Knowledge Versus Gnosis

Imagination was once the medium through which reality was experienced

We’ve been releasing some of the presentations and discussions from “The Future of Consciousness” seminar we held last year. Please check out this wonderful presentation from Gary Lachman (prolific author and former member of the band Blondie), based on his book, The Lost Knowledge of the Imagination. Here is an excerpt:

“I often go to the British Library in London, which advertises itself as “home of the world’s knowledge.” This is a misnomer. It is home to the world’s information. Knowledge exists here, in the mind, not in books or papers. Those are repositories of information—the material we can absorb. Once absorbed, information becomes knowledge. With effort, and this happens less often now, we can reach wisdom: the ability to know what to do with knowledge. That is always the hard part. As Francis Bacon said long ago, knowledge is power—a particular kind of power tied to a specific way of knowing.

We can approach imagination as another way of knowing. It has a noetic character, meaning it contains a form of knowledge. Through imagination, aspects of reality are revealed or made available to us. This is not about inventing novelties or fantasies, but about using a faculty that gives insight into the nature of things. Imagination permeates our consciousness. It is not some isolated corner of the mind but part of the whole. We describe it separately only to understand it better.

This faculty, imagination, gives us knowledge of the world just as intellect or reason does.