Allen Ginsberg’s class at Naropa on Visionary Experience continues from here
AG: I hate to leave the subject, (visionary experience) because I don’t get to talk about it very much, and this isn’t my class, but it would be interesting if you would all write a little description of your own primary experiences. It’s not too often done. At least those of you who are in my class. Maybe I’ll ask my class, too. Those of you who are in my class …
Anne Waldman: And my class, too.
AG: … and Anne’s, who have had some sort of mystical vision, write it down, preferably in a form which details what you saw as I was trying to detail the cornices. In other words, the only way you can tell the story of your subjective illumination is by reproducing the details you observed through your senses. Otherwise you’re reduced to saying, “I had a vision,” or “It was all light,” or “eternity” or “God” or just a lot of abstract words so you can’t really identify the quality of the perception. (No one can) really see through your eye. What everybody wants to do is see through your eyes what you saw when you were high, so to speak. The details of what you saw. One of the characteristics of that visionary experience is microscopic particularity of detail, right? Does anybody disagree? Or other people maybe floated out of their bodies and didn’t see anything except a big blurry light, maybe, but the particular kind of visions I’m interested in is the kind where you actually see precise detail, whether it be though “like a changed, familiar tree.” That’s why I liked that Edward Arlington Robinson, “Meanwhile we do no harm; for they/That with a god have striven,/ Not caring much for what we say,/Take what the god has given;/Though like waves breaking it may be/Or like a changed familiar tree,/Or like a stairway to the sea/Where down the blind are driven.”
Yeah?
to be continued