Have you ever checked out the experimental science fiction story/novel by Colin Wilson called "
The Mind Parasites"? Wilson was taking a stab at something "Lovecraftian". It is referred to as "the supernatural metaphysical cult thriller".
I am not kidding when I confess that my reason for reading that book is because the main character who we know only through a diary left after his suicide believed that Husserlian Phenomenology could be used to combat the Mind Parasites, who are some kind of alien presence located deep in the waters of whatever it is we call "mind".
There's a twist in the plot, our plot. As early as around page 69 or so there is mention of Arthur Schopenhauer. He is blamed (by the narrator?) for spreading the infectious dismal and depressing view of general existence which helps to infect mankind with suicidal ideations. Whereas at first I was angry at Colin Wilson for this, looking back, now I see it as a complement to Schopenhauer! Schopenhauer was a
sotierologist, and yet Wilson paints him as the villain.
I think I only mention it
here and
here. I will place
Bob Corbett's essay where it might be picked up by our local temperamental search engine.
I used to be obsessed with the connections between
gort busting, Husserlian Phenomenology, and Wilson' The Mind Parasites.
I can only access a certain layer from the Way Back machine, but I was able to capture this:
Glimpses Into the Mind of a Loafer :
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Glimpses Into the Mind of a Loafer
What I have discovered is that I need to relax. We all need to relax, but it’s certainly not my place to instruct others to relax. Not in a society such as ours which praises ambition and hard work. Is that a sign of decadence, that we see ambition as a good thing, when it is most likely quite an evil thing?
If we do not relax, we become overwrought and dangerous. I know this about myself. From the looks of the global situation, I have to conclude that we’re a planet bursting with overwrought and dangerous men who need to relax.
I have to contact my own deepest levels on a regular basis in order to re-energize my consciousness. It’s my responsibility to accept that I am hostile toward this soul-killing world we have created. It is best I recoil. The cave bear shuts itself off in a cave … I don’t chase the carrot, and poverty isn’t so bad if you have been blessed with some kind of imagination. I put my loafing to good use. I would like to think I am engaged in cosmic work.
When Husserl talks about “uncovering the structure of consciousness,” he simply means descending into the realms of our mental habits, realms we have no maps for. There is no atlas of our mental world.
Would the rulers of our society want to prevent too many people from being trained in philosophy in general, and trained in phenomenology in particular?
No wonder some philosophers go mad. I think that just attempting to follow along with Husserl’s thoughts has renewed my courage. What was he working on when he died? How did Husserl die? Did Hitler cause Husserl’s death? Heidegger was a student of Husserl, and even expounded upon Husserl’s phenomenology; and yet Heidegger was a Nazi. He taught philosophy. There's more research to be done as far as that goes.
Anyway, Husserl was concerned to map the “structure of consciousness” by means of conscious reflection alone. What better purpose can consciousness be employed than to explore itself? This is the meaning of the word, “p h e n o m e n o l o g y,” one of the most important words in my vocabulary. I read Husserl’s lectures hoping to pick up the techniques of phenomenology, like the “phenomenological epoch.”
epoch is “epoche,” Greek for “to bracket off” [ ]
The human brain is a kind of search light that projects a beam of “attention” on the world. We do not really have a trick of focusing and concentrating the beam; but it happens frequently. The sexual orgasm is actually a focusing of the “beam” of consciousness (attention). The beam of attention suddenly holds more power – the result is a feeling of intense pleasure.
When we say that attention is a beam, we mean the same thing Husserl means when he says that consciousness is “intentional.” Attention is a laser beam. This is the fundamental secret. Now. How do we polarize this beam?
When each of us, individually, asks ourselves, “Who am I?” (in the deepest sense), we stand as pure consciousness confronting the universe. Maybe we just need basic training in phenomenology to enable the radical transformation we call “busting the gort.”
Then again, as I go through Husserl’s lectures, I am well aware of how tedious his terminology can be to decipher. He seems to go around in circles saying things in a thousand different ways. I’m using the dictionary constantly. I’m just trying to develop a primordial mode of consciousness. The vitality of most people is controlled by subconscious forces of which they are not aware. We can’t really understand existence because we are in existence. When we attempt to descend towards the “source” of our existence, we leave behind the realm of existence. The source of existence does not exist. The source of existence does not “stand out” from non-existence. Is the source of existence Nothingness?
Would a population trained in Husserlian disciplines be less easily conditioned by society? Do the social engineers count on the population’s lack of insight into the true nature of existence? The managers of the managers reward gort-like behavior. The gorts are trapped in the world of other people. When individuals lose touch with their “inner being,” their instinctive depths, they become trapped in the socially constructed world of other people. To the gorts, human society is the reality. The gorts are entirely concerned with society’s values, with its pettiness and malice and self-seeking.
Look at the six sacred words: Nothing that is so, is so. Is it just a coincidence that Husserl proposes to radically alter the “natural attitude” with a “phenomenological attitude?”
He exercises this peculiar phenomenological epoch, a certain refraining from judgment. Exercising the phenomenological epoch completely shuts me off from any judgment about spatiotemporal factual being. This excludes all sciences relating to the Natural World.
What is the effect of the phenomenological epoch? What can remain if the world, including ourselves with all our cogitare, is excluded? PURE CONSCIOUSNESS, TRANSCENDENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS. The fully conscious effecting of the “phenomenological epoch” will prove itself to be the operation necessary to make “pure” consciousness, and subsequently the whole phenomenological region, accessible to us.
I’m desperately looking for some “spiritual technology,” but I have to confess, the literature on phenomenology is very obscure and heavy with special terminology. I was hoping to simplify it, not to dumb it down, but to make it more accessible to modern minds.
I’m almost finished going through The Essential Husserl. Take a look at some of the headings:
Absolute consciousness as the residuum after the annihilation of the world
The phenomenological attitude. Pure consciousness as the field of phenomenology
With the epoch, with the exclusion of this psychophysical universe of Nature, we are left with the whole field of absolute consciousness. Husserl does not mean to turn the natural world into a subjective illusion. Something tells me that I will be coming back to Husserl frequently.
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As for the wayback machine (web DOT archive DOT org), it is reaching rather deeply today:
October 12th, 2006 from gb.o : Phenomenological InvestigationsThe Way Back Machine successfully captured more than a handful of posts from
the original gortbusters message board.Thanks for reminding me of the importance of Edmund Husserl. I certainly have not been able to give him the credit due as far as further exploratory reading goes, but, paraphrasing the words of country singer, Willy Nelson or that cracker Elvis Presley (super gort?), "Husserlian Phenomenology was always on my mind, always on my mind ..."
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related:
source of "captured" Bob Corbett essayThe Mind Parasites of Colin Wilson: Fiction or Realityfree pdf of original MPa review from toomuchhorrorfiction blogspot.
Mind Parasites, Energy Parasites, and Vampiresquote:
"Mind parasites" is such an obscure topic that if you google it you will find that an email I wrote on the subject a few years ago, A Mind Parasite Encounter in Dune, turns up in the top three or four hits. My intuition is that this seemingly obscure subject, hard for some to take seriously, is a glimpse, through a glass darkly, into one of the most powerful hidden movers behind human experience, and especially our long, tortured descent into history, the nightmare from which we are trying to awaken.
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