Intuition and the Creation of a Better World

Imagination and the Intuition

Angela Lemaire

Angela Lemaire lives in Scotland and works as a printmaker (wood-engraver and most relief printing), painter, designer and illustrator. She is also a writer and poet. Her art has been exhibited widely in Europe, especially Britain, and in Australia. It has also been featured in various publications in Europe and the USA. This article was especially written for Intuition in Service.

"Silently in the morning thou fliest upward."

What part does imagination play in the unfolding of the intuition?

In the book Art, Ecology and Consciousness ÷ A Snake's Tail Full of Ants, John Lane talks of the imagination. "There are seeds to be sown in skills and social awareness, but the liberation of the imagination is more urgent. Most politicians don't understand the first thing about art. They think it's to do with leisure. We need a major rethink about celebrating the everyday ÷ in terms of working with our hands and gainful occupation, rather than the usual work ethic ÷ gratification through a job and through money, and then buying leisure with the money we earn. William Morris was very clear about the connection between art, work and leisure ·. We need to think more about developing the imagination in us all ·."

The human imagination is a creative tool ÷ a common factor in the arts and sciences ÷ without it these things would not be. And yet great art and the discoveries of science depend upon intuitional insight, and this insight is developed by the intense mental focus and meditation of many of the greatest artists and scientists.

There are no 'doors' blocking universal truths, it already is. We are already intuitional, we're simply not registering it. The way of knowing it is via the imagination. This is where visualisation, which is a faculty of the imagination, is such an essential tool in meditation. Visualisation is the art of seeing, with the eyes of the imagination, that which we already know, but do not know we know. Via the imagination/visualisation, we see what is already known intuitionally. The imagination is thus superseded by the intuition.

All this of course develops over time through the skills of meditation ÷ whatever form that meditation takes. However, a certain amount of personality integration is required, as well as a developed mind, for it is the mind which interprets that which the Thinker, the Soul, knows. The Soul has been described by the 17th Century poet and mystic Thomas Traherne as "A Secret Self · enclos'd within/That was not bounded with my Cloaths or Skin". ("Centuries" 111, 6) He goes on to say, intuitively, that he will, "in the light of my soul, Show you the Universe".

It has sometimes been thought that to be intuitive, all that is required is a kind and gentle nature and lots of love. This is not the case; to be able to think clearly is essential. It is here words come in, and the ability to interpret the ideas of which one may be aware. The Edinburgh philosopher Hugh Blair is quoted by Garry Wills in his book "Lincoln at Gettysburg" ÷ a book which is about words ÷ and how few of them have been required to actually change the world ÷ Christ's sermon on the mount is an example, as well as Lincoln's famous speech.

"For we may rest assured that, whenever we express ourselves ill, there is, besides the mismanagement of language, for the most part some mistake in our manner of conceiving the subject. Embarrassed, obscure and feeble sentences are generally, if not always, the result of embarrassed, obscure and feeble thought. Thought and language act and react upon each other mutually. Logic and rhetoric have here, as in many other cases, a strict connect; and he that is learning to arrange his sentences with accuracy and order is learning, at the same time, to think with accuracy and order".

On the other hand, paradoxically, there is no process, because compassion is the way to the realising of intuition. There is no process because compassion is a form of illumination; this is a compassion which has nothing to do with sentiment, or sympathy, but which is the result of mind development and an awakened heart nature.

Indeed, the unfolding of intuition occurs on the way of the 'Heart'. This Heart is the synthesis of mind and heart. It is the way of the livingness of spirit. Live the Heart way, the way of compassion, and intuition is accomplished and known. Then comes the realisation that God ÷ or the intuition ÷ "is nearer to me than I am myself". (Meister Eckhart)

"If the thoughts are lasting, the seed is lasting; if the seed lasts, the power lasts; if the power lasts, then will the spirit last also. The spirit is thought; thought is the heart; the heart is the fire; the fire is the Elixir." ("The Secret of the Golden Flower", a Chinese book of life, translated by Richard Wilhelm, p 25)

The intuition has not been fully developed in humanity because human beings have reached their nadir or peak of individualisation relatively recently. This has resulted in an intense awareness of the self, and with that awareness, a temporary inability to get beyond self ÷ the immediate focus is altogether too compelling. Also the self is precisely conscious of its separation ÷ an erroneous perception ÷ but temporary.

Only those who have achieved individualisation, and now have the next step before them, which is that consciousness which lies beyond self, can really work together because (a) they have a developed sense of individuality and so will not be mediumistic to others thoughts and emotions, and (b) because the motive is not to serve self but humanity.

With the aid of the imagination the individual is able to see inwardly. This is backed by thought. Energy follows thought, and so it follows that when we project both the vision and thought, we evoke the intuition, and in that light see light.

************

This past millennium has been characterised by materialism, not only in the emphasis on goods, markets and things, but by the very way humanity has thought about the world and life. There has been a shift from desire, feeling, instinct and nature, to the intellect, to the rational mind. These have been wonderful developments despite the terrible mistakes that have been made, and still continue to be made.

But from now we will see a development of equal power and strength towards, not the object and objective, but the subjective, the non-material, the interior truths. A new materialism (that is a new object, and objective) will inevitably result. It is often thought that to focus on the subjective like this is wildly impractical; on the contrary it is firmly practical, since energy descends from above to below and follows thought!

The great discoveries and shifts of the future will be concerned with interior matters, with great subjective truths and with an awakening intuitional sense. This will produce as different a world in the future, as this materialistic one is, and has been, to our past.

The above development would not occur unless there is a certain amount of personality integration in humanity ÷ which there is. We are not talking about psychic sensitivity here, but of a true compassion which opens the "doors of perception" to use Blake's phrase, which itself is a result of mental orientation, mental love. It is the first stirrings of love as pure reason. (William Blake ÷ "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear as it is, infinite" ÷ "Vision of the Last Judgement")

At the end of the book which was inspired by Carl Jung's ideas ÷ "Man and his Symbols" ÷ there is a photograph of the American physicist Mrs Maria Mayer, who shared the Nobel prize for physics in 1963. In the caption it reads " ... her discovery ÷ concerning the constituents of the atomic nucleus - was made like so many other scientific discoveries: in an intuitive flash of insight (sparked by a colleague's chance remark) ·. "

This scientist was motivated by a love of truth, and aided by her intense meditation upon it, the intuitive insight was realised in a flash because of this work ·. Then she was able to formulate the perception ÷ if she had not been able to put it to form in words or symbols ÷ the insight would have come to naught. She arrived at her flash of insight because of a colleague's chance remark. She was not working alone, there were a group of scientists working on this problem, together with her.

The creative imagination is the inner artist we all possess. Through its use, balanced by a reasoning mind and a loving heart, we are already creating those links between that which we know, and that which we do not know.

Already the light has fled downwards ·.

 

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