SHARED LIFE

Dec 21, 1957

Does life come to us or do we go out and fetch it?

I lived with Larry for 59 years, we adapted to each other but maintained inner experience which was unknown to the other. When I read what Larry wrote - his journal, his book, his autobiography, his letters - I realize how separate his inner experience was from what I knew of him. And, of course, I knew that he knew little of my thoughts and feeling from my perspective. As much as we might have shared experience, it meant something different to each of us. I like to say, 'the darkness cannot impinge on the light;' in the same way another's consciousness cannot impinge upon our own. 

Life comes to us like a series of cars on a train - multiple cars but one train - and there are others on the train with us. But what life means to me I have to fetch; that is the part that is unknowable to anyone but God or providence who arranged it.

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 My own serious interest in Blake began in 1977 when my wife brought Blake a psychological study by W. P. Witcutt home from the library. I had been on the point of a commitment to the study of Jung's voluminous writings, which at that time seemed the most creative intellectual work at hand. Witcutt diverted my commitment to  Blake, which we have now.

5-18-1978

Following his study of Witcutt

Some ideas about Blake's poetry:

It is naming of the selves. Sharing his visions gives great help in understanding, in gaining detachment from the hardening and rigid concrete of opinion, prejudice, passion - the principalities and powers - that work to make us automatisms, zombies, denizens of hell. It offers fresh and new ways of perceiving life - ourselves and others - it detaches us from the old man - this body of death, makes us aware of the spiritual struggle going on - we have been asleep to it - tossed under the waves, the prostrate Albion, the sick king. Blake's vivid imagery may shock us into consciousness so that we may begin to act purposely.  

Blake must have been an imaginative young boy and at some point found thinking very oppressive. Did he go from permissive and indulgent parents to a brutal taskmaster who used 'geometric logic' like Quigg did. (in Caine Mutiny) He found reason and feeling horrible and his visions of them seem to center on calamity - the Fall.

He shared his visions in such a way that one might hope to understand him at a deeper, more profound and real level than do most folk including ourselves. Thus if we can achieve this understanding of Blake, we may progress in learning of others including ourselves. Then love may come forth.

The woes of Urizen do indeed move us strangely, perhaps they may evoke the Holy Spirit in a powerful way. Hurrah!

In the Four Zoas, fallen Albion gives the scepter to Urizen who builds a steel trap world, which 'has done so much harm to our imagination's elastic and vital power.' Thus he didn't hate creative thought & law but only the worship of the created good. He hated the reactionaries and identified them with reason which, no doubt, they used as a weapon against visionary liberals.