Customer Reviews

Song and its Fountains

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I found this book to be one of the most significant books that I have ever read. "Song And Its Fountains" explores poetic inspiration and I am convinced that George Russell truly experienced the height of inspiration in a manner that closely matches my inner experiences. He describes many states of consciousness which I am familiar with, "The faculty of dreaming while I was awake had then become active..". This makes it clear that AE was familiar with waking dreams and he goes on to describe this faculty very precisely, "It is not true that we must fall asleep to dream. The dream consciousness may flood the waking, and that waking consciousness may have little more to do with the molding of the dream than the seer of dream in sleep has to do with the creation of images by which he is surrounded."

I also found it highly significant that George Russell did not have to meditate to achieve this heightened state of consciousness, "I had found the genie in the innermost sometimes overcoming me by an enchantment of dream flooding the waking consciousness not merely when I was meditative, but when I was at work or walking in the streets or on country roads."

AE also describes how vision can idealize the world and give it a supernatural beauty, "The words of the seer imply...transfiguring the things his eyes have seen and making of them a wonder-world of his own." Elsewhere he uses an expression which I particularly admire, "So over the images we see a glamour is cast...".

However, his mention of peculiar emotional states in waking dreams came as a surprise to me. I am familiar with intense and unfamiliar emotions in dreams but not when fully conscious. AE describes a visitation occurring while not asleep, "the dream, which was burdened with such intensities of emotion, when it departed left behind a slight lyric which could not hold or hardly hint at the love...". This is quite extraordinary and makes AE worthy of serious study.

George Russell was a serious student of Eastern religions and singled out the Upanishads for special consideration. From this, he got the idea that his visions may have been a distraction from the mystic way and that he was prevented from achieving the highest being. He humbly states, "My farthest traveling inward was but a footstep." Towards the end of the book he strikes a note of despair and describes his vision as "blossoms of illusion". As far as I am concerned, the glamour that vision can cast over the world is too powerful to be ignored. It may even have the power to turn your gaze from God, the Absolute, or what have you. A visionary is truly a distracted soul.