The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries Read Online Free Page A

any exterior motion they seemed to be seething almost joyously inside and gave the distinct impression that in their own degree they were living actively and liking it. This impression so struck the writer that he remained staring at them for some minutes, until the train arrived . . .
     
    The first thing to note about this is his comment that “he was emotionally at ease, planning unhurriedly the schedule of his various calls”. That is, he was in a “right-brain” state, free of tension. Thensome curious effort, some slight movement of the mind, so to speak, propelled him in the right direction, and made him aware that the bricks he would normally have taken for granted were somehow glowing with inner life. It is also significant that the human beings who would normally have occupied the centre of his field of attention now ceased to seem important. Long habit has made us select human beings as the centre of our field of attention, for we are social animals whose peace of mind depends upon “fitting into” society.
    There is no need to assume that his perception of the bricks was a “mystical” experience. We can all induce something of the sort by simply staring intently at a perfectly ordinary wall in the sunlight. Our problem is that we do not normally concentrate on anything; we “scan” things automatically, like the girl on a supermarket checkout. But if anything attracts our interest and we focus our full attention on it, we instantly experience this sense of heightened meaning.
    I am only trying to point out that the chief reason our experience usually seems to unmemorable is that we have become accustomed to responding “robotically” to our surroundings, leaving the automatic pilot to do the driving for us.
    And what difference would non-robotic experience make? Basically this: it would make Daly King aware that the normal assumption he shares with the rest of us, that the world “out there” is a rather ordinary place, is mistaken. His senses are telling him lies. Or rather, his senses are doing their best; it is his attitudes, his assumptions, that reduce their testimony to “ordinariness”. His “glimpse” would have told him that he is surrounded by an unutterably strange vicious circle in which most of us are trapped. This consists in the assumption that the world out there is rather ordinary and dull. And when we are bored our energies sink. And when our energies sink it is rather like a cloud coming over the sun, making the world seem dimmer and less interesting. This feeling that the world is uninteresting prevents us from making any kind of effort. The normal human tendency – unaided by external stimulus – is to sink into a state of lethargy, rather like Samuel Beckett characters sitting in dustbins.
    Every glimpse of reality – every “moment of vision” – even setting out on holiday – tells us the opposite. This tells us that when a cloud seems to obscure the sun, what has actually happened is that we have allowed our senses to become dimmer, like the device in a cinema that lowers the lights. Perception is “intentional”. You see things by a beam of light generated by a dynamo inside your head. When you are bored the dynamo works at half speed, and everything you look at seems dull.But if you can persuade your subconscious mind that the world out there is fascinating – as holidays persuade it – the dynamo will accelerate, and you will see that this is true.
    Wordsworth talked about the time of childhood, when everything seem “apparelled in celestial light”. This is because the child knows that there is an infinitely marvellous world out there, and automatically makes that effort that keeps the dynamo working at top speed. Human beings begin to die when they become trapped in the “vicious circle”, and become convinced they have “seen it all”. And unless circumstances force them to continue to make an effort they sink gently into a kind of swamp of boredom,