. 8eyond the
Occult
colin Wilson The Romeo Error Lyall Watson (Hodder and "Leughton £3.25) 1,11). LYall Watson is a biologist who spent some `IPe working with Desmond Morris, the author (),.! The Naked Ape, and he began his career as a of scientific populariser, with a book called „he Omnivorous Ape. From that point on, you 'euld say his career has gone either steeply up Or steeply down — hill, depending on the view take. For Watson became interested in the orderland between science andwhat used to recalled loosely, the occult,' and his Superna,11re, published in 1973, became something of a °ast seller. Not that this was a particularly 'far eta book. It simply recorded a great many cientific observations that did not seem to fit 1„11 with a rigidly materialistic view of the tTiverse — such as Cleve Backster's discovery ar,t Plants can apparently read our minds, rrood was always terrified of what he called fthe black tide of occultism," and Watson's ,,etlow-scientists have probably already `,eached the conclusion that he is up to his waist al the evil-smelling swamp. His latest book will certain] y justify their gloomiest forebodings, r it is a frontal attack on the whole problem of ecath and life-after-death. I wouldn't be suurPrised if Watson didn't lose his scientific Rrli°r1 Card. My own feeling is that, if The 0frie0 Error is bad science, I wish there were triere bad scientists.
Of course the title is off-putting — I should think it would get a prize for one of the worst titles of the year. It refers to Romeo's mistaken belief that Juliet is dead, and is confusing as well as uninformative, because only the first few pages of the book are taken up with the purely scientific problem of exactly when life turns to death. Then, like a car accelerating, he is into more fascinating subjects.
A review cannot do justice to its astonishing range — not inside ten thousand words, anyway. But I can try and give some idea. In the third chapter, he talks about people who have come close to death while falling — from aeroplanes or in the mountains. Not only is the old story about "all your life flashing in front of your eyes" apparently true, but it also seems that such people also experience a positively narcotic sense of peace. People who know they are going to die of disease at first experience incredulity, shock, anger, desperate hope; but when they reconcile themeselves to it, there is a state of deep peace. This applies Also, it seems, to men sentenced to death in Sing Sing. These stories of sudden flashes of insight and ecstasy on the edge of death remind me of Tolstoy's story The Death of Ivan Ilyich — which Watson does not mention; Tolstoy's description of Ilyich's final flash of sheer ecstasy — and the sudden conviction that death does not exist— seem positively clairvoyant in view of Watson's observations. Watson goes on to speak further of those odd experiments with plants, which seem to prove telepathic sensitivity. Anyone who saw that BBC programme about insect-eating plants recently will recall the comment that scientists still have no idea of the mechanism involved; Watson's chapter seems to suggest the answer. He goes on to speak about scientific evidence for telepathy, and comes up with some fascinating observations. For example, an experimenter (from a College of Engineering) discovered recently that when one friend thinks intently about another; no matter how great the distance, the one who is thought about has a measurable rise in blood pressure and volume. Which would seem to suggest that the old wives' tale about your ears burning when someone talks about you may be true after all. Typically, Watson doesn't mention this; 1 get the feeling he is doing his best to walk the scientific tightrope, hoping his colleagues won't get too furious.
Studies tif various tests on the body's electrical field suddenly take him into deeper water. He sketches Harold Burr's conclusions, based on the "life-fields" of trees, and states his belief that living cells are held together by some "magnetic pattern" outside the cells — a 'spirit' if you like (although he would wince at the word). Kirlian photography, which he goes on to describe (photographing objects between two highly charged plates), produces some incredible results, showing living matter surrounded by a kind of "corona" like the sun's flares, suggesting this same "life field." A photograph of a man's fingertip showed a dark blob surrounded by an "aura." After he had had a drink of alcohol, the print was now literally "lit up," showing as a white blob with the fingerprints all clearly visible. A 'spirit healer,' photographed immediately after healing, had a kind of oi-ange flame coming from the fingertip, like a blow-torch.
If I say there are chapters on such phenomena as flying saucers and the Loch Ness monster, it will probably sound as if Watson is simply aiming for the crank-occult audience in a thoroughly cynical way. In fact, as you read the book, it is clear this is not so. What distinguishes this from so many books of 'marvels' is that he really argues, and endlessly produces evidence that sounds scientifically convincing.
I do not know where he will go next; but I get the feeling that, wherever it is, he will be worth following.
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