The Ultimate Colin Wilson

As a compendium of Wilson's writing this is a great way to get an overview of his thinking. It might have been a little better edited cos the exact same examples and ideas get repeated too frequently. Could have been half the length with no loss of information.

I first came across Wilson 25 - 30 years ago & I loved his articulation of some of Gurdlieff's ideas around habitually via his concept of the Robot. I think CW actually does a better job of articulating this notion of humans as living on a kind of autopilot.

But he was a slightly sloppy thinker & for example didn't seem to recognise that Maslow's idea of “Peak Experiences” & the Gurdjieffs idea of human's as living in a kind of sleep were both connected by the notion of habitually. It is habituality that dilutes the vividness of experience. I won't bother reading any more Colin Wilson after reading this but glad for this book to have discovered that.