Allen Ginsberg on William Blake’s The Four Zoas continued from here
Student: But that’s the disgrace of Blakean and Christian mystics, too, as well as, I think … when you’re talking about the …
AG: Yeah.
Student: ..Tibetan Book of the Dead when you say these monsters …
AG: Right.
Student: … of Beulah..
AG: Yeah, they’re all our own projections. That’s the point in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The exercises (are) preliminary are exercises in recognizing the thought forms and images as being your own projections and not taking them for real.
Student: There’s always been a priesthood that’s (been) willing to convert the scriptures and the Bible and say..
AG: Yeah.
Student: … and say, well, because of this, you’ve got to obey me..
AG: Uh-huh.
Student: …which Blake must have felt….
AG: Well, that was his point, but I guess the question is, is there a deity external to the human mind or is the human mind the author of any projection of a deity?
Student: Well, getting….
AG: Is that a fair question? I don’t know.
Student (2): Blake, for example, talks about Jesus the Divine Vision, as the human imagination.
AG: Yeah.
Student(2): That doesn’t mean that it’s synonymous with every individual …
AG: Right.
Student (2): … only in every individual in imagination..
AG: Um-hmm.
Student(2): ..It’s like a congregate, or like an aggregate, of human imagination, or potentiality.
AG: It would be (an) aggregate, social thing..
Student (2): Yeah.
AG: Yeah. What is it that Los is, then? Los is the Jesus – i.e., the human imagination – or Urthona, Los would be the human imagination in a fallen form.
Student (2): Right.
AG: The Spectre of the human imagination, lost in a lost world. But still with a seed of enlightenment ultimately to win through and recover the whole….
Student (2): Yeah, the imagination can see both ways beyond its own imprisonment …… that’s why it has to be the saving …. function. It’s the fourth immortal starting block. Without the fourth you can’t get out of the separation.
AG: Yeah.
Student (2): Even though it itself is entrapped in it, it somehow or other has the … it can pick itself up by its own bootstraps, so to speak.
AG: Whose conception is that? The imagination as this independent spirit. Do you know the history of that? That must come from the … what? Iamblichus or people like Richard of St. Victor. Would they have that phrase? Or do they have any spirit like the imagination?
Student(2): Artaud talks about the imagination in a very modernistic way.. I don’t know.
AG: Jacob Boehm?
Student (2): In Boehm, too.
AG: Would that be Blake’s lineage for the particular concept of imagination? – some free spirit that redeems? A redeeming spirit that’s not a deus ex machina – that’s not a god from the outside but something….
Student (2): Yes, through that whole occult tradition I think – the Gnostic idea, too. The spark of the divine is inside the husk – the body or whatever – and wants to break out, and that’s why that’s why.. Los always comes on a fiery form. He’s the spark. He wants to get back to the wholeness … to impart vision.. and is it..
Student: I think, in less occult Christian tradition, it was the Holy Ghost that spoken by the prophets.
AG: Um-hmm.
Student: Only Los being some very different … being our own ears.
AG: Um-hmm. I guess, what it is….
Student: ( (and) deep inside), outside of the personality too…
AG: I have difficulty with that interpretation of the Christian divinity. But would (that) be an Anglican version of the Christian notion of God? Is that an Anglican….
Student: To say that the Holy Ghost spoke by the prophets? That’s in the Creed.
AG: Yeah, but is it….
Student: The Nicene Creed, dating from the 4th century. That’s been….
AG: And the notion of God as someone not independent … of course, there is this stereotype of God is within. But does that mean, literally speaking, (God) does not exist outside of our imagination? In other words, is there any legit, bona-fide Christian tradition, non-heretic tradition, where God exists outside of our imagination?
to be continued
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately sixty-four-and-three-quarter minutes and concluding at approximately sixty-eight-and-a-quarter minutes in