Imagination and You

 

Photo Credit: The Threshold Society

Imagination and You

Sant Kabir says, “Put all imagination away.” We think we are poor; we have everything and even then, we imagine what will happen if we lose everything. Imagining in a negative manner will only give us stress. The idea that you are a beggar is also nothing but your imagination. Suppose you get fed up with the idea of being poor, your begging, your desires and your ambitions you start turning towards spirituality and you imagine – “I am God.” That too is imagination, it will not take you anywhere.

Instead of imagining things, drop all your imagination and go into a state of no-imagination. With imagination, you are not yourself, you are traveling in your mind and are moving away from yourself. You fall asleep and go into a dream-state and in your sleep, you find yourself in New York and in the next moment you are in Paris. For the full night you were stationary in your bed, but in your imagination, you had travelled to New York and Paris.

Similarly, if you look at yourself as a soul, then you have never left your divinity. It has always been within you under layers and layers of mental impressions collected over several births. Deep down you know that you are divine, but the heavy layers do not allow that sense to come into your consciousness. It is hidden deep within your subconscious. You have never left your divinity as you are rooted in it. But your imagination makes you an animal sometimes or a tree, sometimes you become a devil and sometimes an angel, sometimes you are kind and sometimes insulting, sometimes you are a gentleman and sometimes a rogue – you go on imagining.

But deep down you are pure consciousness and nothing else. These are all the roles you choose for yourself. You create, you project and then you enter your own projections in your imagination. The best is to stay stable and constant and tell yourself, “Do not go anywhere, stay put!” As Sant Kabir says, “Put all imagination away….”.

That is what meditation is all about – putting the imagination away. But many of us bring our imagination into our meditation too. In meditation too they start imagining – this happens because they hear someone else’s spiritual experiences, get fascinated and then during the meditation the mind tries to project that experience into you. I have heard a person narrating a story of how she went out of her body while asleep. That itself is an indication that she imagined it in her dreams. The very strong desire to go out of body manifested as a dream – that wasn’t reality!

In meditation, it is best to remain detached and aloof – just watch what is happening, do not become a part of it. That is the way to be – no imagination, just witnessing!