Tapsearch Com EditorA friendly imagination
Imagine you and me and what we can do together for the common good
In exploring personality and character, the imagination plays a very important part. Of all the four internal senses, imagination seems to have most to do with personality. Imagination is the faculty that gives us life and color, variety and resource not only in our mental life but in the operation of divine influences. Even our abstract thoughts depend on our imagination. Low intelligence is often the basis of a dull imagination. The good thing about imagination, is that you can stimulate and grow it. In fact it is sometime said that the large part of the science of mental hygiene is connected with the management of the imagination.
Imagination is the power or re-presenting to the mind in a concrete way, things that already have been perceived by the senses. The sense organ picks up records of light and sound and translates it into a nerve stimulation and this nerve stimulation is passed on to the cortex of the brain where it leaves a record. The record remains in out subconscious level until we wish to hve it back and the imagination is the power that brings it back. Most people seem to have what is called a visual imagination. We can recall images of mental pictures of things. Others have what is called an auditory imagination recalling things by the sounds fo things imagined. Listening to music can develop an auditory imagination. Still others have what is called a kinesthetic imagination based on motion and particularly muscular motion. Such a person, imagining a train, will feel the swaying, the jarring, the ryythm of the train ride. Nearly everyone has some of each. A blind person from birth will never have a visual imagination - a deaf person will never have an auditory imagination. Most of us have a mixed type with one perhaps stronger than the others.
Imagination can play games in sleep and in between in a matter of degrees. However, imagination has two primary functions. The imagination can be reproductive of past events or it can be creative where it builds something new out of the parts of previous sensations or events. The ceative function is not purely creative but can build new things out of the things on record. Disney created imaginative cartoons this way.
A secondary function of the imagination is to serve the intellect in its acquiring the use of ideas as they say inquiring minds need to know or imagine this or that. The imagination belongs primarily to body rather than the soul as a recording machine. The imagination can only produce images and only images. The intellect produces the ideas. The two things, image and idea, however, though different are always together. Thus the the intellect is powerfully aided by an active and vivid imagination. This makes a tremendous difference in personality with the old saying applying - just imagine walking in their shoes for awhile.
Great inventors must have vivid imagination. Atletes can use a repetitive imagination to hone their skills. In pursuit of the supernatural , saints can imagine what is possible to achieve in this life by imagining all that God can do.
( We will continue exploring the imagination in the next post - the imagination can develop a good personality and we will explore what the "listening ear" can accomplish in terms of a "friendly imagination" that links us to others in good ways.
By Ray Tapajna from notes taken from a college course by Father McQuade - using my imagination to plug it into the present. See other articles and sites at Tapart News and Art that Talks
In exploring personality and character, the imagination plays a very important part. Of all the four internal senses, imagination seems to have most to do with personality. Imagination is the faculty that gives us life and color, variety and resource not only in our mental life but in the operation of divine influences. Even our abstract thoughts depend on our imagination. Low intelligence is often the basis of a dull imagination. The good thing about imagination, is that you can stimulate and grow it. In fact it is sometime said that the large part of the science of mental hygiene is connected with the management of the imagination.
Imagination is the power or re-presenting to the mind in a concrete way, things that already have been perceived by the senses. The sense organ picks up records of light and sound and translates it into a nerve stimulation and this nerve stimulation is passed on to the cortex of the brain where it leaves a record. The record remains in out subconscious level until we wish to hve it back and the imagination is the power that brings it back. Most people seem to have what is called a visual imagination. We can recall images of mental pictures of things. Others have what is called an auditory imagination recalling things by the sounds fo things imagined. Listening to music can develop an auditory imagination. Still others have what is called a kinesthetic imagination based on motion and particularly muscular motion. Such a person, imagining a train, will feel the swaying, the jarring, the ryythm of the train ride. Nearly everyone has some of each. A blind person from birth will never have a visual imagination - a deaf person will never have an auditory imagination. Most of us have a mixed type with one perhaps stronger than the others.
Imagination can play games in sleep and in between in a matter of degrees. However, imagination has two primary functions. The imagination can be reproductive of past events or it can be creative where it builds something new out of the parts of previous sensations or events. The ceative function is not purely creative but can build new things out of the things on record. Disney created imaginative cartoons this way.
A secondary function of the imagination is to serve the intellect in its acquiring the use of ideas as they say inquiring minds need to know or imagine this or that. The imagination belongs primarily to body rather than the soul as a recording machine. The imagination can only produce images and only images. The intellect produces the ideas. The two things, image and idea, however, though different are always together. Thus the the intellect is powerfully aided by an active and vivid imagination. This makes a tremendous difference in personality with the old saying applying - just imagine walking in their shoes for awhile.
Great inventors must have vivid imagination. Atletes can use a repetitive imagination to hone their skills. In pursuit of the supernatural , saints can imagine what is possible to achieve in this life by imagining all that God can do.
( We will continue exploring the imagination in the next post - the imagination can develop a good personality and we will explore what the "listening ear" can accomplish in terms of a "friendly imagination" that links us to others in good ways.
By Ray Tapajna from notes taken from a college course by Father McQuade - using my imagination to plug it into the present. See other articles and sites at Tapart News and Art that Talks
