Snapshots of Reality

 Imagine standing before a large photo of a cityscape. The image is rich in detail, and the lighting is perfect, but the camera was only capable of capturing it in black and white. This presents us with a perceptual dilemma: the surface of the image is entirely flat, with only varying shades of grey, and the brightest pixels are white. In this case, the photograph may be beautiful, but it lacks depth—both visually and in terms of experience.

However, despite the flatness and absence of color, does this image still give you an idea of the actual place? Could it still evoke the feel of the city? In a sense, this image serves as a pointer, a reference to a real place and time. But the true experience lies beyond what’s shown. It’s up to the observer to imagine the sounds of the street, the shuffling of feet, the voices, horns, the wind, and the opening and closing of doors. The observer must fill in the missing colors, imagine how the taller buildings are nearer, and how the smaller, less detailed buildings may recede into the distance. The image gives us a glimpse, but it requires our imagination to complete the picture.

This is an important point: no two-dimensional image can capture the full depth of a moment. There are no colors in a black-and-white photo, no sounds, no movement. But can we agree that such an image still has the potential to stimulate our imagination, enabling us to make more of it than what’s literally present in the photo?

If this idea feels obvious, let’s extend this consideration to all of our perceptions. Consider the twinkling stars in the night sky: they’re likely far away, perhaps more distant than we can truly grasp. Yesterday, as a whole, exists only in our imagination today. Tomorrow, like yesterday, cannot be captured by any lens available in the present. Memory and expectation allow us to make more of yesterday and tomorrow than could literally be attributed to direct perception.

Now, imagine gathering all the great minds of every religion in one place. Not one of them would be able to reveal even the simplest event of yesterday, because so much of our recollection is shaped by our imagination. The details we remember today about yesterday have already been filtered and shaped by our minds. Yet, despite the fact that we can’t access every detail, we still collectively agree that yesterday somehow exists. This simple example of memory—the most common of pointers—can be applied to everything else in the universe.

No power available to humans is greater than the power of the imagination. To elevate imagination to the status it truly deserves may seem extreme to some, perhaps even blasphemous to a skeptic. Many great thinkers, including William Blake and Neville Goddard, have made this case, but their views were often considered too radical by conventional thinkers.

We, as observers of this moment we call Now, rely on imagination to provide the depth, sound, and color that the present moment simply cannot offer. The imagination fills in the gaps: it recalls the taste of a lemon, the sound of a loved one’s voice, the melody of a song, or even creates new songs yet to be heard.

While this moment is limited by what we can directly perceive, our imagination extends beyond those limitations. It provides us with fine details that enrich our experience of the world. Even more fascinating is how our imagination allows us to picture a past that may or may not have unfolded exactly as we remember it, or to envision a future that has yet to happen. The power of imagination allows us to picture those futures in a state of "superposition," awaiting the power of belief to bring them into being.