Solemnly nodding to one another in the vibrating silence, they agreed to the pact. The two companions gazed at each other’s dim and shadow dusted shapes, enshrouded by a musty darkness on the lower floor of the field house. They make their way, in contemplative concentration, to the kitchen. Each dipped a small rag into the sink filled with a prodigious number of ice-cubes. Simultaneously they spoke to their eyes saying, “We will soak you in these cool salves when the ritual is ended. Until then we ask that you remain strong and serve us in our purpose.”

A large candle imperceptibly bleeding wax was waiting as the two sat on soft black cushions, in the large, otherwise unlit hall. They sat comfortably, each gazing at the other’s left eye, which were respectively flickering and glinting off reflections of the dancing, soft light. In this way they struggled through minutes in an attempt not to blink. Tears poured down each of their faces and as the minutes approached an hour, the tears ceased, and something incredible began to happen…

Before detailing the thrilling incidents that followed, the purposes of this current unconscious newswire will be better served by curtailing it. For, there is a great need to activate the imagination. What happens next? You decide… use your imaginative sense. In the last article I mentioned the fact that we’d explore the nexus or meeting place of the unconscious and conscious realms. One such junction could be what we call the “mind’s eye.”

To begin with, just think for a moment what takes place when you imagine something. Everyone does it differently. One person’s pre-raphaelitic and highly vivid visual landscape, is, on the other hand, someone else’s Sonata or audible internal soundtrack. One person whose imagination is very admirable is often the one who denies it most. That is the same person who could talk your ear off for hours telling you about, for instance, the 3000-megabit microchip with the nano-tech sub-woofers in 3-D. My own imagination goes dizzy at the thought of the hyper-vivid and rich environment that the engineer, the mechanic, architect, mathematician, hobbyist, or geek of any stripe, creates within the specialties they have mastered. Yet, these very same geniuses are the ones who will throw off their gloves and deny, up and down, until they’re blue in the face, that they have any speckle of an inkling of a thing reminiscent of the imagination (with a few exceptions). I say they have one, and you have one, and I do, and a grand one at that.

The imaginative function is linked to the soul. The soul is a meeting-ground between the airy spirit, and the juicy, blood-flow of matter. The soul isn’t a ground though, and that’s an important distinction in what we’re going after. It is no-where, not even yet a space between, but the reference to such a thing. As Henry Corbin tells it, certain Twelfth Century Persian Poets, as the “Na-Koja Abad”, referred to the heightened, actualized experience of your imagination. Literally it was, the land, (abad) of no-where (Na Koja). It is what Thomas Moore originally meant by Utopia, a word he coined to designate as a place without location. The current meaning of the word has evolved to represent a fictitious dream world. But Moore’s intent, according to Corbin, was intended to refer to a place inhabited by men; a city, that was real but that didn’t exist in a geographical space. A place where the question, “from which way did I come?” cannot be answered.

This City of Nowhere, is the place where the imagination takes on a life of it’s own. A place so real, it in some respects exceeds in the depth of sense perception, what we call the hard and sometimes smelly real world. In this place, the internal is made external. This witnessing of such a place is, in the end, created or generated by the imagination. It is a place and an experience that is real, however, it is also a location in internal space (and not at all the “utopia” which has grown into a pejorative name for someone’s inane fantasy of a perfect world).

Of course, an actual experience in this location of the high-beam reality of the imagination can often be tersely labeled as “ravings” and “figments” of an over-stimulated imagination. A vast number of our experiences in this land go largely un-noticed. Who ever hears about the latest visions of the great American Saint? Dreams and even musings qualify as kindred to this great country of Na-Koja Abad; however, they’re often diminished or forgotten as tidbits shortly after they occur. I ask you, is the universe inside you worth ignoring day to day?

Imagine that your world has just turned inside out. Every external thing around you fades as your inner landscape takes shape and emerges as a very real experience and place. You have passed the last mountain, over Mount Olympus, home of the gods. Your are in your internal Utopia in the original sense. This internal city, has places of it’s own, streets, and people, and you sense them with senses heightened beyond your current five. However, as glorious and able to be experienced in three dimensions, it is not a place. When you return from Na-Koja Abad you haven’t been anywhere. You’re just where you left yourself sitting at the kitchen table.

The reality of this internal landscape is often referred to as a spiritual one. I mean to emphasize this place as a meeting ground between the spiritual and the physical world. Carl Jung had an advisor, Philemon, who came to him out of the imaginal realm: "Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I. . . . Psychologically, Philemon represented superior insight. He was a mysterious figure to me. At times he seemed to me quite real, as if he were a living personality. I went walking up and down the garden with him, and to me he was what the Indians call a guru." Although he knew well that Philemon was not a card-carrying member of the shoe-wearing, pavement-pounding, human race, he realized that the man talking to him was an individual with thoughts independent of his own. The ecstatic, rapturous visions of saints and shamans are a combining of the spiritual reality with undeniable realism of the senses. The stigmata phenomenon would be a strange exaggeration of this whereby the spiritual reality bleeds over into physical one. The sublime spiritual is experienced in the conscious body as the soul is ignited into blinding wakefulness.

That realization makes the nexus we’re talking about a crucial location that leads to another rich dimension of experience that’s tapped into all too rarely. So how does one activate it? How does a fellow come to “no- place”? Can we allow in the contents of the unconscious and let them take root and flower in our conscious experience and through our imaginations? Absolutely. We do it all the time; we’re constantly engaged in this activity that activates the “mind’s eye.” Who though, is imagining what? Rather, Are we the ones imagining, or are we being led by unconscious forces filtering over as a static interference into our conscious lives?

We cannot answer these questions, but they bring to light a pertinent lesson from history. For brief periods, most notably during the second and third century in Alexandria among the Neo-Platonists, with certain 12th century Shi-ite Muslim sects in Persia, and perhaps for the last time until recently, a few esoteric Renaissance philosophers, there was a determined effort to consciously recognize and realize this meeting place or “third force” that brings together the Spiritual and Physical. Marsilio Ficino, a Florentine Astrologer, Musician, Physician, and Philosopher, of the flowering Renaissance, explained it well when he said: "If there were only these two things in the universe-on one side, the Intellect [Spirit] and on the other the Body [i.e., Matter]-but no Soul, then neither would the Intellect be attracted to the Body...nor would the Body be drawn to the Intellect...But if a Soul which conforms to both were placed between them, an attraction will easily occur to each one on either side...[Soul] is the mean of all things, in her fashion she contains all things and is proportionally near to both. Therefore she is equally connected with everything, even with those things which are at a distance from each other, because they are not at a distance from her."

I would like to suggest that we’re lucky in our day and age to be afforded the opportunity to re-member this function. We’re fortunate to have resources like the dearth of knowledge provided by the Internet, from which to validate it and put before us an incredible opportunity to experience the correspondence between heaven and earth if you will. The Persian mystic-poets were far ahead of us in terms of our current crisis between the dualistic clash of physical/spiritual. They had understood that there is a meeting place between those opposite realms that unlocked, in their lingo: “the hidden Imam,” the true treasure/teacher. We can do this too, if we make certain leaps of faith. Once we dive off, out of the mist below, the “land of no-where” can come into view. One method of stepping off on a journey to the hidden realm is by activating one’s imagination. A website helps with the following explanation of how to approach this:

One method of stepping off on a journey to the hidden realm is by activating one’s imagination. The most direct way of explaining what Active Imagination is follows: Active Imagination places us at the threshold between our everyday sort of awareness and the dream world. If we can bring a degree of alertness and openness to the threshold, the dream world will reach out to meet us. The dream world provides us with its unique view on the world and we bring our questions, our capacity for learning, and our ability to be surprised. This marriage, of inner world and outer world, can provide our lives with much needed insight, energy, passion, and meaning. Active Imagination is not hypnosis, contemplation, or meditation. Hypnosis asks us to turn off our alert mind to enter into the world of unconsciousness. Contemplation seeks to sharpen the mind's reasoning ability. Meditation asks us to move away from the dream world and our everyday mind through focusing on a single word, our breathing, or our movement.Elements of all of these practices are touched upon when practicing Active Imagination. But, Active Imagination relies upon an alert mind, the non-rational, and a high level of inner creative fludity. This is the only sort of environment that the inner marriage of everyday consciousness and the dream world can exist.

It’s very simple in its premise. Try it. Pick an image from a dream. Go to a quiet place and relax. Put things in your environment that heighten the quality of the image, be it music, colors, or an object resembling the image. Bring the image from the dream (person, place, thing) into view in your mind’s eye. Now that it’s established, interact. If it’s a person, say “hello.” Ask her why she appeared in your dream. If it’s a place or thing, take in sounds, smells, and ask yourself questions about it. Look for new details, feelings, thoughts. Record, in writing, Dictaphone, or some other way of documenting your experience. You have just set foot upon the road to the “eighth climate” beyond the “Mountain of Qaf,” as Sohravadi put it.

I firmly believe that you can reckon with these dizzying heights, and be emboldened by the passionate fire that alights at the crossroads between your conscious and unconscious quarters. In this discussion we have already crossed the threshold beyond the dualistic dilemma of spirit/matter and onto a third place that involves their interplay. With matter slightly less substantive and spirit being an ounce or two more material, the soul emerges as if from a deep sleep. A golden key appears in your hand as you step up to the gates leading to the forgotten valley beyond the purview of your current conscious state.

By the way, what happened to the two companions facing one another in the dimly-lit hall? For one, their old pillars of personal identity fell away and new forms emerged, quite literally. For another, use your imagination and in so doing help turn your universe inside out, and smell the roses there, in your own personal garden of the gods.

Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 183.
Ficino, Three Books on Life, Bk. III, Chap. 1, p. 243
Website: http://www.bodysoulandspirit.net/aidefine.htm
Corbin, Swedenborg and Esoteric Islam.