Watch the Imagination

by Roy Masters

IT'S USE AND MISUSE

In my recent talks with you I have been trying to warn you of the "virtual reality" games you have been playing with your intellect, or your subconscious mind. I have tried to warn all of you of the dangers you encounter when you immerse yourselves in your imagination. Unfortunately, modern preachers and teachers and positive thinkers extol and encourage the immersion of the soul, or consciousness, in the imagination, but I must warn you no to fall for their ballyhoo.

Take your choice. You are free to choose the truth that agrees wit your inclination, but if you want to see clearly with your mind's eye- not your physical eye and not with images that can be recalled to replace, or take over, for reality-you must be free from imagination. That does not mean that thoughts and imaginings are inherently bad in themselves. Don't get me wrong.

Creativity comes from your ability to use imagination, but I am concerned with your tendency to use your imagination to dress yourself up in it. The starship enterprise has a computerized chamber, a holodeck, that creates a virtual reality for the crew to vacation in. The crew actually believes, according to the script, that they are where they are not. The computer is able to create the actual feel, the smell, the sounds, the sights of whatever reality it has been ordered to conjure up for the user.

Now, that idea is not too farfetched, because your mind is able to do the same thing. You are able to call forth from it all kinds of scenes. For instance one of the techniques of the hypnotist is to get the subject to imagine a beautiful scene, one that he has already experienced so that he can enter into it. The technique is valuable in pain control as well. If you can project yourself into a pleasant experience, you can lose awareness of the body's unpleasant condition. So it is quite possible for you to imagine that you are somewhere else, feeling very relaxed, no longer conscious of the cares and guilt's and anxieties of everyday life. You can use your imagination to escape reality by constructing an almost-reality more to your liking.

The practice is a dangerous one because of its inherent appeal to the lose or the person motivated primarily by pleasure. The more you fail in life, the greater will be your tendency to escape into your imagination where you will construct your own paradise, or paradigm, and create a virtual reality of your own. You thus become more dependent on your ability to escape, and you develop favorite images for your entertainment.

We all have a problem with the misuse of our imagination. I didn't say you shouldn't use your imagination at all. For instance, I hope you can use it to assist you with hearing my message, but the misuse of imagination has plagued mankind ever since his fall on earth.

If the universe could be said to be the mind of God, and whatever his mind creates, a concept not too difficult for you to entertain because you take the same godly role when you daydream or dip into your imagination, when you use your imagination to escape, as the Enterprise crew did in order to escape the drudgery of everyday work on the spaceship, you might be doing exactly the same thing God does as you play god.

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