When someone starts picturing something unusual we say “oh, what an imagination”. Imagination is what is commonly known as creation of images or ideas that have not existed before.
In my personal opinion there is no such a thing as imagination: I belive that everything already exists somehow somewhere…I can back up this idea either with Socrates’s Allegory of The Cave or with the modern string theory -no matter what I take, it is obvious to me that there is noting in the world that has not been existing somewhere yet.
Let’s take horror films, all these dreadful images are nothing else than already existing beings. They definitely exist in our collective subconscious (the prove is that in many different cultures these images are similar), and the collective subconscious is a reality. This reality hunts us in our dreams or drunkard/under drugs state. And this is not imagination, this is pretty real. A good example – Hieronymus Bosch. or just any horror film 🙂
The futuristic images are also real – they pop up from our collective supraconsious, which is another interesting realm.
When we say an artist has a great imagination, we are speaking about a person with a strong connection to one of these spheres (Subconscious or Supraconsious) where he/she literary sees these beings or these “worlds” and thus brings it out to our “reality”.
Only very few artists have access to the so called Superconsious, which is the essence of all things, like the Plato’ s World of Ideas, the ideal world, the true one. Such images (William Blake) are extremely powerful and inspiring, whilst the ones from Subconscious or Supraconsious are somewhat sly and sticky…
Thus, there is nothing to imagine for everything already exists. Imagination is not about inventing. It is about getting to one or another state of consciousness.
Don’t you think so?
LOVE; axinia
(image by me)
axinia
1000 petals by axinia 
I actually dont agree with you.I think what we imagine comes from inner psyche (within) and that can be new to some people.but some people can come up with similar ideas.i think thats the part which is connected to collective consciuosness.
Imaginations come from Rajo or Tamo Guna.
🙂
i thought imagination had more to do with what could be. i.e what’s in that box. you can only imagine something you have seen or heard of. or you can mix these things up. but if you try and imagine something completely new it is nearly impossible. creativity./ inventing things is more complicated. like a car somebody imagined cars but i guess you could say they we’re just solving problems which is only finding the shortest route like water or electricity
Sometimes i thught that there ust have been a point in modern history when somebody started to spread this imagination concept like positive. And then like in a chain other people added good words to explain it like: “aww powerful imagination” or “creative immagination” or “sensible imagination” and so on. All these varieties actually have nothing to stand on, no real support. Today we use it in fields such as fashion, design, art, filmmaking: imagination is putting images together with style or in a certain captivating cool way that people love, it is not a quality, it is not an essential characteristic of the human mind, it is not fundamental. Creativity is. Now it has become a conditioning idea that imagination is a great thing to have for a child or an artistical adult. When i was a psychologist the patients children with a great imagination were the sickest ones and they were suffering a lot at the bottom of their personality. In those moments i understood that we have to be careful when talking about imagination or facing imaginative stuff. This is a modern topic open to discussion. While reality cannot be discussed because it is the truth.
Radha, you hit the nail! this is exactly what I meant, thank you my dear.
I don’t think so, Axinia 😐 Imagination surely exists and is one of the characteristic features that humans have in abundance when compared to other animals. The greatest proof of human imagination is this: a completely non-existent thing like the imaginary entity becomes “all-powerful”, “omni-present” etc. 😉 It cannot happen anywhere but in the human imagination.
🙂
As always… i agree with you raj 🙂
very nice Raj
But the biggest/bizarre/best imagination is reality!!
how true! the so called realiy is very far from REALITY.
Well…this is really interesting!! I wonder how many times I felt reading what you write, that this is exactly my point but I would have put it in a different way probably!
Same goes here, I agree that imagination as such does not exist as a separate entity! My thought process behind this is, humans surely have this capability of thinking, and so surely to think about things that are not right in front of them at the moment, think about things that he cannot sense at the moment. So he calls this imagination!
He can only imagine things which he might have sensed in a way or other at any time in his life! It must have registered in his subconscious mind …..So, imagination is actually not that separate from reality as you said!
Now, one might ask, what about creativity and imaginative/innovative ideas…..but this is a totally different ball game….and is dependent on perception!!
Whats your say?
thank you my dearest Friend (BTW, so happy to see your comments again!!!).
I am glad you got my point on this topic, this is not an easy thing and actually I think most people did not really get what i meant. not necesserely one has to agree to show the understanding, not 🙂 But sitll, I have expected a more interesting discussion on that.
i never thought this way friend,
but yes many times those visions turn reality..
and some times they are just dreaded visions which we dun wanna experience in reality
So openly and beautifully prezented topic!!!
Read more on the topic on http://nirananda.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/about-poets-and-poetry/
:)veni
Feel clarification is needed on my extension of the topic.
Meant inspiration of realized poets, which has nothing to do
with psychic sicknesses. Realized poets get inspired by the Divine, and their poems contain pure divine knowledge experiences.
🙂
This people on here, wow! we write down what we observe and we can twist it with other things we observe, we observe nature, we don’t create a dam thing in our minds, not God, not giants, or mermaids, or anything, ALL is real and happened because we observed it and wrote it down, we are very simple, but we try to believe we are so complex, were just barley better then a monkey. I am going to write a REAL paper on this and get it published. Jahbless