Allen Ginsberg’s 1979 Naropa class (“Summer Discourse”) on William Blake continues from here
Student: You know, most of these mystics seem to experience a tremendous heat and light and a kind of awe-experiencing love, they don’t experience any great big mind-blowing computer up there who’s … I mean, that’s not the way I understand it..
AG: Well, I mean why with a computer? I mean why not just the traditional …
Student: Yeah.
AG: … guy with the beard, judging..
Student: But, I mean….
AG: ..which Blake is denouncing all the time.
Student: But I mean in your L.S.D. experiences, didn’t you say you experienced some terrifying? …
AG: Yes.
Student: … agonizing? …
AG: Yes.
Student: … (troubling) things
AG: Actually I’ve written about it at great length.
Student: Maybe you should make note of your L.S.D….
AG: Oh, I have.
Student: … experiences.
AG: Well, now, actually, the way I got out of it (was) I went to see this guy Dudjom Rinpoche in ’62 in India, a Nyingma teacher, and he said, “If you see anything horrible, don’t cling to it, and if you see anything beautiful, don’t cling to it”. Cut through both ways.
And then, I did.. (in) about 1967, I took some acid and did, just some sitting, paying attention to breath, so any time there was a solidification of a central intelligence agency, it simply dissolved on the breath. In other words, anytime there was any conceptualization I dissolved it by just paying attention to the breath. And then, a few years later in ’72, a couple more trips on mushrooms and acid, where, at that point, the shadow of the divine never even entered into it. By that time it was a joke. It was just this all-encompassing space which was already itself. There was no need to superimpose a conception on top of it. The only conception I did superimpose was some sense of vacancy, that seemed to be the … not love or bliss or warmth but sort of a liberation from them. A liberation from love and bliss and warmth, like not being compelled to….
Student: Well, a vacancy isn’t all that interesting, really.
AG: Well, it’s sort of a big relief, I’ll tell you that. It’s the opposite of heavy. “Man, it was heavy!” The opposite of “heavy” would be “light” or “vacancy” – lightness or vacancy, that is to say, no pressure. No pressure of conception at all. That was my experience, anyway – Yes?
Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately seventy-and-a-half minutes in and concluding at approximately seventy-two-and-three-quarter minutes in.