What I, in common with his other enthusiastic readers, took from his work was a conviction and a technique. The conviction was that the everyday world might be — as to adolescents it certainly is — full of boredom and triviality, but the wider world of nature, art, and learning is full of inexhaustible interest. But it’s easy to lose sight of the latter, and let ourselves be trapped in the former. The technique, the trick for lifting oneself from the one world to the other, was simple enough: intense concentration followed by relaxation will lead to elation.

The thing is, it does work.

Colin Wilson, the permanent outsider – Ken MacLeod – Aeon (via deathbeard)