It is a common misconception that the term
'Unconscious' has come to imply something inside
ourselves, in contrast with other terms which often
imply something purely external. Imagination, in the
sense that Coleridge and Blake used it, has no such
restriction; it has a much wider scope. It implies
something existing between the external and internal
perception, and inhabiting both. Nothing, after all,
exists outside consciousness. Imagination precedes
perception, raising it to the level of Vision. It
intrudes into our 'normal' perceptions and suffuses
them, thereby revealing itself - whether internally as
dreams and inspirations or externally as visions or
phenomena. Seen from this light, Imagination is not a
passive thing, a passing fancy or a whimsical mental
construct. It is something more dynamic - wider and
deeper ranges of consciousness than that which we
think of as human. These ranges of consciousness
intrude ofttimes into human consciousness; they
inspire, energise, initiate. This sense of Imagination
as intruding into consciousness has been experienced
by many creative artists in all sorts of fields of
endeavour, and goes under a variety of terms. The
intrusion will be interpreted by a religious person as
the hand of God; by a poet as the Muse; by the artist
as inspirational creativity; by the Jungian
psychologist as the Collective Unconscious; by the
magician as supra-human or extra-terrestrial entity.
Whatever the term used to describe it, human
consciousness has been charged by an infusion of
something beyond its bounds."