Cynthia Bourgeault characterizes the Imaginal Realm, or World 24, as the spiritual, interpenetrating Kingdom of Heaven within.

Defining the Imaginal

“A realm is not fundamentally a place; it is more like a set of governing conventions that make possible a certain kind of manifestation.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Eye of the Heart, p14.

“It is called Imaginal because, while it is invisible to the physical eye, it is still clearly perceptible through the eye of the heart, which is in fact what the word imagination specifically implies in its original Islamic context: direct perception through the eye of the heart, not through mental perception or fantasy.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Eye of the Heart, p15

“World 24 is the Kingdom of Heaven as Jesus put it and supremely the home range of the Imaginal. It is the world of presence … where human consciousness fully inhabits this physical world, takes instructions reliably from the higher realms, and participates fully in the required cosmic exchange.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Eye of the Heart, p36.

The Nature of Imaginal Causality

“What it means to enter the Imaginal realm is to bring our higher mind and higher heart into alignment with a causality and reality that’s moving far faster, more intensely, and more coherently than our own fragmented world. And that this world is not only real, but it is causal with respect to ours.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Imaginal Wisdom School 2020, Sunday Eve 54:00

“A miracle is simply the laws of the higher level of causality bleeding into this world.” Maurice Nicoll, The New Man p71

“Do not fall into the trap of seeing it as a separate world … the essence of Imaginal agency is that it is always interpenetrating and interanimating; it is always about connectivity.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Eye of the Heart, p38

The Heart as Imaginal Organ

“We have subtle subconscious faculties we are not using. Beyond the limited analytic intellect is a vast realm of mind that includes psychic and extrasensory abilities; intuition; wisdom; a sense of unity; aesthetic, qualitative and creative faculties; and image-forming and symbolic capacities. Though these faculties are many, we give them a single name with some justification for they are working best when they are in concert. They comprise a mind, moreover, in spontaneous connection to the cosmic mind. This total mind we call heart.” Kabir Helminski, Living Presence, p205

“Our mind, giving itself to the Divine mind, receiving the Divine Mind, giving itself back—that total thing—is heart. Heart is the process, heart is the flow of the union between the realms.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Imaginal wisdom school 2020, Wednesday am teaching 43:00

The Double Nature of Human Presence

“I have to know that I have a double nature, that there are two forces in me: the descending force of manifestation and an ascending force returning to the source. I have to experience them here at the same time in order to know myself as a whole. There must be some reason why I am here, something that is needed for a relation between the two. This is the meaning of my Presence.” Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being, Shambhala Publications, 2010, p44

Requirements for Imaginal Perception

“The energy required to maintain the nucleated egoic system keeps dragging you down below the threshold where you can maintain what you can see. Which is why the ancient spiritual practices put so much emphasis on surrender and humility. What they’re trying to do is free up the energy that gets siphoned off in trying to take everything back to the story of our extremely high maintenance, energy-consuming system of selfhood.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Imaginal wisdom school 2020, Wednesday am teaching 17.50

“The bottom line is this: Imaginal perception can only be reliably undertaken by a stabilized Imaginal selfhood. Otherwise what you get is glimpses and visions brought back to the psychic level, and you live with that for a long time. Most of our spiritual life is spent in that level confusion.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Imaginal wisdom school 2020, Wednesday am teaching 23:15

“The inconvenient truth remains: If you are going to play in World 24, all those heavy, negative emotions you are clinging to and wallowing in are useless. They belong to the density of that other realm. You can indulge them as much as you want there as you perfect your World 48 self. But to step fully across the line into the Imaginal realm, there can be no more wallowing or clinging; it’s transforming all the way.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Eye of the Heart, p111

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Logion 49 
Yeshua says...
Blessed are those chosen and unified.
The Realm of the Kingdom is theirs.
For out of her you have come,
and back to her you are returning.

Logion 113
His students asked him,
"On what day will the kingdom arrive? "
"Its coming cannot be perceived from the outside," he said.
"You cannot say, 'Look, it's over there,'
or, 'No, here it is.'
The Father's realm is spreading out
across the face of the earth,
and humanity is not able to perceive it. "

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See other writings on the Imaginal Realm

All quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)
Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll’s The New Man refer to Martino Fine Books, Eastford CT, 2019
Cynthia Bourgeault, Eye of the Heart, Shambhala Publications, 2020

Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.