turning the world inside out

In the beginning stage of studying Henry Corbin's works and his descriptions and explanations of Islamic mysticism (I've concentrated primarily on Christian mysticism until now), I am appreciating his understanding that in our spiritual journey, we eventually stop being a soul in a strange world and become so large-souled that the world is inside us.

In other words, quantity is now inside quality. We have reversed the ordinary (ordinal-ary) mode of being in which we search for quality inside quantity ("I'm sure my soul will feel better if you can super-size that").

We engulf the world and then invest it with our spiritual energies -- with the energies of the Presence we feel so deeply and at our core we are. No longer are we victims in a vastness. We are the vastness assisting the victim's healing. Corbin calls this turning the world inside out.

This qualitative space, this realm of quality rather than quantity, this consciousness realm, is neither the Sensory nor the Intellectual, but is the Active Imagination, the aspect of our consciousness that has been downgraded in our current world, has been turned over to those who are scoffingly tolerated as merely poetic.

Ignoring the Active Imagination is like seeing as real only the Father (Intellectual) and the Son (Sensory) and ignoring the Holy Spirit. One-third of the Trinity, the realm of mystical awareness, of direct knowing of the Presence, has been tossed overboard.

The realm of creative or active imagination is not "just a fantasy in our heads" but is a huge and vastly productive aspect of our Being. Reclaiming it, or allowing it to reclaim us, will transform us and our society. The world is transformed by becoming larger than the world.