Around the Outsider

I imagine that a good many readers will have been influenced in their development by reading Colin Wilson's book The Outsider. This was certainly a seminal influence on my thinking in my last year at university, and opened up hitherto unexplored avenues, introducing me to many thinkers who have had a profound influence. This book is a collection of essays presented Colin Wilson on the occasion of his 80th birthday. I also read his books on the Occult and Mysteries, and visited him in Cornwall shortly after the publication of my book Survival in 1984, for which he was a publishers reader. In this collection, Network Member Steve Taylor writes about the effect of The Outsider on his life. He refers to Wilson's core intuition that there is something wrong with normal human consciousness, when it is in fact a state of disconnection and alienation that must be transcended in order to achieve a greater sense of harmony and interconnection. I was also struck by his second book, much less well-known, Religion and the Rebel, which introduced me to Spengler, Toynbee and Whitehead. I also discovered Hermann Hesse and used to encourage my pupils at Winchester to read at least one of his novels every year. Wilson readers will find much of interest to explore in this volume.