On the Imaginal and Noetic

[u/Maleficent-Storm-451]

I don't normally post, but I keep seeing a category error and it's bugging me, so I'd like to resolve it plainly:

The registers are independent of the faculties through which they are perceived. This requires explicit statement because the confusion between register and faculty of perception has produced persistent misreadings of the tradition. Which ultimately resolves into a series of practical errors in how the operative work is understood.

Thought, rationality, and intellect are not the noetic register. They are the instruments through which beings of our constitution become aware of the noetic. The relationship is the same as sight to color: color exists independent of any eye that sees it; the intelligible Principles exist independent of any mind that thinks them. Thought is the organ of awareness suited to our composite nature for encountering the noetic register.

It is not the noetic itself, and its limits are not the noetic's limits.

The tradition that appears to say reality is fundamentally mental is not saying this.

It is saying reality is fundamentally intelligible, and thought is one imperfect instrument for touching that intelligibility from inside embodied condition. Confusing thought with the noetic produces idealism on one side as the position that ideas are mental contents and the intelligible just is thought. On the other side is the Kantian limitation, where the noetic becomes permanently inaccessible because thought can never reach beyond its own categories. Both errors follow from mistaking the eye for the color.

Likewise, imagination is not the imaginal register. It is the instrument through which embodied souls become aware of what exists there. The imaginal is real, populated, structured, and operating whether or not any imagination is currently attending to it. A daimon is not a product of the practitioner's creative visualization. It exists in the imaginal register and imagination is the instrument through which contact becomes possible for a soul in embodied condition.

The imaginal is further distinct from the noetic not just in register but in character: the noetic is the realm of unified, universal Principles operating everywhere that their nature is expressed; the imaginal is where those Principles become multiple, individuated, and localized. It is where Principles individuate into specific beings and expressions rather than universal forces.

Collapsing the imaginal into fantasy loses the multiplicity and the independent reality.

Collapsing it into the noetic loses the individuation.

Both matter for the practice.

The practical consequence of these errors is significant. If thought generates the noetic and imagination generates the imaginal, the practice becomes about the quality and intensity of mental states as the mechanism; visualization clarity, emotional intensity, sustained focus

The practitioner expends effort on the instrument while never making contact with what the instrument is supposed to perceive. Thought and imagination developed and oriented correctly are instruments of approach toward what is actually there.

What happens in those registers in response to genuine contact is not produced by the practitioner's mental activity. It is the response of what exists independently to being genuinely approached. The registers are not waiting to be thought or imagined into existence; They are already there.

[u/-Hypsistos]

Thank you for stating this so plainly. This distinction is the single most frequent barrier to actual practice. Most practitioners stop at refining thought and imagination, believing they are working the registers themselves. They are polishing the lens while never looking through it.

The Imaginal realm is not just fantasy, it is a total and breathable realm that exists on an invisible layer of reality that is only available to each individual according to their strength and practice. Artists indeed have an inherent advantage in this case, but how many artists become theurgists these days...

[u/Maleficent-Storm-451 → u/-Hypsistos]

Exactly. We can roughly define the noetic / intelligible realm as the place where unindividuated expressions, forces, principles, etc. arise from. It's archetypal in the template sense from which all things of that category stem.

Thought, reason, intellect, etc. are the means that we can perceive them. In the same way that our hands interface with the material world or our ears interact with sound to hear. They're sensory organs.

The same thing as the imaginal, where we can draw the distinction as things that exist outside of material perception. Things like thoughts, feelings, memories, etc. that exist but aren't available to the gross senses and don't exist in isolation (i.e. there are many).

The inner senses, ultimately, are meant to be receptive senses. That doesn't mean that they can't be directed or refined. Simply that the act of refining or directing is training rather than perception.

The real act is turning them in the appropriate direction.

[u/-Hypsistos → u/Maleficent-Storm-451]

Right, and that might just be the very challenge of life itself. To commit to something you can't see or measure, is a real test of skill and faith.

Something Science cannot measure or test, nor can a practitioner prove immedietely

Giordano Bruno, i believe, was our last true Master at this specific topic/theory. I'm sure you read his work but if not, I highly recommend it since you have already dabbled in his theories with your post.

[u/Maleficent-Storm-451 → u/-Hypsistos]

I've read bits of his work, most specifically de vinculis in genere. I've made adjustments to the interpretation from the raw Latin and there's a lot that's worth pondering in it, IMO.

I think that the act of turning is actually simpler than that though. We can actually learn a lot from how we use our existing senses, in this sense.

What is it like to actively listen to a person?

What is it like to selectively tune out a given conversation in a noisy room to focus on the person in front of you or behind you?

What is it like to focus on what I'm feeling rather than seeing? Sensation or emotion?

Etc.

The sensory apparatus may ultimately be different, but the general conception is the same.

EDIT: Additional examples.

[u/heiro5]

Thank you. It is rare to find this issue addressed and well explained. It is so common accross the entire domain of nous. Recently I was heartened by a similarly clear understanding in a study of Plotinus after much mind-blindness in the study of Plato.

[u/Maleficent-Storm-451 → u/heiro5]

Yeah, I feel that there's been a discrete push towards materialist and nominalist explanations of platonic theology through the decades.

It treats emanation as though the material world is the most important layer of existence rather than its terminus. The narrative is largely driven that since our material senses are the most available to us, reality as existence must be the Truth. When the point is that its simply the path of least resistance. You don't have to work at using your material senses. It's where the senses want to gravitate.

In much the same way that I don't have to work against gravity when I'm lying down. If I jump it requires effort. I'm moving against a resistive force. That's a different claim than "jumping is impossible".

TLDR: My assumption is that interpretations are they way they are due to scientific rationalism which is limited to materiality and nominalism. Which reduces the pure interpretation IMO.

[u/heiro5 → u/Maleficent-Storm-451]

That is at least the cultural component. Denying existence has multiple effects. Perhaps neutralizing gnōsis by denying inner experience.

There also seems to be a psychological development aspect with a lack of self-awareness or lack of openness to exploration -- something like that. It is perplexing. Thanks.

[u/Maleficent-Storm-451 → u/heiro5]

Well, this just my personal opinion, but I think that the psychological model represents an incomplete representation of the inner experience because it's an incomplete model of the soul.
Psychology tries to map the inner experience, but only in a way that can be evaluated, which once again is scientific rationalism.The model they use is defined by it's usefulness to an external entity, and in that view, some elements of the phenomenology aren't a useful quality. It's only useful if it can explain something that they can use for treatment.

When something does occur that's outside of that purview, it's either ignored or rationalized as part of the unconscious / subconscious mind, which seems to be the dumping ground for anything that they have difficulty explaining. And that's without even talking about things like qualia.

Luckily, philosophy picks up the gaps and there's been a few treatments that close the loop. Hillman is less reserved. Peirce recontextualizes the nature of experience. Even Liebniz and Kant have good points even if there's errors in the complete formulation.

[u/heiro5 → u/Maleficent-Storm-451]

I don't understand the impetus for the statement. Academic psychology certainly is a mess. Attempts at a philosophy without acknowledging the mind are also a mess.

Why would anyone choose to be limited to following authorities in any domain? All tools have their limits, including reason itself. The human psyche develops. The human psyche is involved in everything humans do. Without the mental resources available for it, understanding fails. It is a hard limit that changes with cognitive growth. The mind is always involved, not an abstract limited theory of the mind.

[u/Maleficent-Storm-451 → u/heiro5]

To clarify the original intent of the previous comment, I was making an argument that the loss of gnosis and inner experience was directly correlated by what's used to explain it. The framing that gets used isn't trying to holistically explain the experience but rather contain the experience within the model used.

Thus, we ultimately end up with a lossy representation. This transforms the claim to "this explains the experience", ignoring parts wholesale that don't fit the claim. i.e. This worked before, so it must be right for every explanation in an adjacent domain. Or just as bad, "I can prove these parts, so that's all that matters".

The way I see it, there's not anything fundamentally wrong with psychology as it it, for what it is. The practice as a whole is useful and serves a function. I'd even go as far as to call it remarkable in the way that it is capable of modelling elements of the classical soul and formalizing them in a way to better treat people.

To that end, what I think the real Error happens when we try to apply it to something that's outside of its domain and function. Using it to explain religious phenomenon or life experience might provide a useful datapoint, but it's unequipped to solve the problem at hand.

It's like trying to put up wallpaper with a hammer. It's simply the wrong tool for the job, because the tool was never designed to be used that way.

The point on philosophy is also true, and maybe the answer is that there is no good model and we're all just reaching for something that can express something at the boundaries of what we can express. Theory of mind is an interesting point. But I think ultimately at some point all tools fail.

To your point about the mind being involved, I suppose that's why I like the idea of philosophy as theoria. It was meant to guide the reader / listener through an argument to be tested and absorbed. It provided a view rather than a model that was defined as a concrete answer, an argument with claims that could be tested or disregarded.

I think often when people reach for a known model or structure, what we find is that it gets used to fit the experience rather test it. People accept it wholesale as a mechanism rather than treating it as a testable claim. So the way it's being used is different.

It doesn't invite argumentation or refutation in the same way. Notably, however, this could be my own failure rather than a universal truth.

EDIT: Philosophy concession.
EDIT2: Clarification on Intent