Even though I have been thinking about this idea for some time, I was inspired to start this series when Jack Preston King published his article Is God Imagination? on medium.com. He is a big fan of the Romantic poets, and I am beginning to explore them more.
Continuing with Jack’s theme, here is a quote from the spiritually oriented writer George Trevelyan: “The poets and prose writers of the Romantic Movement recognized Imagination as that faculty which could apprehend the Whole, and by doing so restore to the soul what the analyzing intellect and sense-bound perception had taken from it”. He goes on to quote John Keats: “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affection and the truth of Imagination”, then says: “We must, however, ask in what sense imagination is true (his italics). The emerging world view helps us answer that question in much the same way that Coleridge, in ‘Religious Musings,’ did 175 years ago”:
“There is one mind, one omnipresent mind, Omnific. His most holy name is Love. Truth of subliming import! ……. ’Tis the sublime in man, Our noontide majesty, to know ourselves Parts and proportions of one wondrous whole! This fraternizes man, this constitutes Our charities and bearings. But ’tis God Diffused through all, that doth make all one whole”.
Trevelyan continues, finding another term for Imagination: “With an inner eye, we are looking into this whole, with what Coleridge called ‘sacred sympathy’ — for once perceived as part of that whole, everything alive becomes sacred”.
If only scientists were allowed to use their Imagination as well as their reason!
Footnote: (1) A Vision of the Aquarian Age, Gateway Books, 1994, p14