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46 - Meditation and Imagination

from Part VI - Altered States of the Imagination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2020

By
Sthaneshwar Timalsina
Edited by
Anna Abraham
Anna Abraham
Affiliation:
University of Georgia
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Summary

This chapter explores the scope of imagination in the classical tantric texts and brings its salient features to a global philosophical discourse. Tantric texts treat imagination as a faculty of the mind that can be cultivated to its fullest extent. In this paradigm, imagination is an inherent power of the self, and upon its proper channeling, it can be transformed into the faculty of creativity, an inherent property of the self that remains otherwise dormant. These texts prescribe meticulous visualization processes in order to explore the limits of imagination. Apparently, what these texts meant by imagination is distinct from daydreaming or pure fantasy, as there is an integration of memory and attention in the course of projecting the mind to some intended objects or events. The central argument of this chapter is that this treatment of imagination as a faculty and the application of visualization for enhancing the power of imagination has the potential to address some key aspects in the contemporary philosophical discourse on imagination. This understanding of imagination can also help us devise ways to transform a subject’s self-assessment in order to assist him or her in negotiating his or her role in the socially constructed reality.

Keywords

ImaginationvisualizationbhavanadhyanaAbhinavaguptacreativitykalpanatantra
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination , pp. 783 - 795
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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