Wednesday 8 July 2015

Escape to Paradise


 In my: “Leap of Imagination”, Einstein claimed that imagination is more important than knowledge. Today I must share with you some bad news. The symbolic expulsion of the “first couple” from Paradise was not anchored in time, but it is a perpetual life-lesson for virtually every human being.
As is all Bible.
We are all born in Paradise to a loving mother, a protective father. Usually, the female looks after our day-to-day needs, while the male provides the means and security. This is true of most, not just the human, species. After all, until our behaviour proves otherwise, we are all animals.
Our stint in Paradise doesn’t last. Our parents, teachers, often sacerdotal members of our society, offer us an apple. We awaken to phenomenal reality.
They destroy our imagination.

To repeat, children are born in Paradise. For most of them life is beautiful and carefree. Our innocence allows us to assume that we are truly in heaven, surrounded by unconditional love.
And then comes the first punitive NO!
Thou shalt not do this, that and the other. We, two or three year-old toddlers, sometimes older, look for escape. Wikipedia defines toddler as: “…time of great cognitive, emotional and social development.” Escape is a must. For a while we succeed. We escape into the  kingdom born in our imagination.
Only there, in the new realm, we can sustain our reality of Paradise. Whatever we imagine becomes true. We create our own world and populate it with our dream-beings. We create our own Universe.

Sadly, only some of us manage to escape. The rest are truly expelled from Eden. Lists of dos and don’ts sublimate our intuitive desire to create a reality of our dreams. Slowly but truly we are drawn down to earth, to a reality where physical objects are more real than the ideas from which they originated.
We lose our creative passion.
Slowly we sink down from the realm where ideas become thoughts, and thought fired by imagination become real. Instead we listen to our elders. All too quickly the rate of vibration of creative energies slow down. We don’t even notice that they are not real—that they are empty space; that they are Maya. We begin to live in the past.


To develop our imagination and sustain it for a lifetime, we must start young. Many children enjoy imaginary friends. With them they share equally as imaginative escapades to sate their creative impulse. An impulse not yet sublimated by their parents, school, and all adults. While the elders’ influence might add order and security to our physical life, it also destroys the life within. They destroy our creative instinct.
With notable exceptions (e.g. Einstein or Feynman) most scientists seldom venture outside the field of their expertise. They become skeptical observers. Others are led by the blind. Those in whom creative impulse survived become inventors, artists, and perennial seekers. For them childhood will never end. They spend their life in Paradise.
Trust me, it’s worth it!



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4 comments:

  1. This was worth saying. I wonder how the preservation of the imaginative child can be preserved in a world of such endemic fear? I find myself glad that I had children before that dilemma imposed itself. I can't but be reminded of the family who sold up and travelled to where they felt innocence might be preserved- the Falkland Islands! In short, nowhere to hide.

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    1. PS to below. Isn't Within the places place to hide? It's so easy and so close, and it doesn't cost you a penny.

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    2. Yes, of course. I was talking about conveying that to the next generation in the hope of shortening the time! The Falklands might have offered sufficient monotony for the interior world of imagination to survive? For children, anyway.

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  2. Isn't escape to Eden an act of self-preservation? I do it daily, even if for just a few moments.

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