Colin Wilson is a lovely writer who penned a series of books in the late 1950's and early 1960's
which he called "The Outsider Cycle"  (The Outsider, Religion and the Rebel, The Strength To Dream, Origins of the Sexual Impulse, and Beyond the Outsider) that deal with mankind's recent alienation or relatively new-found existentialist being.  The stages of this cycle Wilson lays out
through these books is roughly as follows:

Stage 1--The Realist Outsider--The outsider recognizes the 'sickness' of society, the 'sleep' of people and the 'awakeness' of the Outsider.  The Outsider is pessimistic at this stage and no action is taken.  Some of those in this stage were Descartes, Sartre, and Kierkegaard.

Stage 2--The Romantic Outsider--The Outsider extends their possibilities, awareness, consciousness, and becomes optimistic and recognizes a 'will to power'.  Seeing meaning is much easier to come by as the indifference threshold lowers.  H. Hesse is included in this stage.

Stage 3--Attempt At Control--The Outsider attempts to take control of the higher states of the mind, still optimistic but now doing something about reoccuring pessimism by gaining self knowledge, unifying the many 'selves' of the mind (The Many 'I's as according to Gurdjieff), becoming conscious of a deep will, controlling the body and personality with new-found energy in some form of self-expresssion.  However, much of this energy is used internally at this stage.  Some of those at this stage were T.E. Lawrence and Van Gough.

Stage 4--An Increased Search--The Outsider searches for vision, prupose in the universe, and becomes anxious to 'evolve' to the 5th Stage.  This person becomes very religious (but not in the institutionalized religions) as their own spirituality is realized.  It is at this stage that Nietzsche said, "God is dead."  G.I. Gurdjieff and Boehme are included in this stage.  This stage is best described by G.B. Shaw in Man and Superman through the character of Don Juan:

I tell you that as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it.  That is the law of my life.  That is the working within me of life's incessant aspiration to higher organization, wider, deeper, intenser self-consciousness, and clearer self-understanding.

Stage 5--The Noosphere--The realm of the mind and planetary consciousness--the universe aware of itself.  This stage does not exist yet for mankind, but we can catch glimpses of it.
 

     The first four of these stages obviously parallel the Buddha's Four Noble Truths:  1) Life is suffering.  2) Suffering is caused.  3) The cause can be extinguished.  4) To eliminate the cause is to follow the Middle Way.  The fifth stage is obviously enligntenment.  Colin asserts that these occidental stages began only 200 years or so ago with the development of existential philosophy when Western thinkers began to realize that too much security and boredom decreases vitality.  Vitality is only 'awakened' again by meaningful experiences such as the threat of one's own death or the rapture of art.  These experiences were named 'peak experiences' by Abraham Maslow and occur when one realizes deeper meaning, the mind 'awakes' and the depression of ambiguity disappears.  One remembers knowledge they've always had (the cosmic sea of archetypes), however this is by no means a plunge into the unconscious because one remains aware of the conscious; it is more of a fusion of the unconscious and conscious.

     Colin Wilson writes about meaning in New Pathways in Psychology:

Man evolves through a sense of meaning (external).  When his sense of meaning is strong, he maintains a high level of will-drive and of general health.  Without this sense of external meaning, he becomes the victim of subjective emotions, a kind of dream that tends to degenerate into nightmare.  His uncontrolled fantasies and worries turn into an octopus that strangles him.  Man has evolved various ways of preventing this from happening.  The most important is religion.  This tells a man that certain objective standards are permanently true, and that his own nature is weak and sinful.  The chief trouble with authoritarian religion is that it works best for intellectually-uncomplicated people, and fails to carry much conviction for the highly sophisticated and neurotic--who are the very ones who need it most.  Art succeeds where religion fails.  A great symphony or poem is an active reminder of the reality of meaning:  it provides a stimulus like an electric shock, re-animating the will and the appetite for life.

     Colin is certainly aware and knowledgeable about Buddhism.  He likens the concept of samadhi to that of reprogramming the subconcious from negative into positive; pessimism into optimism.  To develop creativity is a solution to the alienation of mankind and is a main example found throughout his work.  To do this, Wilson was a big believer in analytically studying one's consciousness (phenomenology) which will lower the indifference threshold and peak experiences will then occur
more frequently.  Or in Buddhist terms:  Meditate and you will be enlightened.  Maslow called the peak experience a boon of self-actualization--the top of his heirarchy of human needs--and Wilson's goal was to obtain full control of this state.  He wrote often about "Faculty X" which is the ability to incite a peak experience at will, without being jolted into it by art, music, the threat of death, and so on (mind-altering drugs including alcohol can do this too, but, of course, the clarity of the experience is lost).  The control of this faculty, he thought, will enable us to move us up the ladder of consciousness at our will where awaits the noosphere.  The energy to do this is obtained from the subconscious.
     Much of this occultist-sounding ideology comes from the great mind of G. I. Gurdjieff and his complicated system of the 4th Way.  It does work for those who wish to follow it, just as any truthful system will that focuses on the changing of reactions rather than circumstances.  But, again, it has all been done before and in a much simpler manner and method by the Buddha.  One interesting method Colin Wilson comes up with himself  is the use of the left and right brain differences.  Modern science has shown that the left brain is more concerned with the concrete and the right with the abstract.  The left is more scientific and the right is more artistic; the left sees only the trees and the right only the forrest.  Wilson likens them to the characters of Stan(right) and Ollie(left) and that one must train themself to recognize the lack of confidence of the right-side and that of the left side to take control and overreact.  This left-sided dominance is the same as the neurotic, pessimistic consciousness that is devoid of creativity.  So it would follow that impoving the power of the right-side would behoove someone interested in creativity.  Colin's method for doing this was initially ontological phenomenology before his turn toward the supernatural, and although it is sad to see a great mind such as Colin Wilson's turn off onto a dark path, the time he did spend on the Buddha's path was brilliant and exciting.  His friendly, knowledgeable writing and skill in summarizing ideas are a pleasure to experience.  Also, the positivism that can be found throughout his works is quite motivational and inspiring.  Indeed, if nothing else, Wilson taught himself through Western methods how to change his attitudes and reactions toward the enlightened one's optimism.
 

 "An adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered, and an inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." --G.K. Chesterton

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