Imagination

The great physicist, Albert Einstein once said, Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

“Oh it’s just his imagination,” is a dismissive line often used by those with little or no imagination themselves. Using our imagination is, in my opinion, the only way to expand our own and in many cases other people’s understanding. It is one of the greatest gifts we possess and although some will insist it is mere escapism from life’s difficulties, it is in fact one sure way to solve them. All of us when we were children had very active imaginations, imaginations that enabled us to transform our in many cases, humdrum surroundings, into a world of magic and wonder. Adults humoured us but also made it quite clear we would be expected to “grow out of it” as we grew older.

There are exceptions. When we are very young children, we are keenly aware of the presence of people from the spiritual world. I doubt there is a person living who did not have ‘imaginary’ playmates when a child. Instead of encouraging this awareness, what the majority of adults do is to scoff at the idea these playmates may be real children from the spiritual realms and by first patronising and later ridiculing, they persuade the youngsters it is best not to mention their friends anymore. This demonstrates just how little we have bothered to understand our true, inner selves. These childhood experiences are wrongly attributed to imagination but are nothing of the sort. We have become infected with the compulsion to weigh everything using those five poor scales, called the senses.

There are serious consequences for humanity in this attitude. By confusing awareness of the spiritual world with imagination and at the same time feeling guilty about our imagination, we develop an inbuilt reluctance to let it be known that we are using our imagination. As adults, while we read stories of fiction and fantasy with great pleasure, we retain a sneaking suspicion that this is all very childish and we should be feeling guilty about such self indulgence. Most people do not read poetry, listen to ‘good’ music or look at great paintings for the same reason. They do not see that such works of art are not only works of the imagination but they are great because they trigger the imagination in the reader, listener or beholder. Or perhaps they do and their materialistically trained minds rebel at such levity!

The imagination is what makes us truly human. It is the mechanism whereby our soul is freed for a while from its earthly constraints and can exercise its ability to ‘fly’ but it should not be confused with awareness of the spiritual world. Our spirit, soul and mind are not part of our physical bodies, although they are linked to it in such a way that all we experience as physical beings can be converted into growth material for our soul. The same is true of our imagination. Without it we are poor creatures indeed and all the progress humanity has made over millennia has happened due to people using it. It beggars belief that despite all the evidence to the contrary, many still regard imagination as something infantile and not worth taking seriously.

Have you never experienced the almost mystical thrill that comes it seems from nowhere, as you walk or sit in beautiful surroundings, listening to the sounds of nature all around? Have you never felt yourself soaring and ‘walking on air’ when you first realise you are in love? Have you never been so moved by a particular piece of music that you seem to escape from your body? All these wonderful experiences come through the operation of our imagination. Unfortunately so many of us have been so conditioned we have become stunted and find it almost impossible to give free rein to our imagination. We wrap ourselves in concerns – concerns about the past, about the present, about the future; all of which creates fear. Fear is the enemy of the spirit and by inference, of the imagination. If we could only allow ourselves to relax, to be our true selves and give our imagination permission to uplift us, our lives could be transformed and all our fears would retreat for as a rule, they have little basis in fact

Everything that exists has positive and negative aspects and I suppose one could say fear is the negative side of imagination. We ‘see’ problems that we think are bound to arise because of these circumstances or that action and because the imagination is so powerful, we create the very problem that we ‘see’ in our mind’s eye. The imagination is a key part of our mind and the product of the mind is thought. If we allow our imagination to run along positive lines then positive thought results in positive action and of course the reverse is true too - the thought is always the father of the deed. Our starting point is to acknowledge that imagination can be used for positive or negative ends.

Imagination is there to make us happy, not to make us miserable, so let us all try harder to be positive. Accept the wonderful gift of your imagination and use it. Do not discourage the use of imagination by your children and never be afraid to think the absurd. I began with a quotation by Albert Einstein and I shall end with one.

“If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it”