Our highest imaginative sense is creative imagination. Creative imagination is simply the "planned activity of the image-making faculty." Beyond guided fantasizing, creative imagination allows us to "bring meaning to" the mosaic of our experiences. "It is, preeminently, the creative activity from which the answers to all unanswerable questions come." This power "brings the soul power in full tide" and "by its means, subtle divine attributes and purposes can be presented in some form to the minds of men."Imaginative Energies
Our densest imaginative energies are images. The easiest way to think of images is as pictures. Images are distinct in themselves and independent or chaotic in terms of relating to other images. Just as the process of creating a picture requires energy, so does the creation of an image require energy. This is the energy comprising the lowest level of the Imaginative Plane. The key to understanding images is that they contain a holistic connection to the constellation of energies in our objective bodies and lower nature. Another way to put it is that images are the holistic reflections of our experiences.Our next level imaginative energies are the fantasies we create. As images are to pictures, our fantasies are to films. What makes a film from a few thousand images? It is the intent, meaning or purpose behind the film. Just as we can unify a number of personal energies around the image, we can certainly constellate an incredible amount of energy in a fantasy. As fantasizing adds a sense of direction and continuity to imaging alone, our fantasies add direction and continuity to images.The middle energies of the Imaginative Plane are metaphysically termed kama-manas. Kama-manas imaginative energy is the integrating imagery our emotional and mental experiences. This imagery unifies the emotional and mental nature for more primitive Man until she/he becomes an integrated, balanced Personality. Kama-manas, or the energy of desire-mind, links the soul from the Subjective to our objective mental and emotional natures and assists us in perfecting our Personality as a projection of the soul. We have the choice whether to dam up this energy by fusing our desires and lower mental energies for personal focus or to utilize this energy to transform our emotional and mental natures.Take a Journey through our
Spirit/Matter Universe
Our Means of Unifying
Personality & Soul
by Jef Bartow
For quite some time, metaphysics has taught that humanity has created what is called a desire-mind. It has been thought of as mental thoughts fused with emotions. Positively, it is our "picture making facility" and a "principle most vital for man." Moving our center of consciousness to this level allows us to attain "freedom from the dual life." This enables us to freely contact at will both higher levels of the Emotional Plane and levels of the Mental Plane. In H.W. Percival's metaphysical system, our desire-mind or imagination is our "rightness mind."I think most of us would agree that our imagination can be very vivid, but not necessarily as objective or powerful as our emotions and thoughts. Imagining is a more internal (individualistic) mechanism within us. Within our piano key organization of Planes, our imagination fits perfectly as the inner Plane overlapping our Mental and Emotional Planes. It is the next higher inner Plane above our instinctual nature. Within the double-helix structure of Objectivity and Subjectivity, it lies between the subjective Dream Realm and the Heaven Realm of our soul. This makes our imagination pivotal to both our objective personality and subjective soul.The Figure below provides an outline of our imaginative world and how it connects to other parts of our universe. Other terms used to describe the Imaginative Plane include psychic world, low-subtle realm, upper yetzirah, life world and un-perspectival world. In our Energy Structure, our desire-mind nature is on the inner ida kundalini channel or creative thread linking our desire nature with higher inner spiritual nodes. As more central to the core of our existence, it also provides a powerful link to our subjective soul.Our articles are available for reproduction for all members. Please give credit to the author.
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Imaginative Senses
Our imaginative senses, like our physical senses, interact with the various energies of the Imaginative Plane and provide input through perception to our imagination. These senses include clairaudience, psychometry, clairvoyance, fantasy and creative imagination. The first three are considered our "psychic faculties." These "psychical senses" include psychic hearing, vision and touch. Simply, they provide our ability to hear, see and touch throughout the Planes of our Personality. The term used consistently regarding these faculties through various fields of study is "inner," just as our Imaginative Plane is an inner Plane.Our fourth imaginative sense is fantasizing. Other than idle daydreaming, there have been many positive uses outlined for fantasizing. Kabbalistically, we can use our imagination "to attain higher realms." They can be made to "minister to higher faculties of the soul." Psychologically, "active imagination" can facilitate better communication between our conscious and unconscious. It "demands not just perception and passivity, but active participation." Using our active imagination or fantasizing can reveal "the negative movement of the unconscious" which allows us to "gain added influence over the unconscious."Another important function of our imagination is its ability to unify the various parts of our Personality. The philosopher Samuel Coleridge considered primary imagination as the "synthetically perceiving and categorizing of things that are not me." His secondary imagination provides the "power of unifying chaotic experience into the significant form of art." To C.G. Jung, our imagination provides a "centering process" which uncovers and transforms the conflicts and twisted energies within our Personality. Through our active imagination, we can use internal imagery of the imagination to uncover and resolve emotional and mental conflicts that become reflected in our imagination.
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The highest energies in the Imaginative Plane include values and virtues. Here we have the energies that connect and reflect core aspects of the soul. Webster's Dictionary defines values as "what we think is good, qualities having intrinsic worth" and "standards held" by individuals and groups. Values are "what we esteem, admire" and "give significance to." Interestingly, many Christians and those in Western society define the soul the same way as Webster's defines values.As desire-mind energies help integrate parts of our Personality and help reflect a part of the soul into it, values help integrate or unify our higher outer Ego with another part of our inner soul. Values are the reflection of the soul that brings greater purpose and meaning to our life. This is why it's so important that we transform the collective values we inherit growing up into our own individually defined values for life. In fact, I think most would agree that what values we live by our more important than what we accomplish in lifeMoving to our highest and most spiritualized imaginative energy, we meet virtues. Webster's defines virtue as power, having potency, goodness, merit, and efficacy. Potency is the "capacity for development." Efficacy is the "power to produce effects and intended results." In Eastern mysticism, efficacy is the strength and permanent union with the supreme principle. Within Western mysticism, Plotinus defined virtue as "purging the soul of influence of the sensual pleasures and imagery." Virtues represent various energies of spiritual Beingness projected into lower materiality. They provide the capacity and strength for transmuting (i.e. transforming) the Ego and Personality into the spiritual Man. The four Cardinal virtues include prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. It should be fairly easy to understand how each of these will bring about some form of transformation within our Ego and Personality.
It is almost a cardinal sin that most in humanity put so little value on our imaginative nature. Experts within various fields of study all agree on the power and efficacy that the positive use of our imaginative senses will produce. It is safe to say that without the use of our inner imagination, connection to our soul and advanced spiritual growth become fleeting to neigh on improbable.
