Value for Tuesday of Week 36 in the season of Fulfillment

Imagining

Imagination is the intellect’s creative force. Before the concrete idea is the imagined and desired state. When that comes into bloom, the inner world thrives, and our productive capacity expands.

  • . . . imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. [George Bernard Shaw]
  • Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. [Carl Sagan]
  • Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. [Albert Einstein]
  • Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and strength, use it to create. [attributed to Maria Montessori]
  • Reality leaves a lot to the imagination. [attributed to John Lennon]

When we imagine, we may abandon rationality temporarily but the process, overall, is rational and thoroughly reasonable: when one seeks a changed state of affairs, there are many tools on which human beings can draw to bring that about. Imagination is among the most important of them. “Imagination is the Seed of Creativity . . . Without imagination, there can be no creativity”, say some scholars. It is a creative and useful process if the person does not spend excessive time on daydreams or fantasies without acting on them productively, and if the person recognizes the difference between fantasy and reality. Great inventions have been the products of such fancy.

Imagination is a cognitive process used to generate new ideas from old, not just in the service of creativity and fantasy, but also in our ordinary thoughts about alternatives to current reality.” “Imagination is not just a peripheral feature of cognition or a domain for aesthetic research. It is instead the core operating system or cognitive capacity for humans and has epistemic and therapeutic functions that ground all our sense-making activities.” Researchers have identified “two dimensions and ten indicators of imagination . . . The first dimension is ‘creative imagination,’ which includes the indicators of intuition, sensibility, productivity, exploration, and novelty. The second dimension is ‘reproductive imagination,’ which includes the indicators of focusing, effectiveness, transformation, crystallization, and dialectics.

Humans use imagination for a variety of reasons: to acquire experience and knowledge about the world, to better understand another person’s perspective, to solve problems, to create and interact with artistic works, and more.” “. . . imagination has a major role in human creativity, agency and everyday thoughts and actions.” “Through its fundamental relationship with metacognition, imagination increases our capacity to learn, enables personal and potentially, democratic capacity.” 

There seems to be at least some role for imagination in science . . .” “The cycle of imagination and experimentation is the key for any research discoveries or pathways. The ability to imagine (hypothesis) and then test it through experimentation would yield a scientific conclusion. This process is known as a hypothesis-based research.

The astounding capacity for the human imagination to be engaged across a wide range of contexts is limitless and fundamental to our day‐to‐day experiences. . . . processes of imagination are central to human psychological function . . .” Imagination may be a skill that can be cultivated and developed.

Several great discoveries came from dreams, a form of unconscious imagining. Einstein’s theory of relativity sprung to his mind after he had a dream about cows. Dmitri Mendeleev envisioned an improved periodic table in a dream. Niels Bohroften spoke of the inspirational dream that led to his discovery of the structure of the atom . . .” Elias Howe is said to have invented the sewing machine after dreaming about being stewed and speared by an indigenous tribe.

The imagination’s range is unlimited. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that creative people think broadly and in complex terms. 

If you want to solve a problem or come up with a new and useful idea, an excellent strategy is to consider multiple options. This is known as conceptual fluency, which “refers to the quantity of ideas a participant generates”. Researchers have tracked brain activity associated with fluency, and have uncovered at least some of its genetic roots. Fluency is one of two components of divergent thinking. 

Another aspect of fluency is perceptual fluency, “the ease of perceiving stimuli”. People who can perceive and process many stimuli have more to work with. “Perceptual fluency effects in judgments of creativity and beauty . . .” Highly creative soccer players demonstrate an ability to process more information during play, and to consider more ways to respond in the moment.

However, imagination is not an unalloyed good. “Imagination, often celebrated for its role in creativity and development, also may be a feature in a range of personality pathology and psychopathology.” When we fail to distinguish fact from fantasy, imagination can lead to unfounded beliefs.

Real

True Narratives

Without imagination what a poor thing my world would be! My garden would be a silent patch of earth strewn with sticks of a variety of shapes and smells. But when the eye of my mind is opened to its beauty, the bare ground brightens beneath my feet, and the hedge-row bursts into leaf, and the rose-tree shakes its fragrance everywhere. I know how budding trees look, and I enter into the amorous joy of the mating birds, and this is the miracle of imagination. Twofold is the miracle when, through my fingers, my imagination reaches forth and meets the imagination of an artist which he has embodied in a sculptured form. Although, compared with the life-warm, mobile face of a friend, the marble is cold and pulseless and unresponsive, yet it is beautiful to my hand. Its flowing curves and bendings are a real pleasure; only breath is wanting; but under the spell of the imagination the marble thrills and becomes the divine reality of the ideal. Imagination puts a sentiment into every line and curve, and the statue in my touch is indeed the goddess herself who breathes and moves and enchants. [Helen Keller, The World I Live In (1907), Chapter I, “The Seeing Hand”.]

Leonardo’s primary activity in many of his formative years was conjuring up pageants, performances, and plays. He mixed theatrical ingenuity with fantasy. This gave him a combinatory creativity. [Walter Isaacson, Leonardo da Vinci, (Simon & Schuster, 2017), p. 521.]

Narratives:

Technical and Analytical Readings

Peer-reviewed journals:

Photographs

Documentary and Educational Films

Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

A few moments later our poet found himself in a tiny arched chamber, very cosy, very warm, seated at a table which appeared to ask nothing better than to make some loans from a larder hanging near by, having a good bed in prospect, and alone with a pretty girl. The adventure smacked of enchantment. He began seriously to take himself for a personage in a fairy tale; he cast his eyes about him from time to time to time, as though to see if the chariot of fire, harnessed to two-winged chimeras, which alone could have so rapidly transported him from Tartarus to Paradise, were still there. At times, also, he fixed his eyes obstinately upon the holes in his doublet, in order to cling to reality, and not lose the ground from under his feet completely. His reason, tossed about in imaginary space, now hung only by this thread. [Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris, or, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831), Volume I, Book Second, Chapter VII, “A Bridal Night”.]

The lad bit his lip. He made a hundred good resolutions. He would imitate Mr. Bons all the visit. He would not laugh, or run, or sing, or do any of the vulgar things that must have disgusted his new friends last time. He would be very careful to pronounce their names properly, and to remember who knew whom. Achilles did not know Tom Jones—at least, so Mr. Bons said. The Duchess of Malfi was older than Mrs. Gamp—at least, so Mr. Bons said. He would be self-conscious, reticent, and prim. He would never say he liked any one. Yet when the Wind flew up at a chance touch of his head, all these good resolutions went to the winds, for the omnibus had reached the summit of a moonlit hill, and there was the chasm, and there, across it, stood the old precipices, dreaming, with their feet in the everlasting river. [E.M. Forster, “The Celestial Omnibus” (1911).]

It was no common shop this; it was a magic shop, and all the prancing precedence Gip would have taken in the matter of mere toys was wanting. He left the burthen of the conversation to me.  It was a little, narrow shop, not very well lit, and the door-bell pinged again with a plaintive note as we closed it behind us. For a moment or so we were alone and could glance about us. There was a tiger in papier-mache on the glass case that covered the low counter--a grave, kind-eyed tiger that waggled his head in a methodical manner; there were several crystal spheres, a china hand holding magic cards, a stock of magic fish-bowls in various sizes, and an immodest magic hat that shamelessly displayed its springs. On the floor were magic mirrors; one to draw you out long and thin, one to swell your head and vanish your legs, and one to make you short and fat like a draught; and while we were laughing at these the shopman, as I suppose, came in. [H.G. Wells, “The Magic Shop” (1903).]

"For fifteen years I have been intently studying earthly life. It is true I have not seen the earth nor men, but in your books I have drunk fragrant wine, I have sung songs, I have hunted stags and wild boars in the forests, have loved women. . . . Beauties as ethereal as clouds, created by the magic of your poets and geniuses, have visited me at night, and have whispered in my ears wonderful tales that have set my brain in a whirl. In your books I have climbed to the peaks of Elburz and Mont Blanc, and from there I have seen the sun rise and have watched it at evening flood the sky, the ocean, and the mountain-tops with gold and crimson. I have watched from there the lightning flashing over my head and cleaving the storm-clouds. I have seen green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, towns. I have heard the singing of the sirens, and the strains of the shepherds' pipes; I have touched the wings of comely devils who flew down to converse with me of God. . . . In your books I have flung myself into the bottomless pit, performed miracles, slain, burned towns, preached new religions, conquered whole kingdoms. . . . [Anton Chekhov, “The Bet” (1889).]

Novels, stories and essays:

Poetry

Space and Time! now I see it is true, what I guess'd at, / What I guess'd when I loaf'd on the grass, / What I guess'd while I lay alone in my bed, / And again as I walk'd the beach under the paling stars of the morning.   

My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps, / I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents, / I am afoot with my vision.

Speeding through space, speeding through heaven and the stars, / Speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring, and the diameter of eighty thousand miles, / Speeding with tail'd meteors, throwing fire-balls like the rest, / Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly, / Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning, / Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing, / I tread day and night such roads.   

I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product, / And look at quintillions ripen'd and look at quintillions green.   

I fly those flights of a fluid and swallowing soul, / My course runs below the soundings of plummets.   

I help myself to material and immaterial, / No guard can shut me off, no law prevent me.    

I anchor my ship for a little while only, / My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me.   

I go hunting polar furs and the seal, leaping chasms with a pike-pointed staff, clinging to topples of brittle and blue.

[Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1891-92), Book III: Song of Myself, 33.]

Other poems:

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Your commitment to kindness and civility might lead you to say that jazz legend Sun Ra was peculiar but in most circles you would be forgiven and probably understood if you said he was crazy. He was convinced that he was from the planet Saturn, and spoke of “altered destiny”. For a time, he embraced an idea called Afrofuturism, which “centers Black history and culture and incorporates science-fiction, technology, and futuristic elements into literature, music, and the visual arts.” (See these books on Sun Ra and Afrofuturism by Paul Youngquist, and William Sites.) Sun Ra left a strong musical and discographic legacy and was the main subject of two documentaries, “Space Is the Place” and “A Joyful Noise”. We may never know what led him to his remarkable way of looking at not only the world but the cosmos, or what he thought any of that had to do with music. But we do have these lyrics from his song “Imagination”: “Imagination is a black carpet / On which we may soar / To distant lands and climes / And even go beyond the moon / To any planet in the sky / If we came from nowhere here / Why can’t we go somewhere there?” For the man who was named Herman Poole Blount, the African experience in America was so abhorrent that he imagined a different reality to replace it. In that, he was not crazy. We are a symbolic species. We can imagine the impossible and the absurd. While we may want someone more firmly grounded in reality leading our space program, Sun Ra and his remarkably unique imagination made a major contribution to music. He is the main subject of a book by John Szwed; a set of interviews and essays edited by John Sinclair; and a collection of his prose and poetry edited by James L. Wolf & Hartmut Geerken. Here is a link to his playlists. Below are links to some of his albums:

Albums by other artists:

Kalevi Aho, Symphony No. 17, “Symphonic Frescoes” (2017) (approx. 58’) takes listeners on a journey from the deep in the first movement to the distant in the final movement, with a scherzo in between. The journey stretches and challenges the imagination. The very subtitle — Symphonic Frescoes — is a declaration of imaginative method. A fresco is a picture conjured into existence, a vast painted scene rendered on a wall; calling a symphony "symphonic frescoes" tells you the composer's imagination is working pictorially, building scenes the listener sees in the mind's eye as much as hears. The movement titles confirm it — From the Deep, Scherzo macabre, Distant Songs — each one a summoned image, an evocation rather than an argument. The first movement's slow rise from contrabassoon-depths into broad sound-waves is exactly the kind of visionary gesture imagination produces, not analysis. The third movement's "distant songs" that gradually fade into near-silence is imagination at its most characteristic work: reaching toward what can almost be heard, what hovers at the edge of perception, what is conjured rather than stated. The rare auxiliary instruments (lupophone, contraforte, organ) are imagination tools — Aho reaches for unusual timbres because his inner ear has heard something that ordinary orchestral colors can't deliver. The whole symphony is an act of large-scale imaginative summoning. Lahti Symphony Orchestra (Lasonpalo) has recorded the work in 2026.

Other compositions:

Music: songs and other short pieces

Visual Arts

While Duchamp's "Portrait of Chess Players" hints at the ability of the creative person to alternate with facility between primary process (e.g., dreams) and secondary process (e.g., reason and logic) thinking, many of our great artists, especially the surrealists, mainly emphasized primary processes. In expressing primary process through the visual arts, perhaps the surrealists, impressionists and others gave us essential tools for drawing the essential distinction between fantasy and reality. The most striking example of this may be the work of Salvador Dali:

Other extraordinary works include:

Film and Stage

This Is Our Story

A religion of values and Ethics, driven by love and compassion, informed by science and reason.

PART ONE: OUR STORY

First ingredient: Distinctions. What is the core and essence of being human? What is contentment, or kindliness, or Love? What is gentleness, or service, or enthusiasm, or courage? If you follow the links, you see at a glance what these concepts mean.

PART TWO: ANALYSIS

This site would be incomplete without an analytical framework. After you have digested a few of the examples, feel free to explore the ideas behind the model. I would be remiss if I did not give credit to my inspiration for this work: the Human Faith Project of Calvin Chatlos, M.D. His demonstration of a model for Human Faith began my exploration of this subject matter.

A RELIGION OF VALUES

A baby first begins to learn about the world by experiencing it. A room may be warm or cool. The baby learns that distinction. As a toddler, the child may strike her head with a rag doll, and see that it is soft; then strike her head with a wooden block, and see that it is hard. Love is a distinction: she loves me, or she doesn’t love me. This is true of every human value:

justice, humility, wisdom, courage . . . every single one of them.

This site is dedicated to exploring those distinctions. It is based on a model of values that you can read about on the “About” page. However, the best way to learn about what is in here is the same as the baby’s way of learning about the world: open the pages, and see what happens.

ants organic action machines

Octavio Ocampo, Forever Always

Jacek Yerka, House over the Waterfall

Norman Rockwell, Carefree Days Ahead

WHAT YOU WILL SEE HERE

When you open tiostest.wpengine.com, you will see a human value identified at the top of the page. The value changes daily. These values are designed to follow the seasons of the year.

You will also see an overview of the value, or subject for the day, and then two columns of materials.

The left-side column presents true narratives, which include biographies, memoirs, histories, documentary films and the like; and also technical and analytical writings.

The right-side columns presents the work of the human imagination: fictional novels and stories, music, visual art, poetry and fictional film.

Each entry is presented to help identify the value. Open some of the links and experience our human story, again. It belongs to us all, and each of us is a part of it.

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The Work on the Meditations