William Blake vs The World Chapter 3 I COME TO SELF ANNIHILATION

William Blake vs The World Chapter 3. I COME TO SELF ANNIHILATION

Author: John Higgs Publisher: New York, NY: Penguin Random House. Publish Date: 2021 Review Date: Status:📚

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High-functioning athletes and highly skilled musicians sometimes talk about becoming so focused that they lose all sense of time, space and ego. They become so fully immersed in what they are doing that it is as if they do not exist, except in their actions. This state is called ‘flow’ by psychologists, or more casually ‘being in the zone’. In a similar way, Blake’s work suggests that there were moments when his sense of self dissolved as he wandered the countryside as a child. This state of mind is a profound one, and mystics go to great lengths to experience it. At such a moment, all is truly one and no division exists, because when there is no sense of ‘you’, there is no way that ‘you’ can be separate from the rest of the universe. This is perhaps why the countryside, in Blake’s work, has all the qualities of a prelapsarian paradise.

Blake certainly valued the experience of the loss of sense of self and viewed it as a spiritual goal. In his epic poem Jerusalem, he writes:

O Saviour pour upon me thy spirit of meekness & love:

Annihilate the Selfhood in me, be thou all my life!

In his poem Milton, he dismisses earthly laws in favour of the ‘Laws of Eternity’, in which the loss of the sense of self is paramount:

… know thou: I come to Self Annihilation

Such are the Laws of Eternity that each shall mutually

Annihilate himself for others good, as I for thee

‘Self Annihilation’ is something other than death; during the horrors that unfurl in Jerusalem, a character seeking freedom from his struggles desperately cries out, ‘O that Death & Annihilation were the same!’ Blake understood the self as a mental creation separate and distinct from physical life, which can be annihilated without our bodies coming to harm.

This loss of a sense of self, it should be noted, is different to the psychological experience known as dissociation, a state in which the mind becomes detached and disconnected, often as a way of avoiding dealing with trauma. Unlike the loss of a sense of self, it is a fundamentally passive experience. In contrast, the flow state is intensely active – the mind is so absorbed in an experience or activity that it forgets to conceive of itself as being in some way separate.

We all think we have a sense of self and intuitively believe that it therefore must exist, but it has proven frustratingly difficult to find, or even define. As children, we might assume that our eyes operate like windows, letting light into our heads and allowing our ‘self’ to see the world outside. But how exactly would this work? Is ‘the self’ like a little person who watches this information, as if on a TV screen, with eyes of their own? If that was the case, would that little person also have another person inside their head, in order to watch what was going on in front of their eyes? That person would then need an even smaller person inside them, and so on to absurdity.

Neurologists have diced and sliced the brain pretty finely and there is no little person to be found, nor indeed any singular part of the brain which seems to act like one. Our sense of self is not a discrete thing, it turns out. It is perhaps better thought of as a story. It is the story of who we are, what we are like and where we are going, and as such it grows out of our history, our relationships with others and our goals for the future. All this is an emergent quality that arises from the interplay of many different areas of the brain, of which the most prominent are the same that make up our default mode network. It is when these areas are communicating that the story of ourselves can be told and our sense of self can be said to exist.

If it is the case that a profound spiritual feeling of unity is the result of a reduction in the brain’s sense of self, then this has significant implications for another hallmark of the visionary experience. Those who have had visions frequently claim that the experience was in some way more real than normal life. They often view the immaterial spiritual realm that they have encountered as a more fundamental state of reality than our everyday world of matter. This was very much Blake’s opinion, and it was also the conclusion of countless mystical seekers going back centuries, from the mystery schools of the ancient world onwards. Outside the West, however, this is not always the case. In Buddhism, for example, visions are valued, but it is accepted that they may be delusions and the product of the imagination.

Is this sense of things being ‘more real’ simply a side effect of the absence of a self? When you are present and self-aware you are able to question what is going on around you, and apply doubts and criticisms where necessary. But when the self is absent there is no ‘you’ to question anything, so all that there is can only be accepted as unarguable and true. The voice that questions whether this is nothing more than a dream is no longer present.

Given our current understanding of consciousness – or rather, our lack of it – a suggestion like this remains speculative. It may, in fact, be that the reason why visionary states feel more real than the everyday world is because that is exactly what they are, and mystics and visionaries are genuinely gaining access to the unfiltered experience of a more fundamental reality. However, for those sceptical of such a position, the suggestion that it is the absence of a sense of self which causes this belief can be a helpful one. The idea that Blake’s visions convinced him that there was a greater reality than the material world can then be accepted, without having to also accept that this was true. With this intellectual hang-up neatly sidestepped, we are free to examine Blake’s visions and explore what it is about them that is of value.

The default mode network helps us to understand how the physical world works, allowing us to make reliable predictions about what is likely to happen next. It is a stubbornly practical and rational system, and as such it is not interested in populating our material environment with characters from the imagination. The default mode network cuts out a lot of unstructured chatter between different parts of the brain and is therefore a highly efficient way for a brain to function. As a result, our imagination can be constrained by the default mode network. It can become subservient to what we know about the world.

If you imagine that the connections between different brain regions are a map of the road network, then the default mode network is like the motorway network – the busiest, strongest and most used connections, and the fastest and most efficient way to go from A to B. Deliberately using the motorways to travel is more efficient than heading down country lanes at random, with no clear destination in mind, just to see what we might find.

We are not born with a default mode network. Babies’ brains are like blank slates, and they are ready to learn and adapt to whatever time and place they find themselves in. This explains why people have no memory of their first years, because autobiographical information requires the default mode network to develop. Gradually, as babies grow, their default mode networks start to emerge and strengthen, and they begin to understand the world around them and their place within it. Our first long-term memories form between the age of two and four. Once we have a memory, we can begin to understand ourselves as a story that is acting out in time.

While the child brain is developing, and the emerging default mode network is still weak, it is less rational and structured than an adult brain. As a result, the imagination is less constrained. We see this in the phenomenon of imaginary friends, in which a non-existent companion is conjured so strongly that the child perceives them as real. It is tempting to see a similarity here with Blake’s ‘twofold vision’, in which intense imagination leads to a weakened sense of self that results in imagined entities being perceived as externally present. It is rare for an adult to get into an argument with a thistle, but it would be less surprising for a child.

In child development terms, imaginary childhood friends are believed to be a positive phenomenon that can lead to improved social, linguistic and creative skills. There is evidence from surveys in UK nurseries, however, that imaginary childhood friends have become rarer in recent years. Children now have far less opportunity to be bored, and with less time in their busy schedules for unstructured play and daydreaming they are less likely to invent characters so rich and interesting that they pass as real. Blame for this is sometimes placed on the use of tablets by pre-school children. It is possible that the use of screens is helping children learn about the world and causing their default mode networks to strengthen earlier, while at the same time reducing their need to flex their imaginations.

The adult mind is, in a sense, in a rut. Once it knows what is likely to happen in the world, it does not usually bother itself imagining scenarios that do not fall into this pattern. A child who has yet to develop a fully formed default mode network may spend time imagining what their life would be like if they had a pet dinosaur they could ride to school and impress their friends with. An adult, in contrast, will think about what they need from the shops and what to watch on Netflix that evening. On one level, this is a much more practical and energy-efficient use of the brain, but it may not be the way to a richer, more fulfilling life.

In a 2014 paper called ‘The Entropic Brain’, a team of researchers led by Robin Carhart-Harris from Imperial College London looked at the consequences of what they called ‘entropy’. In this context, the word ‘entropy’ referred to how chaotic or ordered the activity in the brain was, with chaotic, unexpected brain activity being classed as high entropy and calm, predictable brain patterns being classed as low entropy. Carhart-Harris’s argument is that the brain has evolved to limit entropy as much as possible, in order to run efficiently. As he explained in his paper, the brain tries ‘to promote realism, foresight, careful reflection and an ability to recognize and overcome wishful and paranoid fantasies’. It does this through several top-down brain networks, with the default mode network being a prominent example. These try to keep the brain running in a predictable and monotonous way with as little wild or unnecessary activity as possible.

As sensible as this may sound, the brain can take its quest for efficiency too far. Addiction, obsessive compulsive disorder, eating disorders, depression and rigid or fundamentalist thinking are all the result of a brain that is too efficient, and which has too little entropy. Where these problems arise, a sprinkling of chaos is needed. In Carhart-Harris’s terminology, what is required is more entropy, not less. To achieve this, it is necessary to quieten rigid structures such as the default mode network. One way to achieve this is to practise certain forms of meditation. Another is to take psychedelic drugs.

The link between a quiet default mode network and psychedelic drugs was something of a surprise to Robin Carhart-Harris. When his team of researchers from Imperial College London conducted fMRI scans of subjects under the influence of psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient found in magic mushrooms, they found that blood flow in certain parts of the brain decreased. This result was further corroborated by measurements of oxygen consumption in the brain. This was a shock – the team had been working on the assumption that taking compounds like LSD or psilocybin would cause the brain to become more active, not less. The falloff in activity, they realised, was concentrated in the default mode network. The influence of psychedelics was weakening these rigid structures.

The idea that William Blake took psychedelic drugs, and that this was an explanation for his work, was a common belief in the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. Reading accounts of Blake’s visions, it is easy to see how such a belief could take hold. A good illustration of this was an incident in which Blake was in his home in Lambeth reading an edition of Edward Young’s Night Thoughts, which he had agreed to illustrate. As he read, he was struck by a question Young asked: ‘Who can paint an angel?’ Blake later recounted what happened next to the portrait painter Thomas Phillips.

According to Phillips, Blake closed the book and cried, ‘Aye! Who can paint an angel?’ At that point he heard a voice in the room reply: ‘Michelangelo could.’ Blake looked around, but he saw nothing except a brighter light than usual. ‘And how do you know?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘I know,’ said the voice, ‘for I sat to him: I am the archangel Gabriel.’ ‘Oho!’ Blake responded, ‘you are, are you: I must have better assurance than that of a wandering voice; you may be an evil spirit – there are such in the land.’ ‘You shall have good assurance,’ said the voice. ‘Can an evil spirit do this?’

‘I looked whence the voice came,’ Blake told Phillips, ‘and was then aware of a shining shape, with bright wings, who diffused much light. As I looked, the shape dilated more and more: he waved his hands; the roof of my study opened; he ascended into heaven; he stood in the sun, and beckoning to me, moved the universe. An angel of evil could not have done that!’

There’s a lot to unpick here. It is telling that when Blake heard a voice claiming to be the archangel Gabriel, he didn’t fall to his knees in worship. Instead, he cried ‘Oho!’ and tried to catch him out. Blake is frequently contemptuous of doubt; in ‘Auguries of Innocence’ he writes: ‘If the Sun & Moon should doubt / Theyd immediately Go out’. But this incident shows us that while he didn’t doubt the reality of his visions, he did not blindly accept their contents.

Blake’s story, and in particular the sudden rush upwards from the normal world to an expansive cosmic vision as the roof of his study opened, has all the hallmarks of a high-dose psychedelic experience. Yet the idea that Blake can be ‘explained’ as a drug user is not convincing, not least because he experienced the same visions from early childhood to the end of his days. Psychedelic mushrooms do grow in southern England, a fact that some have used to explain Blake’s visions. But there was no tradition of ingesting them deliberately, and the idea that British people in the eighteenth century voluntarily used mushrooms for consciousness expansion is ahistorical. As the author Andy Letcher notes in his study Shroom, ‘while [European] people appear to have been eating hallucinogenic mushrooms for as long as there have been records, until the twentieth century they always did so accidentally and unintentionally’.

The few accounts we have of people in Blake’s period unwittingly eating psychedelic mushrooms resulted in experiences of horror, during which the mushroom eater was convinced that they had gone mad or been possessed by demons. There was no cultural frame to understand the experience in any way other than madness or religious horror. There was not a shamanic religious tradition, for example, within which the experience could be placed in context. It would be many years before twentieth-century authors such as Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary were able to frame the experience as a positive one in Western culture.

This is not to say that physical factors had no part to play in Blake’s visions. The mind and body are complicated and interconnected. It is possible that something like the paucity of a poverty diet, for example, may have had an influence on his mind. But while a physical cause is unlikely to be anything more than a contributing factor to Blake’s visions, what he was experiencing neurologically does seem to be a state similar to that which can be triggered by psychedelic compounds. This idea is further supported by the models created by the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s, which have distinct similarities with Blake’s view of the cosmos, as we shall see later.

It is a lovely detail that after Gabriel stood in the sun, he beckoned to Blake before he moved the universe – as if the archangel were excited or proud of what he was going to do. But what does Blake mean by saying that Gabriel ‘moved the universe’? Perhaps he is referring to the constant dance of movement and evolution within the universe, and, if so, the reason this proves Gabriel’s identity is that only angels, and not demons, are responsible for this movement. Regardless of the truth or otherwise of such metaphysical speculation, we do at least have some idea of the rapt expression on Blake’s face as he recounted this incident. Phillips was painting Blake’s portrait as he told this tale, and the result has become the best-loved and most known image of Blake.

Because Blake was not initially sent to school as a child, he was untrained in the normal academic way of dividing the world into categories and learning lists of facts. This may be a factor in why his default mode network does not seem to have been as well defined as those of other children. By itself, of course, this is not sufficient to explain the unique individual that was William Blake. Many children are not sent to school and do not grow up to become visionaries. But a background like this could still have been an important factor. For most people, the strengthening of the default mode network and the emergence of a strong sense of self is what casts us out of Eden, making us separate from the natural world. Growing up, in other words, is the equivalent of the biblical Fall.

As adults, we forget what it was like to be a child. There is a sense that the world was different then, and that something important has been lost, but we are unable to recall what this is, or exactly what it felt like. Very few adults can sincerely and unquestioningly believe in an imaginary friend. Those who can have their own subcultures and safe spaces online – they are aware that if they talk about these things in regular society, they are assumed to be suffering from some form of mental illness.

Blake recognised the link between the innocence of childhood and his visions, and the importance to his imagination of maintaining a youthful mind. In his 1794 poem ‘The Angel’, he fears that he will one day become too old to still see the divine figures of his visions:

Soon my Angel came again;

I was arm’d, he came in vain:

For the time of youth was fled

And grey hairs were on my head.

In this, Blake did not need to fear. His imagination and capacity for visions never dimmed as he grew older. Accounts of Blake in the last decade of his life frequently focus on the childlike qualities of sweetness and kindness that he possessed, as we have seen. He was described as that rare thing, ‘a man without a mask’ who had no interest in wealth or possessions but who could joyfully lose himself in music or watching children at play. It is striking that all these qualities indicate a lack of focus on the self.

Of course, Blake’s ego could rear up ferociously when circumstances required. He could be stubborn and self-focused, and this side of him is amply demonstrated in his writing. But at other times his ego would be placed back in its box and his sense of self would be quiet, so that his imagination was free to roam undisturbed.

Basire was reliable and respected, and known for his work with the Society of Antiquaries. As Blake’s first biographer Gilchrist describes Basire, ‘He was an engraver well grounded in drawing, of dry, hard, monotonous, but painstaking, conscientious style; the lingering representative of a school already getting old-fashioned, but not without staunch admirers, for its “firm and correct outline,” among antiquaries.’ These were attitudes that Blake readily admired and absorbed. He too held the past in great esteem, developed a style that focused on the importance of outline, and took for granted the need for long hours of detailed work.

Blake’s understanding of what Jesus represented was sophisticated and heretical, and the meaning of those lines proves to be more interesting than their popular interpretation, as we will discuss later. What is important here is how the themes and characters of his later, most celebrated lines appeared fully formed in his developing teenage experiments. There is little sense of an artist attempting to find their voice in the way that David Bowie, for example, experimented with different styles and forms of expression before becoming the artist we recognise today. William Blake was simply William Blake from the start. His childhood visions showed him a greater world than the material one, and from the beginning he expressed that visionary world in the form of art. This was as clear and straightforward a mission statement as you can find. Blake did not have to search for his path or wait to hear the call. He just had to begin.

Notes

Amount 2

🔮 The Cosmos