‘For the invisible may only be seen with thought – which is itself invisible. If you cannot see thoughts – do you expect to see Atum? Look with your mind, however, and he will appear to you – manifesting himself without hesitation throughout the entire universe – so that you may see his image with your eyes and hold it with your two-hands! Do you think Atum is invisible? Do not say that! Nothing is more physical than Atum! He created all things so that through them – you can see him! This is Atum’s great heart that he manifests himself in everything! Everything can be known – including the insubstantial! Just as mind is known through thoughts – Atum is known through his creations! Atum weaves his will into all known reality – look at the world and contemple his existence with your thoughts!’
Freke & Gandy: The Hermetica – The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs
Many ancient spiritual texts examine the power of the human capacity to “imagine”. Although today, following the advent of modern science, the ability to imagine is relegated to that of the mythical or unreal (as in that which is imagined does not exist) – when humanity was young, no one could be sure exactly what this inner voice was or what its use represented. The ability to suddenly generate images at will was viewed as nothing less than miraculous when compared to the monotonous (and often dangerous) tyranny of the material world. The outer world was steady, set and in many ways predictable – as well as being deadly, cruel and existing mostly outside the will of humanity.
The imagination, by way of contrast, could conjure up cathedral-like structures or propel and individual to distant places – even if the physical body did not move and appeared to stay in the same place. In the case of cognitive disorders, what was imagined on the inside could very well appear to take on an independent reality existing external to the imaginater. The same type of phenomenon of projecting inner imagining into the outer world was also claimed by religions and spiritually, as many human groupings appears to have possessed shamans, totems and other physical important expressions of reality.
In the Egyptian Hermetica, for instance, the god Toth (often through the commentary of Hermes) equates thinking about distant places (by imagining different physical environs in the mind) was exactly the same in principle as the individual travelling to these destinations – despite nothing physically taking place. Imagining structures in the mind, for Toth, was tantamount to creating something from nothing (every creationist story), and achieving movement without going anywhere. All theistic and psychedelic traditions make ample use of the ability to “imagine” – whilst the argument continues to as the proper relationship of the imagination to the physical world.
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 