Islamic Tradition
The imaginal realm is known in Islamic philosophy as alam al-mithal, the imaginal world. According to Avicenna, the imagination mediated between, and thus unified, human reason and divine being. This mediating quality manifested in two directions: on the one hand, reason, rising above itself, could attain to the level of active imagination, an activity shared with the lower hierarchies of the divine realm. On the other hand, in order to manifest the concrete forms of the world, divinity created a range of intermediate beings, the angelic co-creators of the universe. According to philosophers of this tradition, the trained imagination can access a "nonspatial fabric" which mediates between the empirical/sensory and the cognititional/spiritual realms.
Through Averroes, mainstream Islamic philosophy lost its relationship to the active imagination. The Sufi movement in Persia, as exemplified by Ibn Arabi, continued to explore contemplative approaches to the imaginal realm.
Read more about this topic: Active Imagination
Famous quotes containing the word tradition:
“If we are related, we shall meet. It was a tradition of the ancient world, that no metamorphosis could hide a god from a god; and there is a Greek verse which runs, “The Gods are to each other not unknown.” Friends also follow the laws of divine necessity; they gravitate to each other, and cannot otherwise.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)