar things throughout the ages. I suppose that dhyana is "just another way of describing the activation of Leary-RAW’s neurosomatic circuit".

"And your point is?"

Just a dream
catching awareness
that birthed a point making spasm

i was dreaming i got caught up
in somethin
possibly perturbed at work
as long as the remuneration for the time
being works

oh sorry
probably awareness dreaming

Wilson thought ( I believe) that the coming generations would more and more exhibit this 'Faculty X'

So what is meant by that term?
He said various things about Faculty X at various times:
Faculty X is a sense of reality, the reality of other places and other times, and it is the possession of it — fragmentary and uncertain though it is — that distinguishes man from all other animals

A certain something that turns men into supermen.

A state of inspiration.

It sounds like he didn't have a handle on what he even meant, himself.

And I don't think people seem more 'telepathic' or 'inspired/imaginative' than before either. If anything it is the opposite.

@christibrany

It sounds like he didn’t have a handle on what he even meant, himself.

You're saying that Wilson presented conflicting definitions of Faculty X? Can you elaborate on that?

@christibrany

It sounds like he didn’t have a handle on what he even meant, himself.

Colin Wilson's body of work stretches across a number of decades, and across the years he continued to develop and refine ideas and concepts as his understanding widened and deepened; I'd be very surprised had his definitions of Faculty-X not varied. His definitions are not hard and fast; if you're looking for precision of terms, you'll be disappointed.

You see this from other authors too. Crowley's ideas of the nature of the Holy Guardian Angel varied across the years, because his understanding carried on developing in the light of his magical and mystical experience. Similar considerations apply also to the work of Kenneth Grant, as also to authors outside the field of the occult.

It sounds like he didn’t have a handle on what he even meant, himself.

I know what Colin Wilson means by Faculty-X; whether I can articulate it accurately and in terms intelligible to another person is another matter. To what extent do we ever really "have a handle" on things?

Soon I'll bring together Wilson's accounts of 'Faculty X' in his Mysteries book but I know he has given examples of professional historians studying a scene of a e.g. historical battle and the feeling of being totally lifted out of the tedium and boredom of being stuck in the now. Similarly he uses the account of Marcel Proust suddenly being taken back to his childhood by the smell of a teabag (or something) that he hadn't smelt for years. I think it's more than what we usually describe as nostalgia. It is related to what can only be described as meaningfulness.

In the summary, chapter 13, CW relays how he taught himself a method on how to achieve "power consciousness" and to summon it at will. As I mentioned earlier he had to drive his car home in a remote part of England, he had been lecturing in a farmhouse and when the lecture was over the landscape was thick with snow. He and some others pushed his car to what they thought was the main road and he managed to set off. The trouble was he knew that there were snow-filled hidden ditches at either side of the road and he therefore he had to apply immense concentrated attention to figure out the difference between road and ditch as he moved his car through the snow. After 20 minutes of this he felt a "warm glow in his skull". Afterwards he felt that everything was "more curiously real and interesting".

Subsequently, he could use this method of concentration and induce the same experience of optimistic moods which involved a conviction that "most human problems are due to vagueness, sickness and inattention and they can be overcome with effort". He described it as "attention without inner leaks" and a build up of pressure far beyond normal. he labelled it "power consciousness" and explains it as the feelings we get when we are in an unfamiliar and strange place.

He wasn't unfamiliar with power consciousness. When he left school he did factory work which he hated but then his old school offered to put him through a Bachelors science degree and pay him to be a school lab assistant. In teh meantime he had got big ideas about being a professional writer and the though of a career in science bored him nauseous. (ah these youngsters eh?)

He not only felt bored but felt guilty about keeping up the front about wanting to do the science course. His boss was a dick also. Luckily via a T.S.Elliots poem he was led to study The Bhagavad Gita . Through daily morning 30 minute meditations on the nature of Atman and Brahman and through working to work he was able to induce buoyant optimism. He mentions how whislt walking through the "slum streets" where his father grew up , he would induce this feeling from focussing on e.g. a cracked window -pane or the like. In work if he fell back into boredom he says a brief session of focussed contemplation on Brahman and Atman would restore the marvellous feeling that he was totally in control of his life, an infallible method inducing direction and purpose.

He goes on to describe the negativity of the playwright Beckett and contrasts this to Nietzsche's definition of happiness; “the feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome" The objective reality of "newness" (the holiday feeling) is always there like the images recorded on a CCTV camera whether played back or not. He describes Schopenhauer as someone who missed this fact and again Nietzsche is referenced in his dismissal of Schopenhauer as a nihilist and the heir of Christianity. Schopenhauer says all of our desires are based on illusion and the proof is that they lead to disappointment but CW argues that this erroneous as it in fact merely proves that it is the robot that feels this disappointment because it's evolutionary function is to absorb experience and get used to anything.

There's a description of brainless planaria and how even it can get bored and die of boredom but if it is forced to make an effort to survive it doesn't get bored. This is related to Schopenhauer's privileged childhood and his subsequent negative attitudes i.e. he was never really forced to overcome. Before CW goes on to describe levels of consciousness he mentions William James's "vital reserves" and self-pity and laziness.

CW's summation is pretty relevant to Liber Al and Thelema. I'm sure you yourself the reader can piece together the relevant passages from AL and how they echo the concepts in CW's summation. Although CW had a lot to say about Crowley's flaws he does admit in a radio interview that Crowley "got" this concept of overcoming and focussed attention which is encompassed in Do what thou Wilt shall be the whole of the Law.