But the vision of freedom was not dead. It revived in a new form in the twentieth century, calling itself ‘existentialism’. Kierkegaard, the founder of existentialism, had observed that a schoolboy can experience a curious feeling of freedom by concentrating on a fly in the inkwell or the drip of rain from the roof. Hermann Hesse observed that it is when we give our attention to small things that we feel renewed and invigorated. Sartre observed the paradox that he had never felt so free as under German occupation, when he was likely to be arrested. Camus recognised that Sisyphus can be free even when condemned to roll a rock uphill for ever. All had recognised that freedom is an inner state in which we cease to leak energy. It is true that man is being continually undermined by boredom. Yet in flashes of insight, he becomes aware of the paradox that anything upon which he concentrates his full and total attention becomes interesting. A blank wall would become fascinating if you could put into it the same interest you put into an absorbing book. When Dostoevsky stood in front of a firing squad, he was overwhelmed by the revelation that nothing is boring.
These ‘new romantics’ – for existentialists were precisely that – were less pessimistic than their forebears. They believed that human existence is meaningless; but they also accepted that man has the power of free choice. They also had access to the most important philosophical insight of the twentieth century: Edmund Husserl’s recognition that consciousness is intentional. That is to say, consciousness is not simply a mirror that reflects reality; it is more like a hand that has to reach out and grasp the things it apprehends.
Now this was, in fact, the answer to the problem that had driven the romantics to despair. They had observed that in ‘moments of vision’ the world seems self-evidently fascinating and delightful, but that for most of the time it seems dull and exhausting. They tried to reconcile the two perceptions, and decided that the ‘moments of vision’ were probably some kind of illusion. With Husserl’s recognition that consciousness is intentional, the problem vanishes. If you look at your watch without paying attention, you fail to see the time. If you look at a blank wall with total attention, you become aware of ‘meanings’ that normally go unperceived. Consciousness participates in perception; it reaches out and attacks reality, as the teeth of a mechanical digger tear up the earth.
This recognition is of incalculable importance. Ever since he developed ‘divided consciousness’ – with one side of the brain acting as a microscope, the other as a telescope – man has felt alienated from existence, a passive spectator. What was so exhilarating about the rise of science and technology was that they made man aware that the mind is not really passive – that it can help him transform reality. Husserl’s insight goes deeper still; it is the recognition that consciousness itself is the transformer of reality. At the moment we use it crudely and clumsily, as a baby reaches out to grab at some shining object. But if consciousness is a kind of hand, then it could be trained and developed for as many subtle uses as the hand: for grasping, for striking, for lifting, for caressing, for fashioning, for creating.
The yogis of India caught a glimpse of this truth. In fact, we all recognise it when we experience moments of excitement or absorption. Setting out on a holiday, we experience a delight that goes beyond the satisfaction of our desire for change. There is somehow a recognition that the world is a bigger and more interesting place than we gave it credit for, and that if we could now grasp this insight, it need never again be lost.
Hulme was clearly wrong. Man is not a ‘fixed and limited animal whose nature is absolutely constant’. He changed drastically when he developed ‘divided consciousness’ to cope with the complexities of civilisation, and he has been changing steadily ever since. His greatest problem, the problem that has caused most of his agonies and miseries, has been his attempt to compensate for the narrowing of consciousness and the entrapment in the left-brain ego. His favourite method of compensation has been to seek out excitement. He feels most free in moments of conquest; so for the past three thousand years or so, most of the greatest men have led armies into their neighbours’ territory, and turned order into chaos. This has plainly been a retrogressive step; the evolutionary urge has been defeating its own purpose.
But the past three centuries have seen an interesting development. Newton demonstrated that the human mind can grasp the secrets of the heavens, and that in this respect at least, man resembles a god. In the following century, man began to show a desire to explore this problem of freedom, to test its limits. And it is in this light that we should view that apparently catastrophic change from the age of Parson Grimshaw to our own age of violence. It was far from being a mere decline into self-indulgence and ‘magical thinking’. It was also man’s most determined attempt so far to understand his own nature and possibilities. And, in the evolutionary sense, it has been an astonishingly successful experiment.
Let us try to understand precisely what has happened: Man’s chief problem has always been his tendency to feel that life is something of a cheat and a disappointment – ‘vanity of vanities’. Desire drives him to enormous efforts; then the experience seems to run through his fingers like fairy gold, leaving a sense of ‘So what?’
But if we observe closely what happens in such experiences, we can see that it is the mind itself that fails. When we feel that something is within our grasp, the mind automatically relaxes. It is as if we habitually dropped food a moment before it reached the mouth. But then, babies who are learning to feed themselves do drop most of their food before it reaches the mouth. Human consciousness is still in its infant stage. Like a baby’s hand, it has not yet learned to make proper use of itself.
In the past half century, human consciousness has shown an interesting tendency to explore its own possibilities: to learn to use itself. Some of these manifestations have been thoroughly negative – the drug culture, for example, or the attempt of a Dean Corll or Ted Bundy to explore the limits of self-indulgence. Our age has also seen the appearance of an unprecedented number of messiahs and gurus, from Wilhelm Reich and L. Ron Hubbard to Metier Baba and the Maharishi; most of these cults have their positive aspects, although their disciples are inclined to claim too much for them. Aldous Huxley’s recognition, in the 1950s, that certain drugs such as mescalin and LSD could amplify the ‘intentionality of consciousness’ and reveal the infinity of meaning locked in every common object, was an important step in the exploration of perception (even though the psychedelic cult of the 1960s reduced it to another form of self-indulgence).
Other disciplines, like split-brain psychology and bio-feedback control, were almost wholly free of such drawbacks. The two are closely connected; indeed, bio-feedback control could be regarded as a method of exploring right-brain awareness. Bio-feedback machines enable the subject to see or hear his brain rhythms or the electrical impulses of the skin, and to recognise those connected with relaxation. When we relax deeply, we sink into an inner-armchair, and the left-brain ego ceases to patrol up and down in front of consciousness. The result is a sense of richness and multiplicity, as the right brain adds its own voice to the dialogue of perception. This is what happens when we set out on holiday; we relax in the armchair, sense impressions flood the senses, and the right brain adds its commentary – memories of other times and places. (It might be better to speak of the ‘right-brain complex’, for we now know that memory is stored all over the brain.) So bio-feedback is a method of reminding the ego that it is only the facade of consciousness, and that it can call for support upon a far more powerful ally; it is a practical method of contacting Wordsworth’s ‘other modes of being’. If the romantics had possessed such a technique, many tragedies would have been avoided.
In this mechanism of ‘enrichment’ lies the whole secret of human evolution. Let us look at it more closely.
When I open my eyes in the morning, I become conscious. I also begin to perceive. But my consciousness is far more than mere perception. A man with amnesia would ‘perceive’ the same bedroom that I see; so would a baby or a dog. But there is obviously a great difference between their consciousness and mine.
The difference lies in what I add to perception. My brain is a storehouse containing millions of memories, and I use these memories to ‘fill out’ my perceptions. When I look at a photograph of my house, I see a quite different house from some stranger to whom I am showing the photograph, for I complete the photograph with all my memories of the house, while he has nothing to ‘complete’ it with except his own memories of similar houses.