Crime is, then, a completely mistaken solution to a problem that accompanies all of us from the cradle to the grave: the problem of personal evolution. But then, as we have seen in the course of this book, most human solutions tend to be mistaken - from the paradise of the religious fanatic to the simplistic materialism of the Marxist. The criminal simply goes farther than most of us in embracing the wrong solution; and, in doing so, provides the rest of us with a flash of insight into our own stupidity - the recognition that we are making the same mistake, but - fortunately - on a smaller scale. This is the real justification for the human interest in crime.

We have seen that this is an evolutionary problem. All animals are trapped in physical immediacy. Man is lucky to have succeeded in achieving some degree of detachment from it. Instinctively he has concentrated on developing the power of the mind - meaning perception. His problem is that his very success has retarded his progress. Civilisation has enabled him to ‘rest on his oars’. He needs challenge or crisis to get the best out of him, but he built civilisation to protect himself from challenge and crisis.

Is there a way out of this vicious circle? Consider again this basic problem of the ‘dual self. Our inner-being may be divided, but we still have the two halves inside our heads, and they are perfectly capable of co-operation - in fact, they do it all the time. As I write these words, my right brain provides the insights, my left translates them into language. Of course, when I perform some simpler function - like eating my breakfast - the left hardly plays any part at all; I can even read a newspaper as I butter my toast.

And this explains how the problem comes about. For if I happen to be eating my breakfast in a hotel, and there is a noisy and irritating child at the next table, I cease to function quite so smoothly. What happens is that the child’s noise distracts my attention from the newspaper, and I - the leftbrain self - begin to get angry. I cease to enjoy my breakfast and may even develop indigestion. My left brain has interfered with the smooth functioning of my right brain, my ‘robot’ and my digestion.

And what exactly happens when it interferes in this way? It causes an internal leak of energy. When I am relaxed and interested in what I am doing, my energies are ‘funnelled’ quietly and without waste into the effort I am making. The moment my left brain is distracted by some anxiety, I begin to ‘leak’. And this is civilised man’s basic problem. He ‘leaks’ all the time without even noticing it. And the leakage keeps his consciousness at a far lower pressure than it is capable of attaining.

If his anxiety increases sharply, he suddenly notices how badly he is leaking. He may experience a continual unpleasant queasiness in the pit of his stomach, and anything that reminds him of his anxiety causes a ‘sinking feeling’ - a bigger leak still. The reverse can also happen. He has a second martini, becomes interested in the conversation, and suddenly realises that he is no longer leaking. But these delightful states of mind only make us aware of how much we normally leak without even noticing it.

Anything that makes you self-conscious causes a ‘leak’ - for example, someone staring intently at your feet as you sit on the train and making you wonder whether you have odd socks on. But man’s whole evolution has been the evolution of self-consciousness. It is hardly surprising that ‘leaking’ has become the major characteristic of the human animal. We have only to look at a cat to see that its lack of self-consciousness protects it from ‘leaks’.

Anything that arouses our interest, that makes us focus intently, seals the leaks. It does this by encouraging the two halves of the brain to collaborate without fuss. This explains the disproportionate part that sex plays in human existence. We can imagine, let us say, a man who is suddenly confronted by a girl who believes she is alone, and who is hitching up her skirt to examine a ladder in her stocking. Within a split second, all his ‘leaks’ are sealed, and his attention is undivided - which is another way of saying that his brain is undivided. All kinds of physical functions can produce this state of undividedness - eating, drinking, yawning, walking, even excreting. But few of them do it as instantaneously as sex.

And it is because sex can instantly repair the leaks of divided consciousness that human beings are so prone to sexual deviation - which, as we have seen, is closely connected with crime. John Christie was too self-conscious to enjoy normal sexual intercourse - in his home town he had been known as ‘Can’t-do-it Christie’ and ‘Reggie No-dick’. But if he reduced the girl to unconsciousness, then his self-consciousness disappeared and he could enjoy sex to the full. This, in other words, was the only way in which he could unite the two beams of perception, and it turned him into a mass murderer. ‘Forbiddenness’ would add a new dimension of excitement, and therefore of objectivity. It is not surprising that he experienced a deep sense of peace after a murder, and told the police: ‘I had no regrets.’

The same analysis applies to a man who needs to get prostitutes to dress up as nursemaids or schoolgirls. His meaning perception is so weak in proportion to his immediacy perception that normal sex crushes his vitality. He feels feeble, inadequate, ‘contingent’. The sight of a schoolgirl uniform arouses a kind of inner demon; it rubs its hands and chuckles wickedly as it prepares to lift her skirt; he is no longer feeble and inadequate, but bold and defiant. And this, we can see at a glance, is the basic psychological mechanism of crime. This is why Knowles went on a crime rampage after being jilted; he was asserting: ‘I am not a weakling, a social reject. I have the power to do.’ Through criminal aggression, he was asserting self-respect. The journalist Sandy Fawkes, who became Knowles’s mistress for a few days, described him in her book Killing Time as an interesting and intelligent person. It was precisely because he was an intelligent person that he was racked by the ‘identity crisis’ to which the violence was a response. This explains the whole phenomenon of the ‘high IQ criminal’ which has become so characteristic of our time.

We can also see that the ‘identity crisis’ is due to the distress the left-brain ego feels at the belief that it is ‘on its own’. It is unaware that it possesses a powerful helper only a few centimetres away. This also explains why no poet, artist or composer in history has ever committed a calculated, first degree murder. The artist may also suffer an identity crisis, a sense of ‘Who am I?’ Yet the fact that he is an artist means that he can never be wholly unaware of the ‘invisible helper’.

We are beginning to see our way towards a solution of the problem - not just of crime, but of the ‘bottleneck’ in human evolution.

The problem - it should now be clear - is that the left-brain ego is unaware of its powers. But then, awareness is something that can be cultivated.