SEEING

Yale Center for British Art

Jerusalem

Plate 99

If as McGilchrist proposes the right hemisphere of the brain is designed and suited to be the master and the left hemisphere its emissary, we can look for evidence to support that postulate. McGilchrist notes that the act of seeing which may seem straightforward to the left hemisphere, is doing much more when processed by the right hemisphere. The left brain may be seeing solely with the eye whereas the right brain is using the act of seeing to go beyond the surface of an object to the substance and meaning it incorporates.

Iain McGilchrist on  Page 359-60 of The Master and His Emissary makes these statements about the act of seeing which takes place in the right hemisphere

"Every object, clearly seen, opens up a new organ or perception in us." (Goethe)

...for us to truly experience something to enter into and alter us, and there must be something in us which specifically responds to it as unique.

Understanding, then, is not a discursive explanatory process, but a moment of connection, in which we see through our experience - an apercu  or insight. ... each act of seeing, in the sense of allowing something to 'presence' for us, is in itself necessarily an act of understanding."

To Blake the act of perception is not static or solitary. Time and Space are altered as are the organs which perceive them. If we are capable of living in Eternity, if we have developed our spiritual senses sufficiently, we are not opaque to one another but share the one life which includes all.

Jerusalem, Plate 98, (E 258)

"every Word & Every Character
Was Human according to the Expansion or Contraction, the Translucence or
Opakeness of Nervous fibres such was the variation of Time & Space
Which vary according as the Organs of Perception vary & they walked
To & fro in Eternity as One Man reflecting each in each & clearly seen
And seeing: according to fitness & order. And I heard Jehovah speak" 

Letters, To Flaxman, (E 707)

"Now my lot in the Heavens is this; Milton lovd me in childhood & shewd me his face
Ezra came with Isaiah the Prophet, but Shakespeare in riper years gave me his hand
Paracelsus & Behmen appeard to me. terrors appeard in the Heavens above
And in Hell beneath & a mighty & awful change threatend the Earth
The American War began   All its dark horrors passed before my face
Across the Atlantic to France.  Then the French Revolution commencd in thick clouds
And My Angels have told me. that seeing such visions I could not subsist on the Earth
Terrific from his Holy Place & saw the Words of the Mutual Covenant Divine"

We find in the Bible the same implication that the eye is an organ which is capable of furnishing the body with light if it is used in one way and the opposite if used differently: light if looked 'thro' or darkness if it is looked 'with.'

First Corinthians 13

[12] For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

Matthew 6

[22] The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
[23] But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

Luke 11

[34] The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness.
[35] Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness.
[36] If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light.

Commenting on the above verses John A Sanford in The Kingdom Within states: 

"If our eye, our spiritual insight, is dark, and we are accordingly acting out of ignorance of ourselves, our whole inner life will be dark for we will in fact be possessed by everything in ourselves of which we are unconscious."  Page 147

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Auguries of Innocence, (E 492)

"Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born 
Every Morn & every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to Endless Night
We are led to Believe a Lie 
When we see not Thro the Eye         

Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night
When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night 
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day"

Vision of Last Judgment, (E 565)

"People flatter themselves   I will not Flatter them   Error is
Created Truth is Eternal   Error or Creation will be Burned Up &
then & not till then Truth or Eternity will appear   It is Burnt up
the Moment Men cease to behold it  I assert for My self that I do
not behold the Outward Creation & that to me it is hindrance &
not Action it is as the Dirt upon my feet No part of Me.  What it
will be Questiond When the Sun rises  do  you  not  see  a  round 
Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea   O no no I see an Innumerable
company of the Heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord
God Almighty  I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any
more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight I look
thro it & not with it."  

Letters, To Rev Dr Trusler, (E 702)

"Mirth is
better than Fun & Happiness is better than Mirth--I feel that a
Man may be happy in This World.  And I know that This World Is a
World of Imagination & Vision  I see Every thing I paint In This
World, but Every body does not see alike.  To the Eyes of a Miser
a Guinea is more beautiful than the Sun & a bag worn with the use
of Money has more beautiful proportions than a Vine filled with
Grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes
of others only a Green thing that stands in the way.  Some See
Nature all Ridicule & Deformity & by these I shall not regulate
my proportions, & Some Scarce see Nature at all  But to the Eyes
of the Man of Imagination Nature is Imagination itself.  As a man
is So he Sees.  As the Eye is formed such are its Powers  You
certainly Mistake when you say that the Visions of Fancy are not
be found in This World.  To Me This World is all One continued
Vision of Fancy or Imagination & I feel Flatterd when I am told
So."