Active imaginationFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Active imagination is a cognitive methodology that uses the imagination as an organ of understanding.Disciplines of active imagination are found within various philosophical, religious and spiritualtraditions. It is perhaps best known in the West today through C. G. Jung's emphasis on the therapeuticvalue of this activity.

Contents

1 Islamic tradition1.1 Henry Corbin

2 European tradition2.1 Carl Gustav Jung2.2 Rudolf Steiner

3 Role in scientific and mathematical discovery4 See also5 Further reading6 References

Islamic tradition

The imaginal realm is known in Islamic philosophy as alam al­mithal, the imaginal world. According toAvicenna, the imagination mediated between, and thus unified, human reason and divine being. Thismediating quality manifested in two directions: on the one hand, reason, rising above itself, could attainto the level of active imagination, an activity shared with the lower hierarchies of the divine realm. Onthe other hand, in order to manifest the concrete forms of the world, divinity created a range ofintermediate beings, the angelic co­creators of the universe.[1]:11 According to philosophers of thistradition, the trained imagination can access a "nonspatial fabric" which mediates between theempirical/sensory and the cognititional/spiritual realms.[2]

Through Averroes, mainstream Islamic philosophy lost its relationship to the active imagination. TheSufi movement in Persia, as exemplified by Ibn Arabi, continued to explore contemplative approaches tothe imaginal realm.[1]

Henry Corbin

Henry Corbin considered imaginal cognition to be a "purely spiritual faculty independent of the physicalorganism and thus surviving it".[3] Islamic philosophy in general, and Avicenna and Corbin in particular,distinguish sharply between the true imaginations that stem from the imaginal realm, and personalfantasies, which have an unreal character, and are "imaginary" in the common sense of this word. Corbintermed the imagination which transcended fantasy imaginatio vera.

Corbin suggested that by developing our imaginal perception, we can go beyond mere symbolicrepresentations of archetypes to the point where "new senses perceive directly the order of[supersensible] reality".[4]:81 To accomplish this passage from symbol to reality requires a

"transmutation of the being and of the spirit"[5] Corbin describes the imaginal realm as "a precise orderof reality, corresponding to a precise mode of perception," the "cognitive Imagination" (p. 1).[6] Heconsidered the imaginal realm to be identical with the realm of angels described in many religions,which manifests not only through imaginations but also in people’s vocation and destiny.[4]:96

Corbin (1964) suggests that it is by developing this faculty of cognitive imagination that we canovercome the "divorce between thinking and being" [6]:4

More recently, the imaginal concept was further developed in Communication Sciences domain. SamuelMateus(2013) suggested a close link between imaginary, society and publicity. The “public imaginal”was named after the dynamic, symbolic and complex set of diverse and heterogeneous imaginaries thatpermeate societies.[7]

European tradition

The theosophy of post­Renaissance Europe embraced imaginal cognition. From Jakob Böhme toSwedenborg, active imagination played a large role in theosophical works. In this tradition, the activeimagination serves as an "organ of the soul, thanks to which humanity can establish a cognitive andvisionary relationship with an intermediate world"[8]

Coleridge distinguished imagination, expresses realities of an imaginal realm transcending any personalexistence, and "fancy", or fantasy, which expresses the creativity of the artistic soul. For him,"imagination is the condition for cognitive participation in a sacramental universe".[9]

C.S. Lewis considered that "reason is the organ of truth, but imagination is the organ of meaning."[10]

Carl Gustav Jung

As developed by Carl Jung between 1913 and 1916, active imagination is a meditation techniquewherein the contents of one's unconscious are translated into images, narrative or personified as separateentities. It can serve as a bridge between the conscious 'ego' and the unconscious and includes workingwith dreams and the creative self via imagination or fantasy. Jung linked active imagination with theprocesses of alchemy in that both strive for oneness and inter­relatedness from a set of fragmented anddissociated parts. This process ultimately resulted in the Red Book.

Key to the process of active imagination is the goal of exerting as little influence as possible on mentalimages as they unfold. For example, if a person were recording a spoken visualization of a scene orobject from a dream, Jung's approach would ask the practitioner to observe the scene, watch for changes,and report them, rather than to consciously fill the scene with one's desired changes. One would thenrespond genuinely to these changes, and report any further changes in the scene. This approach is meantto ensure that the unconscious contents express themselves without overbearing influence from theconscious mind. At the same time, however, Jung was insistent that some form of participation in activeimagination was essential: 'You yourself must enter into the process with your personal reactions...as ifthe drama being enacted before your eyes were real'.[11]

Of the origination of active imagination, Jung wrote:

"It was during Advent of the year 1913 – December 12, to be exact – that I resolved uponthe decisive step. I was sitting at my desk once more, thinking over my fears. Then I letmyself drop. Suddenly it was as though the ground literally gave way beneath my feet, and Iplunged into the dark depths." [12]

Further explaining its origination, Jung describes his conclusion that active imagination spawns from thedesires and fantasies of the unconscious mind, which ultimately want to become conscious. But oncethey are realized by the individual, dreams may become "weaker and less frequent" whereas they mayhave been quite vivid and recurring beforehand.[13]

Carl Jung developed this technique as one of several that would define his distinctive contribution to thepractice of psychotherapy. Active imagination is a method for visualizing unconscious issues by lettingthem act themselves out. Active imagination can be done by visualization (which is how Jung himselfdid it), which can be considered similar in technique at least to shamanic journeying. Active imaginationcan also be done by automatic writing, or by artistic activities such as dance, music, painting, sculpting,ceramics, crafts, etc. Jung considered indeed that 'The patient can make himself creatively independentthrough this method...by painting himself he gives shape to himself'.[14] Doing active imaginationpermits the thoughtforms of the unconscious, or inner 'self', and of the totality of the psyche, to act outwhatever messages they are trying to communicate to the conscious mind.

For Jung however, this technique had the potential not only to allow communication between theconscious and unconscious aspects of the personal psyche with its various components and inter­dynamics, but also between the personal and 'collective' unconscious; and therefore was to be embarkedupon with due care and attentiveness. Indeed, he warned with respect to '"active imagination"...Themethod is not entirely without danger, because it may carry the patient too far away from reality'.[15] Thepost­Jungian Michael Fordham was to go further, suggesting that 'active imagination, as a transitionalphenomenon ...can be, and often is, both in adults and children put to nefarious purposes and promotespsychopathology. This probably takes place when the mother's impingements have distorted the 'cultural'elements in maturation and therefore it becomes necessary to analyse childhood and infancy if thedistortion is to be shown up.'[16]

In partial answer to this critique, James Hillman and Sonu Shamdasani discuss at length the dangers ofviewing active imagination solely as an expression of personal content, and propose that the technique ismost easily misunderstood and misdirected when applied to the strictly biographical, and never used tobridge the personal with the wider human heritage of the living and the dead. Instead, they suggest,active imagination in Jung's usage was an exposition of the unvoiced influences of the collectiveunconscious, shedding the terminology of psychology to work directly through mythic images:

SS: ... In reflecting on himself, he does not come across at rock bottom his own personalbiography, but it's an attempt to uncover the quintessentially human. These dialogues arenot dialogues with his past, as you're indicating [...] But with the weight of human history.[...] And this task of discrimination is what he spent the rest of his life engaged in. Yes, insome sense what happened to him was wholly particular but, in the other sense, it wasuniversally human and that generates his project of the comparative study of theindividuation process. [17]

Active imagination removes or highlights traits and characteristics that are often also present in dream,and without a broader perspective, the person working with active imagination may start to see them astheir own traits.[18] Thus in this continuing effort to stress the importance of what Maslow would cometo call the transpersonal, much of Jung's later work was conceived as a comparative historical study ofthe active imagination and the individuation process in various cultures and epochs, conceived as anormative pattern of human development and the basis of a general scientific psychology.

Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner suggested cultivating imaginative consciousness through meditative contemplations oftexts, objects, or images. The resulting imaginal cognition he believed to be an initial step on a pathleading from rational consciousness toward ever­deeper spiritual experience.[19]:302–311

The steps following Imagination he termed Inspiration and Intuition. In Inspiration, a meditant clearsaway all personal content, including even the consciously chosen content of a symbolic form, whilemaintaining the activity of imagination itself, and thus becomes able to perceive the imaginal realm fromwhich this activity itself stems. In the next step, Intuition, the meditant leverages the connection to theimaginal or angelic realm established via the cognitive imagination, while releasing the images mediatedvia this connection. By ceasing the activity of imaginative consciousness while allowing one’sawareness to remain in contact with the archetypal realm, the possibility opens up for an awarenessdeeper than the imaginal to be conveyed to the open soul by the mediating agents of this realm.[20]

Role in scientific and mathematical discovery

Hadamard (1954)[21] and Châtelet (1991)[22] suggest that imagination and conceptual experiment playcentral roles in mathematical creativity. Important scientific discoveries have been made throughimaginative cognition, such as Kekulé’s famous discovery of the carbon ring structure of benzenethrough a dream of a snake eating its tail. Other examples include Archimedes, in his bathtub, imaginingthat his body is nothing but a gourd of water, and Einstein imagining himself to be a photon on a horizonof velocities.

See also

AnthroposophyDream interpretationThoughtformsAutosuggestion

Further reading

Hannah, Barbara. Encounters with the Soul: Active Imagination as Developed by C.G. Jung. SantaMonica: Sigo, 1981.Johnson, Robert A. Inner Work (1986) Harper & RowJung, Carl. Jung on Active Imagination (1997) Princeton U. ISBN 0­691­01576­7MIranda, Punita (2013)(http://www.academia.edu/10761999/C.G._Jungs_Active_Imagination_Alternative_Personalities_and_Altered_States_of_Consciousness) 'C.G. Jung's Active Imagination: Alternative Personalitiesand Altered States of Consciousness’, Jaarboek C.G. Jung Vereniging Nederland. Nr. 29 (2013),36­58.

References1. Corbin, H. (1981). Creative imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi. Princeton Univ Pr.2. Inayat Khan, Z. (1994). Preface, The man of light in Iranian Sufism. Omega Publications., p. iii.3. Corbin, H. (1989). Towards a chart of the imaginal. In Spiritual body and celestial Earth: From Mazdean Iran

to Shi'ite Iran (5th ed.). Princeton: Princeton University Press.4. Corbin, H. (1994). The man of light in Iranian Sufism. Omega Publications.5. Najm Kobra, quoted in Corbin (1994), p. 80.6. Corbin, H. (1964). "Mundus Imaginalis or, the imaginary and the imaginal"

(http://hermetic.com/bey/mundus_imaginalis.htm), Cahiers internationaux de symbolisme Vol. 6, pp. 3­267. Mateus, Samuel (2013), “The Public Imaginal ­ prolegomena to a communicational approach of imaginary”,

Comunicação, Mídia e Consumo, Vol.10, nº29, pp.31­50;https://www.academia.edu/5864487/The_Public_Imaginal_­_prolegomena_to_a_communicational_approach_to_Imaginary

8. Fairvre, quoted in Hanegraaff, W. J. (1998). New Age religion and Western culture: Esotericism in the mirrorof secular thought. State University of New York Press.,pp. 398­9

9. Gregory, A. P. R. (2003). Coleridge and the conservative imagination. Mercer University Press. p. 5910. Lewis, C. S. (1979). Selected literary essays. p. 26511. Jung, quoted in Anthony Stevens, Jung (Oxford 1994) p. 10912. Jung, Carl. Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961) Random House ISBN 0­87773­554­913. DAVIDSON, D. (1966), Transference as a Form of Active Imagination

(http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1465­5922.1966.00135.x/abstract?globalMessage=0). Journal ofAnalytical Psychology, 11: 135–146. doi:10.1111/j.1465­5922.1966.00135.x(https://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1465­5922.1966.00135.x)

14. Jung, quoted in Stevens, Jung p. 10915. C. G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (London 1996) p. 4916. Michael Fordham, Jungian psychotherapy (Avon 1978) p. 14917. Hillman, James and Shamdasani, Sonu. Lament of the Dead: Psychology after Jung's Red Book. (2013) W.

W. Norton & Company ISBN 978­0­393­08894­6 (p.18)18. "Active Imagination". The Washington Society for Jungian Psychology. Retrieved 10/02/2011. Check date

values in: |access‐date= (help)19. Steiner, R. (1972). An outline of occult science. Anthroposophic Press.20. Steiner, R. (2001). The human form and cosmic activity. In Guardian angels: connecting with our spiritual

guides and helpers (pp. 25­42). Rudolf Steiner Press. pp. 29­3021. Jacques Hadamard (1954), The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field22. Gilles Châtelet (1991), Figuring Space: Philosophy, Mathematics and Physics

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