Imagination is a Sense

Wonderlands, Intro to a Tulpa’s World

Like any human attribute, the thing you practice improves over time. When mastered, imagination provides insight to real and imagined worlds. And on that continuum, they are all real!

Our society dismisses imagination too quickly. It is a sense in its own right. It inspires us, it holds us back. Per Einstein, imagination is better than knowledge. Per Jung, Active Imagination allows you to speak directly to your unconscious. Per those who have had trauma, dissociation isn’t just an imaginative escape; you don’t just turn your mind off, but you go to a place no one can hurt you. Simonides of Ceos gave us the memory palace, an imaginative way to improve memory to such a degree that masters of this seem to have genius level recall. Tell me again why we don’t develop tools of the mind?

Science generally accepted the premise that the brain can’t tell the difference between real and imaginary events. That idea got amplified. It persists because the imagination holds on to memes that strengthen it. Imagination is very real, to some degree; that degree is dependent on the person imagining. I find people who are very concrete, with excellent memories suffer more with anxiety…