7.3 The Connection between the I maginal Realm and the Mundane World
Robert Pirsig, the author of Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
(1974), says that everywhere we look we see incarnated human thoughts projected
into the outer world and that knowledge of natural objects and the world of nature
is by exactly the same process. Gary Richardson suggests that Pirsig’s point is that
there is no way or sense in which we can know and understand an object unless we
know and understand the thoughts embodied in it, unless our own thinking thinks
the thoughts of the object’s creator as to its purpose and the details of its
composition. Hence, his conclusion:
... we live in an external world of thought incarnated in material
substance, and we know that world by thinking the thoughts
embodied in our own inner world (Richardson, 1987:77).
This causes us to ponder not only the possibility that perhaps there is, after
all, a third realm but rather that is somehow embedded or connected to the places
of our physical existence (Ring, 1992:219-221). I ndeed, Marie-Louise von Franz
suggested that the human psychic realm, the inner world, is a realm that is
temporal but not spatial; it exists in time but has no physical area or locale; it is an
elsewhere-place. However, von Franz suggests that we can imagine space in the
psychic realm in just the same way as we can imagine a chair. However, just as we
cannot take anything from external space into our psychic realm (such as a chair)
we can go the other way: thoughts from the psychic realm can be projected into
physical space and measured there precisely (von Franz, 1992:9-15).
Jung suggested that, we actually are a psychic process, one over which we
have no control (Jung, 1961:4). The great religious and spiritual teachers
throughout the ages have said as much in their claim that we are not physical
beings evolving towards spirit but rather that we are in fact spiritual beings who are
gradually becoming aware of our spiritual essence, or in Gnostic terms, that we are
a split-off spark of the divine returning to its proper realm (Bloom, 1996:144).
This concept of an I maginal Realm, as it is understood in I slamic mysticism
and other ancient esoteric philosophies suggests that there is a dimension, existing
between mind and matter, one that may influence creativity and be accessed,
perhaps, through a process of synchronicity. I suspect that the I maginal Realm is
an aspect of, or something that is coterminous with Mind-at-Large, identified by
Professor Kenneth Ring of the University of Connecticut. I t also seems to have