Allen Ginsberg on Visionary Experience – continues from here
AG: And another thing, maybe I was just wakening up to what I thought was supernatural but was what everybody had been seeing all along, it was just that I was the only one in the universe that had never noticed that. See? That’s why I made such a big deal out of it. It was my nightmare that I was the only one who had never noticed it. I had been so limited and dumb that what I was discovering was what everybody knew already. And I was afraid that that was the truth and probably that was the truth. And nowadays I’ve come to decide maybe it’s best if that were the truth, because then everybody is already living in eternity and I don’t have to worry about it anymore, rather than claiming it as my exclusive territory. However, talking about it is … I haven’t ever talked about it in a class like this, actually. So it’s sort of interesting, but then it’s kind of mindblowing because I said, “How many here have had visions?” – it’s like two thirds have had, so actually I’m curious. What have other people gone through?
Student: Well, I think the reason people don’t talk about it is that it tends to dilute the experience …
AG: Yes.
Student: … although when you talk about it also realizes the experience, that combination. If you talk about it a lot it dilutes the experience …
AG: Yeah.
Student: … and also the pain of being separated from that experience.
Well, didn’t your experience last, the state of higher consciousness, last over a period of a week or two? It wasn’t just….
AG: No, it was intermittent. It was actually quite limited the first day. There were three separate occasions and I can’t measure the time. I’ve always been baffled by that, because it might have been just a second but it seemed like a long bath of time, like twenty to thirty minutes, or something. Half an hour. And then, as I became conscious of experiencing it, it closed down and my ordinary consciousness returned. Sitting there in a sort of state of suspended mind and suspended awe, or suspended decision, suspended mental activity, but then when I said, “Oh, I’m Allen Ginsberg, I’m having this particular experience, isn’t that great, I’m a poet, I’m going to be able to use this for the rest of my life”. Then, all of a sudden, “Let’s see now, what was I having, what was going on?” So it was very paradoxical that you immediately become self-conscious and immediately the thing closes down. Very similar to meditation experience. We’ll get into that later.
to be continued