…immortality, and who has also taken lysergic acid, let's say, knows quite well that Wordsworth spontaneously had this, and quite clearly Blake had it too, and many others, I would say. You do, of course, anticipate this world of tranquilizers and pep drugs…

…when people thought about Christ, but it was... Oh, well, yes, this is after all the poets have thought this way. I mean, Blake thought this way, Wordsworth thought this way. And then, you see, he then goes and finds his friend Matthew reading books and…

…go into this world. And under certain drugs, they would also go into this world. And, of course, you look at a man like Blake, and then you see not only do they see visions with their eyes closed, but this terrific sense of light is projected into the…

…literature. For example, I suddenly discovered, one time I took it, the meaning of a phrase that had always puzzled me in William Blake. He said, it's a phrase which goes like this, gratitude is heaven itself. Well, I did not think about what this meant.…

…one, the world of liberation and the world of appearances, are identical, provided you can find eternity within time. I mean, people like Blake knew all about this and were attempting to do it, and this, it seems to me, is the essence of the art of…

…too, represent a whole social attitude towards the external world. Seeing infinity in a grain of sand. I mean, the whole Blake poem exactly sums up what they were after and what they so consummately succeeded in doing. I mean, this is simultaneously…

…have seen the world I mean it becomes quite clear the sort of world that van Gogh lived in or the sort of world that Blake lived in this is you begin to have a direct experience of this kind of world while you're under the drug and after the drug…

…and to some slight extent recapture this kind of world which Certain privileged people have lived in, moved in and out of, as Blake did obviously all the time. But the artist's talents after the experience are not going to be roughly the same as they…

…possible universe. There are other very strange universes which some people spontaneously inhabit. I mean, a man like William Blake obviously inhabits an extremely different universe from that which most people inhabit. And I think it's probably very wholesome…

…a profound psychological pleasure to people, I mean, these kind of violences pay, so to say, a high psychological dividend. As Blake said years ago, damn braces bless relaxes and people like being braced rather than relaxed and there is a real satisfaction…

…see anything connected with our own private life or even with the general life of mankind we see something quite different When Blake saw these figures, he said, these are the cherubim and seraphim. And he knew all about them. They were very large. He…

…mortal and perishing sight could possibly imagine. They were in some sense super real. They were more real than ordinary reality. And Blake saw these things all his life except for a period in middle life when for some reason visions didn't come to him.…

…say, makes the best of both worlds where the absolute is not apart from the world but is seen in the relative where the, as Blake says, you see infinity in a grain of sand and eternity in a flower that there is a possibility, as I say, if the ground…

…marvelously colored and sparkling like jewels rolling in and many other people have had these similar visions these spontaneous visions of Blake of which I was speaking were essentially of the same nature and one of the interesting figures facts about these…

…figures facts about these visions is that when figures are seen as they often are they are not only extraordinarily majestic, Blake describes these figures as a seraphim, and he says they were 120 feet high. But the most interesting fact about them…

…again following a phrase of Blake's, if in every case the doors of perception were opened, if the doors of perception were cleansed, as Blake says, then everything would be seen as it is, infinite and holy. In this case, I mean, if we all had the doors…

…achieving what they regard as the highest end, the union with God, the the identification with the divine. You get in William Blake, who was essentially a mystic and who was apt to express himself in rather violent terms about those he disagreed with, he…

…and would have been listened to when they described their visions. But as I say, these spontaneous visions seem to be fairly common. Blake had them all the time and we have some very curious accounts of the nature of his visions. He's left an account,…

…place. Then there is a very interesting account by John Varley of his drawing of the famous head of the ghost of a flea. Blake drew this in Varley's house, and Varley has left this description. I felt convinced by his manner of proceeding that he had a…