Activate the power of your imagination
The reality of the unreal
The New Mindscape #A2–3
Imagination
To learn how to play with the magic of your thoughts, you need to understand the power of your imagination.
In English, imagination has two related but contrasting meanings.
One is to associate imagination with creativity — it’s something we especially encourage among children.
Or we associate imagination with illusion — it’s something that’s not true, that exists only in our mind.
Here, I want to talk about imagination as a kind of power.
Aristotle distinguished between perception, imagination and intellect.
Perception is a power of the body, intellect is a power of the mind, and imagination is a power of the spirit.
Let’s consider three different types of imagination.
One is projective imagination.
To understand what projective imagination is, let’s take an engineer as an example. This engineer may start with an idea that there is an island over there. Then, the engineer decides to build a bridge between here and there. This bridge doesn’t exist in the physical world, except in the engineer’s mind — it’s an imagination. The first thing this engineer does is to imagine a bridge. The engineer starts to picture this bridge in her mind. She then thinks about how to turn this imagined bridge into a real one. Next, the engineer begins to draw a picture of the bridge, makes a plan of the bridge with measurements and so on, and then finally decides on the material, organises the workers, and hires construction companies to implement the whole project. So, what did not exist in a material sense, being an imagination, after being projected in someone’s mind, becomes a physical reality. This is one kind of imagination.
We all practice this kind of imagination. All of you here have imagined yourselves getting bachelor’s degrees. You don’t have a diploma from this university — your diploma only exists in your imagination. With this imagination, you begin to picture how you will achieve that, and how this imagination is going to become a physical reality, namely a diploma in your hands. This is what we call projective imagination: you consciously desire something through your imagination, and then you plan in a conscious way to turn the imagination into physical existence.
The second type of imagination is creative imagination.
Let’s consider an artist, an architect, a poet, or even an entrepreneur, any profession related to creation. Let’s assume that you want to make a sculpture. There is an imagined object your mind, something you want to sculpt, whereas you are not sure about the details. However, it is while you are sculpting it that many new ideas come to mind. So, you start with an idea that is vague, and then it comes to shape while you are sculpting it. As you make the statue, it actually grows into something you hadn’t imagined at first. Or, let’s say you are writing an essay, a poem or a story. You have some basic but vague ideas. Then, you start writing. The imagination drives, inspires and pushes you forward. As you go along, the idea becomes richer and more detailed. Many authors say that when they are writing their stories, sometimes these stories come to life. It is not like that engineer who had the whole thing planned out right from A to Z. In contrast, an author writing a story has an intuition and an idea. But then as this author goes about putting it into reality, somehow it takes a life of its own, and becomes something new. This is creative imagination.
The third type of imagination is receptive imagination.
For this type, it is a flash of insight, a dream or a vision that just arises into your mind, the origins of which are unknown. A new idea somehow pops up spontaneously. Compared with the planned, projective imagination, this kind of imagination might come when you are daydreaming, when your mind is wandering, or when you are dreaming at night. It just happens like that. The imagination comes to you, and you receive it, and you don’t know where it came from. Those imaginations — ideas, inspirations or visions that you receive — also can influence you in what you do. They might lead to a new decision, a new idea, a new plan or even a change in your life. So again, for a poet, an artist or a businessman, the very first idea may be a flash of inspiration — some kind of inspiration or vision just came. Then, this idea somehow led these people to do something in this world, or to change something in it.
In an abstract sense, it is easy to categorise and to contrast these three types of imagination. However, when we think about how these three different types of imagination operate, we will realise that the three often occur at the same time. Engineering perhaps involves the most projective type of imagination, yet even engineers have some flashes of insight — new ideas, unexpected solutions just pop into their minds. So receptive imagination may also be very important as perhaps the starting point of projective imagination. The two may go together. Projective, creative and receptive types of imagination are usually mixed together when we are actually doing things, going about our lives.
Imagining your future
Now let’s do an exercise about using your imagination.
What kind of person do you want to be in ten years?
Imagine yourself with some detail. Don’t hesitate to dream.
Write it down.
Now, what’s your plan for becoming that person?
Write it down.
Now let’s talk more about planning.
Planning is about turning imagination into reality.
A good plan includes all three types of imagination.
For example, let’s imagine you want to create your own business, but you don’t know exactly what kind of business.
You need to use your projective imagination to make a very specific plan of the essential skills you’ll need to learn, the training you need to undergo, the diplomas and certifications you’ll need to get, the time it will take to arrange and complete these requirements, and so on. Like an engineer, you have specific goals, and make a linear plan to achieve them.
But at this stage, your idea is still vague. It’s going to evolve with time. You’ll do certain things, and this will lead you into new directions that will give a clearer shape to your business plan. This is your creative imagination. You’ll have new ideas, you’ll try certain things, and as you put them into practice your ideas will become clearer, in ways you hadn’t thought about before.
And along the way there will be completely unexpected insights and ideas that will come to your mind. They might solve your problems in a way you’d never thought of before, or point out to a new direction you’d never imagined before. This will feed into your creative imagination, which will lead you to adjust your projective imagination.
This imagination of yourself in the future is an object of consciousness.
Put it in a central position in your mindscape.
Note that it’s alive, with many aspects and dimensions, growing and evolving.
Tend to it like a plant growing into a tree.
It will have power over you, it will give you direction, and make you achieve your dream.
If it’s a dream you love, you’ll give it positive energy, and it will positively empower you.
If it’s not what you truly want, you’ll give it negative energy, and you will struggle with it.
But remember one thing: it’s not really you. You can cut the tree at anytime.
Maybe the tree will be cut from you, because something happened that dashed your dream.
But that’s OK, because it’s not you, it’s an imagination.
You can start again with a new imagination.
Learn to play with your objects of consciousness.
Learn to gain power from them, and learn to let go of them.
This is the meaning of “letting go” and “detachment” in spiritual teachings.
In Daoism, it’s called “doing nothing to leave nothing undone” (wuwei er wu buwei)
It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan or make an effort for a better future.
It means, don’t let your plan control you.
Imagine, create your plan, empower your plan, let your plan give you power.
And let go of it like a child’s dream when it’s wrong or when it has served your purpose.
Now let’s think about planning in a more detailed way.
Just now we talked about imagining yourself in ten years.
Now, let’s think about your body, your mind and your spirit.
Think about one year from now.
What do you want for your body in one year? Think in terms of health, exercise, diet, sports abilities, or so on.
What do you want for your mind in one year? Think in terms of intellectual capacities. Such as specific knowledge or specific skills. Think, for example, of the specific knowledge and skills you need to master for your major; but it could also be other knowledge and skills that you’ve decided that you need to know for your career, or for your interest and personal development.
What do you want for your spirit in one year? There’s a lot of possible things you might think of. But if you’re not too sure what this means, let’s start with this: what kind of difficulty do you have in your relationships with others, and how would you like to improve yourself to better handle your relationships? Or you could think about the spiritual capacities I mentioned today: the capacity to create a more positive and beautiful mindscape, to manage your thoughts and your mental energies.
For these three, write down your goal.
For each of the goals, one at a time, imagine yourself having reached that goal, and imagine yourself working to reach that goal.
Close your eyes and spend a good amount of time imagining yourself in that way.
What will you do? And what will you need to change from the way you are?
Write some of these things down.
And make a plan to start implementing those things, regularly and systematically, starting today.
Every day, every week, do a bit.
These goals are objects of consciousness that are products of your imagination.
By thinking about them and working toward them every day, they will become a stable and increasingly well rooted presence in your mindscape.
They are objects of consciousness that you are now empowering. Now that they’re implanted in your mindscape, they will start to motivate you and to empower you to reach the goal.
For further studies on the imagination:
Sneath, David, Martin Holbraad and Morten Axel Pedersen. 2009. ‘Technologies of the imagination: an introduction’. Ethnos 74 (1): 5–30.
Christos A. Pechlivanidis, “What Is Behind the Logic of Scientific Discovery? Aristotle and Charles S. Peirce on Imagination.” In Hull, K.A., & Atkins, R.K. (Eds.). (2017). Peirce on Perception and Reasoning: From Icons to Logic (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315444642
Sthaneshwar Timalsina, “Imagining Reality: Image and Visualization in Classical Hinduism” (SERAS) Southeast Review of Asian Studies Volume 35 (2013): 50–69.
Dhivan, Thomas Jones. “Through a Blue Chasm: Coleridge, Wordsworth and the Buddha on Imagination.”
Marina Ivanova. “Imagination, visualization and pure vision in the Buddhist tantric deity ritual.”
Steve Odin. “Alchemical Imagination and Psychic Transformation in Jungian Depth Psychology and the Buddhist Tantras.”
International Philosophical Quarterly Volume 22, Issue 4, December 1982 Pages 255–274 https://doi.org/10.5840/ipq198222439
Adriana Berger. “Cultural Hermeneutics: The Concept of Imagination in the Phenomenological Approaches of Henry Corbin and Mircea Eliade.” The Journal of Religion 1986 66:2, 141–156
Shariat, A. (1991). Henry Corbin and the Imaginal: A Look at the Concept and Function of the Creative Imagination in Iranian Philosophy. Diogenes, 39(156), 83–114. https://doi.org/10.1177/039219219103915605
Corin Braga. “Imagination, imaginaire, imaginal. Three concepts for defining creative fantasy.” Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies. Vol 6, No 16 (2007). http://jsri.ro/ojs/index.php/jsri/article/view/425
Ferlita Ernest, S.J. “The Road to Bethlehem — Is It Level or Winding? The Use of the Imagination in the Spiritual Exercises.” Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 29. 5 (1997): 1–23.
The New Mindscape series is a practical exploration of spirituality rooted in the critical perspectives of anthropology and sociology.
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This essay and the New Mindscape Medium series are brought to you by the University of Hong Kong’s Common Core Curriculum Course CCHU9014 Spirituality, Religion and Social Change, with the support of the Asian Religious Connections research cluster of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
