A MYSTERY SCHOOL NOW
BASIS OF MY CONSULTING
JULY 6, 2011. Since every motivation, plan, goal, ambition, desire and belief can be imagined, why not at least consider the possibility that imagination itself ought to be understood?
Imagination, after all, gives LIFE to goals and desires.
Without imagination, goals and desires tend to fade and lose their power over time.
Therefore, in my work with private clients, I focus on doing exercises and techniques which strengthen and expand the scope of imagination.
This is what power is actually all about.
Any goal can be broken down into a plan for its achievement, but the energy BEHIND the goal—imagination—is what needs to be brought into the foreground. It’s the star of the show.
Imagination is the core of a mystery school of the 21st century; but the mystery is right out in the open. Imagination has always been there, available. It has largely been ignored, because those who use it take it for granted, and those who don’t are in the dark about it.
After experimenting, it became clear to me that all protocols and systems and step-by-step programs that seek to target and enhance imagination are ultimately useless. They are sometimes counter-productive.
This is because imagination is not a structure to be taken apart. It is infinite and can operate in an infinite number of ways.
And the baby-step approach is deflating. It drains away energy instead of increasing it.
No, you have to “start from the top.” This means giving the imagination material to work on that is vivid and powerful and multidimensional. On this basis, starting some 20 years ago, I developed several different types of techniques—and each type naturally gives birth to a virtually unlimited number of exercises.
One of the outcomes of doing this kind of work is clarified perception about choice and freedom. I don’t mean muddled rumination about possible directions in life. When desire, imagination, and freedom meet, the ignited spark is unstoppable.
Everything else is compromise.
The world largely operates on compromise, the acceptance of which is said to be a sign of maturity. Well, lots of lies are floated to the masses. That’s one of them. Whole lives are frittered away on a staircase of successive surrenders.
The opposite end of the spectrum is profound desire, wide-ranging powerful imagination, and unambiguous freedom.
Of these three, imagination is the best avenue of approach. All the mysteries are solved there. All the energies are recovered there. All the magic is inherent there.
This is my position, and I’ve confirmed it many times in many ways. My e-book, The Secret Behind Secret Societies, reframes history to show that a tradition of imagination, like an invisible thread, runs through the past of this planet. It has diverted its course and has detoured around obstacles. But it has always remained alive, and now is its period to flower.
The baggage and the rubbish and the concealments and the diversions have been cleared away.
THE CENTURY OF IMAGINATION
The unspoken superhighway of history tells a story of the unshackling of imagination.
By the second half the 20th century, it became clear to many people that imagination had become unhooked from ideologies, metaphysical clap-trap, religion, the pretensions of psychology, and the juvenile materialistic philosophy coming out of science.
Finally, after centuries of work, imagination stood alone for all to see.
But few were ready to look.
Instead, they dove back into a jungle of spiritual symbology. They dove into a hodge-podge of resurrected ethnicity. They grasped at “revivals” of ancient cosmologies.
Nevertheless, IMAGINATION HAD EMERGED AS THE NORTH STAR.
It was no longer necessary to pretend that imagination was inevitably bound up in its products; which is to say, it was apparent that all the metaphysical meanderings which had taken place since the dawn of time were CREATIONS OF IMAGINATION, pure and simple.
So why not admit it?
Why not stop all the nonsense?
Why not confess that imagination is there for the individual? Infinitely.
Well, people were still obsessed with wrapping the individual in various flags and pennants of “something greater.” It was the old religious impulse reborn. The individual is just one atom in the super-atom of cosmic ding dong.
This cover story never goes away, and one just has to learn to live along side it.
This “something greater” is like recreational drugs. A thing to imbibe, a lot to talk about.
But there it was, imagination, the exposed gold centerpiece of alchemy. Finally. And people said, “Let’s go back to lead.”
In the middle of the 20th century, America was poised in the transition-moment from air flight to space flight. Technologically, imagination had won a great battle. More importantly, people with high intelligence were dreaming large dreams. A titanic future out there on the horizon—and if the journey into space were thrust into the center of human affairs, there would be jobs for virtually everyone, as a side effect of the dream.
And people KNEW that imagination was behind it all.
And then the dip into metaphysical molasses started all over again.
But…no matter. Because the mystery is out in the open.
For those who can see it and use it.
They will discover that every longing pointing to cosmos, illumination, enlightenment, transcendence is answered and fulfilled through imagination deployed. And every delusion is evaporated.
This is the true spiritual tradition of planet Earth. It has been buried, repressed, sidetracked, and misidentified—but now here it is.
In a very real sense, it was always the goal. It was always the thing to be distilled out of the dross of history—and out of the rambling life of an individual.
When I was 20, I finished studying the history of philosophy in college. All the answers I’d been seeking were still missing in action. I approached one of my professors and said, “Suppose all of this, everything the philosophers have proposed, was created? Created by them?”
Like works of art, I meant.
The professor stared at me, and then shook his head.
“No,” he said.
That was my first inkling that I should have been studying the history of imagination, rather than philosophy.
It was only when my publisher, Bonnie Lange, gave me the green light to write The Secret Behind Secret Societies, that I realized I would have a chance to explore this whole area.
The difference between the heavy baggage of traditional cosmology/metaphysics and imagination is: the former requires nothing and the latter implies action. You need to do something.
Imagination isn’t merely a sign on a road. It is the road. It is the action along the road.
And most people prefer no-action.
The first part of my work was to strip imagination of useless and distracting accoutrement. The second part of my work is to show people imagination’s scope and range and power, and what can happen when you use it intensely, without limits. Click here for more details.
JON RAPPOPORT