VISIONS of JUNG & BLAKE

After returning from a long, near fatal illness C G Jung experienced a state where visions absorbed his nightly pursuits. 

 

MEMORIES, DREAMS, REFLECTIONS (PG 295,296):

  "We shy away from the word "eternal," but I can describe the experience only as the ecstasy of a non-temporal state in which present, past, and future are one. Everything that happens in time had been brought together into a concrete whole. Nothing was distributed over time, nothing could be measured by temporal concepts. The experience might best be defined as a state of feeling, but one which cannot be produced by imagination. How can I imagine that I exist simultaneously the day before yesterday, today, and the day after tomorrow? There would be things which would not yet have begun, other things which would be indubitably present, and others again which would already be finished and yet all this would be one. The only thing that feeling could grasp would be a sum, an iridescent whole, containing all at once expectation of a beginning, surprise at what is now happening, and satisfaction or disappointment with the result of what has happened. One is interwoven into an indescribable whole and yet observes it with complete objectivity."  

 

Milton, Plate 32 Erdman says of this image "Knowing it will be impossible to receive the full inspiration of Milton by the mind alone, Blake has to go and catch a falling star." 

 

New York Public Library

Milton

Plate 29 [32]

 Blake's experience of visions, which must have been similar to Jung's, are conveyed to us in a totally different way. Jung used an intellectual, objective way to describe an emotional, subjective experience. Blake involves us in his experience by evoking suggestive images to allow us a perception of the non-temporal, simultaneous, interwoven wholeness. 

 

Here is an example from Blake's MILTON, plate 39 (E 140): 

 

"Suddenly around Milton on my Path, the Starry Seven
Burnd terrible! my Path became a solid fire, as bright
As the clear Sun & Milton silent came down on my Path.           
And there went forth from the Starry limbs of the Seven: Forms
Human; with Trumpets innumerable, sounding articulate
As the Seven spake; and they stood in a mighty Column of Fire
Surrounding Felphams Vale, reaching to the Mundane Shell, Saying

Awake Albion awake! reclaim thy Reasoning Spectre. Subdue        

Him to the Divine Mercy, Cast him down into the Lake
Of Los, that ever burneth with fire, ever & ever Amen!
Let the Four Zoa's awake from Slumbers of Six Thousand Years"