256
ALLEN GINSBERG
Statue of Liberty, which I never published because it wasn't any good.
But I did get the idea of how interesting it could be, the accidents that
come up if you commit yourself irrevocably to accepting the traces of
your mind during the composition.
Int:
What led you to your concept of "undifferentiated consciousness"?
Ginsberg:
Blake.
Int:
The experience in 1948?
Ginsberg:
Whi ch convinced me that it was possible--just like the
Cezanne thing, reproducing the
petits sensations
of experience. That's
why I became interested in Cezanne after Blake, because when I
looked at his painting I got a sudden shock of eternal thrill, that
sensation of eternal space being reconstituted--but the experience of
Blake was that through poetry you could catalyze in the reader the
experience of
Pater Omnipotens Eterna Deus,
an experience of eternal
consciousness; but then later on, reading Zen and other philosophy, I
would find different nomenclature for it.
Int:
In which of your own poems do you think you've come closest to
achieving this quality?
Ginsberg:
I don't know because it seems to happen accidentally, but
apparently in
Howl
where it is sufficient to alter people's minds.
In t:
What about poems like "Journal Night Thoughts" or "Television
Was A Baby Crawling Toward That Deathchamber" ?
Ginsberg:
No, that's like a full chaotic consciousness. There is too much
excitement and activity in the consciousness, that's amphetamine
partly. So it depends on what we mean by "undifferentiated con–
sciousness" ... but if we mean empty,
Sunyatll,
in which everything
comes in quietly, simultaneously, then I don't think I've written any–
thing quiet enough for that--but to get enough excitement to break
people's mind systems open, through rhythmic means partly ,
Howl
works.
Int:
Burroughs was interested in conditi oning, wasn't he?
Ginsberg:
Yeah . Another book that he gave us at that early time was a
book by someone named J acobson called
Progressive Relaxation
which was a sort of Western homemade yoga--just lie down and
begin untensing your whole body from the skull to the toes, muscle
hy muscle and portion by portion, which is similar to the
Satipat:
thana,
or body-feeling-mind and mind-object meditation of Burmese
Buddhists, which is primary Hinayana Buddhist Yoga.
Int:
What about word conditioning?
Ginsberg:
That was covered by Korzybski's
Science and Sanity
immedi–
ately when he pointed out that words were not identical to the things
that th ey re prese nt. And the best example of that was when Lucien
