Imagination

The dictionary defines imagination as the formation of a mental image of something that is neither perceived as real nor present to the senses. Quite the derogatory definition, isn’t it. Fortunately, it is incomplete.

We are born. Some equipment is standard. Ears, mouth, tongue, eyes, nose, skin - these are the sensors to allow in a range of stimuli, and to keep out a much wider range of stimuli. A baby comes with a brain - a processor to deal with the stimuli that comes in. We have some predefined behaviors - crying when disturbed, sucking when something is put in our mouth, sleeping when we are tired or need a break from the stimuli of the world, voiding when our waste receptacles are full. We have some predefined mental activities - pattern making, attraction to pleasurable states,and repulsion from painful states, among others.

Of these, the pattern making faculty is basic. It is the basis of all thinking, learning, and memory. It is the basis of all creativity. A more common term for the pattern making faculty is that word derided above - imagination.

All our life is shaped by our imagination - our perceptions, our conceptions, the models we create to explain our experience. We have created rules to shape and guide our use of imagination - deductive logic, inductive logic, syncronicity, analogy, the scientific method, magic. It is with our imagination that we have created cultures, religions, sciences. Imagination is the agency through which I write these words, and through which you read them. If they touch you, it is through your imagination that you have let them into your soul.

Imagination is the king faculty of the mind. It lets us live in the present, remember the past, and create the future. The so-called realist is creating their world through their imagination just as much as the sky-clad romantic. The person who lives in a world of misery is using their imagination as much as the local Pollyanna. Only the direction and the materials of creation differ. Look around, and we see where our imagination has taken us. Look within, and we see where our imagination can take us.

Are you not tired of surfaces? Come with me and we will bathe in the Fountains of Youth. I can point you the way to El Dorado.

George Russell (AE) in Candle of Vision (aff)

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