Imagination is not the stepchild of reality

by Jon Rappoport

August 9, 2015

This is a previously unpublished introduction to my collection, Exit From The Matrix:

“Civilization is waiting for imagination to revolutionize it down to its core.” (The Magician Awakes, Jon Rappoport)

At the beginning of human history, imagination was an overt means of control. A tribe or clan member had a dream, a product of his own imagination. He went to the medicine man and asked for an interpretation. He was given a canned message that folded into the cosmology of the group. That was called knowledge.

Hijacking imagination is still the most widespread con on the planet.

If a person understood how widely he was engaged in imagining, his life would radically change in a minute. He would step forward and take over. He would demolish his old framework and invent a new one.

It’s no accident that conventional psychology is about everything except imagination. If the patient understood this inherent aspect of himself, the curtain would lift and he would begin to see that the coloration of his past was irrelevant, because he had lived it solving problems that now, in his current state, have no meaning.

Early Tibetan practitioners, 1400 years ago, understood all this and much more, until a theocracy took over. The new rulers told their people: “We will tell you what to imagine.” No matter how charming, how pleasant, how assuring, how ‘good’ the content of what one is imagining is, if someone else is the guide, life begins to drain away, energy fades, and the mind becomes mechanical.

By the end of the 19th century, many people were seeing a cardinal truth: they had been believing what they were imagining, and pretending it came from an external supernatural force. But then, a retrenching occurred. At the edge of a new morning, people drew back. They sought refuge in older traditions. They returned to groups they’d abandoned. They lost their courage. Individuals submerged themselves, once again, in the Collective. They turned back, in order to recapitulate history and induce amnesia about what they’d just discovered about themselves.

Descartes’ famous statement, “I think, therefore I am,” and Buddha’s statement, “As a person thinks, so he is,” would become more powerful if it were formulated: “As a person imagines, so he is.” Then it would become apparent that imagination is a power which shapes appearances, as well as limitations. New questions would arise. “How am I imagining the future?” “How do I want to re-invent the future?”

Now, these days, there is an enormous pretense when it comes to the subject of imagination. The individual, having already retreated from his realization about the power of his own creative impulse, goes into cover-up operations. He launches various cover stories to obscure his own inherent capacities. He shoves in all his chips betting against himself.

The overthrow of this pretension is paramount.

There are revolutions of circumstance, and revolutions by the individual. In the latter case, what is thrown overboard is not the major concern. The revolution is a leap, first of all, into imagining something quite different. Then, a commitment, a launch to make it a reality. Then, discarding what is unnecessary just happens.

All the complex formulations and structures of metaphysics are the content of what was once imagined. Something was an epic poem; then others took it over and made it into a religion. They froze it in mid-stride and shaped a structure.

“Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.” Oscar Wilde, 1891

Those men who try to control civilization are in love with the machine. They install it everywhere they can. They want repeatable pattern.

A large percentage of the population falls in line with this vision. Varnish it with the gloss of “humanitarianism” and you have a piece of stage magic. The puerile conscience is satisfied. “We’re doing Good.”

Even the idea of freedom can be reduced to an apparatus of tyranny. Relatively few people notice. They recast liberty as duty, progress, measurable improvement. They squirt a little oil into the machine and rest satisfied they’re doing their part.

Whereas freedom is the platform from which imagination takes flight.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.