It was the gteat physicist Werner Heisenberg who brought forth the understanding that even the simplist act of perception would affect energy in the nonmaterial realm of particles. He was born 1901 and died 1976.
It was William Blake 1757 -1827 who, over a century before Heisenberg was born, wrote
If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.
And it was a biographer of William Blake named Alfred Thomas Story who in 1893 wrote the book William Blake, His Life Character and Genious . He said
It is now well on to seventy years since that strange and almost inexplicable genius, William Blake, died and found obscure burial in Bunhill Fields; and though his fame has been gradually growing since that time to the present, the world is still undecided as to his rightful place in the realm of art and letters, and likewise as to the message he had to deliver to the generations, even if what he had to deliver can be dignified by the name of message at all, which some deny.
Some also might agree that Heisenberg probably got the message.
It is hardly possible to fully comprehend a piece of writing or the writer when viewing some words out of context, not only of the full written work but also the context of the time period of the life of the writer. William Blake was and Englishman born of London in the era of revolutions, American and French. In his lifetime the cultures of ancient continents were birthing, aging and dying again within the cycles of universal concepts and context of human experience. Imagine that.
But lets look through these doors and see this man and his work in the context of his obituary notices.
... to spread a familiar and domestic atmosphere round the most important of all subjects- to connect the visible and the invisible world, ....
Later, a different book about William Blake was published in the year of 1914 by a man named Pierre Berger, titled -William Blake Poet and Mystic. He wrote
Finally, it is imagination that wIll modify alike the poets' expression and their meaning ; that will change their metaphors, rejuvenate words and give them fresh power, [... ] But no matter what the part that imagination plays, or its preponderance in literature, or what liberties it takes in spite of superannuated rules or a too rigid logic, it never falls away, in the writings of the greater romanticists, from the fundamental laws of human intelligence.
William Blake was an artist, a painter, a prolific writer of poetry and prose. Ultimately he was a mystic, one who contemplates beyond the self in seeking a kind of immersion into the unity which birthed the self. A mystic such as Blake is perhaps by nature a cosmologist, in the flow of the ancients seeking the primordial origin.
Pierre Berger, the French author reflecting on Blake's works, saw the mysticism and symbolism as elements of charm and beauty in the beginning. But he claims that finally these charming elements were the cause ot its ruin. He says, in his book from 1914
There is perhaps no writer in whose works we can better observe, from a literary point of view, the effect of mysticism on a poetic soul. This mysticism showed itself early in him, it developed, fashioning all his thoughts and conceptions till it became an integral part of his life. He put forth spontaneous and splendid poems full of imagination and fancy. At first little fettered by symbolism, it gradually weighed him down ; and the moment came at last when he could not express himself except by the most complex symbols. Little by little the visionary ceased to speak our tongue ; in the end his mystic vision and the symbols which described it reached a sphere in which our eyes could no longer follow them, our mind no longer comprehend them. They are beyond us, and almost cease to be literature. -William Blake Poet and Mystic
Pierre Berger was not a mystic, he was looking at Blake "from a literary point of view". Yet ironically his own words defined the mystical morment where his own mind failed to follow the flow. He says "in the end his mystic vision and the symbols which described it reached a sphere in which our eyes could no longer follow them, our mind no longer comprehend them." - Exactly.- A sphere is a totality, a whole. Berger describes Blake as having weighed himself down, but in fact the reverse is true. Berger was weighted by his literary concepts, Blake was released and evaporated beyond these.
Imagine water coming from a leaking faucet as drops, and dropping one by one into a bucket. We know that under the faucet we have a bucket of water, not a bucket of drops.
Imagine dry red earth in your hand becoming moistened with drops of water until it combines and can form a little ball, like clay. If ten or fifty little drops of clay are dropped in a bucket we have of bucket of clay balls and we can take them out one at a time. The clay earth has not become one, it does not naturally merge. But the water blended into the clay will create an atmosphere around the little ball of earth.
Wherever water occurs it tends to take on a spherical form. A single drop of water will always merge to become one by joining what is divided and uniting it in circulation. A mystic is the drop of water seeking the larger sphere or the original sphere.
The academic like Berger could only sprinkle water droplets on his literary clay concepts and hold them seperately in his bucket. However -It is not the issue that Berger could no longer comprehend Blake, that is not necessarily the immediate goal. It is that Berger could not grasp the atmosphere of where Blake is going, and then blames the mystic and his symbols for the academic's own inability to follow, to flow.
Giving birth is a natural process but it takes time and labor, and many months of gestation. It is possible to circumvent the laborious process of birthing an offspring, but one will not have the actual experience and therefore the authentic knowledge of birthing.
The mystical perception is cleansed by participation in the active labor of the process of knowing for one's self.
In this advanced technological age we have the ability, albeit a controlled selective ability, to source and read from original sources, books and authors of centuries past.
OR, we may choose websites, or linguistic technology systems with funny names which are "able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages."
How we use technology ultimately depends on, is a reflection of, how we use and evolved our innate Human intelligence and flow into our original source.
In the 21st century if the doors of perception are to be cleansed we may need to initially percieve that the doors have been dirtied with data.
Finally, to put he doors of perception quote in the larger context an excerpt from the full piece is given here below, OR you may read the entire writing titled The Marriage of Heaven and Hell here.
The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as I have heard from Hell. For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life ; and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite and corrupt. This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment. But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged : this I shall do by printing in the infernal method by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary, and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid. If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.
Was Willaim Blake called a scientist? I don't think so. Was Werner Heisenberg thought of as a mystic? Probably not. But each in their own way could see into the invisible, each could tap the unseen with the awareness of its existence.
To close this brief perception of a man named William Blake I defer to Pierre Berger
We shall not concern ourselves with the historical aspect of the case, interesting as this is, nor seek to show whether Blake was or was not the product of his age and his environment. We shall look upon him rather as a unique personality, thrown by chance, as he would have himself said, out of the world of eternity into that of space and time, to appear there for an instant and then return to his true dwelling place. The time and place of his coming to earth are of small importance. What do matter are the immortal words he spoke; and these belong to no country and no age. -William Blake Poet and Mystic published 1914
Read more about William Blake or Read the works of William Blake
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell book published 1790
Works of William Blake volume 1
William Blake was born in 1757, died 1827, "amid the gloom of a London November".
Obituary notices for William BLake which appeared in the Literary Gazette of August 18, 1827 (pp. 540-41), the Gentleman's Magazine, of October 1827 (pp. 377-8), and the Annual Register of 1827, in its Appendix of Deaths (pp. 253-4) were republished and may be read in the 1907 book of Aryhur Symons
PEOPLE the UNSEEN. AWARENESS ANCIENT WISDOM
Other quotes from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
He whose face gives no light shall never become a star.
Excess of sorrow laughs, excess of joy weeps.
The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.
The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
Improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement are roads of Genius.
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