week two:
This week we looked at Blake's view of the relationship between God, the senses and perception. In Blake's A Memorable Fancy , he asks "Does a firm perswasion that a thing is so, make it so?" Aside from the interesting spelling, Blake was asking some very philosophical and abstract questions. the reply to this question is "All poets believe that it does, & in ages of imagination this firm perswasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm perswasion of anything". This is such a powerful and * statement... We re confronted with considering the possibility of the existence of dimensions other than the reality that we have been conditioned to perceive. What, if anything exists beyond the senses that we have come to rely on to envision the world around us? Blake dared us to "see heaven in a grain of sand", to rid ourselves of the physical boundaries, transcending this realm and find wonder in that which is not tangible.Michael mentioned something along the lines of-As humans we’ve reduced the human perception to what could be weighed and measured and only this could be labelled as ‘truth’.How did society come to view things this way? From what little I know of Descartes’ philosophy, He believed that the senses were limited in their perception, the mind is much more powerful. Descartes gave the example of dreaming, for in a dream, one's senses perceive stimuli that seem real, but do not actually exist and concludes that one cannot rely on the information that the senses provide as necessarily being true. But I find this argument to have its shortcomings, because Blake might perceive the state of dreaming to also be a state of perception and a different dimension upon which we can envision our worlds or a different world. Blake mentions the act of “raising other men into a perception of the infinite”, that is, opening the inward eye and therefore being able to perceive different levels of vision through the eye, beyond it rather than with it. But how do we reach a state of being able to perceive things in a new dimension, a different reality? Ancient tribes have used hallucinogens for thousands of years to open up their minds to a higher plane...the question is, what were they seeking? Answers to the great mysteries, the meaning of life? Can we open the doors of perception simply by being open to possibilities? By embracing the power of our imaginations and having great faith in the unknown and undefinable, or is it something else? Was Blake actually mentally ill and did this imbue him with a special insight that we don’t have? Wow… so much to think about…
mood:
open minded