SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA–A human is a physical being. That is a no-brainer. Our senses declare it to be so. A human is a spiritual being. That requires proof beyond any iota of doubt. Our senses fail to attest our spiritual existence beyond any reasonable doubt. It is the domain of sorcery and religion which the skeptics among us deride as mere occultism and cultism. But then, we have the power to imagine.
Imagination is our ability to hold a mental image of a thing which is not perceived by the senses. The intellectual (Illuminati) holds it as his innate ability and power of perception. The religious, revelation. The first presumes man as the be-all and end-all of everything. The second embraces the all-pervading presence of an invisible yet omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent God. The power of the imagination is the tool we need to springboard to the spiritual domain. It is the attribute that affirms that we are spiritual beings as well. Imagination, memory and daydream are functions of a spiritual being.
It is in this field of attention that I digress to two friends–Carlos Bueno and Cesar Aquino. In my memory, they are Buen and Czar to mean good and king.
Buen is good for my ego. He alluded to me as an Airbender in a recent Chit-Chat at the Dumaguete Metropost. I feel he is pulling my leg as I used to pull his legs while we were at DYSR together. Buen painted in words a DYSR larger than life. I loom large, too, along with Phil Quingco, Boy Panajon, Annie Bangay, and Glynda Descuatan. Buen never knew that I hailed him as the new kid in town sweeping the beautiful girls off their feet in the SU campus or anywhere else in the city.
To refer to me as an Airbender is to call attention to the movie Avatar: The Last Airbender. The film blends elements of Japanese animation and American cartoon giving life to the adventures of Aang, the hero, who has the power to command the elements and bends them to his wishes. In the movie, Aang and his friends are fighting to save the World from the evil Fire Lord in ending the destructive war against the Fire Nation.
In chess, Czar is my arch-rival. In writing though, he is my mentor and idol. Every now and then, I read a few pages of his book Checkmeta. I find gem in reading it specially with regards to the topic at hand the power of the imagination. Checkmeta is an anagram of checkmate. It is a clever way of adding local color to the word checkmate. It evokes in me our mutual chess buddy Odilon Ontal egging on Czar to checkmate me and shouting “Checkmate na, Tsikmita!”
In Checkmeta, Czar dabbles into a bit of sorcery by delving into Carlos Castaneda’s personal experience with his mentor Don Juan. In the process, he delves into non-reality such as going into astral projection as a flying crow by the power of the imagination. In the world of superhero and supervillain, it is Mxyzptlk popping into the room weaving magic to resurrect his dead novel into a life’s works-in-progress. As a Trickster (Joker to Batman), Mxyzptlk is popping in and out to torment Superman’s real world. Got a feeling, Czar is playing super-Imp to literature’s establishment world.
The potential of the power is drawn in John Lennon’s song Imagine
Lennon has dreamed a perfect world which everybody is striving for. Dream is a function of the noumena, the non-reality or the spiritual realm. Dream, imagination, and memory are functions of man’s spiritual dimension. They remain untapped in man’s transformation journey–to be of this world, and not to conform to the world.
