Nicholas Mosley - John Banks Interview Transcript 9

   The general topic of this excerpt is the evolution of styles of understanding. Mosley moves from the development of his style of writing and of his "hopeful monster" to similarities between "evolutionary" and various traditional religious views of man's place and efficacy. 

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May 8,1991 "Can Ravé" Majorca 

JB - A comment that is often made about your work is that although something important is being said - there's a sense that something has to be explored, and something is captured - it slips away from one as soon as one stops reading... it's somehow gone. 

NM - Well, yes, I gathered that; every now and then I do realize that that sort of thing happens. I think this can't be helped about my later work; I think I'm rather stuck with that. With my early novels I think that sort of thing didn't happen. I think my early novels were fairly straightforward stories about people in predicaments, in human predicaments, conflicts: a young man coming home from the war torn between the demands made by his own society to do things in the war and by his own conscience about the sort of things he'd been expected to do in the war, between two sorts of love, falling in love with two people at the same time... All these are quite common experiences and common human predicaments. And my answer to them, the way I dealt with them in my early-novel stories, was the conventional way of tragedy: people can't handle these situations, so they go into self-destructive states, sort of comedy and farce, life as a farce or tragedy. But people understood them, understood that sort of thing; it was conventional.

   Then my second lot of novels, written when I was coming up to forty, were written in ways that were not all that difficult to understand. I was trying to say, alright people were in these kinds of predicaments - the demands of society and one's conscience, one's instinct and one's altruism, one's selfishness and the unselfishness of other people - human beings were stuck with these conflicts, but the way to deal with these was not, perhaps, to go into self-destructive tragedy, but to try to handle the situation with one's own energy. The image I used, at that time, was that a person trying to deal with life was like a man with a one-wheeled bicycle on a tightrope juggling, keeping everything up in the air at the same time, doing his best. Every now and then he fell off the tightrope; he hurt the people he fell on - all this sort of imagery - then one got back on one's tightrope. One had to recognize that life was like this; one didn't run away from the contradictions in life, one just tried to deal with them with one's energy. But that was a fairly desperate affair: okay, you could carry on like this for a time, but it was pretty tough and desperate. I think people could understand that. My style was sometimes more elliptical, trying to talk about the juggling act. But I don't think people found that sort of difficulty with those novels.

   Then I got to thinking - at a later, more recent, stage - that this still wasn't really the right way of dealing with what one actually experienced, because what one actually experiences is, okay, if you do make these efforts with life, if you do try not to run away, try to face what the predicament actually is, if you do try to hold these conflicting demands between oneself and society, one's instincts and society, altruism and selfishness... and also these conflicts going on in oneself: it's not just the conflicts between the inside and outside world, there are conflicts going on within oneself - one's desire to be faithful and true and single-hearted but the fact that one often isn't, one has drives and interests by which one is not, as it were, single hearted - and if you deny these things you have the experience of suffering some sort of death. Now all these conflicts go on both between oneself and the outside world and within oneself, but the experience is that if you do try to see these things, observe them, try to hold them in mind, be conscious of them and not run away from them, not deny them, then it is not just a matter of tragedy, or crashing off the bicycle, or sticking on the old one-wheeled treadmill, as it were. Actually things happen which are more optimistic than this, you actually find that life in some way then works for you; you do find that you are moving along on the one-wheeled bicycle, you are getting somewhere new, that if you, as it were, try to be true, and not run away from things in yourself, then in fact things happen in the outside world that take you on to some further form of experience, understanding, actually new circumstances: life becomes possible. By facing the difficulties, almost impossibilities of life - near impossibilities of life - then it becomes possible.

   Now, this is a mysterious concept. I believe it to be an experience which everyone can have, has or can have, but it is difficult to put into words. This is the area where you start going outside the normal use of words, because you can't quite demonstrate this in terms of cause and effect, it is a bit of a mystery. And when I talk about this in my later books, I think people do know what I'm talking about. I say this is an experience, and I think they do say, yes, I think I see what you mean, yes okay, it's my experience. But then they go away and think about it and then they can't sort of hold it, they can't hold the realization of this because there aren't the words, there isn't the normal, traditional conceptual usage to hold this idea. It's a bit of a mystery. The danger is to go floating off into mystical verbiage, which also isn't quite the point. But it is still an experience. 

   So when people come along and ask me what I mean by hopeful monsters, what I'm on about in Hopeful Monsters... hopeful monsters are these people who have got some sort of understanding - they hope to have some sort of understanding - that is new, that is perhaps just before its time, or just coming into its time, as it were, in themselves and in the world outside. So people say to me, well, okay, I see that that's desirable, and even possible, but what is it, what is this form of understanding that's not the traditional way of looking at things and feeling things; what is it? And then I try to say, try to put it into some sort of words, and people say they understand, but then say they're not quite sure what it is they've understood. And that's the way I sometimes feel about it. I feel it, I feel that this is an experience that not only I have but people have; but it is difficult to put into words, and if you can't put it into words it's difficult to hold it.

JB - Well, as I think you started to say yesterday, it involves giving up the idea of oneself as a character, at least part of the time, giving up the husk of character that's grown around one. 

NM - Yes, it's giving up the idea of oneself as a set-piece character, or giving up the idea of oneself wanting to be a set-piece character. People have been accustomed to thinking, and still are apt to think, that the way to get on in the world is to establish an all-of-a-piece character, which is consistent, everyone knows where you are, you want to get on in the world, that sort of thing. [But], in some sort of way this is not what human beings are like, it seems to me, and I think other people all know this really. When you come across these sort of set-piece characters - I don't know quite how to put it into words but I think everyone knows what I mean - they aren't real human beings, they're just sort of characters acting out a script, a role. And the feeling you have of a human being is of someone who's conscious of this predicament. Obviously everyone is a character to a certain extent, but one is always sort of loosening this up, opening up this character to other experience. And when I say you are opening this up, I mean that there's part of you as a human being that is opening up, exposing your own character to other influences, to other rules, to other forms of character, and so on, and that's what is the feel of a human being.

JB - This is the engaging with the complexity of life rather than trying to make it straightforward. 

NM - Yes, because life is complex and oneself is complex, a human being is complex: a human being is something that finds itself often torn apart. A human being finds itself opened up, by his or her own nature, and by the nature of his or her relationship with the outside world, and to deny this is a sort of death, a sort of limitation, a cutting off of limbs, an amputation of bits of one. That's a way of existence, but it doesn't seem to be to do with the kind of thing that human beings are. 

JB - You were saying that the later of the three stages of your work - represented by Catastrophe Practice and Hopeful Monsters - is more about this connection, opening up to the outside world. 

NM - Yes, Hopeful Monsters is the effort to say and to talk about - to show - the style in which people might live and might exist who are aware of this, who are aware of the ability, [that] if they look honestly at what they are themselves, and the demands that the outside world makes of them, and if they are open to what's going on in the outside world, they are not just characters desperately keeping alive on a tightrope, they are people who actually by so doing influence the outside world, influence what happens to them and to the world around them. They have some handle not only on keeping themselves going but on what they are going in and what they're going to, the circumstances in which they are moving. Now this is mysterious, as I say, but it seems to me to be an experienced fact.

JB - Perhaps you could read that piece from Hopeful Monsters where you talk about that old image of the thermostat.

NM - Oh yes, well, this is a bit near the end of Hopeful Monsters where I'm trying to tie up a few bits and pieces of the story. [The story] had been in narrative form, describing the way my characters have gone through their lives in a dramatic [way]; [but] as they're moving through their lives they're also learning, they're learning things that they hold in their minds.

Living organisms regulate themselves by maintaining a steady state in the face of changes in their environment; they heal and restore themselves in response to pressures and damage; they ensure consistency of form even when they reproduce themselves. In this they resemble a thermostat, which performs a function of maintaining a temperature within limits. This mechanical function is on one level; on another is the business of setting the dial, which is performed by humans. It is on this human level of consciousness that oscillations are apt to get out of control: there are dashings between extremes - wars, obsessions, self-destructions - a snowballing effect so that the human psyche, and thus human societies, are fen like engines without a governor, so of course eventually they are likely to fuse or blow themselves up. At one time it had been felt that just as human agency was responsible for the setting of a mechanical system, so a divine agency was responsible for the setting of a human system: but such a formulation (Max argued) was no longer necessary: humans themselves now had the ability to look down and see what was happening to them on the level of consciousness.* 

NM - Yes, I think so; there's the level at which this function happens automatically, and then there's the knowing that this happens automatically but thinking that this is not in human control - there's the seeing of the mechanisms of feedback, of interaction between the world and humans, but thinking that this is fate, or doom, or God, or whatever - but then there’s the third level, there's a third realization, which is that this is possibly, conceivably, within, not human control, but within the area of human influence. Human beings can't exactly control this sort of thing - quite obviously they can't control the whole world - but what they do is in an influencing relation with what's going on, and that's the crucial thing. And then I go on to tie this up with what seems to me to be a parallel here, the Christian theological idea of the level of God the Father: the rule of God the Father being the imagery of how things work on a cause and effect level; the idea of God the Son being the realization that humans are very intimately involved with this, but still, on this level, in a rather helpless way (you're involved with the symbol, the image of God the Son who's a victim, who realizes what's going on, but is a victim of it); and then the third level - which is the one that's hardly ever talked about, because it's very difficult to talk about - is the level of the Holy Spirit, where there’s the realization that all this is within human control, and the idea of God as the victim has been transformed into the knowledge of truth within one. Once one faces the old levels, one finds that one has got some living ability to be in relation with what's going on in the outside world.

JB - Well, read that section. 

NM - Reads page 542-543, from "There were obvious parallels, Max argued, between the idea of cybernetic levels and the efforts which Christians had made in trying to establish their doctrine of the Trinity." to "But with this spirit humans could keep an eye on (take a walk away from every now and then) the mechanism that to some extent necessarily ran themselves on other levels: the nature of the world seeming to be such that this watchfulness, alertness, gave a sense of the miracle of control."  [laughs] Yes. 

JB - The miracle is that there might be a hopeful spiritual monster, as well as a hopeful genetic monster, that through some sort of spiritual agency, you can make the experience of life better?

NM - Well, yes; you see these words, like "spiritual," of course have to be used in some contexts, but they're dangerous words, because no one knows quite what they mean. What I'm really trying to say is that these words are efforts to find words to say, for what people experience actually happens. ...words like "spirit" and "God" seem to me to be wild efforts to try to put into words something that people experience - when I say wild, I mean broad, very large-scale words, very cloudy, mysterious words, which are a serious effort to make sense of what people know. But then, when you've got the words, people try to pin it down, to define the words - "Oh I know what spirit means, it's abcxyz, and if it's not this then it's not anything" - well, then the whole thing gets out of control. That's why it's hard to get an exact grasp in this area, because this area is one in which an exact grasp is not applicable, is not relevant: one's talking about things which are necessarily outside one's control, but by realizing this, and being watchful and alert, then one does have a little handle in the control, in the mechanism.

JB - This idea about religious language goes all the way back to your book Experience and Religion, doesn't it. 

NM - Yes, that was my first effort to try to talk about these things. I had been for several years a committed Christian, and I'd done the sorts of things, for a while, that committed Christians are traditionally expected to do. I'd gone to church when I was supposed to, I did the sacraments in the way I was supposed to and performed the sacramental stuff, but as time went on and I learned more of what I thought I was being taught traditionally, going to the services, using prayer, reading the Bible... I finally read the Bible all through, fifteen-hundred pages or whatever it is, which of course hardly anyone ever does, it seems to me, but if you do that you get a sort of eye-opener, because reading it that way, it seems to me - I got, anyway - quite a different impression of what was being talked about and demonstrated from what I had got from being a traditional Christian, going to church and just hearing bits of the Bible just chopped up into bits and pieces. You get a few parables here and there, the nice Old Testament stories just higgledy-piggledy. And the effect of that seemed to me to be totally different from the effect when one really took it all on oneself and read the Bible from A to Z. It seemed to me to be quite explicit in the Bible, if you read it through, that there was the Age of God the Father, when you were supposed to live by rules, which didn't work; human beings were not such that this could actually work; it did not work. Then there was the Age of God the Son, in which it was demonstrated that this did not work, the style in which this didn't work, and the necessity of facing the ways in which the rules, demands, did not work.

JB - The style of the parables... 

NM - Yes, the style of the parable and the stories of the New Testament are all to do with paradoxes, difficulties: how do I help my neighbour? who is my neighbor? these sorts of things, and the injunctions to love your neighbour as yourself, and then, if you love yourself, how do you love your neighbour? These are all sort of paradoxical things, and this is the style which humans find so difficult to do, and because they find it so difficult to do it, they kill other people and they kill themselves, they can't handle the situation. So the Age of God the Son is the facing up to the terrible, paradoxical human situation and the recognition of sacrifice: the need for sacrifice and the efficacy of sacrifice and dying, for others or oneself, or whatever. But then it seemed to me to be absolutely explicit at the end of the New Testament, Christ said, okay, now this had been done, and in some sense this is now over, and from now on this understanding and demonstration which you have been given by me, Christ, is going to enable you to deal with the paradoxes, handle the predicament, by listening to the truth within you, which will guide you, which is the guiding spirit of truth, which is the Holy Ghost. And this seemed to me to be what the Bible was saying, and it seemed to me that most people in the Church were not seeing, or saying, that this was what the Bible was saying, and this seemed to me to be ridiculous. And it seemed to me important to start trying to find out, in experience, what this was that was being said.

JB - It not being said in a literal message, but in a parable and in the style of the language. 

NM - Yes, in the style of language. The parable seemed to be a way of holding it in mind that life wasn't simple, you had to hold in mind the complexities. 

JB - And Jesus’ conduct left the interpretation open in some way. 

NM - Yes, well, this is complex, isn't it, this is difficult: of course, there's the question of how much Jesus knew what he was up to. This goes very deep into matters of theology: Jesus as both god and man, he both knew the whole thing that he was up to as god, but he did not know as man, et cetera. This is complex theology, but all the paradoxes of theology - Jesus as both god and man, the Trinity, in which three are one and one are three - these are all extremely hard-won insights, hard worked at ways of trying to talk about the actual human condition as it is experienced by human beings

JB - But it generates a kind of sensitivity. 

NM - Yes, if you hold this it generates a sensitivity to the workings - in theological language - of the Holy Spirit. It generates a realization that if one tries to hold these ideas, paradoxes, in one's mind, then one experiences one’s being in relationship with the outside world, in the way of a to and fro interaction with the outside world. A phrase I use in the books often is "If one looks after the means then the ends look after themselves." Well, "looking after the means" means being aware of one's own nature, the complexity of one's own nature, and of the relationship between oneself and the outside world - holding this in mind, being aware of it, carrying it, listening, being alert to it - and, then, the so-called miracle is that different things from what might be expected then seem to happen in the outside world: coincidences or occurrences happen in the outside world that do seem to have some relationship with one's state of mind, and one's effort at states of mind. And this is not cause and effect - if you try to put it into scientific notions of cause and effect, it simply isn't relevant, it doesn't work, but one still experiences that this is so, this is the case.

JB - And this way of seeing it is independent of any particular theological language.

NM - I think so, yes. It seems to me that the Christian language is a very marvelous language; it seems to me that it's a language of enormous subtlety, really staggering subtlety. But, of course, because it is a language of subtlety it is so often by simple minded Christians, it seems to me, got wrong, it's reduced to partisan dogma, which seems to me to be absurd. It just isn't what the language is about at all. I don't see how anyone who reads the Bible can possibly see themselves as a simple dogmatist, knowing all the answers - Protestants are right and Catholics are wrong - it seems to me completely insane. If you can read the Bible and think that, well, I don't know...

JB - In the language of the Eastern tradition - I know you've talked about this in Judith - it's just a matter of realizing what you are. 

NM -Yes, I think the Eastern tradition, from what I know of it - Hinduism and Buddhism and Tao and Zen - I think all these languages are relevant. They're of different peoples, with different requirements, in different parts of the world. They're all efforts at saying the same thing, and not just saying the same thing, but finding a way of holding it and living. There's different emphasis, due to the different social characteristics or environmental characteristics around the world. Buddhism is a more quietist religion, and so on, but these religions are all, in a sense, saying the same thing: One has to look at what one is, one has got to be alert and watchful for what the situation is, and then... that will be what is required by the outside world for the outside world. 

JB - This is the naturalistic interpretation of the same complex, then, the same set of relationships. In genetic or evolutionary terms, .there's seeing oneself in contact with the world, as part of the natural world. 

NM - Yes, well. one sees oneself as part of a self-evolving natural world, a self-creating - in the sense of evolving - natural world, yes. And consciousness, human consciousness, is, as far as one can see, the latest stage in the evolutionary mechanism, the natural evolutionary mechanism, and what seems to be special about consciousness is that - it is now being talked about by hard-nosed scientists - consciousness actually plays a part in the ordering of the material world. Now this is going into realms where no one is very clear, whether you can make these connections - between one sort of language you're using and another sort of language you're using. But now it is common knowledge - in science and physics there is this idea - that it is the observation and the observer which actually alters and influences what is observed, and all this sort of thing. It is consciousness, being conscious of an object, that actually affects the... this is difficult... it either affects the nature of the object or it affects the way in which the object is seen, and, in some sort of sense or the other, that is the object. I mean, this sort of language is all open to endless argument, discussion, interpretation, of course; this is where language stops being able to be squeezed into very simple analytical logical categories and goes floating away.

JB - Well, there's the handicap of the dualism: there's "us" and there's "it" - there's the inside world, consciousness, and then there's the outside natural world - and you're saying that's not enough.

NM - Well, I'm saying that's not the case really, you see. I'm saying that the apparent dualism, when you go deep enough and when you look at it closely enough, or when you're able to stand back [chuckles] - i.e., when you're able to create a sort of dualism by standing back from yourself, which in a sense is creating a dualism - here am I looking at myself - then what you find is that you actually have not got a dualism, that all these things have an interaction. Not only are you - you that you're looking at - interacting, but somehow, by so doing, you realize that you're interacting with dthe whole world, and the world's interacting with you. So, by the step of thinking, you're making some dualism, [but] by standing back and looking at yourself, what you find is that you've discovered the relationship not only between you and yourself but between you and everything else. And that is a sort of way that physicists are talking on this level, on this sort of quantum level of subatomic matter, of what are the ultimate constituents of matter, the ultimate nature of matter.

JB - You don't see the pattern of which you're a part, because if you could you wouldn't be part of that pattern. It must be, as you were saying, that the use of this language is to open one to the sense of some connection, but not something you can look at. 

NM - Yes, well it's to open yourself to something that... You have the realization that you're moving in this area in the dark, but you're moving, and as you go along what was dark becomes more light. I'm not sure if that's quite the.... 

JB - Well, you have the language of glimpsing... 

NM - Yes. 

JB - ...that you can only see in some indirect way. Actually "sees" is the wrong word, but you get an idea of how the pattern might be and what your place might be, but it's not literal, something you can describe. 

NM - No, that's right, it's not in the area of words; if you think you can describe it accurately, then you've somehow sort of killed it, it isn't interesting. You're trying to find out what it is to describe, and its the effort to describe it and the search to describe it that is the working relationship with the whole. 

*Hopeful Monsters, Minerva paperback edition 1990, page 542 paragraph begins "Max’s commitment to cybernetics." and Mosley reads from "Living organisms regulate themselves." to "level of consciousness."