Extracts from Abraxas 6

FEEDBACK - readers letters

Ay - what then!

from Ruby Tuesday

Throughout the sixties and seventies there arose a widespread increase in the realms of ecstatic experience. It seemed to be an essential feature of the prevailing 'zeitgeist' to let go of all controls; those damned up, repressed energies were then sanctioned to release themselves in a multiplicity of novel forms. There arose a wave of renewed interest in mysticism, magic, oriental religions, meditation techniques coupled with the use of drugs - hashish, marijuana and hallucogens - to open the mind to hidden dimensions. A permissive attitude to sexual experimenation confounded long-established taboos of prudishness and conventional reality. In the psychological field there developed a form of close self-confrontation based on the work of Carl Rogers. This was called an Encounter Group wherein individuals were encouraged to expose their deepest feelings to themselves and others. One kind of marathon encounter required that participants should stay together for forty-eight hours in the nude. Also the followers of Wilhelm Reich who sought the most complete orgasm or total discharge and catharsis. Although the peak of the peak experiences has apparently subsided, there still remains today the collective need for some kind of Dionysian revival, though in a somewhat modified form. Perhaps it is more difficult to reach in our time owing to the inevitable swing of the pendulum back to the emphasis on fear and control. On an individual basis, however, we are always able to enter into such states of altered consciousness: through a satisfactory erotic communion or the exhiliration of wildly dancing; through the mind being overwhelmed with excitement or contrariwise with inner tranquility; through - at a simpler level - absorption in a book or contemplation of a beautiful painting or natural landscape; through producing a work of art and experiencing the marvellous power of self-expression which arises in the depths of being. We cannot remain at this intensity but are obliged to descend from these heights to assimilate such important insights into everyday existence. It has been demonstrated that through these crucial peak experiences a real sense of meaning is discovered. What once has been glimpsed in these moments will always continue to affect us. Passing through the door in the wall, as Aldous Huxley has affirmed, can only make us wiser and more senstive to our true vocation on this planet. As Coleridge has stated, "If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his sould had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke - Ay! - and what then?"

Lleida - Spain

From Rocky Stockman

Here is my £10 cheque to renew my subscription for a further year's supply of Abraxas which is always enjoyable and stimulating.

In you Editorial in Issue No. 4, you made the point that there is no need to include a direct Wilson angle, or mention of 'Right Men' etc, when writing in Abraxas. Such is the contrariness of the human mind, that I started thinking about Colin Wilson and 'Right Men'.

Example of 'Right Men' popped up frequently among the murderers and some of the offenders when I was writing THE HANGMAN'S DIARY* - James Blomfield Rush, Dr Edward Pritchard, Rudolf Hoess and other Nazi war criminals, Michael X, plus the current stream of serial killers.

Colin Wilson was amused by my interpretation of a less lethal aspect of the 'Right Man' phenomenon. When I first came across his theory of the "the dominant five percent", I was intrigued because I had more or less arrived at the same conclusion - about Royal Air Force pilots!

I was an RAF traffic control officer and, in the mid-60's, it had dawned on me that, on any given aerodrome, we controllers had to deal with a "bolshie pilot" factor of 6%. They were the ones who were forever arguing on the radio waves about our operating decisions, apparently wanting exclusive treatment as if they were the only ones flying in that part of the sky. Their desires were paramount!

The 6% "bolshie pilots" revelation was confirmed in my mind at subsequent airfields right up until I retired from the RAF in 1988. RAF pilots are of necessity dominant personalities and their working contemporaries, officers in other specialisations, are also dominant persons chosen for their aptitude in the command role...Strangely, only a few pilots extended their line of "rightness" to join the ranks of murderers: eg., Neville George Clevely Heath, Brian Donald Hume.

* THE HANGMAN'S DIARY by Rocky Stockman

Headline Books (£17.99)

(non-fiction record of more than 2,400 judicial hangings with locations, precise dates and much more anecdotal matter)

Poetry

D. M. Thomas's remarkable novel Pictures At An Exhibition is an attempt to portray the holocaust in Freudian terms. A psychoanalytic whodunnit where the reader takes the role of psychiatrist, the complexities of the human persona are reflected in the many levels of the novel: each layer needs to be uncovered in order to reveal the dual sources of human suffering:

Eros and Thanatos. The form of the novel is complex, using a multi-viewpoint structure, switching from the death camps to present-day Britain, from epistolary sections to cold documentary reports and back again to clinical narrative. Part of the fascination of this method lies is in the unmasking of the identities of those involved.

In the stark and terrible setting of Auschwitz, social etiquette and rules are stripped away. Given even a slight opportunity to avoid the gas chambers, those who can grasp the chance, but in so doing are forced to awaken to a new and painful reality.

For some adaptation is more successful than others. As a collaborator, Chaim, a Jewish communist, survives by identifying with the aggressor in the form of Dr Lorenz. By incorporating the morals of the Third Reich into his psyche, he learns how to despise his own people and understand why the "civilised Germans" hold them in contempt. Others survive by working in the hospitals; they rationalise their strategy - staying alive enables them to "help" a few other prisoners, and, if that means taking the bread of those too weak to eat, it is not something that troubles their consciences for too long.

For others, the sickening acts they must commit remain buried deep within them. For Judith, the psychological scars will be with her always and it is not surprising that, later in life, she passionately relates to the tortured soul and art of Edvard Munch, for they share a common thread of insanity.

The Freudian notion of key experiences in childhood shaping the development of the personality is shown by the effects of the holocaust on Lilian (Renate) and the abandonment of Chris by his mother. The character of Rachel is interesting in that, while not directly affected by the holocaust, her connection with those persecuted moulds her outlook and decision-making. In fact, she makes the ideal vehicle to portray Freud's idea about the inverse relationship betweeen moral wrongdoing and guilt. She becomes obsessed with opening a museum in Byelaya Tserkov dedicated to the murdered Jewish children.

A recurrent theme of the book is that of betrayal, and Thomas shows the many different levels at which it takes place in human lives: betrayal of confidence in a friend's letter; betrayal of spouses; betrayal of children by their parents - that betrayal is so much part of life, and occurs so easily, is not something we seek to be reminded of. Perhaps the power we have to hurt others is something we should be more aware of in our relationships.

Those looking for justice will not find it in this novel. All of its characters are victims of the madness and hell of the holocaust and its aftermath - of the monstrous suffering whose tentacles spread out and contaminate perpetrators, victims and descendants.

It was to be expected that Pictures At An Exhibition should receive emotive opposition, for it confronts the reader with many unpleasant aspects of human nature, including the evils of prejudice and the selfishness of survival. It is far easier to decry such a work than admit the painful truth that we are all capable of atrocity. Although we would like to think of ourselves as civilised, enlightened beings, there are very few among us, who faced with such circumstances, would do other than conform to the required behaviour and survive at all costs. As each day we become more used to televised portions of armchair horror, we are liable to become de-sensitised and should thank D.M. Thomas for his powerful reminder that each of us contains the seeds of prejudice, cruelty and destruction.

Critics have often pondered the oddness of the Powys brothers, and, as Louis Wilkinson noted and satirised , it almost became a pose with them, what with John Cowper constantly harking on about his 'zaniness' and Llewellyn throbbingly declaiming his gospel of free love and healthy living. The third of the literary trio, Theodore, had an even more unfortunate obsession, and that was death. Nothing made him more animated than thinking about death. He loved to be alive if only to ponder on what it was like to be alive no more - a sure sign that he did not take death seriously, merely regarding it as a useful philosophical prop to support his stories. Religion he loved with equal fervour. He loved God in the same way a bowler loves a skittle - an object which he can repeatedly put in place only to knock flat on its back. All right, you are a non-believer, one feels like saying, now gone on take things further. But no, dear old Theodore cannot quite believe he is a non-believer either; he has to circle around that core of religious intensity, sceptical yet oddly mesmerised. His prose is dignified, flexible and capable of high poetic flighs. On most topics he is broodily cynical and quaintly humourous. He has not the cosmic range of his brother John Cowper but, allowing for his more restricted compass, he is a surer artist, in the same way that Maupassant is a surer artist than Balzac, simply because the ambition and the concomitant risks taken are lesser. This is evident in the republicaton of 'Fables', regarded by some as his masterpiece, by others as a typical Powysian oddity. Theodore's metier here is dignified discourses by lowly inanimate items. He allows his objects a free poetic reign and some of the fables are just plain daft like the story of Mrs Gibb who liked to marry different objects (not by literally enacting a wedding service but by placing them in juxtaposition); others strike a deeper philosophical chord and show a scepticism that might have cheered Voltaire's heart. 'The Bucket and the Rope' is an effective meditation by the two innocent household implements on the death of their master; the rope is too simple and straightforward to comprehend the personal tragedy played out behind the scenes, and Powys employs his artfulness here, by the dramatic omisssion of obvious knowledge. 'Nathaniel and Darkness' holds that light is an illusion; the only truth is old Darkness himself (and we know perfectly well who that is, don't we?). Theodore is not particular about the status of the objects he mythologises - in fact, the more squalidly humble the better, as may be gleaned from 'The Spitoon and the Slate', 'The Corpse and the Flea' and 'Mr Pim and the Holy Crumb' which of course gets swallowed in the end. What else can one say? There is much pure Powys humour here, mixing darkness, whimsy and wisdom - enjoyable, rich and exasperating. The book is handsomely produced with attractive illustrations - P.N.

Does anyone still dream of breaking away from home and joining the circus? Or have such traditional fantasies been engulfed by entirely new modes of dreaming?

The other day I met a Buddist monk who explained that, ever since taking his A Levels in England, he had longed to become a monk, and so (disregarding his parent's advice that he should have his brain re-fitted) he travelled to Thailand and asked to be admitted into a monastery. In time he was accepted into the Buddist order, which entailed denying himself such pleasures as music - to desire something is to make oneself unhappy - and only returning to England twenty years later to see his mother, who unfortunately was dying.

In Thailand, he had felt completely at home - far more so than in the land of his birth - which suggests that the eccentric longings we harbour may well be the whisperings of destiny pleading to be heard above the clamour of habit and security.

If anyone went along with predestination, it was Dan Mannix who, despite his prosperous middle-class background, wanted to be a magician from an early age. Not a purveyor of illusion or sleight of hand trickery, but a master of recondite skills, who could make a spectacle of himself in the non-perjorative sense, so that ordinary folk exhaled loud ooohs and aaahhs on beholding his zany capers.

Born in Philadelphia in 1911, he grew up to be an immensely tall child whose wealthy father wanted him to follow his footsteps in the Navy. But Mannix was obsessed from an early age with the bizarre, the occult, the esoteric and, when he left the University of Pennsylvania, joined a travelling carnival, spending the next three years travelling across America.

Mannix had an overweening desire to be accepted as a fully-fledged fire-eater and sword-swallower. The process of learning - involving plunging scissors, neon tubes and cavalry swords down ones gullet - was painful in the extreme, especially when the muscles of the gut resented the intrusion of these sharpies and sickness and vomitting resulted.

The present book has now acquired the status of an underground classic and has something of the poetic wildness of a Ray Bradbury vignette. We meet fat ladies, human pin-cushions, tiger-tamers and a five-legged horse. Particularly I enjoyed Mannix's portrayal of the Jewish performer who graduated from the exacting Viennese Human Ostrich School, earning an effective living until the Nazis arrived and he got out. His speciality was swallowing rats, mice, frogs, razor blades, chains, watches and afterwards regurgitating them. Apparenly the animals got acclimatized to the trick; the rats would wash their whiskers unperturbedly after deliverance and the frogs plash around in the water provided.

After he swallowed a watch, people would put their ears to his chest and hear it ticking, but they naturally tended be cautious, fearing their costly timepieces might stay permanently embalmed in the spongy gastric jungles. The Ostrich's worst moment came when a challenger appeared holding a large, scrawny, slashing-fanged rat and invited the Ostrich to consume it. After sedating the rodent with cigarette smoke, he stood statue-still for an instant, bolted it down his throat and then clapped one hand to his chest.

'The rat has recovered!' he gasped. 'I didn't give him enough smoke!'

The rat had seized hold of the lining of the stomach and the Ostrich was in mortal danger. And then Mannix had a brainwave - he passed his colleague a pitcher of water which the other promptly gulped down and assumed a Human Fountain routine - rat and water erupted before a queasily intrigued audience.

If this memoir was merely a cluster of grotesque anecdotes, it would not be half so interesting, but what actually motivates the story is a quest for knowledge of a specialised and intriguing type. A self-effacing narrator like Herry Issyvoo, Mannix has an ear for the subtler nuances of dialogue, a fine sense of bathos and a deep sympathy for the sideshow freaks, most of whom emerge as captivating and possessed of a chirpy integrity.

Night and the City

Having never read anything by Gerald Kersh, I was gripped by Night and the City, a spectacular success when it first came out in 1938, exploring the wheelings and dealings of Harry Fabian, pimp and small-time crook whose aim is to make it big in the wrestling world. He is depicted as a bag of lies, meannesses and petty deceptions, wholly contemptible with his false Americanisms and his claims that he is a famous song-writer. An infinitely more believable, well-presented character than Graham Greene's Pinkie in Brighton Rock, one wonders why Kersh is almost forgotten and Greene enthroned on Parnassus; the answer is that Greene is subtler in his use of symbolism and snootier in his theological pretensions. But Kersh knows more about human depravity, characterises better and has a solid, jostling vocabulary; he sculpts in images and metaphors. In fact, he writes more knowledgeably about the underworld of nightclubs and seedy London bars than any other writer I could name. He is brilliant on rackets and corrupt psychology, a minor genius in his handling of dialogue and character. He has the same coarse vitality and hard delighted eye for human weakness that is found in Balzac. Neither does he strive to make his characters any worse than they would be in the real world. There is no direct treatment of sex, but what is implied is far more dirty (in the sense of its denigration of human beings) than anything in D.H. Lawrence; it seems amazing that, while books like 'The Rainbow' were being banned and persecuted for celebrating the senses, Kersch's far more shocking books were selling in their thousands. But Kersh is not all negative; he has his positive characters like Adam the young sculptor who enters the nightclub business in order to get money to work at his trade. It is good to know that Kersh is aware of the finer things, but unfortunately, when he tries to demonstrate that man has a soul and higher aspirations, his prose acquires a slightly mechanical and forced symbolsm. His metier proper is a luscious and blistering contempt.

This is Kersh the philosopher making his observations. There are many passages like this in 'Night and the City' which deepen and extend the range of a what is undoubtedly a novel of tremendous flare and drive. Brainiac Books are to be congratulated for reprinting this minor classic of life amid the urban cess-pit.

Finally the long-awaited reprint of Adrift in Soho, the freshest and lightest novel of the Wilson oeuvre. This novel has been carefully analysed by Nicholas Tredell and other able critics, so I will confine myself to saying that is is an immensely bracing chronicle, a mixture of bildrungsroman and fairytale. It tells the story of Harry Preston who, fresh-faced from the provinces, is initiated into the mysteries of the metropolis by James, the actor-cum-con-man, and meets a whole gamut of social types, from actors to artists, from poets to pot-smokers, from scholars to scroungers. John Cowper Powys once wrote how he disliked novels that were shaped towards a single intention. He preferred them to contain something of life's unitidiness; to be full of interesting irrelevances and piquant odds and ends. Well, Adrift has that special quality and it ends happily too - P.N.

Eric Ratcliffe is the editor of 'Ore', a high-toned poetry magazine with a slant towards Celticism, green politics, legend and topography. So far as poetry mags go, 'Ore' has shown longevity and reliablity, and the review coverage is admirably spacious and sympathetic to different approaches. I have always found it a very enjoyable read because it is crammed with names quite new to me together with several well-deserved reputations like Penelope Shuttle and James Kirkup. There is no savagery or downbeat humour, no revelling in urban degradation (aside from the occasional dystopian vignette of a wrecked and poisoned future); the emphasis is on direct emotional perception and, scenically speaking, unpolluted rills, wide-girthed trees, barrows on windy hilltops - nature as a transcendent and eternal reality. In Ore 46 there are glances at King Arthur, matters of mind, body and spirit, a note on the incident which prompted Robert Browning to compose 'Mr Sludge the Medium' as well as thoughtful assessments of some little-known but worthy provincial nightingales. Eric Ratcliffe himself must qualify as one of the latter. His poem 'Advent' shows range and ambition. A reflection on the notion of Man as an experiment of the cosmos, the rather crammed Anglo-Saxon diction (such as one finds in Pound's translations and 'Briggflats') gives the poem fibre and muscular traction - although it does occasionally stumble over its own grandeur. Like many poets, Ratcliffe relishes the silted artefacts of past ages - the browning bones, corroded helmets and shattered weaponry - and warms to the romance of the warrior, saint and herdsman. A hint of wilful projection here, for the past is not intrinsically nobler than the present. It is merely a question of the receding archetype being clean, distant and uncluttered, like a view of hills and mountains. 'Advent' achieves a fine concentration and moments of regality and splendour:

 A painting by Sidney Nolan, brutal, comical and composite, has been chosen for this umpteenth republication of the poems of Ern Malley. Smeared cheeks, spectacles, a skull grin and a bushranger's hat - it does not quite add up to a person, and yet the poems work at a complex level, parodying the fantastic, towering language prevalent among the Apocalyptic school of the forties and achieving the subtle modulations and pointed felicities of highly stylised poetry.

In Abraxas 3, Colin Wilson (whose essay is included in this volume along with the commentary of other critics) provided the background to this sophisticated antipodean jest. Two accomplished traditional poets, James McAuley and Harold Stewart, in an attempt to undermine the poetry which appeared in the periodical Angry Penguins, got together to create a literary Frankenstein's monster, an incomprehensibly ostentatious and erudite modern poet. The poems were attributed to the deceased Ern Malley and published to considerable acclaim. When good poets try their hand at pastiche and parody, the germ of their originality sometimes irradiates the imitation and the effect can be linguistically liberating. Having said that, apart from the fine poems on Durer and ancient Egypt, Ern Malley's work is palpably stuffed with overblown and elegant fatuities:

To anyone interested in the comic asides and ironic footnotes of literary history, I can recommend this volume but its influence may prove pernicious, for I must admit that I have become a dab hand at producing sonorous but meaningless poems. After reviewing this book, I typed out the following:

Not quite so dashingly pretentious as Ed's but passably bogus all the same - P. N.

I have met Nick Hagger several times, usually when he comes down to Cornwall and looks up Colin Wilson with whom he has had a long friendship. A versatile man, steeped in literature, philosophy and history, he is genial and urbane and, when questioned or criticised, shows admirable manners and aplomb. A master of various meditative techniques, he has travelled in the East, spent time in a Zen monastery where he accepted chastisment for making both the right and wrong responses. He has engaged in intellectual combat with scientists and logical positivists, attacking reductional materialism and eloquently arguing that man - as an intuitive religious being - should be placed at the centre of the cosmos and not marginalised and negated.

This present book, comprising a lecture, essay and television script, develops and broadens the argument of the massive 'Fire and the Stones' which aroused considerable interest when it was brought out two years ago. The first volume had a historical bias, but this takes the main theme right up to the present, incorporating contemporary quantum research into the general thesis.

The problem with a work of this nature lies in the claim behind it. Hagger is a curious mixture of reverence and audacity. If you met someone who told you that he had invented a telescope enabling you to see God sitting on His golden chair playing a harp, you might dismiss him as a intellectually suspect. Hagger can hardly be classed as that; his learning and intelligence are impressive, yet he claims that God can be located in the direct experience of fire or inner light, the mystic vision of which has sustained civilisations for thousands of years. Knowledge of this light is intrinsically good. Not only is God the metaphoric light seen by mystics and visionaries, but possibly an aspect of high frequency rays. "Unlike the physical light which is measurable," he maintains, "the metaphysical is unmeasurable (although its effects may be measurable), but when it enters the consciousness in the universtal being, I suggest that it is received at a point on the spectrum, in the region of 4 cycles per second." Can you be more specific than that? The pulse of God notated in a time and motion study.

There is an element of contradiction or, at least, of partiality here, for Hagger claims to dislike the breaking down of what he sees as a gigantic whole into component parts. Yet he explains the problem of religious experience by employing molecular terminology - he does not mind employing the language of mechanics in designing his own vehicle. Treating metaphysics and quantum theory as if they are inextricably intertwined may cause confusion among the categorists and bracketeers. Priests, too, who believe that they are worshipping a personification of goodness - something that transcends and penetrates everything - may find themselves up against atom smashers and black holes. Light is seen as the least reducible thing in the universe, the fastest, sleekest, most mysterious force we know.

The second strand of Hagger's argument enters the political arena and deals with the fallen world we inhabit. Given the break-up of the Soviet Union and the recession in the West, materialism is portrayed as lashing in its death-throes and needing to be replaced by a new metaphysic based upon Light or Fire. This new philosophy, of which Hagger is the founder, has powerful religious overtones and is called 'Universalism'. Designed to save mankind from the rampant, selfish capitalism that has dominated our age, it has both the advantage and disadvantage of offering no scriptural authority, no ten commandments or princely exemplar - Jesus, Mohamedd, Buddha - to imitate, only the pure knowledge of the Light, which may be experienced by by attending one of Hagger's seminars where it is drawn down under controlled conditions. "The Light can begin as a speck, a point: Dante's "infinitesmal point". It widens into a hint of dawn. There are glimmers and gleams. Many see, behind closed eyes, a shaft of light coming down."

As one may gather, this is a brave book, written with the effortlessly fluency accessible to those who have thought and written a great deal, and I recommend it not only for the challenging new thesis it puts forward, but for the fascinating arguments it marshals and summarises on the way. Like 'The Outsider', whether one agrees with the central argument or not, one emerges immensely better informed from the effort of reading. 'The Universe and the Light' is holistic in the most demanding sense, and it is important to study it with an open mind, for many people view God as ineffable, a mystery for all eternity. Nick Hagger's book is unusual in that it rips aside the veil and takes a bold look at what is normally hidden, and I certainly prefer his glorious and good vision of light to the one that appeared in the skies above Hiroshima.

THE VISION IN THE TOWER

Just before I went to America, during the exhausting weeks when I was busy with my Time plays, I had such a dream, and I think it left a deeper impression upon my mind than any experience I had ever known before, awake or in dreams, and said more more to me about this life than any book I have ever read. The setting of the dream was quite simple, and owed something to the fact that not long before my wife had visited the lighthouse here at St. Catherine's to do some bird-ringing. I dreamt I was standing at the top of a very high tower, alone, looking down upon myriads of birds all flying in one direction; every kind of bird was there, all the birds in the world. It was a noble sight, this vast aerial river of birds. But now in some mysterious fashion, the gear was changed and time speeded up, so that I saw generations of birds, watched them break their shells, flutter into life, mate, weaken, falter and die. Wings grew only to crumble; bodies were sleek and then, in a flash, bled and shrivelled; and death struck everywhere at every second. What was the use of all this blind struggle towards life, this eager trying of wings, this hurried mating, this flight and surge, all this gigantic meaningless biological effort? As I stared down, seeming to see every creature's ignoble little history almost at a glance, I felt sick at heart. It would be better if not one of them, in not one of us all, had been born, if the struggle ceased forever. I stood on my tower, still alone, desperately unhappy. But now the gear was changed again and time went faster still, and it was rushing by at such a rate, that the birds could not show any movement, but were like an enormous plain sown with feathers. But along this plain, flickering through the bodies themselves, there now passed a sort of white flame, trembling, dancing, then hurrying on; and as soon as I saw it, I knew that this white flame was life itself, the very quintessence of being; and then it came to me in a rocket-burst of ecstasy, that nothing mattered, nothing could ever matter, because nothing else was real, but this quivering and hurrying lambency of being. Birds, men, or creatures not yet shaped or coloured, all were of no account except so far as this flame of life travelled through them. It left nothing to mourn over behind it; what I had thought was tragedy was mere emptiness or a shadow show; for now all real feeling was caught and purified and danced on ecstatically with the white flame of life. I had never felt such deep happiness as I knew at the end of my dream of the tower and the birds, and if I have not kept that happiness with me, as an inner atmosphere and a sanctuary for the heart, that is because I am a weak and foolish man who allows the mad world to come trampling in, destroying every green shoot of wisdom. Nevertheless, I have not been quite the same man since. A dream had come through the multitude of business.

J. B. Priestley - Rain Upon Godshill

POEM

J. B. Pick

Back in the sixties, Pat Griffiths was known as the author of a series of well-structured and impeccably paced psychological thrillers - try reading Time of the Year for Spiders or The Chucking Game. This new work of hers is entirely different, being the story of a young gull she took in and christened Hobbs. The impetus of the book came from observing the brutal treatment such birds received at the hands of the fishermen in Cornish fishing ports. As a pet, the bird turned out to be wild, raucous and fiercely defensive of his territory. Pat nurtured it until it was strong and could re-join the other birds. Then one stormy night, a gull returned to Pat's house and died in the shed. Was it Hobbs who remembered her as its protector? The answer is left hanging. Most of us like to think that our acts of kindness towards creatures strike a responsive core, while another part of us senses that, in the stab-in-the-back world of nature, there is no place for fond memory or nostalgic attachment. Written in the fine tradition of Tarka the Otter, this book does not sentimentalise Hobbs in any way but there leaks through the pages something of the beauty and terror of sentient things, coupled with a sense of loss stemming from our need for a more personal bonding with the vast procreative cauldron from whence we evolved.

'Back to Metaphysics' by Jon Goulding

Martin Gardner (whose latest book On the Wild Side was reviewed in Abraxas 5) once argued that before developing elaborate theories to explain how paranomal events occur, it would be wise to establish that such events actually do occur. As is clear from Mr Gardner's writing, he has already decided that paranormal phenomena are not real; anyone who claims they are must be dishonest or deluded. Such a blanket rejection is as much prejudgement as a credulous belief in all things weird and wonderful. The credibility of serious work can only suffer from such associations.

What counts as serious work? An obvious contender is research undertaken by parapsychologists who attempt to conform to experimental standards of control and measurement. Ironically these attempts to bring paranomal research within the framework of experimental testing have taken place as science itself is moving even further away from a mechanist, materialistic view of the universe. Thus Arthur Koestler, in The Roots of Coincidence, pointed to a possible reversal of accusations: "parapsychology has laid itself open to the charge of scientific pedantry, quantum physics to the charge of leaning towards such 'supernatural' concepts as negative mass and time flowing backwards."

Not only are the findings of parapsychology contested, but the very status of it as a science is disputed. More that 100 years after the founding of the Society for Psychical Research, most orthodox scientists continue to deny that parapsychology has achieve any positive results. One possible explanation for this lack of acknowledged progress is that parapsychology is based upon the mistaken assumption that, if paranomal events occur, the conditions can be simulated in a laboratory.

Koestler has likened an ESP faculty to the penis of the human male. Take a man into a laboratory, strip him naked and wire him up to various recording devices. In the presence of researchers and sceptical observers, ask him to will an erection. Unless he is some kind of exhibitionist, the result is likely to be negative. The more stringent the conditions, the less likely that the subject will be able to respond. Koestler maintains:

This would explain why the anecdotal evidence for paranormal phenomena is so much more dramatic than the laboratory evidence. Many positive results have been claimed from laboratory experiments, but they relate to weak effects in the realm of probabilities. Hundreds of subjects may be able to guess the symbols on Rhine's ESP cards at a rate slightly above mean chance expectations, but where is the subject who can make the correct prediction every time? The hardest piece of recent evidence for the paranormal was provided by the work of Michel and Francoise Gauquelin who submitted impressive statistical correlation between star signs and occupations. Yet because their research seemed to support conclusions unacceptable to orthodox science, there have been continuing attempts to expose weaknesses in the statistical method.

Karl Popper rightly pointed out that a purely existential statement, if accepted as empirical, cannot be refuted. If I claim, for example, that some people on some occasions have precognitive experiences, no amount of empirical evidence will prove my assumption false. But this does not make my claim a scientific one. Since parapsycholgists want scientific status for any conclusions thay draw, the burden of proof is on them and not their critics and their continuing failure to provide concrete scientific evidence (because it is not recognised as a logical consequence of the dominant scientific view) reinforces the prejudgement of cynical sceptics such as Mr Gardner.

As things stand, the occurrence of paranormal events is neither provable nor refutable as an empirical fact. It is of course an empirical fact that about half the population of Europe and the USA claim to have had a psychic experience, and Sue Blackmore, writing in The Skeptic, suggests that although people's experiences are real, the phenomena which they experience can be explained as an illusion - or, in other words, people are deluding themselves.

Dr Percy Seymour (whose book Beyond Sensory Science was reviewed in Issue 5) has developed a theory embracing a whole range of paranormal phenomena which is potentially testable, being underpinned by a mathematical framework. However, I suspect the response by the scientific community will be far more hostile than if he had presented his ideas without reference to things paranormal - for such theories challenge science as the dominant world view in much the same way that Galileo's heliocentric theories once challenged religion's dominance.

It is not science which I take issue with but with science's status as the only legitimate source of knowledge. At the foundations of an empirical science lie epistemological and ontological assumptions which cannot be based on an appeal to empirical evidence. You cannot use a scientific method to prove the value of scientific method any more than you can reach down and lift yourself up by your own shoelaces.

Not that science can be criticised for proceeding from certain basic, undemonstratable assumptions - for its reductionist, mechananistic approach has proved tremendously valuable in answering certain type of questions. So successful has it been that Stephen Hawking can suggest that the end is in sight for physics. But it should be remembered that science emerged from metaphysics and theories being put forward at the frontier of theoretical physics seem to be increasingly metaphysical in character. If physics is coming to an end, it might well be because the questions left unanswered are metaphysical ones. A revived metaphysic would owe much to what has been gained in physics but would not be limited by it. Instead of clamouring for admission at the closed doors of science, those interested in the paranormal should be preparing to welcome science back to the wide open spaces of philosophy.

Update

Colin Wilson has returned from travelling in Australia and America; after delivering a lecture in New York, he had a meal and long discussion with Maurice Bassett, his present-day Boswell. Further developments in the Asda popular series - a book by Colin and his sons, Rowan and Damon, on bizarre news stories. Recent appearance on Radio Four in the series Cult Figures wherein he described his meeting with Camus. A visit from a Scotland Yard detective on the subject of the Ripper Diaries; to throw down the gauntlet, the Sunday Times have made allegations of fraud (which have now been dropped) against the publishers, Sidgwick and Jackson - nevertheless the diaries are the subject of a televison programme featuring Colin. Television crew recently visited him while making a film on the subject of the Japanese cannibal, Issei Sagawa, who consumed the larger portion of his Dutch girlfriend and has also thoroughly digested (geddit?) Colin's works. Beyond the Outsider has been reprinted in America. Editor of Abraxas recently met an "enthusiast" called Bob, an amiable Scotsman who, athwart a floodtide of Wreckers Ale, managed to say 'Thank you' over fifty times to the invisible presence of Colin Wilson for the enlightenment he had brought to his life.

'WHY ASK WHY' by Chrysippus

In Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall, one of the characters is set on becoming a priest but shortly before his ordination, a question enters his mind: "Why did God bother to make the world in the first place?" The issue perplexes him so much that he touts it around to every holy person he can find and not one is able to provide a satisfactory answer. His doubt snowballs and eventually he finds he has to abandon his chosen professon. This is a comic example but it does point to a large and potent issue.

The question "why" is the most frequently asked question, and yet in a sense a misleading one. Often it is intertwined with the concept of personal betterment. Suppose someone gives us a specific order. If we ask why we should follow this instruction, we expect the answer to be that it is in some way preferable to its alternative. Here are a few rather crude examples:

Question - Why should I take that route to Blackpool?

Answer - Because you will get there quicker.

Question: Why should I educate myself?

Answer - Because you will lead a more fulfilled and better-paid existence.

Question - Why should I behave according to the Christian concept of goodness?

Answer - Because you will eventually be rewarded with eternal life in Heaven.

The first two answers supply a practical logic which the third extends (speciously) into a belief system. At a sociological level, "why" is a perfectly legitimate question, usually employed to root out reason and motive. At a superficial level we can explain "why" a burglar steals (to gain extra funds or relieve a psychological need?) or a postman posts but we cannot answer "why" in a motivatory sense winter follows autumn or summer follows spring. We can resort to mechanistic observations about the angle of the sun and latitude and longitude but those are not ultimate reasons, only description of how things are.

Earthquakes and Egos

What, then, has happened to "why" at this juncture? Here, it seems, the personal motive dissolves before those larger processes that shape our environment yet seem oddly indifferent to our welfare as individuals (although we are often able to use them beneficially - for example, the farmer harnessing summer in order to build up supplies for winter or the engineer utilising thermal springs in volcanic regions for the supply of hot water.)

Thomas Hardy once expressed the notion that the tragedy of existence stemmed from the fact that non-conscious life gave birth to conscious life, since when man has been shaking his fist at the stars, demanding far more compassion and pity than those distant concentrations of energy seem inclined to donate.

This state of mind becomes particularly relevant when an event like an earthquake destroys or disrupts the personal and replaces it with chaos. A young doctor may be about to make a stupendously important breakthrough - his life, along with hundreds of others, is destroyed during a cataclysm. Why should this be, one asks? This kind of "why" is akin to the cry of an outraged ego expecting empathy from things whose nature is not ostensibly empathic. It occupies that void of uncertainty where the plans of mice and men seems at odds with seemingly disorderly natural or historic processes. Books like C.S. Lewis's The Problem of Pain strive, rather implausibly, to explain how an avowedly compassionate Deity can stand by while innocent beings are being victimised either by tyrants or forces of nature.

Heavenly Recompense

Although the more sophisticated modern theologians hedge around such tenets, many Christians believe that recompense for the indignities and inequalities of this present world may be found in a permanently pleasurable afterlife. Such a bountiful reward seems almost materialist in its scope and longevity. At the end of all their good acts, they anticipate a place in Heaven and reconciliation with the Saviour. But, one asks, would the majority of them act with equal consideration toward their fellow beings were there no afterlife attached to their faith? Humanists maintain that acting decently and compassionately towards fellow humans during the brief span one is allotted is self-validating and requires no further reward.

Beyond Emotion

Before such imponderables as earthquakes and senseless cruelties, the response of many thinkers has been to cancel out entirely the idea of a Creator. They claim that God does not exist or He is actually a blend of dark and light, good and evil - thus more plausibly accounting for the ambiguities of fate, or the rapacious food chains of a natural world hell-bent on survival rather than following any code of morality. In this century, the general trend has been to erase God entirely from the scientific picture and the word "why" from the history of the cosmos, substituting it with "how" or seeking an answer in closer description and definition. In other words, excluding human psychology from these larger processes in order to avoid confusion. A stone will fall at the same rate whether we wish it to or not, whether we are happy or sad; forces like gravity and magnetism appear to operate beyond human emotion. Yet we know at some point the invisible realm of the atom must connect with the make-up of man as an emotional being. I have no doubt that a book entitled Sociology and the Subatomic Particle would represent an amazing breakthrough.

Manmade Gods

Without the "why" or wherefore of a deity, where does man stand? Nietzsche's response was to say that man has created God and he must strive to achieve a stature commensurate with such a grandiloquent concept - men must try to become "gods" or heal their sense of incompleteness. Colin Wilson, similarly, urges men and women to explore their personal freedom or potential. Progress thus becomes a question of self-created goals acted out within an eternal present. An existentialist proper should not let his decisions become clouded over by future glooms or the fact that, as Thomas Gray put it, "the paths of glory lead but unto the grave." Death or the extinction of the personal ego is perhaps one of the most appallingly difficult things to come to terms with - but does it actually negate the concept of progression in the historic sense? Each generation can try to make "a better world" than the previous one. This gives rise to another notion: that of man as the most complex and advanced expression of the universal spirit (whatever that may be) and the spearhead of evolution. Taking up this particular piece of role-playing, it is man's destiny to perfect himself and to endow the world with the meaning or purpose it would otherwise lack. A grand idea - yet one which provokes a whole host of objections and is itself subject to the temporalities of chance. For instance, we know that man could wipe himself out (or be wiped out by a colliding comet or rain of meteors) and milllions of years later (the universe has literally all the time in the world) another species, of either greater or lesser ability, might develop and create an entirely different or similar world. Everything is possible where no limits have been satisfactorily defined.

To return to the question of death, wherein the ultimate "why" can be re-phrased as - "Why are we born in order to die?" No one can tackle this one satisfactorily but there are various angles of approach which may prove fruitful or barren according to our individual outlooks. Optimistically speaking, there is no actual cessation of life in that all phenomena is contained in a cosmic-melting pot which constantly interrelates and interacts. When a man or woman is born, a catalystic reaction takes place resulting in the appearance of what may be called personal or ego-centred consciousness. Upon death, the personal consciousness is cancelled out, the aspect supported by the physical organism, but not the basic matter of consciousness itself which remains constant and transcendent.

Inherit Consciousness

In other words, we inherit consciousness as individuals rather than produce it at the point of birth. It precedes the ego-centred percipient who interprets it in his or her own special way. Consciousness is rather like electricity in that it does not function purposefully until utilised by a series of terminals and connectors.

In such a context, death may be seen as the destruction of the shell or the receiver. As individuals, we are of course no longer alive - for the mechanism which makes us self-conscious has broken down - but there is a continuity of the process of which we all are part. In successive generations, we experience the same sensations afresh without recognising that we have (in a sense) existed before anymore than the air recognises its previous incarnation in the lungs of millions of individuals. But for the rising generations, there is the re-discovery of these ancient sensations ad infinitum. No one has phrased this better than Rilke when he tries to describe the intensity of human attachments:

(Duino Elegies)

'A Miracle of Nature' by Geoffrey Lee Cooper

A performance of this play in Nottingham (November 1991) was favourably reviewed by Colin Stanley in Abraxas 2. Colin Wilson dashed it off for the Medici Quartet's twentieth anniversary in 1991, which was also the bicentenary commemmorating Mozart's death. The recording and script have since become available. Unfortunately the two do not match up, there being so many discrepancies between as to make the following the two together a frustrating and futile experience. The play has been adapted for the listener and visual references have naturally been modified, but the divergences go much further and suggest that the Paupers Press script is an earlier version of the play before rehearsals and performances demanded changes and cuts. For instance, on the recording the minor and probably unneccessary part of Count Joseph von Schinzburg has been cut to one line, words have been changed, speeches have been moved around, and even the music sometimes varies - for instance, on the disc, the play ends with a performance of the first movement of the Dissonance, whereas the whole quartet is intended according to the written text. Elsewhere in the script several of the musical excerpts used are not indicated - for example the last movement of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik which rounds of the first half of the play.

However, in spite of the inconsistencies, for Wilson scholars the playscript may be still worth having even at £6.95. The play proper is only 30 pages but an introduction by Wilson is included and a fascinating letter as an appendix, where he suggests that the final playthrough of the Dissonance should partly be conducted by the actor playing Mozart, that he should improvise, urge them on with his enthusiasm - "as those last bars of the slow movement die away, he looks almost exhausted, as if he has had an orgasm" (expert acting needed here!) and during the last movement he should "positively babble"! Mozart's visit to the von Schinburgs has taught him something about his own music - and about himself - of which he was only dimly aware before. As the quartet ends - "If properly done, the audience ought to be close to hysteria."

According to a note added by Wilson to the appendix, these suggestions were never tried in performance, "the actors feeling it would be blasphemy to interrupt Mozart." They would in any case be inappropriate in audio, but, as I say, the slow movement and the finale are absent on the disc. Personally, I also feel the interruptions would be irritating for a live audience trying to appreciate the music, and I wonder whether by these suggestions Wilson was thinking to add some dramatic effects which have been lacking up till then.

Indeed Wilson's plays are not noted for their dramatic treatment; in fact, he often eschews the dramatic in favour of long chunks of philosophical self-analysis, for instance in his play Strindberg. The greatest play of our time about Mozart is of course Amadeus by Peter Shaffer. Apart from the question of whether Salieri poisoned Mozart, it is about creativity and the peak experience, the contrast of Salieri's mediocrity with Mozart's divine genius. How did this "obscene child" become God's chosen voice? Now Amadeus was planned as an ambitious biographical profile, a drama of rivalries and clashing egos, whereas Wilson's offering is very much a conversation-piece - although it does have does have its own raison d'etre. The play is based on a novelle by Morike and concerns and incident in 1787 when Mozart was en route by coach from Vienna to Prague for the first performance of Don Giovanni. The journey is broken in the middle of the second day at a small Moravian village and Mozart wanders into the garden of the Count Joseph von Schinzburg, where he is caught picking an orange by the head gardener. This one dramatic moment, however, is merely related to the audience by the Countess Sophie von Schinzburg, and the play becomes a conversation piece between the composer and the Countess. Mozart talks to her about his life and work, which provides a useful peg to hang some musical diversions played by her husband's string quartet at appropriate moments.

On the face of it, Mozart is an ideal subject for Wilson to tackle. He is fond of quoting the passage from Hesse's novel Steppenwolf where Steppenwolf escapes temporarily from his boring, suicidal, lukewarm consciousness, relaxes with a glass of Moselle and "is reminded of the eternal and of Mozart and the stars." Wilson quotes the Earl of Huntingdon who called Mozart "a miracle of nature" and, indeed, acknowledges in the introduction that in a sense Mozart was the starting point of The Outsider (which, by the way, the compact disc info charmingly calls his first novel). In fact, one might say that Mozart is perhaps the Peak Experiencer par excellence. In Wilson's words, he was "father of the new [romantic] music, just as surely as Fielding and Scott and Balzac sprang out of Richardson." Yet "musically speaking, he was the product of the age of Bach and Handel. In his own eyes he was no musical revolutionary." Perhaps there is a lesson to be learnt here. The Romantics expanded their inspiration, sometimes in a grandiose way, which militated against the sort of innate formal beauty that Mozart had embraced. The expansion that came with the Romantics also brought the conflict with boredom and the tepid consciousness. As Wilson says, "This explains why so many men of genius in the 19th century committed suicide or died insane." Mozart's strength was a profound simplicity, a direct link with "the stars". In the play Mozart explains this when he says his music should never be played with sadness. "Beauty is a feeling...But not the kind that makes you want to cry..." Unfortunately, on the disc the Medici do not take too much of the Mozart instruction and do seem to play the music concerned, the allegro of the Quartet in D, K421, with a modicum of sadness. But these are present-day musicians and it shows perhaps how difficult it must be to adapt our minds to 18th century purity.

Dorothy Tutin comes over well as the Countess and sounds natural. I was not impressed with Richard McCabe's Mozart, who may be still adopting his voice and character from Amadeus which he has also played in. There is also just a hint that he is reading the part. Often a voice over music technique is used, which is distracting and the balance between voice and music is sometimes less than ideal. There are a few inconsistencies such as the pronunciation of "Salzburg" and "Nannerl" and the cutting of the final performance of the Dissonance is unfortunate. That said, for those who want to relive the experience of the play, the compact disc (supplemented with an essay by Wilson) will prove obligatory and the playscript a valuable elaboration of the former.

'Two very short stories' by A.R. Lamb

Frank was smearing olive oil over Pauline's body. Boulang was playing cards with the devil. Gina was toying with a bottle of pills. Marcel was hang-gliding from the kitchen-table. The police was arrving.

Paul came slithering down the banister and answered the door. For a moment she glistened in front of the two policemen, then she put her hand to her mouth to deflect a scream and ran back upstairs

They stepped through into the hall. They looked at each other and shrugged. They began transferring small packages from their own pockets to the pockets of the coats and jackets hanging up in the hall.

Marcel happened to be dreamily watching them through the half-open kitchen door. He didn't know that the police came round with presents. He didn't know they had a master-key to everyone's house so they could just sneak in with some presents whenever they were feeling in a generous mood. He would thank them whether they wanted to be thanked or not.

"Hullo", he said.

They stared at him.

"I just wanted to thank you."

They frowned. Modesty, thought Marcel.

"What for?"

"The presents."

"You trying to be funny?"

One of them came right up to him.

"You're going to get done whether you saw anything or not. So you better not have seen anything. Get it?"

Marcel came zinging into focus as he suddenly realised what kind of men they were, how naive he'd been.

He shrugged.

They were only doing their job. They were only making their job a little easier for themselves. So many arrests to a promotion. Who would want to deny them their promotions?

 

Dab was woken in the middle of the night by the rocking of his bed. He knew what was going on even before he flashed his torch at the loving couple. They came to a halt almost at once.

His wife said: "Hello, Dabbie. I'd like you to meet Ron."

"Now then," said Ron.

Dab grunted.

"How long are you going to be?" he enquired.

"What the hell's it go to do with you?" said Ron.

"Oh, nothing. It doesn't matter if I don't get back to sleep. I've only got to work all day tomorrow. Carry on with your screw."

"What makes you think we're having a screw, darling?" said Frieda.

"What do you take me for? I suppose you're having a business meeting, are you?"

"Cheeky bastard," said Ron, leaning across and punching Dab on the shoulder.

"Hey, get off. What are you so touchy about?"

"Listen, mate. Think yourself lucky you're still in the bed. I could have thrown you in the cupboard if I'd wanted to."

"I never thought like that. I am lucky, aren't I? I'm one of the luckiest men on earth."

He turned his torch off and lay back. They started moving again, but only for a few seconds.

"He's put me right off, he has," said Ron. "Interfering prannock."

"I'm sorry. I suppose I ought to have kept quiet about the fact that you'd woken me up."

"Yes, you bloody well ought."

Dab was silent for a while. Then he said:

"Tell you what, Ron, by way of compensation, I'll pay you what my wife was going to pay you plus fifty percent, if you'll get up right now."

Frieda's bedside lamp went on. Ron lit a cigarette and got dressed without removing it from his mouth. Then he went down to the end of the bed and stood there with his hands in the pockets of his cardigan, facing Dab and Frieda. Dab took the gun out from beneath Frieda's pillow.

"So that's three bullets I owe you, is it, Ron?"

Ron nodded, the smoke from his cigarette echoing his nod.

"Aye, that's right," he said smugly.

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