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I've notice a tendency to downplay the divine element in accounts of William Blake, and to reduce his understanding of the imagination to a human artefact, from its true status as a supernatural capacity that he knew.
In this talk I consider 5 ways in which this can be resisted:
- Blake's insistence that "there is no natural religion".
- Blake's affirmation that “God becomes as we are that we may become as he is”.
- His understanding that, “The desire of man is infinite”, and without it, we consume the natural world.
- His realisation that even Eternal Death is transformed by Eternal Life.
- And his engagement with The Bhagavad Gita, which arguably not only inspired some of his own mythology but his clear absolute idealism and philosophy.
By Mark Vernon4.9
1515 ratings
I've notice a tendency to downplay the divine element in accounts of William Blake, and to reduce his understanding of the imagination to a human artefact, from its true status as a supernatural capacity that he knew.
In this talk I consider 5 ways in which this can be resisted:
- Blake's insistence that "there is no natural religion".
- Blake's affirmation that “God becomes as we are that we may become as he is”.
- His understanding that, “The desire of man is infinite”, and without it, we consume the natural world.
- His realisation that even Eternal Death is transformed by Eternal Life.
- And his engagement with The Bhagavad Gita, which arguably not only inspired some of his own mythology but his clear absolute idealism and philosophy.

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