Imagination

Imagination is pale and fragile,
Dreams grip with a false reality.
Imagination can build bridges,
Dreams can deceive.

When we dream, the experience is often deeply involving. Frightening dreams make us awake trembling and sweating. Pleasurable dreams leave us with lingering desire. Certain dreams are a form of healing, a way for our minds to recircuit and adjust themselves. No matter what, these dreams have no objective reality in our waking world.

Imagination is also a form of mental involvement. It is a way of projecting our thoughts into believable images to be contemplated and manipulated. We can play with our imagination, use it to inspire creative projects.

Both imagination and dreams are similar activities of the mind, and yet they differ in the level of conscious participation that they permit. In the case of the dream, there is a total suspension of rationality and consciousness, so there is little or no direction possible. There is no mode of control. By contrast, imagination is a tool through which we can make our lives better, different, and creative. By cooperating with it, we can achieve things that “we never dreamed possible.”

Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

Carl Jung on Active Imagination:

The two opposing ‘realities,’ the world of the conscious and the world of the unconscious, do not quarrel for supremacy, but each makes the other relative. That the reality of the unconscious is very relative indeed will presumably arouse no violent contradiction; but that the reality of the conscious world could be doubted will be accepted with less alacrity. And yet both ‘realities’ are psychic experience, psychic semblances painted on an inscrutably dark back-cloth. To the critical intelligence, nothing is left of absolute reality.

It is characteristic of the Western mind that it has no word for Tao. The Chinese character is made up of the sign for ‘head’ and the sign for ‘going.’… ‘Head’ can be taken as consciousness, and ‘going’ as travelling a way, and the idea would then be: to go consciously, or the conscious way.

Truth to tell, I have no small opinion of fantasy. To me, it is the maternally creative side of the masculine mind. When all is said and done, we can never rise above fantasy.… All the works of man have their origin in creative imagination.… The creative activity of imagination frees man from his bondage to the ‘nothing but’ and raises him to the status of one who plays. As Schiller says, man is completely human only when he is at play.

Imagination is active, purposeful creation.

When you concentrate on a mental picture, it begins to stir, the image becomes enriched by details, it moves and develops. Each time, naturally, you mistrust it and have the idea that you have just made it up, that it is merely your own invention. But you have to overcome that doubt, because it is not true. We can really produce precious little by our conscious mind. All the time we are dependent upon the things that literally fall into our consciousness … I am convinced that we cannot do much in the way of conscious invention; we over-estimate the power of intention and the will. And so when we concentrate on an inner picture and when we are careful not to interrupt the natural flow of events, our unconscious will produce a series of images which make a complete story.

Since by active imagination all the material is produced in a conscious state of mind, the material is far more rounded out than the dreams with their precarious language. And it contains much more than dreams do; for instance, the feeling-values are in it, and one can judge it by feeling.

I’ve always had a pretty active imagination. I’m pretty good at imagining the possibilities of the future and making things happen according to how I’v eimagined they will play out. I am rarely influenced by my dreams, although occassionally I can control my dreaming and use it to work out certain ideas I have been pondering.

One of the interesting things about having actually been crazy is I now understand very well how things you are imagining that are completely irrational can become acceptable. I know what that state is like, and so I understand how those who are very religious can believe as they do, or how those who believe they are in power think they can control reality. But I also know how delusional their thinking really is. I find it almost amusing to watch what is currently happening and realize that these people believe they can control the outcome of the reality they are “creating”. Almost. But my own rationality shows me that things won’t play out the way they believe they will.

I would say the conservatives are following their dreams, their unconscious desires for control. And instead of consciously choosing their path, what they are really doing is being unconciously led by their desires. They want so much to believe what they are doing is right and just and moral. They refuse to accept the proof before their own eyes that it isn’t so. “The Democrats must have made up the story about a memo in congress on the Schiavo incident – we couldn’t actually have done that!” But they did. And others among them lie, and cheat, and steal, and commit other crimes in the name of their beliefs, as if these things don’t matter. The ends must justify the means, even if it is the ends themselves that are incorrect.

So, imagination. How is that different from dreams? How is an imagined future of a better world for everyone different from a dream world of power and control for those who lust after it? Because in that imagined future, we take into account what is actually rational. We behave rationally and responsibly, not irrationally and irresponsibly. We act as real leaders to create a better life for everyone, not as liars who manipulate for their own ends. And mostly, we see the world as it is, not as we dream it should be, and imagine how we can improve other’s lives and control our own actions, not control other’s lives and create our own wealth at their expense.