سنڌي ورچوئل لائبرري

CHAPTER II WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827)

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William Blake was the most intensely mystical poet of England. His personal appearance, his uncompromising character, his manner of living, and his physical experiences at once mark him out as a unique figure in the realm of Mysticism. With a book of verses in one hand, and a picture-album in the other like the Persian sage, Manes (Circa 216-277A.D.), he would have been hailed as a prophet in the East divinely commissioned with a message to mankind. But in the hard-headed and prosaic land in which his verses and pictures alike were brushed aside as airy nothings of an idle visionary. He appeared as ‘a new kind of man’ in an age in which reason was installed as ‘Lord and King’, from whom alone all departments of life borrowed their luster and value.

Blake’s Madness:

Although Blake is gradually coming into his own, because Mysticism stands on a new level to-day, being regarded, as I have said previously,[1] the most scientific form of religion by no less a person than the Dean of St. Paul’s, there is still an uneasy suspicion in the mind of the cultured world that he must be a ‘queer fellow’. Even some of his more sympathetic critics have stigmatised him as an eccentric or a mental degenerate, and regarded much of what he wrote as fatuous and nonsensical–mere ‘Balderdash’. W. M. Rossetti, while professing the deepest reverence for Blake and the keenest enjoyment for a great deal of his work, nevertheless, avows that “there was something in his mind not exactly sane.”[2] Smetham expresses himself very much to the same effect. He believes that Blake was ‘slightly touched’.[3]

Mysticism is Madness:

But, what seer and saint in the world ever escaped the imputation of madness? Christ himself was said to have a devil. Buddha’s visions of truth were attributed to an epileptic discharge of nervous energy. Mahomed’s lonely vigils on Mount Hira, accompanied as they were voices, issuing as if from the very caves around, were dismissed by his own kith and kin as a mere hallucinations of a morbid mentation. It is these so called madmen, however, who are the salt of the earth. They have exalted the human race as none else have; “they have drawn on forces which exist, and on a Soul which answers; they have dwelt on those things’ by dwelling on which it is,’ as Plato has it, ‘that even God is divine.’”[4]

Madman, indeed, every man of lofty genius is, inasmuch as his method of thought and perception is precisely the opposite of that pursued by the common mortal. Aristotle has said: “Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fruit.”[5] The ordinary man is too apt to put down as mad those whom he cannot understand.

“Nor is it possible to thought

A greater that itself to know.”[6]

To the respectable man of Science Blake appears mad, because he scorns patiently to track the laws of nature, and goes straight to what constitutes the basis of all-pervading unity of law. He steps beyond the ordinary consciousness, and recognizes the eternal ‘Ideas’ in the fleeting things of the earth. To call him a madman, simply because he cannot be fitted into a Huxley’s or a Spencer’s preconceived theories and opinions is nothing short of madness. “You cannot,” says G. K. Chesterton, “take the region called the Unknown and calmly say that though you know nothing about it, you know that all its gates are locked.”[7] Gilchrist, while discussing this aspect of Blake’s character, truly remarks: “so far as I am concerned, I would infinitely rather be mad with William Blake than sane with nine-tenths of the world.”[8] Both Poltinus[9] and Rumi[10] have called Mysticism a sort of divine madness. The latter, playfully styling his great experimental treatise on Mysticism, viz. the Masnavi, as “a tissue of stuff and nonsense,” apstrophises love of divine things in the following impassioned words:

“Hail to the, O love, sweet madness!

Thou who healest all our infirmities!

Who art the physician of our pride and self-conceit!

Who art our Plato and our Galen!

Blake’s Personal Appearance:

Blake’s general appearance could not help making a very strong impression upon all: who came into contact with him. Samuel Palmer, one of his most intimate friends, writes of him: “Blake once known could never be forgotten.”[11] He possessed a massive head with hair like a lion’s mane, and his eyes flashed with the white radiance of eternity, burning and piercing into the very soul of those whom they looked upon. ‘His eyes’ says Palmer, “could be terrible; cunning and falsehood quailed under it.’[12] Nor was his mouth less expressive. His flexible lips which never seemed to smile, quivered with feeling, and always wore an expression of kindliness. Altogether he looked very much like a Hebrew prophet of old, and what is further symptomatic in the same direction and more in keeping with the origin of the Hebrew word, ‘Nabi’ for prophet, he every now and then, literally bubbled forth as a fountain into prophetic utterances.

Now, I would not have referred to the physiognomy of Blake had it not been for the fact that it was of a typical mystic. I have not only read in the lives of the noted mystics of the East,[13] but have seen for myself, by coming into touch with a few of them that in all essentials they possess the same physiognomy as Blake. Their eyes particularly bear a close family resemblance; they beam with a sort of extra-terrene light, and exercise a magnetic influence on those they look upon.

Blake’s Unworldliness:

Like all true mystics, Blake looked upon this world’s good as “gifts from the devil”[14] Rumi says that the even thoughts of worldly things are due to the agency of the devil.[15] Blake was rich in the midst of his poverty.

“The countless gold of a merry heart,

The rubies and pearls of a loving eye,

The idle man never can bring to the mart,

Nor the cunning hoard up in his treasury.”[16]

Nor did he care for fame. The approbation of his “Emanation far within,”[17] his true Self made him ample amends for the cold contumely of his contemporaries. He would say of those who had their full share of the riches of this world, and who expressed pity for him: “They pity me, but ’tis they who are the just objects of pity: I possess my visions and peace; they have bartered their birthright for a mass of pottage.”[18]

“I have mental joys and mental health,

I’ve a wife that I love, and that loves me;

I’ve all but riches bodily.”[19]

Blake’s Self-Confidence:

Rossetti thinks that in many instances Blake spoke of himself with measureless and rather provoking self-applause.[20] He attributes this partly to egotism arising out of Blake’s child-like simplicity of character, and partly to his conviction that he was constantly under direct inspiration. But this trait of character is by no means an uncommon thing. Horace, Lucretius, Ovid and almost all the ancients have spoken proudly of themselves, and also Dante, Shakespeare and others among the moderns. There is not a single Persian mystic poet who has not given expression to his own approval of his merit. ‘To take one instance, Hafiz thus speaks of his poems:

“Songs thou hast made and jewels strung,

Come, Hafiz, and recite them well,

So Heavens on thy string of pearls,

The clustered Pleiades may strow.”[21]

Schopenhauer explains the psychology of this in the following words: “With people of only moderate ability, modesty is mere honesty; but with those who possess great talent, it is hypocrisy. Hence it is just as becoming in the latter to make no secret of the respect they bear themselves, and disguise of the fact that they are conscious of unusual power, as it is in the former to be modest.”[22]

Blake’s Pacificism:

Notwithstanding his so-called egotism, Blake was essentially a good man. His goodness softened every harsh element in his mature. ‘Pardon’s the word to all’[23] was his motto. He would not willingly have hurt a worm. He preached the gospel of love and good-will to all mankind, and of man’s brotherhood with his fellow-creatures, and even with the brute-creation. Now, the cultivation of this quality is insisted upon as a necessary condition to the commencement of the mystic journey in Hindu mysticism.[24] But of this later. In Blake’s Pacificism lay the secret of his inward happiness. “If asked”, says Palmer, “whether I knew among the intellectual a happy man, Blake would be the only one who would immediately occur to me.”[25]

Blake’s Tranquillity:

Blake lived a solitary life. For him the outside world was as nothing. He turned completely away from it, and saw a new world. He was so susceptible to its influence that environment, as in the case of Wordsworth, did not matter. The change from the quiet of the country to the noise and bustle of London town troubled him but little. The communion which to most mystics is the precious experience of rarest and most sacred hours was to him the bright and inspiring experience of every day, the source of illumination and strength in every temptation and trial, the uplifting consolation in the deepest and darkest sorrows. It was this which gave him that absolute serenity and self-confidence amounting almost to aggressiveness, which set at naught all public opinion, and warred against all social conventions.

Blake’s Visions:

Blake was a born mystic. Patanjali, the great Hindu writer on the method of Mysticism, states that some persons are born with mystical tendencies, as a result of their mystical practices in a previous birth; hence they become full-fledged mystics with but little or no training.[26] Blake, perhaps, inherited his mystical tendencies from his mother. As a boy, he was of a strangely romantic habit of mind, and passed much of his time in imaginative reverie, which is usually the initial stage of mystical experience. At a very early age, however, he attained to a higher level of consciousness. His reverie passed, it would appear quite automatically, into trance, in which he saw visions of various kinds. His visions are too well-known to need a description here. In the language Psychical Research, they may all be classified under the two heads of clairvoyance and telaesthesia.

Universality of Visions:

(1) Christian Mysticism:

All down through the ages we have the evidence of a constant stream of phenomena analogous to those of Blake. It is quite impossible to brush them all aside as delusion, imagination or imposture. Such cases are common in the lives of Christian mystics. For instance, St. Chrysostom, on consecrating the bread and wine, used to see a multitude of white-robed angels surrounding the altar and bowing their heads. St. Theresa of Avila heard divine locutions, saw Christ and the Virgin, and received the transfixation of her heart. St. Francis of Assissi, just two years before his death, received the sacred stigmata in his own person. And St. Catherine of Siena, like Blake, saw Christ at six years of age, and later took from the hands of the infant Jesus the bridal ring which she wore all her life. Incidents such as these are not confined to Christian hagiology, but are met with in the history of all the noted mystics of the East.

(2) Persian Mysticism:

The biographer Al-Aflaki gives a number of authentic stories relating to the marvelous visions to which the great mystic poet, Rumi, was subject all his life.[27]And curiously enough, his visions bear a striking similarity to those of Blake. Hafiz is believed to have been in constant touch with the Invisible world, from which his verses are said to have flowed forth spontaneously, and owing to which he was styled, ‘tongue of the Occult world,, and ‘interpreter of Heavenly mysteries.[28]

(3) Hindu Mysticism:

The Indian atmosphere is surcharged with stories of sages who were able to see God and divine things. Direct apprehensions such as these form the very basis of Hindu religion. All its ancient scriptures are the records of the personal experiences of mystic sages who came into immediate communication with spiritual forces.[29] Perhaps, we may be inclined to believe that of most these marvellous visions with all their Oriental setting, are bound to vanish into nothingness when scrutinized in a modern English scene. This feeling, however, is not sound. These phenomena occur now, and their authenticity has been vouched for by competent witnesses. Only recently we had the case of the Bengali mystic, Ramkrishna Paramahamsa (1834-1886 A. D.), who could remain continuously in a state of exalted trance of six months at a time, almost without a break, and see most marvellous visions.[30]

Theories Concerning Visions:

No one who has made even a superficial study of the subject will be disposed to demur to the conclusion, that in spite of much deception and self deception, fraud and illusion, we find, intermixed with the stream of physical experience, a line of experiences of a different order, not amenable to laws which have been found to govern the physical world. Now the great problem which confronts us is: What is at the back of these phenomena? In all fairness, before we proceed to seek an independent scientific solution of the problem, if any, let us hear what explanation the mystics of various lands themselves have to offer. I have already alluded briefly to that of the Christian mystic,[31] which besides has been sufficiently treated by several well-known writers.[32] I shall here confine myself to an examination of the belief of the Oriental mystics.

(1) Persian Mystic’s Theory:

The Persian mystic believes that there exist five different planes of being, viz. (1) the ‘World of Unity’ of which no description is possible and which, in fact, is not be reckoned among the five planes, (2) the ‘World of the Fixed Prototypes,’ which is absolutely invisible, and whose denizens are the Substances which underlie all the earthly names and the outward show of things, (3) the ‘World of the Celestial Souls’, which is relatively invisible, and whose dwellers are the spirits of the departed prophets and saints, (4) the ‘World of Similitudes’,[33] which is partially visible, and in which exists the forms which are to be materialised in the physical world, and (5) this visible, material world of ours.

Now, the confines of the one plane of being touch those of the other; rather, they interpenetrate one another. For this reason, passage between any two is quite possible. In the state of sleep, when the avenues of the physical senses are closed, man perceives the things of the ‘World of Similitudes,’ which is the nearest to this world of matter, either in their naked form or under the veil of allegory to be subsequently lifted by interpretation. But, as a rule, in sleep, thoughts of worldly things blur the perception to such an extent that a clear vision is rarely attainable. Now this is exactly what happens in conditions bordering on those of prophetic or poetic inspiration. Intuitions spring up in the mind, unconveyed through any physical sense-channel, and without the instrumentality of sleep. The more a man purifies himself from fleshly lusts, and concentrates his mind, the more conscious does he become of such intuitions. By degrees, he can rise from one plane of being to another, and in course of time, he can see even in the waking state, quite at will, the spirits of the departed prophets and siatns in the ‘World of the Celestial Souls,’ and hear their voices ‘within the unfathomed caverns’ of his ear. The Degrees of ascent and proximity to the ‘World of Unity’ which he can thus attain depend upon his aptitude and endeavour.[34]

Rumi and other celebrated Persian mystics hold that the human soul possesses, besides the five senses adapted to the physical world, a three-fold set of subtler and finer senses, which are adapted to the remaining three planes of being.[35] With gradual ascent of the human soul from one plane to another, the vision of spiritual things becomes clearer and ampler. Thus, there are four grades of perceptual experience. Rumi asserts that the three spiritual grades of perception stand in the same relation and value to one another as opinion, conviction, and ocular evidence do to one another in the scheme of worldly knowledge.[36]

It is worthwhile mentioning here that, Shah Abdul Karim, a celebrated mystic of Sind, who flourished about the sixteenth century, says the same thing as mentioned in a work entitled ‘Bayan-ul-Arifin’, which is still in manuscript. I imagine that the publication of this work^* will throw a flood of light on many a dark corner in the mystic’s psychology. I may also state that in my personal interviews with some well-known mystics in India, I have ascertained that the explanation that I have attempted is in consonance with Oriental mystic belief.

(2) Hindu Mystic’s Theory:

The Hindu mystic is at one with Persian mystic in his belief that the normal limits of the human vision are not the limits of the universe, that there are other worlds than that which our senses perceive, and that we have other senses than those which we share with the lower animals. He believes that far away in the depths of human personality, behind all the external and internal senses, there is a higher power which, by shedding its light on and reflecting these senses, enables us to catch a vision of the various planes of being. It is called the ‘Atman.’ It is not only the illuminator, by means of which the internal senses perceive, but constitutes the real essence, the true Self not only of man, but of the entire universe. The Yoga system is a practical discipline pointing out the way to the realization of this higher power.[37] It may, however, sometimes come by chance to a man who does not understand its true origin; he, as it were stumbles upon it. When this is the case, he generally interprets it as coming from outside. This explains why an inspiration may be the same in different countries, but in one country it would seem to come through the agency of an angel, in another through a discarnate intelligence, and in a third through God, the respective interpretation, depending on the previous beliefs and education of the person concerned.

(3) Psychical Research Theory:

Now, all the unusual phenomena which accompanied Blake, though little understood in his day in Europe, have been submitted to a thorough scientific inquiry in modern times. Many of the leading workers in this filed have been irresistibly driven to the conclusion that some at least of these phenomena are actual, objective facts, that there are other means than the five senses by which knowledge can be acquired, and that there is evidence–small though it be in amount–which is sufficient to prove the existence of a sort of Dante’s ‘Spaceless Empyrean’, with which communication does take place in the case of specially gifted men like Boehme, Swedengorg and Blake. Myers, than whom the Society for Psychical Research has produced no closer student of this subject, struck a deeper and truer note, quite in harmony with the Oriental mystic’s utterance, when he said: “Genius… should rather be regarded as a power of utilizing a wider range than other men can utilize of faculties in some degree innate in all;–a power of appropriating the result of subliminal mentation to subserve the supraliminal stream of thought;–so that an ‘Inspiration of Genius’ will be in truth a subliminal uprush; an emergence into the current of ideas which the man is consciously manipulating of other ideas which he has not consciously originated, but which have shaped themselves beyond this will, in profounder regions of his being. I shall urge that there is here no real departure from normality; no abnormality, at elast in the sense of degeneration; but rather a fulfillment of the true norm of man, with suggestions, it may be, of something supernormal, or something which transcends existing normality–as an advanced stage of evolutionary progress transcends an earlier stage.[38]

Blake’s Illumination and Ecstasy:

So long as Blake continued in the ‘Illuminative stage’, he did see visions whose veridical character he did not for a moment doubt. On a careful analysis, I find in them distinct traces of a gradually increasing illumination; which eventually culminated in ecstasy and union. If we accept the Oriental mystic’s theory, then Blake’s consciousness during this stage must have functioned in an ascending series of gradations, firstly on the ‘World of Similituedes’, where he could see even the ‘ghost of a flea’, secondly on the ‘World of the Celestial Souls’, where he could hold converse with Moses and the Prophets, thirdly on the ‘World of the Fixed Prototypes’, where he could obtain a vision of the Christ, who being the Logos would, according to the mystic, be on that plane, and fourthly on the ‘World of Unity’, where realizing, as a result of ecstasy, his union with God, he could claim identity with the whole universe, and startle his bearers by exclaiming: “I am Socrates”, “I am Moses” etc.

Shams, the spiritual preceptor of Rumi, like Blake, used to claim his identity with Mahomed, when whom the Persian mystics consider the Logos and also with the Hebrew Prophets. And Rumi himself in heights of ecstasy, used to imagine himself to be the Logos, wherefrom the whole creation emanates. In a passage of his Masnavi, he says:

“The world derives its existence from me, not I from it!

I am like the bee, and all earthly bodies are my hive,

I build up all these bodies and indwell them.”

From Blake’s own statements it is evident that my explanation is correct. For instance, in the ‘Descriptive Catalogue’, he says: “The Prophets describe what they saw in vision as real and existing men, when they saw with their imaginative and immortal organs the Apostle the same. The clearer the organ, the more distinct the object.” In the ‘Prophetic Books’, he frequently speaks of the single, double, triple and four fold vision. The single vision, of course, refers to the perceptual experience of this earth, but the remaining three visions, no doubt; symbolize the three ascending grades of direct perception adapted to the Persian mystic’s three ascending planes of being.

In the earlier stages of illumination, Blake was perhaps not able thoroughly to understand the origin of his visions, but there is no doubt that after he had attained to a more exalted state of consciousness, he too, like the Hindu mystic, held that the ultimate source of all perception is the Atman, or as he termed it, the ‘Emanation far within’. This is confirmed by the reply which he gave to a lady, who questioned him regarding the origin of his visions. His sole answer was to point to his head. This view will receive additional support when I proceed to examine his theory of knowledge.

Blake’s Divine Urge:

Blake was a mystic first, and a poet afterwards. He is therefore to be judged rather from the standard of Mysticism than from that of Poetry. Much of the conflict of opinion regarding him is probably due to the ignoring of this point. Speaking of his own work, Blake said: “It is the gift of God, it is inspiration and vision.”[39] He did not, to use Emerson’s words, speak his words, or do his own works, or think his own thoughts, but he became an organ through which the Universal Mind acted. According to Rumi, this is an essential characteristic of the true mystic. He is merely an ‘energumen’, or a passive instrument guided by the divine impulse.[40] Blake was merely a medium of higher powers. He gave himself out as no other than a mere ‘Secretary’ to the ‘authors in Eternity.’[41] “I am really drunk with intellectual vision, whenever I take a pencil or graver in my hand,” said he.[42] Poetry and painting failed him when the power was withdrawn. Swedenborg too claimed to have been passive amanuensis of higher intelligences.

The proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research contain many analogous cases, the most notable recent case being that of William Stainton Moses. W. B. Yeats, as a result of such experiences, seems inclined to believe in the objective existence of a general memory, which is not that of any individual, but which exists, as it were, in the air, and on which, by means of magical invocations or symbols, we can draw at will.[43] Myers in a sense, endorses this view. He suggests the possible existence of a ‘Cosmic picture gallery’, which contains a photographic record of all that has occurred or will occur in the universe, and which may be partly open to the ‘lucid part’ of an ‘automatist’s mind.’[44] In my view, the hypotheses adopted by Yeats and Myers are an illustration of ‘obscurum per obsucurius’. It will be much saner to accept the explanation of the mystics themselves, who in the ultimate analysis refer all supernormal phenomena to the agency of the one, undivided Self, who is the substratum and illuminator of the whole universe.

Blake not only possessed the sense of that brooking Power, out of which flow the things of heaven and earth, but also possessed the ‘high seriousness which comes from absolute sincerity.’ He sang because he must; he felt the urgency ‘to fix in lasting thoughts the wavering images that float before the mind.’ He might have exclaimed with Jeremiah: “His word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones: and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay.”[45]

“more thau mortal fire

Burns in my soul, and does my song inspire.”[46]

His lips burnt with the live coals of inspiration, he had, like the prophets of old, a commission to discharge. For this reason, he was too much in earnest to pick and choose hid words. He had not the patience to acquire the technical skill to give artistic expression to his message, with the result that he often transgresses even the obvious laws of grammar and metre. In this respect he bears a wonderful resemblance to the great mystic poet Rumi, who also disregards all attempts at embellishment and the ‘ars poetica.’

Blake’s Symbolism:

In  the case of Blake, poetry did not take its origin from ‘emotion recollected n tranquitllity.’ It was rather a veil which conveyed least inadequately some hint of the burning ‘ray of the deep light which itself is true.’ Hence he spoke chiefly in allegories and symbols; and when these failed, he had recourse to his pencil and brush. But even these often proved powerless.

Now there is nothing strange about this in the history of Mysticism. Persian mystic poetry abounds in allegories and symbols. We hear of songs of the nightingale in love with the rose, the moth fluttering round the light of the candle, the snow melting in the desert and mounting as vapour to sky; the praises of wine and musky tresses, the raptures of embraces and kisses etc., but the real meaning does not transpire from the songs themselves. Perhaps, it was, like the Greek mysteries, originally intended to be kept a secret, lest the profane and the vulgar should scoff. But as time went on, all allegories and symbols began to have a definite, recognized meaning. Regular treatises were written, wherein they could be conveniently consulted.[47] The nightingale, the moth, the candle and the sky stood for God, the ‘Eternal Darling’; the wine signified the draught of that self-oblivion which bring one into complete union with the Supreme Being; the musky tresses represented the plurality which veils the face of divine unity and the embraces and kisses portrayed the raptures of love, ‘the divine madness’.

Persian mystic poetry invokes the additional aid of Romance in order to portray divine love. All Persian love stories, and their name is legion, are but the symbolic pictures of the soul’s passionate longing to be re-united with God. They liken the soul to a reed torn from its bed and made into a flute whose plaintive music rends the heart in twain, to a falcon flown away from its divine nest and lured back again by the Heavenly King’s whistle, to a moaning ring dove that has lost her mate, to a frenzied camel rushing headlong through the desert by night, to a caged parrot ‘quaffing its heart’s blood’ for its home  in India, to a fish that frets and fumes on dry land.

No Persian mystic poet, however ever wrote, systematically on such lines. But there is an undercurrent of symbolism all through the Persian mystic poetry. We feel its all-pervading presence sometimes as dim shadow; sometimes as a persistent intrusion on our notice. Its predominance depends upon the poet’s temperament and the depth of his mystical consciousness. Rumi is of the opinion that it is not given to every poet to make proper use of symbols and similitudes in divine matters. According to him, this faculty is peculiar to a saint who is fully awakened, but he admits that even such a sage is often helpless, because there is no language for the Infinite.[48]

Now, Blake uses and arbitrarily chosen symbolism, the interpretation of which he does not always supply. To him the sun represents a legion of angels, a thistle typifies an old man, a lark is an intermediary of celestial powers. Sometimes he uses the already established symbols for conveying new ideas, e.g. Jesus for ‘Imagination’, Hell for want of ‘Imagination’, and name of the various places in the United Kingdom and America for various mental states. There is no evidence of the use of his symbols by any other Christian mystics. This is the reason why much of his poetry defies all attempts at interpretation in spite of the efforts of his commentators,[49] and strikes the non-mystical reader as obscure and chaotic, lying him open to Chesterton’s charge that he was ‘an inspired idiot.’[50] Chesterton complains that the actual words used by Blake mean one thing with Blake, and quite another in the dictionary. “If he uses ‘hairs’,” continues Chesterton in his usual bantering vein, “he may not mean hairs, but peacock’s feathers.”[51] Blake would characterize a statement such as that as “confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning.”

But taking Chesterton at his word, I can show that in the case of some mystics in the East, the charge is literally true. In their despair of giving expression to an occasionally extraordinary experience, they are sometimes led to use of terms which cannot in their minds a different sense from the ordinarily accepted one. For instance, Rumi to whom Blake presents a close parallel in many respects, does so at times. He says:–

“When I speak of ‘lip’, it is the lip (i.e. shore) of the sea; when I say ‘not’, the intended meaning is ‘except’.

By reason of excessive sweetness, I sit with sour face; from the fullness of speech I am silent.”[52]

But Rumi, as a rule, desists form giving expression to his ineffable visions, when he finds that symbols and similitudes cannot carry him far. Sometimes he even regrets having had to employ, in moments of great exaltation, an imagery which might confound and lead astray the unwary and non-mystical reader.[53] Blake, however, persists in his symbolism till it weighs him down, with the result that his poetry, in many places, ceases to be a thing of the earth. It is a common saying in the East that a mystic alone can understand the full drift of a mystic’s poetry; perhaps it is equally true in the case of Blake.

Shabistari, the philosopher mystic poet of Persia has said the last words:

“And those who abide in these mystic states

At once comprehend the meanings

Veiled in the words.

But if you know them not,

Pretend not you understand like an ignorant infidel.

For all cannot be mystic or grasp the mysteries.

Not mere illusion are the mystic’s dreams.

And a man of truth does not vainly talk.

Tom comprehend requreis revelations or great faith.”[54]

Blake’s Theory of Knowledge:

Before I proceed to set forth the mystical system of Blake, and surely he had one: on this he always insisted, as for instance, in ‘Milton’, where he repeatedly declares: “Mark well my words; they are of your eternal salvation,”–I should discuss his theory of knowledge, which tinged all his conceptions of the universe and coloured all his philosophy of life.

(1) Senses:

According to Blake, the evidence of our senses is not only incomplete, but illusive. The eye is not an instrument of vision but merely a window to be look through; and every image that it perceives is but the earthly symbol of a heavenly ‘Idea’. In the light of what I have said above with regard to Oriental mystic’s belief in the existence of the five planes of being, this statement of Blake presents no difficulty. I would simply content myself with the remark that even in Oriental Mysticism, the five senses are spoken of as five windows of the soul, and sometimes as five ‘doors’ of perception. That they cannot give us a glimpse of the ultimate reality of the universe has been abundantly shown already.[55]

(2) Reason:

Reason too teaches us nothing new. It has no innate ideas of its own. It is “the ratio of all we have already known.” The abstract knowledge it imparts derives its entire content from sense-perceived knowledge; it borrows its materials entirely from the latter. Therefore it is not able to give really new knowledge but only serves to condense the knowledge acquired through the physical senses into settled concepts or accumulated experience.

(3) Products of Reason:

The study of reason and its abstract contents under the name of Logic, and so likewise the pursuit of Science, which is a mere product of reason and experience, are, in the sight of Blake, mere “pride and vanity of imagination”, and “not worth a button.” Priestly, Bacon, and Newton were poor, misguided creatures, suffering from compound ignorance, inasmuch as they were really in sleep, but imagined themselves to be awake.

“May God us keep

From Single vision, and Newton’s sleep.”[56]

In the light of what Blake though of Newton, the latter’s metaphor that he was but playing on the shore of the roaring sea of knowledge was no mere figure of speech, but the truth.

(1) Science:

Science, under the guidance of reason has merely brought or tries to bring within its sphere a series of ever-shifting phenomena. The great and profound mystery that lies behind these has always baffled the feeble attempts of Science.[57] It was in the fullness of this sense of the darkness around that Goethe cried out: “We are eternally in contact with problems. Man is an obscure being: he knows little of the world, and of himself least of all.”[58] In the same way, Rousseau was forced to exclaim: “We have no measure for this huge machine–the world. We cannot calculate its relations; we know neither its primary laws, nor its final causes. We do not know ourselves; we neither know our nature, nor our active principle.”[59]

The study of Science, according to Blake, is a crowning sin. It is the “eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” It chains us down to this dark earth, blinding us to the perception of the eternal truth. “Study Science” says he, “till you are blind.”[60] To realize the impotence and ignorance of reason, and to feel a hankering after a knowledge undimensioned, untimed, effect of no cause, cause of no effect, is in itself a privilege, according to Blake.

(2) Art and Literature:

All art and literature which did not portray the ideal side of things was equally Blake’s abhorrence. He disliked realistic artists like Rubens, but admired Raphael, “the artist of the ideal”. He could not find words bitter enough to express contempt for the poets of the Age of Reason. He does not see the synthesis between Science and Poetry, embodied by Walter de la Mare in the happy encounter of Beauty and Beast, nor does he see the underlying harmony between them in their pursuit of truth.

(3) Human Laws:

All man-made institutions, all social, religious, and moral laws that derived their sanction and authority from reason, appeared to Blake as monstrosities fit to be destroyed. He denounced kings like Louis XIV and loathed all priests who enslaved the minds of men in the name of God. It is the priest and king “who make up a heaven of our misery.” To the free soul of Blake “One law for the lion and ox is oppression.” He is all for liberty, for the absence of any laws, for license. It is said that he once proposed to his wife that they should live naked in their back garden at Felpham, like Adam and Eve. He regarded the concealment of the fundamental relation between the sexes as unnatural. He asks:

“Does spring hide its joy

When the buds and blossoms grow?

Does the sower

Sow by night?

Or the plowman in darkness plow?”[61]

Blake would have heartily endorsed Kant’s ideal, viz., every man his own doctor, every man his own lawyer, every man his own priest. These views permeate all his writings, but are expounded in detail the ‘Prophetic Books.’

(4) Imagination:

“Man’s perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception: he perceives more than senses (tho’ ever so acute) can discover”, says Blake.[62] Beyond reason, and at a higher level, a new faculty of vision is bestowed upon man, which gives him occasional intimations of that Something within him and without him, which proclaims the infinity in the finite, and the universality in the individual. These intimations are as inaccessible to reason as the concepts of reason are inaccessible to the senses. The soul’s insatiable longing for Something afar from the sphere of our sorrow is itself an irrefutable proof that every man must have perceived something to long for. “None can desire what he has not perceived.”[63] Consequently every man must possess means of perception independent of his organs of sense and reason. This means of perception, Blake calls ‘Imagination’.

“To open the eternal worlds, to open the immortal eyes

Of man inward into the worlds of thought, into eternity,

Ever expanding in the bosom of God, the human

Imagination.”[64]

Sometimes Blake calls this faculty, ‘Poetic or Prophetic Genius.’ It is the essence of his personality, the great illumination which by its reflection enables his immortal eyes to acquire an ever expanding vision, –the four-fold vision –till he is merged in the divine bosom.

“Come hither

And see the opening morn,

Image of truth new born,

Doubt is fled and clouds of reason

Dark disputes and artful realizing.”[65]

In his ‘Imagination’ are to be found the origin and medium of his visions, and the ground work of all his mystical doctrine. In fact, to Blake, as to many others ‘Imagination’ was the “divine vision” itself. Naturally, therefore, the final truth of the doctrine is incapable of a logical exposition. The truth is what Blake himself experiences. It cannot be demonstrated to the sophisticated intellect, nor can it be acquired by mere instructions.

“He’s a blockhead who wants a proof of what he can’t perceive,

And he’s a fool who tries to make such a blockhead believe”[66]

Blake censured Swedenborg for endeavouring to explain to the reason what it could not comprehend. Al-Ghazzali joins hands with Blake in this. In his ‘Confessions’, he says that he who has arrived at the intuition of the highest truth by means of ecstasy should confine himself to repeating the verse:

“what I experience I shall not try to say;

Call me happy, but ask me no more.”[67]

And Rumi says that the intense rapture of divine love puts an end to all thinking and argument. He illustrates it by the following humorous story:

“A certain man whose hair was half grey

Hurried to a barber who was is friend,

Saying: ‘Pluck out the white hairs from my beard,

For I have a wedded a young bride, O my son.’

The barber cut off his beard and laid it before him,

Saying: ‘Do you part them, the task is beyond me.

Questions are white and answers black; do you choose

For the man of faith knows not how to choose.”[68]

The faculty of ‘Imagination’ can be acquired only by the simple and pure-minded through faith, ecstasy and the transformation of the moral being. In this Blake is at one with every mystic. Shabistari echoes the same thought:

“But, beyond reason, man has a certain faculty

Which God has placed in his soul and body

Whereby he perceived hidden mysteries.

And like the fire in flint and steel

When these two are struck together,

The two worlds for him are lit up in a flash.”[69]

(5) Faith, the pre-requisite of ‘Imagination’:

Blake demands faith from the aspirant, not blind faith that is subversive of reason, but a spirit of reverence and ‘wise passiveness’, which alone can open his eyes into the vista of divine truths. There is a general agreement among the mystics of all nations in regarding faith as the essential pre-requisite of the spiritual apprehension of divine realities. The Persian mystic defines faith as the voluntary surrender of all faculties to the Will of God and the Hindu mystic defines faith as the conviction of the futility of the intellectual apparatus.[70] Even the great philosopher Kant was forced to admit that the sphere of faith transcends the sphere of reason.[71] The problems raised by the intellect solve themselves the moment we transcend reason, and live the life of faith. “Human reason”, says Thomas a Kempis, “is weak and may be deceived, but true faith cannot be deceived.”[72]

Blake’s Mystical System:

Like every great mystic,  Blake has a two-fold system of mystical doctrine, viz. the transcendental, and empirical. He views the Supreme Spirit both as an impersonal Absolute and a personal God. In fact, he attempts to effect a synthesis of the two. That is the reason why we find in him apparently conflicting views. It is also to be borne in mind that Blake was no philosopher to set forth his teaching in a logical manner. All the same his tone is dogmatic, often aggressive; and he does not believe that it is possible for him to err. He gives the truth as he sees it. He claims to have had the full vision of it; through him “Again he (God) speaks in thunder and fire.”[73] Let us now

“Hear the voice of the Bard,

Who present, past and future sees;

The Holy Word

That walked among the ancient trees.”[74]

1. Transcendental Doctrine:

Blake’s transcendental doctrine is summed up in these words: “Mental Things are alone Real; what is call’d Corporeal, ‘Nobody knows of its Dwelling Place: it is in Fallacy, and its Existence an Imposture. Where is Existence Out of Mind or Though? Where is it but in the mind of a Fool? Error is Created. Truth is Eternal. Error, or Creation will be Burned up, and then, not till Then, Truth or Eternity will appear. It is Burned up the Moment Men cease to behold it.”[75] Now, these words need careful analysis and exposition, especially because hardly any writer on Blake has paid adequate attention to the doctrine underlying them; and although several Christian mystics have spoken of the world as an illusion;75a none besides Blake has looked upon it as an error.

According to Blake, what we consider as the world is a mere illusion and an error. The world is real only relatively that is, it is real for the time being to us who come into contact with it through the senses and reason; but regarded from a plane higher than that in which the senses and reason function–namely, from that of the transcendent mind–it is unreal because, impermanent, and illusory because it veils the eternal verities underlying it, of which it is but the temporary symbol. The senses and reason cannot pierce the veil of phenomena, so they must be ignored and superseded in favour of ‘Imagnation’ which is the only faculty by which man can perceive the Eternal Reality. Illumined by ‘Imagination’, he finds that the entire complex of phenomenal existence vanishes into nothingness like the fabric of a dream. There remains, instead, the Eternal Reality which till then was hidden from his sight. The last judgment is nothing than the annihilation of this innate error, simply by our spirit’s ceasing to perceive it.[76]

Now there is a wonderful accord here between Blake and the Hindu mystic. The latter too calls Creation an innate error. It springs from the mind attributing reality to something that is unreal. This false transference is said to be beginningless, endless, and innate to all mankind. All the sources of knowledge are valid only until the ultimate truth is attained. They have, therefore, only a relative value. Strictly speaking, however, they are an error. It is only when the error is realised that our bondage is broken, and when we cease from the cycle of birth and death.[77]

According to Blake neither the self-righteous Pharisee, nor the fool can ever hope to attain to salvation.[78] In this respect, too, Blake is at one with the Hindu mystic, who says that salvation or heaven is not a matter of invention but discovery. Morality has always a reference to something beyond itself, pure knowledge is complete in itself. Whatever we do, unless surrender our selfishness, we cannot be saved. We may fulfill letter of the law from selfish motives, but it has no moral value. Knowledge alone can lift us out of our individuality, and place above the possibility of sin. Shankaracharya, the great philosopher mystic, argues that if moral life were all, then genius would be a futile thing, love a fleeting shadow, and happiness an ever-receding goal. The view of Bosanquet on this point is exactly in harmony with that of Blake and Shankara.[79] Rumi is of the opinion that mere external righteousness is a ‘veil of light’, which conceals the divine truth much more completely than open sins, the ‘veil of darkness’. The self-righteous Pharisee, says he is necessarily unrepentant, while the avowed sinner is already self condemned, and so advanced one step on the road to repentance.”[80] Blake talks exactly like Rumi in his apostrophe to ‘Divinity of humanity’: “If I were Pure I should never have known thee  if I were unpolluted I should never have glorified thy holiness or rejoiced in thy great salvation.”[81]

All these voices proclaim unanimously that true knowledge is the only way to salvation. To a soul whose whole struggle is the passion for truth, to whom folly and pharisaism are the worst of sins comes the ever increasing power of direct perception, and finally the last emancipation which effects his entrance into the world of “Imagination’, the region of the Eternal Mind. A  consummation such as this is the matins and even song of every devout Hindu:

“From the Unreal, lead us to the Real!

From darkness, lead us unto light!

From death, lead us unto immortality!

Reach us through and through ourself,

And evermore protect us – O Thou Terrible!

From ignorance by Thy sweet compassionate Face.”[82]

2. Empirical Doctrine:

According to Blake’s transcendental viewpoint we cannot attempt to describe the Real. We have either to indulge in tautology and say that Reality is Reality, or admit that it is a mere vague impersonal abstraction. But Blake loathes to think of Reality as an X, Y or Z. “He who adores an impersonal God, has none; and without guide or rudder launches on an immense abyss, that first absorbs his powers and next himself.”[83] Nor does he subscribe to the view of Natural Religion which conceives of God as a distant sovereign, enthroned above the starry heaven, creating the world out of pure caprice. To the transcendental conception of God as the One in all the changing manifoldness of the universe, he super adds another conception, which may be regarded as the keynote of his mystical system.

(1) God:

To Blake, above all else, God is the Divine Humanity, which is his name for the Supreme Spirit incarnated in the Person of Jesus. “God is Jesus”, says he.[84] This idea is common to all the systems of Mysticism. In its purest form it is nothing but the evolution of Divinity in every man. In Buddhism this idea is put forward most beautifully. We are told that when the Buddha reached illumination, he became aware, as in a flash, of the innumerable lives which he had previously lived in the lower kingdoms of nature.[85] This is only an allegorical way of saying that he had to go through the entire process of evolution till he reached the perfect divine life in human form. In Hindu mysticism, ‘God man’ or ‘Avatar’ is representative of the ‘Jesus’ idea. He descends from Deity into manhood; he does not ascend from manhood into God, as in Buddhism. In Persian mysticism, Ahmed or Mohamed is the type of the perfect man. He is the one Divine man, who is evolved through his various emanations down to man, and united again himself in man’s upward journey back to God.

Now this God-man is always spoken of by the mystics as the great teacher and saviour of the world. There dwells in his bosom an abiding love and compassion towards men. He is love, mercy, pity and peace.[86] Moved by compassion, he becomes man, that man may become God. It is told of the Buddha that while he was about to pass over into the God-head, there rose to his ears the sound of the sorrowful crying of humanity. Thereupon he turned back and entered again into life, declaring that till the last grain of sand in the universe had passed before him, he would by no means go into salvation.[87] Hindu mysticism represents God as Eternal Love even like the Christian, who projects himself into the sphere of manifestation, taking shape as a man, in order to act as a lamp amidst the darkness of this world’s delusion.[88]

In Christian mysticism, the above idea is by no means peculiar to Blake. It occurs in various forms in several mystics. For instance, Eckhart preached: “Our Lord says to every living soul, ‘I became man for you, if you do not become God for me, you do me wrong.’” Through Eckhart it spread to German mystics, and we find it in the sermons of Tauler in Suso and Ruysbroek, and in the Theologia Germanica.[89]

Now, although there is an essential agreement on the doctrine of the Divine Humanity between all the mystics, there is a wide gulf dividing the Hindu mystic from the Christian and Persian mystics regarding the occurrence of such an incarnation. The latter believe, as did Blake, that although there have been a number of prophets in whom God was revealed in proportion to their own and their nation’s receptive capacity, the Divine Humanity in its perfection could visit the world only once. The Hindu mystic, on the other hand does not admit that Jesus or Mahomed stands alone in the history of the world. According to his belief the power of Creative Energy to assume human form is not exhausted in a single effort. God is represented as saying in the Bhagavad-gita:

“When Righteousness

Declines, O Bharata! When Wickedness

Is strong, I rise, from age to age, and take

Visible shape, and move a man with men,

Succouring the good, thrusting the evil back,

And setting Virtue on her seat again.”[90]

It is curious, however, that Shanakara, the great Philosopher mystic of India, holds that no manifestation of God through the finite human form can ever be complete, and thus any incarnation, however superior, would yet be partial.[91]

(2) Creation:

Blake believed that “he who sees the Infinite in all things, sees God.”[92] The whole universe accordingly is the manifestation of God. It is the ‘Venerable Glass of Nature’; the mirror in which He reveals Himself; the arena wherein the ‘Permanent Realities’ exhibit themselves. It has therefore no real objective existence; it is but the reflection of Being cast on the mirror of Not-Being. The Persian mystic who is at one with Blake, illustrates this idea by the reflection cast by the sun on a pool of water. This reflection owes its existence entirely to the sun. the moment the sun withdraws, itself, the reflection ceases to exist.

Blake held that, “God only acts and is in existing beings or men,”[93] or to use Goethe’s words, the divinity works in the living, not in the dead; in the becoming and changing, not in the become and fixed. This accounts for Blake’s abhorrence of the beauty of Nature. It is no doubt true that just as the light emanating from a luminous body becomes weaker and more diffuse as it recedes from its source, s the emanations of Being become less real as they become further removed from their origin, with the result that they hide and distort the divine element in them.[94] Shankara, the Hindu Philosopher mystic, remarks that Nature conceals the real and projects the unreal.[95] And Brownign endorses this view:

Some think Creation’s meant to show him forth,

I say it’s meant to hide him all it can.[96]

For this reason, some mystics, particularly the Spanish puritans in the West, and the Persian Sufis in the East, have looked upon the beauty of Nature as a hindrance or a delusion. Blake, however, in his aggressive manner goes to extremes when he remarks that “whoever believes in nature disbelieves in God; for nature is the work of the devil.”[97]

But, how was Creation brought about? In ‘The Marriage in Heaven and Hell’, Blake argues the necessity for contraries. They are wedded, he says, for the purpose of creation, and are to be regarded as the essential conditions of mortal life. Incidentally this explanation comprises the explanation of the existence of evil; it is the inseparable accident of creation. Here there is a marvellous agreement between Blake and Rumi. The latter too gives exactly the same explanation for the existence of both creation and evil:

“God created pain and suffering for this reason,

That through these contraries pleasure may be manifested,

Thus hidden things become manifest, through their opposites,

Since God has no opposite, He remains concluded.[98]

Thus by the opposite of the light alone can you know light;

Opposite when set in antithesis, manifest one another.”[99]

(3) Man:

Blake does not believe in the Semitic idea of the special creation of man. He puts forward the theory of man as an ending nation from God, containing within himself all divine possibilities. Man is ‘a brother and friend’, a member of the Divine Humanity. The Hindu mystic calls man a fragment or thought-form of God. In the ‘Song of Innocence’, Blake shows that all men come forth thus from God were like each other in their origin, and dwelt in a state of innocent childhood, a state of happiness and bliss. Now, this idea is by no means peculiar to Blake. In the Hindu scriptures we read of a far off age when all men were alike when they had not yet developed qualities which differentiated them the one from the other. They were all simple, childlike creatures, unevolved, the mere outline, as it were, of ahuman being.[100] The Chinese historians, like the Hindus, have preserved the legends of an age of innocence, in which all men were exactly alike, and lived a life of perfect virtue. “Men lived in common with all creatures, as forming one family; –how could they know among themselves the distinctions of superior men and small men? Equally without knowledge, they did not leave the place of their natural virtue; equally free from desires, they were in the state of pure simplicity.[101] Rumi says the same thing:

“The souls in their still undifferentiated state.

Revelled as a unity in their innocence.”[102]

Next, Blake shows in ‘The Book of Thel’ how the human souls urged by a strong impulse are about to quit their Eden; but he does not tell us the reason why? Rumi, however, supplies the answer. When God, the one wishes to be Many, i.e. when He wants to create a world,

“He speaks words of power to souls,

These things of naught, lacking eyes or ears,

And at His words they all spring into motion;

At His words of power these nothings arise quickly

And strong impulse urges them to existence.”[103]

Every fragment of God, thereupon, descends through the various planes of being till it reaches this earth which is the lowest point in its downward course:

“We like infants descend

In our Shadows on earth.”[104]

This is termed the ‘Arc of Descent’[105] by the Persian mystics. The object, says Rumi, is that the soul may acquire experience of the whole manifested universe. The moment, however, the nadir is reached, the upward journey begins through the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, and the human kingdoms. This is called the ‘Arc of Ascent’.[106]

In the ‘Songs of Experience’. The soul has already acquired the experience of the three kingdoms of nature. This, Blake calls eating of the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.” And so the upward journey goes on till the soul wins back the paradise it has lost for a while.

Man, by cultivating the divine principle, which dwells within him concealed beneath the folds of the flesh, the senses, and the reason, can transcend the physical world while still in it, and bring himself into communion with God.

“Each Man is in his Spectre’s power

Untill the arrival of that hour

When his Humanity awake

And cast his Spectre into the Laek.”[107]

He is most God-like, says Blake, in whom the divine consciousness is most active, and since “less than all cannot satisfy Man, his possession is Infinite and himself Infinite.”[108] The fully awakened sage becomes identified with God. Rumi says that just as humanity is the crown of the animal kingdom, so is the perfect man the crown of humanity.[109] And Science teaches that evolution and involution are equal and opposite, even as cause and effect. If man has involved from Godhood to Manhood, then surely by disentangling himself from his ‘Spectre’, he can evolve from manhood to Godhood, and thus as the Persian mystic has it, complete the ‘Circle of Existence’.[110]

(4) Evolution:

The process of involution and evolution, according to Blake, is ever at work even in inorganic nature. the secret force within its every atom is a part of the imprisoned consciousness of God, a spark of Pure Being, seeking to purify and strengthen itself to regain its real Self. The same law operates throughout the universe, for God is most sure in His ways.

To the sublimated vision of Blake, every particle of matter contains within it germs of growth and potentialities of development. The Persian mystic says that God sleeps in the mineral. In the ‘Little Girl Lost’, Blake says the same thing. He sees prophetically that the earth, (he means the element earth, the mineral) shall rise from sleep and seek “her maker meek”, and that the wild desert shall become a “garden mild.” For, had not man himself, now so high in the scale of Creation, to pass through the entire cosmic process of involution and evolution? So likewise,

“Each grain of Sand,

Every stone on the Land,

Each rock, and each hill,

Each fountain & rill,

Each her, and each tree,

Mountain, hill, earth and sea,

Cloud, Meteor & star,

Are Men seen Afar.[111]

And in the concluding stanza of ‘Jerusalem’ also, the accomplished redemption of Nature is described as the humanising of all things. Trees, metals, earth, rocks and stones–all will be endowed with human forms.

How eloquently this cosmic process of the outward movement of spirit towards matter, and the inward return of matter to spirit has been described by Rumi:

“I died from the mineral and became the plant;

I died from the plant, and arose the animal;

I died from the animal, and became the man.

Why then should I fear that in dying I become less?

Yet again shall I die from the man

That I may assume the form of the angels

And even that angels must I further win

That which entereth not the imagination that I shall become!

Let me then become non-existence; for non-existence like the organ

Peals upto me: ‘Verily unto Him do we return’.”[112]

Indeed, Blake could conceive no end of space or time or existence, not yet of development and progress. Tennyson sang that nothing walks with aimless feet, that not a worm is cloven in vain.[113] But what to Tennyson was a dream, a hope, an infant’s cry in the night, was to an illumined mystic, like Blake, the beatific vision of an accomplished fact. He could extend his gaze through eternity and see a grain of sand evolve into a material world, and a wild flower already a stage higher in the process, evolve into a heaven, and both in turn progressing to a higher and yet higher plane of being, involve once again into the Divine Unity. To us who are embedded in empiricism, space appears infinite, and time eternal; but to the transcendental consciousness of an awakened sage like Blake, infinity is but a tiny speck, just no more that a palmful of space, and eternity but an ever present now, jut no more than an hour. Awake, we live and see in eternity; asleep, we exist and perceive in time. Shabistari, the philosopher mystic poet of Persia, says exactly the same thing:

“If you cleave the heart of one drop of water,

A hundred pure oceans emerge from it.

If you examine closely each grain of sand,

A thousand human beings may be seen in it.

The heart of a barely corn is equal to a hundred harvests.

A world dwells in the heart of a millet-seed.”[114]

(5) Pre-existence and Immortality:

Like most mystics Blake seems to have believed in the doctrine of metempsychosis. He is said to have expressed to Crabb Robinson that in one of his former lives he had been Socrates, and in another he had held conversation with Jesus Christ.[115] According to Blake, the outward form of the body may fall into the grave and rot, but the ‘Genius’ thereof is not destroyed. Until ‘a Last Judgment’, by which Blake means death through illumination of the phenomenal self, is passed upon the individual, he shall experience the eternal renewal of life, even in the grave. Rumi, as I have said elsewhere,[116] likens the body to the grass which springs up and again. Shankara likens the body to a plant, because like it, at death it perishes, but leaves behind a seed that fructifies into a new organism. Blake too associates the same idea with it. He calls it a ‘vegetable form’. It is only the knower of truth who can attain to eternal life, as distinct from mere survival, which it is the lot of every other individual. The world is the expression of the time-process, and until individuals rise from time to eternal life by means of spiritual knowledge, they are bound to the wheel of birth and death.

(6) Religion:

With Blake, religion is essentially the assimilation of the human nature to the divine. Within every man there is a spiritual centre, which is identical in essence with the Divinity itself. Man, therefore, in fact, needs no intermediary between himself and God, no Saviour, no priests, no rites, no ceremonies, no litanies of fear and flattery. It is St. Thomas Aquinas himself who points out that prayer cannot avail to change the will of God.[117] Man’s spiritual development lies in his own hands, he must work out his own salvation.

“Whey stand we here trembling around calling on God for help, and not ourselves in whom God dwells?” asks Blake. And Rumi makes a still larger sweep when he asks:

“Ye who in search of God, of God, pursue,

Ye need not search for God is you, is you!

Why seek ye something that was missing ne’er?

Save you none is, but you are–where, oh, where?[118]

Mahomed said that when man walks towards God, God runs towards him; and Christ illustrated this truth with the parable of the Prodigal Son. When on repentance, he felt the urge within to return to his father’s house, his father “ran and fell on his neck, and kissed him.”[119] Rumi has given expression to this idea in his characteristic manner:

“Whomsoever thou didst deem to be a lover, regard him as the loved one too, for relatively he is both this and that.

If they that are thirsty seek water from the world, water too seeks in the world them that are thirsty.”[120]

Religion, accordingly, is not merely man’s search for God, but also God’s search for man. But since man is a weak, erring, helpless creature, prophets and apostles are needed as links to connect him with God. Besides, “if it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic Character,” says Blake, “the Philosophic and Experimental would soon be at the ration of all things and stand still, unable to do other than repeat, the same dull round over again.[121] Rumi endorses Blake’s view:

“God sent the prophets for this purposes,

Namely, to sever infidelity from faith.

Before they came we were all alike,

No one knew whether he was right or wrong.

Genuine coin and base coin were current alike:

The world was a night, and we travelers in the dark,

Till the sun of the prophets arose, and cried,

‘Begone, O slumber; welcome, O pure light!’

Now the eye sees how to distinguish colours.

It sees the difference between rubies and pebbles.”[122]

The prophets of the various nations were men in whom the divine light was revealed in its purity, in order that they might act as lamps amidst the darkness of delusion and error. All were but one soul, one expression of truth coming at different times to act as exemplars and models to humanity.

“Heavenly Men beaming bright,

Appeared as One Man.”[123]

Rumi also says that all the prophets, however large their number, are essentially one, just as the light of all lamps, however different in shape, is identical.[124]

All religions therefore, says Blake, are one. Truth is not the exclusive poss     ession of any one creed; no single faith is its sole repository. “The religions of all Nations are derived from each Nation’s different reception of the Poetic Genius, which is everywhere call’d the Spirit of Prophecy.”[125] In other words, all religions possess the same essentials of truth, and all lead to God, but he creedal and intellectual apparatus of each religion is adapted to the medium through which it is revealed, and also to his own time, country, temperament, and philosophic outlook. Rumi also holds the same doctrine:

“In the adorations and benedictions of righteous men

The praises of all the prophets are kneaded together.

All their praises are mingled into one stream

All the vessels are emptied into one ewer.

Because He that is praised is, in fact, only one.

In this respect all religions are only one religion.

Because all praises are directed towards God’s light,

These various forms and figures are borrowed from it.”[126]

But even if there be divergencies, says Blake, in divine revelation, we should not be dismayed, but regard them all as the golden chains that meet beyond mortal sight at the throne of God. Truth presents different aspects to different individuals; but at bottom when beheld with ‘double or triple or four-fold vision’ it is the same. From the foot of the mountain, says a Buddhist poem, many are the paths ascending in shadow, but from the cloudless summit all who climb behold the self-same moon.

The Hindu mystic says that every thing in this world, even truth itself, is relative. What may be truth for one state of things or for one plane of existence is not truth for another state on another plane. The different ideas of truth are nothing more than the different views of the Absolute from different angles of the relative. The fault is not with the truth, but with man’s limitations. As he grows spiritually, these limitations decrease, so that he can see the truth better and better, till at last all his limitations fade away as mists before the rising sun, and he grasps the truth in its entirety; rather he discovers in himself the boundless ocean of being and knowledge.

With the passing of the years, says Blake, religion dwindles into mere dogma, and the letter of the law becomes to occupy the entire filed of vision of its adherents. Each considers his own religion the only true one, which he feels bound to spread even with the sword. Thus, what was originally the light of Heaven, becomes nothing but the darkness of Hell. “Every Religion that Preaches Vengeance for Sin is the Religion of the Enemy and Avenger and not of the Forgiver of Sin; and their God is Satan, Named by the Divine Name.”[127]

(7) Universal Love:

Blake pours out his fiery wrath on the self-righteous Pharisee who emphasises the mere husk of outward formality, who professes purity and practices convetousness, who prays at street corners, yet breaks every rule of love and mercy, who moans over the sins of others and lulls his own fast asleep.

“To be good only, is to be,

A God, or else a Pharisee.”[128]

Love, not the Levitical law, is the essence of all religion and morality. Compassion for the world, for all its ills, its ignorance and sin, is the only way to salvation. The “mere moral law” is the “letter that killeth.”[129] Mutual forgiveness of sin and vice is true corner-stone of morality, the only gate of paradise.[130] The publication, the adulteress, the thief, and the harlot are neither to be loathed nor shunned. They must be encompassed in an all embracing love.[131] Rumi says that God does not judge as men judge, but looks at the heart, the secret motives and the aspiration.[132]

Blake enfolds the entire universe in his love; it is far-reaching, measureless. It is only by realizing our kinship with the whole world that we can rise to our highest height. His idea of love was in full accord with that of the Buddha.

“E’en as a mother watcheth o’er her child

Her only child, as long as life doth last;

So let us, for all creatures great or small

Develop such a boundless heart and mind,

Aye, let us practice love for all the world,

Above, below, around and everywhere,

Uncramped, from ill-will and enmity.”[133]

A veritable storm of compassion broke loose within Blake’s heart, whenever he contemplated human misery and sorrow. Whatever folly men may commit, be their sins ever so great, we must feel sympathy and pity for them. He equally waxed indignant at every suffering inflicted upon the humblest of the helpless, dumb ‘little brothers’ of humanity. He believed that every injury done to the least of sentient beings, such as a robin redbreast, set up a commotion in Heaven, and God visited the world with His wrath in consequences.[134]

Rumi too has expressed himself in almost identical terms:

“Where is a bird, weak and innocent,

Who does not hold a Solomon with all his host within?

When he moans bitterly without cry of complaint,[135]

A noise of tumult arises in the Seven Spheres of Heaven.

At every moment there come to him from God a hundred

couriers:

From him one cry elicits a hundred responses from God.”[136]

(8) Problem of Evil:

As regards the much-vexed question of the origin and source of evil, Blake says that “Man is born a Spectre or Satan and is altogether an Evil and requires a New Selfhood continually, and must continually be changed into his direct Contrary.”[137] In other words, as I have explained above, evil is coincident with existence. It is only by dying ‘death of Man’, that is, by annihilating all ignorance, bodily lust, pride of intellect, in short, by destroying the ‘Spectre’ of self-hood, and discovering the ‘Emanation far within’, the true Self, the Atman of the Hindu mystic, that we can transcend the consciousness of evil.

Poltinus says the same thing. The evil that has befallen man is due to the desire of the soul to have a separate, individual existence of its own. The only way of escape lies in the soul’s reversing its will, and returning to God. Change the character, says Plotinus, and the evil will be gone.[138]

Besides, what we call evil has in reality no existence of its own. It is, as St. Augustine says, not a substance but a disagreement hostile to substance, a mere negation.[139] As soon as true knowledge arises, it will vanish. But without pain and sorrow, out above, it is an axiom that things can be known only through their opposites or negations. “Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human Existence.”[140]

Much evil again, says Blake, is probationary. Life is a state of probation, and probation involves the existence of evil lusts, and passions to prove us. It is the common lot of man, and out of it arise fortitude, faith and inward joy

“Man was made for Joy and Woe,

And when this we rightly know,

Thro’ the world we safely go.

Joy and Woe are woven fine.

A Clothing for the Soul divine;

Under every grief and pine

Runs a joy with silken twine.[141]

In the last resort, Blake makes God the author of good an evil, Who in His inscrutable wisdom, frames the tiger’s ‘fearful symmetry’, and fashions the lamb’s ‘meek innocence’. The Persian mystic does the same. He regards Adam as a manifestation of the divine beauty and Satan as the divine majesty and wrath. Says Rumi:

“And if you say that evil proceeds from God,

It matter not. How does it damage His perfection?

To send down evil is one of his perfections.

I will give you an illustration, O vain fool:

The divine Artist paints His pictures of two kinds,

Fair pictures and those the reverse of fair.

Joseph He painted fair and made beautiful;

He also painted ugly picture of demons and goblins.

Both sorts of pictures are of His workmanship,

They proceed not from His imperfection, but His skill,

That the perfection of His wisdom may be shown,

And the cavilers of His art be put to shame.”[142]

Alleged Sources of Blake’s Mystical System:

It remains to consider the statement often made by Blake’s critics that there is nothing new in his mystical system, that it is a hotch-potch of doctrines derived from other sources. Among these are mentioned the Bible, the Hindu scriptures, and the writings of Boehme and Swedenborg. As regards the Bible, he was no doubt steeped in it, but he was not a literal Christian. He did not even believe in the historical Christ apart from the Christ within, much less the other orthodox doctrines. Like all mystics, he interpreted the Bible, and brought it in line with the truth as he saw it. So did Origen. He ascribed three meanings to the Bible, the historical for the ignorant, the allegorical for the educated, and the spiritual for the enlightened.[143] Blake perceived a four-fold meaning in the Bible in conformity with his four-fold vision. Rumi does the same in respect of the Quran. He goes further than Origen and Blake, and ascribeds no less than seven senses to each passage of the Quran.[144] It will, therefore, be more correct to say that Blake threw light upon the Bible than that eh drew upon it for his mystical system. He emphasized and redeclared the eternal truths which constitute the basis of the Bible.

It is impossible that Blake could have possessed a first hand knowledge of the Hindu scriptures. Not is it likely that he read them in translations, least of all the Bhagavad-gita, as M. Berger states.[145] Sanskrit, the language in which the Hindu scriptures are written was not discovered to Europe until the latter part of the eighteenth century, and though Charles Wilkins, who figures in one of Blake’s water colour drawings, published a garbled version in English of the Bhagavad-gita at Benares in 1785, it is doubtful if it found its way to Europe. In fact, it was not until the publication of his work on ‘The Languages and Wisdom of the Indians’ by Freidrich Schelegel in 1808 that Europe became aware of the existence of the sacred writings of the Hindus.[146] Blake’s most important works containing his doctrines were complete with the appearance of ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Milton’ in 1804. He is, therefore, not likely to have had any acquaintance with or to have been influenced by the Hindu system of religious thought. Nevertheless, there is a remarkable coincidence with regard to two important points. The first is the doctrine of the creation being an error, to which I have previously referred, and the second is the belief of Blake regarding the existence of three ‘Gods or Geniuses’ in the human soul, ever warring against one another. He calls them, OOthoon which is desire, Bromion which is reason, and Theotormon which is desire restrained.[147] This corresponds to the Hindu theory of the three ‘gunas’ or qualities, viz. ‘sattva’, which is intelligence, ‘rajas’ which is energy, and ‘tamas’ which is inertia. They are ever waging a war within the human soul. But this theory has been put forward by Plato also. He calls these three qualities three elements, viz. appetite, spirit and reason.

Boehme and Swedenborg are said to have been a far more fruitful source of Blake’s theories. This point has been sufficiently dealt with by several writers, and need not therefore be stressed by me. The question is whether Blake was a real mystic. On this, I am sure, there can be no two opinions. He was an adept in the cult of Mysticism, and if we accept what Mysticism stands for, then he must have had a direct experience of the truths he has sought to convey. We have his most emphatic assurance that his vision of truth was “not of this world, not of man, nor from Man.”[148] Besides, whereas both Boehme and Swedenborg professed to have been seers of the ‘World of Correspondences’, Blake claimed to have seen visions on higher planes of consciousness. In the Bhagavad-gita, the mystic is exhorted to study assimilate and then verify for himself and, if necessary, amplify the spiritual experiences of his predecessors in the Path. This is exactly what Blake has done.

There is bound to be a similarity of thought between the various mystics, ‘not only of one land or country’, but between those of the world, for as Saint Martin observes they all come from the same country and speak the same language.[149] The doctrines that they preach are not isolated phenomena. They are not peculiar to any one of them. They are the common property of all, and result from direct perceptual experience. Rumi likens mystical experience to a light that is handed on from one mystic to another in an unbroken flame, and is therefore bound to be the same in all cases, except in degree and intensity.[150]

If on the ground of family resemblances between the ideas of the various mystics, we continued to trace the system of one from that of the other, there would ensue a sort of regressus ad infinite. Indeed, M. Maeterlinck has attempted this already. He believes in a great mysterious river of though “which since the beginning of history has been flowing beneath all the religions, all the faith and all the philosophies.”[151]. He places the source of this river in India, from where mysteries and secret doctrines spread in Egypt and Persian and Chaldea, filtered into Palestine, Greece and Northern Europe, and finally reached China and even America. No one who has understood the psychology of Mysticism will agree with Maeterlinck’s startling theory.

Blake’s Position as a Mystic:

From whatever point of view we regard Blake, from the Eastern or the Western, he at once arrests our attention as one of the most remarkable figures in Mysticism. He would be reckoned as a ‘Swan amongst men’ by the Hindus and a ‘perfected gnostic’ by the Persian Sufis.[152] He combines in himself all the three varieties of his true nature, and in doing so made him realize his kinship with the whole universe. His love was therefore boundless as the sea. But it was not passive; it was intensely active and practical. He passed through life like a happy crusader, sitting in a ‘chariot of fire’, with a ‘bow of burning gold’, in one hand and ‘arrows of desire’ in the other, determined to free the holy land of England from all the Turks and Saracens who, in the name of religion and reason, claimed to guide and govern the consciences of men.

1. Berger is surprised at what he regards as a queer mixture of two opposite feelings in Blake, viz. love of humanity and entire absence of emotion, contempt for this world and love of every thing that it contains.[153] The Bhagavad-gita says that this is the surest sign of the true mystic. He feels himself as everything, so he does not desire anything, for he has whatever can be had; he feels himself as everything, so he does not injure anything, for anybody injures himself. He lives in the world, is surrounded by its illusions, but is not deceived by them.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the quintessence of Blake’s mystical system may be said to be contained in the following aphorism:

“The Eternal Body of Man is the Imagination: that is God Himself

The Divine Body Joshua, Jesus: We are his Members.

It manifests in Works of Art (In Eternity All is Vision.)[154]

**

 

[1] See Chapter I.

[2] Prefatory Memoir to Blake’s Poetical Works.

[3] Life of William Blake, London Quarterly Review, January 1869.

[4] Human Personailty by Fredrick W. H. Myers.

[5] Seneca: “De. Tranq. Animi, 15, 16.

[6] Songs of Experience: A little Boy Lost.

[7] Life of William Blake.

[8] Life of William Blake.

[9] Enneads. Eng. tr. by McKenna.

[10] Masnavi.

[11] Life of William Blake by A. Gilchrist.

[12] Life of William Blake by A. Glichrist.

[13] e.g. Tadhkirat-’l-Awliya by Faird-ud-din Attar: Persian text edited by R. A. Nicholson.

[14] Riches.

[15] Masnavi.

[16] Blake’s poems from Rossetti MS. 1793.

[17] Broken love.

[18] Life of William Blake by A. Gilchrist.

[19] Mammon.

[20] See, ‘Prefatory Memoir,’ to Blake’s Poetical Works.

[21] Eng. tr. by John Payne.

[22] Studies of Pessimism by Bailey Saunders.

[23] Shakespeare: Cymbeline, V. 5. 422.

[24] See Chapter I.

[25] Life of William Blake by A. Gilchrist.

[26] See ‘Yoga-Sutras’

[27] See Manaqib-’l-Arifin.

[28] See Nafhat-al-Uns by Jami.

[29] See Chap I.

[30] See Life of Ramkrishna by Max Muller.

[31] See Chapter I.

[32] e.g. R. A. Vaughan in ‘Hours with the Mystics’, Dean Inge in ‘Christian Mysticism’, and Miss Evelyn Underhill in ‘Mysticism’.

[33] This is similar to the ‘World of Ideas’ of Plato, and the realm of Correspondences of Swedenborg.

[34] See Kimia-e-Sa’adat by Al-Ghazzali.

[35] The ‘World of Unity’ as I have said above, is not to be reckoned among the five planes of being. The human soul therefore, has no senses peculiar to it; besides in that World has human and the divine merge into an undifferentiated one.

[36] See Masnavi.

[37] See Chapter I.

[38] Human Personality.

[39] Identitiy.

[40] Masnavi.

[41] See ‘Jerusalem’.

[42] Ibid.

[43] See ‘Ideas of Good and Evil’.

[44] See ‘Human Personality’.

[45] Jeremiah, 20-8.

[46] William Blake.

[47] e.g. Abdur-Razzaq’s ‘Dictionary of the Technical Term of the Sufi’s pub. By Dr. Sprenger, 1845, and Shabistari’s Gulshan-e-Raz (Persian).

[48] Masnavi.

[49] e.g. Ellis and Yeats and Foster Damon.

[50] Life of William Blake.

[51] Ibid.

[52] Masnavi.

[53] Ibid.

[54] Gulshan-e-Raz.

[55] See Chapter I.

[56] Letter to Thomas Butts.

[57] See Chapter I.

[58] The Wisdom of Geothe by J. S. Blackie.

[59] Confessions.

[60] Notes to Swedenborg.

[61] Earth’s Answer.

[62] ‘There is no Natural Religion.’

[63] Ibid.

[64] Jerusalem.

[65] The Voice of the Ancient Bard.

[66] Couplet and Fragments.

[67] Eng. tr. by Claud Field.

[68] Masnavi.

[69] Gulshan-e-Raz.

[70] The Persian name for faith is ‘taslim’ and the Hindu name is ‘Shraddha.’

[71] See Wallace’s ‘Life of Kant’.

[72] Imitation of Christ.

[73] Jerusalem.

[74] Songs of Experience.

[75] See ‘The Last Judgment’.

75a. See Chapter I.

[76] See ‘The Last Judgment’.

[77] See Shariraka Bhashyam by Shankaracharya.

[78] See ‘The Last Judgment’.

[79] See ‘The Meeting of Extremes in Contemporary Philosophy.’

[80] Masnavi.

[81] Quoted by De Selincourt in ‘William Blake.’

[82] Brihad. Up. I. 3-30. 31.

[83] Notes to Lavater.

[84] Jah and His Two sons, Satan and Adam.

[85] Jataka Stories, edited by E. B. Cowell.

[86] See ‘The Divine Image’.

[87] See Jataka Stories, edited by E. B. Cowell.

[88] See Bhagavad-Gita.

[89] Vaughan: Hours with the Mystics.

[90] Chapter IV. Eng. tr. by Sir Edwin Arnold.

[91] See his commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita.

[92] ‘There is no Natural Religion.’

[93] The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

[94] See Chapter I.

[95] See Sharirak Bhashyam.

[96] Bishop Blougram’s Apology.

[97] Jerusalem.

[98] God includes all things, so there is nothing to contrast Him with.

[99] Masnavi.

[100] See the Purana.

[101] Chwang-Tze, S. B. E. X. IX. II: ii. 2.

[102] Masnavi.

[103] Masnavi.

[104] Letters to Thomas Butts, 1800, 1802.

[105] The original word is, ‘Qaus-e-Nuzul’.

[106] The original word is, ‘Qaus-e-Suud’.

[107] Inscription on Plate 37.

[108] ‘There is no Natural Religion.’

[109] Masnavi.

[110] The original word is, ‘Dauran-e-Wujud.’

[111] Letters to Thomas Butts, 1800, 1802.

[112] Masnavi.

[113] In Memoriam.

[114] Gulshan-e-Raz.

[115] The Life of William Blake by A. Gilchrist.

[116] See Chapter I.

[117] Summa Theologiae.

[118] Eng. tr. by R. A. Nicholson in ‘The Mystics of Islam’.

[119] Luke, 15·20.

[120] Masnavi.

[121] There is No Natural Religion.

[122] Masnavi.

[123] Letter to Thomas Butts.

[124] Masnavi.

[125] All Religions are one.

[126] Masnavi.

[127] Jerusalem.

[128] The Everlasting Gospel.

[129] The Life of William Blake by Alexander Gilchrist.

[130] The Gates of Paradise.

[131] See’ William Bond.’

[132] Masnavi.

[133] Sutta Nipata. Eng. tr. by Mr.s Rhys Davids.

[134] See ‘Auguries of Innocence’.

[135] The original word is ‘Shakr’ which means ‘complaint’; but Nicholson confounds it with ‘Shukr’ which means ‘thanks’. See his edition with English translation of the first two volumes of the Masnavi.

[136] Masnavi.

[137] Jerusalem.

[138] Enneads, Eng. tr. by McKenna.

[139] Confessions.

[140] The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

[141] Auguries of Innocence.

[142] Masnavi.

[143] Con Celsum.

[144] See Masnavi.

[145] Mysticisme et Poesie. Eng. tr. by D. H. Conner.

[146] See ‘A History of Sanskrit Literature’ by A. Macdonell.

[147] Visions of the Daughters of Albion.

[148] The Life of William Blake by A. Gilchrist.

[149] See Chapter I.

[150] Masnavi.

[151] See ‘The Great Secret’ by Maurice Maeterlinck.

[152] See Chapter I, for explanation of the terms.

[153] Mysticisme et Poesie, Eng. tr. by D. E. Conner.

[154] Laocoon Plate.

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