Adding to the long list of contradictions attributed to the ideologies of William Blake we recently touched upon the differences of sight and vision as an extension of the body functioning as the prison of the soul. Picture your face, your outward signifier of social difference. Corporeal sight functions as a way of internalizing the physical world around us. I see you, that tree, and those telephone poles and I understand that I am seeing such objects. The instant my eyes set upon an object, my brain automatically interprets, reasons what that object is. It becomes real to me, exists in my immediate reality. When I close my eyes, however, that reality does not go away. Just because I can not see your face does not mean that your face no longer exists in my perceived reality. It remains in my memory, in my imagination, which exists beyond the tangible world. Blake argues that man is blinded in a sense by corporeal sight; that the world can be experienced more fully through imaginative vision. Imagination pushes us beyond the bounds of reason and exposes that reason itself is bounded.
I think that the most immediate way in which to explore outside the bounds of reason is through meditation. The Romantics may not have called their walks through nature meditation, but that is definitely what they were doing. Contemporary life does not always lend to the physical exploration of natural settings, so meditation offers a sort of out of body experience that can happen in your own home. I always thought of meditating just as a way for the body to relax, a calming experience rather than an internal exploration. My sister-in-law encouraged me to start meditating for a half hour or so every day to help with anxieties and stress, etc. But then she came over with a guided meditation of past life regressions and asked if I was interested (she was doing a paper for one of her graduate classes). I thought that it would be fun to try, but I didn't think that anything could actually happen because I have never really been able to relax enough to be hypnotized. But it turned out to be an amazing exercise in allowing the imaginative mind to overtake your corporeal body, and all rationality or reason aside, explore parts of the mind that I didn't think accessible.
It began as all guided meditations do, dark room, very quiet and relaxed setting, breathing exercises to bring about the most relaxing state. Her voice soothed and quieted my thoughts, focused only on a bright light. As the regression continued, she eventually led me to a door, and as the door opened the threshold of reason and imagination was crossed. Asking descriptive questions about my surroundings, she encouraged me to describe all that I was seeing (silently of course). Where was I? What environment surrounded me? What was I wearing? Was I male or female? Going into this regression, of course I thought about what kind of individual it would be cool to think that I was in a past life. Of course I thought of great women throughout history, in the style of Elizabeth or Marie Antoinette. I can with absolute honesty say that the vision I had during this meditation was the furthest thing from my mind possible. I was standing on the bank of a river, surrounded by green, an ancient temple in the distance. I could feel the cool wind on my naked body. I looked down at my hands, large, dark working hands. I knew that I was male. I didn't see my body, I just understood that I was male and I was naked. I was jerked awake from the vision and I sat up, my sister-in-law curiously asking if I had seen anything. Had the regression worked? And I was silent. My mind was trying to reason what I had just experienced. But I couldn't.
Throughout reading Blake in this class I have been thinking about this experience. I don't necessarily believe that I was actually a man in some ancient civilization (I latched on to Mayan civilization for some reason), but I think that it makes me feel what Blake is trying to express when he says that reason is bounded and that imagination allows us to bridge that boundary.
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Even though you posted this blog before we had read Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," I could not help but tie your comment to our conversation about Wordsworth:
ReplyDelete"I see you, that tree, and those telephone poles and I understand that I am seeing such objects. The instant my eyes set upon an object, my brain automatically interprets, reasons what that object is. It becomes real to me, exists in my immediate reality. When I close my eyes, however, that reality does not go away. Just because I can not see your face does not mean that your face no longer exists in my perceived reality. It remains in my memory, in my imagination, which exists beyond the tangible world."
In his poem, Wordsworth goes to considerable lengths to communicate his lament over the loss of the child's ability to interpret the world in magnificent color, emotion, and beauty. There is a separation between himself and this child (referred to as "Thou best Philosopher" and Thy Soul" (ll 109-110)) which seems to infer a sort of past life, much like what you speak of later in your blog (minus the naked stuff). This past life, "the thought of our past years," is the missing link between the poet's true connection to nature, or his ability to feel the earth without the bothersome contexts which life inevitably adds to everything (l 133). The child is the pure absorber, but an unfit communicator, so the only way he can possibly make contact with and communicate the child's visions is to reach into his memory; to meditate himself into that past life, accessing the child's mind, therefore a real connection to nature. Wordsworth is reaffirming your point, he can no longer immediately experience the child's perception of reality, he must reach through the channels of his memory, to access that sort of genius. In this poem, Wordsworth has a considerably hard time accepting this truth: that he will never immediately feel the passions of childhood, "Which we are toiling all our lives to find," and that he must come to a reconciliation that the closest thing we have to reliving our youth is simply memories (l 111). What truly marks this poem though, is the eager note upon which the poem leaves the reader. The memory can be immortal, we can forever delve into its depths, into ancient worlds of our past lives; childhood and life itself is mortal, but our memories spoken in the lines of poetry live forever.