The idea that “our tendency to accept imagination in place of reality must be destroyed” is so completely opposite from this idea of Soul as a Living Mirror that it is increadible to read it here.
Part of this idea of Soul is to restore the importance of the imagination, not to eliminate it. The Soul can only be seen, witnessed and experienced through the imagination. The imagination is not a lesser method of perception, it is a stronger one. It can penetrate beyond the surface to witness and experience the core.
Soul as the ability to reflect is also key to understanding the autonomy of agents in the world. Between the stimulus and responce is a moment or reflection. Here our capacity for imagination makes it possible for us to avoid returning pain for pain.
Xanderman, I just don’t understand this current trend in New Age thought that strives to equate imagination with reality. The soul is the ultimate conscious reality for a human being yet it is believed that imagination, illusion, reveals its core to this “whatever it is” that experiences beyond the soul.
I don’t know. Maybe its me, but it doesn’t make any sense to me. The ancient traditions are more meaningful for me and I’m perfectly willing to admit that this makes me “odd” in modern times.
I have a hard time figuring out how you can suggest understanding of Daoist thinking, and not make the connection between imagination and creativity. You imply negative connotation to imagination as if it is simply illusion at work. Quite the opposite, it is central to our awareness of reality. It is the essence of sponteniety and novelty that arises from the flow of experiencing. Our imagination is the interpreter that take’s each new moment and allows us to consider all of the potential of that experience. Without imagination, Jack is a dull boy indeed.
The imagination is what allows us to change. Even if you see someone else doing something and think, "Hey, I would like to do that, " you first have to imagine (this may only take the briefest of moments) that you can do it. Then you set yourself to accomplishing that. If we had no imagination, we would never be able to change ourselves. Imagination is the power of change.
Yes you can delude yourself with it as well, believing something that isn’t true and hardly possible, but it all depends on how you use it. That same power can also make you believe that you are greater than you are now and become that.
Imagination is reality. Once you’ve thought it, that idea at once becomes part of reality. No other may experience quite as you did, but it was real to you. And that makes it real. From what I gather so far, the Soul experiences these things as you do. And develops and changes with you using the power granted by your imagination. It may not have a physical representation, but it is nonetheless real.
First off, I don’t see this present investigation into Soul as a New Age endeavor. Look deeper into this.
The idea here is NOT that imagination IS reality. No, that is not it at all.
The idea here is that the faculty of imagination allows us to perceive a Truth that the physical eyes cannot ever experience. So now take the conception of Soul as the power to reflect, and add to it the imagination as the power to create Images.
The most remarkable thing about this power to create Images is the spontaneity of it. Images come to us. Out of “nowhere” these Images emerge. This ability to witness the Emerging is crucial. For it allows us to experience the ambiguous, the uncertain, the incomplete,the unformed and the undefined.
Now our ordinary empiracle senses can only witness a partial world. Our ordainry eyes only see the certain, the complete, the formed and the definined. In short they see what has already emerged, but they are blind to witness the emerging.
Here again the important of autonomy is present. The Imagination is self-moving. The Images it present to us are not a product of the Ego.
All this is the joy of the experience of random association. It is pleasant and a natural aspect of the level of human “being” but has nothing to do with the soul. Actually it deters its coming into existence. Either pure fantasy or imagination deals with interpreting phenomenon from the earthly level. But the soul does not exist there.
A soul in its potential as we have and when it comes into existence is of a different quality of energy entirely or that of the “Spirit”
This reflection you are referring to is fine for reflecting “created things” but soul is something different. Consider how Meister Eckharat describes it:
Normally our imagination or these reflections fill the space where the higher spiritual energy can enter and add more created things. Consider how Simone Weil describes it:
Consider how Father Sylvan describes it:
We don’t “reflect” anything simply because we do not possess anything that can reflect. It is only in its infancy and suppressed by corrupt egotism. When these reflections can be experienced for what they are by the power of sustained attention, perhaps then something real can enter and give genuine meaning to the word “soul.”
I may be old fashioned by I still believe that Simone Weil, Meister Eckhart, and Father Sylvan understand these matters of the soul far greater than we do or the results of contemporary psychology.
Let’s try it another way. Imagination is the vehicle that allows us to see before we see. That which is soul entertains all the potential of that which is coming into being and creates that which is. The soul, through imagination is the mirror of what imagination has created from the potential of becoming.
As to the soul being a different kind of energy than spirit… Possibly, but only to the extent that you’ve imagined that reality. For you, the soul is the mirror of a different quality of energy than spirit.
You put great stock in your expert’s opinions, you choose to label xander’s concept as 'New Age". It’s a shame that it doesn’t fit into your cosmological view, but sometimes, that’s the way it goes.
If my presentation contains the flavor of the New Age, then I take the blame as a poor presenter. My contention is that this activity of the imagination is not random and has everything to do with Soul.
You seem stuck on dichotomy around the metaphor of height:
(examples from this thread)
“Normally our imagination or these reflections fill the space where the higher spiritual energy can enter and add more created things.â€
“the higher goodâ€
“The soul participates in the process of reconciling or uniting the higher and lower or heaven and earth.â€
“the awe that they have for higher life.â€
“If we were to acquire a soul, it would retain perspective since its function is to reconcile and connect the higher with the lower which is perspective itself.â€
“Where the soul of the lily is tied to the earth and complete in its evolution, man’s evolution is beyond the confines of the earth and its expansiveness is the domain of the soul where at this level, it can reconcile the higher with the earth for the purpose of the earth’s spiritualization or working the garden.â€
This emphasis on moving higher points towards the idea of getting away, flying away, escaping and the like. There is a little book I wonder if you have ever heard of called, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford. Sometimes what we most strenuously avoid holds the key to everything.
What you are I believe referring to as the “soul”, I am referring to as the human machine. No soul is necessary for it. The three main aspects of this human machine are related to thoughts, emotions and the physical body. Impressions from external life enter the human machine and the materiality from these impressions such as food, water, air,and the like are transformed as is normal for all organic life on earth to do. This is the purpose of organic life on earth: to transform substances. No soul is necessary, just an alive functioning machine. This seeing before we see is just indicative of the different speeds at which different parts of the human machine function at.
Spiritual thoughts initiating from conscious sources are only interpreted by us as the results of degraded attention so fall into imagination.
This is a nice description of our conceptions of our machine but the human soul is different, it is not a machine.
I’m not labeling anyone or anything. Imagination as I believe it is being used here appears to me as New Age. Maybe I’m misreading Xander. The main difference I believe between the esoteric concepts of religion and New Age concepts are in the way imagination has taken the place of conscious attention.
There is no attacking going on here JT but only discussion. We compare concepts and people are more than welcome to believe whatever they wish as far as I’m concerned.
Xander
Of course there is great danger in taking esoteric ideas wrongly which is why they are an oral teaching when legit. But at the same time consider the depth of Hermes Trismegistus. … “'That which is above is the same as that which is below.” Is it possible that what he brought had nothing whatever to do with Debbie Ford?
You’re right, couldn’t possibly be wrong. Because your life was created,
and it already happen’, long time ago. You just did not get there yet,
I mean to the end of It.
DNA that is our signature, never changes on inside, only outside.
Like tree, starts with seed using soil to become beautiful tree. It just take time, to get Apple.
Our imagination is part of our reality, produced by our spirit, that is part of our soul, product of nature, that is part of God. Part of God that is our
soul and spirit is truth, that is in every imagination, as relation to our
Creation. Our creativity, powered by our imagination is not part of thought
process, it is not perception, that is part of belief.
Perception of reality is by default sign of persons inability to recognize
truth that is all over. Psychosis for instance.
" the autonomy of agents in the world " ??
Do you mean like, Special Agent Cooper, from " Twin Peaks " ?
it seems like the word ‘soul’ is similar to the subconscious
I think reflection serves the purpose of examining already-made connections, and looking underneath to see if we made some of them too hastily (maybe due to necessary dependence on heuristics) or forgot to consider something when we were making the connections (thanks to bad memory), or have since acquired new conditioning which makes necessary a reshaping of connections… and so/or a strengthening between them…
what we reflect into is the default drives/needs mixed with the incoming data which got past the sift of consciousness (made possible by heuristics which make conscious processing less effortful) and settled into subconsciousness (how that works w/ long-term and short-term memory… not sure).
drives, basic human needs, are like information already in the subconscious… those drives and needs interact with incoming data and travel back with them into thoughts/behavior of which we become conscious… back up through a surface-film of connections… if what tries to breech the film, is a threat to the surface connections, the consciousness will fight back to repress (mental immune system comparable to physical immune system)… but some break through despite those efforts… resulting in what is felt as uncontrolled behavior… and eventually grafting itself into that surface film of connections…
that we can ‘empathize’ with the fact that others ‘think’ and others ‘reflect’ and others display odd behavior they later regret – points to the fact that people’s souls/subconsciouses/minds are all built on the same pattern… where our patterns are the same… it is like we all bought the same mirror at WalMart, hahaha… mass production… over-population crisis… pardon the tangent…
variations in the patterns, and in the conditioning upon the patterns, results in the differences between minds… and the perceiving of ourselves to be reflecting into unique mirrors (one’s not mass-produced… one’s not dime-a-dozen…)…
I think mine has a crack in it… and a whole bunch of smudgy finger prints… and tiny bits of froth from crazy teeth-brushing… or maybe I’m just jokin’ around with the image…
I read the following passage and it seemed keenly fitting at this point.
Her James Hillman adresses the differecnes betwen Soul and Spirit.
He goes on to point out the difference between the paths of the mystic that requires being empty of imagination versus that of the visionary who seeks to be full of imagination.
I tend to agree with Hillman’s “place of the soul” which is not to say that this place manifests a fully developed soul. What he seems to be describing is the subconscious open to conscious influences such as symbols blended with all sorts of fantasy and imagination that interprets everything into a giant muddle.
He says that this the soul has been lost but experiments with it are alive and well in modern psychology, the arts, and New Age thought. But it is also true that many people striving to be “objective thinkers” discount all this as rubbish. As far as cultural trends, I would agree that materialism has cheapened this realm of soul even more and Rudolph Steiner is right IMO to describe materialism reflected through our obsession with technology as being influenced by Ahriman however this influence is perceived.
I have no idea why he emphasizes the Spirit as “ascending”. True, the Spirit is the quality of the moment as opposed to a concept of linear time but why limit it to ascending? Its descent is equally important within our universe. Our ability to become open to it is receiving its descent. It may be that he is mixing the Spirit with the emotional and physical energies of the earth which do express this ascending verticality. if so, it is a mistake IMO.
This is the state of the location where our soul could begin to develop. It is quite chaotic and not at all indicative of the life of the soul itself.
In the opening paragraph Hillman refers to this “middle position” as between our inner state of mind and the quality of the bodies contact with external impressions. Since our senses have dulled and we’ve sacrificed the striving towards the conscious mind with the egotistic satisfactions of the associative literal mind, obviously this middle is of a very low worth in respect to human potential and cannot be considered as “soul” other than as containing its potential.
Actually this is not the spirit itself but a quality of emotional purity that we are capable of that invites and can be open to the spirit. It is a very big part of the thread “Simone Weil: Atheist to Christian” The purity of denial that this cannot be God invites and creates the opening for the Spirit. The big detail is of course who can have such emotional purity and how can one become open?
Quite true. It is called getting ones inner house in order…separating the wheat from the tares within.
The spirit deals with the quality of the moment itself. It manifests for us as the quality of “I” in relation to vertical potential outside of linear time. The visionary is the quality of “Am” which is within linear time. A real human being would reflect “I am” as a reality and not as is normally done through imagination.
Existing as a plurality of many “i’s as opposed to inner unity or “I”, we become caught up in the cycles of “am” losing our attraction towards “I” and replacing it with egotism assuming itself as"I”
Actually this is the basis of all the conflict between Christianity and magick. Take the tarot for example. Initially it was pure symbolism that could bypass the literal mind and touch the subconscious bringing us self knowledge. However, through the loss of the value of this self knowledge, it gradually degenerated into a tool of divination for a “visionary” who had forgotten completely about “I”. Naturally, a true esoteric teaching that understands man’s evolution will have to be cautious about such practices that have the ability to enchant you into imagination at the expense of yourself, your potential.
The only time a person can really strive to profit from the experience of reality is when they’ve become truly disappointed with imagination in their need to experience “meaning”. Many never get that far and are content with imagination which I guess is normal for the collective being of Man.
A quick point. You also tend to use the term “evolution” frequently. I take it that you extend this term beyond how Darwin used it. Are you implying a kind of spiritual-evolution? You seem to retreat from what you call New Age thinking, however, the idea of spiritual-evolution seems to be a New Age concept.
Actually it’s rather like the sub-conscious is the back door the 19th century thinkers opened up to allow Soul back into acceptable society. It’s that inner mystery that nobody can master yet it draws all kinds of attention and efforts at understanding.
As Hillman points out, it is the Soul itself that originated this process in the formation of self-created psychopathologies. It announced itself with the symptom which was the clue that set everyone searching for it.
The importance of this power of reflection is also that it takes us beyond mere mechanical activity of stimulus and response.
This underlying pattern is what Jung was aiming to describe with his concept of Archetypes. Patterns, not like mathematical formulas, but living entities. The Shadow, the Anima, and the others are not just abstractions, but active persons that live behind and beneath ordinary consciousness.
Not really. The spiritual evolution of New Age thinking is not conscious evolution as understood virtually from the beginning. If you read the following article you’ll get an idea of how ancient the idea is. IMO New Age replaces consciousness with imagination changing the meaning entirely for the sake of egotism.
Another quick note. I read through the webpage you posed and found no explicit mention of the term “evolution” as you use it. In fact the word does not appear on the page. It seems to contain a good measure of propaganda against the Catholic Church, but nothing about evolution. Did I miss something? Did you post the wrong link?
