The Mind Parasites by Colin Wilson

Author:Colin Wilson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Published: 2011-03-09T15:38:35.942000+00:00

Page 38

Wilson, Colin, The Mind Parasites

mind, strength began to return. I saw that they had set out to get me into this state, just as turtle hunters used to

turn them on their backs; they knew that this was a direction from which human beings were vulnerable. But if this

was so, then presumably they themselves knew it was some kind of illusion, this sense of emptiness. My mind was

doing its best, but it was making a mistake. An adult can easily browbeat a small child by taking advantage of his

ignorance. He could, for example, drive a child insane by filling his mind with horror stories— of the Dracula -

Frankenstein variety—and then pointing to Buchenwald and Belsen to prove that the world is even more horrible

than these. In a sense it would be true, but it would take an adult to see through the fallacy: that Belsen and

Buchenwald are not necessary horrors in the nature of the universe; that they can be fought by human decency.

Perhaps these creatures were taking advantage of my ignorance in the same way? My reasoning seemed

accurate enough: that our ability to go on living depends upon a series of supports that have the nature of illusions.

But, then, a child can cease to believe that its parents are infallible without ceasing to love them. In other words,

there is still a reality left there to love, when the illusions have vanished. Could it be that this awful agony—or,

rather, this awful lack of agony, this feeling of utter coldness and reality—.was no more dangerous than a child's

pain when it falls down?

I grasped at this possibility and clung to it. Then another thought came that strengthened me. I realized that when I

contemplated this alien 'universe', and felt it to be arbitrary

absurd, I was making the oldest of human errors: of believing that the word 'universe' means 'universe out there'.

The mind, as I well knew, was a universe of its own.

They had made their first mistake in not attacking me when I was shattered and exhausted. They now made an

even greater one. They saw that I was somehow recovering, and they attacked in force.

I was panic-stricken. I knew I had not the strength to fight them off. This glance into the abyss had drained off all

my courage; now it had to seep back slowly.

At that moment, the full implications of my argument about the child dawned on me. A child can be browbeaten in

its ignorance because it underestimates its strength. It does not realize that it is potentially an adult, perhaps a

scientist, a poet, a leader.

In a flash, I saw that perhaps I was doing the same thing. And I suddenly remembered Karel's words about his first

battle with the parasites: about how his own deepest life forces had rallied to beat them. Were there actually

deeper levels of strength that I had not yet called upon? At the same moment, I remembered my frequent feeling,

over the past months, that there was some strange force of luck on our side—what I used to call 'the god of

archaeology', some benevolent force whose purpose was to preserve life.

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