Active imagination is a cognitive methodology that uses imagination as an organ of understanding. The discipline of active imagination is found in various philosophical, religious and spiritual traditions. This is perhaps best known in the West today through the emphasis of C. G. Jung on the therapeutic value of this activity.
Video Active imagination
European tradition
The post-Renaissance European theosophy includes imaginal cognition. From Jakob BÃÆ'¶hme to Swedenborg, the active imagination plays a major role in the theosophical works. In this tradition, the active imagination serves as "the organ of the soul, the humanity's thanks can build cognitive and visionary relationships with the middle world".
Coleridge distinguishes the imagination, which expresses the reality of an imaginary realm that transcends any personal existence, and "luxury", or fantasy, that expresses the creativity of the artistic soul. To him, "imagination is a condition for cognitive participation in the sacramental world".
C.S. Lewis considers that "reason is the organ of truth, but imagination is the organ of meaning".
Carl Gustav Jung
As developed by Carl Jung between 1913 and 1916, active imagination is a meditation technique in which the contents of a person's unconscious are translated into pictures, narratives or personified as separate entities. It can serve as a bridge between conscious and unconscious "ego" and includes working with dreams and creative self through imagination or fantasy. Jung attributes the active imagination to the alchemical process in which both seek for the unity and interconnection of a fragmented and integral part set. This process found an expression for Jung in his book Red Book .
The key to active imagination processes is the purpose of exerting as little influence as possible on mental images as they unfold. For example, if someone is recording an oral visualization of a scene or object of a dream, Jung's approach will ask the practitioner to observe the scene, watch the change, and report it, rather than consciously filling the scene with the changes one wants. Someone will then respond earnestly to these changes, and report any further changes in the scene. This approach is meant to ensure that the unconscious content express themselves without the influence of support from the conscious mind. However, at the same time, Jung insists that some form of participation in active imagination is very important: "You yourself must enter into the process with your personal reactions:... as if the drama imposed before your eyes is real".
From the origins of active imagination, Jung writes:
It was during the Advent of 1913 - December 12, exactly - that I decided on the decisive step. I was sitting at my desk once more, thinking of my fears. Then I let myself fall. It was suddenly as if the ground really gave way under my feet, and I plunged into the dark depths.
Further explaining his origins, Jung illustrates his conclusion that the active imagination brings out the desires and fantasies of the subconscious mind, which ultimately wants to become conscious. But once they are realized by the individual, dreams can become "weaker and less frequent" when they may have been quite clear and repetitive before.
Carl Jung developed this technique as one of the few that would determine his typical contribution to the practice of psychotherapy. Active imagination is a method to visualize an unconscious problem by letting them act on their own. Active imagination can be done with visualization (as Jung himself did), which can be considered the same in techniques at least for shamanic journeys. Active imagination can also be done by automatic writing, or by artistic activities such as dancing, music, painting, sculpting, ceramics, crafts, etc. Jung assumes that "Patient can make himself creative independently through this method... by painting himself he gives form to himself ". Doing active imagination allows mind-forms from the subconscious, or the inner "self," and the totality of the soul, to show any message they want to communicate to the conscious mind.
But for Jung, this technique has the potential not only to enable communication between the conscious and unconscious aspects of the personal soul with its various components and inter-dynamics, but also between the personal and "collective" consciousness; and therefore must be initiated with full attention and attention. Indeed, he warns with respect for " 'active imagination... This method is not entirely without danger, because it can take the patient too far from reality". Michael Fordham's post-Jungian goes further, showing that "active imagination, as a transitional phenomenon... can, and often happens, both in adults and children punished with malicious intent and promote psychopathology.This may occur when the mother's smelting has distorts the elements of 'culture' in maturation and therefore it becomes necessary to analyze childhood and infancy if distortions will arise. "
In partial response to this criticism, James Hillman and Sonu Shamdasani discussed at length the danger of seeing active imagination solely as an expression of personal content, suggesting that this technique is most easily misunderstood and misdirected when applied to strict biographies, and never used. to bridge the person with a wider human heritage of the living and the dead. Instead, they suggest, the active imagination in Jung's use is an exposition of the unconscious influence of the collective unconscious, the shedding of psychological terminology to work directly through mythical images:
SS:... In reflecting on himself, he does not find at the bottom of his personal biography, but it is an attempt to uncover the basic humanity. These dialogues are not a dialogue with his past, as you point out [...] But with the weight of human history. [...] And the task of discrimination is what he spends the rest of his life involved in it. Yes, in some sense what happens to him is very special but, in another sense, it is a universal human being and that produces his project from a comparative study of the individuation process.
Active imagination eliminates or highlights the characteristics and characteristics that are often present in dreams, and without a broader perspective, people who work with active imagination may begin to see them as their own characteristics. Thus in an ongoing effort to emphasize the importance of what Maslow would call transpersonal, much of Jung's later work was conceived as a comparative historical study of active imagination and the process of individuation in various cultures and epochs, conceived as a normative pattern. human development and basic common scientific psychology.
Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner suggests cultivating imaginative consciousness through meditative meditative contemplation of texts, objects, or images. His imaginary cognition he believes is the first step on the path leading from a rational awareness to a deeper spiritual experience.
The following steps of Imagination he is called Inspiration and Intuition. In Inspiration, a meditator cleans up all personal content, including even content that is consciously chosen from a symbolic form, while maintaining the activity of the imagination itself, and thus being able to sense the imaginary nature from which this activity itself begins. In the next step, Intuition, the meditation utilizes connections to the imaginary world or angels built through the cognitive imagination, while releasing images mediated through this relationship. By stopping the activity of imaginative consciousness while allowing one's consciousness to remain in touch with the archetypal nature, the possibility of opening for a deeper awareness of the imaginal will be conveyed to the open soul by the mediating agent of this world.
Maps Active imagination
Islamic Traditions
The imaginary realm is known in Islamic philosophy as the natural al-mithal , the imaginal world. According to Avicenna, imagination is mediated between, and thus integrated, human reason and divine beings. The quality of this mediation is manifested in two directions: on the one hand, reason, rises above itself, can reach the level of active imagination, an activity shared with lower divine beings. On the other hand, in order to realize the concrete forms of the world, the divinity created various middle-class creatures, the creators of the angels of the universe. According to the philosophers of this tradition, the trained imagination can access the "nonspatial fabric" mediating between empirical/sensory and cognition/spiritual realms.
Through Averroes, mainstream Islamic philosophy loses its connection with active imagination. The Sufi movement in Persia, as exemplified by Ibn Arabi, continues to explore the contemplative approach to the imaginary realm.
Henry Corbin
Henry Corbin considers imaginal cognition as "a pure spiritual teacher who is independent of the physical organism and therefore survives." Islamic philosophy in general, and Avicenna and Corbin in particular, distinguish sharply between true imaginations of imaginary nature, and personal fantasies, which have an unreal character, and "imaginary" in the general sense of the word. Corbin termed imaginations that go beyond imaginatio vera fantasies.
Corbin suggests that by developing our imaginal perception, we can go beyond the symbolic representation of archetypes to the point where "the new sense sees directly the order of reality [of being]". To achieve this passage from symbol to reality requires "transmutation of existence and spirit" Corbin describes the imaginary realm as "the proper sequence of reality, corresponding to the proper mode of perception", "cognitive imagination" (pp. He considers the imaginary world to be identical to the world of angels depicted in many religions, which manifests not only through imagination but also in human vocation and destiny.
Corbin (1964) argues that by developing the ability of this cognitive imagination we can overcome "divorce between thinking and being"
More recently, the concept of imaginal is further developed in the field of Communication Science. Samuel Mateus (2013) suggests a close relationship between the imaginary, the public and the publicity. "Public imagination" is named after a diverse, heterogeneous, symbolic and complex heterogeneous imaginative collection that permeates society.
Role in scientific and mathematical discovery
Hadamard (1954) and ChÃÂ telet (1991) argue that conceptual imagination and experimentation play a central role in mathematical creativity. Important scientific discoveries have been made through imaginative cognition, such as the famous discovery of the structure of the benzene carbon ring through the dream of a snake eating its tail. Other examples include Archimedes, in his bathtub, imagining that his body is nothing but a gourd, and Einstein imagines himself to be a photon on the speed horizon.
See also
- Anthroposophy
- Automatic Suggestions
- Dream interpretation
- Bleak dream
- Thinking Form
References
Further reading
- Hannah, Barbara. Meeting with Soul: Active Imagination as Developed by C.G. Jung . Santa Monica: Sigo, 1981.
- Johnson, Robert A.
(1986) Harper & amp; Rows - Jung, Carl. Jung on Active Imagination (1997) Princeton U. ISBNÃ, 0-691-01576-7
- Miranda, Punita (2013) 'C.G. Jung's Active Imagination: Alternative Personality and Awareness Change, 'Jaarboek C.G. Jung Vereniging Nederland. No. 29 (2013), 36-58.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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