Some musings on and by William Blake

[Soul_of_Shu]

I've been listening to these readings, transporting one into the poetic, visionary brilliance that is the lavish soulscape of William Blake, which others may also find of value ...

[AshvinP]

I've been listening to these readings, transporting one into the poetic, visionary brilliance that is the lavish soulscape of William Blake, which others may also find of value ...

I remember coming across Goddard early last year or the year before, and was really impressed at the time. From what I recall, he treats all of scripture as a revelation of what is occurring in our "personal" psyche. In some ways, it is aligned with what many Jungian psychologists do as well. And this is accurate to the extent that we are, in fact, microcosms of the Macrocosm and therefore all the latter evolutionary dynamics can be found within our inner being as well. But the problem, as always, is when this view gets reified into the 'view-in-itself', where the "personal" dynamics are used to avoid confronting the much broader transpersonal spiritual reality which resides between our current localized fragmented perspective and the ever-present Origin. As we see very often here, it is all too easy for us to utilize these views as a way of sitting back and just saying, "whatever happens, happens... where we are right now is where the Divine within us says we are supposed to be, so why change anything about ourselves?" That is not to say people like Goddard didn't go around doing things or helping people, but it's unlikely he perceived how spiritual evolution unfolds through our proactive Thinking activity which harmonizes the immanent-transcendent aspects of experience in a concrete way. We are not passive observers of the entire process.

“If we do not believe within ourselves this deeply rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves, we shall never find the strength to evolve into something higher.”

[Soul_of_Shu]

I remember coming across Goddard early last year or the year before ...

Curiously, I don't recall ever having come across Goddard before, perhaps in name only, then forgotten, while never following up on it. Anyway, I was mainly lured in out of curiosity about the interpretations of Blake, and the reading of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. I'm still not feeling inclined to delve much further into Goddard.

[Ben Iscatus]

it's unlikely he perceived how spiritual evolution unfolds through our proactive Thinking activity which harmonizes the immanent-transcendent aspects of experience in a concrete way. We are not passive observers of the entire process.

Of course Blake understood this -the "mind-forg'ed manacles" of Reason turning the burning bright tyger of Imagination into a feeble lamb.

[AshvinP]

I remember coming across Goddard early last year or the year before ...

Curiously, I don't recall ever having come across Goddard before, perhaps in name only, then forgotten, while never following up on it. Anyway, I was mainly lured in out of curiosity about the interpretations of Blake, and the reading of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. I'm still not feeling inclined to delve much further into Goddard.

I generally prefer the philosophy of Coleridge to Blake, although they were both brilliant poetic thinkers in their own right, because Coleridge also perceived, like Goethe, the polar dynamic underlying our Thinking experience, the deep continuity of Reason and Imagination, and the capacity to bring the latter "[philosophic organ" below] into greater clarity of consciousness through the natural cognitive evolutionary process.

"Socrates in Plato shows, that an ignorant slave may be brought to understand and of himself to solve the most difficult geometrical problem. Socrates drew the figures for the slave in the sand. The disciples of the critical philosophy could likewise represent the origin of our representations in copper-plates; but no one has yet attempted it, and it would be utterly useless... The sense, the inward organ, for it is not yet born in him. So is there many a one among us... to whom the philosophic organ is entirely wanting. To such a man philosophy is a mere play of words and notions, like a theory of music to the deaf, or like the geometry of light to the blind."

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817)

[Soul_of_Shu]

Of course Blake understood this -the "mind-forg'ed manacles" of Reason turning the burning bright tyger of Imagination into a feeble lamb.

Yes, and I expect that Gebser would have read "mind-forg'ed manacles" as the kind that confines, hinders and limits 'thinking' to the 'mental' stage and state.

[Ben Iscatus]

Yes, and I expect that Gebser would have read "mind-forg'ed manacles" as the kind that confines, hinders and limits 'thinking' to the 'mental' stage and state.

Interestingly, Blake sometimes called Reason "thought"

[AshvinP]

Of course Blake understood this -the "mind-forg'ed manacles" of Reason turning the burning bright tyger of Imagination into a feeble lamb.

Yes, and I expect that Gebser would have read "mind-forg'ed manacles" as the kind that confines, hinders and limits 'thinking' to the 'mental' stage and state.

Gebser identifies "deficient" stages of the magical, mythical, and mental. Many people here reify the deficient stages into the entire stage and that's why no continuity is perceived between mental-perspectival and integral-aperspectival. Gebser goes at great lengths to combat this reification at every turn, but it is the hallmark of the deficient mental stage to abstract and fragment these things, basically ignoring what does not fit into its tiny well-defined categories, which is something Gebser also points out. That is why it's so important to make all these concepts concrete to our Thinking experience. We can even see from 1st-person perspective how the evolutionary progression plays out over the course of each day. This will help us avoid falling into the trap so many 'Romantic' thinkers like Blake fell into, which is really none other than the trap Kant fell into when critiquing "pure Reason", i.e. a Reason which is presumed to be somehow detached from all sense-experience, which is a presumption that can only be the result of a phantom abstraction by someone trapped within the deficient mental stage they are aiming to critique.