Opening Remarks
While the little mind was tying down knowledge to fixed facts and rigid laws governed by measure and device, a power swept down from above. This power that we term as imagination is actually a portion of the formative power of Maya. It is given to man to escape from the trap of the senses and the mind tied to their imperfect and incomplete data.
A rebel light
Then from the secret heights a wave swept down,
A brilliant chaos of rebel light arose;
It looked above and saw the dazzling peaks,
It looked within and woke the sleeping god.
Imagination came down to assist the discovery of Truth. It woke within us the sense of a god and above the dazzling peaks concealed to our early sight formed under the pressure of the little mind. It was a rebel light that tried to escape against fixed laws and explored new and unknown possibilities.
Shining squads
Imagination called her shining squads
That venture into undiscovered scenes
Where all the marvels lurk none yet has known:
Lifting her beautiful and miraculous head,
She conspired with inspiration’s sister brood
To fill thought’s skies with glimmering nebulae.
Imagination came and opened the doors of man’s mind to inspiration and other higher possibilities. It led men into unknown realms and undiscovered domains of consciousness where marvel and wonder was the way to live and be. Thus the sky of man’s mind was filled with the glimmer and glow of the ethereal and the sublime.
Myth suckled knowledge
A bright Error fringed the mystery-altar’s frieze;
Darkness grew nurse to wisdom’s occult sun,
Myth suckled knowledge with her lustrous milk;
The infant passed from dim to radiant breasts.
Though imagination is not the truth-vision yet it can open the doors of mind shut within fixed boundaries of the senses towards it. They open new possibilities of understanding and seeing and thereby help the mind grow towards a greater Truth than the little mind can surmise. It is the birthplace of myths that often carry within their heart a much deeper truth than the drab earthly realities and our all too materially cramped up vision of things.
Nourishing the immature divinity
Thus worked the Power upon the growing world;
Its subtle craft withheld the full-orbed blaze,
Cherished the soul’s childhood and on fictions fed
Far richer in their sweet and nectarous sap
Nourishing its immature divinity
Than the staple or dry straw of Reason’s tilth,
Its heaped fodder of innumerable facts,
Plebeian fare on which today we thrive.
Nourished by imagination the mind begins to grow towards Wisdom that is lost in a heap of ‘facts and figures and information’ provided by the misleading senses. Imagination drew a figure of reality that the senses could not perceive. Though not the full truth yet it was sufficient to nourish the soul’s seeking and aspiration. Fed on this richer and sweet and nectarous milk the child soul grew towards Wisdom with far greater ease than by the food of ‘dry facts’ provided by Reason.
Realm of early light
Thus streamed down from the realm of early Light
Ethereal thinkings into Matter’s world;
Its gold-horned herds trooped into earth’s cave-heart.
Nourished by this early light the Mind began to receive ethereal thoughts and develop the sense of the sacred and the sublime. This light entered the heart cave to feed the infant soul.
Morning rays
Its morning rays illume our twilight’s eyes,
Its young formations move the mind of earth
To labour and to dream and new-create,
To feel beauty’s touch and know the world and self:
The Golden Child began to think and see.
Our eyes still unable to shake off the darkness of the animal consciousness began to dream and wake up to deeper realities hidden to animal and the material mind. It began to feel the touch of beauty and the self within. The doors of a subjective inner space opened for man and with this the soul in man began to turn within and look at life afresh.
Closing Remarks
The power of imagination is a saving grace given to man. But we generally do not train or know how to use it. On the contrary reason often dismisses it as fantasy. But in reality this fantasy opens the doors to a greater Truth if we take the lead and explore what lies beyond the limits of our senses and the thinking mind.
