Essay 17-Imagination

Opening

Imagination is an essential part of any kind of philosophy or even human life at all. The capacity to think and visualize reality is necessary to produce any logical judgements. However, sometimes imaginations can contradict each other in interesting ways. These problems must be resolved if we desire to retain the stability and validity of our system. Particularly the contradiction is what happens when we imagine a reality where the laws do not match the laws as resulted from our other imaginations.

Discussion

The first principle of reality that we must accept is that all conscious experience is proof for the existence or presence of the objects behind the experience. We have established as well that imagination constitutes part of conscious experience. As by fact, imagination is indeed a form of experience which we do consciously. Therefore, imagination alone, which is sometimes seen as inferior to sensation, is sufficient to prove the existence of objects.

As such, surely if I imagine a reality where existence is not eternal, then such a reality must exist. However, this would be contradictory to the other facts that existence is eternal for all of reality. Before we continue on to pin down the existence of this contradictory reality, let us review the definition of reality and how our imagination leads us to believe that existence is eternal.

Reality is the totality of all existence, so there is no exclusion from reality. If there is a law which applies to all of reality, then there cannot be any possible exclusion of that law. The law is “universal”, or to be accurate, it is “realistic”. Now what we must review or prove once more is how the eternity of existence applies for all of reality. It seems that at first simply imagining two realities with different laws would prove the locality of such law, but it is not as simple.

When we imagine, what we are doing is not making up objects in our mind, rather it is peering through reality through the standpoint of imagination. Imagination is not a method to create reality, it is a perspective to observe reality. As such sometimes when we only imagine the surface of the reality, it seems to be in a certain way. However, what is required is a deeper imagination, that is a deeper observation of reality.

We have observed through the power of imagination that objects can have no beginning through the concept of containment. It is observed that an object must be present within its cause so it can be real, as such it is already present in the beginning since if it wasn’t then no actual “realization” can happen. For the end, we observe that nothingness cannot be associated with any object and therefore objects cannot enter the nothingness.

These observations apply to all objects and if we examine each and every object, we will discover the same result which is the eternity of existence. We may imagine some object which do not follow that law, but that contradicts the established facts and definitions which are higher. So, there is a hierarchy of laws and imaginations. To imagine an object which is not eternal is simply to imagine the appearance of that object and not the deeper reality of that object, that it is eternal.

Unfortunately, the explanation that imaginations of improper objects are mere distortions fails in front of the highest principle that existence is guaranteed by conscious experience. However, we do need to ask, what kind of existence is guaranteed by experience? Of course, it seems that not a complete existence such that their properties would operate completely. What exists instead is some sort of “shadow” existence where the object exists sufficiently that it can be sensed by our imagination, but insufficiently that it does not actually operate.

A good analogy is the difference between objects in paper and objects in real life. A mask which has only been designed is only that, “designed”. It does not have an actual presence in real life such that it can operate and be used. I say it is an analogy as even such a mask as long as it does not violate the laws of reality still can operate completely in its own abstract realm. Any violation of law does not operate at all.

The shadow realm would then be the realm where reality is not what it is. Do not misunderstand this, the complete laws of reality still apply in this shadow realm. As such there are still no actual violations of law. In a sense there is a thing which we can think of but does not exist. That is the actual form of the violation or contradiction, does not exist. It exists but only as an abstract concept which cannot be realized in any way. Therefore, with the introduction of the shadow realm, it is all resolved.

Closing

In summary, we have reviewed the ideas that grounds this problem. We reviewed that all conscious experience is proof of existence. We also reviewed other concepts such as the totality of reality and the eternity of existence which applies to all of reality. The contradiction is when we imagine a reality where the laws do not match up. As such, the shadow realm is introduced, as a place where things exist but not in its fullness, only as a construct or imagination.