Imagination is generally considered a help to escape the bitterness of life. Keats in one of his poems calls it a deceiving "elf". Still it cannot be called bad in any sense of the word. Many a time we want to be deceived because we are too weak to stand realities, we want to escape because life becomes dull and mechanical routine, imagination can make us to forget the worries of life and to smile at the crushing cares. It takes us into the regions where we feel comfortable, happy and satisfied.
Getting happiness in life has been one of the great enigmas for the philosophers. The Buddha may recommend spiritual, meditation for getting happiness. Stoics may ask you 'Drink and be merry'. When imagination can afford a solution for such an enigmatic problem, we should consider it one of the best activities of mind.
Imagination is the basis of all the activities serious and trifling. Without imagination no one can be inventive in thinking, and powerful in action. By imagination do not mean only dreams because dream can be considered idle imagination. Dreams may be useless but the give rise to artistic activity.
It is wrong to say that imagination has no behind it; there may not be logic as science would like to have, but there is logic of a higher type in all imaginative conceptions. There might not be any cause and effect but there is bound to be a conclusion that is based upon certain assumptions that have been absorbed through the imagination of the individuals. The logic of imagination is the logic of probability and it is always more powerful than the logic of reasoning.
If we take purely fatalistic view we will have to say that there are some impersonal forces which are working against human beings. Man's hopes are frustrated and aspirations cheated. Happiness becomes an occasional episode in the general drama of life . Man is hunted do by the hounds of fate. That is why Keats wanted to "fade far a way, dissolve and quite forget" "the wearings. the fever and the fret" of this world.
This is the world "where men sit and hear each other's groan", and "where but to think is to be full of sorrow." But we can blink over the worries of life through enchanting dreams and 'castles in the air'. Man intelligence has been probing the mysteries of life since the dawn of human civilisation and has come to the conclusion that life itself is as unsubstantial as 'castles in the air'.
Life is "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" but it is only imagination that gives significance and direction to life. If we are to live and live a better life, castles will have to be built, not on earth, but in air.
[ Part 1] [ Part 2]
Getting happiness in life has been one of the great enigmas for the philosophers. The Buddha may recommend spiritual, meditation for getting happiness. Stoics may ask you 'Drink and be merry'. When imagination can afford a solution for such an enigmatic problem, we should consider it one of the best activities of mind.
Imagination is the basis of all the activities serious and trifling. Without imagination no one can be inventive in thinking, and powerful in action. By imagination do not mean only dreams because dream can be considered idle imagination. Dreams may be useless but the give rise to artistic activity.
It is wrong to say that imagination has no behind it; there may not be logic as science would like to have, but there is logic of a higher type in all imaginative conceptions. There might not be any cause and effect but there is bound to be a conclusion that is based upon certain assumptions that have been absorbed through the imagination of the individuals. The logic of imagination is the logic of probability and it is always more powerful than the logic of reasoning.
If we take purely fatalistic view we will have to say that there are some impersonal forces which are working against human beings. Man's hopes are frustrated and aspirations cheated. Happiness becomes an occasional episode in the general drama of life . Man is hunted do by the hounds of fate. That is why Keats wanted to "fade far a way, dissolve and quite forget" "the wearings. the fever and the fret" of this world.
This is the world "where men sit and hear each other's groan", and "where but to think is to be full of sorrow." But we can blink over the worries of life through enchanting dreams and 'castles in the air'. Man intelligence has been probing the mysteries of life since the dawn of human civilisation and has come to the conclusion that life itself is as unsubstantial as 'castles in the air'.
Life is "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" but it is only imagination that gives significance and direction to life. If we are to live and live a better life, castles will have to be built, not on earth, but in air.
[ Part 1] [ Part 2]
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