Allen Ginsberg on William Blake – continues –
AG: So going on from there, this Plate XI – “The ancient Poets…” – page 37 of the Erdman text – “The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged and numerous senses could perceive – (So, Spontaneous Mind making up Spirits, names, words, poems, metaphors). And, particularly, they’ve studied the genius of each city and country, placing it under its natural deity – “Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of and enslaved the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects – (and so give them big names, like, “This is a complaint of the Jews, the Hebrews, that, never make an image, never pronounce the name of God, never make a picture image of the world, never try to abstract the world into a picture image, because event and name are not identical, a name can never displace, or replace, or be identical with the actual event. Just like two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time. So, language – conception, abstractions in the middle of reason. Experience is repeated several times and then generalized into a.. fixation.. fixations. The third skandha, for Buddhist scholars, what’s that? the third skanda?
Student : Thought-form perception?
AG: Yeah. What would that be in… You have the form, and then you’d have the feeling about it, yes? no? or indifferent, and then you bumped into something and you liked it, or you did not like it, or not care. Then you do it repeatedly till you get a fixed reaction to it – “Oh yes, the nimtree, that’s the nimtree, that’s the nimtree, that’s good – ‘ (the) water monk, the water monk’ So it would be the third skanda which would begin to fixate your experience (“skandha” means “heaps of appearances”), or the third stage of consciousness. The first stage is just Wow! just open space, everything is there. Second stage – “Ow, I hurt my leg, I don’t like that desk” – I did it again – “I don’t like that desk” – so you get a fixation. And then the next stage would be living in a world of desks! And then the next stage would be writing a big treatise on the philosophy of the desk-universe!
Alienation /Sensation/ Fixation – no.. Alienation/Reaction…”, no.. Alienation/Sensation/Reaction/Fixation/Meditation – That would do it.. I think was that what we had the last time? – yeah..just to make it rhyme
“..Till a system was formed” – (like I just did) – “which some took advantage of and enslaved the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental…(“abstract”, or realize, real-ize, make real, make them real, not just imaginative forms) – “or anstract the mental deities from their objects – thus began the Priesthood.” – (which is a problem we have here, say, in the Buddhist community, or in the Catholic community – that to what extent does the priesthood get fixated on its perceptions or its ideas, or to what extent are its ideas empty and unfixated and gentle. And you’ll know. So it’s an individual experience but it’s a constant, something constantly that has to be worked with that is cutting through conceptual organization constantly and cutting through identity constantly (which is what he’s talking about, he’s complaining about it, that they’ve solidified the identities of natural strains, feelings). Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales! – (ridiculous!) – So “at length they pronounce…” another.. another essay later on, in “A Memorable Fancy”, he’ll be saying that all the prophets were just a bunch of poets – like him – “And at length they pronounced that the Gods had ordered such things/ Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast” – (And that’s very clear, I think, a beautiful, clear.. (it) fits with common sense, it fits with radical politics and it fits with classic Buddhist notions that all… the herukas (he’s talking about the herukas, the ancient.. they’re the giants, the world of the giants, the ancient objects (So I’ll talk about giants later on), like in the Buddhist term of the herukas, I think).
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately seventy-six-and-a-half minutes in and concluding at approxmately eighty-two-and-three-quarter minutes in