We Salt Imagination

Every spiritual happening is a picture and an imagination; were this not so, there could be no consciousness and no phenomenality of the occurrence. The imagination itself is a psychic occurrence, and therefore whether enlightenment is called real or imaginary is quite immaterial.

A man who has enlightenment, or alleges that he has it, thinks in any case he is enlightened. What others think about it can determine nothing whatever for him with regard to his experience. Even if he were to lie, his lie would be a spiritual fact.

Yes, even if all religious reports were nothing but conscious inventions and falsifications, a very interesting psychological treatise could still be written on the fact of such lies, with the same scientific treatment with which the psychopathology of delusions is presented

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytic psychology, wrote those thoughts in the foreword of D.T. Suzuki’s 1964 book An Introduction to Zen Buddhism. We forget how important imagination is to reality. We’re taught that imagination is a dream figment not a precursor to the physical reality we experience. Imagination is a psychic occurrence, and for the most part, we don’t understand the nature of our psychic experiences.

Our imagination is filled with the energy of our intuition and inner knowledge. Those energy forces create our reality in one way or another. The challenge is to recognize that energy in physical form. We usually credit other people, places and things for our experiences, but in this reality we create experiences using our imagination. The concept of real or imaginary is perception playing word games. Everything we experience comes from imagination. Lies become truths, and truths become lies as we salt imagination with the toxic granules of associations and influences.

Enlightenment, like other spiritual concepts, is a truth to some and a lie to others. We are not alone in our physical reality, so the imagination of others influences our experiences if we choose to allow that energy to pepper our beliefs.

Enlightenment, through our imagination, makes the unknown recognizable. The word, not the energy, attaches itself to certain significances and ignores others. That is the nature of duality. But the nature of our imagination is not restricted by our concept of real or imaginary. Imagination's main function is to create experiences. Experiences expand our own version of enlightenment.