The Eternal and the Created

Taken from my post at 8-10-2009 to the William Blake yahoo group

The Eternal is within, the Created without.

Time and Space are creatures.
The Sea of Time and Space is a creation; our
image of 'reality' is largely the creation that keeps
us from Eternity; we are asleep!

According to Blake we (Albion) come from Eternity
(being made in the image of God). But falling in love
with the material and dividing into "many selves",
we drop down into Ulro.

British Museum
Europe
Frontispiece

Look at the 'Creator'!
[Urizen-creator, frontspiece of Europe):

"not a picture of God creating the Universe..but the image of the mind creating or projecting its own Maya
.....The person who can attain insight into this image for himself will know the source of his greatest illusion and bondage." (cf Symbol and Image in William Blake by George Wingfield Digby, p. 53)

This is the secret of reintegration and regeneration, a moment aptly described in The Prodigal Son, when the  man 'came to himself'. Then he returned to his father, described by Blake as realizing Eternity. 



 
Note added by ellie Jul 20, 2018:

In Blake's lexicon Creation is synonymous with Generation, the world between Beulah and Ulro, where there is the possibility recovering the ability to live in Eden or Eternity. The fall occurred when man lost his perception of the Infinite, Eternal Vision. It continued as he fell in love with the external world which prevented him from discerning the Truth which resulted from having been made with the image of God within him.
Through living in the material world of time & space, man is given the opportunity to 'experience the consequences of his unbelief.'  He can 'turn the experience of error into the apprehension of truth.' The contribution which time & space make to this exercise lies in providing a body to be cast aside when error is discerned. The temporal, material continues in order to 'give to error a created and transitory form, to be experienced and cast off time after time, until the experience of temporal error reveals the lineaments of eternal truth.'

Quotations from William Blake's Circle of Destiny by Milton O Percival, Page 220.

Jerusalem, Plate 56, (E 206)
"What may Man be? who can tell! But what may Woman be?
To have power over Man from Cradle to corruptible Grave.
He who is an Infant, and whose Cradle is a Manger                
Knoweth the Infant sorrow: whence it came, and where it goeth:
And who weave it a Cradle of the grass that withereth away.
This World is all a Cradle for the erred wandering Phantom:
Rock'd by Year, Month, Day & Hour; and every two Moments
Between, dwells a Daughter of Beulah, to feed the Human Vegetable
Entune: Daughters of Albion. your hymning Chorus mildly!
Cord of affection thrilling extatic on the iron Reel:
To the golden Loom of Love! to the moth-labourd Woof
A Garment and Cradle weaving for the infantine Terror:"