Invoking Your Own Imaginary Laboratory/Workshop

One aspect of our human imagination I think is fascinating is the ability to create our own unique Workshop or Laboratory in our mind. Many in our society today would think this is completely ludicrous or downright silly – until you consider that many people throughout history have done just that…they created an inner workshop from which stories, inventions, and new discoveries were developed by the simple expedience of consulting with inner images. Who were the famous people throughout history whom have done this? Consider the following historical accounts:

Robert Louis Stevenson

In his Chapter on Dreams, RLS relates that when he was growing up as a sickly child – he would often in his delirium visit imaginary realms. One of these inner realms was a sort of theatre – where he would act in plays in his imagination accompanied by other imaginary figures. As he grew older, he still visited this inner theater before going to sleep and came to adore certain “Little People” whom he named as his “Brownies.” These dreamlike figures would assist RLS in coming up with compelling plots for his storylines in his novels. They were like the ‘movers and shakers’ in his imagination that helped him come up with the characters, sequence, ideas, and other items that he found indispensable in sewing a novel’s tapestry of elements together – and he stated they often did this outside of his awareness while he was sleeping (Stevenson, 1888).

These ‘little people’ in his imagination were very helpful to RLS during times when he had strived to come up with a good story but was coming up emptyhanded. He recounts that when the bank was beginning to send him letters and the market was needing a good story – these Brownies came in to fill the breach in his creative productivity (Stevenson, 1888).

He viewed these Brownies as more talented than he was – even though they were the product of his own imagination – since they worked around the clock in his mind and would inspire bestselling ideas that he would then pen into existence. One of those bestsellers was his timeless classic The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Stevenson, 1888).

Napoleon Hill

In his landmark bestseller Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill states that at night before sleep – that twilight reverie before the onset of sleep – that he would have imaginary council meetings with nine men that he tended to admire and he felt had qualities that he wanted to emulate in his own character and personality. These nine men were:

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thomas Paine
Thomas Alva Edison
Charles Darwin
Abraham Lincoln
Luther Burbank
Napoleon Bonaparte
Henry Ford
Andrew Carnegie

These council meetings were held every night in which Hill would ask questions for advice and counsel on various issues and problems he was having – and he began calling these individuals in his imagination his “Invisible Counselors” (Hill, 1937).

The purpose of these meetings – according to Hill (1937) – was to take admirable traits from each of these historical figures and use them to build his own character. In a sense, he felt that by interacting with these personalities, he would begin to absorb osmotically through association characteristics he desired and admired in these figures and weave them into his own personality. For example, he relates that from Emerson he took the characteristic of poetic insight into nature ; from Paine freedom of thought ; from Burbank the ability to alter natural laws to one’s bidding ; from Edison the ability to uncover nature’s secrets ; from Darwin the study of cause and effect without bias ; from Lincoln the capacity to lead and work well with people ; from Napoleon the ability to inspire people to action ; from Carnegie the ability to organize effort into plans and from Ford the ability to have single-minded determination.

In order to make these meetings as realistic as possible, Hill studied the histories and biographies of these men with disciplined precision. He studied their strengths and weaknesses and when he wanted encouragement to develop a strength they had in his own character he would request of them to help him develop and impress on his subconscious mind these strengths. He often did so by acting as Chairman in these nightly council meetings. What is really interesting – over time these inner images seemed to have a life of their own, exhibiting idiosyncrasies that you would observe in people when having a real meeting – such as witty banter, showing up late, sitting in a certain chair. His inner figures tended to exhibit these characteristics that it sometimes disturbed Hill because they seemed so realistic (Hill, 1937).

Nikola Tesla

The famed scientist and inventor had a very vivid imagination. He related in interviews that when he was young he had a ‘peculiar affliction’ in which when a word of an object was spoken to him that object would appear before him in vivid detail – so vivid that he had trouble distinguishing between an imaginary object from a real object – and these occurrences were accompanied by flashes of light. Sometimes images from previous days would persist in his mind while he was trying to sleep, and he could run his hands through the images as if they were ghostly apparitions. At first, these apparitions were disturbing to him and he would try to control them by forcing his mind to recall pleasant scenes. While this helped at first temporarily, he then began to use his will to force his mind to visit places he had never been to before – cities or places far beyond his childhood home and sometimes far into the future. He would on these journeys meet and converse with imaginary friends, and these friends seemed very real and dear to him. He did this until the age of seventeen, and it was at this age that he turned to this vivid imaginative capability to the serious enterprise of invention (Wisehart, 1921).

It was at this point in his life that he could visualize with such skill that he did not need drawings, experiments, or models to work with – he could do all of this in his mind. He could develop parts to machines and run the machines in his head without the need to record this on any drawings or notes. The parts and their wear and tear were just as vivid as if they were real objects (Wisehart, 1921).

Carl Gustav Jung

The famed Swiss psychiatrist had his patients engage in a therapeutic process in which the patient relaxed and allowed imagery from the mind’s eye to surface. At first there was no interference from the patient into the flowering imagery that began to surface from the mind’s eye. But when the imagery began to take the form of symbolic figures from dreams, stories, myths, or other symbols of meaning to the patient – the patient engaged in a dialogue with these inner images and sometimes would gain some unique insights into various psychological issues that the patient had been dealing with. Then, the patient was assisted by Jung to help interpret or elaborate on the meaning of these inner conversations. This process Jung referred to as Active Imagination (Samuels & Samuels, 1975).

These symbolic figures full of meaning for the patient Jung referred to as archetypes. Jung believed that these archetypes were gateways to deeper unconscious material – and was a way for the patient to get in touch with their creative spirit for psychological healing (Jung, 1964).

Jung saw the positive therapeutic effects experienced by his patients and began to wonder what would happen if he himself began to experiment with his own images. In order for him to visualize easily and vividly, Jung would imagine dropping down deep descents into abysses or even travelling out into deep space. His imagery seemed to get more intense and vivid by preceding with these imaginary voyages – and on such journeys, he would encounter imaginary figures like dwarves, wise men, large mythical creatures – and if he felt compelled – he would have conversations with these inner figures. Jung considered these inner journeys as some of the most insightful and fruitful periods of his life. He recorded these experiences in written form or he would draw and paint them. He noticed during his outpourings, that there was this growing creative spirit that was bubbling forth from within him. He felt from these experiences and their subsequent creative expression that his unconscious was centering him and moving him toward wholeness and integration. Such integration he felt was the hallmark of a creative, healthy individual (Samuels & Samuels, 1975).

Jung was so impressed by the insight he gained from these images that he felt that these images had a life of their own or had their own autonomy. This led to the development that he felt that we each carried in our minds a vast storehouse of memory, data, and knowledge that he termed the Collective Unconscious (Jung, 1964).

Insight and Application

What can we learn from these historical accounts? Well, for one, the idea of making inner imaginary journeys and interacting with inner images in either the form of an inner workshop or inner theater of imaginary characters is anything but silly. In our overtly rational and empirical age, it may behoove us to “go inward” and get in touch with our creative spirit to develop our ingenuity, achieve psychological wholeness, gain insight, or create works of art that will not only inspire us but inspire others.

What are some steps we can take to go on this exciting journey? Well, you could create an imaginary workshop or theater right before going to sleep – that twilight period of hypnagogic reverie right before the edge of sleep – much like what Robert Louis Stevenson and Napoleon Hill did on a regular basis. You may want to create a council meeting with you as chairman or you may create a theater with a stage or movie screen with you as director of the characters and plots of your next story – whether that is a novel you are writing or the story of your life.

You may not have the eidetic imagery of Nikola Tesla with its exceptional vividness of detail – but you may take a hint from how to develop this vividness from Carl Jung by descending into deep abysses or travelling in your mind to some distant, intergalactic outpost.

I would like to share with you what I have done over the years to gain insights into problems or gain an intuitive direction in solving problems that tended to not have a simple, convergent solution. The steps of what I have done to increase my imagination in the above ways I hope inspires you:

Create a relaxed state of mind by progressively tensing and relaxing your muscle groups. Start by tensing your hands by making them into fists for a few seconds and then letting go the tension.  Study the relaxation you experience after tensing your hands and then continue this process for your forearms, biceps, shoulders, scalp muscles, neck, chest, back, abdomen, buttocks, thighs, calves, etc. – all the way until you tighten and release your toes.
Begin to start breathing deeply. First count how many seconds it takes for you to take your first deep breath.  For example, you take your first deep breath and it takes four seconds.  Then breathe in for four seconds – hold – and then out for four seconds – hold.  Then try to deepen the amount of seconds by increasing to “in for five/out for five” ; “in for six/out for six”; etc.  Do this until you start to feel really relaxed.
When you have achieved a level of relaxation and focus, begin to create in your mind’s eye pleasant, tranquil scenes. You may want to remember a park you used to visit from childhood or a sandy beach where you used to make sandcastles.  Maybe its a beautiful lake where you like to fish or it was taking a relaxing walk in a forest glen surrounded by majestic mountains.  Whatever pleasant tranquil scenes you can think of or conjure up will be helpful for the next step.
Next, in whatever scene you create – try to find a cave or some sort of opening in the ground that leads to some precipitous descent. Or, you may go into a cave or cavern – some place that is in a more shadowy realm…and begin descending into deeper and deeper depths.  Another method is for you to take off flying outside of Earth’s atmosphere into the Solar System and beyond – maybe fly to another galaxy.  Or, you may even shrink yourself down to the atomic level of reality.  Notice how playing with these variations in time and space seems to enliven your images, because they symbolize areas of your experience that are new and novel.
Finally, whether you descend down a stairwell to some deep place in the Earth or fly to some planet in a distant galaxy…create some sort of theater, laboratory, or meeting place in your imagination at these locations complete with a formal entrance of some kind or a path leading to this place of creation. Equip it and decorate it as you like.  You may equip it with advanced technology like the Fortress of Solitude that Superman visited when needing solitude and counsel from Kryptonian advisors.  Or, you may make it an underground Lair where you can design and invent new technology with the help of lab assistants.  You could even make it an office that is richly decorated with art and has a series of doors in which office assistants or historical figures happen to walk in and out at your summons.  Play with these ideas…it will help enliven your creativity and perhaps lead to the imaginative insights and ideas some of the historical figures that we have discussed had enjoyed.

When I have done the above activity – I often would get insights or ideas on how to solve a thorny problem in my personal life or the problems of others. It has been especially helpful if I want to get ideas on problems that I have little education or experience with. For example, if I have a career problem – I will consult with an inner “career counselor” on strategies that I could use when handling such problems as office politics or ways of promoting an idea at my job. What has been really interesting is that in the “real” world I would experience various ‘deja-vu’ occurrences that were often synchronistic or serendipitous in nature – leading eventually to a solution or direction that ended up solving the problem.

In a future post, I will discuss this fascinating phenomenon of synchronicity and serendipity, but for now, play with these ideas and start getting in touch with your creative spirit!

References:

Hill, N. (1937). Think and Grow Rich. New York, USA: Penguin Group, Inc.

Jung, C.G. (Ed.). (1964). Man and His Symbols. New York, USA: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group.

Samuels, M. & Samuels, N. (1975). Seeing With the Mind’s Eye: The History, Techniques and Uses of Visualization. New York, USA: Random House.

Stevenson, R.L. (1888). A Chapter on Dreams. Scribner Magazine, pp. 122-128. Retrieved from http://www.bl.uk/collection-items/a-chapter-on-dreams-by-robert-louis-stevenson

Wisehart, M.K. (1921). Making Your Imagination Work for You. American Magazine, 91(13, 60-66). Retrieved from https://teslauniverse.com/sites/default/files/article/19210400-the-american-magazine-01.pdf