CONSCIOUSNESS

Fitzwilliam Museum

Jerusalem

Frontispiece

The thing that distinguishes mankind from other created beings is his consciousness, a concept which is difficult to define. When we reflect on our own consciousness we may postulate that it originates from an undifferentiated status of the psyche. When the mind begins to recognize sense data which originates outside of itself, consciousness makes a giant step. Perhaps consciousness includes the ability to receive data, the ability to process data, and the ability to distribute data. But there is in addition a sense which determines the ability to receive, process, and distribute. Consciousness looks for content and process within as well as outside. To Blake the ability to connect with God and humanity came through man's spiritual sensation with which he is born. Blake wrote about this additional ingredient which is present in the psyche; 

There is no natural religion [a], (E 1)

  "IV  None could have other than natural or organic thoughts if
he had none but organic perceptions"

Milton, Plate 1 (E 96)

"Come into my hand    
By your mild power; descending down the Nerves of my right arm
From out the Portals of my Brain, where by your ministry
The Eternal Great Humanity Divine. planted his Paradise,"

Annotations to Reynolds, (E 156) 

"Reynolds Thinks that Man Learns all that he Knows I say on
the Contrary That Man Brings All that he has or Can have Into the
World with him.  Man is Born Like a Garden ready Planted & Sown  
This World is too poor to produce one Seed"

... 

Reynolds wrote: "The mind is but a barren soil; a soil which is soon
exhausted, and will produce no crop," 
Blake wrote: "The Mind that could have produced this Sentence must have
been Pitiful    a Pitiable Imbecillity.  I always thought that the
Human Mind was the most Prolific of All Things & Inexhaustible 

Letters, To Trusler, (E 702)  

 "Why is the Bible more
Entertaining & Instructive than any other book.  Is it not
because they are addressed to the Imagination which is Spiritual
Sensation & but mediately to the Understanding or Reason" 

In his thesis Lee Hamilton explored Blake's poem Four Zoas from the perspective of Jungian psychology. His paper is deserving of careful study. We begin with his statement concerning the development of consciousness in Albion:

"The coming of consciousness to Albion signals the end of the unified state of unconsciousness and the beginning of differentiation, or the distinction of
opposites and differences. This rupturing of the unity of the unconscious state is necessary for psychic growth." (Page 33)

 Perception of the Infinite by Larry Clayton, posted 2007.