The Imaginal

The work of French philosopher and theologian Henri Corbin, who spent his life delving into Islamic studies, has been instrumental in bringing to the West an understanding of the imaginal.  It’s a concept that for many of us falls outside the parameters of our world view, fused as we tend to be with the subjective ego as the center of our show.  Corbin’s writing on the imaginal, or mundus imaginalis, posits an objective realm of imagination where all sorts of spiritual experiences take place: visions, recitals, encounters, and journeys to name a few.

“This is the reason that we can no longer avoid the problem of terminology. How is it that we do not have in French [or in English] a common and perfectly satisfying term to express the idea of the ‘alam al-mithal? I have proposed the Latin mundus imaginalis for it, because we are obliged to avoid any confusion between what is here the object of imaginative or imaginant perception and what we ordinarily call the imaginary. This is so, because the current attitude is to oppose the real to the imaginary as though to the unreal, the utopian, as it is to confuse symbol with allegory, to confuse the exegesis of the spiritual sense with an allegorical interpretation. Now, every allegorical interpretation is harmless; the allegory is a sheathing, or, rather, a disguising, of something that is already known or knowable otherwise, while the appearance of an Image having the quality of a symbol is a primary phenomenon (Urphanomen), unconditional and irreducible, the appearance of something that cannot manifest itself otherwise to the world where we are.”  from Henri Corbin, Mundus Imaginalis, or the Imaginary and the Imaginal (full text here)

The question that becomes relevant for us:  How might the connection to the imaginal be restored?  Step one: we will need to begin to explore with an open mind that the imaginal might actually exist.