Imagination [Resources]+

I think it's refreshingly honest to see people who are willing to open up their thinking process to others, vague though those thoughts may be, silly to some, pointless to others. But to a few others they might be vaguely familiar, a spark to build upon their own thoughts, they might just be what they needed. This isn't a paper that needs critiquing.

Michael calls these fair criticisms. I disagree. He doesn't need my help defending him at all, but I just wanted to make these comments.

Well yes and no. :) I meant that Max's critique is valid because from his perspective very little of what I wrote makes any sense (to him.) The fact that it makes perfect sense to me, doesn't help Max much. So what is it exactly that I'm asking people to do here by posting this stuff? Maybe I'm not asking them to do anything more than chime in with their own thoughts. Which Max did, but while true to the letter, doesn't help much either. Anything I would have posted here would be necessarily vague and obscure. I do have to ask myself, of what possible use is that to anyone but me? In that specific sense Max's critique is, in my opinion :), spot on.
 
I still disagree. I think that Max was too busy being critical and saying nothing about imagination. Such an approach surely keeps less confident people from posting here. Just my 2p/c :)
 
I still disagree. I think that Max was too busy being critical and saying nothing about imagination. Such an approach surely keeps less confident people from posting here. Just my 2p/c :)

:) I'm ok with being delusional about most everything. But thanks Steve for pulling this back to the topic: Imagination. I'm not in favor of rational accuracy or logical consistency when it comes to wandering in the territory of the soul. I can see where the expectations for clarity as expressed by Max and David must inevitably be dissapointed. But, my setting up a little context is appropriate. So, let me set out the following two necessary poles:

1. Confronting reality is destructive - everything we cling to for stability goes out the window - what's remains is real
2. Poetry is a more appropriate tool than science
 
Some more context to help situate those who approach reality from a scientific/rationalist frame of reference (Part 1):

Corbin’s hermeneutics postulates the occurrence of Revelation, namely the “epiphanic descent” of the Divine Word into Creation. In the course of its manifestation, the Word undergoes a progressive objectification—what Corbin describes as a “corporalisation of the spiritual.”

The “condensation” of the Word progresses along a plurality of universes in descending order in a sort of dialectic of manifestation and occultation, such that “the exoteric of each degree becomes the esoteric at the lower degree.”

This results in a fundamental structure of hierarchical “correspondences,”where to everything that is apparent, literal, external, exoteric ( zhir) there corresponds something hidden, spiritual, internal, esoteric (batin).

Corbin likens the manner in which the exoteric relates to the esoteric to that of a mirror in which an image is suspended: “the mirror shows the image, and in showing it, shows its presence ‘elsewhere’ in another dimension.” In this perspective, the exoteric is the “apparitional form,”the “epiphanic place” (mazhar), of the esoteric.

The exterior is not something different from the interior, but rather is the interior itself transposed to a different level of being.

Philosophy and the Abrahamic Religions: Scriptural Hermeneutics and Epistemology
Chapter 22 : Hadi Fakhoury - Henry Corbin’s Hermeneutics of Scripture
 
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Some more context to help situate those who approach reality from a scientific/rationalist frame of reference (Part 2):

In what space does the…experience unfold?

With a quantitative conception of space, it is impossible to apprehend any of these things. In fact, spiritual visions and events imply the existence of different kinds of spaces. These are spiritual or qualitative spaces, where the events of the soul take place. “Such space,” Corbin writes, “is existential space, whose relationship to physico-mathematical space is analogous to the relationship of existential time to the historical time of chronology.” The proper measure of that space is the state of the soul. It is indeed a place “where time becomes reversible and where space is a function of desire, because it is only the external aspect of an internal state.”

To designate this “existential space,” which is the location of visionary events, Corbin coined the term mundus imaginalis.

As a “median and mediating” world, the imaginal world shares aspects of both the world of sensation and the world of intellectual forms. It is a world “‘where the spiritual takes a body and the body becomes spiritual,’ a world consisting of real matter and real extension, though by comparison to sensible, corruptible matter these are subtile and immaterial.”

The function of the mundus imaginalis defined by its ability to symbolise with the worlds it mediates: On the one hand [the mundus imaginalis] immaterialises the Sensible Forms, on the other it “imaginalises” the Intellectual Forms to which it gives shape and dimension. The Imaginal world creates symbols on the one hand from the Sensible Forms, on the other from the Intellectual Forms.

Accordingly, the mundus imaginalis requires a faculty of perception that is proper to it. This faculty is the active Imagination, which Corbin sharply distinguishes from the imaginary or “fantasy.” The latter secretes nothing but the imaginary, the unreal, whereas the active Imagination has a cognitive function just as fundamental and objective as sensation or intellection. The active Imagination is the organ that allows the exegete to penetrate the mundus imaginalis, where the reality of symbols is verified.

Philosophy and the Abrahamic Religions: Scriptural Hermeneutics and Epistemology
Chapter 22 : Hadi Fakhoury - Henry Corbin’s Hermeneutics of Scripture
 
Some more context to help situate those who approach reality from a scientific/rationalist frame of reference (Part 3):

These 4 videos give a good introduction to Henry Corbin and the "mundus imaginalis" the last one in particular veers into channeling, UFOs, Terence McKenna, etc.

"Angela Voss about the "creative imagination" or "mundus imaginalis" via the work of French Islamicist Henry Corbin, 12th century Andalucian mystic Ibn Arabi and various neo-Platonic philosophers."




 
Good idea Sci, would be better for me if I had an actual “thing” in mind when I started this thread. But I had vagueness in mind instead: what is my bottom line on reality? This all started for me as a result of a conversation between Steve and me on reincarnation. I don’t know where reincarnation fits in my bottom line on reality. Hence: what is my bottom line and does it matter if reincarnation fits and how it fits or doesn’t fit? But oddly enough this is a thread about imagination, not reincarnation. My experience has been to simply allow my intuition to lead me where my reason cannot go. It has always been, and I do mean always, been a good choice for me.

Bear with me for a while as I wander through vagueness and obscurity.

I’m struck by the notion that “how I am” in this world leads me to “an understanding” of reality that complements my “how I am”. By “How I am”, I mean this to be an active doing or being - an act of my imagination.

To illustrate: if I imagine that I am an object, even a conscious object, then the world is a world of objects and is itself an object. Everything is strictly opaque and my direct experience of the world is always only of the surface of things. I cannot ever go beyond the surface of things. Even if I take an object apart and divide the object into smaller objects – my experience is always blocked at the surface. This is true no matter how many times I divide an object, and so even down to the very smallest point, where things cannot be divided any further, it is still an object whose outer surface I cannot penetrate. I can never know the essence of anything in this object-world, not even the essence of myself since I too am an object. I may have private thoughts but these too are objects whose surfaces I cannot penetrate.

In this object-world I am strangely not ever fully present, not even to myself.

This is true no matter which objects I am focusing my attention on: such as “reincarnation.”

I suppose as long as I am satisfied just with the surface of things, and not concerned with ever knowing the essence of anything, including myself, then I can be a happy-camper object.

But what if I do want to know the essence of things? Seems clear to me that requires a mode of being that penetrates the surface of things to experience their essence.

[Continuing from the earlier post]

How do we change or „mode of being?“

But first, what is a „mode of being?“

„Mode of being“ is a term that comes from Phenomelogical Philosophy: the study of the structures of experiences and consciousness.

Heidegger’s definition of the different modes of being.

Being as Substance: substance and property Ontology, the world is composed of substances with properties, such that if you can identify all substances and identify all their properties we can understand everthing. People and souls are thought of as being certain kinds of substances. The Cartesian perspective is based on this substance and properties ontology. Science certainly takes this perspective: the world is a collection of objects (substances with properties)

Being as Equipment: a hammer’s way of being is such that it couldn’t be hammer in the abscensce of nails, and wood and people using it skillfully to build something. For instance anything can be a hammer, coke bottle, a rock, a shoe, a day-old bagel (?) in the right context, Unlike Being as Subtance, a hammer cannot be defined in terms of its substances and their properties, it can only be define holistically within the wholistic context of its being.

Being as „Existence“: this is specific to persons, it is that which makes „being an issue of definition“ for them. We can be particular kinds of persons: being a mother, being a teacher, being a mountain climber, being a scientist, being an artist. In this sense, persons define their own mode of existence: we define our own mode of being.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, following Heidegger, adds to this by stating that consciousness and the human body, as a perceiving thing, and the world are „mutually engaged“. This enagement is primary and cannot be deconstructed into substances and their properties. In other words: my experiences of the world are a result of the engagement of my body, my consciousness, and the world as the primary source of that experience.

So then: How do we change our „mode of being?“ We do this by an act of imagination and chosing to redefine who we are. If we are not „objects“ , as we would be under the Substance „mode of being“, then we can re-define ourselves as extensible-beings capable of extending our awareness into the world.

Following Ponty then, changing our mode of being also changes our engagement with the world and our experiences of the world.

Angela Voss (see video’s posted above) proposes a research methodology using imagination for the symbolic interpretation of images and texts, but while she is focused primarily on the study of the esoteric tradition, if we view the sensible world as a kind of book composed of images and texts, then this approach can also be a method to actuate a deeper personal experience of this reality to get beyond the surface of things by re-imaging our mode of being to one that extends into the world as opposed to a mode of being as an object (separated from other objects.)

..if we are to pursue an approach in which the imagination is allowed to become a Primary research tool, then we have to consider the nature and function of such an [imagination.] [Its] modus operandi…is the mode in which the soul reveals its nature through the language of symbol and metaphor. As such, it is active and creative and will always seek to amplify and enhance that which it touches.

To illustrate: an excercise I often practice when hiking through the woods where I live , is to imagine a sphere of awareness radiating outward from me and encompassing not only what is immediately visibly to me but extending through and well past what is visible to me. In this mode of being, where I imagine myself not simply as someone walking along a certain path in a certain location, but as an outwardly radiating locus of awareness, I find that some trees take on the quality of being persons having presences that distiguish them from mere objectness. These trees then are more than substances with properties, they too, as I am, are beings, persons with a presence and awareness.

Does this teach me something about trees from a scientific rationalist standpoint? No it does not. What it does teach me is that my experiences of the world is directly related to how I define my mode of being in the world. If I define myself as an object then the world reflects that mode of being right back at me: the world is an object composed of objects. If, on the other hand, I define myself as extending past my body-boundary, then the world too reflects that back at me, by extending itself into and through me and I then experience the world as composed of persons with presences that I become aware of.

Edit: I had meant to include this quote from Henry Corbin.
Everything is but revelation; there can only be re-velation. But
revelation comes from the Spirit, and there is no knowledge of
the Spirit.

It will soon be dusk, but for now the clouds are still clear,
the pines are not yet darkened, for the lake brightens them into
transparency. And everything is green with a green richer than
pulling all the organ stops in recital. It must be heard seated,
very close to the Earth, arms crossed, eyes closed, pretending to
sleep.

For it is not necessary to strut about like a conqueror and
want to give a name to things, to everything; it is they who will
tell you who they are, if you listen...

Theology by the Lakeside, 1932, written while sitting by Lake Siljan, Sweden
 
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Shihab al-Din Yahya al-Suhrawardi - Part 1

http://kevin-rd-shepherd.blogspot.com/2014/11/suhrawardi-and-ishraq.html

Shihab al-Din Yahya Suhrawardi (d.1191) was an Iranian who became known posthumously as Shaikh al-Ishraq, meaning “teacher of illumination.” He was educated at Maragha and Isfahan, and his early training was apparently in the Peripatetic or Aristotelian philosophy associated with Ibn Sina (980-1037).

https://theartoftransformations.wordpress.com/tag/uthman-ibn-suwaid/

In Syria a man called Shihab al-Din Yahya al-Suhrawardi was executed on direct instructions from the great Islamic ruler, Saladin. He was 38 years old.

His death and short life might seem to have nothing to do with Pythagoras, or the Pythagoreans of ancient Greece. But that’s not the case.

Suhrawardi has been known in Persia since his death as “The Sheikh of the East,” or simply as “He who was killed.” While still alive he taught and wrote about how he had discovered a continuous line of esoteric tradition: a tradition that started in the East, passed to the early Greek philosophers, then was carried from Greece to Egypt where it traveled a long way up the Nile and eventually was transmitted from southern Egypt back to Persia.

…Suhrawardi was very serious about what he said. So were his successors – people who down to the present day claim they have perpetuated intact an esoteric tradition based not on theorizing or reasoning about reality, but on direct experience gained through spiritual struggle and specific techniques of realization.

For them this tradition was alive, incredibly powerful, Suhrawardi described it as an eternal ‘leaven’ capable of transforming whatever it touches, of raising people who are ready into another level of being. And just as yeast acts subtly, but irresistibly, transforming from the inside, unrestrainable precisely because it’s so subtle, the theologians in his time saw the only way to try and stop his teaching would be to kill him. But they killed nothing.

And Suhrawardi, like his successors among Persian Sufis, was quite precise about his ancestors. He mentions two early Greek philosophers, and a man from Sicily called Empedocles…

Empedocles lived in the 5th century BC and played a major role in transmitting Pythagoras’ teaching in Sicily. He used the language of the gold plates in the poetry he wrote, and through what he says he shows that the process of dying to be reborn doesn’t just refer to dying physically. Initiates had to die before they died – face the underworld before their physical death..

During the 9th century AD, 700 years after Empedocles’ teachings had been copied onto this papyrus, an alchemist in Akhmim wrote a work that was to have the profoundest influence on virtually every aspect of medieval alchemy. His name was Uthman Ibn Suwaid, and he wrote the work in Arabic.

sufi_gatherings.jpg
It became known in the Islamic world as The Book of the Gathering; translated into Latin it came to be called the Turba philosophorum, or Gathering of the Philosophers. The book described a series of meetings between ancient Greek philosophers at four “Pythagorean conferences,” all of the dedicated to getting to the heart of the alchemical art. The meetings were presided over by Pythagoras himself. And in the text of one of the speakers at the gathering, Empedocles, outlines genuine aspects of the historical Empedocles’ teaching – about the fundamental importance of fire at the center of the earth – which until recently were either forgotten or completely distorted in the West.

The significance of those details is immense. What Empedocles wrote and taught during the 5th century BC played a crucial role in shaping Western philosophy, Western science, the history of Western ideas. But the simple fact is that a true understanding of what Empedocles had taught didn’t survive in the West. All that was left there of his teaching – about the mysteries of the world around us, about the nature of the soul – was empty theorizing and hollow ideas. The lived reality had moved elsewhere.

It’s strange, now, to look at the surviving evidence in Arabic texts about the existence of groups of alchemists who called themselves “Empedocles circles,” or “Pythagoras circles.” You find “Empedocles circles” mentioned again in descriptions of Islamic esoteric groups who saw Empedocles as their guide: who “regard themselves as followers of his wisdom and hold him superior to all other authorities.”Here were people who in spite of their culture, religion, language, took as their inspiration and teacher a man who had lived one and a half thousand years before them.”
 
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Good idea Sci, would be better for me if I had an actual “thing” in mind when I started this thread. But I had vagueness in mind instead: what is my bottom line on reality? This all started for me as a result of a conversation between Steve and me on reincarnation. I don’t know where reincarnation fits in my bottom line on reality. Hence: what is my bottom line and does it matter if reincarnation fits and how it fits or doesn’t fit? But oddly enough this is a thread about imagination, not reincarnation. My experience has been to simply allow my intuition to lead me where my reason cannot go. It has always been, and I do mean always, been a good choice for me.

Bear with me for a while as I wander through vagueness and obscurity.

I’m struck by the notion that “how I am” in this world leads me to “an understanding” of reality that complements my “how I am”. By “How I am”, I mean this to be an active doing or being - an act of my imagination.

To illustrate: if I imagine that I am an object, even a conscious object, then the world is a world of objects and is itself an object. Everything is strictly opaque and my direct experience of the world is always only of the surface of things. I cannot ever go beyond the surface of things. Even if I take an object apart and divide the object into smaller objects – my experience is always blocked at the surface. This is true no matter how many times I divide an object, and so even down to the very smallest point, where things cannot be divided any further, it is still an object whose outer surface I cannot penetrate. I can never know the essence of anything in this object-world, not even the essence of myself since I too am an object. I may have private thoughts but these too are objects whose surfaces I cannot penetrate.

In this object-world I am strangely not ever fully present, not even to myself.

This is true no matter which objects I am focusing my attention on: such as “reincarnation.”

I suppose as long as I am satisfied just with the surface of things, and not concerned with ever knowing the essence of anything, including myself, then I can be a happy-camper object.

But what if I do want to know the essence of things? Seems clear to me that requires a mode of being that penetrates the surface of things to experience their essence.

I shall call you Plato.

I strongly believe in reincarnation.

The universe recycles.
 
Shihab al-Din Yahya al-Suhrawardi - Part 2

http://www.independentphilosophy.net/Suhrawardi_and_Ishraqi_Philosophy.html

Suhrawardi's major work Hikmat al-Ishraq (Philosophy of Illumination) divides into two sections, the first being concerned with the critique and revision of Peripatetic logic. The second and metaphysical part is specifically ishraqi (illuminationist), being "unique in the history of Islamic philosophy." (ASI, p. 13)….

The same book is inseparably associated with the theme of "knowledge by presence" (al-ilm al-huduri), which became regarded as a cardinal tenet of ishraqi philosophy (see PEP). This theme epitomised Suhrawardi's negotiation of Peripatetic logic. In this perspective, "all kinds of knowledge require a direct, unmediated relation between the knowing self and the object of knowledge." (WLA, p. 168) The self-conscious subject is here a priority, and the contention is "deeply nominalist and empiricist." (WLA, p. 169)
.

Alam al-Mithal or Subtle World

A problem for assessment is the alam al-mithal, the "world of idea" or "world of image," a "fourth world" extending from intellect, soul, and body. The description as "subtle world" is also found in the literature. That obscure world is said to be independent of matter. Suhrawardi also used the symbolic term Hurqalya, which has been translated as "archetypal world," a topic elaborated in the works of Henry Corbin (d. 1978). That scholar innovated the description of mundus imaginalis, though his semi-Jungian exegesis is in dispute.

The alam al-mithal is diversely associated with occult phenomena, magic, jinn (spirits), the celestial spheres, the afterlife, and reincarnation. Subsequent ishraqi commentators attributed this teaching to the ancient philosophers, including Pythagoras and Plato. Yet according to Professor John Walbridge, this "is a philosophical doctrine that first emerges clearly in the writings of Suhrawardi himself." (WLA, p. 80)

The alam al-mithal relates to visionary and other experiences in the occult/mystical range. One may conclude that any attempt to induce mystical experiences, without undergoing the purification specified, would lead to chronic confusion and potentially severe setbacks rather than any enlightened knowledge. If there is truth in such an extending "subtle world," then many layers of crude "images" might be encountered before anything sublime.

One recent commentary refers to imagination in terms of mutakhayyilah, and qualifying that the function of this faculty goes further than apprehension, and "synthesises and analyses." A related faculty is described as fantasy (khiyal), and further described as "the place where sensus communis is stored." A location in the brain is mentioned, and sensus communis is here defined as "the center where all the information and data of the external world is collected." (ASI, p. 49) A retreat from this data storage is specified for perception of the imaginal world. "Seeing the [suspended] archetypes requires transcending all obstacles in order to go beyond what Suhrawardi symbolically refers to as the Qaf mountain." (ASI, p. 88)

A problem for Suhrawardi was that the faculty of imagination figured strongly in the Peripatetic tradition, from which he borrowed. Ibn Sina and other logicians, when charting internal faculties, referred to imagination, fantasy, recollection, estimation, and sensus communis (a term deriving from Aristotle and basically denoting the sensory field). A locus in the brain was specified, though Suhrawardi was keen to negotiate the physical dimensions of this package, insisting that extensions were relevant. Strangely enough, some of the references in Arabic can equate with basic brain rhythms of the type associated today with hemispheric brain function. The "imagination" was divided into synthetic/analytic and a form of passive/active operation (cf. my reference to Abdul Karim Jili, via R. A. Nicholson, in Psychology in Science, 1983, pp. 66, 199). Even if such a cerebral mechanism had been more tangible in the Peripatetic repertory, Suhrawardi would doubtless have regarded this as a cage for the soul.

According to the ishraqi sources, access to the "suspended images" (or archetypes) of the subtle world can be obtained "through visions during sleep or while awake, and by intuitions." (HIP, p. 1152) The "imaginal world" is associated with both Suhrawardi and the Arab Sufi Muhyi al-Din ibn al-Arabi (d. 1240). (62) The ishraqi mystical perception was not actually regarded as an imagination, but as the direct cognition of a greater reality than the physical.

Ibn al-Arabi adopted the prudent recourse of grounding his exposition in metaphorical Quranic imagery. Suhrawardi was more daring in his allusions (for example, the Zoroastrian symbolism), and exhibits a much stronger logical tendency than Arabi. Yet Suhrawardi did not supply any systematic description of the "subtle world." Subsequent Iranian philosophers contributed further versions of this subject. According to Mulla Sadra, the subtle world "has even more reality than the physical world." (HIP, p. 652) The Iranian philosophers were not discussing anything they believed to be imaginary.

From a scientific point of view, much scope for improvement exists in relation to explanations of the "subtle world," if more credence is to be awarded that complexity. Otherwise, the level of ambiguity and poor definition risks being mistaken for fantasy. However, Suhrawardi clearly distinguished between the forms of the "subtle world" and the Platonic Forms (or fixed archetypes). The latter he defined in terms of pure light, while the subtle images he described as comprising both beautiful and repulsive experiences. (CSB, pp. 129-30) The lesser phenomena of the alam al-mithal are clearly not something to be desired.

Corbin was enthusiastic about this theme, and commented "it seems that Suhrawardi has been the first to systematically establish" the fourth world. Other commentators deny that the subject got quite that far in his exposition. The ishraqi "did not, however, systematically develop the concept of the imaginal world, something his followers sought to address" (Marcotte, Suhrawardi's Realm). Corbin located on paper the jism mithali, which he described in terms of "the subtle body is an imaginal body." One could easily conclude that the best description for mnemonic reference is in terms of subtle body, to avoid other complicating associations.

Suhrawardi appears to introduce the fourth world "in part, to account for the the posthumous retribution promised to souls by the religious tradition" (Marcotte, Realm). In this respect, he "envisions human souls being able to attach themselves to a subtle body that would guarantee the proper posthumous functioning of their imaginative faculty" (ibid.). Ibn Sina had formerly alluded to the possibility for some souls to witness imaginative forms in the afterlife. Again, the ishraqi was endeavouring to refine the Peripatetic description. He was "attempting to identify a specific realm - one or even two spheres" (ibid.). In other words, there is no use imagining only a fourth world, as there might even be a fifth.

The fourth world "lies somewhere between the physical world and the world of the species and of Platonic Forms" (ibid.). Hence the status as an intermediary world. It is relevant to grasp that "numberless angels" are included in this cosmic conception, and that "the sanctified godly sages may rise higher than the world of the angels" (ibid.). There are evidently several worlds and levels of accomplishment under discussion here.

The correct translation of suwar mu'allaqah appears to be "suspended forms," as in the Marcotte version. One should detour the images and archetypes that have made this subject so confusing. The full rendering from the same scholarly source is "luminous and tenebrous imaginal or suspended forms." As might be hoped, there are complexities in the afterlife that go much beyond standard religious expectations. In general, the afterlife is depicted by Suhrawardi as varying between happiness and misery, depending upon whether the soul is identified with the light or the darkness involved. The eschatological layer of meaning is not exhaustive.

The suspended forms are distinct from "the world of incorporeal figures" (alam al-ashbah al-mujarradah), also mentioned in Hikmat al-Ishraq. This world contains the "mental forms or representations" (Marcotte, art. cit.), not to be confused with the Platonic Forms or Ideas, which are self-subsisting. Obviously, the complexities are now prodigious.

An ethical complexion attends the basic schema. "The more the soul has progressed in its detachment from everything bodily and material and has ascended to to the luminous (the intellective), the more it is able to receive those [luminous] forms.... Their reception equally depends on the extent of the soul's moral character" (Marcotte, art. cit.). Moreover, this moral factor assists the perception of "suprasensible realities," which is perhaps one reason why contemporary commercial mysticism is such a failure.

There is an ominous warning. A problem with the "suspended forms" is their unfixed and shifting nature that may result in an impingement upon the physical world. Suhrawardi says in his major work that "amongst these [forms] are a variety of djinns and demons" (Marcotte trans.). There is the qualifier that these unpleasant denizens of the subtle world are produced by the suspended forms and by souls. The meaning is not entirely clear, but a consequence is that these adverse spirits and demons can be "felt as corporeal entities with which one may struggle" (ibid.). If that is correct, then access to the subtle world may not be nearly so desirable as some enthusiasts imagine.

There is another problem that is generally ignored. Suhrawardi grants a high degree of importance to genuine visions achieved both during sleep and during the waking state. In these experiences, the suspended forms are said to be "self-subsisting images," and "acquire a certain type of independent existence" (ibid.). He also includes a theme of souls in the intermediary group and amongst ascetics who "perceive by means of their faculty of active imagination wondrous and pleasant images and forms with which they experience pleasure" (Intimations, Marcotte trans., in Suhrawardi's Realm). This is not "the real happiness experienced by those who are able to access the realm of pure intelligence" (art. cit.).

The half-way ascetics and subtle intermediates can therefore be implied as existing in a state of delusion by comparison with other occurrences. They could easily mistake their pleasures and transitory visions for a higher grade of experience. Wondrous visions and pleasurous imaginations are attended by an unfledged grade, and might produce complications. That is a citizen deduction made after many years of observing the contemporary new age of bogus spirituality, where "visions," presumed enlightenments, "transformations," sensations, therapeutic techniques, empowerments, and extravagant claims are commonplace.
 
One thing I'm learning through this thread is: There is nothing truly new under the sun. We might think that C G Jung is the originator of the concept of Active Imagination. But this notion predates Jung by millenia, even if he did wrap it in different words. By Jung's own admition, his life's goal was to remind the West, the civilized and advanced West, that the soul is real and is actively engaged. Each age seems to re-interpret ageless truths thinking it has discovered something new. We seem to move in cycles of forgetting and remembering. What happens to us when we've forgotten that we've forgotten?

Edit: I missed my main point. :) Woops.

If there is nothing new to discover, then what is this notion of progress all about? What do we think we are progressing towards? In my opinion, we might phrase that differently and say that "we are remembering towards something."
 
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Imagination. I was reading a book by Tom Cheetham on Henri Corbin and was pleasantly surprised to come upon this discussion on imagination. The book is The World Turned Inside Out. One begins with a 'great refusal,' meaning one must transcend the modern ideas of space and time. We let go of the 'objective' world and come to understand that the idea of objectivity is just an idea. I appreciate what Michael wrote about the 'mode of being' and how to change it. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote "the Primary Imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and is repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I am..."
 
Imagination. I was reading a book by Tom Cheetham on Henri Corbin and was pleasantly surprised to come upon this discussion on imagination. The book is The World Turned Inside Out. One begins with a 'great refusal,' meaning one must transcend the modern ideas of space and time. We let go of the 'objective' world and come to understand that the idea of objectivity is just an idea. I appreciate what Michael wrote about the 'mode of being' and how to change it. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote "the Primary Imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and is repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I am..."

Interesting that you quote Coleridge, since Corbin felt that the mantle of keeping the imaginal world alive in the West was passed on to the poets, since it had no official place left in religion and science.
 
Interesting that you quote Coleridge, since Corbin felt that the mantle of keeping the imaginal world alive in the West was passed on to the poets, since it had no official place left in religion and science.
I happen to live a on street named after S.T. Coleridge so I am fascinated by him. A very erudite person who on teh Imagination. I am interested and curious about cultural history in many ways. How human ideas change through time. Why does our view of the imagination change? Why did Corbin feel "that the mantle of keeping the imaginal world in the West get passed to the poets?" I don't know. The question led to me a book by Ernest Lee Tuveson who writes about the changes in the ideas about imagination that were happening in the late seventeenth century. Hobbes and John Locke were the thinkers that had much to do the changing epistemology by their writings and in the period poetry and literature went through through a major change. It was divorced from reason and based more of feelings. Some ideas.
 
I happen to live a on street named after S.T. Coleridge so I am fascinated by him. A very erudite person who on teh Imagination. I am interested and curious about cultural history in many ways. How human ideas change through time. Why does our view of the imagination change? Why did Corbin feel "that the mantle of keeping the imaginal world in the West get passed to the poets?" I don't know. The question led to me a book by Ernest Lee Tuveson who writes about the changes in the ideas about imagination that were happening in the late seventeenth century. Hobbes and John Locke were the thinkers that had much to do the changing epistemology by their writings and in the period poetry and literature went through through a major change. It was divorced from reason and based more of feelings. Some ideas.

Hi Charles, we should all get to live on streets named after poets :) (painters, musicians, and artists of all stripes). In part I think - not that I am an expert on this by any means - Corbin felt that we have a strong tendency (need, urge?) to literalize the world and our internalized images and thoughts about the world. Corbin saw the world and our images and thoughts as signs pointing to a higher reality, so literalizing these turns everything into an object that has lost its function as a sign. It can then be said to have become opaque and no longer functions as a conduit (has lost its transparency, luminous quality) to our deeper reality. A tree is simply a tree. We are simply people. The World is simply a world. The same applies to our use of words. Words that have become literalized lose their transparency, they no longer function as signs. Poets use language in a non-literal mode, their words are always pointing to something else, a deeper more profound meaning than what is written on the page or spoken out loud. Poets use words in a mode in which they retain their function as signs.
 
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Hi Charles, we should all get to live on streets named after poets :) (painters, musicians, and artists of all stripes). In part I think - not that I am an expert on this by any means - Corbin felt that we have a strong tendency (need, urge?) to literalize the world and our internalized images and thoughts about the world. Corbin saw the world and our images and thoughts as signs pointing to a higher reality, so literalizing these turns everything into an object that has lost its function as a sign. It can then be said to have become opaque and no longer functions as a conduit (has lost its transparency, luminous quality) to our deeper reality. A tree is simply a tree. We are simply people. The World is simply a world. The same applies to our use of words. Words that have become literalized lose their transparency, they no longer function as signs. Poets use language in a non-literal mode, their words are always pointing to something else, a deeper more profound meaning than what is written on the page or spoken out loud. Poets use words in a mode in which they retain their function as signs.

Religions (and Science) tend to literalize their words (the world). The "truths" propounded by religions tend to be taken as literal truths, they tend towards being opaque objects, and no longer fullfill their function as signs. The god of a religion is the only God, a literalized object that no longer functions as a sign. Corbin calls this the 'paradox of monotheism': by insisting on itself being the only truth it loses its ability to function as a conduit to the truth. An esoteric approach to religion reads scriptural texts as pointers to a deeper truth and always sees the text, the God, as merely a conduit to the truth, not as the perfected image of the final truth.
 
Hi Charles, we should all get to live on streets named after poets :) (painters, musicians, and artists of all stripes). In part I think - not that I am an expert on this by any means - Corbin felt that we have a strong tendency (need, urge?) to literalize the world and our internalized images and thoughts about the world. Corbin saw the world and our images and thoughts as signs pointing to a higher reality, so literalizing these turns everything into an object that has lost its function as a sign. It can then be said to have become opaque and no longer functions as a conduit (has lost its transparency, luminous quality) to our deeper reality. A tree is simply a tree. We are simply people. The World is simply a world. The same applies to our use of words. Words that have become literalized lose their transparency, they no longer function as signs. Poets use language in a non-literal mode, their words are always pointing to something else, a deeper more profound meaning than what is written on the page or spoken out loud. Poets use words in a mode in which they retain their function as signs.

Hello Michael, I Agree. A working principle that I appreciate is "the map is not the territory" The need for literalism and either/or answers, closure come from many streams. Suzanne Langer wrote that our greatest fear is of a "collapse into chaos should our ideation fail us." Fear, anxiety and the fragmentation of living in a modern technological society are several of the reasons.
 
Hello Michael, I Agree. A working principle that I appreciate is "the map is not the territory" The need for literalism and either/or answers, closure come from many streams. Suzanne Langer wrote that our greatest fear is of a "collapse into chaos should our ideation fail us." Fear, anxiety and the fragmentation of living in a modern technological society are several of the reasons.

Thanks for introducing me to a couple of thinkers who are new to me. I found this quote in a NYT article about Langer:

''Mrs. Langer challenged what she said were two basic assumptions held by philosophers about esthetics. These two basic assumptions,'' she wrote, ''go hand in hand: (1) that language is the only means of articulating thought, and (2) that everything which is not speakable thought is feeling.''

She added: ''I believe that in this physical, space-time world of our experience there are things which do not fit the grammatical scheme of expression. But they are not necessarily blind, inconceivable, mystical affairs; they are simply matters which require to be conceived through some symbolistic schema other than discursive language.''
 
Religions (and Science) tend to literalize their words (the world). The "truths" propounded by religions tend to be taken as literal truths, they tend towards being opaque objects, and no longer fullfill their function as signs. The god of a religion is the only God, a literalized object that no longer functions as a sign. Corbin calls this the 'paradox of monotheism': by insisting on itself being the only truth it loses its ability to function as a conduit to the truth. An esoteric approach to religion reads scriptural texts as pointers to a deeper truth and always sees the text, the God, as merely a conduit to the truth, not as the perfected image of the final truth.
I agree. I am glad that you mentioned the esoteric approach. One could compare what is called esoteric and what is called exoteric religions. In some ways, what is called exoteric religion is what people customarily mean by religion. That is the challenge today for people. There is a continuum of ways to think all these ideas. As Aldous Huxley said "knowledge is a function of Being." There are subtleties in the differences. Humans can't live without religions obviously. I could suggest that the origin of a religion is the need for a story, a narrative, that takes us from chaos (the unknown) to order (the known) As you say, an esoteric approach can lead to a deeper truth.
 
Thanks for introducing me to a couple of thinkers who are new to me. I found this quote in a NYT article about Langer:

''Mrs. Langer challenged what she said were two basic assumptions held by philosophers about esthetics. These two basic assumptions,'' she wrote, ''go hand in hand: (1) that language is the only means of articulating thought, and (2) that everything which is not speakable thought is feeling.''

She added: ''I believe that in this physical, space-time world of our experience there are things which do not fit the grammatical scheme of expression. But they are not necessarily blind, inconceivable, mystical affairs; they are simply matters which require to be conceived through some symbolistic schema other than discursive language.''
 
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