Saturday, July 03, 2010

LEVELS of EXISTENCE II

Continuation of July 1 post.

BEULAH

Through Los generation supplies belief in the Eternal values using reason and the senses, (although confined in the illusion of time and space). Beulah supplies knowledge of the Eternal through the imagination which can transcend material limits. Beulah like generation is a world of the sexes, but in Beulah the male and female are married, each plays a role and accepts the designed functions. Beulah is a place of rest and repose where the contraries are equally true. The active nature of the male is in abeyance and the female is obedient. The delicate balance of Beulah however is maintained through illusion which is not to be taken for reality. Reality is unified as in Eden; Beulah maintains the illusion of duality.

Page 86: "...so long as love remains self-sacrificing, man retains his faith in a spiritual reality beyond the world of appearance. When, however, love fails, faith is lost and the finite mind seeks for reality within the finite form."Percival

Man is not meant to remain in Beulah for it is a place of retreat and renewal. Upward to Eden or downward to Generation are the options offered. A desire to remain in Beulah destroys the beautiful balance and sends man backward. Beulah shares with Eden evanescence, fluidity the ability to escape time and space. Love and forgiveness are the methods of maintaining Beulah as the environs of Eden.

EDEN

William Blake's personal goal was to spend as much time in Eden as possible. To transcend to fourfold vision, the ability to perceive the infinite, was his supreme delight. But Eden meant more than vision it also means creative energy, forgiveness, brotherhood and the oneness of wholeness. Beulah is the condition of rest and repose for a purpose - that of returning to the energetic activity of Eden.

Page 50: "In Eden 'there is no restraint from the greatest of all restraints on imaginative living - the selfhood. The self knows it, too, but fixes and makes manifest the energy which flows into it from God.'"

In this life the intensity and clarity of Eden is more than the soul can long endure. Thus the visionary world is fled for the worlds of appearance which have already been described.

Three Levels of Existence are pictured in Plate 9 of Jerusalem:
Pastoral world - Beulah
Dualistic world -Generation
Disintegrated World - Ulro.

Yale Center for British Art 
Jerusalem
Plate 9
 A Descriptive Catalogue (E 541)
"The Prophets describe what they saw in Vision as real and existing men whom they saw with their imaginative and immortal organs; the Apostles the same; the clearer the organ the more distinct the object. A Spirit and a Vision are not, as the modern philosophy supposes, a cloudy vapour or a nothing: they are organized and minutely articulated beyond all that the mortal and perishing nature can produce. He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and better light than his perishing mortal eye can see does not imagine at all. The painter of this work asserts that all his imaginations appear to him infinitely more perfect and more minutely organized than any thing seen by his mortal eye" 

 

3 comments:

Susan J. said...

I'm a little confused:

"Man is not meant to remain in Beulah for it is a place of retreat and renewal. Upward to Eden or downward to Generation are the options offered. A desire to remain in Beulah destroys the beautiful balance and sends man backward."

Backward meaning downward, "to generation"? Not backward meaning back in time to Eden, right?

The metaphor of backward & forward can be kind of baffling... I suppose I'm a progressive at heart: backward is bad / regress, forward is good / progress. Onward! ("Onward, through the fog!)

But then there's backward & forward in time, and surely Eden is backward in that regard. Well, maybe not for Blake, come to think of it...?

I just googled "Back to Eden" and found, among other things, the Back to Eden Health Ministry, "based on the Hallelujah Acres Diet and Lifestyle"

:-) :-)

ellie Clayton said...

Metaphors are so slippery!
We have to keep reassessing and redefining them. A 'back and forth' conversation may result in some common understanding as well as expanded perception.

I wasn't even thinking of the original Eden when I wrote.
Backward has negative connotation to me too; returning to what has already tried and discarded.
We spend most of our 'time' in the world of generation but even here we can make progress. I think Beulah and Eden partake of eternity rather than time.

Larry Clayton said...

As I said yesterday we are creatures of time and space (two other creatures!) In Eternity there is no backward or forward, no up or down; time and space simply don't apply.
"For now I see through a glass darkly..."
Unfortunately there are no (worldly) metaphors with which to talk about Eternity; it's "wholly other".