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	<TITLE>“The Marriage of Heaven and Hellâ€</TITLE>
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<font size="4">William
Blake: “The Marriage of Heaven and Hellâ€</font></b></p>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin:0; text-indent:0; line-height:150%"><FONT SIZE=3>THE
ideal was Blake's. It will not sound so revolting if we understand
what the poet meant by Hell. Hell, he explains, is simply the body,
the Energy of Life – hell, because body and life on earth were so
considered by the orthodox Christianity. The Christian ideal demands
an absolute denial and <SPAN STYLE="font-style: normal"><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">rejection
of life. Fulfilment is elsewhere, in heaven alone. That is, as we
know, the ideal of the ascetic. The life of the spirit (in. heaven)
is a thing away from and stands against the life of the flesh (on
earth). In the face of this discipline, countering it, Blake posited
a union, a marriage of the two, considered incompatibles and
incommensurables. </FONT></SPAN><I>Enfant terrible </I>that he was,
he took an infinite delight in a spirit of contradiction and went on
expatiating on the glory of the <I>m<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&eacute;</FONT>salliance.
</I>He declared a new apocalypse and said that Lucifer, the one
called Satan, was the real God, the so-called Messiah the fake one:
the apparent Milton spoke in praise of God and in dispraise of Satan,
but the real, the esoteric Milton glorified Satan, who is the true
God and minimised or caricatured the counterfeit or shadow God. Here
is Blakean Bible in a nutshell:</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>But first the notion that man has a body distinct from
his soul is to be expunged.. . . If the doors of perception were
cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of
water, the beard of earth.</FONT></P>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin:0; text-indent:0; line-height:150%"><FONT SIZE=3>Such
is to be the ideal, the perfect, the spiritual man. Have we </FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page – 125</FONT><BR>
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the progenitor of the Nietzschean Superman? Both smell almost the
same sulphurous atmosphere. But that also seems to lie in the
direction to which the whole world is galloping in its evolutionary
course. Humanity in its agelong travail has passed through the agony,
one might say, of two extreme and opposite experiences, which are
epitomised in the classic phrasing of Sri Aurobindo as: (1) the
Denial of the Materialist and (2) the Refusal of the Ascetic.<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&sup1;</FONT>
Neither, however, the Spirit alone nor the body alone is man's
reality; neither only the earth here nor only the heaven there
embodies man's destiny. Both have to be claimed, both have to be
<I>lived – ubhayameva samr<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">Ä</FONT>t, </I>as
the old sage, Yajnavalkya, declared.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>The earliest dream of humanity is also the last
fulfilment. The Vedic Rishis sang of the marriage of heaven and earth
– Heaven is my father and this Earth my mother. And Blake and
Nietzsche are fiery apostles of that dream and ideal in an age
crippled with doubt, falsehood, smallness, crookedness, impotence,
colossal ignorance.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>We welcome voices that speak of this ancient tradition,
this occult Knowledge of a high Future. Recently we have come across
one aspirant in the line, and being a contemporary, his views and
reviews in the matter will be all the more interesting to us.<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&sup2;</FONT>
He is Gustave Thibon, a Frenchman-not a priest or even a religious
man in the orthodox sense in any way, but a country farmer, a wholly
self-educated <I>la<FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&iuml;</FONT>que. </I>Of
late he has attracted a good deal of attention from intellectuals as
well as religious people, especially the Catholics, because of his
remarkable conceptions which are so often unorthodox and yet so often
ringing true with an old-world authenticity.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Touching the very core of the malady of our age he says
that our modern enlightenment seeks to cancel altogether the higher
values and install instead the lower alone as true. Thus, for
example, Marx and Freud, its twin arch priests, are brothers. Both
declare that it is the lower, the under layer alone that matters: to
one &quot;the masses&quot;, to the other &quot;the instincts&quot;.
Their wild imperative roars: &quot;Sweep away this pseudo-higher; let
the instincts rule, let the pro-letariat dictate!&quot; But more
characteristic, Monsieur Thibon has made another discovery which
gives the whole value and</FONT></P>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin:0; text-indent:0; line-height:150%"><FONT SIZE=2><I><FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&sup1;</FONT>
 The Life Divine</I></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin:0; text-indent:0; line-height:150%"><FONT SIZE=2><FONT FACE="Luxi Serif">&sup2;
</FONT><I>The Times Literary Supplement, </I>January 15, 1949</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page – 126</FONT><BR>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin:0; text-indent:0; line-height:150%"><FONT SIZE=3>speciality
to his outlook. He says the moderns stress the lower, no doubt; but
the old world stressed only the higher and neglected the lower.
Therefore the revolt and wrath of the lower, the rage of <I>Revanche
</I>in the heart of the dispossessed in the modern world.
Enlightenment meant till now the cultivation and embellishment of the
Mind, the conscious Mind, the rational and nobler faculties, the
height and the depth: and mankind meant the princes and the great
ones. In the individual, in the scheme of his culture and education,
the senses were neglected, left to go their own way as they pleased;
and in the collective field, the toiling masses in the same way lived
and moved as best as they could under the economics of <I>laissez-faire.
</I>So Monsieur Thibon concludes: &quot;Salvation has never come from
below. To look for it from above only is equally vain. No doubt
salvation must come from the higher, but on condition that the higher
completely adopts and protects the lower.&quot; Here is a vision
luminous and revealing, full of great import, if we follow the right
track, prophetic of man's true destiny. It is through this
infiltration of the higher into the lower and the integration of the
lower into the higher that mankind will reach the goal of its
evolution, both individually and collectively.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>But the process, Monsieur Thibon rightly asserts, must
begin with the individual and within the individual. Man must &quot;turn
within, feel alive within himself&quot;, re-establish his living
contact with God, the source and origin from which he has cut himself
off. Man must learn to subordinate <I>having </I>to <I>being. </I>Each
individual must be himself, a free and spontaneous expression. Upon
such individual , upon individuals grouped naturally in smaller
collectivities and not upon unformed or ill-formed wholesale masses
can a perfect human society be raised and will be raised. Monsieur
Thibon insists – and very rightly – upon the variety and
diversity of individual and local growths in a unified humanity and
not a dead uniformity of regimented oneness. He declares, as the
reviewer of the London <I>Times </I>succinctly puts it: &quot;Let us
abolish our insensate worship of number. Let us repeal the law of
majorities. Let us work for the unity that draws together instead of
idolizing the multiplicity that disintegrates. Let us understand that
it is not enough for each to have a place; what matters is that each</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page – 127</FONT><BR>
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<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin:0; text-indent:0; line-height:150%"><FONT SIZE=3>should
be in his right place. For the atomized society let us substitute an
organic society, one in which every man will be free to do what he
alone is qualified and able to do.&quot;</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>So far so good. For it is not far enough. The being or
becoming that is demanded in fulfilment of the divine advent in
humanity must go to the very roots of life and nature, must seize God
in his highest and sovereign status. No prejudice of the past, no
notion of our mental habits must seek to impose its law. Thus, for
example, in the matter of redeeming the senses by the influx of the
higher light, our author seems to consider that the senses will
remain more or less as they are, only they will be controlled,
guided, used by the higher light. And he seems to think that even the
sex relation (even the institution of marriage) may continue to
remain, but sublimated, submitted to the laws of the Higher Order.
This, according to us, is a dangerous compromise and is simply the
imposition of the lower law upon the higher. Our view of the total
transformation and divinisation of the Lower is altogether different.
The Highest must come down wholly and inhabit in the Lowest, the
Lowest must give up altogether its own norms and lift itself into the
substance and form too of the Highest.</FONT></P>
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<FONT SIZE=3>Viewed in this light, Blake's memorable <I>mantra
</I>attains a deeper and more momentous significance. For it is not
merely Earth-the senses and life and Matter that are to be uplifted
and affianced to Heaven, but all that remains hidden within the
bowels of the Earth, the subterranean regions of man's consciousness,
the slimy viscous undergrowths, the darkest horrors and monstrosities
that man and nature hide in their subconscient and inconscient
dungeons of material existence, all these have to be laid bare to the
solar gaze of Heaven, burnt or transmuted as demanded by the law of
that Supreme Will. That is the Hell that has to be recognised, not
rejected and thrown away, but taken up purified and transubstantiated
into the body of Heaven itself. The hand of the Highest Heaven must
extend and touch the Lowest of the lowest elements, transmute it and
set it in its rightful place of honour. A mortal body reconstituted
into an immemorial fossil, a lump of coal revivified into a flashing
carat of diamond-that shows something of the process underlying the
nuptials of which we are speaking.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT SIZE=2>Page – 128</FONT></P>
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