Quest Magazine

Printed in the  Summer 2024  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Keene, Douglas  "Veiwpoint: Imagine That!" Quest 112:3, pg 10

By Douglas Keene
National President

Imagination. What does that bring to mind? Something wonderful, mysterious, spectacular, or escapist? Or possibly a delusion, a trick, wishful thinking, or something false? Like so much else, It depends a good deal on our nature and nurture.

Imagination is often contrasted with the reality that we perceive through our senses, that which we refer to as the “real world.” We can invoke our imagination to reach beyond our senses for creations, relationships, abilities, and a vast array of applications.

H.P. Blavatsky addresses this concept: “Imagination is . . .  one of the strongest elements in human nature, or in the words of Dugald Stewart it ‘is the great spring of human activity, and the principal source of human improvement . . . Destroy the faculty, and the condition of men will become as stationary as that of brutes.’ It is the best guide of our blind senses, without which the latter could never lead us beyond matter and its illusions. The greatest discoveries of modern science are due to the imaginative faculty of the discoverers” (Blavatsky, Collected Works 12:133‒34).

Although Blavatsky indicates that imagination distinguishes us from the “brutes,” our younger siblings in the animal kingdom also demonstrate creativity, although what type of imagination they might have, we can only speculate.

Some scholars believe that classical mythology is based on a combination of history and imagination, used to tell tales and teach lessons to a preliterate society. The divine and semidivine entities that inhabit these myths, both good and evil, are often thought to be products of imagination, and yet the message they convey is much more tangible.

Imagination, whether waking or sleeping, whether conscious or unconscious, is absolutely essential to creativity. All works of art need to be imagined before they can be manifested, even through more palpable media such as architecture and photography. In order for a work of art to exist, it needs to originate in the mind and imagination of its creator. From the plays of Shakespeare to modern dance to the silicon chip, all phenomena were first created in the human imagination.

Where does this imagination come from? Where does it live? Immanuel Kant has written: “Imagination is a powerful agent for creating, as it were, a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature.” But this view—that imagination is derivative—is classically more Western, especially from the eighteenth century on.

In Theosophy, it is noted that imagination can be generated from images in the astral and mental worlds, which often operate largely independently from the physical. In, Annie Besant writes: “Impressions made on the mental body are more permanent than those made on the astral, and they are consciously reproduced by it. Here memory and the organ of imagination begin, and the latter gradually moulds itself, the images from the outer world working on the matter of the mental body in forming its materials into their own likeness” (The Ancient Wisdom, 2d ed., 154).

Children tend to be particularly imaginative, as they are not yet fully adapted to the physical and social governance that the more mundane, concrete world teaches us. Eleanor Roosevelt is noted to have said, “The greatest gift you can give a child is an imagination.” Indeed children seem to come by imagination naturally if their elders can avoid suppressing it. Theosophy teaches us that children may be more in touch with the astral world and other higher vibrations, and that they gradually lose the ability as they become older and more grounded in the physical dimensions of life.

At times, imagination can be equated with dreaming. This is often in the context of unrealistic expectations, such as ideas that one may become a U.S. senator or one’s team may win the World Series. The response “you must be dreaming” denotes misplaced confidence (at least in the opinion of the listener) regarding the imagined outcome of a particular challenge. But the analogy should not be dismissed too quickly. According to Theosophical teachings, nocturnal dreams may, like the imagination, be rooted in nonphysical aspects of ourselves but are no less real than our day-to-day world, although they are generally less accessible.

There are numerous examples of scientific discoveries that were preceded by vivid dreams. Niels Bohr envisioned the structure of an atom during sleep. James Watson dreamt of a spiral staircase that led to discovery of the double helix of DNA. Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity was based on elements of his vision during sleep. Mendeleev’s periodic table of the elements was essentially presented to him during a dream. Thomas Edison felt that his creativity could be enhanced by napping. He would intentionally fall asleep with a ball in each hand; when one fell to the floor, it would wake him, and he could more easily recall images from his twilight state, which might lead to a solution for a problem he was working on. More recently, Larry Page had a nocturnal encounter as a student at Stanford University that led to the basic infrastructure for Google.

The well-known Theosophical text At the Feet of the Master, written by a young Jiddu Krishnamurti, was largely given to him by the Master Koot Hoomi during sleep. Charles Leadbeater gives an account of this: “Every night I had to take this boy in his astral body to the house of the Master, that instruction might be given to him. The Master devoted perhaps 15 minutes each night to talking to him, but at the end of each talk He always gathered up the main points of what He had said into a single sentence, or a few sentences, thus making it an easy little summary which was repeated to the boy, so that he learnt it by heart. He remembered that summary in the morning and wrote it down” (Leadbeater, Talks on the Path of Occultism, 1:24).

There is yet another role for imagination: it is needed to advance our own spiritual awareness and unfoldment. If we rely only what is known through our sensations and logic, we are extremely limited in being able to expand, elevate, and apprehend other states of consciousness. We need imagination to lift ourselves beyond the known, to embrace the unseen, and to understand ourselves. We need to have a vision of the universe and our place in it in order to open our higher nature. Our deeper insights may be called imagination initially, but ultimately they lead to recognition of our true being and the unity of all life.

Imagination can be our closest associate and our most enduring friend. We will never outgrow it, we never need to surrender it, and it can never be taken from us. With this faculty, we can envisage new worlds, transport ourselves in time, accomplish great feats, witness historical events, soar to new places, visit lost loved ones, and endless other possibilities. Just imagine.

Printed in the  Summer 2024  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Heubel, Peggy  "Moksha in a Nutshell" Quest 112:3, pg 8-9

By Peggy Heubel

The Theosophical worldview emphasizes the essential unity underlying existence. Its teachings advance the concept that every entity in the universe, from the smallest atom to the highest spiritual being, is on a journey of self-realization and ultimate reunion with the divine source—a holistic and cyclical view of the active cosmos and what may lie beyond.

Involution and evolution form the dual mechanism of this process, which involves the unfoldment (or unveiling) of universal consciousness as an ever present and active source. The cyclical nature of this process, guided by spiritual hierarchies and governed by karmic laws, contributes to this unfolding. It leads to a state of cosmic perfection and ultimate unity beyond manifestation.

The activity of the universe, seen and unseen, drives this evolutionary process toward its obligatory reintegration. Despite the perceived inevitability of the outcome, many esoteric traditions emphasize the importance of individual choice and free will.

Few, it is said, understand the mystical need to extricate oneself from the cycles of almost unending rounds of karmically driven reincarnation. These few seek what has been termed “liberation” as a conscious choice to expedite their spiritual progress and take a more active role in their own development.

The journey toward conscious self-determination on the path to higher states of consciousness (or divine union) is called moksha or mukti in Sanskrit, usually translated as “liberation.” But liberation is not the end-all of evolution; rather it is a journey on the way to gaining ultimate enlightenment (although the two are often confused). While both are related parts of the same path, the former indicates an action or process and the latter, a state of being that occurs as a result. Liberation motivates us toward seeking a more profound and conscious connection with the ultimate reality. Enlightenment is the end result of the human stage of existence but not of the spiritual being traversing that stage.

In Hinduism, the concept of moksha is closely tied to the idea of samsara, a continuous cycle of birth and rebirth extending for innumerable eons; indeed moksha is liberation from samsara. All through this enormous cycle, each incarnation offers opportunities for growth, learning, and advancement in spiritual evolution. Through successive lifetimes, karmic lessons are learned, experiences are accumulated, and slow and gradual progress is made towards unveiling higher states of consciousness.

Karmic considerations are frequently intertwined with ideas of reincarnation and spiritual evolution. Methods aimed at gaining liberation from the cycles of birth and death are seen as means to resolving karmic debts, achieving a state of purity, and ultimately reuniting with the source of being. With more advanced efforts, the material world and the cycle of evolution are seen as illusory or temporary. Seeking liberation also involves transcending the illusions of the material realm to experience a higher, more real, state of existence.

As mentioned above, some individuals eventually attain a life in which enough karmic lessons have been learned that they can make conscious efforts towards spiritual development. A tenuous connection to the higher Self has developed, and the personality may unconsciously experience an attraction to inner heights. The first steps of spiritual awakening and moksha have been taken.

Some spiritual traditions, including Theosophy, emphasize that understanding the true nature of reality and our place within it can only be achieved through direct experience or gnosis. Theosophical teachings suggest that conscious efforts towards spiritual development can definitely accelerate one’s evolution.

Seeking liberation involves specific practices, disciplines, and experiences aimed at realizing the ultimate goal in the fullness of conscious awareness. Even relatively minor efforts help to limit the number of reincarnation cycles by reducing habitual and compulsive conditioning, thereby lessening karmic causes and effects.             

There are said to be seven disciplines or yogic paths that are available as means to the realization of moksha: hatha yoga (physical postures); karma yoga (the path of selfless action), laya yoga (laya means dissolution, that is, of personal attachments); mantra yoga (the path of the divine word); jnana yoga (the path of knowledge); bhakti yoga (the path of devotion); and raja yoga (the path of meditation). These practices are forms of conscious evolution whereby individuals actively work on refining their bodies, emotions, minds, and actions to align with spiritual principles.

As we become more and more adept at our chosen spiritual practice, moksha involves transcending the sense of ego or personal self (ahamkara) and realizing the interconnectedness of all beings. This is a stage in the process toward experiencing ourselves as (or becoming) one undifferentiated ultimate Reality.

As we progress, we learn to navigate life in accordance with higher principles, contributing not only to our own evolutionary growth but, it is said, to evolutionary stimuli for all sentient beings. Evolution towards moksha can be seen as an increasing alignment with the cosmic order (dharma). Living in harmony with natural and spiritual laws is considered essential.

The motive for undertaking such steps is everything. H.P. Blavatsky said, “It is impossible to employ spiritual forces [the “attainments”: the siddhis referenced in the beginning of The Voice of the Silence] if there is the slightest tinge of selfishness.” At every step along the narrow way of moksha, “we can never be indifferent to the fate of mankind.” As we gain spiritual wisdom, strength, and courage, our devotion to humanity must increase along with our spiritual growth; otherwise moksha becomes nothing more than words on a page.

Peggy Heubel is president of the TS East Bay Lodge.

Printed in the  Summer 2024  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Trull, David "Drill, Baby, Drill" Quest 112:3, pg 38-40

By David Trull

Set a timer, put pen to paper, and write. Let your hand dance across the page. Don’t second-guess its path. Whatever emerges is fine. Judge nothing. Pretty soon you’ll find the shrill cries of your inner critic fading. When the timer goes off, walk away and return in ten minutes. Scan the words for something that shines. Pan for gold. Usually you will find some.

I received this advice in a fiction workshop. The goal, our instructor informed us, was to connect the imagination with the subconscious. When too closely coupled with our surface thought processes, the imagination produces material it thinks will please the little conductor that sits behind our eyes and renders the output dull and quotidian. To infuse your writing with vital force, she said, you must bypass the conscious mind. Of course, she also warned us to revise and revise and revise again, but make sure that what you are polishing is the subconscious gold that first caught your eye.

Before I tried this exercise, my stories were semiautobiographical accounts of past travel experiences, childhood incidents, or thinly veiled imitations of stories I had ingested over the years. I loved none of it. After committing to a daily free-writing habit for several months, my stories became about a boy haunted by visions of a self-immolating Buddhist monk, a woman exhibiting her half-finished paintings as a way to expunge her guilt over abandoning her dying mother, and a homeless teen with leukemia hopping freight trains in the early oughts. As I revised the strange and unfamiliar words, I felt alienated, as if I’d glanced in the mirror and locked eyes with a stranger. It wasn’t unsettling, however. More like exhilarating.

After graduation, a college buddy of mine found work on an oil rig off the California coast. At one point, he had a bit of shore leave, and I grabbed a beer with him at a bar near his launch point, a place with walls festooned with taxidermic swordfish and a murky lobster tank gurgling away in the corner.

I grilled him about his experience, and he told me that although he and his crew were engaged in exploration, they’d found nothing so far. I asked how they knew where to drill, and he said they really didn’t know. It was trial and error, tapping one section of ocean floor and then another, praying to hit the motherload. Sure, they used advanced sonic equipment to identify areas that had a high chance of hiding black gold, but they still had to bounce around and stand ready to capture the stuff when they struck.

This conversation reminded me of my stories, not because I’d written about fossil fuel extraction, but because the drilling process bore a strange resemblance to my fiction exercise. In a way, I was circling above the ocean floor of my mind and drilling for something that could move the world. We know how oil deposits come to be where they are, but where did my strange stories come from?  And how did they get there without my knowing? Would I have ever uncovered them if I hadn’t gone wandering without judgment?

I have always thought of my imagination as my possession, a private world all my own. As we talked, I started to wonder if my imagination might have more in common with a solitary oil rig glittering amidst a dark and vast ocean, perched above a sea no more mine than the one lapping against the barnacle-encrusted pier beyond the windows.

During undergrad, I spent about a month under the spell of Carl Jung and his concept of the collective unconscious. Jung thought that much of the content of our unconscious mind was the result of genetic inheritance rather than the accumulation of personal experience. This inherited material manifests as archetypes (most clearly seen in the repeated character types in literature and storytelling traditions: the Trickster, the Hero, the Tyrant, the Mother) and in our instinctive behavior, such as traditional religious practices and sexual mores. Much of what we consider individual expression is simply a shaping of shared archetypal clay available as a birth rite to all.

While Jung’s theory of a shared unconscious explains the deep patterns found in human society, religion, and behavior, I wonder if some repeating forms emerge because humanity has remained huddled around the same fire, the same deposit of imaginal energy. We are born into a community that siphons its spirit from a particular repository of the mind. The surrounding landscape is unforgiving, and our survival drive keeps us close to this source. To fraternize with novel imagery would, we feel, be futile at best, and suicidal at worst.

Fossil fuels are dwindling. The supply is not infinite, after all. Toxic by-products have accumulated in the atmosphere, wreaking havoc on weather patterns and poisoning our lungs and bloodstreams. Likewise, the images and archetypes that once served to sustain us have begun to lose their potency.

I am not the first to notice that we seem to be collectively running out of fuel, especially in the realm of art. Theater marquees have become bloated with glossy remakes of aged blockbusters, dance floors throb to resampled choruses from thirty years ago, and aging rockers sue young stars for “stealing” their melodies, to the point where the young can only throw up their hands and wail, “There’s only so many ways to put together seven notes, man!”

I once heard someone say that complex societies collapse when the costs of further complexity outweigh the returns. The torrent of economic, literary, and artistic progress over the last few centuries is perhaps a sign that our species, as it shifted into modernity, struck a rich imaginative well. The present struggle to produce novel and interesting work raises a question: has this deposit at last run dry? Are further attempts to mine it worth the energy cost? Maybe this is why, in recent years, talk of collapse has risen in both pitch and volume.

Speaking from experience, I can tell you that millennial and Gen Z artists feel a strange kinship to those California farmers forced by the depleted aquifers beneath the state’s Central Valley to extend their irrigation wells to expensive and dangerous depths, expending ever greater effort merely to maintain the status quo. Same water, same crops. Same notes, same songs. The present condition of the earth mirrors the state of our minds.

I don’t, however, endorse the “nail in the coffin” stance so many older generations of journalists take: those who love to declare that art is finished, that everything worth saying has been said, that kids these days don’t possess the depth of experience required for true artistic expression.

It feels bizarre, as a younger person, to say this, but perhaps the solution is the imaginal equivalent of that cringey fossil fuel rallying cry, “Drill, baby, drill!” (albeit with far more positive possible outcomes). Before I began to access my subconscious, I had concluded that I didn’t have much to say as a fiction author. The jury is still out on that, but now I am at least able to produce something that excites me and some readers: words and images that hold a charge sufficient to draw me to my pen and paper every day to see what might emerge. The process alone, ripe with uncertainty, is enticing.

Maybe oil rigs are the wrong metaphor. It could be that our imagination more closely resembles the ancient conception of the firmament, a glass dome holding back boundless waters. At our core, we are a nomadic species. The patch of imaginal sky beneath which we have pitched our tents may have succumbed to drought, but there are infinite heavens beyond our encampment, skies which may not, as we fear, restrain the destructive waters of a world-annihilating flood, but instead hold a life-giving rain. Physical migration has always been a part of humanity’s development. Perhaps instead of continuing our futile rain dance, we would do better to pull up stakes and find a fresh piece of mental sky.

David Trull has worked as a fireworks salesman, forensic tax researcher, railroad logistician, teacher, songwriter, and musician. He studied philosophy through a Great Books immersion program at Thomas Aquinas College in Ojai, California. A lifelong autodidact, he has advanced his explorations through a self-designed curriculum focused on the intersection of philosophy and theology. Raised in St. Louis, Trull now orbits between Santa Barbara, California, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Printed in the  Summer 2024  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Levine, Arlene Gay "Through the Muntins" Quest 112:3, pg 35-36

By Arlene Gay Levine

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

—John Lennon

One sapphire-sky morning, I sat at my kitchen table, gazing through a window overlooking the garden and an emerald profusion of trees beyond.

My home is an old English Tudor townhouse dating back to 1938, so each pane possesses a muntin located on the glass itself. These vertical elements divide the windows into a grid. (The earliest known use of the noun muntin is in the Middle English period, 1150‒1500, as a variant of the obsolete montant—from the French, literally, “rising.”)

Through the muntins, on a neighbor’s towering oak about 300 feet away, I spied what looked to be an eye in the sky opening into the tree’s luxurious crown. During this Alice in Wonderland moment, my musings sent me soaring into another realm.

As a verb, to muse is to thoughtfully consider something. Used as a noun, it means a person, especially a woman, who is a source of artistic inspiration. In mythology, the Muses were nine goddesses who symbolized the arts and sciences.

For me, a muse is virtually anything in Spirit’s world that serves to inspire a sense of awe and wonder. How lucky we are that such sources are infinite! Without this element, the imagination might never take off at all. Sadly, many people never tap the wondrous power inside them that provides the means to reveal scientific discoveries, compose magnificent music, craft new worlds through the written word, prepare a feast without a recipe, or possibly even conceive of a plan to return this planet to what the Creator intended when the words “Let there be light” were first spoken.

As an educator for over two decades, I made it my mission to restore the miraculous power of creativity to my pupils. In many cases, they had not been encouraged to develop it, or worse, were admonished to “stop daydreaming,” “pull their head out of the clouds,” and get back to the “real” world.

Perhaps you had an invisible playmate who seemed to speak to you through the soundless sound of an inner voice that was quite as genuine to your ears as your mother calling you for lunch. If you shared the wonderful things that you and your imaginary friend spoke about with adults and sometimes even other children, you may well have experienced scorn, insults, or even concern that you were “letting your imagination run away with you.”

Before I completed my MA degree in education, I was offered a brief opportunity to teach at a Montessori school and encountered an astounding key to unlock the hearts and minds of my pupils. There was a limited number of children in each class and many fascinating aspects of this system. These included hands-on learning, silent time and particularly “choice time,” when the class could select from various “centers” set up around the room. These areas were dedicated to activities such as drawing, music, reading, writing, and construction. What a boon to free creativity for the lucky youngsters who could afford to attend!

Flash-forward a few years. As in many serendipitous events in my life, I found myself selected to work with gifted children in a system called Talents Unlimited in a public school located in the largest federally subsidized housing development in the nation. There I became a certified Talents Unlimited practitioner, trained in developing creative and critical thinking skills in my elementary school students. Later I worked instructing other teachers and supervisory personnel as a staff developer.

Established primarily by Carol Schlichter based on the works of Howard Gardner, Calvin Taylor, and Robert Sternberg, the Talents Unlimited model was designed to help teachers recognize and nurture the multiple talents of all children. The program allows students to grow their talents as they learn and acquire knowledge in six areas, including productive thinking, decision-making, planning, forecasting, communication, and academics.

The first skill, aptly named “productive thinking,” is involved most closely with the imagination. The steps included are: (1) Think of many ideas. (2) Think of varied ideas. (3) Think of unusual ideas. (4) Add to your ideas to make them better.

One morning, my class was busy working at the centers I had created at home, based on their suggestions of which topics interested them. Gazing at their complete absorption, it reminded me of a full-on “flow” experience straight out of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyli’s captivating book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. He explains how by concentrating our creative energies within, we can accelerate beyond our everyday abilities into a state of transcendence.

To my eye, the children seemed to shine like balls of energy, projecting total immersion in their task. In that moment, it was not a huge leap to envision that perhaps we all are centers of expression for the One who creates and sustains the universe. With an open heart I whispered, “Namaste”: “The Divine within me bows to the Divine within you.” Enthralled by that wave of light, I decided to imagine I too was a sixth grader in Mrs. Levine’s class and began writing a play. Every day when it was “Center Time,” I would pull those pages out from the drawer of my desk and keep writing. The finished product was called A Talent for Friendship.

Excited by the results, I decided to read the class a few scenes. After that, I asked them to use their productive thinking skills to decide what I should do with the manuscript now. Their many, varied, and unusual ideas led to them producing, directing, creating costumes and props and acting in the play, which they presented in the school auditorium for all the grades to enjoy.

Along with the delight of encouraging the imagination of my students, the most rewarding results came from parents.

They expressed gratitude for my expanding the vision of these youngsters beyond the stultifying violence and crime emanating from their windows and TV screens. Einstein said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” In other words, when our rational ego intellect generates a problem, we must use our spiritual, creative mind to find the solution.

 Now, dear reader, here is your assignment. This article began with a fanciful journey through the muntins of my window to an eye into the sky. Imagine that you are gazing through an eye in the sky. Use your productive thinking skills to list the many, varied, and unusual things you see there and what happens next. (This task touches on another of the six components included in the Talents program: forecasting.) Add to your ideas to make them better.

Perhaps together you and I will envision a way to make our world a safer, wiser, kinder home for all of us.

All the Names I’d Like to Give Myself

Call me what you will
but I have names for myself
wishes of who I want to be
dreams of an open face
dancing whole person
able to take the heat
Call me Luna, call me Sol
I’ll answer to either or both
because they are me in its entirety
Call me resilient ground cover, murky tide pool,
encouraging firmament, fiery diadem
spinner and spun in the cosmic maze
There is always a world for me, of me, by me
from the words I chose, from the singing
syllables of sound strung together into thought
I imagine myself: a velvet rain forest
in the Amazon at dawn with a dozen squawking
lime-sherbet parrots dining on mango flesh
ripe as the morning
Call me crazy, call me shadow, call me
the beginning of an idea stirring
on the tip of your medulla oblongata
as succulent as fresh bee whiskey
capable of stinging senses
jolting the overgrown glade of your
sleepy life back into existence
Call me what you will

-Arlene Gay Levine

Arlene Gay Levine is the author of 39 Ways to Open Your Heart: An Illuminated Meditation (Conari Press) and Movie Life (Finishing Line Press). Her prose and poetry have found a home in The New York Times, numerous anthologies, including most recently The Power of the Pause (Wising Up Press), and a new collection from Highland Park Poetry. Her poems appear online at A Year of Being Here, Your Daily Poem, Verse-Virtual, and Storyteller Poetry Review. She is the creator of Logos Therapy, a transformational writing process from which the exercise in this article originated. The poem here was previously published in Movie Life and subsequently performed as spoken word set to modern dance in the off-Broadway show Identity.