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Lost Knowledge of the Imagination
The ability to imagine is at the heart of what makes us human. Through our imagination we experience more fully the world both around us and within us. Imagination plays a key role in creativity and innovation.
Until the seventeenth century, the human imagination was celebrated. Since then, with the emergence of science as the dominant worldview, imagination has been marginalised -- depicted as a way of escaping reality, rather than knowing it more profoundly -- and its significance to our humanity has been downplayed.
Yet as we move further into the strange new dimensions of the twenty-first century, the need to regain this lost knowledge seems more necessary than ever before.
This insightful and inspiring book argues that, for the sake of our future in the world, we must reclaim the ability to imagine and redress the balance of influence between imagination and science.
Through the work of Owen Barfield, Goethe, Henry Corbin, Kathleen Raine, and others, and ranging from the teachings of ancient mystics to the latest developments in neuroscience, The Lost Knowledge of the Imagination draws us back to a philosophy and tradition that restores imagination to its rightful place, essential to our knowing reality to the full, and to our very humanity itself.
Until the seventeenth century, the human imagination was celebrated. Since then, with the emergence of science as the dominant worldview, imagination has been marginalised -- depicted as a way of escaping reality, rather than knowing it more profoundly -- and its significance to our humanity has been downplayed.
Yet as we move further into the strange new dimensions of the twenty-first century, the need to regain this lost knowledge seems more necessary than ever before.
This insightful and inspiring book argues that, for the sake of our future in the world, we must reclaim the ability to imagine and redress the balance of influence between imagination and science.
Through the work of Owen Barfield, Goethe, Henry Corbin, Kathleen Raine, and others, and ranging from the teachings of ancient mystics to the latest developments in neuroscience, The Lost Knowledge of the Imagination draws us back to a philosophy and tradition that restores imagination to its rightful place, essential to our knowing reality to the full, and to our very humanity itself.
145 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 19, 2017
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881 people want to read
About the author
Gary Lachman
65 books444 followersGary Lachman is an American writer and musician. Lachman is best known to readers of mysticism and the occult from the numerous articles and books he has published.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
October 2, 2021
Unimaginative Nonsense
Nonsense. The contention that a language of science has replaced a language of myth to the detriment of the world is nonsense.
Lachman blames the pre-Socratic Greeks for starting the rot in language. Measurement and the language of mathematics are particularly vile. They empty out the existential reality of everything and leave us with sterile husks of mere scientific concepts. According to him the results are disastrous: “Anomie, apathy, alienation, a sense of existential ‘So what?’ accompanied the success of our now seemingly unstoppable aim of quantifying all of existence and our experience of it.”
Lachman gropes continuously for examples to demonstrate how evil his idea of scientific terminology is. He says, for example, “The spirit of geometry works sequentially, reasoning its way step-by-step, following its rules, whereas the intuitive minds sees everything all at once. It arrives at its goal in one glance, not by a process of deduction.” Step by step reasoning - bad; intuitive understanding of wholes - good. Perhaps he could benefit by reading Ian Hacking’s exposition about how important both intuition and the process of deduction are in mathematics: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
That Lachman attempts to make science conform with his idea of social evil is apparent. What he would like us all to do about this evil is less clear. He wants more ‘imagination’ but is convinced that we no longer know what imagination is. He defines it as “our ability to grasp reality;” and claims have lost knowledge of this critical skill through the pernicious intrusion of unimaginative science into every aspect of our lives.
The obvious question that has to be posed to Lachman is ‘How could you possibly know this?’ If the connection between our language and our words is flawed, the error is inexpressible in the language we have. Many have claimed linguistic superiority as a matter of divine revelation as a solution to this epistemological problem - Hebrew for Jews, Latin for Christians, Arabic for Muslims. Lachman is very big on Owen Barfield’s so-called Anthroposophy, a sort of poetic systems theory of the world, which was influential with C.S. Lewis and the other members of the Oxford Inklings.
So Lachman likes poets, especially religious poets, the more mystical the better: Goethe, Hamann, Jung, Cassirer. So do I. And I have some sympathy with Lachman’s rather spiritual view that language, scientific or not, does not capture reality. But to claim that poetic or religious language somehow does and in some way demonstrates superior imaginative skill is not just bogus but stupid. Lachman is well read; but he is also a closet religious fundamentalist who believes that he and his pals have an inside track on which language has the right connections with those things that are not-language.
As I said: Nonsense. And not very imaginative nonsense given that its all been said before.
Postscript: See here for Lachman’s language suggestions: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0wqof...
Nonsense. The contention that a language of science has replaced a language of myth to the detriment of the world is nonsense.
Lachman blames the pre-Socratic Greeks for starting the rot in language. Measurement and the language of mathematics are particularly vile. They empty out the existential reality of everything and leave us with sterile husks of mere scientific concepts. According to him the results are disastrous: “Anomie, apathy, alienation, a sense of existential ‘So what?’ accompanied the success of our now seemingly unstoppable aim of quantifying all of existence and our experience of it.”
Lachman gropes continuously for examples to demonstrate how evil his idea of scientific terminology is. He says, for example, “The spirit of geometry works sequentially, reasoning its way step-by-step, following its rules, whereas the intuitive minds sees everything all at once. It arrives at its goal in one glance, not by a process of deduction.” Step by step reasoning - bad; intuitive understanding of wholes - good. Perhaps he could benefit by reading Ian Hacking’s exposition about how important both intuition and the process of deduction are in mathematics: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
That Lachman attempts to make science conform with his idea of social evil is apparent. What he would like us all to do about this evil is less clear. He wants more ‘imagination’ but is convinced that we no longer know what imagination is. He defines it as “our ability to grasp reality;” and claims have lost knowledge of this critical skill through the pernicious intrusion of unimaginative science into every aspect of our lives.
The obvious question that has to be posed to Lachman is ‘How could you possibly know this?’ If the connection between our language and our words is flawed, the error is inexpressible in the language we have. Many have claimed linguistic superiority as a matter of divine revelation as a solution to this epistemological problem - Hebrew for Jews, Latin for Christians, Arabic for Muslims. Lachman is very big on Owen Barfield’s so-called Anthroposophy, a sort of poetic systems theory of the world, which was influential with C.S. Lewis and the other members of the Oxford Inklings.
So Lachman likes poets, especially religious poets, the more mystical the better: Goethe, Hamann, Jung, Cassirer. So do I. And I have some sympathy with Lachman’s rather spiritual view that language, scientific or not, does not capture reality. But to claim that poetic or religious language somehow does and in some way demonstrates superior imaginative skill is not just bogus but stupid. Lachman is well read; but he is also a closet religious fundamentalist who believes that he and his pals have an inside track on which language has the right connections with those things that are not-language.
As I said: Nonsense. And not very imaginative nonsense given that its all been said before.
Postscript: See here for Lachman’s language suggestions: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0wqof...
July 7, 2020
I am at a bit of a loss as to where to start with this book. To call it "life-changing" would be false, but I can clearly see how it could be life-changing to some. For myself, the term "life-restoring" seems most appropriate. I have not been so deeply affected by a book in a long, long, long time. I will be re-reading this book multiple times. Saying "I can't recommend it strongly enough" seems entirely inadequate.
The title Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, while catchy, doesn't capture, for me, what this book does or can do, or what it did for me. Restored Hope for the Inner Life just begins to approach my feelings.
As a child, I had, as they say, a wild imagination. Part of it was escapism - I was raised in the military during the Cold War. There were lots of reasons to not want to think about outside reality. So, I created a comfortable inner reality and often found myself retreating into it. Reading, drawing, long walks or bike rides by myself, music - these were all escapes for me. Life was not always happy, much of the time far from it (I suffer from occasional depression even now, but much more so as a child), but I was afforded the luxury of an escape route through the means I've already described. As a teenager, with more of a need for social interaction, I found myself among others who sought escape and found new means of escape, mostly through drugs and alcohol (though music and roleplaying games were also an important part of my self-medication). After a hard crash and facing the threat of a very long prison term, I became much more religious and gave up drinking and drugs. I found an awesome woman whom I married and we have raised four wonderful children. But life has been hard, as it is, I realize, for everyone. I'm not special in this regard: life is difficult, oftentimes almost unbearably horrific, for every human being. Realizing this, a certain amount of jadedness, subconsciously meant to protect my emotional self, I believe, crowded out a great deal of the innocence, wonder, and hope that I had in my inner life as a child. That's not to say I've become some kind of empty shell, far from it! But my inner life, my soul, has changed dramatically from my childhood. There's no going back, I know, but going forward can be, at times, excruciating.
The need to escape is felt by many. Look at the ever-increasing money pumped into the entertainment "industry" for evidence of this (the word "industry" is interesting, as it puts entertainment on the same level as food production, building houses, making machines that sustain our lives and livelihoods. It implies that entertainment is a life-need.) - we look to the outside world to feed our need to avoid thinking about the horrible things that happen to us and those we love. We apply a topical narcotic, supplied to us by outside sources, to make us temporarily forget our inner pain.
This escape into fantasy is explicitly not what Lachman is arguing for in this book. He is careful to make a distinction between Fantasy, collage-like constructions of what we observe coming into our sensory input from the outside, and Imagination, which is something that emerges from within us, rather than a collection of things from without. Imagination is the activation of the inner life, the life that plays out inside your consciousness every day, that place where no one else can go (though we intuitively know that others have a similar place "inside" of them). Note that imagination, as defined here, is more of a verb than a noun. It is always active and going on within us. Think of the difference between "thought" and "thinking". We can think thoughts, but to think about thinking, the actual mechanism of thinking, requires stepping beyond the mere acknowledgement that we have thoughts. "How do I think?" (not what do I think about) is an important question to ask oneself when exploring the inner life.
Really engaging with that question opens up doors. One such door is the thought that there is a truth beyond the external inputs of data coming from the outside world, that the way you apprehend the world from your inner-self is every bit as "true" as all the scientific data in the world. The balance between these two truths is what Lachman seeks to restore. He argues, convincingly, that while science and hard data have provided one way of knowing, that there is another way, and that this other way of knowing arises, again, not as a construct of what we observe outside us, but from somewhere within us. We apprehend the world via our thinking, and all the extraneous data "out there" is simply that, until we observe and act upon it.
There is no outer world until we complete it with our inner one.
The idea here is not a rejection of science, but it is a rejection of "Scientism," where subdividing the world and explaining it purely from the viewpoint of measurable, explainable data has become a religion in itself. Scientism has become, since the Enlightenment, the predominant way of knowing, and it has crowded out all other kinds of knowing in the public sphere. Of course, this happened as a retort against the reductionist religious view of the world, often enforced by violence and murder, that was predominant in Western society until the Late Renaissance. But the worship of measurable data and step-by-step explanation of phenomena has simply stepped in and taken the slot left vacant by the churches.
Lachman shows that the way of knowing as hinted at in Lost Knowledge of the Imagination is not at odds with science, but that the two are ends of the same pole. At times, it is more beneficial to lean toward the scientific end, at others, it is more beneficial to lean toward the imagination. Science and imagination are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, moments of Gnosis on one end often lead to a more nuanced understanding and increased output from the other.
As I said in my introduction, this book has had a profound effect on me. I feel that by reading and contemplating it, my sense of wonder has begun to rush back in, that sense that I had as a child when discovering new beautiful aspects of the universe that I had not known before. Along with that sense of wonder is a newfound hope I haven't felt in some time. Of course, this is my imagination being re-awakened. Will yours undergo the same restoration as mine? Only you can tell. Only you. YOU!
The title Lost Knowledge of the Imagination, while catchy, doesn't capture, for me, what this book does or can do, or what it did for me. Restored Hope for the Inner Life just begins to approach my feelings.
As a child, I had, as they say, a wild imagination. Part of it was escapism - I was raised in the military during the Cold War. There were lots of reasons to not want to think about outside reality. So, I created a comfortable inner reality and often found myself retreating into it. Reading, drawing, long walks or bike rides by myself, music - these were all escapes for me. Life was not always happy, much of the time far from it (I suffer from occasional depression even now, but much more so as a child), but I was afforded the luxury of an escape route through the means I've already described. As a teenager, with more of a need for social interaction, I found myself among others who sought escape and found new means of escape, mostly through drugs and alcohol (though music and roleplaying games were also an important part of my self-medication). After a hard crash and facing the threat of a very long prison term, I became much more religious and gave up drinking and drugs. I found an awesome woman whom I married and we have raised four wonderful children. But life has been hard, as it is, I realize, for everyone. I'm not special in this regard: life is difficult, oftentimes almost unbearably horrific, for every human being. Realizing this, a certain amount of jadedness, subconsciously meant to protect my emotional self, I believe, crowded out a great deal of the innocence, wonder, and hope that I had in my inner life as a child. That's not to say I've become some kind of empty shell, far from it! But my inner life, my soul, has changed dramatically from my childhood. There's no going back, I know, but going forward can be, at times, excruciating.
The need to escape is felt by many. Look at the ever-increasing money pumped into the entertainment "industry" for evidence of this (the word "industry" is interesting, as it puts entertainment on the same level as food production, building houses, making machines that sustain our lives and livelihoods. It implies that entertainment is a life-need.) - we look to the outside world to feed our need to avoid thinking about the horrible things that happen to us and those we love. We apply a topical narcotic, supplied to us by outside sources, to make us temporarily forget our inner pain.
This escape into fantasy is explicitly not what Lachman is arguing for in this book. He is careful to make a distinction between Fantasy, collage-like constructions of what we observe coming into our sensory input from the outside, and Imagination, which is something that emerges from within us, rather than a collection of things from without. Imagination is the activation of the inner life, the life that plays out inside your consciousness every day, that place where no one else can go (though we intuitively know that others have a similar place "inside" of them). Note that imagination, as defined here, is more of a verb than a noun. It is always active and going on within us. Think of the difference between "thought" and "thinking". We can think thoughts, but to think about thinking, the actual mechanism of thinking, requires stepping beyond the mere acknowledgement that we have thoughts. "How do I think?" (not what do I think about) is an important question to ask oneself when exploring the inner life.
Really engaging with that question opens up doors. One such door is the thought that there is a truth beyond the external inputs of data coming from the outside world, that the way you apprehend the world from your inner-self is every bit as "true" as all the scientific data in the world. The balance between these two truths is what Lachman seeks to restore. He argues, convincingly, that while science and hard data have provided one way of knowing, that there is another way, and that this other way of knowing arises, again, not as a construct of what we observe outside us, but from somewhere within us. We apprehend the world via our thinking, and all the extraneous data "out there" is simply that, until we observe and act upon it.
There is no outer world until we complete it with our inner one.
The idea here is not a rejection of science, but it is a rejection of "Scientism," where subdividing the world and explaining it purely from the viewpoint of measurable, explainable data has become a religion in itself. Scientism has become, since the Enlightenment, the predominant way of knowing, and it has crowded out all other kinds of knowing in the public sphere. Of course, this happened as a retort against the reductionist religious view of the world, often enforced by violence and murder, that was predominant in Western society until the Late Renaissance. But the worship of measurable data and step-by-step explanation of phenomena has simply stepped in and taken the slot left vacant by the churches.
Lachman shows that the way of knowing as hinted at in Lost Knowledge of the Imagination is not at odds with science, but that the two are ends of the same pole. At times, it is more beneficial to lean toward the scientific end, at others, it is more beneficial to lean toward the imagination. Science and imagination are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, moments of Gnosis on one end often lead to a more nuanced understanding and increased output from the other.
As I said in my introduction, this book has had a profound effect on me. I feel that by reading and contemplating it, my sense of wonder has begun to rush back in, that sense that I had as a child when discovering new beautiful aspects of the universe that I had not known before. Along with that sense of wonder is a newfound hope I haven't felt in some time. Of course, this is my imagination being re-awakened. Will yours undergo the same restoration as mine? Only you can tell. Only you. YOU!
March 10, 2018
Driving to work this morning after an unexpected couple inches more wet snow, more shoveling, cleaning off the car, various frustrations in traffic... I tried something. Instead of fuming over the idiot in front of me on the highway who hadn't bothered to clean the snow from his car so it now sprayed all over mine, I made a deliberate attempt at appreciating the amazing beauty all around me. I'm lucky - live in Vermont - my commute winds up and down the mountain highway, I-89.
Snow blanketed the branches of the bare trees and evergreens lining the sides of the road, and though the highway was slick in spots, slowing down made it safe enough to take in my surroundings with true appreciation and creativity - the pine trees hunching over, heavy with the snow blanket's weight - bare bushes like heads of cauliflower, covered in the clumpy white stuff. For a moment, everything held slightly more detail, somehow more three dimensional, and I felt - wonderful! Then, it faded. So I tried it again. It worked again! More came with it, too, a realization this is a Peak Experience, this is actual, active perception. This thought came: "Coleridge believed poems should put you in this space" - not a brand-new thought, but enhanced, understood in more depth - reading his Biographia Literaria: Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life & Opinions, it seemed to me Samuel Taylor Coleridge thought of poems as spells, opening doorways into the imagination. Suddenly, I knew better what he'd meant.
A week after "finishing" this book (I will read it again), I was experimenting with and experiencing the kind of consciousness covered in these pages, a way of perceiving the world, of participating in the world, that is in danger of being lost, as another way has taken over. With the rise of science, our "left" brain developed, ascended, and took over, with its insistence on only observable reality and a tendency to murder to dissect. It needed to develop, to assist in our evolution, but has now achieved total dominance and control, over-compensating. The suggestion here is that the next step in our consciousness' evolution is to bring back the "right" brain and its more holistic, symbolic, imaginative perception of "reality". Not so that the right may then take over, but rather to then employ both sides of our brain - here's where we begin.
Active perception - interactive, even. Duo-consciousness. Primary and Secondary Imagination - Gary Lachman continues to probe the nature of consciousness and perception in this thin volume (about 139 pp). It's length would be my only complaint - I want more! That is not to say this is a quick read - Lost Knowledge of the Imagination is densely packed with heady concepts, ideas, quotations and references from perceptive thinkers across millennia. This is Lachman's own exploration of territory his recent biography of Colin Wilson (Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of Colin Wilson) and esoteric history (The Secret Teachers of the Western World) covered. In those tomes, Lachman mostly wrote about others' takes on human consciousness. Here, he's formulating his own, in much the same way Wilson did.
Lachman is, in some ways, carrying on from where Wilson left off - certainly in showing a facility for digesting an enormous amount of material and distilling it down for easy relation to the reader. But Lachman isn't quite as jovial and... British, I guess... as Wilson, and not only in voice but approach. Lachman has a more serious tone accompanying prose that is aimed at a slightly above average reader. Wilson, writing for a no-longer-extant general reading audience, felt compelled to explain in some detail, for his more average reader. Lachman knows his audience is, presumably, less average and more engaged. Maybe, ready for higher knowledge... the Lost Knowledge of the Imagination.
Like what I did there? Heh.
If you're familiar with any of Lachman's recent books, you'll enjoy this personal distillation and advancement of the ideas within. Armed now with years of research and knowledge, this latest shows Lachman eminently qualified to lead our inquiries into the nature of consciousness and our divided mind. It's inspirational! Makes me want to read - and write - more.
November 20, 2017
Essential Reading; a Core Text for Imaginal Worlders
Finally. Gary Lachman has done us an immense favor with this excellently written and reasoned book. It presents the argument for the vital place of imagination in our model of reality. I have long been a student of Jung, and through him James Hillman and Henry Corbin, as well as esoteric and occult thought from all over the place. There has long been a counter-argument brewing to the modern materialist metaphysics, but it’s been scattered through different works, few of which have been noticed by the public at large. Lachman brings all the threads together, not just Jung but Blake, the Romantics, Goethe, Barfield, the Neoplatonists, etc. With clarity and concision, Lachman has produced the perfect primer for understanding these threads of thought that build a coherent model of the imagination and how it weaves us into the world.
Finally. Gary Lachman has done us an immense favor with this excellently written and reasoned book. It presents the argument for the vital place of imagination in our model of reality. I have long been a student of Jung, and through him James Hillman and Henry Corbin, as well as esoteric and occult thought from all over the place. There has long been a counter-argument brewing to the modern materialist metaphysics, but it’s been scattered through different works, few of which have been noticed by the public at large. Lachman brings all the threads together, not just Jung but Blake, the Romantics, Goethe, Barfield, the Neoplatonists, etc. With clarity and concision, Lachman has produced the perfect primer for understanding these threads of thought that build a coherent model of the imagination and how it weaves us into the world.
July 6, 2022
Apie Vaizduotę kaip alternatyvų, dabar įsigalėjusiam moksliniam, pasaulio pažinimo būdą. Kaip kitą žinojimo polių.
November 21, 2022
Let's start with the problems, because they're central.
The basic contention is that science, "the new way of knowing", has driven out an older, and implicitly better, way of knowing based on imagination that provides meaning and somehow gets to the heart of things.
First, this is a caricature of scientific thinking. Lachman refers to clockwork models of the world, a metaphor that science abandoned a hundred years ago or more. He quotes Einstein on the role of intuition in science without making the connection that, though Einstein had an extraordinary imaginative faculty, this is exactly how science is done, if usually by lesser mortals. At the same time, Einstein held a strongly objectivist view of the world, contrary to Bohr and the quantum physicists.
Second, it's just obviously untrue that the world is overly rational and empirical. Look around you and watch the news.
Third, there's a semi-hidden far right agenda behind this. Several of the thinkers referred to object to various aspects of modernity, venerate "Tradition" or lament the loss of religion and hierarchy. One, Schwaller de Lubicz was an actual proto-Nazi. The implication is that there is more here going on than a search for meaning. This meaning will be found in an abandonment of Enlightenment values, including political values, and a return to a traditional social order, with hierarchies of class, and presumably, gender and race.
Setting all this aside (and that's quite a lot), there is a lot of interesting material, based on massive research, and could hardlybe bettered as a tour of thought about intuitive ways of knowing. I plan to read more of Owen Barfield and about Husserl's phenomenology, if not Husserl himself.
The basic contention is that science, "the new way of knowing", has driven out an older, and implicitly better, way of knowing based on imagination that provides meaning and somehow gets to the heart of things.
First, this is a caricature of scientific thinking. Lachman refers to clockwork models of the world, a metaphor that science abandoned a hundred years ago or more. He quotes Einstein on the role of intuition in science without making the connection that, though Einstein had an extraordinary imaginative faculty, this is exactly how science is done, if usually by lesser mortals. At the same time, Einstein held a strongly objectivist view of the world, contrary to Bohr and the quantum physicists.
Second, it's just obviously untrue that the world is overly rational and empirical. Look around you and watch the news.
Third, there's a semi-hidden far right agenda behind this. Several of the thinkers referred to object to various aspects of modernity, venerate "Tradition" or lament the loss of religion and hierarchy. One, Schwaller de Lubicz was an actual proto-Nazi. The implication is that there is more here going on than a search for meaning. This meaning will be found in an abandonment of Enlightenment values, including political values, and a return to a traditional social order, with hierarchies of class, and presumably, gender and race.
Setting all this aside (and that's quite a lot), there is a lot of interesting material, based on massive research, and could hardlybe bettered as a tour of thought about intuitive ways of knowing. I plan to read more of Owen Barfield and about Husserl's phenomenology, if not Husserl himself.
April 29, 2018
Turn on your mind:antidote to the '60's revolution!
Like reading Wilson,you feel the author is with you while you read. Summarizes Lachman's thoughts to date. Along with his constant favourites like Stiener, Years and Hung this work introduced a few new names to those following Lachman's works. Kathleen Raine, Barfield,Thompson, Goethe among others exploring the theme of consciousness evolution and imagination.
Like reading Wilson,you feel the author is with you while you read. Summarizes Lachman's thoughts to date. Along with his constant favourites like Stiener, Years and Hung this work introduced a few new names to those following Lachman's works. Kathleen Raine, Barfield,Thompson, Goethe among others exploring the theme of consciousness evolution and imagination.
August 12, 2019
Let me begin my review by sharing some thoughts that I held about imagination before first reading this book.
Imagination is one of those terms, such as freedom or love, that we can’t conclusively define, but which we can’t do without. Imagination, however, seems to have fallen out of favor in comparison to the more widely used contemporary term, “creativity.” Creativity, however, strikes me a much shallower concept. To my mind, creativity denotes more of a surface ingenuity, a clever retelling or reworking of existing schemes, structures, or stories. A typical example of this sense of creativity comes from contemporary public art, which often runs from the whimsical or merely clever (in the American sense) to the disjointed, if not merely dull or ugly. Imagination, on the other hand, exists at deeper—one might even say archetypal—level. By going deeper, below the surface, it goes beyond the common human trait of reworking the surface of things by recognizing the deep structures of reality and how they may be contemplated and explored. It is from within the depths of the human mind that imagination springs. Thus, my sense of the distinction between creativity and imagination and where I find much of our contemporary infatuation with creativity misses the mark. In times of trouble, in which we certainly live, we need to move beyond creativity and into the deep wellsprings of imagination.
It was with the frame of mind described above that I eagerly dove into Gary Lachman’s Lost Knowledge of the Imagination. As I’ve come to expect from Lachman’s books, he’s gone before me to explore and give voice to thoughts that I often held as no more than intuitions. And when someone says something that you’re inclined to think in any event (and you can overcome the envy in realizes the other’s superior talent and effort), you quickly are taken in by a book or argument, as I was with this book. Lachman entitles his opening chapter “A Different Way of Knowing,” and he had me there. Lachman explores the profound shift in ways of knowing that came to fruition in the Scientific Revolution of the 17th-century with its emphasis on empirical observations and mathematical-logical thinking that emphasized the role of quantity. This, Lachman writes, was not a slow shift, but a sharp break with tradition, although essential thinkers of the era, such as Pascal, realized that this new method was an addition to older ways of thinking, not a full replacement. Lachman quotes Jacques Barzun (referencing Pascal): “the spirit of geometry ‘works with exact definitions and abstractions in science or mathematics’, while the spirit of finesse ‘works with ideas and perceptions not capable of exact definition’”. Lachman, Gary. Lost Knowledge of the Imagination. Floris Books. Kindle Edition. But not all of Pascal’s contemporaries, nor Barzun’s in our own time, appreciate and realize this distinction. Lachman goes on to explain some of the ramifications of failing to appreciate this distinction:
“The drawback here is that because the lack of definition is rooted in its subjects themselves, and not due to insufficient information or ‘facts’ about them – when will we have all the facts about love or freedom? – those who follow the spirit of finesse find it difficult, if not impossible, to explain how they know what they know. There are no steps 1, 2, and 3; it just hits them and it is obvious, self-evident. We hear a sonata by Beethoven and we know it is beautiful and meaningful; we do not arrive at this knowledge through a series of logical steps. We do not say to ourselves, ‘Well, it has x number of notes in this passage, which means that …’ and so on. But if asked how we know it is beautiful and meaningful, and even worse, if we can prove it, we draw a blank. The spirit of geometry can take us by the hand and lead us from definition, theorem, and axiom to the goal. But the process is mechanical, practically tautological, as each definition is merely another way of stating the same thing (4 is only another way of saying 2 + 2). And it works best with practical, utilitarian things, not with those that have a purchase on our emotional being.” Id.
Lachman goes on to discuss others who’ve arrived at very similar insights, from the 20th-century German thinker Ernest Junger to Michael Polanyi, Alfred North Whitehead, and the contemporary literary scholar-turned-neuroscientist, Iain McGilchrist. These thinkers—and many others—have described and appreciated the distinctions between these different modes of thought, while much of the broader culture clings to a simplistic emphasis on the abstractness (and resulting barrenness) of the "scientific method.” To be clear, Lachman isn’t rejecting the scientific method or the value of science, only “scientism,” which recognizes the abstractions and conclusions of natural science as the only means of knowledge and arriving at “truth.” From this foundation in the history of Western thought, Lachman proceeds to establish the value of the ways of knowing that have been mostly (although not entirely) lost. He describes his project:
“This book is about this ‘lost’ knowledge of the imagination. Yet, while this may give us a handy phrase under which we can put examples of the other kind of knowing I have been speaking about, it is not immediately clear what we mean by ‘imagination’. Imagination is one of those things which we all know intimately but which we would find difficult to pin down exactly. It is one of those things that, as Whitehead said, are ‘incapable of analysis in terms of factors more far-reaching than themselves’. . .. Memory, self-consciousness, thought, perception: all inform and are informed by imagination and are difficult, if not impossible, to pry apart from it or each other. This should not be surprising. Imagination does not follow the clear axioms and definitions of the spirit of geometry, but the wayward, vague, surprising insights of the spirit of finesse.” Id.
Lachman, having set the terms of his project, moves on to explore a variety of thinkers who have developed and explored insights into this different way of knowing. For instance, he explores the towering figure of the German Enlightenment and Romanticism, Goethe, and the (underappreciated) 20th-century British thinker, Owen Barfield. And, I must add, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, about whom Barfield wrote a book-length study. I must pause here because of what I wrote about at the opening of this review about my distinction between “creativity” and “imagination.” As is inevitably the case, someone arrived at 'my' keen insight long before I did—in this case, no mean figure: Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Lachman writes, “[T]he distinction that the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge made between fantasy and imagination, with fantasy doing collage work, and imagination creating something that is truly ‘new’. For Coleridge a unicorn or a flying pig is a product of fantasy, of putting together different bits and pieces of our snapshots. True imagination is something else.” Id. Like I said.
Lachman goes more deeply into Coleridge’s perspective by tying his insight with that of Goethe’s work on plants and Goethe’s imaginative insight about what the first plants must have looked like:
The non-existing plants that Goethe could hypothetically create would not be monsters in the original sense of the word – aberrations of nature – but in perfect keeping with Nature’s designs. This is because Goethe had matched the ‘unknown law’ in the outer world, Nature, with the ‘unknown law’ in his inner one, his imagination. As I mentioned, these ‘unknown laws’ are what Coleridge called ‘facts of mind’, necessities of the imagination, that must be met in order for it to be something more than a ‘madman’s cornerstone’. Failing this, imagination sinks to being merely what Coleridge called ‘fancy’, which is nothing more than ‘a mode of Memory’, a way of re-arranging elements obtained through the senses (‘flying pigs’), which is all the ‘blank slate’ school of psychology will allow us. Or worse, it becomes a distortion of reality, Paracelsus’s ‘madman’s cornerstone’ or the kinds of images being produced by much of modern art that Barfield found indicative of a spiritual bankruptcy and which, with something like Yeats’ warning in mind, he feared could eventually produce a ‘fantastically hideous world’. Id.
Do we live in a “fantastically hideous world”? As, no doubt, the world has always been, it’s a mixed lot. But much of what passes for imagination today we can more accurately describe as (at its best) mere creativity or fancy, and at its worst, a nightmarish parody of reality, where fake and real become interchangeable and indistinct. Lachman discusses (and greatly appreciates) the work of the 20th-century British poet and essayist Kathleen Raine, and in exploring her work in “the Tradition.” He writes
Decades before its popularity, Raine predicted the rise of ‘reality TV’, pointing out that what is on the screen is often no different from the lives of those watching it. ‘Viewers and viewed’, she observed, ‘could change places and nothing would be altered’. If a work of imagination had once been a ‘magic glass in which we discover that nature to which actuality is barely an approximation’, it had become in our time a kind of brightly lit bathroom mirror, in which all the blemishes and wrinkles of ‘real life’ were magnified a hundredfold. Id.
I can only add that in the U.S., in the era of the reality-TV president, we need more from our imaginations that ever.
I haven’t addressed many other themes and thinkers explored in this wonderful work. “Imagination” is one of those significant terms that one could explore almost endlessly (and I hope to explore the topic further). There are many works and thinkers to reference in such a project. But it’s hard to—imagine?—a better book with which to begin such a quest. In fact, there is so much that Lachman covers in this (relatively) short work that I’ve not mentioned that I feel guilty leaving so much out, but the best way to alleviate my shortcoming (my guilt is my own stuff) is the read this outstanding work.
Imagination is one of those terms, such as freedom or love, that we can’t conclusively define, but which we can’t do without. Imagination, however, seems to have fallen out of favor in comparison to the more widely used contemporary term, “creativity.” Creativity, however, strikes me a much shallower concept. To my mind, creativity denotes more of a surface ingenuity, a clever retelling or reworking of existing schemes, structures, or stories. A typical example of this sense of creativity comes from contemporary public art, which often runs from the whimsical or merely clever (in the American sense) to the disjointed, if not merely dull or ugly. Imagination, on the other hand, exists at deeper—one might even say archetypal—level. By going deeper, below the surface, it goes beyond the common human trait of reworking the surface of things by recognizing the deep structures of reality and how they may be contemplated and explored. It is from within the depths of the human mind that imagination springs. Thus, my sense of the distinction between creativity and imagination and where I find much of our contemporary infatuation with creativity misses the mark. In times of trouble, in which we certainly live, we need to move beyond creativity and into the deep wellsprings of imagination.
It was with the frame of mind described above that I eagerly dove into Gary Lachman’s Lost Knowledge of the Imagination. As I’ve come to expect from Lachman’s books, he’s gone before me to explore and give voice to thoughts that I often held as no more than intuitions. And when someone says something that you’re inclined to think in any event (and you can overcome the envy in realizes the other’s superior talent and effort), you quickly are taken in by a book or argument, as I was with this book. Lachman entitles his opening chapter “A Different Way of Knowing,” and he had me there. Lachman explores the profound shift in ways of knowing that came to fruition in the Scientific Revolution of the 17th-century with its emphasis on empirical observations and mathematical-logical thinking that emphasized the role of quantity. This, Lachman writes, was not a slow shift, but a sharp break with tradition, although essential thinkers of the era, such as Pascal, realized that this new method was an addition to older ways of thinking, not a full replacement. Lachman quotes Jacques Barzun (referencing Pascal): “the spirit of geometry ‘works with exact definitions and abstractions in science or mathematics’, while the spirit of finesse ‘works with ideas and perceptions not capable of exact definition’”. Lachman, Gary. Lost Knowledge of the Imagination. Floris Books. Kindle Edition. But not all of Pascal’s contemporaries, nor Barzun’s in our own time, appreciate and realize this distinction. Lachman goes on to explain some of the ramifications of failing to appreciate this distinction:
“The drawback here is that because the lack of definition is rooted in its subjects themselves, and not due to insufficient information or ‘facts’ about them – when will we have all the facts about love or freedom? – those who follow the spirit of finesse find it difficult, if not impossible, to explain how they know what they know. There are no steps 1, 2, and 3; it just hits them and it is obvious, self-evident. We hear a sonata by Beethoven and we know it is beautiful and meaningful; we do not arrive at this knowledge through a series of logical steps. We do not say to ourselves, ‘Well, it has x number of notes in this passage, which means that …’ and so on. But if asked how we know it is beautiful and meaningful, and even worse, if we can prove it, we draw a blank. The spirit of geometry can take us by the hand and lead us from definition, theorem, and axiom to the goal. But the process is mechanical, practically tautological, as each definition is merely another way of stating the same thing (4 is only another way of saying 2 + 2). And it works best with practical, utilitarian things, not with those that have a purchase on our emotional being.” Id.
Lachman goes on to discuss others who’ve arrived at very similar insights, from the 20th-century German thinker Ernest Junger to Michael Polanyi, Alfred North Whitehead, and the contemporary literary scholar-turned-neuroscientist, Iain McGilchrist. These thinkers—and many others—have described and appreciated the distinctions between these different modes of thought, while much of the broader culture clings to a simplistic emphasis on the abstractness (and resulting barrenness) of the "scientific method.” To be clear, Lachman isn’t rejecting the scientific method or the value of science, only “scientism,” which recognizes the abstractions and conclusions of natural science as the only means of knowledge and arriving at “truth.” From this foundation in the history of Western thought, Lachman proceeds to establish the value of the ways of knowing that have been mostly (although not entirely) lost. He describes his project:
“This book is about this ‘lost’ knowledge of the imagination. Yet, while this may give us a handy phrase under which we can put examples of the other kind of knowing I have been speaking about, it is not immediately clear what we mean by ‘imagination’. Imagination is one of those things which we all know intimately but which we would find difficult to pin down exactly. It is one of those things that, as Whitehead said, are ‘incapable of analysis in terms of factors more far-reaching than themselves’. . .. Memory, self-consciousness, thought, perception: all inform and are informed by imagination and are difficult, if not impossible, to pry apart from it or each other. This should not be surprising. Imagination does not follow the clear axioms and definitions of the spirit of geometry, but the wayward, vague, surprising insights of the spirit of finesse.” Id.
Lachman, having set the terms of his project, moves on to explore a variety of thinkers who have developed and explored insights into this different way of knowing. For instance, he explores the towering figure of the German Enlightenment and Romanticism, Goethe, and the (underappreciated) 20th-century British thinker, Owen Barfield. And, I must add, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, about whom Barfield wrote a book-length study. I must pause here because of what I wrote about at the opening of this review about my distinction between “creativity” and “imagination.” As is inevitably the case, someone arrived at 'my' keen insight long before I did—in this case, no mean figure: Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Lachman writes, “[T]he distinction that the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge made between fantasy and imagination, with fantasy doing collage work, and imagination creating something that is truly ‘new’. For Coleridge a unicorn or a flying pig is a product of fantasy, of putting together different bits and pieces of our snapshots. True imagination is something else.” Id. Like I said.
Lachman goes more deeply into Coleridge’s perspective by tying his insight with that of Goethe’s work on plants and Goethe’s imaginative insight about what the first plants must have looked like:
The non-existing plants that Goethe could hypothetically create would not be monsters in the original sense of the word – aberrations of nature – but in perfect keeping with Nature’s designs. This is because Goethe had matched the ‘unknown law’ in the outer world, Nature, with the ‘unknown law’ in his inner one, his imagination. As I mentioned, these ‘unknown laws’ are what Coleridge called ‘facts of mind’, necessities of the imagination, that must be met in order for it to be something more than a ‘madman’s cornerstone’. Failing this, imagination sinks to being merely what Coleridge called ‘fancy’, which is nothing more than ‘a mode of Memory’, a way of re-arranging elements obtained through the senses (‘flying pigs’), which is all the ‘blank slate’ school of psychology will allow us. Or worse, it becomes a distortion of reality, Paracelsus’s ‘madman’s cornerstone’ or the kinds of images being produced by much of modern art that Barfield found indicative of a spiritual bankruptcy and which, with something like Yeats’ warning in mind, he feared could eventually produce a ‘fantastically hideous world’. Id.
Do we live in a “fantastically hideous world”? As, no doubt, the world has always been, it’s a mixed lot. But much of what passes for imagination today we can more accurately describe as (at its best) mere creativity or fancy, and at its worst, a nightmarish parody of reality, where fake and real become interchangeable and indistinct. Lachman discusses (and greatly appreciates) the work of the 20th-century British poet and essayist Kathleen Raine, and in exploring her work in “the Tradition.” He writes
Decades before its popularity, Raine predicted the rise of ‘reality TV’, pointing out that what is on the screen is often no different from the lives of those watching it. ‘Viewers and viewed’, she observed, ‘could change places and nothing would be altered’. If a work of imagination had once been a ‘magic glass in which we discover that nature to which actuality is barely an approximation’, it had become in our time a kind of brightly lit bathroom mirror, in which all the blemishes and wrinkles of ‘real life’ were magnified a hundredfold. Id.
I can only add that in the U.S., in the era of the reality-TV president, we need more from our imaginations that ever.
I haven’t addressed many other themes and thinkers explored in this wonderful work. “Imagination” is one of those significant terms that one could explore almost endlessly (and I hope to explore the topic further). There are many works and thinkers to reference in such a project. But it’s hard to—imagine?—a better book with which to begin such a quest. In fact, there is so much that Lachman covers in this (relatively) short work that I’ve not mentioned that I feel guilty leaving so much out, but the best way to alleviate my shortcoming (my guilt is my own stuff) is the read this outstanding work.
February 8, 2021
I love the premise of this book, which is that for the past 400 years, imagination has been dismissed as only 'make believe,' rather than acknowledged as the key to most fully experiencing a necessary sense of meaning in our lives. The imagination holds the key for humanity to both know reality, and truly bring our most desired reality into being. Lachman strikes a masterful balance of scholarly insights, philosophical musings, and down-to-Earth practicality in this extraordinary book.
One way I can tell how much I adore a book is by the number of post-it bookmarks I've added; and this book has dozens, which probably should be replaced, since I've been constantly coming back to this book to refer to it again and again.
Another way I can tell when I absolutely love a book is the way I find myself telling people about it at every opportunity. I've mentioned this book to friends, family, colleagues, in my newsletter, in interviews where I'm talking about my work, and pretty much anywhere, any time.
And perhaps the most telling way I can tell when I truly love a book is that it rapidly ends up looking something like the Velveteen Rabbit; I can tell I will likely at some point be obtaining another copy of this literary gem.
One way I can tell how much I adore a book is by the number of post-it bookmarks I've added; and this book has dozens, which probably should be replaced, since I've been constantly coming back to this book to refer to it again and again.
Another way I can tell when I absolutely love a book is the way I find myself telling people about it at every opportunity. I've mentioned this book to friends, family, colleagues, in my newsletter, in interviews where I'm talking about my work, and pretty much anywhere, any time.
And perhaps the most telling way I can tell when I truly love a book is that it rapidly ends up looking something like the Velveteen Rabbit; I can tell I will likely at some point be obtaining another copy of this literary gem.
August 14, 2018
An arcane avenue of scholarship
I was surprised that Gary Lachman is a thinker I hadn't encountered before at some point. Along with Kathleene Raine (4 June 1908 – 6 July 2003), a scholarly pioneer and visionary scholar of William Blake's work, he formed a synthesis of her thought and dissensions from her "Imaginal Castle" thought been made by Lachman, Owen Barfield, and begun by theosophical figures as George Steiner. Of course, poets like David Gascoyne, Holderlin, and apocalyptic romantics are to be given credit for the development of this strange but gloriously intuitive thought.
Although Lachman introduces this is as a study of the poetic imagination and how it works apart from logical positivistic, material explanations (while still including those), it is chiefly a reflection on Henry Corbin and Barfield's work, and a rejection of the postmodern.
There is much more in here for the metamodern reader than in just about any modern study of poetry. It stresses the evolutionary power of the imaginal and studies figures like Francis Cornford (Adam Francis Cornford is a fantastic poet himself) and Emmanuel Swedenborg, finding an imaginative symmetry and arcane wisdom in all these figures, and especially delineating the meaning of Blake's poems, a figure akin to Christ when you see just how pure his rejection of Empire was and at the same time his embrace of his vocation. (W.B. Yeats' "A Vision" is given only a passing note. That book alone, a peer into the lunar side of the imaginative experience and as good as his poems, could summarize a lot of the jist of these studies all all a couple readings.)
Uninhibited and refusing many of the cynical and artificial barriers even the layman makes in his reading and scholarship, Lachman studies the intentionality in the poetic gland and the specific psychical thread that eachpoet and writer-in-general must follow if they want to continue on writing at all.
I was surprised that Gary Lachman is a thinker I hadn't encountered before at some point. Along with Kathleene Raine (4 June 1908 – 6 July 2003), a scholarly pioneer and visionary scholar of William Blake's work, he formed a synthesis of her thought and dissensions from her "Imaginal Castle" thought been made by Lachman, Owen Barfield, and begun by theosophical figures as George Steiner. Of course, poets like David Gascoyne, Holderlin, and apocalyptic romantics are to be given credit for the development of this strange but gloriously intuitive thought.
Although Lachman introduces this is as a study of the poetic imagination and how it works apart from logical positivistic, material explanations (while still including those), it is chiefly a reflection on Henry Corbin and Barfield's work, and a rejection of the postmodern.
There is much more in here for the metamodern reader than in just about any modern study of poetry. It stresses the evolutionary power of the imaginal and studies figures like Francis Cornford (Adam Francis Cornford is a fantastic poet himself) and Emmanuel Swedenborg, finding an imaginative symmetry and arcane wisdom in all these figures, and especially delineating the meaning of Blake's poems, a figure akin to Christ when you see just how pure his rejection of Empire was and at the same time his embrace of his vocation. (W.B. Yeats' "A Vision" is given only a passing note. That book alone, a peer into the lunar side of the imaginative experience and as good as his poems, could summarize a lot of the jist of these studies all all a couple readings.)
Uninhibited and refusing many of the cynical and artificial barriers even the layman makes in his reading and scholarship, Lachman studies the intentionality in the poetic gland and the specific psychical thread that eachpoet and writer-in-general must follow if they want to continue on writing at all.
October 5, 2023
This is another one of those books I came across while watching John Vervaeke's Awakening from the meaning crisis YouTube series. I found it very surprising how, given the mention of Jungian synchronicities in the book, my decision to read the book also came about as the result of one. From reading about the role of the productive imagination in constructing the phenomenal world in Kant's critique to the stress laid on it in Iain McGilchrist's The Matter with Things, I had already been encountering a succession of thinkers who were painting the role of the imagination in an entirely new light. They were rehabilitating it from its commonly held of role as a mere whimsical producer of fantasy, disconnected from the real world to its central role not only in perception but also as the prime active agent of creativity and intuition. Imagination, being a product of the more holistic way of thinking of the Right Hemisphere, brings a kind of knowledge that cannot be apprehended by the discursive intellect alone.
The book covers a lot of thinkers in quick succession, giving the reader a reasonable overview of philosophers, poets and mystics all united by their explorations of the lost knowledge of the imagination. By giving a taste for the many directions of thought that spring from this rich landscape, the reader can springboard into exploring the thought of whichever one of them they find interesting.
The chapter on Goethe's method of scientific investigation was one of the highlights of the book for me. We have all heard the lamentations of the romantics that science, by isolating, dissecting and freezing the living flow of life and nature, takes the vital element away, which cannot be reconstructed from the isolated parts. This cannot helped as it is just the way the analytic intellect, or in the words of the book, 'the spirit of geometry', gets to work. However Goethe's method of active imagination in which the observer participates in the process of letting the Phenomenon itself reveal its truth can be a way to study nature in a more holistic manner that preserves its essence. This is similar to Heidegger's notion of Truth by Alethia, or an uncovering. If this is true, then the whole manner in which science claims to conduct itself, i.e by disinterested observation, cannot be what actually happens or should happen. Instead, the observer is deeply involved with the process as he attends to the phenomenon at hand with active attention and love. This is not to say that the observer projects their own fantasies onto the phenomenon, thereby distorting it's truth. Instead the observer approaches the phenomena in an empty egoless state to only receive what the phenomenon itself reveals. But this is only one side of the story, as this attentive passivity naturally drives the active imagination to conform itself to the phenomenon and generate not only a hypothesis, but if Goethe is right, a direct perception of its living form as well. Whether Goethe's method works or not, in just the way he intended, can only be verified by actual practice, something which it will be exciting to explore.
The book also delves into a lot of esotericism by mentioning names such as Rudolf Steiner, Henry Corbin and Suhrawardi. While each of these thinkers are fascinating in their own right, one naturally hesitates to accept their reports of the cartography of alleged spiritual realms. I'm open to the possibility of there existing such dimensions of inner experience, taking cue from Jung's explorations of the collective unconscious and the common motifs and agencies encountered by modern day psychonauts tripping on psychedelic substances. As to whether these inner realms are objective and outside of the individual mind, I cannot say. I am definitely intrigued by the universality of the broad features of such experiences reported by people across cultures but am a bit hesitant to take them at face value. To do that would be to verify them by personal experience, something which I am not naturally predisposed to do, atleast for now.
One of the biggest takeaways from the book was the concept of the imaginal. I was already intrigued by Vervaeke's use of it as the driver of inner change via aspiration. The subject naturally clothes their vision of aspirational ideals and values into an imaginal form. This makes it easier for them to direct themselves to the process of transformation. There is an increase in fluency, value imbued affect and purposive action that is achieved through contemplation of the imaginal object. I am already convinced about the indispensability of the Imaginal as the agent of change, aspiration and transformation in our lives, however I am still unsure about the objectivity of Corbin's divine double, and what that would even mean. Perhaps the imaginal stands between objective value and subjective understanding, a meeting point between the intelligible and the sensual realm. Probably as the way in which the understanding clothes a transcendent value in a corporeal, understandable form. This is to speculate. Definitely an interesting area to explore despite my cautious skepticism.
The discussions on beauty were illuminating. Beauty reveals an aspect of the intuitively accessible intelligible realm that convinces one immediately of the primacy of the whole over the parts and the irreducibility of Beauty to the formal characteristics of the form displaying it. This confirmed a lot of my own intuitions. It reminded me of Robert Pirsig's discussions of Quality in the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Especially the part where Pirsig struggled to build a formal science for the pedagogy of quality in his classroom. What he eventually realized was the inability of the discursive intellect to pin down the characteristics of a work of quality and exhaustively define it once and for all. It is understood that a quality judgement is prior to the attempt of the discursive intellect in setting to work analysing it's structure and trying to figure out it's definable essence.
The concept of 'like can only be known by like' also struck a chord as it reminds me of the concept of 'knowing by conforming' rather than 'knowing by representation'. It reminded me of an episode in After Socrates where Vervaeke talks about the inability of nominalism to adequately explain the relation of our ideas and intellect to the world of the senses. Whether this indicates a possible return to some aspects of Platonism, I do not know. Definitely food for thought. An impetus for further exploration.
This book, like all good books, has given me a lot of food for thought. I may keep updating the review as I remember other motifs that struck me as interesting.
The book covers a lot of thinkers in quick succession, giving the reader a reasonable overview of philosophers, poets and mystics all united by their explorations of the lost knowledge of the imagination. By giving a taste for the many directions of thought that spring from this rich landscape, the reader can springboard into exploring the thought of whichever one of them they find interesting.
The chapter on Goethe's method of scientific investigation was one of the highlights of the book for me. We have all heard the lamentations of the romantics that science, by isolating, dissecting and freezing the living flow of life and nature, takes the vital element away, which cannot be reconstructed from the isolated parts. This cannot helped as it is just the way the analytic intellect, or in the words of the book, 'the spirit of geometry', gets to work. However Goethe's method of active imagination in which the observer participates in the process of letting the Phenomenon itself reveal its truth can be a way to study nature in a more holistic manner that preserves its essence. This is similar to Heidegger's notion of Truth by Alethia, or an uncovering. If this is true, then the whole manner in which science claims to conduct itself, i.e by disinterested observation, cannot be what actually happens or should happen. Instead, the observer is deeply involved with the process as he attends to the phenomenon at hand with active attention and love. This is not to say that the observer projects their own fantasies onto the phenomenon, thereby distorting it's truth. Instead the observer approaches the phenomena in an empty egoless state to only receive what the phenomenon itself reveals. But this is only one side of the story, as this attentive passivity naturally drives the active imagination to conform itself to the phenomenon and generate not only a hypothesis, but if Goethe is right, a direct perception of its living form as well. Whether Goethe's method works or not, in just the way he intended, can only be verified by actual practice, something which it will be exciting to explore.
The book also delves into a lot of esotericism by mentioning names such as Rudolf Steiner, Henry Corbin and Suhrawardi. While each of these thinkers are fascinating in their own right, one naturally hesitates to accept their reports of the cartography of alleged spiritual realms. I'm open to the possibility of there existing such dimensions of inner experience, taking cue from Jung's explorations of the collective unconscious and the common motifs and agencies encountered by modern day psychonauts tripping on psychedelic substances. As to whether these inner realms are objective and outside of the individual mind, I cannot say. I am definitely intrigued by the universality of the broad features of such experiences reported by people across cultures but am a bit hesitant to take them at face value. To do that would be to verify them by personal experience, something which I am not naturally predisposed to do, atleast for now.
One of the biggest takeaways from the book was the concept of the imaginal. I was already intrigued by Vervaeke's use of it as the driver of inner change via aspiration. The subject naturally clothes their vision of aspirational ideals and values into an imaginal form. This makes it easier for them to direct themselves to the process of transformation. There is an increase in fluency, value imbued affect and purposive action that is achieved through contemplation of the imaginal object. I am already convinced about the indispensability of the Imaginal as the agent of change, aspiration and transformation in our lives, however I am still unsure about the objectivity of Corbin's divine double, and what that would even mean. Perhaps the imaginal stands between objective value and subjective understanding, a meeting point between the intelligible and the sensual realm. Probably as the way in which the understanding clothes a transcendent value in a corporeal, understandable form. This is to speculate. Definitely an interesting area to explore despite my cautious skepticism.
The discussions on beauty were illuminating. Beauty reveals an aspect of the intuitively accessible intelligible realm that convinces one immediately of the primacy of the whole over the parts and the irreducibility of Beauty to the formal characteristics of the form displaying it. This confirmed a lot of my own intuitions. It reminded me of Robert Pirsig's discussions of Quality in the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Especially the part where Pirsig struggled to build a formal science for the pedagogy of quality in his classroom. What he eventually realized was the inability of the discursive intellect to pin down the characteristics of a work of quality and exhaustively define it once and for all. It is understood that a quality judgement is prior to the attempt of the discursive intellect in setting to work analysing it's structure and trying to figure out it's definable essence.
The concept of 'like can only be known by like' also struck a chord as it reminds me of the concept of 'knowing by conforming' rather than 'knowing by representation'. It reminded me of an episode in After Socrates where Vervaeke talks about the inability of nominalism to adequately explain the relation of our ideas and intellect to the world of the senses. Whether this indicates a possible return to some aspects of Platonism, I do not know. Definitely food for thought. An impetus for further exploration.
This book, like all good books, has given me a lot of food for thought. I may keep updating the review as I remember other motifs that struck me as interesting.
September 19, 2019
Wonderful book. I wish I had read this 20 years ago. It would have given my younger self some much needed confidence and reassurance that my manner of thinking was not ill, misguided, nor lost. The mind is limitless and free, capable of finding the perfect union with our external, "objective," realities, where our quantitative experiences rely on our inner ones just as much as we rely on the former. I always enjoy how Gary Lachman paints pictures of classic thinkers, like Goethe, Suhrawardi, Jung, and Yeats, and their early pursuits of knowledge. It was also good learning more about people like Owen Barfield, Kathleen Raine, and Thomas Taylor, and how much their research has influenced many great minds. I would highly recommend this book for anyone with a creative mind, or for anyone who's interested in learning more about the power and history of our own imaginations.
January 7, 2018
An inspiring overview of the history and importance of creative thought and imagination. Recommended for those with a mind.
February 7, 2018
Loved this book. My first book by Gary Lachman but I am inspired to read more. Ive followed up with some of the references snd suggested readings. Pleased with his understanding sand insight.
June 29, 2020
The importance of the Imagination for Consciousness and the World is affirmed! Really Great.
"The fundamental polarity of our experience, Coleridge saw, is that of the self and the world, the inner and the outer. He saw the mind as a kind of ‘current’, like electricity, running between the two. According to Barfield, Coleridge argues that it is the task of the imagination to help us experience this polarity, this current, immediately and intensely. As it is now, we don’t – or at least this is true of most of us. We perceive the outer world but are unaware of our contribution to our experience of it; that is, we are unaware of our mind’s, through the Primary Imagination, participation in ‘the world’. We experience only one pole. Just as we are unaware of our perception as active, as ‘intentional’, in Husserl’s term, we are unaware of the activity of our minds. We are aware of our thoughts, but not, Coleridge argues, of our thinking. We lack what he called ‘the mind’s self-experience in the act of thinking’.
Using the medieval terms, we are aware of Natura naturata, that is ‘nature’ as a passive finished product (our thoughts), but not Natura naturans, nature as the active cause of itself (our thinking). By thinking here Coleridge does not mean the content of our thoughts, what we are ‘thinking about’, but the live character of thought itself. We accept our thoughts and our thinking passively. Coleridge believed it was vital that we become aware of the act of thinking itself. Imagination, he saw, was the way to do this.
Imagination can do this because it in itself is ‘precisely an advance of the mind towards knowing itself in the object’.Without imagination, we do not know ourselves in the objects we perceive. We are aware of only one side of our polar relationship, that of the ‘objectified’ world. This is ‘objectified’, ‘fixed and dead’, precisely because we do not perceive it with imagination, but only with what Coleridge calls ‘understanding’.
Understanding, in Coleridge’s use, is essentially the ‘new way’ of knowing we have discussed throughout this book. It posits a completely separate ‘world’ ‘outside’ consciousness which it thinks ‘about’ in terms of conventional logic, and sees ourselves as separate and distinct bodies within this world. Understanding can analyse and manipulate the ‘objects’ in this world, and in that sense is active. But it is passive regarding itself. As it sees only an objectified, non-living world – because it perceives it without imagination – it, as Yeats said, becomes hypnotised before a ‘mechanised nature’. It becomes what it beholds.
We can free ourselves from what is ‘essentially a sleeping relationship with phenomena’ and enter into a ‘waking one’, Coleridge tells us, by becoming aware of the other pole of experience, that is, our own minds. Until we do, we are subject to what Coleridge calls ‘the lethargy of custom’. This is our habit of seeing the world around us as ‘everyday’ and ‘ordinary’, of looking at it from the ‘natural standpoint’ and taking it for granted. Through the lethargy of custom we grow used to everything. It becomes ‘uninteresting’. We become apathetic and to relieve our ennui we relinquish our active imagination entirely and give ourselves up to ‘entertainments’ devised to divert us from boredom, which, of course, only weakens our imagination more."
"The fundamental polarity of our experience, Coleridge saw, is that of the self and the world, the inner and the outer. He saw the mind as a kind of ‘current’, like electricity, running between the two. According to Barfield, Coleridge argues that it is the task of the imagination to help us experience this polarity, this current, immediately and intensely. As it is now, we don’t – or at least this is true of most of us. We perceive the outer world but are unaware of our contribution to our experience of it; that is, we are unaware of our mind’s, through the Primary Imagination, participation in ‘the world’. We experience only one pole. Just as we are unaware of our perception as active, as ‘intentional’, in Husserl’s term, we are unaware of the activity of our minds. We are aware of our thoughts, but not, Coleridge argues, of our thinking. We lack what he called ‘the mind’s self-experience in the act of thinking’.
Using the medieval terms, we are aware of Natura naturata, that is ‘nature’ as a passive finished product (our thoughts), but not Natura naturans, nature as the active cause of itself (our thinking). By thinking here Coleridge does not mean the content of our thoughts, what we are ‘thinking about’, but the live character of thought itself. We accept our thoughts and our thinking passively. Coleridge believed it was vital that we become aware of the act of thinking itself. Imagination, he saw, was the way to do this.
Imagination can do this because it in itself is ‘precisely an advance of the mind towards knowing itself in the object’.Without imagination, we do not know ourselves in the objects we perceive. We are aware of only one side of our polar relationship, that of the ‘objectified’ world. This is ‘objectified’, ‘fixed and dead’, precisely because we do not perceive it with imagination, but only with what Coleridge calls ‘understanding’.
Understanding, in Coleridge’s use, is essentially the ‘new way’ of knowing we have discussed throughout this book. It posits a completely separate ‘world’ ‘outside’ consciousness which it thinks ‘about’ in terms of conventional logic, and sees ourselves as separate and distinct bodies within this world. Understanding can analyse and manipulate the ‘objects’ in this world, and in that sense is active. But it is passive regarding itself. As it sees only an objectified, non-living world – because it perceives it without imagination – it, as Yeats said, becomes hypnotised before a ‘mechanised nature’. It becomes what it beholds.
We can free ourselves from what is ‘essentially a sleeping relationship with phenomena’ and enter into a ‘waking one’, Coleridge tells us, by becoming aware of the other pole of experience, that is, our own minds. Until we do, we are subject to what Coleridge calls ‘the lethargy of custom’. This is our habit of seeing the world around us as ‘everyday’ and ‘ordinary’, of looking at it from the ‘natural standpoint’ and taking it for granted. Through the lethargy of custom we grow used to everything. It becomes ‘uninteresting’. We become apathetic and to relieve our ennui we relinquish our active imagination entirely and give ourselves up to ‘entertainments’ devised to divert us from boredom, which, of course, only weakens our imagination more."
July 2, 2025
The book’s central subject is how, over the last couple of centuries, analytical/rational/left-hemisphere thinking has become a not-so-benevolent dictator, forcing its counterpart—imagination—into exile. But more than that, it’s a profound analysis of why imagination is not just an equally valid way of knowing the world, but also crucial to our humanity—the key to unlocking a wonderful treasure.
In doing so, it offers a politically correct history of the fringe, the parallel world of the imagination, inspecting some of the most beautiful thinkers in recent history: Goethe, Jung, Husserl, Corbin, Paracelsus, and more—I’d have coffee with all of them. Pure, golden rockstars of the inner experience.
While analyzing what the hell imagination is, it clearly states what it is not—and so it explains the difference between imagination and fantasy, a fascinating subject on its own that I’ve been discussing lately with friends. That said, I have to confess I was disappointed by his take on modern art trends like Surrealism and Dadaism, which I see as balancing forces.
Anyway, it’s the first thing I’ve read from Lachman, and the theme touches me deeply. I’m a software developer who practices the Japanese tea ceremony, fond of mysticism, art, and poetry—I’m used to being on different sides of the camp, always trying to cross the bridge from one opposing side to another, depending on where I happen to be at any given point.
And I think that by trying to put imagination in its “rightful” place, Lachman underestimates what’s happening both inside and outside of us. I agree with him that reclaiming imagination is paramount, but I also think this—whatever it is—is both necessary and equally important.
We might be going through a crisis of meaning—actually, I think we definitely are. But our lives aren’t just stress, numbness, and microplastics. We’ll get through it by going upwards and forward—certainly not by going back to a past that never existed in the first place. We don’t need to recover ourselves, but to invent ourselves. Our ancestors may have seen the world in metaphors, but some metaphors shouldn’t be taken literally—and that’s a point Lachman, I think, should be more clear about.
In doing so, it offers a politically correct history of the fringe, the parallel world of the imagination, inspecting some of the most beautiful thinkers in recent history: Goethe, Jung, Husserl, Corbin, Paracelsus, and more—I’d have coffee with all of them. Pure, golden rockstars of the inner experience.
While analyzing what the hell imagination is, it clearly states what it is not—and so it explains the difference between imagination and fantasy, a fascinating subject on its own that I’ve been discussing lately with friends. That said, I have to confess I was disappointed by his take on modern art trends like Surrealism and Dadaism, which I see as balancing forces.
Anyway, it’s the first thing I’ve read from Lachman, and the theme touches me deeply. I’m a software developer who practices the Japanese tea ceremony, fond of mysticism, art, and poetry—I’m used to being on different sides of the camp, always trying to cross the bridge from one opposing side to another, depending on where I happen to be at any given point.
And I think that by trying to put imagination in its “rightful” place, Lachman underestimates what’s happening both inside and outside of us. I agree with him that reclaiming imagination is paramount, but I also think this—whatever it is—is both necessary and equally important.
We might be going through a crisis of meaning—actually, I think we definitely are. But our lives aren’t just stress, numbness, and microplastics. We’ll get through it by going upwards and forward—certainly not by going back to a past that never existed in the first place. We don’t need to recover ourselves, but to invent ourselves. Our ancestors may have seen the world in metaphors, but some metaphors shouldn’t be taken literally—and that’s a point Lachman, I think, should be more clear about.
August 12, 2022
The issue though that I have with this book, actually this audiobook, is that the reader performed it as if there were no paragraph separating different ideas. There was some intonation but no pause between sentences, thus it felt like a read book rather than a rich story, yet the book has a story to tell, even if it is a very intellectual one.
The author demonstrates a vast breath of knowledge but I was hoping for more depth, for more applied philosophy or application of the tool of imagination.
Overall, I think it is an excellent book for a philosophy course on imagination. I think that would be a fun class to take but I was left on my appetite, unable to use this to convince others that imagination is serious business in life and especially in mental health where I work.
The author demonstrates a vast breath of knowledge but I was hoping for more depth, for more applied philosophy or application of the tool of imagination.
Overall, I think it is an excellent book for a philosophy course on imagination. I think that would be a fun class to take but I was left on my appetite, unable to use this to convince others that imagination is serious business in life and especially in mental health where I work.
November 7, 2024
Really profound and engaging, though quite dense and filled with historical references pointing to a lot of other thinkers, each following one another. This is not an entry-point book but an addition to those on their way to explore the nature of consciousness, somewhere in between cognitive science, esoteric philosophy, spirituality and Jungian psychology. If you're familiar with all of these topics already then this book points to and explains what you're already likely suspecting: that the inner and the outer are more closely related than we 'think'.
September 25, 2018
Lachman is very thorough. A friend of mine, who did and did not read this with my study group, praised him for being able to complete their previous studies in (western) philosophy. They found that Lachman provided the missing link in a way with this book. It was kind of familiar territory to me because of my (now waning) obsession with trying to understand anthroposophy, but I appreciated the new names, new stories, and new perspectives on the ideas I’m currently working with.
August 22, 2022
Book was referenced in John Vervaeke’s Awakening from the Meaning Crisis (YouTube course).
This book is similar to Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and his Emissary, both making a case for the right hemisphere.
This book is much shorter and less scientific, and is essentially making a case for full on mysticism. But mainly the book is making a case for intuitive intellect, by talking about certain historical people and pointing out the style with which they used their mind.
This book is similar to Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and his Emissary, both making a case for the right hemisphere.
This book is much shorter and less scientific, and is essentially making a case for full on mysticism. But mainly the book is making a case for intuitive intellect, by talking about certain historical people and pointing out the style with which they used their mind.
June 16, 2020
Lachman's representation of the Lost Imagination was better for me than reading the woman who inspired him to write the book - Katherine Raines. Food for thought in this book - about how art, media and thinking could be MUCH more aspirational vs. our consumerism capitalism breast feeding us garbage that we "should" like - instead of thinking and dreaming for ourselves.
October 11, 2025
Maravilloso. Se lee muy bien, y la tesis del libro me parece increíblemente sugerente. Un acercamiento racional e interesante al mundo de las intuiciones, al mundo de lo simbólico. A otra forma de entender el mundo necesaria, que complementa el acercamiento científico en el que todo debe ser medido y demostrado que impera ahora mismo.
December 31, 2021
De manera indirecta es una gran explicación de cómo la cultura moldea nuestras conexiones neuronales, así como una gran recordatorio de lo sospechoso que resulta la obsesión con una "verdad objetiva" que se encuentra afuera, independiente del observador.
March 13, 2018
Another examination of what the imagination is...
Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars
Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars
February 11, 2019
Very interesting and insightful book!
June 14, 2019
Excellent but too short!
December 22, 2022
This is my favorite Lachman book - providing a doorway to the re-enchantment of the world.
September 16, 2025
A deep, thoughtful read. Involved lots of pauses to reflect.
August 24, 2023
Almost "an alternative introduction to philosophy". Highlighting figures we don't always encounter in these books, or showing the ones we do often encounter in a different light. I did find it somewhat odd. But also, oddly beautiful.
October 3, 2023
A few chapters got way too deep into esoteric topics for it to mean anything to me as a person not well researched as the author. Otherwise loved the book, some wonderful insights to glean from the book regarding visualization and imagination
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