God-consciousness and the "poetry of madness"
pp. 361-378
in: Rolf von Eckartsberg (ed), Metaphors of consciousness, Berlin, Springer, 1981Abstract
The question "What is god-consciousness?" and how it has manifested itself in the great visionary writers, from most ancient times to the present as the "poetry of madness" (Plato), will be answered in this essay from the double-perspective of the poet and the literary historian. That is, I shall write from my own experience of god-consciousness as it became transformed into the words of my poetry, and I shall try to describe simultaneously how other poets and thinkers before me have experienced and expressed this highest state of consciousness when man feels he has become one with the gods, when he is en-theos, enthused, enthusiastic, and the gods speak through him.