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Beyond the Occult

Colin Wilson

Find this book at buch7.de | eurobuch.com | buchhandel.de | books.google.com ASIN=0593011740, Category: Science, Language: E, cover: PB, pages: 381, year: 1988.

Review © (2004) by interesting-books-selector.com

In "Beyond the Occult" CW explains that [intelligent] life was unavoidable in universe (many years before Stuart Kauffman in "At Home in Universe" came to the same conclusion). CW believes that life was created because the universe is so beautiful that it needed observers to admire it - or rather the observers created the universe [and it's history] by imagination.

"there is in Shaw, as in Gurdjieff and Nietzsche, a recognition of the immense effort of Will that is necessary to express even a little freedom, ..."
-- quote CW

"as long as mankind accepts mental stagnation as as a norm, man will continue to mark time at his present stage of evolution."
-- quote CW, Beyond the Occult, p502.

This reminds me of Oswald Spengler:

"We have not the freedom to reach to this or to that, but the freedom to do the necessary or to do nothing. And a task that historic necessity has set will be accomplished with the individual or against him."

... the Civilization will move in the direction of its Destiny, regardless of our choices. We can choose to contribute or to have no impact."
-- quote from extracts of the English translation of OS's "Untergang des Abendlandes" found at http://www.duke.edu/áparks/Spengler.html.

Now back to CW. Friedrich Nietzsche (FN) - like Beethoven for example - was inspired by the subconscious mind.

"Tell [Goethe] to hear my symphonies, and he will see that I am saying that music is the one incorporal entrance into the higher worlds of knowledge which comprehends mankind, but which mankind cannot comprehend."
-- quote Beethoven, in CW, Beyond the Occult.

If this is right, how could Beethoven have created these symphonies - being himself a member of mankind - or was he an outsider?

I guess FN -like Beethoven- has seen God. But then, why did FN write in his Zarathustra "God is dead"?

"If the moon and the sun doubt, they will go out."
-- quote William Blake, in CW, Beyond the Occult.