You know, I’m realizing that in my great haste to put this out I not only failed to honor our great Buddha (I think I always assume people have read my review of Roland on Al Kimel’s blog before they’ve come here but obviously they maybe haven’t so I shouldn’t) but also our own very conversation about this! I will fix it to reflect.
Reading this felt like someone dipped a quill into the Akashic Records, stirred it into Turkish coffee, and served it with a side of William Blake’s hallucinations. You’re not just writing about the Imaginal Realm. You’re opening the trapdoor behind the world and saying, "Jump in, kids, the angels are weird and the metaphysics are spicy."
Corbin handed us the map. You’re the one handing out lanterns and pointing out the elf queens hiding in the syntax. What a glorious rebuke to the rationalists, who still think the mind is just a filing cabinet instead of a cathedral filled with shapeshifting iconography.
This isn't abstract philosophy. It's an invitation to taste the divine in friendships, in music, in dreams, and in that strange ache we get when reality almost breaks open. Thank you for reminding us that imagination is not fantasy. It is a faculty of communion.
May more of us learn to see with both eyes of the heart, and maybe with the third eye winking just a little for good measure.
I am reminded also of Stephen R. L. Clark's hypnotically rambling "How the Worlds Became," which I suppose could be read as an extended meditation on the imaginal realm as mediator between matter and intellect, science and philosophy.
I suspect there is, among a great many other things, a moral logic to be found in relation to this imaginal realm. You give a brief litany of human experiences that raise us from the realm of material constraint to that of imaginal plenitude. None of these experiences can be converted to neatly quantified "goods" to be appraised and exchanged in the zero sum game of the material realm. How might this lead us to a wise response to utilitarian moral philosophies --- like the school of thought known as "effective altruism" --- which turn morality into a sort of optimization problem? To be clear, I think these schools of thought can serve as a healthy shock to bourgeois decadence, but it seems to me that they ultimately nullify the good in an effort to optimize it, and I wonder if an appeal to the imaginal can illuminate this matter.
Have you read any of Daniel Helminiak's work building on Lonergan's philosophy? His take on perceptual vs. intellectual forms of knowing had quite the impact on me. Your post adds a whole new dimension!
I've been thinking about this one, and it has really helped clarify and crystallize some more inchoate notions that I've long had about the imaginal realm. Thank you for that.
I still think you are failing to give due credit to Roland for pointing us all in this direction.
You know, I’m realizing that in my great haste to put this out I not only failed to honor our great Buddha (I think I always assume people have read my review of Roland on Al Kimel’s blog before they’ve come here but obviously they maybe haven’t so I shouldn’t) but also our own very conversation about this! I will fix it to reflect.
So long as that furry Mahatma is given his proper honor, I am at peace.
Factumst!
Reading this felt like someone dipped a quill into the Akashic Records, stirred it into Turkish coffee, and served it with a side of William Blake’s hallucinations. You’re not just writing about the Imaginal Realm. You’re opening the trapdoor behind the world and saying, "Jump in, kids, the angels are weird and the metaphysics are spicy."
Corbin handed us the map. You’re the one handing out lanterns and pointing out the elf queens hiding in the syntax. What a glorious rebuke to the rationalists, who still think the mind is just a filing cabinet instead of a cathedral filled with shapeshifting iconography.
This isn't abstract philosophy. It's an invitation to taste the divine in friendships, in music, in dreams, and in that strange ache we get when reality almost breaks open. Thank you for reminding us that imagination is not fantasy. It is a faculty of communion.
May more of us learn to see with both eyes of the heart, and maybe with the third eye winking just a little for good measure.
I am reminded also of Stephen R. L. Clark's hypnotically rambling "How the Worlds Became," which I suppose could be read as an extended meditation on the imaginal realm as mediator between matter and intellect, science and philosophy.
I suspect there is, among a great many other things, a moral logic to be found in relation to this imaginal realm. You give a brief litany of human experiences that raise us from the realm of material constraint to that of imaginal plenitude. None of these experiences can be converted to neatly quantified "goods" to be appraised and exchanged in the zero sum game of the material realm. How might this lead us to a wise response to utilitarian moral philosophies --- like the school of thought known as "effective altruism" --- which turn morality into a sort of optimization problem? To be clear, I think these schools of thought can serve as a healthy shock to bourgeois decadence, but it seems to me that they ultimately nullify the good in an effort to optimize it, and I wonder if an appeal to the imaginal can illuminate this matter.
Very cool!
Have you read any of Daniel Helminiak's work building on Lonergan's philosophy? His take on perceptual vs. intellectual forms of knowing had quite the impact on me. Your post adds a whole new dimension!
I've been thinking about this one, and it has really helped clarify and crystallize some more inchoate notions that I've long had about the imaginal realm. Thank you for that.