William Blake on inner alchemy

Mystic poetry of Jnaneshwar.

From website address linked below.
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I offer obeisance to the God and Goddess,
The limitless primal parents of the universe.

They are not entirely the same,
Nor are they not the same.
We cannot say exactly what they are.

How sweet is their union!
The whole world is too small to contain them,
Yet they live happily in the smallest particle.

These two are the only ones
Who dwell in this home called the universe.
When the Master of the house sleeps,
The Mistress stays awake,
And performs the functions of both.

When He awakes, the whole house disappears,
And nothing at all is left.

Two lutes: one note.
Two flowers: one fragrance.
Two lamps: one light.

Two lips: one word.
Two eyes: one sight.
These two: one universe.

In unity there is little to behold;
So She, the mother of abundance,
Brought forth the world as play.

He takes the role of Witness
Out of love of watching Her.
But when Her appearance is withdrawn,
The role of Witness is abandoned as well.

Through Her,
He assumes the form of the universe;
Without Her,
He is left naked.

If night and day were to approach the Sun,
Both would disappear.
In the same way, their duality would vanish
If their essential Unity were seen.

In fact, the duality of Shiva and Shakti
Cannot exist in that primal unitive state
From which AUM emanates.

They are like a stream of knowledge
From which a knower cannot drink
Unless he gives up himself.

Is the sound of AUM divided into three
Simply because it contains three letters?
Or is the letter ‘N’ divided into three
because of the three lines by which it is formed?

So long as Unity is undisturbed,
And a graceful pleasure is thereby derived,
Why should not the water find delight
In the floral fragrance of its own rippled surface?

It is in this manner I bow
To the inseparable Shiva and Shakti.

A man returns to himself
When he awakens from sleep;
Likewise, I have perceived the God and Goddess
By waking from my ego.

When salt dissolves,
It becomes one with the ocean;
When my ego dissolved,
I became one with Shiva and Shakti.

http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/J/Jnanadev/UnionofShiva.htm

Link below has more complete version of The Union of Shiva and Shakti by Jnaneshwar. The book is The Nectar of Self Awareness by Jnaneshwar Maharaj, English renditions by Swami Abhayananda published by SYDA Foundation. Copies would be avaialble at Siddha Yoga Ashrams and centres.

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The Union Of Shiva and Shakti

I offer obeisance to the God and Goddess,
The limitless primal parents of the universe.
The lover, out of boundless love,
Has become the beloved.
Both are made of the same substance
And share the same food.
Out of love for each other, they merge.
And again they separate for the pleasure of being two.
They are not entirely the same
Nor are they not the same.
We cannot say what they really are.
Their one great desire is to enjoy themselves.
Yet they never allow their unity to be disturbed
Even as a joke.
They are so averse to separation
That even their child, the universe,
Does not disturb their union.
Though they perceive the universe
Of inanimate and animate creation
Emanating from themselves,
They do not recognize a third.
They sit together on the same ground,
Wearing the same garment of light.
From time past remembrance they have lived thus
United in bliss.
Difference itself merged in their sweet union
When, seeing their intimacy,
It could find no duality to enjoy.
Because of God, the Goddess exists,
And without Her, He is not.
They exist only because of each other.
How sweet is their union!
The whole world is too small to contain them,
Yet they live happily in the smallest particle.
They regard each other as their own Self,
And neither creates so much as a blade
Of grass without the other.
These two are the only ones
Who dwell in this home called the universe.
When the Master stays awake,
And performs the function of both.
When He awakes, the whole house disappears,
And nothing is left.
They became two for the purpose of diversity;
And both are seeking each other
For the purpose of becoming One.
Each is an object to the other.
And both are subjects to each other.
Only when together do they enjoy happiness.
It is Shiva alone who lives in all forms;
He is both the male and the female.
It is because of the union of these two halves
That the whole universe exists.
Two lutes – – one note.
Two flowers – – one fragrance.
Two lamps – – one light.
Two lips – – one word.
Two eyes – – one sight.
These two – – one universe.
Though manifesting duality,
These two – – the eternal pair – –
Are eating from the same dish.
The Shakti, endowed with chastity and fidelity,
Cannot live without Her Lord.
And without Her,
The Doer – of – all cannot be.

Since He appears because of Her,
And She exists because of Her Lord,
The two cannot be distinguished at all.

Sugar and its sweetness
Cannot be told apart,
Nor camphor and its fragrance.

If we have the flames,
We have also the fire.
If we catch hold of Shakti,
We have Shiva as well.

The Sun appears to shine because of its rays – –
But the rays themselves are produced by the Sun
In fact, that glorious Sun and its shining
Are the same.

To have a reflection, one must have an object.
If we see a reflection, then we infer that
An object exists.
Likewise, the supreme Reality which is One
Appears to be two.

Through Her,
The absolute Void became the primal Person;
And She derived Her existence from Her Lord.

Shiva formed His beloved Himself;
And without Her presence,
No person exists.

Because of Her form,
God is seen in the world.
Yet it was he
Who created Her form of himself.

Embarrassed by Her formless Husband
And Her own graceful form,
She adorned Him with a universe
Of myriad names and forms.

In unity, there is little to behold.
But She, of good fortune,
Brought forth the world as a play.

She made evident the glory of Her Lord
By spreading out Her own body – form.
And He made Her famous by concealing Himself.

He takes the role of Witness
Out of love of watching Her.
But if He cannot see Her,
He abandons Himself as well.

Because of Her,
He assumes the form of the Universe.
Without Her,
He is left naked.

Although He is manifest,
He cannot be seen.
It is only by Her grace
That he appears as universal form.

When He is awakened by Her,
Shiva perceives the world.
Then He enjoys this dish She serves,
As well as She who serves.

While He sleeps, She gives birth
To the animate and inanimate worlds.
When She rests,
Her husband disappears.

When He conceals Himself,
He cannot be discovered without Her grace.
They are as mirrors, each to the other.

When He embraces Her,
It is His own bliss that Shiva enjoys.
He is the Enjoyer of everything,
But there is no enjoyment without Her.

She is His form,
But Her beauty comes from Him.
By their intermingling,
They are together enjoying this feast.

Shiva and Shakti are the same,
Like air and its motion,
Or gold and its luster.

Fragrance cannot be separated from musk,
Nor heat from fire;
Neither can Shakti be separated from Shiva.

If night and day were to approach the Sun,
Both would disappear.
In the same way, their duality would vanish
If their essential Unity were seen.

In fact,
Shiva and Shakti are ever averse
To the primal unitive state
From which AUM emanates.

Jnanadev says,
“I honor the primal pair of Shiva and Shakti
Who, by partaking of the sweet dish of name and form,
Shed light on the Essence which supports them.”

Embracing each other, they merge into one,
As darkness and light at the breaking of dawn.

All levels of speech, from Para to Vaikar
Merge into silence
When their true nature is realized,
Just as the ocean and the Ganges both merge
Into the primal waters When the time of Dissolution comes.

The air along with its motion merges
Into the universal air;
The Sun along with its brilliance merges
In the elemental fire at that time.

Likewise, while attempting
To see Shiva and Shakti,
Both the seer and his vision disappear.
Again and again I offer salutations
To that universal pair.

They are like a stream of knowledge
From which a knower cannot drink
Unless he gives up himself.

When such is the case,
If I remain separate in order to honor them,
It is only a pretended separation.

My homage is like that
Of a golden ornament
Worshipping gold.

When my tongue says the word, ‘tongue’,
Is there any difference between the
Organ which utters the word
And the object it represents?

Although the names, ‘Ganges’ and ‘Ocean’ are different,
When they commingle,
Are their waters not the same?

The Sun is both the source
And the object of illumination;
Still it is only one.

If moonlight illumines the moon,
Or if a lamp is revealed by the light of itself,
Is there any separation here?

When the luster of a pearl
Plays upon itself,
It only enhances itself.

Is the sound of AUM divided into three
Simply because it contains three letters?
Or is the letter ‘N’ divided into three
Because of the three lines by which it is formed?

So long as Unity is undisturbed,
And a graceful pleasure is thereby derived,
Why should not the water find delight
In the floral fragrance of its rippled surface?

It is in this manner I bow
To the inseparable Shiva and Shakti.

A reflected image merges with its object
When the mirror is taken away.
When the air is still, the ripples vanish.

A man comes to himself
When he wakes from sleep.
Likewise, I have perceived the God and Goddess
By waking from my ego.

When salt dissolves,
It becomes one with the ocean;
When my ego dissolved,
I became one with Shiva and Shakti.

I have paid homage to Shiva and Shakti
By uniting with them – –
Just as the inner space of the plantain tree
Is united with the space outside
When its outer covering is removed.

by, Jnaneshwar – – The first chapter in the book Amritanubhava or The Nectar of Self Awarness

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http://groups.msn.com/SpiritualCommunityNetworkCity/shivaampshakti.msnw

William Blake is one Greatest spiritual poets in the english language. Unlike Rumi, Hafiz or Kabir, and all the Chinese Taoist & Zen poets his work has the advantage of being approachable to English speakers in the original language. In fact in 1894 a group of Oxford scholars felt so strongly about the value of western and especially english poetry for spiritual inspiration that they created there own Sufi order, the Blaketashi Darwishes to promote the idea. Some of the text from their FAQ:

What are the origins of the Blaketashi Darwishes?

Legend has it that the Blaketashi Darwishes (pronounced Black-tashi Dar-wishes) were founded by a group of seven Oxford professors in 1894. These professors, which included the grandson of William Hazlitt, had met in the prior years with famed explorer and Sufi Sir Richard Burton, during which time many features of the Eastern philosophy were discussed. In 1894, there was a collective realization that much of what Burton had brought back to England, once it was de-rated from its linguistic and cultural context, was in fact little different from the utterances of the English romantic poets. Seeing in Sir Richard a foreshadow of things to come in the approaching 20th century, the Blaketashi Darwishes were established in order that “Englishmen should no longer be driven to ‘go native’ when perfectly serviceable English spiritual materials go unexamined.”

What is the mission of the Blaketashi Darwish organization?

The Blaketashi Darwishes are a non-denominational, universal expression of Western Sufism, based upon principles and the spiritual realization of our putative founder, William Blake. The mission of the Blaketashi Darwish is the active fostering of spiritual growth, on a personal and a collective basis, using the gems of Western spirituality as a source of contemplation and reflection. Ultimately, the Blaketashi Darwish seeks the enlightenment of Western society as a whole.

Is the Sufism of the Blaketashi Darwish only directed at the West?

The Sufism of the Blaketashi Darwish is a native product of Western civilizations, and is naturally addressed to persons raised in a Western culture. Its spiritual reference works were written by Western poets and artists, who are our saints and masters. As the works to which we address our attentions were written, in relatively recent times, by members of our own culture, in our own languages, they have a unique ability to have an appropriate spiritual impact on Western individuals.

How can it be said that your poets are your saints?

Something which was learned from Burton was that, in the East, the great saint and the great poet were often the same person. Further, we also learned that the ability to create great poetry was often a key sign of sanctity. The Blaketashis came to the understanding that many of the English poets who were ‘only’ considered poets, were, in fact, saints. To demonstrate this point, allow us to quote from the Forward to the works of William Blake, written by David Perkins of Harvard, (1967):

‘Born in London on November 28th, 1757, Blake was the second son of a well-to-do hosier. From childhood, the world was to him visionary. As he walked through the streets of the city or the green fields he saw angels and talked with spirits, and in later years he always spoke of his paintings as ‘copied’ from the visionary world and of his poetry as having been ‘dictated’ to him. In the earliest of these visitations, when he was four years old, God looked through the window at him and set him screaming. When he was eight or ten he saw a tree filled with angels, bright wings shining from every bough…….. In later years the world would think him mad, so far as his work and existence were known at all. But from Blake’s point of view, the world was mad, with its anxiety and bloodshed, its cruelty and repressive morality, and selfish lovelessness….. A root cause of our warped civilization is a failure of imagination, an inability to even conceive nature and society other than as they now appear. To Blake such passivity seemed a slavish bowing down so unnecessary and desperately mistaken that one could hardly understand it. His poetry and painting are a lifetime’s effort to explain how this passivity comes about and how it can be changed. As he puts it “My Work…is an Endeavor to Restore what the Ancients call’d the Golden Age.”

The Blaketashis view the sainthood of Blake to be self-apparent.

In what ways are the Blaketashis similar, and in what ways are they different from other Sufis?

The Blaketashis’ primary concern is the inner life of man, and in that concern it is aligned with Sufis of all times and all cultures. The Blaketashis share certain similarities with other Western expressions of Sufism in regards to its universalism, liberality of spirit, and use of Western cultural motifs in order to convey perennial truths. In this regard, certain casual similarities may be observed between the Blaketashis and the Sufi Order of Pir Vilayat, the Threshold Society of Edmund Helminski, and of course, the work of Idries Shah. The Blaketashis are Western and are not primarily Moslem, and while certain of these characteristics are different from the Sufic expressions of the East, we consider the apparent distance between these expressions to be largely a matter of superficialities. On a conceptual basis, the Blaketashi understanding of innovation, which is based on the writings of both Blake and Hegel, provides an important difference between the Blaketashi and other Sufi groups. The Blaketashi views progression as the raison d’etre of human history.

And innovation requires, at least in a quiet, gentlemanly sense, conflict. “Without Contraries there is no Progression, ” says William Blake. “Opposition is true Friendship.” The Blaketashi, set, as he or she is within the democratic matrix of Western culture, is a firm advocate of innovation and progression in all matters physical and intellectual, but especially in religious and spiritual matters. While Moslems often seem quite suspect of innovation, the Blaketashi applauds all creative steps, both successful and unsuccessful. This respect of innovation, which is a key feature of Western culture, is believed to be an important difference in the relative robustness of Western versus Eastern cultures. The Blaketashis believe that the carry-over of this bias against innovation into Western expressions of Sufism, from its Moslem roots, has ham-strung the efforts of many modern Sufic exponents, who have been trying, with limited success, to make a meaningful contribution to the improvement of the inner life of Western man.

Peace.
Greg.

http://www.blaketashi.com/index1.htm