#147. Imagination As the Forming Force of the World

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Blog entries beginning with #101 are not essays but minimally-edited notes and reviews from the files I've collected over the last few decades. I no longer have the time and energy needed to sort out and put together into decent essay-form the many varied ideas in these files, but I would like to share them with all who are interested.

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com

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These are notes on Robert Sardello's Foreword to Tom Cheetham's Green Man, Earth Angel (SUNY, 2005), the second of Cheetham's quartet of books on the work of the French religious thinker, Henri Corbin. 

Robert Sardello is a Transpersonal Psychologist. I learned from Wiki that there are now five commonly agreed upon types of Transpersonal Psych: "Analytical" (Jung), "Archetypal" (Hillman), "Psychosynthesis" (Assagioli), "Zen Transpersonal Psychotherapy" (Anthony), and "Spiritual" (Sardello).

I'd been very much looking forward to reading Cheetham's Green Man book, and was quite disappointed with the very few references to the Khadir and Green Man. But it turns out that when I read the Foreword, "I was floored."

I don't remember ever using that phrase in my life! And, alas, I don't have any easy way to describe such a strong reaction on my part. I'm writing this 'essay' as a kind of therapeutic exercise.

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Sardello begins by saying that there are many stories which account for the matter-spirit split and that hold to the view that we must return to the past-- or at least its values. He notes, however, that we can only do that by being apart from the world's destiny and surrounded by fear. Indeed! That's a good description of Western monasticism, of RC in general in the ideals it has held to, and of religious fundamentalism.

Sardello says we need to understand the longing for the past differently; not as a longing for a historical past but as a longing for wholeness-- by which he seems to mean healing and "salvation" in the fuller sense than it's usually meant in conventional religious terms. Already, the inadequacy of our available words is apparent!

He also says this is obvious "to those who have an inner life" and who are concerned with the meaning of out lives/existence. But we now need new ways of telling that old story of the matter-spirit split (newer, he means, than the Adam & Eve stories and the doctrine of original sin).

We need, he says, new ways of imagining-- of telling the story of our existence. While he doesn't mention the New Cosmology by name, he clearly means, it seems to me, exactly what "cosmology" means in Anthropology and in references to the New Cosmology.

OK so far, but then he says it's "soul" and "soul ways" that we need. I note that, to me, that's no more helpful that any other wording that's presently available for telling a [or the] new story. But Sardello has evaluated the problem nicely....

He says, "Only soul understands and responds to soul." And so to understand the longing for wholeness and meaning we need to use soul's own terms; we need soul-words, like "archetypal" and "imaginal." I wonder if there isn't some other way to talk about all this. Certainly we need a wholistic cosmology. But we need to look at soul-ways?? Hard to accept that as is.

But... Sardello then makes a very powerful point: "Imagination is a world force." Without imagination any metaphysics splits spirit and matter, with no linkage possible. I note that I hear "world force" here as dynamis, holy Spiritus-- "energy" in the broadest cosmo-the-andric sense, which is also the missing fourth of the mandalic understanding of time and space, matter and energy.

What comes next is a bit fuzzy-- not that his initial references to "soul" aren't. But apparently, in his transpersonal psych perspective, he uses "soul" as James Hillman does, and sees no need to say so.

The fuzzy part is that he seems to talk about science and materialism as the two sides of the split. Either he has a special 'philosophical' meaning for "materialism" or he just didn't say well what he was trying to say.

Anyway, that so far is his presentation of the problem of dualism. He never used the word "dualism" nor does he even note that he's talking in what seems to be not just a Western but also an explicitly American context. (Although his later reference to "this country" can only mean the USA.)

He then moves on to say that Cheetham helps us to see what's lost when we ignore the imaginal and archetypal aspects of "soul." His list: imagination, speech, words as angels, reading ("from, not about, reality," he says) and, "most important of all," sense of place.

What he means by "reading" seems close, I think, to the traditional lectio; and his "most important of all 'sense of place'" could easily be called "sacred geography."

In any case, these five aspects of soul clearly have to do with the "human" (in contrast to the "cosmic" or "divine"), and specifically have to do with human consciousness. It is the first list I've seen of just what it is that the imaginalis perspective involves that makes it different from other views.

Aside from the sense of place (and probably that one, too, when I think about), the items on the list are all obvious characteristics of not of the divine or of the cosmic but precisely of anthropos-in-cosmos. He is exactly right with that.

And here is the project at hand: Sardello says Cheetham helps us first to feel the loss, then to establish a "metaphysics of imagination as the forming force of the world." This, as far as I can see, presumes a scientific worldview.

Earlier Sardello used the phrase "world force," but this phrase-- "the forming force of the world"-- is an even clearer-- indeed, a much clearer-- way of talking about energy (dynamis, holy Spiritus) in exactly the sense it's understood by people like Fred Spier (Senior Lecturer in Big History at the University of Amsterdam), and the American physicist Eric Chaisson (from Harvard and Tufts) whose book is so good.

That phrase is also exactly a way of talking about energy (dynamis, holy Spiritus) in the same sense that "evolution" is used in the New Cosmology, and in the way "non-stasis" is understood in a more philosophical sense. "Etc, etc, etc," as the King of Siam says. (That last sentence is an indication that I feel swamped!)

There's no indication in the Foreword that Sardello is tuned in to much (or any) of the mandalic perspective, but he's expressing the right idea in a very clear way: "The forming force of the world." Any aware 6th grader (my criterion for good communication) can readily understand what's being said there! This is a major breakthrough for me. (Although, amazingly, not the only one in this Foreword!)

Sardello goes on to describe the archetypal/imaginal/soul "metaphysics of the imagination" that Cheetham helps us establish:

• it allows for participation (our participation in the dynamic process)

• it sees creation happening always and everywhere

• it sees that all reality is alive

• it sees us (humans) as "part of soul" and not v.v. (Obviously a definition of "soul" would be of tremendous help here!)

"This metaphysics exists," says Sardello, "in a radical interpretation of Jung and in Henry Corbin." He says that Jung has some limitations which Cheetham clears up (I like that!), and it "opens us to Corbin's and Islamic (Sufi) mysticism's fully developed imaginal metaphysics."

I note that except for that list's last statement (about humans being part of "soul"-- with its, again presumed, Hillman-ian meaning for "soul"), that this is the same perspective offered in various contexts and with enormously varied terminology by many modern thinkers such as Bruno B, Karl Rahner, the Paleo perspectives of Native peoples, Thomas Berry, et al. Also, recently-- with the NYRB's review of the book by Patricia Crone on the context of Islam's emergence-- the ancient Persian-Zoroastrian perspective.

It is amazing that with those few words of his, "the forming force of the world," Sardello makes all these views and perspectives tie together so well for me. It feels good. He is saying, maybe, even more than he is aware! I'm grateful.

I especially delight in the statement about Jung's limitations. I knew Hillman went beyond Jung, but never saw what was lacking in Jung's seemingly exhaustive understanding of the psyche. That Tom Cheetham is the one who "clears up" those limitations is delightful.

He (Cheetham) is alive and well today, I've had some contact with him. We're not just trying to catch up with the thinking of a century or two in the past. We're on the growing edge. That feels very good.

Sardello's next part isn't well presented at all, alas. About Jung's limitations... He says Jung did not distinguish between soul experience and spirit experience. (Sardello has only used "spirit" once previously here, and this too will be like "soul," an undefined term-- at best, a starting point.) He says that the limitation persists not only in Analytical Psych but also in Hillman's Archetypal Psych. (Hillman pushed "soul" at the expense of "spirit," apparently.) All this needs much more explanation!

The distinction between soul and spirit is that the darkness of the Shadow (capitalized in the Foreword) is a soul experience and is to be integrated into consciousness, whereas the Divine Luminous "Black-Light" Darkness is a spirit experience and needed for experience of the world (and "wholeness"). All this is far too carelessly and quickly stated!

Soul goes with anthropos, spirit goes with cosmos. (I think that's what Sardello's saying.) Spirit and world go together in the same way that soul and consciousness do. There is a soul-consciousness and a spirit-consciousness. (Those two different uses of "consciousness" are an example of Sardello's fuzziness-- and of the difficulties we have today with language.)

Sardello then notes that Hillman sees Corbin's imaginalis as helping Depth Psych. And what Cheetham does, says Sardello, is to bring up precisely the right quotes from Corbin that establish-- if I'm getting this right-- that "un-conscious" goes with "soul" and "super-conscious" goes with "spirit." He also notes that the Islamic understanding of imaginalis mundus knows the mundus as spirit-consciousness, and then he talks about soul-darkness and Luminous Divine Spirit-darkness-- but does so fairly poorly, alas.

To me, there's a lot of very sloppy talk here! But it's not at all easy to dismiss. If it wasn't obvious (to me, at least) that he's trying to talk about the fourth function as something more than "soul" (in an un-defined sense), I might have given up at this point. The mandalic perspective is being affirmed here but, alas, very poorly!

While Sardello notes that neither Jung nor Hillman distinguishes soul and spirit, and at one point he says that soul-consciousness is related to the unconscious while spirit-consciousness is related to super-consciousness. He also distinguishes soul-darkness from spirit-darkness (which is in fact light, not darkness!), but he never says clearly and simply what that difference is.

The darkness of soul (the un-conscious, soul-shadow) is archetypal (as with Jung and Hillman); the divine-darkness (spirit-darkness, luminous darkness of super-consciousness) is imaginal (as in Sufi mysticism). Too many words! Maybe they're needed, and I'm happy to know someone's trying to sort all this out, but it's really difficult to handle well.

According to Sardello, Cheetham says that the un-conscious soul is perceived by soul, but the super-conscious realm is perceived by the "supersensory senses."

And this fits well with the mandalic view-- that the fourth function is a perception function just as the Sensing function is. So maybe "super-sensory senses" is a good term there! Maybe! And maybe, someday, thinkers might be talking about the physical senses as the "sub-imaginal senses."

In any case, Sardello goes on to note that he and Corbin use, as a term for "supersensory sense," nothing other than "heart."

So here at least we're with the Hesychasts and Cynthia B, in trying to distinguish perception in the imaginal realm-- by the "heart"-- from perception by "soul'"--although there doesn't seem to be some other "soul realm" wording to go with imaginal realm). Again, this is not as satisfying as it might be, considering how profoundly significant it is. Surely we can do a better job with all this! There is sensory realm, soul realm and super-sensory/imaginal realm. As I see it, using "heart" confuses the soul realm and the imaginal realm! It sure as hell confuses me.

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Next: Some explanation of Imaginal Metaphysics.... In imaginal metaphysics "all persons, places and things are mirrors of the spirit world." Note that "spirit world" is same as "imaginal realm." I presume this is Sardello's way of saying 'all is theophany' (even though "expression of" and "reflection of" surely do not mean the same thing, although I think they are meant to, here). Seeing by the "heart" is perception of all things as theophany.

But this has nothing at all to do with soul-"perception"! (I think, even, that we can say there is no such thing as perception via "soul." It is an evaluation of all things as good, something very different from perception of all things as theophany.)

Sardello adds: We see by the light that makes all things visible, but then he also says "we are, in effect, composed of the artistic play of spiritual beings." Maybe that's supposed to be "poetic"? But both it and his use of "mirrors" seem to me to negate any real reality to "persons, places and things"-- even though he obviously doesn't mean to do that. So I find his language totally unacceptable here.

But he concludes this section by saying that the imaginal metaphysics of Ibn Arabi is fruitful (his word) "for gnosis of divine worlds and earthly worlds," and this is precisely because it "does not confuse or separate them as Jung does." "Gnosis" here is used in the right sense as perception.

So there's no question that all of this is on the right track. It's amazing, though, that Sardello does not attempt a more clear distinction between the various expressions of that all-important distinction he's saying Corbin, Cheetham and Islamic mysticism are presenting to us. I'm sure he thinks he is, however.

Even with all of (what I call) his "sloppiness," it's still very, very impressive. It is all about wholeness and meaning-- nothing less than our understanding of and participation in our life and existence-- to which gnosis we have access via "heart" (i.e., imaginality, our fourth function).

The language here is very different but it reminds me a lot of the Carmelite Constance Fitzgerald's understanding of John of the Cross and the dark night of the soul, where his (John's) directive is "move on." I.e., "Get out of your isolated Feeling function." It also reminds me of Bruno B saying simply, that "There is no dark night."

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I'm about half way through my 10 pp of notes on this 6 ½ page Foreword. This is the end of Sardello's introduction to Cheetham's book. The rest of the Foreword talks about the implications for the culture of seeing imaginally. Some of it is good, some of it is awful. He mentions seven topics....

1) Incarnation. The first topic is about what I think is an extremely poor understanding of incarnation and Xnity. Sardello says "Gnosis from imaginality is in opposition to any kind of incarnational Xnity." Sloppy, to be sure. He actually means something like "is in strong opposition to the conventional/popular Christian understanding of incarnation." His sense of "incarnational" is almost fundamentalist.

He talks about "Christ" when he means Jesus, and says that the Christian understanding of incarnation is both "archetypal secularization" and "the death of God." He says that Cheetham's chapter about all this-- which he calls "the theological chapter"-- is pivotal in the book.

One more thing the conventional understanding of incarnation does is that it "collapses any sensitivity of the angelic hierarchies." (How's that for clarity!)

Sardello adds: "An imaginal theology accompanies-- even precedes-- imaginal metaphysics" and is "founded on Beauty, not salvation."

What a testimony all this is, to the failure of the church! That a leader of Spiritual Transpersonal Psychology sees Christianity only as a fundamentalist does, with no sense at all that "salvation" can mean healing/wholeness/fulfillment, rather than a rescue from reality.

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2) Beauty. About Beauty, Sardello says, "That's what the longing is for." But it has to be strived for, via soul-purification.

He then adds that "Beauty is the theophany of Sophia." This is the first use of Corbin's "theophany" term, and offers no hint of what "Sophia" might mean in this context. He does, however, describe Sophia as "a destination," but then uses what I thought of as a singularly dumb image about "arriving but not arriving" when he's trying to say that it's a goal into which we can enter ever more deeply.

He then backs off from trying to talk about imaginal knowing by saying that non-dual gnosis is "epistemological complex." I realize that this is a Foreword, not an explanatory essay, but surely this phrase is nothing but what used to be known-- when people still looked for explanations of things-- as a "cop out."

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3) Freedom. Next comes a paragraph about Freedom.... Sardello identifies freedom in the conventional understanding with nihilism, blames it on the Christian understanding of salvation, and notes that "this country's battle cry is freedom"-- which, as nihilism/terrorism, "speaks of wars of self-destruction." Hard to know what to make of all that! He's trying to say something of the greatest importance, but stutters woefully.

He adds that for freedom not to be nihilistic, it has to be filled with love, and he seems to be critical of Cheetham about this.

Somehow, Christian freedom leads to Christian technology (which seems to be yet another name for nihilism), and stands in great contrast to Islamic mysticism. The difference "hangs on transformation"-- he uses the term metamorphosis-- "and on initiation into the Source of Love, 'the Beloved'."

He says conventional Christianity "lacks the angelology to proceed to this Source;" it can only lead to nihilistic freedom. And adds that "Cheetham's work on all this is wondrous." (Earlier, he called Corbin's work on Beauty "stunning." Hmmm.)

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4) Geigerich. A paragraph about someone new to me, Wolfgang Geigerich, follows. It's about Jung's spirit-matter dualism, which comes, says Sardello, from Jung's work on alchemy. The main idea seems to be that without spirit, matter can only lead to nihilism and thus to technology understood "as the god and the means of salvation."

Sardello says of these ideas in Cheetham's book that "Just this section is worth the price of admission to the book." That statement is followed by one more comment about Geigerich and incarnation, which, alas, makes no sense at all. (All my condemnations of Sardello are really laments-- that he doesn't talk better about these tremendously important perspectives!)

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5) The way out. Cheetham's concern is for valuing the world, Sardello says, "but not in an abstract or nostalgic sense." He describes Cheetham as "one of the most courageous thinkers I have ever read." What Cheetham does is "shows us the way out of the nihilistic worldview through-- not above-- the labyrinth."

And that way-- based on the imaginal, and not on a dichotomy between spirit and matter-- is two-fold:

 • love, as an initiatory process via purifications

• re-sanctification of the world.

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6) Word. This is followed by a fascinating section on Word "as way out and as way to rightly respond to the longing for wholeness." He refers to Ibn Arabi's understanding that our language is a unique articulation of divine Breath, saying that "our breath belongs to us and to the world" (i.e., that it expresses both a human and cosmic reality).

Our breath is "poetic and creative speech," he says. As spirit is linked to world via soul, so speech embodies spirit without collapsing it into matter. He notes that "This is a new idea of soul, as that by which spirit is embodied and thus matter is spiritualized." I hear him saying something like: we are the world speaking and our symbol-speech is Divine Breath. Surely Rabbi Arthur would agree!

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7) Lectio. We need to read the world-- which is a discipline of imaginal asceticism-- keeping us from giving in to technological worldview desire, and giving us the courage "to be fully present to what is present." That's it. End of Foreword. So many significant things!

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Summary. I think what "floored me" most about all this is that it so directly addresses the dualism of Western culture in terms of psychology (which I wasn't expecting), including the different dualisms of Jung and Hillman, while at the same time incorporating them into much bigger perspective. And of course I am delighted by the fact that that it does so precisely by affirming the reality of the fourth function.

Most of what has been important to me all my life, and utterly absent from the culture as a whole, is here recognized as central to our existence. Can't ask for more than that! As I've said, I'm grateful! (1 July 2013)

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#99. Beyond the Impasse

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Originally published separately, all three parts slightly revised are included here.

PART ONE (posted on July 5, 2012)

This post started as an email to a friend about a conference held in the Washington DC area this year on the weekend after Easter. The email morphed, all by itself, into this post.

The conference was the annual Gerald May Symposium, sponsored by the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation, a group dedicated to the support of contemplative living and leadership. This year's speaker was Cynthia Bourgeault, an Episcopal priest, author and contemplative hermit who lives on an island in Maine. Her conference title was "Contemplatives and Mystics as Prophets and Visionaries."

In one sense, "contemplative" is almost an old-fashioned word nowadays. It used to be used of monks and nuns who lived cloistered lives. But in our time it has come to mean any persons for whom some kind of spirituality is central to their lives and who-- unlike religious fundamentalists-- are concerned with environmental and social justice issues and open to the findings science and psychology. "Contemplative studies" has even become an academic field; it's just getting itself together as an area of serious scholarship. (You know it has in some sense "arrived" when academics want to get in on it!)

I was fortunate that a friend of many years attended Cynthia Bourgeault's conference and afterwards provided me with a lengthy report-- which he and I then followed up with many hours of discussion. So many significant insights emerged that it seems especially important to share some of them here. I had thought I was done with my blog efforts, but it was the power of those insights that caused my intended email note to morph into this one last post.

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Cynthia Bourgeault's starting point is the basic insight that in just about every way our political, economic and religious traditions are at an impasse. And for those of us who take religious or spirituality seriously-- at a deeper level than many conventional and conservative church-goers-- she offers four guides for dealing with that contemporary impasse: Thomas Merton, Raymond Panikkar, Bruno Barnhart and Constance Fitzgerald.

I've mentioned the first three of Cynthia's suggested guides a number of times in this blog, but Constance Fitzgerald was new to me. She is a Carmelite nun in a monastery in Baltimore. (For those unfamiliar with such things, Carmelites are part of the contemplative tradition of two very famous religious figures: the 16th century Spanish saints John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila.)

Like me, you may be thinking, "Can this array of monks, nuns and priests be of any help as we try to work our way out of the economic, environmental, political and religious impasse we find ourselves in?" It seems unlikely, to be sure.

But I found myself captivated by the energies coming out of the perspectives offered by Cynthia Bourgeault. And one of her main references-- to the work of a religious thinker she greatly values and who was totally unfamiliar to me, the French philosopher and Islamic scholar, Henri Corbin-- has led me to some extremely significant breakthroughs in my personal self-understanding as well with regard to the convergence of science and spirituality.

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The word "impasse" used to describe our present dead-end cultural and religious situation comes from the work of Carmelite Constance Fitzgerald. Two of her theological presentations, which I found fascinating and tremendously helpful, are available on the web.

At the symposium, Cynthia presented four keys needed to deal with the contemporary impasse: "Imaginal Vision," "Boldness," "Unified Cosmology" and "Contemplative Practice."

By "Contemplative Practice" Cynthia means having a practical, down-to-earth, daily discipline of some kind: something like what has come to be called "Centering Prayer" or one of the many other forms of meditation available in our day.

"Unified Cosmology" is her term for our need to take seriously the understanding that everything in the universe is connected with everything else. It's a basic insight of all the ancient spiritualities and is even clearer today from the perspectives of evolutionary science and ecology. I've quoted the Native American expression of it many time in these posts, "All things are our relatives." Mitakuye Oyasin!

By "Boldness" Cynthia means that, because many religious people are still stuck in the static and dualistic religious worldviews of the past, we need to have the courage to wholeheartedly embrace the evolutionary worldview-- to "jump," as Cynthia put it, "on to the train of evolution."

Her fourth key, "Imaginal Vision," is probably the most important but also the most difficult to understand easily. It's our need to move away from the highly restricted views of reductionist science so that we can see the biggest picture of reality available to us.

The word "imaginal" comes from the French philosopher, Islamic scholar and religious thinker I mentioned above, Henri Corbin. Late in life he called himself a "historian of religions." As far as I can tell, Corbin doesn't mention C. G. Jung's studies of the four functions of consciousness that I've referred to many times in these posts; I think he was so knowledgeable he probably just took them for granted. But it's clear enough that by "imaginal vision" Corbin means seeing the world not from a surface viewpoint but from that in-depth perspective which Jung calls the Intuition function. He goes all the way back to Persian Sufi mystics of the Middle Ages to help us understand just what he means by "imaginal vision."

I think Corbin greatly enriches the Jungian perspectives. And I find it especially fascinating that, just as we need evolutionary science in order to move out of religious dualism, so we need ancient religious wisdom in order to move out of reductionist science. That, too, is convergence, to be sure-- although, for me, it's a convergence in a quite unexpected way!

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This imaginal-intuitive way of perceiving the world was lost to the people of western culture sometime around the 1100s CE. Since that time, says Corbin, "Western philosophy and philosophical theology have lacked the means of making any sense of religion and art." With a return at that time to the rationality of Greek philosophy, imaginal consciousness was, as Corbin says, “abandoned to the poets.” The American scholar Thomas Cheetham phrases Corbin's point delightfully: "The Western world lost its angels."

With this loss of imaginal consciousness, not just poets but "all other artists," says Corbin, were "thereby marginalized and entirely misunderstood by everyone else." And it's that loss which is the source of our contemporary impasse.

Today, it is especially the "contemplatives and mystics" of Cynthia's conference title-- who, along with the "poets and other artists"-- have a major role in its recovery.

These "misunderstood" and "marginalized" individuals, who by their personality type are more open to Intuitive-Imaginality than many other persons, have the job of being "prophets and visionaries" for the rest of us as Western society tries to recover its natural capacity for Imaginal Vision.

Wading through Corbin's odd language isn't easy-- he likes to use Latin, Greek and Arabic words "for clarification"-- but I've found his work and Cynthia's overview of our present situation to be profound. Probably the most accurate way I can describe what the recovery of Imaginal Vision is all about for us today is that it is a bringing together of cosmic evolution and personal transformation at the most intimate levels.

When Western society adopted what Corbin calls "the kind of consciousness which ignores consciousness," we lost contact with our own energy-sources. We lost contact with the angels and spirits-- the energies of the universe, by whatever name-- by which we are empowered to become persons-- and, as Corbin emphasizes, thereby to become a theophany.

He not only stresses that each of us is a unique manifestation of the Mystery, but also that this cosmic-human-divine union-- which is an intuitive-imaginal perception of reality at its depths-- happens primarily by way of ritual. (You can see why Corbin speaks to me! I'll share my thoughts about that, later in this post.)

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Teilhard's noosphere has long become a fact of everyday life and internet resources abound on the web for those who want to tune in to these perspectives. Two of the resources listed below are in pdf form; I've included directions for the second step needed. They are well-worth the few extra seconds it takes to access them.

For Cynthia Bourgeault's own website, click here.

Videos of Cynthia's four talks at the Gerald May symposium are available on the Shalem Institute website: click here. Her three Saturday talks can be watched free, but for some reason, there's a fee for viewing the video of her Friday evening presentation. Unfortunately, I found the videos I looked at to be poorly filmed and difficult to watch.

The texts of two of Constance Fitzgerald's theological presentations are available on the web. For the first one, just click the title: "Impasse and Dark Night." For the second, click the title: "From Impasse to Prophetic Hope: Crisis of Memory," then look for that title in the list which appears. Both presentations are fascinating and tremendously helpful for understanding the impasse in which we-- church and world-- find ourselves at this moment in our history.

There's also a great deal of internet material available both by and about Henri Corbin. A long and very interesting discussion between two women connected with group peace work, Carol Frenier and Lois Sekerak Hogan, helps us to see how Intuitive-Imaginality connects with many contemporary concerns: "Engaging the Imaginal Realm: Doorway to Collective Wisdom." 

You can also tackle Corbin directly, if you want to give him a try. Two translations of his most basic essay, Imaginalis Mundus, are available. I found them both-- separately-- fascinating. Corbin's perspectives are so unfamiliar that these two translations of the one same work read almost like two different essays. For the earlier English translation, click here. For the later (and, with Corbin's permission, somewhat shortened) English version of "Mundus Imaginalis," click here.

I think the most helpful resource by far for a good overview of Corbin's insights is a talk given October, 2010, in Oxford, England, by the American scholar Thomas Cheetham. Cheetham teaches at the College of the Atlantic, a beautiful school just a short distance from downtown Bar Harbor, Maine. (I studied environmental chemistry there in the mid1990s!) His talk is an extremely thorough description of the four major themes of Corbin's work. For that talk, click here and then click on the talk's long title at the top right of the web site: "The Prophetic Tradition and The Battle for the Soul of World: An Introduction to the Spiritual Vision of Henri Corbin."

These are enough resources to keep anyone busy for a long time. And like everything else, the more we learn, the more we realize how just little we know. I keep asking myself, "Why didn't I hear about Henri Corbin thirty years ago?" You may be thinking that, too.

In any case, many of these resources about Imaginal Vision are wonderfully significant. If you have trouble choosing, I suggest you start with Cheetham's talk.

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PART TWO (added on 9 July)

Probably because I've been familiar with Merton and Panikkar for many years and have known of Bruno Barnhart's work for a decade or more, it's the insights of Henri Corbin which I've found most helpful at this stage in my life. "Helpful" is an understatement!

Corbin's work turns out to be extremely significant for me personally. The best way I can say it is that, "what Merton did for me when I was 10 years old, Corbin is doing for me when I'm 75 years old."

When I first read his definitive essay, Mundus Imaginalis-- and despite the many Arabic words and his references to medieval Persian sages whom I had never even known existed-- I found myself immersed in a context in which I felt quite at home. I knew from experience what Corbin was talking about. Although I have few words to describe it, it was a powerful affirmation of my life's most basic interests and concerns.

One of the most significant things for me is how Corbin connects imaginal vision with religious ritual. One quote, which makes little sense on first reading (so, please be patient with his wording below), sums up for me much of what he has to say about it.

"Symbol" is Corbin's name for what we see when we see imaginally. In distinguishing symbols from allegories and other fantasy images he says, "Every allegorical interpretation is harmless; the allegory is a sheathing, or, rather, a disguising, of something that is already known or knowable, ...while the appearance of an Image having the quality of a symbol is [in contrast] an ur-phenomenon, unconditional and irreducible, the appearance of something that cannot manifest itself otherwise to the world where we are."

In saying that symbols-- our in-depth experiences of reality which result from the imaginal vision-- are "ur-phenomena," Corbin means that something new appears when we perceive the world imaginally. Although his context is the study of Persian Sufi sages, he's talking about exactly the same thing contemporary science refers to as evolutionary emergence and Irenaeus of Lyons calls the novitatem.

Corbin's emphasis on the fact that the novitatem-- the ur-phenomenon which emerges from our imaginal vision-- is ontologically real appears to me to be a breakthrough for both science and for the religious traditions of the Western world. I think it may someday be recognized as the essence of our present Second Axial Period.

The first Axial Period started around 500 BCE when global humanity began on a wide scale to understand the nature of the human person and of personal transformation. The mindfulness techniques of Buddhism are probably the best known example of these personal transformation processes.

In the second Axial Period-- of which we're at the beginnings right now-- we're coming to understand something of the evolution of the universe and of human development within that larger context of cosmic transformation. It's what the New Cosmology is all about.

Corbin's special contribution is that he links cosmic transfiguration and personal transformation with divine incarnation. It's a version of Panikkar's cosmos-theos-anthropos perspective which I've mentioned often in these posts. If the spiritual traditions of Asia tend to focus on personal transformation, the focus of Western religion at its best has been the unity of the cosmic, human and divine. But what's especially clear today, thanks to the new scientific cosmology, is that we understand it not as a static unity but as a process of dynamic emergence.

What Corbin specifically helps us to see is that how we participate in that process-- the means by which we take part in it-- is by using our long-neglected human capacity for imaginal vision.

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One aspect of Corbin's perspective which makes his ideas especially valuable in the current cultural-religious impasse is that he can talk about Imaginal Vision in the language of the ancient Near East, the very source and root of the spiritual worldview which eventually evolved into the religious traditions of Western culture.

And this lets us see-- for the first time for me-- not just a possible coming together of Islam with the rest of the West, but also how it might even be that the inclusion of Islam will be what finally holds the whole of the Western spiritual traditions together.

I want to offer a few brief examples of Corbin's insights with regard to the recovery of Imaginal Vision. He notes that this recovery "presupposes a scale of being with many more degrees than ours." It's odd philosophical language, but he's saying that we need to see reality in terms of levels of emergence. He says explicitly, "We need a new cosmology."

Corbin wrote those words in the 1960s. They're an early version of what has come to be called the "New Story of the Universe" and, more recently, "Big History"-- precisely that evolutionary perspective spelled out for us originally by Teilhard de Chardin and enhanced by the work of Thomas Berry.

I offer two other brief-- but definitely not trivial-- examples of Corbin's insights. One is that in describing the experience of the medieval Persian sages, Corbin notes that "the ultimate thought of Shi'ism" is not a "social or political fantasy" but "the experience of an eschatology, because it is an expectation which is, as such, a real Presence here and now."

The other is that in expanding on this distinction between fantasy images and the reality of the world which we see via our Imaginal Vision, Corbin emphasizes that what he calls "the resurrection body" is "certainly not an imaginary body."

His words are awkward, but they are examples of the fact that those aspects of our Western world's religious tradition which seem least meaningful for many today-- precisely those aspects such as eschaton and resurrection-- have a coherency in the perspectives of Corbin's mundus imaginalis that is impossible in the mundus rationalis of reductionist science.

So, while Cynthia Bourgeault's emphasis on the need for Imaginal Vision in moving beyond the present religious impasse sounds no doubt strange at first, it looks like she is very much on the right track. I think the idea of eschatology as "experienced expectation," for example, may in itself be sufficient for Christian theology-- understood as Panikkar does in the broader sense of Christophany or theophany-- to persist as a life-giving perspective even as the relevance of our conventional religious institutions seem to be fading away quickly.

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Of special interest to me is Corbin's emphasis on the basics of religious experience. He not only links cosmic transfiguration on one side and divine incarnation on the other with our personal transformation, he specifically sees this happening by way of symbol and ritual.

"Ritual," for Corbin, is simply a name for what we do when we use our Imaginal Vision to see the ordinary things of life at a deeper than surface level. And "symbols" are whatever it is that we're focusing on when we look below the surface at their deeper reality.

We need to make a tremendous effort to understand Corbin's words, because the overwhelmingly dominant cultural biases of both religious dualism and scientific reductionism make it almost impossible for us to understand, without great effort, what Corbin is saying. I especially appreciate his perspectives here, because I have spent much of my life trying to figure out ways of talking about ritual and symbol clearly.

I hope later to say a bit more about that. The focus of my thoughts just now is another aspect of Corbin's understanding: that looking at reality imaginally is-- amazingly!-- how we become persons. In more familiar language, he's saying that the evolutionary and developmental process by which we become who-and-what we are-- the "individuation process"-- is empowered by our in-depth perception of images of reality's significance.

And he takes it one more step. He says clearly and strongly-- unequivocally-- that this process by which we grow as human beings is what spirituality is all about. Our personal growth and development is "the central principle," he says, "in all spiritual disciplines."

It's important to note that this view-- that the recovery of Imaginal Vision gives us a cosmological perspective for our growth and development-- is obviously well beyond the limitations of dualistic religions as well as of reductionist science. Which is why we need Cynthia's "contemplatives and mystics" to become "prophets and visionaries" for us.

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In his talk at Oxford, the American scholar Thomas Cheetham observed that Corbin "denies the Incarnation." I think it would be more accurate, however, to say that Corbin expands it. Corbin simply equates human individuation with divine incarnation, not limiting it to any single tradition, group or individual. For him, as with many contemporary religious thinkers, incarnation is an all-inclusive process.

But Corbin also stresses that it's also an intimately personal process. He says that each small step in our personal growth and development is a theophany-- a divine revelation. And he spells it out explicitly: "It is in prayer that the creative imagination most perfectly accomplishes its role in human life." Prayer, he says, "is the highest form, the supreme act of the Creative Imagination."

In describing the novitatem which comes to exist as theophany by this joining in prayer of consciousness and the empowering unconscious, Corbin's wording is a bit awkward, but it's well-worth looking at. He says that we can understand that "By virtue of the sharing of roles, the divine Compassion is the Prayer of God, aspiring to issue forth from his unknownness, whereas the Prayer of Man accomplishes this theophany because [it is] in it and through it that the 'Form of God' becomes visible to the heart."

He is saying that the divine mystery shows itself uniquely to, and in, and via each human being. And that the new creations which come to be by our imaginal perception of reality are specific theophanies appropriate to our own personalities. "Deep calls out to deep."

Corbin notes that the form of God that appears "is not of course God 'in His essence'-- the Deus absconditus – but rather is the form which he reveals uniquely to each soul." The Great Mystery calls out to the mystery which we are in such a way that, by our response to it, we actualize it in accordance with our own personality.

In that same Oxford talk, Cheetham pointed out that "The individual nature of these [unique] theophanies is a constant theme in Corbin’s work." Cheetham also mentioned another of Corbin's related and very significant ideas: that each time we have a theophany experience we have attained the fullness and completion of which we are capable at that moment.

Corbin says it in philosophical language: "Phenomenology becomes ontology." Cheethan's wording is clearer: each time we have such an experience "we are changed utterly, ontologically: in our very being." He concludes that it is here-- in this experience of transformation, this more and more complete and full becoming of who-and-what we are which is also cosmic, human and divine transfiguration-- that we find the healing of that great schism that has split the West.

It's clear enough, I think, how Cynthia's four keys, as strange at first as they may seem, fit together. They are precisely what's needed if we are to move beyond our present cultural impasse.

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PART THREE (added on 14 July)

The inclusion of Imaginal Vision as one of the four keys which Cynthia Bourgeault says are needed in our present Impasse provides us with a wonderful overview of the contemporary convergence of science and religion. As I see it, the evolutionary perspective, the neurological understanding of human consciousness as the matter of the cosmos come to self-awareness, and the deepest spiritual traditions of the western world all converge in these perspectives of the Imaginalis Mundus.

The essence of this convergent picture is the fact that in becoming a person-- in being gathered, as Teilhard says, "from all time and the four corners of space"-- we are also, thereby, part of the evolution of the cosmos and participants in divine incarnation-- all three, at once.

And-- most amazingly for me-- all this happens by way of ritual. Henri Corbin's perspectives are a powerful affirmation of my life. In this Part Three I'll share some thoughts about how and why I find his ideas so meaningful.

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For a start, I understand far better now why-- despite my life-long interest in religious ritual and willingness to share my understanding of it with others-- I have found talking about it so difficult. While I seem to have been born with a skill for aiding persons who want to do ritual to do it well, expressing it conceptually has been just about impossible.

Corbin helps a lot. He makes clear first that "symbols" are simply the world we live in looked at with our imaginal awareness, and secondly that ritual is simply the act of intentionally doing that looking.

But, as he says, ours is a culture which, a thousand years ago, adopted a form of consciousness which ignores this needed imaginal consciousness.

We still do ritual, of course; it is as necessary for us as food and water. But there is simply no way to conceptually understand it-- no way to understand just what ritual is and how it works-- in our impoverished cultural context.

Another aspect of that cultural impoverishment which Corbin helps makes clear is that seeing imaginally via ritual changes our personal reality. Via ritual, we become ontologically new, and that resulting newness is thereby, as Corbin stresses, a theophany.

But none of these words-- "theophany," "novitatem," "symbol," "ritual"-- makes much sense in a culture as intuitively and imaginally impoverished as is ours.

Although I have a fairly decent background in philosophical and theological language-- broader than many, at least-- I've found trying to talk about these things-- even to persons who are intensely interested in them-- to be a difficult task.

Corbin makes clear that the only way to make any sense of them is to recover our awareness of imaginal consciousness-- to add (in Jungian terms) the missing fourth to the mandala of our four-fold mind, and to give our attention (in Native American imagery) to the shamanic Black Bear at the west on the Medicine Wheel.

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I also understand better, thanks to Corbin, the reason why such things as mandala images, personal development, ritual and cosmic evolution matter so much to me personally.

When I first read that Corbin said Western culture has "abandoned imaginal vision to the poets," it reminded me of how often I've said to myself "I wish I were a poet." That's not because I want to write poetry but because I would like to have the skill with words that poets and other artists have, to explain well just what rituals are and how they work.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a poet or artist, but do I share with such creative people their basic personality type. Corbin says we have been "marginalized." I've known for decades that I have a strong intuitive-introvert orientation-- that's INTJ, for those who know the Myers-Briggs terminology-- and that that is, clearly, the source of my interest in ritual. I just didn't appreciate what a culturally-rejected group I was in!

My interest in science also helped me to understand this aspect of my personality. The word I found which best describes my personality orientation comes from cultural anthropology; I think of it as a paleolithic term: "shamanic." I remember how good I felt when I first heard Thomas Berry talk of the need for shamanic persons in our day. And Corbin's emphasis on personal transformation via ritual greatly enhances my self-understanding precisely within the broad evolutionary context of the New Cosmology.

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Corbin also helps me to understand my strong interest in and need to help others understand the new evolutionary cosmology. This is a bit more complicated than the two previous thoughts I've shared. It has to do with Corbin's description of just what goes on in personal growth and development, especially the fact that it's a creative process. He says, "the exploration of the imaginal realm requires participation between the human and divine and is at once discovery and creation."

The two words which powerfully grab my attention here are "exploration" and "discovery." I've thought of myself as an "explorer" for many years; and now, as it turns out, I hear Corbin saying that the transformation process includes explanation as well as exploration.

He uses an ancient Arabic term, ta'wil, along with the Latin and Greek terms exegesis and hermeneutics, to talk about what's involved in transformation via imaginal seeing.

In academic circles, "hermeneutics" and "exegesis" refer to the principles used to interpret-- to understand and explain-- sacred texts, symbols and images. The important point here for me is that explaining-- to myself and to others-- is itself an essential aspect of the transformation process. So I understand better now why I have such a strong teacher instinct. Corbin also helps me to understand why I lack, in contrast, much of a competitive drive.

Since Darwin's time, competition has been understood to be central to the process of natural selection. More recently, however, cooperation has come to be understood as equally necessary for the survival and reproduction of a species. I think that for me, with my strong teacher instincts and lack of competitive drives, explanation is my personal form of cooperation.

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I have one more idea I want to add with regard to my self-understanding. When Corbin says that personal transformation via imaginal vision is the central principle in all spiritual disciplines, he adds an extremely important point. It only works, he says, "in the measure to which it furnishes the means of going beyond all conformisms, all servitudes to the letter, all opinions ready-made."

It's funny language, certainly, but it clarifies well the fact that those of us who are included among the poets and other artists-- explorers, shamans, mystics and contemplatives-- feel "marginalized and not understood by everyone else." When it comes to the cosmic drive for personal transformation, rigidity and conformity don't stand a chance!

Personally, I never understood why it was always so important for me at an early age to think for myself, not to follow the letter of the law, not to go along with the crowd just to get along. I remember that whenever I heard someone say something like "What will the neighbors think?" I always said to myself, "Whatever does that matter?" I didn't know, then, that I was a marginal person!

And I can see now, much more clearly than I did previously, what does matter. What matters is the very opposite of "all conformisms, servitudes, and ready-made opinions." A good name for it might be "intentional marginality." Clearly, it's what each of us is being called to in our day. Cynthia's four keys are precisely what's needed for our society to move beyond the impasse. My encounter with Henri Corbin has indeed been a major breakthrough for me!

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A final point. I thought back in March, with the publication of post #98 about the work of Terrence Deacon and the unfinished business of science, that my efforts to share thoughts about the convergence of science and religion via this blog were done. But-- thanks to Cynthia Bourgeault and the Shalem Institute symposium-- Henri Corbin came along less than a month later.

Terrence Deacon and Henri Corbin are looking at things from just about as different directions as possible-- cutting edge anthropology and neuroscience on one side, metaphysics and medieval Persian-Sufi mysticism on the other-- but to me Corbin seems to be saying something very similar to what Deacon is telling us. Just as Deacon says that we've left ourselves out of our scientific worldview, Corbin observes that we've left our own personal consciousness out of our religious worldview.

They're both talking about aspects of the real world which are denied by the "facts-and-logic" perspectives of Western culture's patriarchal rationality. And they're both calling our attention to precisely that aspect of our unawareness which has resulted in the present impasse.

Deacon uses the term "ententionality" to describe those aspects of our lives-- such as purpose, value, function, meaning and personal experience-- which were neglected by science because they can't be found in physical or material objects. He says what all such "ententional phenomena" have in common is an end or goal, and notes that they are obviously real because they so strongly influence us.

I think Corbin's term "imaginality" may have a role in the present religious and cultural impasse similar to that which Deacon's term "ententionality" has in expanding contemporary scientific insights.

Just as Deacon says that the unfinished business of science is to look at the processes by which the physical matter of the world becomes living and conscious, so Corbin is telling us that spirituality also has an unfinished business: to look at the processes by which conscious matter at the level of the human person becomes a reflectively self-aware theophany.

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When he was interviewed by Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow in February 2012 (to listen to the interview, click here), Deacon said he thought it would probably take a few decades for his concepts to catch on; that's the way new ideas work in science. (I'd like to think it won't take that long!) In any case, Corbin died back in 1978. His ideas have already been around for several decades. Corbin's ideas are due!

With events like the Shalem Institute's conference and Cynthia Bourgeault's calling our attention to Corbin's Imaginalis Mundus as one of the four keys needed for moving beyond the present impasse, this may very well be the time that contemplatives and mystics-- as well as all the other marginalized artists, poets, shamans, explorers and teachers-- are called to become prophets and visionaries so that Western society can finally make its move beyond the impasse.

My long-time friend whose attendance at Cynthia's symposium sparked this final post mentioned that people he talked to had come from great distances to hear her. It seems we are in fact entering a very hopeful time. That feels good!

sam@macspeno.com

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My thanks to all who encouraged me over the last five and a half years to persist with this blog adventure. Thanks to you who are reading these words right now. And special thanks to Anne for her many, many hours of proof-reading! -Sam **************************************