Self-Annihilation Inner Revolution

The University of Notre Dame
Self-Annihilation/Inner Revolution: Blake's "Milton", Buddhism, and Ecocriticism Author(s): Mark Lussier Source: Religion & Literature, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Spring, 2008), pp. 39-57 Published by: The University of Notre Dame Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40059842 . Accessed: 12/12/2013 09:40
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SELF-ANNIHILATION/INNER REVOLUTION: BLAKE'SMILTON, BUDDHISM, AND ECOCRITICISM

"The extinctionof self is salvation;the annihilationof self is the condition of enlightenment."(The Buddha) "I come in Self-annihilation & the Grandeurof Inspiration." (Blake)
MarkLussier
I.
The coincidence of these statementswithin my reading (as a scholar of WilliamBlake and Romantic Studies and as a practitionerof Tibetan Buddhism)made somewhat inevitablean obvious question to which this similar answer:"Do thesetwo strikingly essayoffersa somewhatabbreviated statementsfrom two seeminglydisparatespiritualtraditionsreflectshared affinitiesregardingthe dynamicoperationsof 'self-annihilation' (whatever that might be), a processin both systemsthat clearlyfunctionsas the privithatmightbe) is attained?" leged vehicleby which enlightenment(whatever The answer to this question has admittedlybecome an obsessionof late, given that it cuts across the boundariesof the professionaland personal, functions as literarydevice and philosophicalprocefor self-annihilation dure (in my professionalstudyof Blake)yet definesthe primaryvehicle of and principleof ethical commitment(in my psychologicaltransformation The simplecoincidenceof the phrase meditative and practices). pedagogical "self-annihilation" points beyond language and encouragespsychological act and thisparticular action(asdoes the term "enlightenment"), "spiritual" affinities with as and east "self" the west)manifests, well, strong (both against and physics, the discoursesof contemporaryneuroscience,psychoanalysis, a view recentlyespousedby His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso (The Fourteenth
R&L 40.1 (Spring2008) 39
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Religion& Literature
Dalai Lama). In any number of contexts, His Holiness has sought to communicate formsandvariousBuddhist perceivedbridgesamongthesewesternscientific beliefsand practices.While hostinga groupof scientistsin India (1987),he assertedhis view that "Buddhism, and particularly MahayanaBuddhism,is its of 'logicalempiricism']" close to a scientific very approach[in deployment in and another east-west 31), dialogueduringthe well-known ("Questions" "MindScience" conferenceat HarvardUniversityMedical School (1991), he proposedthat:
. .findit extremelybeneficialto incorporateinto theirthinkingthe Buddhistthinkers. insightsof various scientificfields, such as quantum mechanics and neurobiology, where there are also equally strong elements of uncertaintyand essencelessness. (26)
In yet anothergatheringof westernscientists and philosophers (1997),commonalitywas found among Buddhistviews on mind and matter and 'the role of the observer,randomness,non-locality,and causalityin quantum mechanics'([2004] 17-30).However,perhapsof most significancefor this studyis a Buddhistmonk'sresponseto a physicistquotingWilliamBlake's oft cited opening quatrainfor "Auguries of Innocence":1
To see a Worldin a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinityin the palm of your hand And Eternityin an hour (E493: 1-4)
After the physicistTrinh Thuan offers these lines to suggestsharedaffinities betweenwesternand easternviews of enlightenment,RicardMatthieu (a Tibetan monk and Frenchtranslatorfor The Dalai Lama)exclaims:"I can't help wonderingif William Blake had read these texts [of sutra]! If then you will see that the Buddha's you considerthese thoughtscarefully, omniscience correspondsexactly to the globedperception [expressedby Blake]"(Matthieuand Thuan 74). Given these convergences,the epistemic,linguisticand symboliccoincidence of sharedvehicles and methods acrosstwo millenniaevokedby the epigramscould simplynot be ignored.Their convergencehad the feel of a strongsynchronicityor meaningfulcoincidence (in the sense discussedby CarlJung and WolfgangPauli),which I have discussedelsewhere,and the impulseto pursue one (the Blakeanpath) throughthe other (the Buddhist path) itself graduallygrew into a commitmentto an integralmodel for all effortsand all things.2 While grapplingwith the maddeninglyelusivecoin-
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cidence of terms and concepts in Blakeand Buddhism,I was also preparing for lecturesat Monash Universityand the Universityof Melbournein Australia,which forcedanotherwidening of perspective.3 My readingfor those Australianlecturesengaged two "old"influences, Fritjof Capra and GregoryBateson, whose work augmented my analytic obsessionwith self-annihilation by addingan ecocriticaldimensionto it. As "The of our [currentecological] dilemmalies in our origin Capra argues, to create the abstractions of separateobjects,includinga separate tendency self" (208), a state of being that disperseswhen "we""overcomeour Cartesian anxiety.. . [and] realizethat identity,individuality, and autonomydo not imply separatenessand independence"(Levin 3). For Bateson "circuit structure" better conceptualizesthe fundamentalecological relationshipof mind and matterand thereinprovides"a new way of thinkingabout what a mind is" (490).Mind is not autonomousfrom but deeply implicatedin its as an emerenvironment,exhibiting "autopoiesis(literally'self-making')" in in a state manifest "network" which "the phenomenon of life has gent to be understoodas a propertyof the system as a whole" (Capra 10). In this context, mind and matterexist, to fuse terms from David Hartleyand Michael Faradaycurrentin Blake'smilieu, as a vibratingfield comprised on interactiveforces(Nimii 174). Bateson's"broad conception of the world" was published over thirty years ago and claims, itself, to articulatea summationof researchacross "thelast twentyyears"(490),and since then, in a seriesof studies,the cognitive scientistFrancisco J. Varela,as well as numerouscolleagues,arrived at similarconclusions:
Moment by moment new experienceshappen and are gone. It is a rapidlyshifting stream of momentarymental occurrences [where] the shiftinessincludes the perceiver as much as the perceptions.There is no experiencer, just as Hume noticed, who remainsconstant to receive experiences,no landing platformfor experience. or egolessness. senseof no one home is calledselflessness This actualexperiential (Varela et al. Embodied 60-1; View1-15, 95-1 11)
Clearly,a consensualview of a sovereignself (often collapsedinto ego) as an illusion,a primaryyet not primaldelusion,has increasingly appearedin the experimentaloutcomes of western neuroscienceand the emergentexperiencesof easternmind science.The solitaryself becomes,to paraphrase Blake,a 'spectreof selfhood'that impedesinner recognitionof the illusory separationof subject/object relationsand the dis/ease (both malady and source of discomfort)that emerges from this state. As we will shortlysee, its the illusionand therebyreconfiguring re/cognition of thisstate(realizing imites an inner revolutionand leads to a stateof consciousness operations)
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capable of graspingthe ecological state of human subjectivity. The implications of self-annihilation, then, impingeupon the fundamental relationshipof mind and matter,since mental and materialprocesses shapethe primaryecologicalstateof the subject.Withinthe threeintertwinthat relational ing discoursesof this essay (Blake,Buddhism,Ecocriticism) statecan now only be characterized as alienatedand fragmented,and these sharedpractices,then, providea means for refusinga false divide between arenasof thoughtand experiencein preferencefor an integralview capable of creatinga unifiedframework actions(thatis, to re/ for all self-generated fuse [both to deny a divisionand to heal it] what seems to me a false,even informs the core of impossible,divide). The concept of self-annihilation both professionaland personal commitments and forms the intellectual bridge linkingthree large criticalendeavorsI have pursuedacrossthe last decade (Lussier,1999, 2007 and 2008). Withinthe analyticdiscoursesof contemporaryecocriticism,the emerwith 'first-stage' self,a constructassociated gence of the sovereign enlightenhas been ment thinking(i.e. the Cartesiancogito or Newtonian objectivity) seen as the pivotalphilosophical dualistic thinking underwriting development that alienated individualsfrom the naturalworld in all possible relations erto whatone neuroscientist has termed"Descartes' (committing culturally ror"[Damasio248]).4As much criticismin the ecologicalmode has argued, the reactionof Romanticwritersto first-stage thoughtsought enlightenment to heal both the fissureof subject-object relationsat its foundationand the fragmentationas its by-product.The salve offeredto affect a 'cure'for the affliction currentsof Romanticthoughtand just describedwithinparticular was self-annihilation and expression requireda willed confrontationwith the illusorynatureof an independent,solitary, sovereignsubjectobserving a separatematerialobject,since "theself-positing ego cannot limit itself by to which contradicts positingnon-egoopposed itself," "ordinary experience" (Beiser137). Although "some Englishwriters,like Blake and in a differentway also Wordsworth" as Charles attemptthisformof "Romantic[inner]rebellion," the "idea was in much further elaborated Taylor observes, Germany" (368-9). Both Dennis McCort and Kate Rigby amply demonstratethat German epistemologyin the wake of Kant was ready to desist its violent clinging"to the illusionof an autonomousself" (McCort 168)and thereby resist"thatseveringof the naturalfrom the human sciences,matterfrom technefrompoeisis"(Rigby26 1).Indeed,as spirit,reasonfromimagination, in another the .. Rigbyargues essay, epistemicview of "interconnectedness. romantic science and as a la form of avant qualifies Naturphilosophie ecology letter" (29). The movementbeyond opposites,in McCort'sapt phrase,was
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certainlymore prominentin German Romantic thought than elsewhere, and even withinKant'swork,as PhillipOlson argues,a way of overcoming or "negativeconsciousness" selfhoodthroughself-annihilation (37) can be located:
....I am conscious of myself in a twofold sense, both as spatial/temporal phenomenon and as "empty"noumenon, then by becoming aware of the emptiness underlyingand supportingmy sensibleappearance,I become conscious of myself bound by and free from sensibleconditions.(38) as simultaneously
mind and matEarlyGermanRomanticphilosophiessoughtto reintegrate of natureas a dynamic, ter beyonddualism,with "theirnew understanding whole" (Rigby TS 24) becoming the sharedfounliving, self-transforming dation for both consciousnessand cosmos, and when this body of thought encounteredanalogousviews in eastern forms and languages,their fusion immortalphrase, an "OrientalRenaissance" SchlegePs ignited,in Friedrich that allowedhim to arguethat the 'highest'formsof Romanticismmustbe sought in the east (Schwab67-8; Batchelor252-4). Given this encounter, intenseengagements the laterphilosophically inaugurated by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche with Buddhism,which only achievedstatusas a world religion in westernsociologiesof knowledgeacrossthe periodof Romanticism (Masuzawa121-46),achieve the propercontext. I will arguethatthe methodthat of thisessay,however, Forthe remainder is best the emergenceof "negative activates consciousness," self-annihilation, viewed in William Blake'sMiltonbecause the process of self-annihilation is literallyencoded into its "composite"textual state (Mitchell3-40) at the itself.Intriguingly, as suggested thematicand textuallayersof signification his versionof this annihilative above,at the very moment Blakearticulated process(a path well definedand documentedwithin the Christianmystical traditionsof which Blakewas aware),an analogousmode for overcoming alienationand fragmentation began to emerge throughorientalistresearch that led to the crystallizationof what is now termed "Buddhism"into the coincidenceof exact terms for Europeanconsciousness.Compellingly, and the both the end, "enlightenment," point process,"self-annihilation," as WalterTruettAnto practicaland theoretical,if not historical,affinities; dersonhas argued:"[The Enlightenment brought]an outburstof scientific and social dissent, philosophicalexplorationthat at some points discovery, of enlightenmentmuch closer to what we find producedconcepts personal in Eastern traditions...It isn't entirely coincidental that we use the same - for the eastern concept of liberation - enlightenment word in English and the Western illusion from concept of liberationfrom ignorance"(21). in Self-annihilation functions, Blake,Buddhism,and Ecocriticismalike,as
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the method for inner revolution,an evolutionarystate of freedom from the self-victimizing tendenciesof the sovereignself. Through this process, all three strainsof discourseseek to reunitepracticeand theory,a position PadmasiriDe Silva has strenuouslyargued to establish:"what is needed today is not a movement from theory to practice, but one from practice to theory,or more truly the art of what Anthony Weston calls 'enabling practice,'that theory and practiceshould develop together"(27). II. The interplayof verbaland visualart in WilliamBlake'sMilton provides an exemplary semiotic space within which to chart the presence of the for its cure. In maladydescribedabove and to analyzeBlake'sprescription the poetic narrative,the powerfulprecedingpoetJohn Milton, pondering Blake'spresent/presenceand his role in shapingit/him from the (advanto a willed act termed "self-annihilation" tage point of eternity,undertakes overcome"selfhood" as the necessaryfirststep in what can only be termed an apocalypse of the creative imagination leading to an experience of absoluteconsciousness(E 108: 14.20-2).The textualtrajectory, then, maps the "movementof mind fromignoranceto wisdom,fromcrassmaterialism to the universeas sacredbody"(Brown136).Milton in eternity(a position moved by relations), beyondspace-timeand therebyoutsidesubject-object is termed but what "The Bard's poetry (what conventionally might Song" equally be describedas a Blakeanact of autopoiesis),recognizesthat the a state price of identityis, asJudithButlerargues,one of self-victimization, of consciousnesswhere "the subjectengages in its own self-thwarting, acits own and so desires and crafts its own shackles, complishes subjection, turnsagainsta desirethat it knowsto be- or knew to be- its own" (Butler 24). Blake clearly expresseshis tragic understandingof the subject'splight than in "London," throughouthis work,perhapsno wheremorepowerfully where every face the "I" engages reflectsthe "mind-forg'd manacles"of albeit in radicallydifferenttones and voices, explore the degreesto Urizen, whichourprojections of autonomousselvesformthe basisof our ignorance and become our sharedfiction or delirium,a diagnosisoffered in Blake's workbut more recentlytheorizedby Gilles Deleuze:
we are not threatenedby error,rather and much worse, we bathe in delirium... the positingof an identityof the self, requiresthe interventionof all sortsof fictive uses of relations,and in particularof causality,in conditionswhere no fiction can
self-binding (Bandy 12-43). TheMarriageof HeavenandHell and TheBookof
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be correctedbut where each insteadplunges us into other fictions,which all form part of human nature.(43)
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Selfhoodor a sovereignself,a delusionof separationand alienation,establishessubjectivity within "the Sea of Time and Space,"a nightmarerealm traversedin Blake'spenultimateepic Miltonbut whose source is unveiled on the plates of the final epicJerusalem. The visualfield in Blake'slast propheciesenergeticallyattemptsto bring the tragic fate of subjectformationinto readerlyconsciousness.The title plate and platefifteenfromMilton image (andtherebyimagine)the firsttwo stepsin the eternalpoet'sannihilationof selfhood,while a laterdesignfrom Jerusalem, plate forty-one,operates meta-criticallyto unveil the mirrored dynamicat the foundationof the composite text and at the foundationof one, two, and three).The illustrations subjectformationalike (illustrations emanatewith an 'auraof genius',exude extraordinary power,and manifest detailin their supportof the discourseof self-annihilation, proimpressive vidingsomethinglikea semioticdreamscapefor the linguisticprocessesex/ pressingitself as a singular,solitarysubjectratherthan an interdependent entity (with the latter necessarilyfunctioningas a boundarycondition for all Blake'silluminatedpropheticbooks). Through the dynamic operationsof word and design, Blake generates an enriched semiotic textual environmentspecificallydesigned to unveil selfhood and stage self-annihilationin its most dramatic way, encoding the conditionsfor an inner revolutionin the narrativeand pictorialrepresentationof that revolution;the illuminatedprophetictextual state, then, as a boundary condition for its textual exhibits analytic "post-critique" a at a primarylayer of as form of meta-textuality operations,functioning the inner revolution imagined by Blake and pursued expression.Indeed, of Milton requiresa commitmentto "self-critique by the titularcharacter all the way down [i.e. beyond any self]"(Hoy 228). This criticalmode disof conventionalontology"(Lundeen61) as a necessary solves"boundaries liberationof the mind from ignorance"(Brown127). stage for "individual illuminated Blake's propheciesachievetheircomplexitiesby drawingupon to create a bricolage"(Mee 5), refractinglinguistic discourses "disparate and semioticraysinto a spectrumof aestheticex/pression (thatis, both as and suchartisticlaborachievesa and as counter-repression), representation fusionthat underwrites"a new kind of body" and anticipates"a new kind of being" (Makdisi262). S. FosterDamon suggeststhat "the self or selfhoodis the innate selfishness with which we are born" (362), but such a definitiondoes not fit very works. stateexhibitsin Blake's well with the actualagencythispsychological
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Both in its incipientformsand its more directembodimentin the laterepics, selfhoodfunctionsas the singlegreatestobstacleto Blake'speculiarview of which itself the lastjudgment (the overcomingof errorby any individual), intersectsBuddhistdescriptionsof enlightenmentas liberationfrom "all [mental]defilements[that] have the false theory of individualityfor their root" (Conze [1995] 167). Psychoanalytic, as well as neurological,models to an the of essential self, and the state of being termed point instability in William Milton Blake's "spectre" poem parallelsquite well the view of formation articulated subject byJacques Lacan,where the subjectemerges a "function of the through imago''' (Lacan Ecrits4) and is maintained by "anesthetized" desire (Lacan [1992] 324). The Freudiandrivesof "innate selfishness" precede the formationof the subject,whereasquite clearlyfor the state of selfhoodemergesfromwhat can only be termed,followBlake, a encounterwith the "vegetable ing Lacan, "mirror-stage" glassof nature" or what Lacan terms "the intra-organicmirror"(Lacan Ecrits 2, 5-6). The Lacaniansubjectis constructedby and within "thefield of the other,"and the imago shaped in the mirror-stagebecomes a structuringdevice for the subject'sinteractionswith the Symbolic and Real realms of experience (Fink35-48). In this context, Blake'sevocativeterm/state/character (whoseetymologyimplicatesboth the eye and the gaze, as Lacan "spectre" might say)assumesits full importanceto the processherein mapped, since its agency bridgesthe visual and verbal dimensionsof Blake'sexpression. LikeLacan'simago, Blake'sspectresituatesitself "betweenthe Innenwelt and the Umwelt...ofnatureand culture"(Lacan4, 7) in order to mediate all desire,yet beneath this spectre,only a contingent and constantlyshifting self exists. Blake'smode also seems compatiblyinterconnectedto more recent deof the physicsof the mind itself,wherethe "self-reflective scriptions capacity of thought to observe itself" (Zohar 179) through the meditative-textual establishes"quantuminterconnectedness of technique of "post-critique" our consciousness"(Zohar 185) as the unified ground for all acts in the world. This "quantumself" as describedby Danah Zohar very much resemblesBlake'sawakenedman, the ecologicalsubject,and the enlightened consciousness of Buddhist self"perceives practice;thiscontingent"minimal "selfhood[as] an obsolete idea" (Lasch257) throughthe recognition(and re/cognition)of "ourongoingdialoguewith our own pasts,with our experiences, with the environment,and with others"(Zohar 184). Of course,before makinga commitmentto self-annihilation, one must knowor havesome senseof preciselywhereto applythe practice,and Blake of hermeneuticconcernsforMilpositionsthisquandaryin the foreground ton.The operationsof "Selfhood"and "Spectre" (connectedpsychological
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- tracedby Blakefor the firsttime in any depth in and neurologicalstates) - thwartsthe achievementof inner revolution,strivinginsteadto thiswork worldconditionedby ignoranceand confusion" reify"livingin the everyday Embodied 234). (Varela III. Phrased directly, 'selfhood" emerges through mirror stage dynamics and is the "spectre"or imago of a solitaryand self-sufficient "self";selfreifies this external consciousness initially imagoyet subsequently recognizes its fantasy structure,thereby igniting self-examinationas a skillfulmeans in Geoffrey Hartman's apt phrase, to achieve "anti-self-consciousness," and which leads to Blake'slast which reachesa climax in self-annihilation Almost critic drawnto Blake'sepic effort every judgment (Hartman47-56). ethos attemptsto articulatesome to textuallyembody his transformational type of understandingof the convolutedprocesses that link the state of and the act selfhood(thediagnosedmaladyof obsessiveself-consciousness) to this narcissistic salvific antidote of self-annihilation (the malady).From William like and Dante Rossetti,AlgernonCharlesSwinearlyrespondents burneand WilliamButlerYeatsto the vibrantgenerationof criticscurrently of contemporary Blakestudies, the deeplyenrichedenvironment elaborating these concepts stand at the heart of visionaryprocess,providingthe acute Blake's of the humanconditionand itsactiveantidote,respectively. diagnosis as a correctiveto selfhoodand its spectrous elaborationof self-annihilation mediation re-fusesthe division "between the philosophic and spiritualist concepts of developinga view of self"; in such conditions,self manifests "both a set of interiorpsychologicalprinciplesand a set of exteriorforces manifestin the world of men" (Howard57), that is a psychosocialbeing and uncertainties. definedby complex complementarities self annihilation, Blake,through rejectsthe sovereignself at the foundathisdivision,creating tion of first-stage refusing epistemology, enlightenment and resistingthe splitbetween con/fusion as the contextfor understanding, yet so subjectand objectso crucialto westernenlightenmentepistemology, antitheticalto eastern approachesto enlightenmentslowly emerging into (c. European consciousnessacross the temporal span of "Romanticism" that of both "selftraces Harold 1750-1850). Pagliaropersuasivelyargues hood" and "self-annihilation" appear in incipient if not nominal forms and Of Experience Innocence as far back as Songs (17-33), and aspects of of these psychic states also circulate widely through the illuminatedworks andHell, of the 1790s, including most especially TheMarriage of Heaven most criticismconfirmsthe late fruitionof these concepts, since the actual
Visions of Albion,and The Bookof Urizenabove all. However, of theDaughters
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terms first achieve linguisticbodies in TheFour are first explained in Zoas-> and in detail Milton the prescribed receive and, finally, daunting depressing cure in the visualfield of Jerusalem, The emergenceof the linkedconcepts of selfhood and self-annihilation come late in Blake'scorpus, because the versus willed the to processesthey map (imposed self)need the approaches inflatedvisionaryuniverseof the late epics and their illuminations to trace their contoursand charttheir operations.The complex operationsof selfhood and self-annihilation acrossboth consciousnessand cosmos are best the dimensions of Blake'slate poetry,where psyche mapped through epic and phenomena exhibit mutualinterdependence(Pagliaro17-34). For every Blakean subject, the spectre as deluded state haunts selfconsciousnessand is preciselywhat must be overcome in any act of selfannihilation,as its firstliteralappearancein the canon (in the seventhnight of TheFour oas)clearlyproposes:
. . .Los embracdthe Spectrefirstas a brother Then as another Self;astonishdhumanizing& in tears, In Self abasementGiving up his Domineeringlust . . .by Self-annihilation back returning To life Eternal.(E 367-8; FZ 85.30-5)
At this stageof the work,Albion continuesto fragmentand is poised on the abyssof "deathand torment"(E 376; FZ 95.4), in dangerof collapsinginto a subjectstate Blaketerms "non-entity" which alwayshas dire psychological and historicalconsequences.However,as PeterOtto notes, even at this darktextualmoment, "theembraceof the SpectreallowsLos to bridgethe gap between self and subject, objectiveworld and subjectiveindividual" (244), therebyenacting a "self-annihilation" by which imaginationreturns to primalunitywhereany essentialunderstanding of self disappears: "thou art but a form & organ of life & of thyself/Art nothing being Created Continually"(E 368; FZ 86.1-3). Timothy Morton has discussedthis view of self relative to Hegel's reception of Buddhism, especially the mutual states in the renowned "Heart Sutra,"which stands at the very center of theprajnaparamita traditionin all formsof Buddhism. AlthoughI will return to thisview in my conclusion,this "perfection of wisdom"traditionequates formand emptiness,whichrendersany "separate self [as]a spuriousreality, which can maintain itself only by finding supports,or props, on which to lean, or rely"(Conze 103). The interlockingnature of "selfhood,"the "spectre," and "self-annihilation"reachesa creativecrescendoin Milton, where the title character, following apprehensionof the Bard'ssong in eternity,pursuesthroughan act
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of will "self-annihilation" as the apt process to overcomeselfhood (Satan) and redeem his six-foldemanationOlolon:
And Milton said, I go to EternalDeath! I will arise and look forthfor the morning of the grave. I will go down to the sepulcherto see if morning breaks! I will go down to self annihilationand eternal death, Lest the LastJudgmentcome & find me unannihilate And I be siez'd& giv'n into the hands of my own Selfhood I in my Selfhood am that Satan:I am that Evil One! He is my Spectre!(El 08; 14.14-24)
These lines bring our three crucial terms into mutual interaction, and the anaphoricsequence of the central lines enacts linguisticallywhat the - identifyingthe drive for self-annihilation to the text evokes thematically "will."
Satan!My Spectre!I know my power thee to annihilate Such are the Lawsof Eternitythat each shall mutually Annihilatehimself for othersgood, as I for thee[.] (El 39; 38.35-6)
This leads to the detailedanalysisof the conditionof selfhood,which must be quoted at length:
There is a Negation, & there is a Contrary The Negation is the Spectre;the ReasoningPowerin Man This is a false Body:an Incrustationover my Immortal Spirit;a Selfhood,which must be put off & annihilatedalways To cleanse the Face of my Spiritby Self-Examination. To bathe in the Watersof Life;to wash off the Not Human I come in Self-Annihilation & the grandeurof Inspiration To cast off Rational Demonstrationby Faithin the Savior To cast off the rottenrags of Memory by Inspiration To cast off Bacon, Locke & Newton from Albion'scovering To take .off his filthygarments,& clothe him with Imagination To cast aside from Poetry,all that is not Inspiration That it no longer shall dare to mock with the aspersionof Madness Cast on the Inspired... (E 142; M 40.31-41.9)
The spectre emerges through mirror stage dynamics; the "Reasoning Power in Man" reifies separateexistence through "RationalDemonstrato overturnthis state begins tion," and the necessary"Self-Annihilation"
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in "Self-Examination" designed "to wash off the Non Human." What is offered somewhat here- beyondthe discretedefinitions equally astonishing - is the for the spectre, selfhood, self-annihilation,and self-examination textual connection establishedbetween "self-annihilation" (which seems like death)and "selfhood"(whichseems like life), an expressionof Blake's ironicview of existence. The "Non Human"to be "castoff" remainsdirectlytied to the mechanical operationsof mind (thevehicle which separatessubjectand object and gives rise to varied forms of dualism),which Blake here associatedwith "Bacon,Locke & Newton," and which give rise to his reputedhostilityto all science. Blake's opposition to science, however, is more complicated than appearancesmight indicate.Forexample,thisview shouldquitelikely be read relativeto the end of the unpublishedepic, TheFour oas (which servesas textualunconsciousfor both Milton andJerusalem), when in "Night the Ninth Being The LastJudgment,"Blakecreatesthe conditionthrough which "sweetScience reigns"(E 407; 10). The eliminationof selfhood or the "Non Human"that occursin "The LastJudgment"shattersthe imago of the sovereignself, thereby creating the conditions through which the "New born Man" returnsto the enricheddialogicrelationship with all that is other than the human as the primalstate of the subjectitself:"He walks upon the Eternal Mountains raising his heavenlyvoice/Conversing with the Animal forms of wisdom night & day" (E 406: 138.28, 31). establishes a similar dynamic operative within and without Jerusalem consciousness,with the additionalrecognitionof "the terrorsof annihilation" (E 150; 7.61) experiencedby those that cling to an essentialself for which acknowledges the problematicnatureof a subject subjective stability, self constructedin "the field of the Other."At the mid-point in the text, Blake laments the "narrowedperceptions"that accompany enslavement to "the most powerfulSelfhood"and promisesa.jouissance when all "arise fromSelf" (E198, 199: 49.2 1, 30, 45). Blakeseeksto cultivatein consciousness the abilityto reside at the nexus where imaginaryand symbolicstates interactbut which requires jettisoningthe spectreor illusionof a sovereign self. This zone of subjectivitypulses with emergent energies that create a force field of consciousness:this zone of consciousness,like its cosmos, is ruledby uncertainty theories,definedby existential principlesand relativity and mirror and manifestsnaturalsymmetries emptiness stage encounters, and culturalcomplementarities. In this state, the subjectenters that time and place (to paraphraseBlake) in "every day that Satan cannot find," where enlightenmentitself awaits the death of the self as willed act, and through this enacted state, consciousnessorchestratesa collision of mind and mattercapable of creatingthe epiphanyof epistemology.In Hatsuko
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Nimii's insightfulwords,"the annihilationof self means the unificationof variouscontrarieswithin the self, which is in consequence liberatedfrom those contraries.In the resultingstate of fulfillment,all is affirmedwithout discriminationor limitation"(178), and without such limitations,the self dissolvesinto its interdependentenvironmentsto experience thejouissance of ecologicalexistence. IV Turningto the visualfieldof Milton, especiallythe titleplate and platefifwhich Blake built self-annihilation as visionaryresponse the method teen, by to selfhooddirectlyinto its textualstatebecomesmore easilydiscernedthan its thematicevocationsand operations.The title plate finds a nude Milton stepping furtherinto the depths of the plate, entering a swirlingmass of cloudsthat movesin vorticalfashionaroundhim, a clearvisualreferenceto thatprovidestwo-waytransportation betweeneternity the famous"Vortex" and generation(E 109: 15.21-35). Of more significancefor this essay,the design presentsthe past poet stepping away from selfhood (positionedat the reader'slocation relativeto the design)and into self-annihilation (positioned as the vanishingpoint perspectivein the depth of the design),with his righthand reachingforwardto sunderin half his own name (aswell as the work'stitle),which begins to flow into the vortex.The characterMilton and the author of Miltonsimultaneously perform,on the title page, an act beforethe theme, or even the discretetermsthemselves, of self-annihilation are introduced(a visual practiceon Blake'stitle plates that extend back to As seen above,Miltononly announceshis intention and The Urizen Marriage). on plate and therebyovercomehis "spectre" to pursue "self-annihilation" fourteenand only clearlydefines these terms at plate forty,so Blake'stitle plate places priorityon the annihilativeprocess,staginga performanceof it by acting simultaneously againsttwo locationsin the spectrumof nominalization(character/historical entity,textualtitle/author). Platefifteen,I argue,depictsMilton'ssecondstepin his movementagainst selfhoodthroughthe pursuitof self-annihilation two), and the (illustration to shows the head bottom from foot to read (i.e. subject top), striving plate, five the liberated which dance selfhood figures representing beyond against senses. Once again, processesof significationare broken, this time at the foot of the plate by Milton's right foot, which literallysplits "Self-hood" even as the designdefinesit: "ToAnnihilatethe Self-hoodof Deceit & False (E 110).While the rightfoot led on the title plate, the left foot Forgiveness" now steps deeper into the design and, with both hands extended, grapples with an Urizenic figurederivedfrom that work'stitle plate. However,here and therebysplitting the figureleans awayfromthe poet, fallingbackwards
52
the twin tabletsof the Decalogue, an act againstwhat Lacan termed the SymbolicOrder.Like Urizen in Blake'smyth, this Lacanianorderlurksin the reifiedreflectionsof a solitaryself (the imago) reinforcedideologically forms of cultural semiosis by empowered seekingprimarilyto controland In the background,five to encoded behavior. therebypromote conformity female figuresdance on top of the hill behind Urizen and play musicalinthe experienceof liberation or freedomexperienced struments, representing the senses the inner revolution by upon completing inauguratedthrough self-annihilation. Some woulddescribethisend as a formof enlightenment, and RobertThurman'sdescriptionof Buddhistpracticefits quitewell with the processesmappedby Blakeon the titleplate and plate fifteenof Milton: "The experienceof selflessness as freedomfrom alienatedego-addictionis a revolutionin the deepest heart of the individual"(98). The primaryfunction of the spectre seems to be that of cleaving the individualinto subject/objectand of bridgingthat abyss,an absence,with the assertionof a sovereignself, which merely gives an image to a psychic desirefor individuality. In other words,Blakeseems to have recognizedthe in inherent Lacanian mirrorstagedynamicswell beforeLacanput dangers to in and Blakebeginsto producean occasional pen paper, beginning Milton, in or line mirrored passage writing(thatis, he inscribedthe plate so printed wordswere reversed).In Milton,this occurs at a crucialplace, the passage from "Bookthe First"to "Bookthe Second"to offera necessarycorrective to Blake'searliertheoryof contrariesdiscussedin The Marriage ("Contraries are Positive/A Negation is Not a Contrary"[E 129]), since the diagnosed dis/ease of the spectreand selfhoodonly found its cure in Milton'spassage and self-annihilation. Mirrored throughself-examination writingalsooccurs in severalplaces in the last epic,Jerusalem, but the first,plate forty-one,specificallycontinuesthe meta-textualand thematicinterplayby providingthe most pithy Blakeanstatementon spectre,selfhood,and self-annihilation. As mentionedabove,Blake'smost precisestatementon the malady(selfoccurs on hood) and its cure (self-annihilation through self-examination) in of a where readers encounter plate forty-one Jerusalem half-platedesign, Albion sound asleep and in seriousneed of awakening(illustration three). The head of Albion, Blake'severyman(yetparticularcountry)figure,has collapsedin slumberon a scrolledtext drapedacrosshis knees. On the left side of the visualfield, an impishfigure(mostoften identifieddirectlywith Blake as the voice of the work'sfour "addresses" to particularaudiences) rests on left margin on the curled leaves of the scroll with quill in hand, recliningaftera meta-textualact of inspiredmirroredwriting:
MARK LUSSIER
Each Man is in his Spectre'spower Untill the arrivalof that hour. When his Humanityawake[s] And cast his Spectreinto the Lake.(El 38; 41)
53
As I have elsewhere argued, reading is among the most influentialand paradigmaticmirrorstage encountersexperiencedin the semiosis of the 48-50). The initial mirrorstage in its Symbolic Order (Lussier"Vortext" situLacanian(andI suggestBlakean)form becomes a recurringstructural ation by which the unsteadyself maintainsthe illusion of its sovereignty in subjectivity are driven relentlessly (Green187-90),one whereparticipants to "becomewhattheybehold"(E 178, 187: 30.50 & 39.32).When we adopt we indeed become what we behold, assumingan the spectreof the imago, but Blakeclearlystrivesto cultivate,in and of self-sufficiency, image totality readersattunedto the visualfield in the later illuminatedworks,the ability to shatterthis mirrorat will. Blake reinforcesthis view of the shaping power of mirroreddynamics by unveiling,in the mirroredwriting itself, his own process of textual production(inverseinscriptionon copper plates)at the foundationof the composite text. Once Albion either secures or becomes a mirror,he will lesson at the literal, symbolic and encounter a seemingly straightforward the of plate'scomplexsemiosis,namelythe processmapped layers imaginary the subjectself overturnsits "Worldin which Once this essay. throughout Man is by his Nature the Enemy of Man,/In pride of Selfhood"(E 185: 38.52-3), the assertedoutcome of the act of casting the spectreback into the lake (mirroredmind) from which it emerges, the Blakeanapocalypse, is realizedfor "wheneverany individualrejectsError& EmbracesTrutha LastJudgmentpasses upon that Individual"(E 562). When this processis the identitiesof Milton (as character),Los (as the zoa completedin Milton, of imaginationand the author)and Blakelose their stabilityand flow into one another. Blake'sview of the last judgment sounds similar to, but strikesa diametricallyopposed stance against,enlightenmentclaimsfor the pursuitof truth, and by the time Blake virtuallycloses his epic efforts(c. 1810), the strongesttheme acrossthe canon, broughtto its climaxwith the concept of selfhood,strugglesagainst"Enlightenment mentality"in an effortto unveil cause underlyingthe destrucits operationsas "apersistent,psychocultural tive... assaultson the environment"(Wei-ming21). Blake'srepresentation for the formativeecology of of mentalapocalypsecertainlyhas significance the mind/matter forcefield, as the previouslyevoked"The Last Judgment" section of TheFour oas indicatesand which will be here quoted at greater
54
length (406: 20-31).

The ExpandingEyes of Man behold the depths of wondrousworlds One Earthone sea beneath nor ErringGlobes wanderbut Stars Of fire rise up nightlyfrom the Ocean & one Sun Each morning like a New born Man issueswith songs &Joy Gallingthe Plowmanto his Labour& the Shepherdto his rest He walksupon the EternalMountainsraisinghis heavenlyvoice Conversingwith the Animal forms of wisdom night & day That risen from the Sea of fire renewdwalk oer the Earth.(E406; 138.25-32)
This descriptionof an interconnectedsubjectbeyond selfhoodundergoes furtherexpansionat the conclusiontoJerusalem, where "AllHuman Forms" Name is freedom experience ("Jerusalem Thy Liberty"), identifywith matethe Cartesian shatter the fissure), riality(healing projectiveimaginationthat strivesto possessthe world (overcomingthe imago or spectre),and experience enlightenment(the abilityto expand and contractperceptionat will): "forcontractingour infinitesenses/We behold multitude; or expanding:we behold as one,/As One Man all the UniversalFamily"(E 180: 34. 17-9). Here Blake approachesas close to eastern forms of enlightenmentas any western poet or writer.Inner revolutionradicallytransformsthe state of subjectivitythat leads to an energized re-engagementwith the world in all its complexities,ratherthan a retreatfrom it. In such states,opposition becomes true friendship,a bonding (ratherthan boundary)condition for consciousness where "Bacon& Newton & Locke [conversewith] Milton & forms dramatic"(E 257: Shakespear[sic] & Chaucer"through"Visionary 98: 9, 28). like other sacredtheologies,Blake'smythictreatmentof mind and matter in the epics also functions as a sacred ecology, since "worldviews and beliefs"figure prominentlyin its constructionand since it manifests"an ethic of nondominant, respectfulhuman-naturerelationship [s]" (Berkes Blake'sprocessof self-annihilation as the vehicle for 163).Not surprisingly, inner revolution just as clearlyintersectswith Buddhistecologicalthinking as well, since both recognizethat "thedistinctionbetween 'self and 'other' is purely illusory"and acknowledgethat "the idea of a solid reality has dominatedWesternphilosophical,religious,and scientificthoughtfor over two thousandyears"(Matthieuand Thuan 13). However,against Blake's linguistic resistance to the "Satanic mills" of cultural consumption, the sovereignself continuesto dominatewithin and without, and as the three
MARKLUSSIER
55
interactivediscoursespursued here (Blake,Buddhism, and Ecocriticism) agree, much to our collectiveperil.

ArizonaStateUniversity
NOTES
1. Unless otherwise indicated, all citations for Blake come from the Erdman edition (abbreviated E) and refer to the page number followed by plate /page and line number. 2. Jung descnbes this "event as follows: Therefore it cannot be a question of cause and effect, but of a falling together in time, a kind of simultaneity. Because of this quality of simultaneity, I have selected the term 'synchronicity' to designate a hypothetical factor equal in rank to causality as a principle of explanation" (19). 3. 1 thank with all gratitude the wondrous Kate Rigby (who arranged the Monash lecture and class, who took me into her household, and who revealed to me the wonders of southern Australia) and the courteous Peter Otto (who arranged the Melbourne lecture and offered a splendid dinner and even better conversation at the end of the trip). 4. 1 he term first-stage enlightenment epistemology is designed to foreground a significant shift in precisely how western enlightenment epistemology defines self as Romantic writers swerved from the material and mechanistic views of "Bacon, Locke & Newton" (E 142: 41.4) and sought to elaborate an "implicate multiverse" of dynamic interaction and energetic exchange. This shift also coincides rather well with the emergence of Buddhism into European consciousness.
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The University of Notre Dame

SELF-ANNIHILATION/INNER REVOLUTION: BLAKE'SMILTON, BUDDHISM, AND ECOCRITICISM

self-binding (Bandy 12-43). TheMarriageof HeavenandHell and TheBookof

length (406: 20-31).

interactivediscoursespursued here (Blake,Buddhism, and Ecocriticism) agree, much to our collectiveperil.

day/ Anchor, 1982.

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