9d • General discussion
Thought
ALL IS IMAGINATION
A Philosophy of the Reality That Appears
By C.C. Halloran
THE PROPOSITION
There is a simple idea at the centre of this book:
ALL IS IMAGINATION.
This does not mean that the world is fake.
It does not mean that other people are fake.
It does not mean that the Earth does not exist.
It means something more fundamental.
Everything that I can ever experience appears as imagination.
I experience a body.
I experience other people.
I experience the Earth.
I experience the sky, the stars and the universe.
I experience thoughts.
I experience memories.
I experience emotions.
I experience time.
I experience the story of my life.
All of these things appear.
But where do they appear?
They appear in experience.
And experience is imagination.
I deliberately do not call it “my imagination.”
The word my creates a problem.
If I say, “This is my imagination,” I have already assumed that there is a separate me who exists outside the imagination and possesses it.
But what if that assumption is wrong?
What if the person I call me is also part of what appears?
What if the body is an appearance?
What if the personality is an appearance?
What if the memories that tell me who I am are appearances?
What if the observer I believe is looking out at the world is itself another appearance?
Then there may be no separate person standing outside imagination.
There may simply be:
IMAGINATION.
Not my imagination.
Not your imagination.
Not someone’s imagination.
Imagination itself.
And if this is so, then the relationship between reality and imagination must be reconsidered.
Perhaps imagination is not something that happens inside the universe.
Perhaps the universe is something that appears within imagination.
That does not prove that there is no physical reality beyond experience.
It asks a different question:
How could we ever encounter that reality except through experience?
Whatever reality ultimately is, it appears to us.
And what appears is the entirety of the world we know.
So this book begins with neither the claim that everything is real nor the claim that everything is unreal.
It begins with a more fundamental observation:
Everything appears.
And the proposition of this book is:
All appearance is imagination.
THE FIRST QUESTION
Before asking what the universe is, perhaps we should ask something even more basic:
What is it that we actually experience?
We usually begin with the assumption that there is a physical world.
Then we assume that there is a body inside that world.
Then we assume that the body contains a person.
Then we assume that this person looks out at the world.
But perhaps we have begun at the wrong end.
Perhaps we should begin with what is immediately present:
Experience.
Before I can say there is a universe, I must experience the appearance of a universe.
Before I can say there is a body, I must experience the appearance of a body.
Before I can say there is a “me,” I must experience the appearance of a “me.”
The entire story arrives together.
The world.
The body.
The observer.
The past.
The future.
The people.
The stars.
The thoughts.
The questions.
Even this book.
All of it appears.
And therefore the deepest question is not:
“Is the world real?”
It is:
“What is the nature of that which appears?”
That is where our journey begins.
ALL IS IMAGINATION.
0
0 comments
Thought
powered by
skool.com/jesus-talks-8661
Discussions for the complete understanding of the words of Jesus
Suggested communities
Powered by