tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34585979.post1171720745021899156..comments2024-02-13T13:39:31.292-05:00Comments on William Blake: Religion and Psychology: DIVINE BODYLarry Claytonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11571190213288384302noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34585979.post-11905717964831780302020-08-25T13:36:48.680-04:002020-08-25T13:36:48.680-04:00I am so glad you posted your comment. It adds a di...I am so glad you posted your comment. It adds a dimension which had been missing. Once we camped beside a mountain creek long enough that I began to hear the Music of the Spheres. The rushing waters didn't produce the sound which was inside me and around me, but it released me to listen more intently.<br /><br />Thank You. ellie Claytonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13708032405797473211noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34585979.post-86243292522265625252020-08-24T15:29:48.717-04:002020-08-24T15:29:48.717-04:00Music may be inside you for which you need not phy...Music may be inside you for which you need not physical vibration of strings nor voice. It comes when you are happy or when you feel sorrow. It comes from above and it is from eternal world. No doubt. A musician feels it and plays by their hands but Original music is within though it appears without.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34585979.post-79235699720424058292010-05-13T15:21:45.336-04:002010-05-13T15:21:45.336-04:00Re Science: Blake loved it as much as you and Don,...Re Science: Blake loved it as much as you and Don, or Ellie and I., but it's a shadow of Eternal science. (incidentally Ellie and I both got our degrees in Chemistry -- and in natural sciences.)<br /><br />All of this life is a shadow of Eternity. Everything that we perceive here (with our 5 senses) can be found there, and oh so vividly.<br /><br />There is another realm in which we live forever, and in which our sense based experience is a pale imitation.<br /><br />This life can be wonderful, but what comes infinitely surpasses it.Larry Claytonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11571190213288384302noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34585979.post-34430923119968739692010-05-13T14:58:25.258-04:002010-05-13T14:58:25.258-04:00Susan, we are really thankful to have someone like...Susan, we are really thankful to have someone like you questioning our posts; it's the best way we can improve our posts.<br /><br />Re: ""the spiritual world which is the only true existence."<br /><br />Right! I can question that with you. Blake didn't say it. However if you look at it as a poetic statement you could say that it contains truth, although not true in other ways. It's an exaggeration; Blake exaggerated often, making his poetry very vulnerable to critics. <br /><br />Blake and Ellie are trying to say, as Plato might have said, that the Eternal is the only real. This life is a shadow of that.<br /><br />Yes, music is a spiritual activity, but the "music of Eternity" is the reality of which our senses provide a shadow. I think that was Blake's idea.<br /><br />Blake enjoyed the earthly stuff as much as you and I, but deplored our limited perception:<br /><br />"How do you know, but every bird that cuts the airy way Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?" (this from Plate 7 of the Marriage of Heaven and Hell).<br /><br />Blake died singing, but I think he fully expected that being a part of the celestial choir would be a lot more meaningful than his mortal music.Larry Claytonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11571190213288384302noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34585979.post-77960703792128571002010-05-13T08:12:12.237-04:002010-05-13T08:12:12.237-04:00"we have access to this world now if we will ..."we have access to this world now if we will open ourselves to vision through contemplation, poetry, painting and music."<br /><br />Does Blake -- and do you -- discount the awareness of spiritual reality by way of science and mathematics -- and through the use of imagination in the study of the physical world -- and through the use of imagination in human inventiveness?<br /><br />For example, through the mentorship of my deeply spiritual engineer husband, I've come to appreciate the wonders of such amazing products of human imagination as the internal combustion engine, airplanes, radio... God's original creativity is recapitulated in human creativity, of which the modern world provides abundant examples all around us....Susan J.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07676460547965873094noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34585979.post-34142700961400544662010-05-13T07:43:56.706-04:002010-05-13T07:43:56.706-04:00"the spiritual world which is the only true e..."the spiritual world which is the only true existence."<br /><br />I find myself resisting this idea. I continue to sit with it, as I continue to explore Blake.<br /><br />To make an analogy -- music bears some resemblance to spirituality, in the ways it affects people, its ineffability, its often sublime character. And yet music occurs via the material: physical instruments, the human voice, electronic synthesizers. Were it not for the particular vibrations set up by the instrument, and the way our ears and neurons and brains work, there would be no music. With some types of music, the urge to get up and dance can be almost overwhelming; and other sorts of music often spark other physical reactions in the hearer. For me, appreciation of the physicality of music is integral to appreciation of music.<br /><br />Possibly my rootedness in physicality/the material plane is due to my gender. I dimly remember from the years that I attended an annual Biblical Studies conference that there's been a turn in Romanticism scholarship lately, that privileges female voices and our alleged consciousness of "embodiment"....<br /><br />this abstract of an article called "Romanticism and the Body" is typical of the line of discourse I'm remembering:<br /><br />http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/literature/article_view?article_id=lico_articles_bsl092Susan J.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07676460547965873094noreply@blogger.com