Imagination is a conscious or half-conscious mental process. Here, the mind deliberately projects ideas and images based on its wishes, fears, desires, either to escape from the physical reality in which it finds itself or else to form a parallel reality or alternate world in which it could dwell alongside the physical. This formative capacity is given to the human mind. It is the human equivalent or a diminished power of Maya lent to the human mind, like many other faculties and capacities. It is an error to think that whatever one imagines is unreal and whatever we experience through the gross physical senses alone is real. By doing so, we set up an artificial and rigid barrier between the physical world and the other worlds that co-exist, and even try to press towards their realisation using the human mind as an instrument.
Thus, for example, a novel written in 1898 describes the sinking of an unshakable ship with uncanny similarities about the Titanic that happened 14 years later. So did Leonardo da Vinci conceive of the flying machine, and Sir Isaac Newton about gravity, triggered by an apparently commonplace event. Imagination, therefore, can sometimes open the doors of truth. Often, it is an indication of things that are not yet, but yet can be. The test of an imagination being a truth formation or a projection from the realms of ignorance or even worlds of falsehood that imitates truth is a subtle and delicate matter and requires keen discernment. One has to look carefully within to see if the imagination is simply satisfying a deep longing and desire or else feeding the ego with positive or negative images.
Authentic spiritual experiences, on the other hand, arise spontaneously, suddenly, as a marvel, as if a gift of Grace. They often happen in an unexpected manner. As Sri Aurobindo describes, –
‘Here with the suddenness divine advents have,
Repeating the marvel of the first descent,
Changing to rapture the dull earthly round,
Love came to her hiding the shadow, Death.’
(Ref. https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/33/the-issue#p27)
Authentic spiritual experiences almost always accompany a state of peace and joy. Though there is often a background of aspiration, sometimes an intense aspiration, but the actual experience is something that one could ever conceive or imagine. For example, one aspires for Peace, but the experience of peace is like a solid block of ice that is as concrete as a wall around oneself, and everything seems suddenly far, far off. The body and mind both enter a different zone altogether. There are, of course, less dramatic experiences, subtle yet concrete, beyond scope of doubt, leaving an unforgettable stamp on nature, and unreadable from memory. This is the essence.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
