|
Others ~ Selected Correspondence Imagination
No 37, If you’d like to make a list of all the things I’m ‘imagining’ or ‘inventing’, I’d be happy to supply supporting evidence that is convincing to me ... whether it is convincing to others is up to them. Can’t be fairer than that... I certainly wouldn’t claim to make an exhaustive list – so I will stick to the current exchange. I began wondering recently just where you were coming from when you made out like Richard would ‘toy’ with people or with No 62 in particular. I have read most conversations on this list and not once have I seen Richard ‘toy’ with anyone. Rather, he has always – always been up front and open. Next, you ‘imagined’ that Richard was somehow leading No 62 on – as if he wasn’t disclosing that he considers their experiences to be worlds apart. As Richard demonstrated – it has been clear from their very first exchanges. It is also written all over the website for anyone to see. It took all of ... what? ... five minutes? ... to say it in plain English. The way Richard dicks around it might have taken another five years; he obviously couldn’t have cared less, else it would have been sorted out long, long ago. What you said in ‘five minutes’ has already been said over and over by Richard on the actual freedom website and on this mailing list for all to see. Why would he think that someone who has ignored what is already plain and obvious would listen to an email detailing what has already been made clear? So – you imagined that Richard ‘dicks around.’ You imagined that he might have taken ‘another five years.’ You imagined he ‘obviously couldn’t have cared less.’ Then, the kicker – you imagined that ‘it would have been sorted out long, long ago’ when in fact, it has already been sorted out long ago. In whose interests is that? Certainly not the interest of a live, here and now, fellow human being ... so what is it? Grandstanding? Writing for the history books? A nice little demonstration of the shortcomings of the tried-and-true, perhaps? Whatever. OK – here you are imagining that what you previously imagined is not in the interest of a live, here and now, fellow human being. Then you imagined the possibility of ‘grandstanding’ and ‘writing for the history books,’ and finally a ‘nice little demonstration of the shortcomings of the tried-and-true.’ Followed by the dismissive ‘whatever.’ If you had stopped to consider that people write what they write for their own reasons and that possibly much of your concerns had already been made quite obvious – you could have avoided continuing your diatribe against actualism. No 37 to No 60, 9.10.2005 * With matters psychological and social, do you really think taking words at face value is necessarily always likely to yield the truest picture? (I agree that it’s a slippery slope if one departs from that, but still ... do you?) No I do not think that taking words at face value is necessarily always likely to yield the truest picture. But, that is definitely the place to start. If everything hangs together – is verified in one’s own experience, etc – then there is no need to deviate from face value. If after taking a person’s words at face value – they begin contradicting themselves or deviating from the facts, then it’s time take into consideration error and insincerity. At the same time, I must also make sure than I am sincerely investigating what they say. No 37 to No 60, 9.10.2005a
There is absolutely nothing that would preclude scientific inquiry once one is actually free. Imagination is used in some current scientific inquiry, but isn’t necessary in all scientific inquiry. Scientific inquiry would likely carry on just fine once actually free – it is only the kinds of inquiry that depend upon the use of the imagination that would not continue in the same way. Beyond that – generally people think that imagination is necessary in all sorts of things where it isn’t required. Just because people tend to assume that it is necessary (because that is what they are accustomed to) – doesn’t mean that it actually is necessary. I also find it interesting how people tend to praise the imagination as a wonderful thing – because it is so linked with creativity. Actually, creativity can go right along just fine without imagination. In the same way that creativity does just fine (only differently) without imagination – science – I’m sure – will do just fine (only differently) without the imaginative faculty. No 37 to No 94(R), 13.9.2005
Okay my attempts at trying to explain what is happening (unedited):
Richard: [UG] he clearly states, on various other occasions, that he has no ability to create images ... You have drawn an important distinction between the ability to create images and having an imagination. I had previously thought that the two were the same thing. My statement that UG says he has no imagination was merely my paraphrase of his statements where he clearly states that he cannot create images. In one of the quotations you provided, UG does seem to talk about having blissful experiences, which would indicate the presence of imagination, yet without the ability to create images. Regarding Bernadette Roberts, I’m pretty sure it’s the same sort of situation because what I was reporting (to my best recollection) is that she stated that she had no ability to create a mental image. She also talked about a kind of ‘development’ of her no-self state as if it kept on going, and that there was still more to come that she had only glimpsed – it would be hard not to chalk that one up to imagination, since a changing state means that one or the other is not final, and would indicate a ‘state.’ The more I read what UG says about experience coming in ‘frames’ – an inability to create images, knowledge coming to an end, etc – it all starts to make sense as solipsism. ‘Forget what you know, everything anyone ever told you, including what you think you remember as the past and future – all that is Real is the moviescreen of MY experience NOW.’ So much for ‘unknowing.’ Douglas Harding seems to have understood pretty well what enlightenment is
all about... * ... to just give one example of an ‘alleged’ misrepresentation of others then yourself: vis:
To me that is clearly stating that Richard is [misrepresenting UG’s use of the word knowledge] Yes, it is a clear statement that Richard is [allegedly] misrepresenting UG’s usage of the word ‘knowledge.’ I don’t see any reason to think that No 58 is correct. Besides, the point that Richard was making [that just as one needn’t infer from UG’s statements that knowledge must come to an end – that UG says he has no knowledge, likewise one needn’t infer from UG’s statements that imagination must come to an end – that UG says has no imagination] was not necessary for making a distinction between the ability to create images and having imagination still intact. It only illustrates that there is at least one other instance where he says something must come to an end [in some sense] whereas it still operates in him [in some possibly other sense]. So, regardless of whether Richard’s point about UG’s words about ‘knowledge’ is valid – it makes no essential difference, as the essential point is that it is possible to have an affective imagination still present without the ability to create images. This can be concluded from the fact that on the one hand UG says clearly that he cannot create images, and on the other that he still experiences [in some sense] fear, aggression, bliss, etc. A ‘normal’ person might have trouble understanding why the presence of fear, aggression, bliss, etc would indicate the presence of imagination, but if one understands actualism’s statement that all feelings only have a felt ‘reality’ – then it is easily understood why the presence of feeling indicates an imaginative faculty still present. So what do you think do you find my claim still hmm unsubstantiated. Based upon this ‘substantiation,’ yes. No 37 to No 23
In real life I think there are several (probably two or three) more levels of indirection, depending on how intelligent / neurotic / empathetic / deranged we are ;-) The only two actualities are S and J, and there is no guarantee that the true nature of S and J are known to anyone, including S and J themselves. We have only images (impressions), and images of images, distributed between two minds. This part here is a bit fuzzy to me. You say that the only two actualities are S and J, and that the ‘true nature’ of S and J may not be known to anyone. That leaves open the question what is a human beings ‘true nature’. There is a great deal more to human interaction than just images and images of images. There is evocation of emotional reactions, sharing of emotional feelings, etc. When one speaks of a human beings ‘true nature’ one could be referring to any number of things. If you believe in a soul, then you are talking about the soul or spirit. It leaves the door open to a metaphysical explanation of ‘being’. If I remember rightly, your posting a few weeks back seemed to be angling toward the idea that we partially create each other. At least, that is the way I interpreted it based on my own reflections. In isolation we do not need a social identity (and yet we still have J’s image of J, and S’s image of S because, even when we are not directly engaged in socialising, we still spend a lot of our time imagining ourselves in social scenarios). Together we generate these identities in the form of images of self and other, images of other’s image of self, images of self’s image of other, and so on. Again, I think you leaning a bit heavily on the image-making faculty of human beings. Perhaps there is a reason for this. I would say that one does not ‘need’ a social identity in any sense of the word, either in isolation or in interaction with other human beings. The only ‘need’ that I see for a social identity is to assuage the deep and abiding sense of loneliness and separation that is at the heart of one’s instinctual identity. A social identity is maintained either in isolation or in interaction with others because it is founded on the root animal instincts. (I know this probably sounds like standard Actualist stock-in trade but I really do think it is so). Understanding each other is tortuously complex; our brains/minds have pretty effective ways for dealing with this complexity, but the potential for error is enormous. So let’s see how clever or deluded (or both!) these mirror neurons really are ... When No 60 sees a message from No 33, No 60 has certain expectations. Those expectations reveal something of No 60’s image of No 33. No 60 expects to read a message from a person whose public persona is polite, reasonable and friendly. He expects to read a message that always has at least some constructive content, i.e. content that is intended to further his own understanding, to help another understand something more clearly, or to seek greater mutual understanding by exploring a topic intelligently. Over time, No 60 forms in his mind an impression that, to him, represents No 33. That impression is of a person who has all the basic qualities of a generic human being, but the idiosyncratic features that make him ‘No 33’ to ‘No 60’ are: a person who wants to understand, and wants to help others understand the issues; a person who is deeply interested in (and at times very excited by) the possibilities he is discovering, and wants to help others to share them, or at least be able to share them, not hampered by misunderstanding; a person who has his fair human share of egoic motivations but is mainly motivated by the urge to get to the bottom of things for mutual benefit after many years of seeking without very much success. Thus, No 60 helps to ‘create’ ‘No 33’ by responding to the ‘No 33’ that No 60 imagines No 33 presents of himself ;-) No 60 imagines that No 33 has fairly similar impressions of No 60 that No 60 has of No 33, with a few differences. No 60 imagines that No 33 images No 60 as somewhat more impatient, aggressive, and a little more unstable than No 33, but No 60 imagines that No 33 also ‘senses’ that No 60 is communicating with the good will and good intent which No 60 knows is real. This makes it possible for No 60 to ‘be himself’ with No 33, ‘knowing’ that mutual good will exists between them, and also knowing that whatever No 60 writes No 33 will be able to understand, whether he agrees or not. No 60 also ‘believes’ that No 33 ‘feels’ the same way. No 60 also believes that No 33 has noticed that No 60 tends to jump to conclusions, and No 60 suspects that No 33 suspects that No 33 is seeing something in actualism that No 60 has not yet understood because his emotional reaction to Richard and the Actualists prevents him from studying deeply, carefully and coolly. No 60 suspects that No 33 also suspects that some of No 60’s criticisms of Actualism may have some validity, and is probably concerned enough to investigate those for himself, but also knows that his (No 33’s) direct experience of life is getting better and better, and therefore he (No 33) is keen to find out for himself and draw his own conclusions. And No 60 respects this. So a ‘psychic web’ is formed based on these images, and images of images, and images of images of images, and ‘No 60’ and ‘No 33’ are created partly by each other. It’s complicated, but the mirror neurons (if they are actually the mechanical basis of all this) makes the complexity manageable. I think it might be more accurate to say that the psychic web is based on far more than mere images. The psychic web, formed through the aeons of physical evolution, is founded on lower brain structures that make us as human beings exquisitely in tune with the emotions and feelings of other human beings. There is also a psychic web between humans and animals. A dog, for instance, has an outstanding ability to pick up on human emotion. This is so, I understand, because they share remarkably similar limbic systems in their brains. In a nutshell, I think/feel/sense/intuit we both understand that we are both people who are capable of understanding complex issues, not just the factual ones but the interpersonal ones too; and we have established a rapport that allows us to investigate these issues with mutual respect, liking, and an interesting mixture of affinity and complementarity. (If complementarity isn’t a word, it should be, and it is now). Would it be stretching the point to say that a trust has developed between you and No 33? Is there a feeling of trust? Gary to No 60
Hello Richard... It occurred to me a while ago to ask you about dreams. It really is a very simple matter: Do you dream at night? From reading your website, Journal, and correspondence with others, it is clear that the imaginative faculty was eliminated when you underwent the radical mutation which resulted in an Actual Freedom from the Human Condition. I find your comments about the lack of the imaginative faculty to be, well ... honestly, fascinating. After the mutation you experienced, did you notice anything about dreaming at night? I saw a program on TV recently in which dream experiments were being conducted on human subjects, with the object of understanding what happens when human beings dream. An expert on the program opined that dreams originate in the lower, more primitive sections of the brain which sends signals or transmissions into the higher, cortical centres which then get remembered as dreams. The expert also opined that dreams have little significance other than just being random transmission from these deeper emotional parts of the brain. This caused me to consider what happens when the primitive animal instincts are extirpated and eliminated: do dreams then stop completely? * As I drop off to sleep at night there is the diminishing awareness of being a flesh and blood body situated in physical surroundings – always delicious – until there is no awareness at all ... whereupon there is the growing awareness of being a flesh and blood body – always delicious – situated in physical surroundings upon awakening a ‘split-second’ later. Upon looking at the bed-side clock I can determine whether I have slept for three or four or five hours ... for there is no other way of knowing: sleep is total oblivion. If there be dreaming occurring during the three, four or five hours I have no awareness of it whatsoever. Hm ... interesting. Your comments are confirmatory of what I suspected: no dreams. This seems to hold true for both the sleeping and waking state. While this post was concerned with your experience of sleep and dreaming, your other correspondence makes it abundantly clear that you do not lucidly dream in the awake state either. I sleep like a log, as an old saying goes ... unconscious, unaware and (probably) dreamless. It would take an unusual noise (a window being broken) or an unusual smell (something burning) or an unusual sensation (a creature crawling) to awaken me. Usually upon waking I find that I am lying in the identical position (flat on my back) that I went to sleep in – complete with reading glasses perched on nose and book/magazine held in hands slumped to the belly – indicating no movement at all. Must be nice to sleep like a log ... I should think it would be a welcome development. It has not always been like this ... I tracked down the dreamer of dreams in the same way as the waking entity is tracked. Interesting expression – tracking down the dreamer of dreams in the same way as the waking entity is tracked. Is this the same thing as ‘chasing a dream’? I gave some thought as to whether I am ‘tracking’ the waking entity, and I think I am. I seem to go over the same emotions over and over again and the same repetitive thoughts until I give up the chase and relax, often to but take up the tracking the next day. I used to have horrific nightmares as a child, as a youth and as a young man (which I recall always considering terribly unfair, back in those days, as living in the ‘real-world’ was traumatic enough and night-time repose should be a relief). For all those years both dreams and nightmares were in full-colour imagery (same-same as ‘seeing in my mind’s eye’) with a fully-committed ‘dreamer’ participating helplessly. After the end of the intuitive/imaginative facility the dreams were ‘word-scenes’ of circumstances or ‘word-descriptions’ of events (no images) with no ‘dreamer’ as a participant ... somewhat akin to arbitrary, or stray thoughts, which sometimes wander around in day-time and are associated with nothing at all. I think your pre-self-immolation description of your dream life fits in more with my own experience, both in past and now. My nights are always extremely ‘busy’. I often awake feeling that I have not had enough rest – I seem to sleep very fitfully, and dream sporadically throughout the night, sometimes having nightmares. I also sometimes experience what is called ‘terminal insomnia’ – in that I awake very early in the morning and can’t get back to sleep. I usually just get up and get busy, but then by the end of the day I feel exhausted by the lack of sleep. Many people would go to their doctor and get some kind of medication to help them sleep, but I do not want to be on any medication at all. This terminal insomnia thing is not as bad as it used to be right now. Recently, about a week ago or so, I had awoken having had extremely vivid dreams that were very fresh in my mind. This, and other things, made me wonder what happens when the primitive instincts are eliminated. Any examination of the content or meaning of dreams always showed them to be nothing but haphazard, unsystematic thoughts – generally taken from events such as depicted on TV programs or in other media combined with daily experience – all mixed-up and firing erratically ... like pulling items from a ‘lucky-dip’ at a fair. There is nothing to be learned or gained from dreams other than what one wishes to read into them ... the disconcerting part of dreaming is the ad-hoc juxtaposition of seemingly real events happening in a seemingly real world. I also observed that a portion of the ‘dream-scape’ would be drawn from past dreams and making it difficult to discern whether they be drawn from real-life or not. There would also be a mix-up of the ‘dream-people’, with characteristics of one ‘dream-person’ all-of-a-sudden being the characteristics of another ‘dream-person’, or an admixture of the two ... leading to further confusion or perplexity. And so on ... and so on. Technicolor. Yes, I now think dreams are just random events representing nothing in particular. The content of dreams often concerns real life events, but is woven together willy-nilly with many other things that don’t make sense. I had been conditioned to think that there is some value in dreams in promoting self-understanding but I no longer waste my time trying to figure them out or make sense of them. I do think, however, that the emotional content of dreams often leaves a person in a particular emotional state either while dreaming or right after dreaming – for instance, I have awoken feeling terrified and the feeling has persisted for awhile, colouring what happens next during the day. I have also had dreams with a lot of sexual content that leave me in a state of sexual arousal when I wake up, unusual for me as I have inhibited sexual desire. So I would say that the emotional content (and the imagery itself) of the dream-process is, as the expert on the program you write of opined, originating in ‘the lower, more primitive sections of the brain which sends signals or transmissions into the higher, cortical centres which then get remembered as dreams’ ... but not dreaming per se (night-time arbitrary or stray thoughts). It would be beneficial to compare notes with another like myself so as to distinguish between what is humanly common and what is bodily specific ... the particular genetic arrangement of this individual body as compared to the general genetic arrangement of every human body. But, until then, what I have to report is all that exists so far... just do not take it as being set in concrete and typical. Dreaming per se you describe as night-time arbitrary or stray thoughts. Do you mean arbitrary or stray thoughts devoid of emotional content or devoid of emotional impact’? I often find myself thinking at night about, for instance, a particularly vexing problem at work. But usually there is an underlying anxiety about the matter in question, so that the arbitrary thoughts about the situation are emotionally charged. It’s a lot like night-time worrying. But it occurs more or less in a sleeping or semi-sleeping state. But I do see that this is different from the Technicolor dreaming with visual imagery. Gary to Richard
Hmm ... interesting. Your comments are confirmatory of what I suspected: no dreams. This seems to hold true for both the sleeping and waking state. While this post was concerned with your experience of sleep and dreaming, your other correspondence makes it abundantly clear that you do not lucidly dream in the awake state either. As a child, a youth and a young man ‘day-dreaming’ was a common occurrence ... it was a way of having time pass, for example, whilst working for wages in any job that required only mindless repetitive movements to achieve the desired result. Then one day I caught myself looking at the clock and thinking ‘damn, only 2.00 PM; three more hours to go’ and it dawned on me, with upsetting intelligibility, that I was wishing large parts of my life away. Many years were to pass spent in finding better jobs, better locations to live in, better lifestyles and so on before I finally faced the fact that, while changing the physical situation is not to be sneezed at, it was how I experienced this moment that was vital ... only this moment is actual. The question I asked was this: could I be in solitary confinement, in some hypothetical penitentiary, and be so delighted with being just here right now that ‘day-dreaming’ never need occur? ‘Tis an interesting question. I remember reading about you saying this somewhere, perhaps in your Journal. I imagine that your answer is an unqualified ‘yes’. Even under conditions of the most extreme deprivation, one experiencing an Actual Freedom would still be blithe and gay? Even after years of confinement? That is indeed remarkable. The tendency to let one’s imagination soar, to allow one’s fantasy free rein, is basically, I think, a way of getting away from this actual moment, an escape, because as long as one is an instinctually-ridden being, one is not happy or harmless, one is suffering and in sorrow. It seems within the Human Condition that much of one’s life is spent in idle daydreaming or planning for future happiness with scant regard to being happy in the present. I think I am much more aware of the tendency to indulge in flights of fantasy or imagination now than I was in the past. I was going to say that sometimes I ‘rein in’ these imaginative forays, but then that comment implies that there is a controller, ‘me’, controlling what is happening, rather than allowing what is happening now to happen. When one faces the fact that how I experience this present moment of being alive is absolutely vital, no control is necessary, is it? Gary to Richard
Jane Goodall then described a seminal event in her life, an experience of what is sometimes called a nature experience. From her description, her experience seemed to be a pure consciousness experience – a sensate-only experience of the purity and perfection of the actual world. Thinking about it afterwards, she felt the experience must have been a mystical experience or a spiritual revelation – simply because there was no other explanation available to her. This experience proved to be a turning point in her life – she changed from sceptic to spiritualist, from scientist to saviour, from feeling lonely to being loved, from feeling hopelessness to having a ‘reason for hope’. She saw human evolution as the eventual triumph of Good over Evil and began to cement her place as a champion of the good in the battle against evil – a Saviour, not only of Mother Earth and ‘her’ creatures, but also of Humankind. I may have seen the program you are referring to in the past, but it must have been a long time ago. I cannot remember much about it. But I do remember that Jane Goodall sounded very spiritual. I think that many people experience PCEs, yet having no clear point of reference to understand these experiences, and given the popularizing of the Altered States of Consciousness experiences, interpret them as or convert them into ASCs. I think that has happened to me in the past. I seem to recall experiences of exceptional clarity and sensuousness occurring in childhood, when everything had a lustre and a scintillating quality. Later in adolescence, I interpreted these experiences in a mystical framework. Now that there is a Third Alternative, people are being helped to realize what a PCE is and what it is not. It was a classic story, common to many. A period of loneliness and depression, an experience of personal loss or grief, a life-changing experience and a life born again as a Saviour – by whatever name, for whatever cause. What was of most interest to me in Goodall’s case was her description of what appeared to be a pure consciousness experience, her after-the-fact interpretation of the experience as a mystical experience and that she then went on to claim the experience as ‘her’ own – as being a personal revelation from God. A human being’s imaginative faculty is carefully nurtured and hurried along in childhood through nursery rhymes, fables, stories of all kinds, and the belief in the supernatural, the mystical, and the otherworldly is the result. It is not surprising, then, that people hurry to interpret a perfection experience in the framework that they are most comfortable with – as a mystical, otherworldly experience, or as a frank communication from God himself. In a way, it almost seems that it is exceedingly difficult for a human being to recognize the immediate and actual as exactly what it is, rather than what it is not. I wonder if it would be possible to raise children with an immediate appreciation and delight in what is actually present, something they have innately anyway, with no imaginative fabrication of what is not there. Regardless of whether it would or would not, the practice of Actualism is, in part, the unwinding and untangling of the skein of belief and fantasy, the dispelling of illusions, and the immediate appreciation of that which is actual, tangible, and present. Gary to Peter
Belief aside, or rather, before I took up any of those beliefs, I have always cherished my imaginative powers. For example I have enjoyed creative writing, music composition, and I’ve felt for a while that as long as I have a channel into which I can use my creative energy, I am fairly happy. At the moment that consists of brainstorming to write a computer game. Just recently it consisted of researching techniques of business and wealth creation. It occurs to me that whether I follow through – by finishing a song, or novel, or game, or actually get rich, is of much less importance to me. But I cannot imagine existence without the imaginative faculties. Can anyone explain the attraction of eliminating those faculties? It is indeed difficult to imagine life without imagination. The reason for this, I think, is that whilst one is an instinctually-driven being nursing malice and sorrow, one needs to have the palliatives of hope, dreams, beliefs, schemes, and a myriad of other escapes and diversions from what is actual. Just a brief look in my Webster’s New World Dictionary yields the following definition of the word imagination:
So, you see, imagination involves image-making, image-creating and image-sustaining. But what is imagined is not what is actual. What is actual is what is actually physically present and experienced through the senses, and nothing else. I had much the same question about imagination when I approached actualism in the beginning as you do now. And it has been helpful to me to read Richard’s correspondence in order to get a better idea of what living in the state of Actual Freedom is like. His writings can be accessed at the Third Alternative Website at the following address:
Then too, there is the Actual Freedom Website on which there is voluminous information on this and many other subjects. If you have not paid it a visit yet, I would suggest you do so, as you may find answers there to many of your questions about actualism. On the website, in the library, there is a glossary of terms in which imagination is described, as well as other key terms. You may access that information at the following URL:
It is not only possible to live without imagination but life is infinitely much clearer and cleaner without it. When imagination goes, along with it go all the Gods, Goddesses, Devils, and The Diabolical, which are all just products of Humanity’s fevered imagination. To understand this, I had to have my own experience of the PCE, the Pure Consciousness Experience, which all people have had at least one of in their lifetimes. In the PCE, the ‘self’ is temporarily in abeyance, and one experiences directly the pristine pureness and perfection of the physical universe as being a delightful and magical place. No imagination is required at all in the PCE. It is necessary to have the memory of these experiences firmly in mind in order to understand the best that is possible. These experiences then become one’s guide, showing one what is possible without a ‘self’ mucking things up. Gary to No 21
I discovered something interesting – I seem to have ‘lost’ my ability to ‘imagine’ – I remember Richard wrote something about this on either the genius or listening mailing list, when someone asked him to imagine his partner having sex with several strapping men and he said he could not do it. I thought it a bit strange at the time but can, perhaps, now understand what he meant. It is a year since I discovered Richard’s web site and I have been carrying out a sort of review of the differences between me of a year ago and me now. The other morning, lying in bed and for no apparent reason, I realised that I am no longer able to feel ‘lust’. I had not noticed its passing and, thinking about it, it must have been several months ago that it disappeared. I went on from this to explore whether it was lust which had gone, or the imaginative facility and discovered that I can no longer obtain an erection by thought alone. There must be a difference between ‘thinking’ and ‘imagination’. I have no difficulty thinking of myself in an erotic situation, with a lovely woman (or several), but I can no longer ‘imagine’ it. I discovered I can apparently no longer imagine anything – I can think about things, plan events etc. but I cannot ‘visualise’ doing things. Rather weird and, on reflection, quite satisfying, as I used to imagine all sorts of dreadful possibilities (as well as delightful ones). And, of course, all the time we are ‘imagining’ possibilities we cannot be living here and now. Thinking about it, imagination is actually a complete waste of time and energy, so I do not regret its passing (even if I could still feel regret!). Anyone else lost the ability to ‘imagine’? Alan
About imagination: I used to be quite good at being able to play a game of chess in my mind by imagining a chess board with chess pieces on it. I would scan it in my mind back and forth to visualize them and to realize the interactions between them. There was no necessity for any feeling to be involved in that process. In your opinion, was that imagination? What you described seems to be a pretty good example of imagination that is not affectively tinged, at least not obviously so. In such an imaginary mental activity, it may be that the underlying impetus to form these pictures in the mind is motivated by wanting to get away from a feeling of boredom or ennui. If that were the case, just as an example, imagination might be an instinctually driven activity. The instinct would be desire (?). The process of mentally representing a chess game or some other pleasing activity might be a way of fulfilling the object of one’s desire in imagination. Another example would be fantasizing about sex, albeit an example with more passionate interest on the part of the imaginer. I think the imaginative faculty is very interesting, and I have wondered, as others, what it would be like to be free from these mental pictures. It seems so ‘natural’ to form these pictures, automatically, and it is so much a part of life, the Human Condition if you will, that one takes it for granted much of the time. But so often imagination is ‘negative’ and the mental images are accompanied by fear, dread, worry, anxiety, etc. One would like to be free of the negative imagery and hold on to the positive. I suppose it doesn’t work that way – because what is imagined is clearly not actual. We are here on this list to discuss Actual Freedom, and that, as I understand it, requires a total expunging of the rudimentary animal instincts and, along with it, the imaginative faculty. The baby is going out with the bathwater, or so it seems. I wonder if every form of imaginal activity is affectively tinged, however slightly. As I write this post, I am beginning to think that every form of mental imaging probably has some associated feelings with it, whether positive or negative. What do you or others think? Gary to No 7
Regarding a recent post about imagination – yes, this is proving to be my experience also and for some time now. It is interesting for me particularly, because I am a digital artist and spend vast amounts of time at it. My images were all full of ‘great’ ‘mystical’ content, and a good amount of time was spent imagining meaning and affective qualities that ‘I’ wanted to convey. Much was visualised and conceptualised along the way (all very passionate I’m sure!). Consequent to my personal journey to actuality in about January this year I found I had no more images in my head that I ‘felt’ that I had to ‘express’. This was indeed curious as for the past year, learning to, producing and experimenting with computer art had been my obsession and my fecund imagination teeming with works in progress. So – what to do – I turned off the computer (other than e-mail) for 6 weeks. I have now returned to computer graphics and find that the process of creating images is very different. Firstly, I start with only the vaguest of, or no idea at all and then just build it step by step, one foot in front of the other, not knowing where it will go or indeed if it will go anywhere. The images thus produced are still often surreal in appearance but devoid of any ‘meaning’. The results ... as always, some are delectable and some are deleteable. I remember Richard saying to me one afternoon that he had been a professional artist at one stage and that he no longer had the capacity for abstract imagination, and I suspect that I squirmed a little at the time. I am experiencing now what he spoke of and find so little sense of a ‘me’ for the loss of imagination to matter to – it’s a bit of a giggle, really. Being as there seems to be a certain reciprocity happening here – i.e. less self = less imagination = more freedom – say no more! So-that’s my experience of imagination loss. Mark to Alan
The other play of consciousness that I am interested in here is that of pure imagination. The situation where I sit and think of a person or people I don’t know in a place that I have not been and a scenario that I have not been in before. Is there a break from instinct in this entirely fantasy world? No way!
Certainly it is not cut and dried and a fantasy can be powered up by more than one instinct at a time. Now, can this pure fantasy world run on just the social identity layer of a human construct? Or to put it another way – can belief be involved and affective within a human psyche, independent of the instincts? (Ha! cute, I just tried to think of a belief to use as a test case in point here and couldn’t find one ... guess I’ll have to use my imagination ... doh!, can’t find that either – this is getting difficult!). Example – if one has a belief that one is a loving person, that belief comes from a value judgement that says that love is ‘good’ and is supported by the social programming, one is rewarded for apparent loving behaviour by society – such a person would also look around and compare their ‘lovingness’ to gauge its degree and amount with other ‘loving’ people. Mark
Hmm ... interesting. I was not aware that you do not write to other lists anymore. It does take time to write and I have always preferred quality to quantity, interest to disinterest, vitality to weariness, down-to-earthness to holier-than-thouness and talking common sense rather than exchanging hackneyed and rehashed platitudes. Which is why I particularly enjoy writing to you given that we are able to talk freely about any-thing at all. I still find it absolutely fascinating to be writing to someone on the other side of the world and be able to compare notes about experiences which are to some extent universal to all humans. The potential of this medium is astounding. As you say, it does take time to write, and it does take time to respond to these posts, and I ordinarily go through cycles of interest and disinterest with it. Generally reading a post and allowing it to infiltrate my consciousness for a while before responding, but working at it over several days in a slow, methodical way. And I must say that I find myself forming mental images of the people with whom I am talking, and these mental images crop up from time to time. It does seem to me, however, that the imaging process has gotten less and less and I am more concerned with the content of the post and responding genuinely and sensibly based on what is being written to me. Also there is the realization that one’s images probably have little or nothing to do with the actual flesh-and-blood person. Why is it that we form these images and why is it that they are important to us? One can see it happening with this Internet medium, but one also sees it happening in more personal, face-to-face interactions: one may make a friend, say, at work, and then one wonders about them, forms images of them, wondering about what they are really like, with their family, with their lover, etc. It clearly is an activity of the imagination. Gary to Peter
There is certainly a vast and varied ‘popular cottage industry’ (a wonderful descriptive expression!) and I always consider Oprah Winfrey the most successful queen of this industry of feelings and imaginations – hot air, to be precise. I always chuckle when she urges her audience to ‘remember your Spirit’ because it is obvious that if your spirit were something actual you wouldn’t have to remember it – you don’t have to remember your feet or your legs when you get up and walk out, for instance. People are desperate and gullible to the max for a bit of feel-good offering and are ready to pay a great deal to someone famous to tell them how wonderful they are. Well, since I was in the guru-disciple trap for a long period in my life I know that the only thing that leads out of this addiction is to thoroughly explore what is on offer and undeniably experience that it does not work. Nothing succeeds like utter failure, failure in the real world and especially in the spiritual world. And it’s important to remember in acknowledging this failure that it is not that I have failed, but that it is both materialism and spiritualism that fails to deliver the goods – neither happiness nor harmlessness, neither peace nor harmony within the human species. While we are on the theme of this ‘industry of feelings and imaginations’, I should say that I have been intensely interested with the observation of children and their fantasy life. I am not conducting some type of scientific study. But I have been interested in observing the fascination that some children have for ghosts, goblins, monsters, and such. This fascination takes complete hold of the child’s imagination and becomes an obsession. I have wondered if this kind of intense fantasy activity might not be an accompaniment of severe trauma, such as child abuse. It also seems, from my informal, naturalistic observations of children, that the fascination with ghosts and hobgoblins and monsters of various sorts seems to occur co-incident with an emerging consciousness of God and the Spirit world. Such imaginings might of course be accelerated if the children are being taught spiritual or religious teachings at home. I find myself wondering if what is happening is that this fertile imagination is one manifestation of the primitive survival program running in the human child, a program which literally impels one to take on board all types of fantastical notions such as life after death basically because ‘I’ desire immortality and cannot countenance even the thought of death. So in the children I have observed, there is this preoccupation sometimes with morbid themes (death, the grave, dead bodies, etc) and simultaneously a thrill with anything that suggests people can be brought back from the grave, that there is life beyond the grave. One child was completely obsessed with the story of the Frankenstein monster, Mary Shelley’s creation, and sought pictures of the monster and Dr. Frankenstein, who brought his creation back to life. I don’t know if Piaget, for instance, or any of the other psychologists that have studied children’s cognitive or intellectual development have noted these things, and perhaps my observations are somewhat spurious because I am dealing with an abused population, but I just thought I would mention it here. I remember when I myself was 7 years of age, and struggling with the painful loss of a beloved Grandfather, how comforting it was to think of him as a ghost inhabiting my closet at night. Although frightening, at least he was still there, hovering in the background, watching out for me. Gary to Vineeto
Whereas this actual world is here under people’s noses all the while ... there are three worlds altogether, but only one is actual... Yes, I feel a sense of urgency in that. What a bummer to miss this world for the sake of an imagination. It would be like go to Hawaii for vacation and spend all the time there watching videos. No 7 to Richard
I.e.. the ability of such a parasite to ‘transmit’ to the brain this sense of ‘I’ to such a degree that what we feelingly experience. As me is actually a signal by the brain received from this parasite. ^note one also might consider imagination as a disturbance that is brought about by this parasite^ Yes, I think what we speak of as imagination is a ‘disturbance’ of sorts. Yet a person’s capacity to form images, and transmit these images to others is seen as a respectable sign of full-fledged adulthood. The imaginative faculty is given free reign in childhood and later on in development is usually channelled into artistic or spiritual pursuits. Nevertheless, it is interesting to look deeply into imagination. For instance, I have often found it very interesting to turn my attention to any flights of fancy, day-dreams, sexual fantasies, evocative memories, and such that I am liable to have at any point in time and see that it is hankering after something that is not actually present. For instance, driving home from work, I may find myself doing some day-dreaming, or fantasizing about having sex with someone. Whilst running the Actualism question, attentiveness is brought to bear on this imaginative activity and it quickly dissipates, to be replaced perhaps by a much sharper appreciation of being here, right now ... the look, the feel of the steering wheel in my hands, the exquisite and delicate beauty of the fading sunshine, the play of light and shadows. Suddenly, I am here, now ... not off in some far away place. I then begin to see that there is a deep sorrow in these dreams. And people will tell you, I think (and opine here), that life is ‘not worth living without your dreams’. On this point, I would beg to differ. Gary to No 23 Web page designed by The Actual Freedom Trust |
