Blake's Marriage, The Doors of Perception

 

The Doors of Perception:

The Gaps in the Wall

   William Blake's famous poem, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, has a passage that goes as follows.

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern." -Marriage of Heaven and Hell; plate 14

 It is this short passage that has some of the most profound and lasting meaning out of the entire poem. The vivid imagery and the fact that Blake calls man naive and unaware of what is truly happening.

Man thinks he knows, but he knows not.

Blake's assertion that everything is "truly infinite", is a large, impossible concept to ever (due to its inherently unending nature) completely understand.

I think what Blake is driving at in this passage is that man, at some point, need to try to open that door, or to clean one of the glass panes of it, to catch just a glimpse of the other side of that vast, wise and terrifying void. As it is, man only sees breif blips of the infinity that lies beyond the everyday naivete of mankind.

Could the enlightenment of the Buddha and Buddhists be the realization that there is truly no bounds to what is out there? How do they communicate this to the un-enlightened, the commoners?

What happens when people don't think they have the mental capacity for philosophical thought?
  I'd actually like to address this question. They lose hope, to some extent, they lose hope. People who don't think that they are capable of philosophizing are generally not able to take a definitive stance on certain things in their lives, even though everyone always has some definite philosophical view. For example, I was talking to a friend of mine, and she said that she couldn't be philosophical. I said it was impossible, because everyone is innately philosophical to establish a worldview. Hers was that everyone should do their own thing and find their own way to be happy and successful. I told her she was an Existentialist (see my last post), and it really widened her eyes to what she was capable of.

In effect, if one thinks one cannot, one cannot (arguing as an Existentialist), because if one says one is not philosophical then they will never see just how belief oriented and philosophical they may be.

The moral of the story, and the message Blake is trying to convey:
Have a paradigm shift. Change your view on things, especially if you can escape the wants, needs, and hassles of being a man.

Blake wants people to start seeing things, to break away from the herd mentality that is such a dominant force in the cultures and societies of today, yesteryear and the future. Eventually this paradigm shift could be a dangerous weapon, something that will be sought out for discussion by governments that do not approve of dissent.

There is no way to protect your thoughts, since that is the case, have your own thoughts, not someone else's, and always try to break free and see things as they truly are, infinite. 

-Wolfram पहला प्रजना