What is 'real'?
What is 'real'? When I read an engaging story, my heart beats faster, and my attention is gripped. I might read to the end of the chapter and look up and 'emerge' from that experience into what we call the real world. And it's like 'coming to' after being asleep or unconscious. You remember, "oh yeah, this is what's real..." and somewhere feel a sense of disappointment that what seemed so real in the story is not.
Let's take the Harry Potter books, for example. J.K. Rowling has done such a terrific job of creating a rich magical world populated by amazing characters. Her writing style and story telling abilities make it easy to picture this world and empathize with the characters. We are sucked in from the very first page. And we soon experience that dichotomy of feeling between the real world and the very real experience we've had reading the book. The stories are so compelling that we want them to be real, we feel that somewhere, somehow they should be real.
I remember reading a book by a theosophist that suggested that popular fictional characters take on a life of their own, as thought forms, on the astral or mental plane. With so many people reading the Harry Potter books, all that thought energy, all that imagination power, crystalises the characters... somewhere, somehow... if only into the collective unconscious... the universally shared mind.
With the books being made into movies, the characters are objectified onto digital film. We now read the books and tend to see Harry Potter as the version played by Daniel Radcliffe in the movies. Same with the other characters. Maggie Smith's portrayal IS Professor Mcgonagall. Robbie Coltrane's Hagrid IS Hagrid.
When does something become real? What is the difference between something we decide is real and something we deem to be imaginary? It's often said in the personal development movement that the mind cannot tell the difference between the real and the vividly imagined. If you agree with that, I'd like to swap your real $100 for my five imaginary $20s!
There is a difference between real and imagined. Of course there is. Otherwise nobody would bother doing anything. We'd just sit around and be happy with our fantasies and imaginations. Most people have had at least one fantasy relationship, if not recently then in their youth. It's an entertaining distraction. But it's nothing like the real thing. Simulation is always a secondary experience, however good you are at visualisation.
Real, for me, is something that does not need the investment of my conscious mental energy to exist. This is interesting to consider in the context of creativity. When you come up with an idea, you usually start with a blank canvas. This is like the primordial state. And you have to invest mental energy, you have to have a thought.
In the beginning was the Word.
Our imaginations bring something forth that wasn't there before. The more detail we give to the thing we are imagining, the more real it seems to become.
J.K. Rowling's books are extraordinarily rich with interesting details that bring her wizard world and its inhabitants to life. Your own ideas become more vivid and real the more you think about them and work out the particulars.
If you take your detailed imaginings to the ultimate, you start to externalise and build the thing into reality. It has so much detail that it has become form. In 'realising' it, by adding more and more layers of detail and knowledge about it, it becomes part of reality, it becomes real.
I'm not satisfied by this answer. Have you got a better one?
Let's take the Harry Potter books, for example. J.K. Rowling has done such a terrific job of creating a rich magical world populated by amazing characters. Her writing style and story telling abilities make it easy to picture this world and empathize with the characters. We are sucked in from the very first page. And we soon experience that dichotomy of feeling between the real world and the very real experience we've had reading the book. The stories are so compelling that we want them to be real, we feel that somewhere, somehow they should be real.
I remember reading a book by a theosophist that suggested that popular fictional characters take on a life of their own, as thought forms, on the astral or mental plane. With so many people reading the Harry Potter books, all that thought energy, all that imagination power, crystalises the characters... somewhere, somehow... if only into the collective unconscious... the universally shared mind.
With the books being made into movies, the characters are objectified onto digital film. We now read the books and tend to see Harry Potter as the version played by Daniel Radcliffe in the movies. Same with the other characters. Maggie Smith's portrayal IS Professor Mcgonagall. Robbie Coltrane's Hagrid IS Hagrid.
When does something become real? What is the difference between something we decide is real and something we deem to be imaginary? It's often said in the personal development movement that the mind cannot tell the difference between the real and the vividly imagined. If you agree with that, I'd like to swap your real $100 for my five imaginary $20s!
There is a difference between real and imagined. Of course there is. Otherwise nobody would bother doing anything. We'd just sit around and be happy with our fantasies and imaginations. Most people have had at least one fantasy relationship, if not recently then in their youth. It's an entertaining distraction. But it's nothing like the real thing. Simulation is always a secondary experience, however good you are at visualisation.
Real, for me, is something that does not need the investment of my conscious mental energy to exist. This is interesting to consider in the context of creativity. When you come up with an idea, you usually start with a blank canvas. This is like the primordial state. And you have to invest mental energy, you have to have a thought.
In the beginning was the Word.
Our imaginations bring something forth that wasn't there before. The more detail we give to the thing we are imagining, the more real it seems to become.
J.K. Rowling's books are extraordinarily rich with interesting details that bring her wizard world and its inhabitants to life. Your own ideas become more vivid and real the more you think about them and work out the particulars.
If you take your detailed imaginings to the ultimate, you start to externalise and build the thing into reality. It has so much detail that it has become form. In 'realising' it, by adding more and more layers of detail and knowledge about it, it becomes part of reality, it becomes real.
I'm not satisfied by this answer. Have you got a better one?
Labels: imagination, real, reality
