Britain philosophy | Brad Spurgeon's Blog

Meetings With Remarkable People. Episode 3: Colin Wilson, Part 3

Colin Wilson, author of The Outsider and The Occult

Colin Wilson, the angry young man of British literature

We launch this episode with a talk inspired by the part of Wilson’s autobiography in which he speaks of trying mescaline, and of course the obvious inspiration for that, the work of Aldous Huxley in his book The Doors of Perception. I talk about my own decision that drugs are not a way to reach the “peak experience” that Wilson made one of his life goals to achieve. This leads to his discussion of his “seven levels of consciousness,” and his ability in the previous year of his life to stay in this higher state than ever before. In short, the segment is all about trying to control our levels of optimism and general contentedness, and to induce the peak experience.

This is the original interview that served as the basis of the article I wrote about Wilson that appeared in August 2005 in the International Herald Tribune and then The New York Times. I later expanded it, and worked with Colin Wilson himself, to develop the interview into a book that was published to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of “The Outsider,” which appeared in 1956. My book, Colin Wilson: Philosopher of Optimism, is now in its second edition, and still available in many online bookstores and directly from the publisher, Michael Butterworth books in Manchester.

Part 4 of the interview will follow soon.

Meetings With Remarkable People. Episode 2 : Colin Wilson, Part 2

Colin Wilson

This is the second podcast in my new series “Meetings With Remarkable People.” It is also the second part of the meeting with the remarkable Colin Wilson, the angry young man of British literature, who I met for the first time in 2005 at his home in Cornwall, England.

In this part of the interview Wilson talks about intentionality, Husserl, Sartre, Tom Sawyer…and how we must concentrate on what we look at in order to see it… or how to make our lives more interesting and interesting by changing our mental attitude to how we see it. He also speaks about how he wanted to create a philosophy on a new foundation, and about Kierkegaard and his flaws and need for philosophical spectacles. Not to mention Abraham Maslow and studying healthy people as a psychologist. Above all, Wilson introduces here the idea of the “peak experience.” I’ll let you listen to it to learn about that!

This is the original interview that served as the basis of the article I wrote about Wilson that appeared in August 2005 in the International Herald Tribune and then The New York Times. I later expanded it, and worked with Colin Wilson himself, to develop the interview into a book that was published to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of “The Outsider,” which appeared in 1956. My book, Colin Wilson: Philosopher of Optimism, is now in its second edition, and still available in many online bookstores and directly from the publisher, Michael Butterworth books in Manchester.

The above book and this interview led to a British film company inviting me the following year to do a filmed interview of Colin Wilson, and excerpt of which is on my YouTube channel.

By the way, in the short introduction of this podcast I also speak about how I felt personally at the time while doing the interview, and why I sometimes sound a little cold and detached during Wilson’s fascinating talk. Part 3 of the interview will follow soon.

Follow @BradSpurgeon