Supernatural by Colin Wilson Read Free Book Online

efficient.Mine makes me take too much ‘for granted’.He glances at something, says ‘Oh yes, we know all about that ...’, and prevents me from really seeing it. It is just as if I spent my life wearing a dark pair of sun-glasses.
    But does this really matter?In some ways, no.I get just as much exercise whether I walk ‘robotically’ or not, and a meal supplies me with just as much energy whether I eat mechanically or not.The real trouble arises if I begin to feel depressed or discouraged.These sun-glasses make the world so much darker.But my vitality—and therefore my health—depends upon enthusiasm. It depends upon a certain eagerness.It depends upon noticing differences.
    Ouspensky tells a story that makes the same point.He describes how he and a friend were crossing the River Neva in St Petersburg.
    ‘We had been talking, but both fell silent as we approached the [Peter and Paul] fortress, gazing up at its walls and making probably the same reflection.“In there are also factory chimneys,” said A.Behind the walls of the fortress indeed appeared some brick chimneys blackened by smoke.
    ‘On his saying this, I too sensed the difference between the chimneys and the prison walls with unusual clearness and like an electric shock.I realised the difference between the very bricks themselves ....
    ‘Later in conversation with A, I recalled this episode, and he told me that not only then, but always, he sensed these differences and was deeply convinced of their reality.’
    And Ouspensky goes on to say that the wood of a gallows, a crucifix, the mast of a ship is, in fact, a quite different material in each case.Chemical analysis could not detect it; but then, chemical analysis cannot detect the difference between two twins, who are nevertheless quite different personalities.Ouspensky begins this important chapter with a paragraph that ought to be written in letters 20 feet high:
    ‘It seems to us that we see something and understand something.But in reality all that proceeds around us we sense only very confusedly, just as a snail senses confusedly the sunlight, the darkness and the rain.’ 1
    A similar experience was reported by the American psychologist Abraham Maslow, who had been told of it by a marine who had been stationed in the Pacific for several years and had not seen a woman.When he came back to base, he saw a nurse, and immediately had a ‘peak experience’—an experience of sudden overwhelming delight—as it suddenly struck him with a kind of shock that women are different from men. We say ‘Of course women are different from men’, yet these words disguise the fact that we have allowed the robot to obliterate the real difference.We do not see it with that sense of shock and amazement experienced by the marine—although it is true that a man might experience something similar if he walked past an open doorway and caught a glimpse of a woman removing her clothes.And this example makes us aware that we have simply allowed our senses to collapse.You could compare them to a tent that has been blown flat, so it is no longer of much use as a shelter.Because of this collapse of our senses, they cannot do their proper work, which is to show us the differences between things.
    In short, I am suggesting that it is the ‘robot’ who destroys our ‘magical’ powers, and prevents us all from being able to float through the air like Richard Church or Joseph of Copertino.
    Let us look more closely into this fascinating problem.
    You may feel that the idea of floating through the air is just a little too much to swallow.Yet there is another odd faculty which seems to be closely related to it, and which thousands of people have reported: I mean the odd ability to be in two places at once.
    When the Society for Psychical Research was formed in London in 1882, it received hundreds of reports of people who had ‘seen’ other people who were not actually in the room.In many of these cases, the person who