Excerpts from Colin Wilson's "Religion and the Rebel"

SPIRITUAL HELL IS TO PLACE A MAN OF HIGH ABILITIES AND GREAT TALENT IN A POSITION WHERE HE WILL BE FRUSTRATED AND BORED, DENIED SELF-EXPRESSION. IT IS, IN SHORT, THE OUTSIDER'S POSITION IN THE WORLD.

[Emphasis added, as hereafter]

The Outsider could be compared to a man who has been hypnotised, and lowered into a cage full of apes. The hypnosis prevents him from understanding why he finds the apes so disgusting and stupid. He only knows that he detests them. He believes he is an ape too. His solution lies in deliberately fighting the hypnosis, in telling himself: I am not an ape; I must be something more than an ape. [This will be a] ...difficult matter if his hypnosis--his conditioning as an ape--inclines him to give up the struggle and become 'a member of the simian race' and a good citizen of the ape community.

THE OUTSIDER'S DESPAIR, IN FACT, COMES FROM HIS VISION OF THE VAST SEA OF MEDIOCRITY THAT MAKES UP HUMANKIND, AND HIS REBELLION AT THE IDEA OF BELONGING TO IT. The perfect example of this attitude is in Swift, whose loathing of human beings has frequently been called 'pathological,' insane, psychotic--although to any Outsider, it looks reasonable and normal enough. ...

WHEN THE OUTSIDER IS IN HIS EARLIEST STAGES--WHEN HE DOES NOT KNOW HIMSELF[*] OR UNDERSTAND WHY HE IS 'OUT OF HARMONY' WITH THE REST OF HUMANKIND--HIS HATRED FOR MEN AND THE WORLD MAKES HIM AN UNBALANCED MISFIT, A MAN FULL OF SPITE AND ENVY, NEUROTIC, COWARDLY, SHRINKING AND WINCING. HIS SALVATION DEPENDS UPON THE ACHIEVEMENT OF SELF-UNDERSTANDING, SELF-KNOWLEDGE. IT IS ONLY WHEN HE BEGINS TO FIND HIMSELF THAT HE REALISES THAT HIS HATRED IS PERFECTLY JUSTIFIED: A HEALTHY REACTION TO A WORLD OF SICK HALF-MEN. ...

For the simplest way to define an 'Outsider' would be to say that he is a man for whom the world as most men see it is a lie and a deception. ... The fact that men need one another, that they live in close contact, means that they all impose their way of seeing on one another. This means that while a man is a member of society, it is impossible for him to achieve any vision of the world radically different from that of his fellow-men. ... COMPLETE ISOLATION--that is what the Outsider is driving at. He knows that, if he could only achieve it, there is a completely different way of seeing the world--a way so different that one might almost say that it would no longer be the same world. THE OUTSIDER'S FINAL PROBLEM IS TO BECOME A VISIONARY. THE FIRST AND MOST OBVIOUS STEP IS TO CUT HIMSELF OFF FROM OTHER PEOPLE, SO AS NOT TO BE CONDITIONED BY THEIR WAY OF SEEING. ...

The idea of hell is fundamental to the Outsider's way of thinking. He lives in a world of apes, whom he detests. He is told that 'religion' consists in loving your neighbour as yourself, and in practising the virtues of patience and charity. The most the Outsider can say is that he dislikes his neighbour just a little more than he dislikes himself. Most human beings strike him as being so stupid that they might as well be dead; consequently, he has none of the 'respect for human life' that most religions enjoin. His credo is a doctrine of self-expression, and if self-expression means war and murder, he unhesitatingly prefers it to the doctrine of peace and goodwill towards men. BY CONVENTIONAL STANDARDS, HE IS A DANGEROUS AND ANTI-SOCIAL MAN WHO SHOULD BE QUIETLY EXTERMINATED FOR THE GOOD OF SOCIETY.


* This idea of 'knowing yourself' is precisely the advice which the Delphic Oracle gave to Socrates: "gnothi seauton" (or "know thyself").

Also (by the way), Thoreau said much the same thing that Wilson says here, in his famous essay "Life Without Principle": that one cannot truly 'find oneself' or 'know oneself' unless one retreats to a profound state of isolation, much in the manner in which proverbial "prophets" have always had to go up into "the mountain" before they are able to return to mankind with a profound new vision of the Divine, or whatever else they saw or discovered. Joseph Campbell also makes this point in his book "Inner Reaches of Outer Space," at much greater length and depth than either Wilson or I have done here.