Jan 24, 2020 02:04 AM
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cro...agination/
EXCERPT (John Horgan): . . . Lacking imagination, we’d lack art, science, mathematics, technology and social progress, which comes about only after we imagine a better world. [...] I’ve been brooding over imagination since telling Lindsey Swindall, a friend and colleague at Stevens Institute of Technology, about how the Esalen meeting tested my open-mindedness. One talk focused on mediums ... Some mediums spout information that they could not have learned through conventional means. Allegedly. I don’t buy channeling, I told Lindsey.
To my surprise, Lindsey, an authority on African-American history, said she sometimes feels like she’s channeling when she writes. ... words just poured out of her, and the writing seemed better than what she ordinarily produced. She felt as though she had tapped into a deeper part of herself ... Her editor validated her judgment..
[...] My only experience of this sort ... occurred not while writing but while tripping. In 1981, a potent hallucinogen catapulted me into a trance that lasted almost 24 hours, during which I was disconnected from the so-called objective world. I was immersed in elaborate narratives laden with metaphysical and theological significance. ... The visions (which I describe in detail here) seemed produced by a director gifted with infinite talent and resources. They seemed far too artful, and grand, to have been invented by my puny little brain. They were utterly unlike my dreams, which ... tend to be dumb and clunky...
[...] Experiences like Lindsey’s and mine suggest that the imagination might occasionally draw upon sources beyond the ordinary self. Could that be true? Here are a few responses to that question, in order of descending plausibility:
Nothing but Sense Impressions. [...] According to this view, Lindsey’s book, and my trip, were just artful rearrangements of our prior knowledge...
The Collective Unconscious. [...] If you find the collective unconsciousness hard to believe, try thinking of it as the instinctual knowledge encoded in our genes...
Platonism. Plato posited the existence of an eternal realm of perfect forms, of which our material world is just a shadowy simulacrum. Many mathematicians and physicists tend toward Platonism...
Divine Inspiration. The Greeks invented deities, the Muses, to account for creative inspiration...
[...] James’s classic work Varieties of Religious Experience can be seen as an exploration of the Transpersonal Imagination. The book investigates experiences in which people feel they are encountering God or some other entity or force that transcends their individual selves. James was even open-minded about the possibility that some mediums might channel the dead. I still can’t go there, but I agree whole-heartedly with James that our imaginations are deep, diverse and mysterious and “must be studied in detail.” (MORE - details)
EXCERPT (John Horgan): . . . Lacking imagination, we’d lack art, science, mathematics, technology and social progress, which comes about only after we imagine a better world. [...] I’ve been brooding over imagination since telling Lindsey Swindall, a friend and colleague at Stevens Institute of Technology, about how the Esalen meeting tested my open-mindedness. One talk focused on mediums ... Some mediums spout information that they could not have learned through conventional means. Allegedly. I don’t buy channeling, I told Lindsey.
To my surprise, Lindsey, an authority on African-American history, said she sometimes feels like she’s channeling when she writes. ... words just poured out of her, and the writing seemed better than what she ordinarily produced. She felt as though she had tapped into a deeper part of herself ... Her editor validated her judgment..
[...] My only experience of this sort ... occurred not while writing but while tripping. In 1981, a potent hallucinogen catapulted me into a trance that lasted almost 24 hours, during which I was disconnected from the so-called objective world. I was immersed in elaborate narratives laden with metaphysical and theological significance. ... The visions (which I describe in detail here) seemed produced by a director gifted with infinite talent and resources. They seemed far too artful, and grand, to have been invented by my puny little brain. They were utterly unlike my dreams, which ... tend to be dumb and clunky...
[...] Experiences like Lindsey’s and mine suggest that the imagination might occasionally draw upon sources beyond the ordinary self. Could that be true? Here are a few responses to that question, in order of descending plausibility:
Nothing but Sense Impressions. [...] According to this view, Lindsey’s book, and my trip, were just artful rearrangements of our prior knowledge...
The Collective Unconscious. [...] If you find the collective unconsciousness hard to believe, try thinking of it as the instinctual knowledge encoded in our genes...
Platonism. Plato posited the existence of an eternal realm of perfect forms, of which our material world is just a shadowy simulacrum. Many mathematicians and physicists tend toward Platonism...
Divine Inspiration. The Greeks invented deities, the Muses, to account for creative inspiration...
[...] James’s classic work Varieties of Religious Experience can be seen as an exploration of the Transpersonal Imagination. The book investigates experiences in which people feel they are encountering God or some other entity or force that transcends their individual selves. James was even open-minded about the possibility that some mediums might channel the dead. I still can’t go there, but I agree whole-heartedly with James that our imaginations are deep, diverse and mysterious and “must be studied in detail.” (MORE - details)
