Jail Notes #230294

One scholar who transmitted Blake's kabbalah, 8. Foster Damon, can remember his sudden vision of tiny flowers car peting Harvard Yard violet before World War One, an image that lingers over 60 years in'mind since his fellow student Virgil Thomson gave him the cactus Peyote to eat. Damon concludes that rare beings like Blake are born with physiologic gift of such vision, continuous or intermittent. William James, whose pragmatic magic probably called the Peyote God to Harvard in the first place, had included shamanistic chemical visions among the many authentic Varieties of Religious Ex perience. His student Gertrude Stein experimented in altera tion of consciousness through mindfulness of language, an extremely effective Yoga since mechanical reproduction of language by XX Century had made language the dominant vehicle of civilized consciousness; her companion Alice B. Toklas contributed a cookbook recipe for Hashish Brownies to enlighten those persons over-talkative in drawing rooms uh aware that the medium is the message.