System #16: Imagination

The human mind is much more powerful than we regularly give it credit for. We're much more powerful than we give ourselves credit for. For instance, we've known, for a long time, the power of the placebo effect. In many cases the placebo effect has a larger, more scientifically significant effect on drug trial participants than even the drug itself. So much so, that participants need to be screened against it (maybe we should screen for it?). But the placebo effect is based on our belief; on our imagination. It's based on the power our mind has over our bodies which can defy what we believe is possible. It can lead to miraculous healings, or undiagnosable ailings. Things we have historically attributed to "magic."

What is "Magic"?

Merriam Webster defines magic as:

"The power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces."

But, whenever I think of magic, I think of this quote:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
- Arthur C. Clarke

The interesting thing is that as our knowledge of the universe grows, the things we denote as magic theoretically shrink. Once we understand how everything works, we'll no longer be left surprised by the effect that something has had. Think of things like cellphones, kitchen magnets, flashlights, lasers, glow-in-the-dark paint or even an eclipse; each one of these would have been considered magic at one point. Yet, through our technological progress, they have been created, and understood. We have, through our own curiousity, stolen them from the realm of magic and the unexplainable and organized them behind us, in the realm of logic, science, and branded them "understandable." However, if you ask someone how cellphones actually work, they, in most cases, will not know. This ignorance, however, doesn't mean that a cellphone cannot be used by them.

We defer what's possible in our world to things that we can make use of by the touch of a button. The simpler something is, the more ingrained it becomes within our collective consciousness. We filter out the things we can't explain and send them out to the fringes of our consciousness so that we can keep the order that we've created. We can feel safety in the order that we've created. We can feel like we understand our world.

However, since we still have phenomenon that exist that cannot currently be explained, magic continues to live on. Magic will always live past the fringe of what we've all culturally accepted. Anyone who's watched a show by the magician, David Blaine, can tell you, we still have a lot to learn. Some of his stunts are using technology in a tricky way, or going to the limits of physical laws, however, some of them require training in ancient lost arts. Things that we may have understood centuries ago, but have collectively forgotten. Things that require much more diligence, and practice, to master or understand than the simple push of a button.

I, personally, have experienced and am convinced of the existence of one of those seemingly supernatural phenomenon which you can read about in my Yogaville experience. An experience that currently has no culturally acceptable mechanism of operation, yet was as real as the keyboard I'm typing this on, or the screen or device you're now reading from.

Belief

As a thought exercise, imagine if you, individually, were capable of fully believing something. Imagine you could, in the freezing cold, make yourself believe you are really warm. Or in the scorching heat, feel that as cold. Feel pain as pleasure, or maybe even sweet as salty. Just imagining ourselves in an ice bath can send shivers down our spines. This is a real phenomenon that untrained people all over the world are able to do. For some people this comes naturally, though unintentionally, for others, it may need to be trained.

Take Wim Hoff, for instance. A man who, through learned control of his body, can be submerged in ice-cold water for an hour and maintain body temperature, or run a marathon in a desert without water, or climb ice covered mountains with nothing but shorts on. He's not just a kook, he now has a total of 26 Guinness World Records. At one event, on stage with an infrared camera pointed on him, he was asked if he could make his hand warm up. Moments later, while holding is hand above his head, the crowd gasped as the infrared camera (being projected to the screen) showed it raising in temperature.

He reasons that everyone has these abilities dormant within them. It's the easiest to demonstrate when people are hypnotized. These people really feel what they are being hypnotized to do, regardless of the external conditions. They do feel hot, when the room is objectively cold. Or like they're drowning when they aren't even near water. How does it do this? By disconnecting the part of the brain that processes external stimuli from the part that processes internal experiences, it alters brain activity, leading to changes in perception. By disregarding the external world (the world of logic and facts) and focusing on your internal world (the world of experiences and belief) the way you experience the world can change, not just mentally, but physiologically. This is the way of meditation and sensory control.

The Placebo Effect

What's interesting is this belief can also be externalized (as it usually is in the placebo effect). If I eat this pill, it will heal me. It can also be externalized to other people; if I see this doctor, they can heal me.

Mark 5:28: “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed”

Imagine you believed that about your wife, or mother, or friend. They could be your placebo effect. By their words, you could be healed. The problem is that we see their flaws, we see how they fall short. We see them sick, ill, and making mistakes so it breaks the illusion. How could they be our healer? We ironically imbue more belief into our image of strangers than we do the people closest to us.

Matthew 13:57: “But Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home.’”

This is why, I believe, shamans, historically, had to be outside of society. They had to build a myth around themselves. This myth, these legends, this aura was donned on them by the people who believed. And as they believed, they were healed. Not by the shaman, but by their own minds. Their own dilusion. By their own belief, real or fake. Though many would attribute it to the shaman's powers, or magic, the power really belongs within our imaginations.

Imagination

I ran across an old YouTube video a few years ago about a man who, in a Tibetian village, got permission to film and interview some monks. It talks about certain practices like Tummo meditation (or inner heat meditation), part of advanced Tantric practices within Tibetan Buddhism. The goal of Tummo is to generate heat within the body using breath control, visualization, and meditation techniques.

One of the monks, upon courageously breaking an oath of secrecy, explains how this practice is done. It requires imagining a sun within your core and your skin being inflated like a balloon around it so that the skin at the tip of your fingers is as close to this internal sun as the skin on your chest. During this visualization, one imagines the heat of this sun on their skin warming up their entire body. This practice, and visualizaton is so powerful that it not only can allow them to maintain their body temperature in freezing conditions, but ultimately dry wet towels on their bare backs in snow!

...visualizaton is so powerful that it not only can allow them to maintain their body temperature in freezing conditions, but ultimately dry wet towels on their bare backs in snow!

There, however, is the rub. All these forces utilize the power of our imagination; the placebo effect, being hypnotized, and the practice of Tummo. A big part of their success is the dilusion of believing something internally that has yet to be manifested externally. But that's our collective gift; our ability to dream up things that don't yet exist. It has allowed us to to terraform and leave a mark on the external world. Everything that isn't tangible (physical, or virtual) that exists in our world has been created as part of our collective imagination. Things like companies, scores, nations, rules/laws, territory, money, debt, taxes, etc. are all just part of the play we've decided to put on. None of those REALLY exist, yet we believe. That belief, these stories, and these collective narratives can allow incredible showcases of cooperation and allow us to be mentally resilient, or when used badly, it can allow us to create our very own prisons.

Negative Influences

If your mind and your imagination are so powerful, it would behoove us to guard them and treat them with respect. We should be selective about what we choose to allow into our internal worlds, into our minds, into our beliefs. For, just as healings can happen, so can curses, hexes, and trauma. If you believe someone else to be more powerful than you, you give them power over you. Your mind bows down to their expression of their energy. If a seemingly powerful "sorcerer" curses your year, even if you may not believe them at first, by assigning them to have power (whether they do or not), you have given away your power. Slowly, but surely, the thought starts to pick at you. You notice the first bad thing happening and you bring their words back to your mind. And the next. It grows. Seemingly against your will, it grows. Yet it is by your very will that you allow it to grow. You, unfortunately, have learned that you are not as powerful as they are and this "weakness" allows others to control you. Yet, all along, you hold the key. You, by allowing yourself a moment of delusion can change the story, can change the narrative.

This is why belief in a benevolent God, or a benevolent omnipotent entity can be so psychologically powerful. Your God, being the most powerful god, and in control of everything would never let anything happen to you that wasn't for your own good. By simply believing that, you negate the negative influences your own imagination can have on you.

Imagine for a moment that Christian missionaries ran into these pagan shamans that I referenced earlier. They would walk straight through this aura that had been built up by them and their community only by virtue of that fact that they, the shamans, cannot have any power since they aren't Jesus. Or, even if you believe that they do have power, Jesus, in their minds, can protect them since he is God, and they are but men. In both cases, the spell is broken. The effect that these shamans have on them, no longer does anything. And as the shamans' power breaks for one, it breaks for all. Magic is removed from the community. The power that the shaman was able to wield evaporates and he's seen as a charlatan. Yet those that have seen remember the incredible acts that the shaman was actually able to do. Their belief, however, has now been broken. A seed of distrust has sprouted which slowly envelops and erodes the stories that they told themselves. Yet they still contain an imagination, and with that imagination, new stories unfold to explain past events.

I find these types of interactions, fascinating. Where a battle of beliefs leads to a removal of magic in our world. Magic, like the creatures in the second book of the Chronicles of Narnia, becomes relegated to the fringes of society. Taking center stage comes logic, science, and proof (the things we know). It's hard to take something as true when it happens sometimes but not others. With some people, at sometimes, and not with others, at other times. In short, only to people who believe...

Sai Baba

There's an old Indian sage, and prophet, named Sai Baba. He is believed to have been an incarnation of God, an avatar of God. Through this belief, he has healed many people. Interestingly enough, he says, however, that it doesn't matter if you believe that he is God, or that you are God, the result is the same. Since he, when he lived, however, was able to make things appear, it becomes far too easy for people to believe that he, in fact, holds the power. Can you make things appear? Maybe, but you haven't seen it happen. Here, however, if you had been in his presence, you would have believed. And with that belief, you would have given away your power. If he said that you were healed, you would believe him and be healed. However, if he said you wouldn't be healed, you would also believe him. You would have given him control over your health and over your life, he would become your placebo.

Fortunately, he says that you too can materialize, and heal. But we don't believe him. What a strange phenomenon. His disciples believe him in every other way except when he tries to give them, or us back our power.

The Corrupting Influence of Magic

It's interesting that in every major religion, magic is frowned upon. They all, however, accept that it exists. In Christianity, and Islam, magic is seen as a way to go against God (like Pharaohs' magicians) or the natural flow of the universe. When we believe ourselves to be more powerful than God, when we imagine ourselves to be in control, we start to worship and idolize ourselves leading to egocentrism, and narcissism. When things don't happen outside of us like we want or expect, we take matters into our own hands.

In Buddhism and Hinduism as well, magic powers, or 'siddhis', are said to exist, but should not be used for personal gain as they are a distraction from the ultimate goal of liberation. Magic, in all these cases, is a form of control, and as we've talked about before, what you control controls you. If you are controlled, you are not free, you are not liberated.

Conclusion

All we have control over is ourselves, our reactions and our imagination. We have control over how we respond to something. We have control over the stories we accept, and the stories we tell ourselves, individually, and collectively. The stories we tell ourselves can defy what's actually happening in "reality." They can grant us our freedom, or serve as our very own prisons.

Understanding the impact that your mind, and your outlook can have, not only on your own physiological responses, but on the way we see the world and interact with it, can allow you to take back your power. It can allow you to break the chains of negative influences of which, unbeknownst to you, you have been a willing victim. It can allow you to be more conscious about the influences that you let into your mind.

It can also allow you to start practices that build up your resilience to the stresses of life. Practices that build up the strength of your internal senses, and diminish the strength of the external stimuli. Practices such as prayer, meditation, ice baths, cold showers, high intensity interval training (HIIT), fasting, abstaining from sex/masturbation, long distance running, or even belief in an all-powerful diety. Challenging yourself to feel the pain, the cold, the hunger, the desire, but choosing to ignore it.

Finding a refuge in your own imagination. And through that refuge, and safety, the courage to dream, build and create. The courage to chase your dreams and follow your convictions. The courage to unlock that cage you've built around yourself with your mind, the one you've believed had been built by someone else. It's time to start using your imagination for you, not against you.

Until every cage is open...