AG: We’re up to in Blake.. (in William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence)
”To be in a Passion you Good may Do/ But no Good if a Passion is in you”
“The Whore & Gambler by the State/ Licencd builds that Nations Fate”
– (That’s kind of interesting, considering the modern licensing of gambling in New Jersey . And you can see the Mafia taking over)
“The harlots cry from street to street/ Shall weave Old Englands winding sheet”
“The Winners Shout the Losers Curse/ Dance before dead Englands Hearse”
Every Night & every Morn/Some to Misery are Born”
“Every Morn and every Night/ Some are Born to sweet delight”
“Some are Born to sweet delight/Some are Born to Endless Night”
We are led…. that’s kind of interesting – that is Vajrayana – “Every Morn and every Night/ Some are Born to sweet delight/ Some are Born to sweet delight/ (and) Some are born to Endless Night” – We’ll pick up on that in a minute….
“We are led to Believe a Lie/ When we see with not Thro the Eye”
Thro the eye. Actually, that’s very good instruction on how to compose your eyes during meditation, very literally see through the eye, from the back of the head into space, through the window of the eyeball, realizing the particular perception you might get if you’re actually attentive to the phenomena of optical phenomena, attentive, in the sense of resting within them, without trying to rationalize,but simply seeing physically through the front surface of the eye into the space.
I don’t know if while you’re..while you meditate you fall into that space. See, otherwise, when you look out, if you look out staring, you get a solidified external universe (which looks real) and you’re led to believe a lie . Whereas, if you’re actually sitting in a resting position with your eyeball relaxed, aware of the space at the surface of the eye (actually, literally aware of your eyeball surface and all the dust motes floating in it and
the space outside of it) , you see..there’s a certain transparency to the otherwise over-tense over-real external phenomena appearance.
“We are led to Believe a Lie when we see with not Thro the Eye”– It’s (just) simply Einstein-ian, it’s an Einstein-ian take, in a way that Einstein-ian notion that a (the) measuring-instrument determines the external shape of the thing measured and as the measuring instrument changes, the shape of the universe changes, or the shape of phenomena changes, which Blake repeats in another line in “The Mental Traveler” when he says “The eye altering, alters all” . You know that line? That’s a great slogan – The eye altering, alters all” . Anybody that’s taken acid knows that one – “The eye altering, alters all” . ok – We are led to believe a lie when we see not through the eye
(Incidentally, if any of you have this Harold Bloom, Erdman good text of Blake,the big thick thing, they’ve got a misprint – it says: ‘We are led to believe a lie when we see not Thro the Eye”, but the original is: “We are led to believe a lie when we see With not Thro the Eye” – There’s also reduction of “When we see not Thro the eye” – He’s got the “with”in there (not with but through the eye – it’s a little better, a little clearer what the “Thro” means) – “We are led to Believe a Lie/ When we see not Thro the Eye”
“Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night/ When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light” – That’s kind of mysterious. Do you know Blake well enough to interpret that, Glen (sic)?
We are.. We are.. “The Eye/ Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night/ When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light” – I’ve never fully understood that.
Student: (I don’t know if I can…) ..but he.. the eyes in (the baby’s world)… he has this whole idea of…they’re hit by that first flash of light and there’s this conditioning-process which takes place, right from the beginning (and so, you know, in London), the baby’s tears lasted. So that the eye is fatally conditioned. In that way, he can’t see because the organs of perception have been conditioned….and so you have to… Before that they were these souls of light… (but now…) (And by the way, from the very beginning he’s shocked with this, you know, with this.. phenomena ,which conditions it). That’s the way I would (interpret) it.
AG: Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not sure. It sounds sometimes to me that he’s saying that..he’s not referring to the night before birth and the night after death, he’s referring to this as night (this) vegetable world, and prior, as you were saying, the soul slept in beams of light – Yes?
Student: (He says you see not with your eyes, it’s almost like your soulcomes through your eyes
AG: A little louder?
Student: Can you “see not through the eye”? So that (it’s, possibly, the whole thing is some body inside you that’s deceitful..
AG: What’s the last three words. You’re holding..?
Student: (You’re holding) deceit
AG: Oh yes, “deceitful”, you’re holding back,.. you’re holding in something deceitful. Yeah?
Student: Yes, meaning your soul is being made like glass.
AG: Yes, when your soul itself is opaque, or deceitful, then you’re stuck with seeing just what’s outside, and not recognizing the phenomena of opacity or (your) deceitfulness inside
Student: Or if it’s not you that’s glass, that’s what people perceive, what you might show (to people..)
AG: Uh-huh. That makes sense – “When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light”, “Born in a Night to perish in a Night/ When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light…
[to Gregory Corso] – Have you ever had any idea of that, Gregory?
Gregory Corso: Yeah
AG: Yeah? What is that word for you? What does that mean?
GC: In the night?
AG: Yeah – “We are led to Believe a Lie/ When we see not Thro the Eye/ Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night/ When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light” – “Born in a Night to perish in a Night/ When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light” – That’s a riddle. (And that’s the…) there are only four lines more
Student : (Yes, born) outside of this world, but it’s still the light, while we’re in night ..all around the world
AG: Yeah, but, except, there’s something a little easy about (that), you know, it sounds too pat, somehow. And, also, it doesn’t carry (unless I don’t understand it, which I don’t..) it doesn’t carry that immediate literal meaning that the “Each outcry of a hunted hare/A fibre from the Brain does tear “.. It doesn’t have the.. quite that literal (quality). It sounds more theoretic
Student: (So Blake describes his) cosmology first
AG:Then he goes on – “God Appears..” – (that’s interesting) – “God Appears & God is Light/To those poor Souls who dwell in Night” (he really reverses it, you know).
“But does a Human Form Display/ To those who dwell in Realms of Day?” – (which is more Vajrayana – (the other one is theistic ) – “God appears and God is light/ To those poor souls who dwell in night” – But does a Human Form Display to those who Dwell in Realms of day?”
That’s a very..I keep hearing a little angelic sixteen-year-old boy’s voice saying , “- But, does a Human Form Display to those who Dwell in Realms of day ?” It’s really a sort of innocent voice saying that – da-da da-da da-datta-da – But does a human form Display?”
[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately forty-four-and-a-half minutes in and concluding at approximately fifty-four minutes in]