Aspects of the Imaginal (Part 1)

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to this short course, this set of talks that will focus on soulmaking, imaginal practice, related ideas like eros, etc., and add to what we've talked about over the last several years around these themes, around what they mean, what they might mean; what they mean in the Dharma and for the Dharma; how they might also expand, and stretch, and enrichen, and deepen or dimensionalize our understanding, our sense of what Dharma practice is, what it can open up, where it can go, etc.

Actually, if I'm really honest -- I know this will change, but right now, I'm feeling a little bit ambivalent about giving more talks on these themes. You're aware there's already quite a large edifice of teachings around this subject of soulmaking, etc., in the Dharma. And it's a lot. It's a lot to digest. It's a lot to come to terms with, to get under one's belt in terms of practice. It's a lot to understand. It's a lot for the heart to open to. It's not simple, you know. I'm really aware of that. And it's quite new in terms of being different from the usual cultural ways of seeing the world, feeling ourselves, sensing existence, and also quite different from a number of, let's say, other Dharma approaches, or other perspectives on what Dharma is and can be.

So I know it's a lot, and I'm feeling a little ambivalent -- just in this moment; I'm sure it'll change -- but just not wanting to add too much more to that edifice at this point. I'm not wanting to give you too much, to overload you, to put too much out too fast that might be gobbled up in a way that gives you indigestion or confusion, etc. So there's a certain kind of pacing that I think is necessary to give attention to and mature reflection to, in the appropriation and approach and digestion, to these teachings.

So I don't want to add a lot of new material, and I won't be adding a lot of really new material, new ideas, and whole new directions. I won't really be doing that. Rather, this set of talks is kind of -- how would you say? -- supplementing or elaborating or clarifying previous material that we've already put out. Now, I'm not, on the other hand, going to repeat everything that we've gone through in the last few years in terms of laying out that whole edifice again, and explaining what we mean by all these terms and ways of practice. Rather, I hope, in these talks, to be able to clarify a little bit and supplement some of what was already said, where it's needed, where it seems, so far, that clarification and supplementation might be needed, just in terms of what we're getting back from people.

So an attempt to clarify certain aspects, themes, elements, and fill out some of the strands and elements of what we've done, and the implications, and perhaps show just a few possible directions for extending practice. As I said, I'm aware it's a lot already, a lot to take on in terms of practice possibilities, and skills, and the art that that requires, and the know-how, and the capacities that that requires, as well as just intellectually. So for the heart, the soul, the practice, the mind -- it's a lot. Really, the purpose is not to add more, but rather to supplement and clarify what's already been put out there in order that you can digest more and understand better.

Now, all of this -- in these talks and the past talks, a lot of the past talks from the last couple of retreats perhaps -- certainly these will all sound pretty abstract, pretty, as someone put it, "bizarre and baffling," unless you've done quite a bit of experimenting, serious experimenting, with imaginal practice, and eros in practice, and what we're calling 'soulmaking' (when we use these words 'imaginal,' 'eros,' 'soulmaking'), and general Dharma practice (mindfulness, and samādhi, and mettā, and some understanding of emptiness, and all of that). All of what we're going to talk about in these talks will sound pretty abstract, puzzling. It will be hard to recognize the value in it without quite a bit of grounding and intimate familiarity with these kinds of practices.

If that is there, or to the degree that is there, I think, I hope, that some of the discriminations that we'll make, or the clarifications, you'll really recognize their value, and recognize the significance of these discriminations and nuances, and really see their relevance. But without that practice, yeah, probably it will sound a bit strange, all this. Or just not very interesting, a little irrelevant. [7:08]

(1) Okay. Now, in the first talk, or the first group of talks, depending on how you count -- I might divide them into parts -- in this first talk, I want to take a look in a bit more detail, at this word 'imaginal' that we've been using. Now, I want to clarify what we mean, what Catherine and I are meaning, when we use that word, 'imaginal,' as I'm aware it's a little bit in vogue in certain circles right now, and there's plenty of overlap between the way different people are using it, but there are also certain really significant differences.

And it's not to say one's better or worse, or right or wrong. I'm not interested in any of that. But in terms of what we're trying to lay out and put forward, in terms of that kind of edifice of teaching and conceptual framework and practice idioms, it is quite important that we're all on the same page about what we really mean when we use the word 'imaginal.' So I want to hopefully clarify that a little more. Really, that will involve reiterating and re-emphasizing certain aspects or elements of what that means, this word 'imaginal' or 'imaginal experience,' that may easily have been missed in past teachings, or I haven't been clear enough, or whatever, for lots of different reasons. [8:42]

(2) Secondly, in this first group of talks, also in order to help clarify, "What do we mean? And what are we talking about? What's involved in these practices?", I want to actually introduce a new term, new vocabulary, which is 'sensing with soul.' Now, I want to add this, not replace that word 'imaginal.' I'm aware some people really don't get on with the word 'imaginal.' Some people love it. Some people love it, but could use a little more understanding, actually, of what that means, and the discriminations, as I just said. And some people might prefer this phrase 'sensing with soul.'

So it's not so much a new concept -- and I'll explain what I mean as we go through this talk, this first group of talks -- not so much a new concept or a new practice or a new way of looking. It's really just another language for some of (or quite a bit of) what we've already been talking about. We might say it's almost identical with the word 'imaginal' or 'imaginally' -- 'perceiving imaginally' or whatever. It's almost identical. They're almost interchangeable. I'm quite happy with the word 'imaginal,' but if I remember to, I'll try and use them roughly 50/50, and you can kind of gravitate to whatever word you prefer. But hopefully, the most important thing, rather than the words, is the understanding. So hopefully, by introducing this different term, it will open up and increase the understanding, and make fuller the understanding, and more precise the understanding of what we're talking about.

So when I say -- and as I said, I'll explain more -- when I say 'sensing with soul,' when I use that term, I do mean to include in that term, in that phrase, 'sensing with soul,' the perception of intrapsychic images: I close my eyes, and I see whatever it is, an image of a wise old man, or you know, whatever it is -- a so-called 'intrapsychic image.' So it includes that. That's part of sensing with soul, with the inner senses, we might say, the inner vision, the mind's eye, or whatever. We 'see' something, a so-called 'intrapsychic image.' That's part of sensing with soul. But another part of sensing with soul, and equally important, is the perceiving of this material world that we live in, and others, and objects, and things, and trees, and whatever it is, and perceiving them imaginally. So when we use this word 'imaginal,' we've actually been including this, this perception of the world imaginally. So another way of understanding all this, rather than the word 'imaginal,' is 'sensing with soul.' And I'll try and fill this out more as we go along. So that's the second aspect in the first talk/group of talks. [12:00]

(3) The third is a little of the 'how.' So there's some of the 'what': what do mean by this word 'imaginal'? What do we mean by 'sensing with soul'? What exactly do we mean? What's involved? A little of the 'what,' and a little about the 'how.' Sometimes I hear from people, "Sounds really interesting. I really want to develop this, but I don't get images. I don't get images, therefore it must be irrelevant to me." So I want to address the practitioner who thinks that is the case for themselves, that they don't get images. What might we develop in practice? How might that develop in practice beyond that statement, "I don't get images"? What needs to be understood? What needs to be developed? How can it be developed?

Or someone who's maybe listening, then, to this more nuanced and finely discriminating definition of what 'imaginal' means, and then says, "Hmm. I get images. But now I listen to what you say about what 'imaginal' means, I'm not sure they're imaginal," which is a really good thing to be aware of. And so, how might that practitioner, or a practitioner in that boat, be addressed and helped in practice? In other words, what allows some object of the imagination to become imaginal? What supports that?

Or someone says to me, "I only get intrapsychic images" (so-called intrapsychic; I haven't found a better word). "I don't really get what you mean when you talk about things like cosmopoesis, or seeing someone imaginally, or this sensing with soul -- also sensing the world with soul." What might be offered to such a practitioner who feels that they only get intrapsychic images?

And the opposite, if you like, or the complementary practitioner who says, "I get this kind of perceiving the world as sacred, and the sense of divinity in nature, and how the understanding and the practice of emptiness opens that up and legitimizes it. But I don't get any intrapsychic images. I don't know -- how does that happen?" So I also want to say something that hopefully will be helpful for such a practitioner as that.

So, with regard to practice, hopefully a little about -- I was going to say "getting," or, better, "receiving" images, opening to images; a little about how objects of the imagination, how we can support them to become more fully imaginal. And what is it -- again, about practice -- what is it, how can we support a sensing with soul, a sensing of the world/self/other, world/objects/things, material objects in the world, sensing with soul? What supports that movement to that kind of opening of perception? [15:34] So that's the third domain about practice that I hope to weave into this first group of talks.

(4) And lastly, fourthly, just a little bit more about some of the assumptions and implications in what we're saying. Again, I know I've touched on it quite a bit in the past, but just a little bit about some of the philosophical dimensions and aspects of this whole subject. And again, I know I've touched on it before, but specifically about ontology: that is, the question of "What is real?", or "What are we assuming is real in the world, in ourselves, in others?" Looking at that question of ontology is so central in terms of what gives a foundation to these practices, and this whole outlook, and this whole conceptual framework, but also is part of what gets opened up. Our whole sense of reality can be opened up, questioned, challenged, extended, etc.

And complementary to that is the whole philosophical area of epistemology, which is, "How do we know? How does a human being know?" I know I'm sitting on a chair right now. And I know. It's knowledge. I know that. And everyone would agree. You can see me: "Rob's sitting on a chair." And we just say, "Well, I take that knowledge for granted." And then when we get more into the imaginal or sensing the world with soul, then this question of "How can I claim knowledge? How can I claim this is knowledge?" Most of society -- contemporary Western society -- discredits, discounts that kind of perception as any kind of knowing of anything real. [17:39]

So again, these practices, and these concepts, and these ideas, and these sharings push on and break open or extend our epistemological notions. They call them into question, and they also rely on a questioning of epistemology, a penetrating kind of assessment and investigation of epistemology, of what knowledge is for a human being, and what counts as knowledge. What counts as knowing something? I don't mean intellectually knowing something. I mean knowing something with the senses as well, or the intuition -- knowing something with the heart. We'll go into this a little bit. I just want to touch on these areas. So those are the four main themes and strands that I want to weave together in this first group of talks.

Okay, so let's make a start and focus a little bit on this word 'imaginal.' And it seems to me that, in various ways, this word 'imaginal' is confusing for some people, or not clear, really. Its meaning is not clear for perhaps many people. Sometimes a person is aware of their confusion or their lack of clarity as to the meaning of the word 'imaginal.' And other times, they're not so aware. They're not even aware that they're confused. The conception that they have is confused. The idea is confused. And they're not aware that they're not clear. So as we said, it may be better for some people to gravitate towards this term/phrase that I'm introducing now, called 'sensing with soul.' [It] may be, for some people, more helpful for them to use that to get a better understanding and a better feel and approach to practice with the imaginal.

So if we think about the imagination for a moment, we can see very easily that the imagination is certainly part of being a human being. It's a faculty of the human being. But there's, at least to my mind, clearly a difference between what we might call papañca, and the way the imagination spins in a state of papañca, of proliferation -- "He/she looked at me a certain way, or didn't look at me a certain way, and now I believe they're evil, or this, or I'm a loser," or whatever it is, and the imagination spins off, creating catastrophic scenarios in the future, or whatever it is. So clearly there's that kind of use of the imagination, or ensnarement in the imagination run riot there -- very different than a mindful use of the imagination. For example, in mettā practice, I'm imagining my friend and keeping the image of her, the sense of her -- whether that's a visual image or not -- keeping the sense of her mindfully in the consciousness, and radiating the intention or energy of mettā towards him, towards her, towards them. There's a deliberate and mindful use of the imagination. Clearly very different than the use of the imagination in papañca.

And maybe, even, that use of the imagination is not just mindful but quite embodied. In other words, my energy body, my awareness of the energy body, is really integrated seamlessly in that experience of mindful imagination, for example, in mettā practice, so that I have the sense of my friend, the image of them, and the sense of the awareness of the energy body, and the intention of the mettā. And all that [is] kind of harmoniously woven together in the embodied, mindful imagination in the mettā practice. Certainly that's how I would tend to emphasize the practice of mettā, and how I would teach it. And then there might be a healing image, the use of a healing image. For example, we talked about the figure of love in the imagination a few retreats ago. And so it could be even someone like Tārā, or a deity like Tārā, or the Buddha, or Jesus, or your grandma, or whatever it is. And one -- again, with mindfulness, and with the energy body awareness -- is aware of this image, and there is healing flowing there towards one. Can be really, really helpful.

So there's papañca. There's mindful imagination. There's embodied imagination. There's healing imagination, or a healing image. And then there's the imaginal. We could make more gradations as well. What do we mean by this word 'imaginal'? Because it's certainly more than -- let's say, more is implied and included than in those other examples of categories of use of the imagination -- papañca, mindful imagination, embodied imagination, healing imagination, etc. When we use the word 'imaginal,' we mean something more than that.

So I want to tread carefully here. Let's maybe open up the idea of a spectrum. There's a spectrum of, we could say, the use of the imagination, in what I've just outlined, from papañca on one side, all the way to, let's say, the imaginal on the other. Or we could say that's the spectrum of the imaginal, and we get more and more towards the, if you like, authentic or fully imaginal. There's a spectrum of experience with the imagination. What do we mean when we use this word, 'imaginal'?

Now, as I pointed out earlier, briefly, people have used and do still use that word differently. It was originally coined by Henry Corbin, but different people have picked it up. And different kinds of psychotherapeutic modalities and other kinds of directions have picked it up, and use it differently from each other. So I really, really don't believe in a right or wrong here. People are free to use words whatever way they want, and I'm certainly not interested in saying I'm right or someone else is wrong or anything like that.

But there is a particular way that we are using it, a particular way we're using that word, 'imaginal,' that is, in fact, not completely the same as the way Henry Corbin used it, or the way James Hillman used it, or the way Tom Cheetham might use it, or Philip Pullman (although I don't know his work very well), or Mary Watkins. Many of those people -- except for Pullman, whose work I don't know -- these people have been very important to me personally, and very influential, and they're very dear to me, and what they have contributed to certainly my relationship, my explorations of all this.

But still, there are some differences. We're using it in quite particular ways. There's a lot overlap, of course, and similarities between the way this word is used among different groups, but there are differences. And the same, in fact, is true of the term 'soulmaking' that we're using. Again, you know, it's a niche word, but it's relatively common these days. And again, words like 'eros' or 'soul' or 'logos' -- all these words are used differently by different people. And there's quite a bit of overlap and similarity, I'm sure, and some very, I would say, significant differences and important differences that actually mean that the whole trajectory of practice and understanding -- and revelation, if you like -- unfolds differently, depending on how the words, how the terms are conceived in the first place, and thus how practice is approached and what then unfolds.

So if I were to very briefly throw out a list of what is involved as a list of aspects of the imaginal, as we are using that word, a list of aspects of what is involved in the constellation of the imaginal. There are different aspects that come together to make up the fully imaginal as we use that term. If I were to throw a list out briefly -- and I do this, as I say, with quite a lot of caution, and really trying to walk a tightrope here between helpful precision, precision of discernment on the one hand, and daunting sort of pedantry on the other side. I really want to be quite careful here, and you'll hear, perhaps, my own ambivalence about the whole thing. But for the sake of clarity, and bringing more life and colour and beauty, in fact, and power to this whole direction of practice, if we just throw out a list very briefly. We'll come back to these elements or aspects of the imaginal in more detail later on. But if we say, "What are some of the aspects or elements in the constellation of the imaginal? What kind of nodes are involved in making an imaginal experience?" [29:34] So I'll throw these out very quickly, and we'll come back to them.

I'm deliberately not numbering them. I roughly count eighteen, but that also depends on how you divide them up, because one might count as one item on the list, and actually involve several aspects to it, so it might count as more. And there's a reason as well, again, for me not being too precise. But if I threw out roughly eighteen elements of what's involved in imaginal experience, (1) one would be love and being loved. I've talked about most of these, almost all of them, I'm sure, before, in different talks. And again, right now, I'm not going to go into detail. We'll pick up many of these as we go on in this first group of talks. But the first one, the first aspect is love and being loved.

(2) Second, eros. Again, I'm not going to go into what that means and define it. We've talked a lot about it before. It's different, it's more than love and being loved. So love and being loved. Eros is second.

(3) The third is beauty. Beauty is involved in the imaginal.

(4) Fourth is a sense of dimensionality -- if you like, depth -- but a dimensionality that issues or eventually opens out into a sense of divinity. So that would be a fourth: dimensionality opening out to a sense of divinity.

(5) A fifth and related one would be a sense of beyondness -- not complete transcendence, but an image has a sense for us of: "There's more than I can quite get my head around, or grasp, or even see or sense right now. It has more for me to move into." And actually, so much more that one intuits a sense of unfathomability to the image.

(6) Another aspect is autonomy, that the image is not sensed as just a part of me or an element of my consciousness, etc. It has its own, if you like, somewhat distinct autonomy, its own somewhat distinct, independent being, so that there's a twoness. Twoness is an aspect of the constellation of the imaginal. There's me, and there's this image, this imaginal object or person. And even if it is an object -- this book, for instance, may be imaginal to me -- as the imaginal sense deepens, there's a twoness of person, of personhood. It's as if the book is also or has also a soul, an intelligence. And so there's this autonomy. There's this kind of distinct twoness.

(7) Yet the boundaries are not definite. There's a kind of softness or blurring of boundaries of the imaginal object. So that's six or seven so far.

(8) There is also -- number eight -- what I would like to call a kind of infinite echoing or infinite mutual mirroring between the image and me or my life -- you or your life, if it's your image, obviously. There's a kind of infinite echoing and mirroring between the two. I'll come back to what I mean by this later, as I said.

(9) So this includes meaningfulness, that the image is pregnant, full, superabundant with meaningfulness, a sense of meaningfulness for us, for the subject. But we cannot quite grasp or delimit or totally articulate or define the totality of that meaningfulness, the complete meaningfulness. But it's pregnant with that. It has that sense of meaningfulness to us. 'Meaning' is a part of 'meaningfulness' -- so yes, it may well have meanings as well. But meaningfulness is even bigger than meaning, or meanings, plural. And in that -- perhaps ninth -- we are not reducing the image to, "It only means this. It only represents that. It only is this." There's not a limitation or a reduction of the image in any way.

(10) Another element is that there's a quality of what I call theatre to the imaginal, meaning it's powerful. It has an effect. It moves us. It stirs our soul like good theatre, and it's intimate like good theatre. But we know that it's theatre. It's neither real nor not real. Rather, either one of those doesn't feel quite right. It's what I also call, sometimes, the imaginal Middle Way between real and not real. It's a really crucial part of the imaginal: the theatre, the imaginal Middle Way. I've lost count now, but it's about ten, I think.

(11) The imaginal is not a non-conceptual experience, if even such experiences are really possible for a human being to have. The imaginal is definitely not non-conceptual. Implicit in the imaginal, in the constellation of the imaginal, and in the experience of the imaginal, is a logos, is some kind of conceptual framework, some kind of conception of what is going on. Now, it might be very loose and quite open and unarticulated, but it's not a non-conceptual experience. And the imaginal, and that whole realm of the imaginal, involves logos, involves the mind in that way, the conceptuality.

(12) Next, an imaginal image has a quality of what we might call eternality to it, timelessness. Something is different in the sense of time that pertains to an image, or that an image inhabits, if you like. Again, we'll come back to all this, and I've mentioned much of it before.

(13) Next, humility is an element in the constellation of the imaginal. We feel humble in relationship to the image. That's a quite loaded word, and again, I'll revisit this. So some people are not quite sure what that means, or it gets too squeezed, that word. But humility. I'd like to explore a little bit what that means.

(14) And also, next, reverence.

(15) And grace. When an object is imaginal for us, whether it's a purely so-called intrapsychic image, or something in the material world that has become imaginal, there's a sense of grace there, of inexplicable gift, an overflowing and bestowing on us from something greater, a sense of grace.

(16) Another kind of defining element or aspect or quality of the imaginal is that it leads to, it brings with it a sense of soulmaking, a sense of soulfulness. As I said, it stirs and engages and ignites our soul, full of resonances and richnesses. What does that mean, 'soulmaking'? We'll come back to this, and I've touched on it a lot before. But basically, the eros-psyche-logos dynamic is stimulated, and starts to expand, and deepen, and enrich, and mutually fertilize its elements of eros, psyche, and logos.

So soulfulness as an element in the constellation of the imaginal. And that's more than heartfulness. It includes heartfulness, but it's actually more than the heartfulness, more than just the being touched in the heart.

(17) Next, the imaginal could actually be conceived more as a way of looking at something than the thing itself, than the object itself. So we could say, in the constellation of the imaginal, which includes the subject and the object, what's key, a key aspect is the way of looking at the object and the way of conceiving. And part of that is that it includes the awareness of the energy body, in this very integrated, very sensitive and responsive way. It's part of the way of looking that, if you like, makes or supports something to be imaginal.

(18) And lastly, when we are with an image, when we're with the imaginal or an imaginal object, we have the sense that it is part of a bigger context of the imaginal. It's part of what Catherine and I sometimes call the concertina of images or the concertina of the imaginal. In other words, this is one image, but we have a sense -- either sometimes directly, right then in the moment, or palpably or sensibly right then in the moment, clearly, and sometimes much more vaguely, much more intuitively -- of other possible images, possible other imaginal objects, if you like, waiting in the wings of the theatre, so to speak. So there's that sense of the concertina of the context, the imaginal context.

Okay, so there's a brief list of, say, eighteen (or, depending how you count it, maybe twenty-something) elements of the constellation of the imaginal. And as I said, I'll come back to many of those in more detail and expand them, expand on them.

As I said, I'm cautious here, and I'm wanting to walk a little bit of a tightrope. So as I said, in our understanding, we might conceive of a spectrum of experiences that involve the imagination, if you like, culminating -- one end of that spectrum is the authentically imaginal, if we can use that word, or the fully imaginal. (Again, I'm not quite sure about those words.)

I feel a little ambivalent here about churning out a list like that, or stipulating a list like that. Now, you probably know this about me already, but I can admit that perhaps my personality type, my tendency, is to be quite picky and precise and fussy. I am perhaps a quibbler by nature. Some might say I'm a quibbler by trade. But to me, that's just my tendency. So I'm aware of that tendency, and I, at the same time, want to encourage a kind of generosity or amplitude in these teachings, so that a certain looseness is required to kind of balance out, or at the same time as this kind of fussy precision that is perhaps my tendency, but I think is also quite necessary if we're really going to get the power and the potency out of these teachings.

I might as well share as well: if I have a fantasy or a hope of, at some point in the future, a kind of creative Saṅgha, contributing to and developing these directions in practice, these logoi, these conceptual frameworks, these ways of practising, then I think both a kind of looseness and a kind of rigour of discernment and precision and clarity are going to be necessary to allow that potential of communal creativity to actualize. Just as in the arts or the sciences, the ability to create and discover in those fields, it needs a clear common ground in understandings and, you could say, a developed kind of mastery, if you like (again, I use that word with caution), developed mastery of the history of its tradition, whether it's painting or jazz or classical music, whatever it is. And then, based on that can come new creations, new discoveries, out of that kind of grounding. So my sense is, it's similar here. And so we need a certain precision, a certain kind of subtle discernment that's quite rigorous, and we need a certain looseness.

Now, many of you -- just again, about the relationship to lists: I know one or two of you, maybe (no more), one or two of you actually like lists. Like, you like when the Buddha gives lists, and you like when I give lists. But I'm guessing there are probably many of you who actually hate lists, and it turns you off. It may help that latter group to know that I feel quite ambivalent about lists, actually. Sometimes, though, when one is teaching something that's relatively new, lists can be a kind of good heuristic, a good educational tool or device to stretch and light up the awareness and the discernment where it might otherwise just not notice what is new. We tend to hear what we already know, and kind of hear within a box. So lists sometimes help stretch it. You say, "Oh, what was that number -- number twelve on the list? Hold on. What does that mean? Am I including that? Am I thinking about that? Is that in my awareness?" So it helps us to notice what is new and different, outside of our habitual conceptions.

However, lists can also get dry, and if care is not taken, what I think is even worse is they can get regarded as kind of atomic truths, which I get a bit nervous about. But I'm ambivalent partly because of what I just said, and partly because I don't want to discourage you. And you might hear that and go, "All that's on the imaginal? I'm nowhere near that. I don't know what even you're talking about. And this thing, and that kind of dimension of experience, and this and that ..." So I really don't want to discourage you. I rather want to encourage. And what I'll come back to later on in this first group of talks is, you'll actually see that the elements of this list each end up being a kind of ignition key for deepening the imaginal experience and practice.

So it's not just useless pedantry and pickiness. I'm actually pointing to these things, these elements, because awareness of them and turning towards them, as I'll explain later, can actually deepen the practice. They are keys to igniting and deepening the whole imaginal opening and soulmaking opening.

I'm cautious and treading a tightrope for another reason. It's even more of a subtle reason. It's that, if you've been following the teachings so far over the last couple of years, if you've been following closely, you'll recognize the fact that imaginal and soulmaking experiences are dynamic. They're not static experiences. As we've explained in previous talks, the soulmaking dynamic starts to involve the other elements (so the eros, and the logos, or the image), and they start to deepen, and widen, and enrich, and fertilize, and complicate each other. That's a dynamic. It's moving. It's on its way. It's expanding. It's enriching. It's complicating. It's getting more complicated. It's deepening.

And then also, as you may remember if you've been listening closely, when there's an imaginal perception, then not just the object, but eventually, at some point, the sense of the self becomes involved in that imaginal constellation. So subject and object, self and other, and then the world, too, in cosmopoesis, and the eros itself. And within all that, as we alluded to already, there's this kind of infinite echoing and mirroring.

And at some point in the dynamic -- all this is a process; it's happening, it's expanding and enriching -- and at some point, the self-image becomes, actually, one's whole life, one's whole storying, if you like. It's not just this moment now, without past, without future. And as I said, something of the relationship with and the concept of time is opened out and altered.

But the main point right now is that there's a dynamic. So how much of this, or what stage of complication, and enrichening, and deepening, and widening of the eros, of the psyche, of the logos -- what stage of involvement of the self and the world and the image of the eros, or the logos of the eros, are we at, at any moment, in relating to an imaginal object? And at what point in that dynamic, in that unfolding, in that process of mutual enrichment and involvement, deepening, complicating -- at what point are we going to say, "Now it's imaginal"?

So I might have all the beauty, and the meaningfulness, and theatre, and all those other things with the imaginal object, but the self is not quite fully involved yet as image. It hasn't been drawn into and involved in the imaginal complex and the constellation of the imaginal. Am I going to say that's imaginal or not imaginal? It's a little bit arbitrary. So that's another reason -- more subtle, if you like -- why I'm a little cautious about throwing out these lists that can easily become sort of canonical, or rigid, or too formulaic and stipulative.

So there is this spectrum. Clearly, something like papañca, imagination in a state of papañca is not imaginal, and neither is it imaginal when we do a straightforward mettā practice, necessarily. And there's this kind of spectrum -- yes, gradation -- of uses of the imagination that, we could say, get more and more imaginal. And exactly what point we say, "Now it's imaginal," we could argue that.

So what that means is, as a practitioner, one wants to maybe listen to all these elements and see, "Well, how can I move towards more of the fuller end, the more authentically or more fully imaginal end of things? How can I enrich my experience, deepen it, open it out, make it more fertile?" So it's not so much about judging oneself or measuring up or something. It's a kind of direction we're interested in. And for me, the clarity is important. We're really talking about something other than just the use of the imagination, or something just mythic or whatever.