Hi dear forum and Bruce.

As I understand the active-imagination process from the home study course,
we are looking for "imagination" material that we are not making up. Unexpected images etc or grey area as Bruce calls it.

question1-
What is in your opinion a more succesful way to receive:
a)to look behind closed eyes and wait for images or sensations to come?
b) to picture a standard thing and wait for something unexpected to come (and take it from there)?

question2-
If I "loose" the image cause I think of something or make a verbal comment, is it better to recall the image and pretend or is it better to look at 2d blackness (I haven't experienced 3d) and wait for something to come again?


I understand that experimenting is the best way, but I would appreciate other explorers' opinions.

Much Love Giannis

HI Giannis

Think of your imagination in the same way as you would a TV receiver. To obtain imagery from an experience, you must have some basic stimulii from the event, and also you need to tune your imagination to it. If you're looking for a familiar scene, this is easy.  It gets a little more difficult when you look for something that you have never experienced.

The way that the imagination operates is that we get an initial bit of information from the event, and that begins to form imagery. We look at the images and sort out the noisy parts and emphasize the parts that seem to be making sense, which makes us more sensitive to them, leading to more imagery, then more focus, then more input, then more imagery etc 'round and 'round until we finally have an image.

There is an old fashioned radio circuit that works like this, called a "regenerative radio receiver".  In essence, the recirculation of a signal, like between a microphone and loudspeakers, can be tuned very sharply, which is why you get a ringing at the specific tone just before the microphone and amplifier go into a feedback oscillation. Your imagination does the same for psychic stuff.

The problem with directing your imagination, whether it's because your mind wandered a moment, or because the scene changes, is that you are attempting to tune into a specific scene. If the scene has changed, the result will be largely a matter of your own invention. That might be interesting, but it's just your own mind talking to itself.

As a result, most people suggest simply watching whatever is happening, and then when you see something interesting, focus on it without any other effort. The alternative, trying to stay on topic, or to correct whatever is happening, or otherwise to make adjustments yourself, soon becomes a battle between you and the disturbances, until you find yourself like the person who tried to calm the ripples on a pond by patting them down with his hand. It doesn't work.

My instructions to people in my clinic are to, "Relax away the outside world - relax away the activities of the day - relax away the stuff going on nearby - and look at whatever is happening inside your inner world. Relax away everything except awareness. " Then your imagination will operate properly, and without any effort on your part except to stay interested in whatever is happening.

I hope that helps-

d

Dave,

 That's one of the best explanations of the use of imagination I've seen, Thanks.

Giannis,

I would add that your use of the phrases:

"wait for images or sensations to come "

" wait for something unexpected to come "

point to something that sometimes becomes a problem.  It's the "wait state of mind" part that can become a problem.  This might seem like a picky, subtle point but it can be powerful in its effect at blocking experience.  

As an example, some folks who listen to Monroe Institute Hemi-Sync tapes, like a Focus 10 tape, will say, I listen to the whole thing, waiting for something to happen, but nothing ever happens.

If I am in the state of mind of waiting for something to happen not much can happen because I am "waiting."

One way I've found around this is to make something happen,.  In workshops I emphasize that it is okay to actively pretend spmething is happening as a way of beginning the "regenerative radio receiver" process that Dave describes.

When we actively pretend, the "initial bit of information," the seed of the fantasy, is coming from our intent to use imagination as a means of perception.  If we allow our selves to continue freely pretending along the lines of where ever that regenerative radio receiver is leading us, without struggling to maintain a specific "scene," at some point we will be "tuned in."  At that point the perceptual experience takes on a life of its own, and we seem to be following the "fantasy" instead of leading it, something unexpected has happened and we just keep playing along.

If we lose contact with the signal, it's always okay to pretend as a way of tuning back in or tuning in to something new.

Hope that helps too,

Bruce

Thank you both! Lots of things to think about.

Dave_a_mbs, I'm quite sure that some part of me is afraid of my imagination being only a receiver and not a transmitter also... ( I felt some resistance to accepting your TV analogy).

Bruce, the waiting state is really dead-on. i can see how it cancels my intent when it's there.
It is like when I go to talk to a girl, when my intent is strong, it's like it already has happened and my feet are moving towards her. Instead, when I wait for my intent to materialize , a lot of times I loose my chance to meet her.

Unfortunatelly , the "I want..." intent-affirmations usually put me in a "I wait for..." state. I'll stop it when I realise it or use something like: "I plant an intent seed of..."

As for the "tuned in" state, I'll experiment to understand better what you say (of course pointers and help from explorers is always welcome). My direct hit verifications from alive people looked more like my leading of imagination and less like this tuned in feeling. There must be a really fine line between them..

If imagination is like a tv receiver, then what is creativity? Does creativity really exist (on this plane)?

Hi Lucy,
If the imagination is a tv receiver, doesn't it still need a perceiver who has some room to add experience, translate, transform what has been received--? So creaativity would be rearranging the parts into a new relationship?
betson

Oooops-  a clarification - thanks Bruce, but I missed a bit it seems -

Imagination is NOT  the receriver. Your sensory system is the receiver.  Imagination is part of the "video display system".

Your imagination is a faculty of the mind through which you assemble sense data into coherent systems. As such it takes a tendency toward modelling the data and creates an image. The tendencies toward modelling are generally due to experiences that link data into sets and collections (called gestalten by psychologists) that tend to be repeated, either in fact, or at least in our minds. There are several sections of the brain associated with generating imaginary models of reality, or "images".  

When you are specifically looking for an image, imagination works with perception to filter our things that don;t fit your preconception. This is called "selective perception" and is why a child (or paranoid schizophrenic) concentrates on the boogey man hiding behind the curtains, sensitive to every change of shadows, and totally ignores the light beneath the curtains that show no boogeyman feet sticking out. (This is also the cause of post traumatc stress sysndrome.) We use the same ability for selective perception to focus on psychic material, and use our common sense to avoid side trips into terror.

Choice and creativity differ from imagination in that they involve an action, not just an organization of information. Choice occurs when you change your identification of the "knower" (Tibetan term) or "viewpoint" (my term)  from a prior state to a later one.

Creativity occurs when you take your imagination and figure out some new way to assemble incoming informtion so that you get a new image of something.  For example, the idea of a bus plus the idea of a pelican might lead you to imagine a seaplane. (Or not.) The interesting thing about creativity is that the result is a new "thing" in terms of information, which can be actually translated into energy under certain circumstances. This is one of the clues that we live, not in extended physical space, but in information space that behaves like physical space.

My - how I ramble. Sorry - Anyway, imagination is NOT the activity, but merely an internal process.

d

Is it pilfering info if I give the source even if I don't use good MLA form?

From Merriman-Webster:

Imagination

1 : the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality c : the thinking or active mind : <stories that fired the imagination>
2 a : creative ability b : ability to confront and deal with a problem
3 a : a creation of the mind; especially : an idealized or poetic creation b : fanciful or empty assumption  

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/imagination

Dave I'm having trouble with your comments, which are interesting, but jeez I wish someone had used a different word than "imagination" for the function you are describing because, from the difinition, I think the word is used many different ways and I just can't seem to limit myself to your idea conceptually....not as bad as when I had to limit my mind to w= f * d in physics when to me work meant so many other things,, but your comments on imagination don't make sense wrt my common everyday use of the word.

I think we use our imaginations to be creative. By definition, imagination is what we use to be creative.


But at least your discussion clarifies for me why this is so hard to prove..imagination IS making it up. I think maybe you can use your imagination to jump-start the process of learning to perceive the non-physical. But it somehow seems double-binding to tell people to use their imaginations to perceive something that should exist outside of what they make up.

Bruce said:

Quote:

As an example, some folks who listen to Monroe Institute Hemi-Sync tapes, like a Focus 10 tape, will say, I listen to the whole thing, waiting for something to happen, but nothing ever happens.

This is so true as it's what happened to me, especially when I listened to the first 3 1/2 waves of Gateway Experience before I took Gateway Voyage.  I never thought to use imagination to get it going even though I'd read your first 3 books by then. I'd think of your experiences and my mind would go that way.

In Exploration 27 we were to go to the Entry Station to see people getting ready to come into this life. What I saw was the picture I had in my mind from your description of it.  I was pissed and yelled (in my mind) NO, THAT'S BRUCE'S EXPERIENCE. I WANT MY OWN.  Well, absolutely nothing happened, and I'd wanted to see it so much.

I learned so much from that but it took time. ;-)

Love, Mairlyn ;-)

Hi Giannis,

To start, I see/sense/feel I’m standing on a narrow dirt path and sense kind of melancholy feeling, (the voice says look at your guide but I merely sense him (him???)) and then go back to noticing the dirt path I’m standing on while studying an old knurly unpainted piece of wood, Oh! I realize that the wood’s part of a 6-foot high fence running along the dirt path, or am I making this up? Could be but I continue. (the voice directs me to peek  behind the fence)… I see a large town of unpainted wood shanties in a shallow valley in a smoke ridden environment, (the voice directs me to go to the nearest shanty)… I find myself standing at the foot of a 5 step up flight of old unpainted stairs with an open door at the top.  (the voice directs me to continue)… So up the stairs I go and tap lightly at the ½-opened door and there across the kitchen stands a slim 30ish old woman wearing a housedress with flowers on it…  

This is my recall today of my first retrieval directed by Bruce on his CD where I learned to follow through with the retrieval using my imagination, in spite of having self doubts, to have an experience, while awake, but in the relaxed state, on my back in bed during the late morning daylight.  One step at a time hand in hand with intent and guidance to keep moving forward and using my imagination to follow/see the story line that is unfolding in “front” of me.  My only concern, upon reflection right after doing the exercise, regarding the above situation and use of imagination, is over possibly mistaking what is there and changing into something I’m more familiar with (interpreter overlay).  Like, for example, say the woman was actually some sort of alien individual from another planet and I turned her into this slim 30ish looking woman from earth to be able to retrieve her with less fear from me.  I think that the essence of that individual would be the same even though the costume that I “saw” would look different.  I think that this is how using my imagination might take a wrong turn in the retrieval exercise but as I read others in the Guidebook, for example, the job still gets done and it works because the imagination, with the guidance, is keeping it going.  

Creativity, on the other hand, IMO involves the situation where I choose, see, or are given a problem/challenge to solve.  Then I use my imagination to come up with new solutions.  In other words, starting from ground zero and then using the tools/talents/interests/guidance acquired or available to make a new thing, whether it’s a work of art, music, invention, or merely a new way of doing something.

These are some of my thoughts on imagination vs creativity and what role my imagination played and how it unfolded as it gave me glimpses or "pictures" to follow as I listened to Bruce's CD.  The guide mentioned above, at this point, seemed to be merely a presece to my left but later in this situation played a more active role.

Jean :-*

Hi Lucy-

Let me try it from a different direction.  It's going to require a little bit of rambling, but I think I can express the ideas in a manner that makes sense. To understand the mechanism of imagination as a "tuner" requires a specific global awareness of the nature of reality in which you can see that imagination actually moves your viewpoint to a potential parallel universe.

Your physical body has a brain in which there are circuits that ultimately make up collections of stimulii that arise from external events and presents these to your awareness in a manner in which you can "understand them" and respond to their content.  The mechanisms of these brain circuits are partially learned and partially hard wired. When presented to our awareness we call these sensations "our image of reality". The actual form of the presentations has been shown to begin with a more or less one-to-one match with nervous receptors, and then become abstracted somehow.

We also have the ability to use  internally generated stimulii that have, when compared in the proper manner, many or all of the properties of the outside world. The difference is that the inner stimulii draw on internal experiences stored in memory, as opposed to externally sensed events stored in the outside world. Further, because we might recall things incorrectly, or because we might group the items that we recall in patterns that actually do not occur (like remembering a school bus, remembering a pelican, and then developing the idea of a transport airplane that lands on water) we recognize that this internally generated system may differ radically from externally rooted experiences.  We refer to this secondary system as "imagination".

Now, let's go back one moment before the Beginning. There is only voidness. A void has no manifesting properties by which it might be identified, neither shape, nor color nor taste nor form nor size. There is no space and no time. The size of a void is so small that it has no interior volume. At very best we can simply refer to it, so it has a sort of pseudo-exterior shell but no inside. At the same time, voidness has the nature that no matter what you dump into it, it cannot be filled. In this sense it has no exterior surface by which its interior volume is limited, so it  can be said to have a potential interior surface that is infinitely huge, but no exterior.  The voidness thus exists as smaller than and larger than anything else, and in between we have reality, the region in which we can equate the exterior of the minute and the interiod of the vast. Voidness can thus be regarded as one or as two, and the two-ness means that it can relate to itself as other than an identity.

Now we have two cases, one is static and the other is dynamic. In the static case everything continues to be void. End of story. The dynamic case is the statistical tendency for objects to move toward their most stable form by joining. The motivation by which this tendency occurs was called, by St Thmoas Aquinas, the "Uncaused Cause". It is the manifest nature of God.

Move now to the very instant of the Beginning. The Big Bang gang refers to this as a singularity, a single unique point projected into a self-generated spacetime. The projection has to use available materials to extend its nature, so what it does is to form combinations of various sorts from the two natures of emptiness. (In that sense, you yourself are a manifestation of the initial Oneness.)  Although these have no reality, in the sense of a brick or fireplug, they have logically defined properties, usually associated with the probability of finding this or that property in abstract space.  The interactions of these properties can occur only in specific ways, giving rise to the manifestation of the properties as they form new combinations with one another. These larger combinations also have rules governing their nature that define their ability to interact, giving rise to aggregates of subunits that have collective properties by which their interactions with other aggregates are defined. This is the basic nature of the material world. It's not real, but it appears to be.

At the initial instant of Creation, all these combinations and meshes of properties are extended in a series of infintely brief (Planck length time of about 10E(-44) seconds) steps. However, there is ultimately an infinite number of ways that these combinations can emerge. Since they're doing all this in emptiness, what happens is that all the different ways of arranging or sequencing these various elements of the world are fulfilled by having all the possible kinds of orders and sequences of worlds extended out of the initial instant. There's a Gold Coast saying that "Destiny is fan shaped" that tries to express the ways in which the different arrangements of the furniture of the world can occur.

All of these realities are valid spaces, and they all extend infintely, defining an infinite array of parallel spacetime
universes. There is at least one of these universes that is so arranged that at some point of space and time your existence is defined. This specific universe is actually nothing but relationships of groups of relationships of clusters of relationships that happen to have the properties of interacting as if they were physical objects. As the properties define you and your physical nature, your viewpoint senses the manner in which your definition arises and continues as sensory inputs.

Experiences follow. According to learned values, your viewpoint reviews sensory data, and based on that review tends to move the point at which you identify yourself to another step along the path. This tends to take you toward unending definition independent of external supports.

Choices are made by shuffling the elements by which our natures are defined. Thus, choice means that we move from this definition of self to the next definition of self, thus moving through the defining spacetime mesh of paths available to us.  Because the universe perpetually presents us with a nearly infinite array of options, choice is like wandering through a city by choosing to walk down different sidewalks that were already laid out, requiring only that each step along our way be based on the step preceeding it, and leads to the step following.

We also can move to parts of the network of parallel universes by simply putting our viewpoint at the point at which they are defined. Using memory data we assemble the idea of a spacetime location from numerous individual experiences. These experiences exist in all possible combinations, so the model we assemble actually exists somewhere in the mesh of endless potential combinations and relationships. So the viewpoint goes there and looks at it by taking on properties equivalent to its motion to the arbitrary location we cobbled up.

If that location is actually part of a real, ongoing event, then by putting our imagination there, we tap into the event, and to the degree that our viewpoint stays in alignment with that event, it occurs for us as well.  If not, we say that we are dreaming, but no dreams arise. Thus, to locate an event, create a list of the properties that it has (ie: imagine its nature), see how it feels to be at a place where those porperties are present (ie: go into that space), and be aware.

Bruce mentioned a "disk" with Snidely Whiplash's face on it. That is an assemblage of properties, and there is a spacetime in which it can be sensed as real. Bruce went into that spacetime and sensed the reality of Snidely's existence, which lasted until he had reached the limit of the contingencies associated with its preservation. The way he got there was to make the choice to take on the properties of a viewpoint in interaction with Snidely. That's like walking through Manhattan until you get to Radio City. Then you experience the plaza so long as you don't pass certain limits, for example by walking over to Central Park.

When we seek the presence of others, what we do is to place our internal image maker in a very general kind of space in which we can sense those who are there doing this or that.  Our selection of the properties of "I'm stuck in an earthbound reality and I can't get out" tends to direct our attention to spaces in which that might be true, a space in which others are stuck.  We place awareness in those spaces, then our viewpoint takes a look. If we "lock in" by becoming fascinated by the conditions we discover, then our viewpoint will continue to point to that space and those events. (This is a regenerative feedback effect.)

To the degree that we alter our viewpoint by changing criteria, which is how we search over a range of properties, then to that degree we may move toward or away from a person who needs us. Seeking the nature of their dilemma is the manner in which we "tune" our search, and we do it by making choices of the properties to which we are to become sensitive.

As an example, a dream is a sequence of events that follow one another logically to some degree, and thus form a stable reality, althrough it might be limited in length. For the duration of the dream, we live in that parallel universe and experience it. If we choose to alter some part of the dream, so that we get a prize, succeed in overcoming a problem, or do some other thing that we introduce, then we alter the dream reality. This tampering generally makes the dream unstable, and it ends. This is exactly the way we stay focussed on a stuck soul, unless we alter the situation that we want to see, in which case we lose the contact.

Mmmm - that's a lot of words.  I hope it's useful.

dave