It's interesting that most people think imagination is something that you do `in your head` and that it is confined to occasional bursts of visualization in which you `invent` fantasy realities that aren't really real.
How about entertaining this possibility for a moment... How about the whole physical universe is `in your imagination`, it's all a dream, but yet you don't want to admit that because it would undo your whole important `earth life` and all of its meaning and values. So instead you decide to say ok, all of the stuff outside of my body, and including my body, is not a dream, it's `real`, and anything that happens in my mind is unreal.
In other words, objective reality is something other than who and what I am, and I am merely a subjective victim of the world. Then from that perspective you are able to say that imagination is relegated to the mind and is fantasy, compared to `how real` the physical world seems to be (in your experience of it). You can even go so far as to point out physical scientific evidence that justifies this belief that the world is real, and also cite how so many other people seem to also believe the same - that there really is an objectively real world here. Whatever.
It would certainly seem plausible to say that everything I said I experience is `just in my imagination`, and that by being there it is insane fantasy with no real objective merit. However, where this is all flawed is that if the whole world is in your imagination, then the stuff going on in my little mental fantasy is nothing compared to how much you imagine that this *world* is actually `more objectively real`. As soon as you've decided that there is no reality beyond physical existence, you start to segregate off parts of the world, giving special value to some over others, and saying that some aspects are more real and some less real. So if you did this and decided that new-age aliens jesus mysticism dreams whatever is less valuably real than `other stuff` like material objects, then of course you aren't likely to *want to* consider that your very important physical life is just a dream that never happened. Scary thought.
What this all boils down to is what you `think is real` versus what actually IS real. And for that you need a definition of reality that has nothing to do with personal opinion or the evidence of the world. Reality is `what is`. Is is a spiritual reality of wholeness, purity, constancy, a total lack of change or difference, it is love, it is holiness, it is innocence, it is outside of all time and space, it has nothing to do with people in bodies, it has nothing to do with relationships, it has nothing to do with physics chemistry or biology, it never had a beginning or an end, and is simply everywhere - there is nowhere that it is not, and so if it is everywhere, where the heck is this world except in your insane fantasies? Reality is self-evidently real. What is not self evidently real is the stuff that has to have something else to justify it, which accounts for everything that you think of as the `real world`. It is not real, it is imagined, and my little musings about meeting with other unusual beings `within this dream` is rather insignificant compared to the far more bizarre activity of you thinking that your life/body/job/relationships/computer/house/car/world are real.
I will accept that all of my `experiences` are not necessarily experiences of Truth, because that would mean being in pure oneness with All That Is. Whether it be mediumship or dreams or daydreams or waking dreams (this life) or telekinesis or telepathy or psychic ability or alien civilizations (of which we are one), these things ARE all a dream, they ARE all fantasy, and they are all imagined within my mind - BUT SO IS EVERYTHING IN THIS UNIVERSE, including who I think I am as a separate identity, the life that I think I'm living, the experiences I think I'm having, the body that I think is who I am, and everything else here. All of these fantastical things are no more or less a dream than everyday provable scientific evidenced tested examined studied aspects of this dream. It is all the same. Totally solid physical reality is made of the same dream-stuff that nightly dreams, other dimensions, disincarnate beings and all other stuff is made of. None of this is actually *real*, but none of it is any more or less real than any other part of it.
So what IS real - the only reality is the one that has been the same for eternity, the one that has never changed, the one that always `is`, the one that is wholly without differences or changes or fluctuations or forms, and that is the kind of spiritual `reality` that you enjoy in Oneness. That's nothing to do with this dream life. It doesn't matter whether your dice fall on the side of science or on the side of religion or on the side of new-age beliefs or athetism or anything else. This is all illusions here, all of it, the only reality and the only truth is with God. So to think that any of us are more `right` or more `wrong` than others is itself an insane fantasy, designed to make the illusion seem real and to take on special meaning. The world has no meaning whatsoever that we didn't give to it in our fantasizing.
How about entertaining this possibility for a moment... How about the whole physical universe is `in your imagination`, it's all a dream, but yet you don't want to admit that because it would undo your whole important `earth life` and all of its meaning and values. So instead you decide to say ok, all of the stuff outside of my body, and including my body, is not a dream, it's `real`, and anything that happens in my mind is unreal.
In other words, objective reality is something other than who and what I am, and I am merely a subjective victim of the world. Then from that perspective you are able to say that imagination is relegated to the mind and is fantasy, compared to `how real` the physical world seems to be (in your experience of it). You can even go so far as to point out physical scientific evidence that justifies this belief that the world is real, and also cite how so many other people seem to also believe the same - that there really is an objectively real world here. Whatever.
It would certainly seem plausible to say that everything I said I experience is `just in my imagination`, and that by being there it is insane fantasy with no real objective merit. However, where this is all flawed is that if the whole world is in your imagination, then the stuff going on in my little mental fantasy is nothing compared to how much you imagine that this *world* is actually `more objectively real`. As soon as you've decided that there is no reality beyond physical existence, you start to segregate off parts of the world, giving special value to some over others, and saying that some aspects are more real and some less real. So if you did this and decided that new-age aliens jesus mysticism dreams whatever is less valuably real than `other stuff` like material objects, then of course you aren't likely to *want to* consider that your very important physical life is just a dream that never happened. Scary thought.
What this all boils down to is what you `think is real` versus what actually IS real. And for that you need a definition of reality that has nothing to do with personal opinion or the evidence of the world. Reality is `what is`. Is is a spiritual reality of wholeness, purity, constancy, a total lack of change or difference, it is love, it is holiness, it is innocence, it is outside of all time and space, it has nothing to do with people in bodies, it has nothing to do with relationships, it has nothing to do with physics chemistry or biology, it never had a beginning or an end, and is simply everywhere - there is nowhere that it is not, and so if it is everywhere, where the heck is this world except in your insane fantasies? Reality is self-evidently real. What is not self evidently real is the stuff that has to have something else to justify it, which accounts for everything that you think of as the `real world`. It is not real, it is imagined, and my little musings about meeting with other unusual beings `within this dream` is rather insignificant compared to the far more bizarre activity of you thinking that your life/body/job/relationships/computer/house/car/world are real.
I will accept that all of my `experiences` are not necessarily experiences of Truth, because that would mean being in pure oneness with All That Is. Whether it be mediumship or dreams or daydreams or waking dreams (this life) or telekinesis or telepathy or psychic ability or alien civilizations (of which we are one), these things ARE all a dream, they ARE all fantasy, and they are all imagined within my mind - BUT SO IS EVERYTHING IN THIS UNIVERSE, including who I think I am as a separate identity, the life that I think I'm living, the experiences I think I'm having, the body that I think is who I am, and everything else here. All of these fantastical things are no more or less a dream than everyday provable scientific evidenced tested examined studied aspects of this dream. It is all the same. Totally solid physical reality is made of the same dream-stuff that nightly dreams, other dimensions, disincarnate beings and all other stuff is made of. None of this is actually *real*, but none of it is any more or less real than any other part of it.
So what IS real - the only reality is the one that has been the same for eternity, the one that has never changed, the one that always `is`, the one that is wholly without differences or changes or fluctuations or forms, and that is the kind of spiritual `reality` that you enjoy in Oneness. That's nothing to do with this dream life. It doesn't matter whether your dice fall on the side of science or on the side of religion or on the side of new-age beliefs or athetism or anything else. This is all illusions here, all of it, the only reality and the only truth is with God. So to think that any of us are more `right` or more `wrong` than others is itself an insane fantasy, designed to make the illusion seem real and to take on special meaning. The world has no meaning whatsoever that we didn't give to it in our fantasizing.