Dr John Vervaeke Profile picture
Jul 8 10 tweets 3 min read Read on X
You have been invited to consider that the sacred may be something you encounter:

That calls to you, addresses you, transforms you—and that it didn’t disappear—but has become inaccessible because you’ve forgotten how to see it.

This is the forgotten wound of modernity.

And the imaginal is the lost thread which can stitch it back together.

Let me explain…Image
If the sacred is not accessed by analytical reasoning alone—but requires a reorientation of the whole self to undergo a transformation—it means that:

Such a reorientation cannot occur without the capacity to inhabit ways of seeing and being that transcend our immediate propositional understanding.

The imaginal affords precisely this—because…
…it is the faculty by which we enact possibility, rather than merely analyze actuality—allowing us to simulate states of being we do not yet inhabit.

It is not to be confused with…
…the imaginary—which we often reduce to private fantasy or illusion.

When you plan your day, imagine a difficult conversation, or envision a future self, you are not merely daydreaming. You are inhabiting the imaginal.

It allows you to shift perspectives, simulate futures, adopt identities.

Imagine a person who…
…has long lived in fear, but begins to imagine themselves as courageous—not merely pretending, but actively living into that image—then you are binding yourself to a vision that:

Reorganizes your perception, your priorities, your behavior.

And if that imaginal frame…
…leads them to confront reality more honestly—then it brings the person into deeper conformity with what is.

From this point of view, the imaginal does not point us away from the real, but draws us into its depth.

The French philosopher Henry Corbin saw this clearly…
…his distinction between the vertical and horizontal gaps is a way of diagnosing the fractures in modern consciousness.

The vertical gap is the rift between the sensual and the intelligible. It’s the severing of appearance from essence, of what we sense from what we understand.

The horizontal gap is the disjunction between the inner world and the outer world—between what we feel, imagine, and experience inwardly, and what we perceive as external reality.

And the imaginal is the domain that…
…does not deny these distinctions but mediates them.

It doesn’t collapse the sensual into the intelligible, or the inner into the outer.

Instead—it holds the tension—and opens a third space (the mundus imaginalis) in which the sensual and the intelligible, the inner and the outer, enter into a reciprocal articulation.
Thus the world is no longer mute matter, and the self is no longer an isolated ego.

The imaginal becomes the place where your subjective depths and the objective world meet.

So the sacred relates to the imaginal not as a content to a container—but as a presence to a mode of disclosure.
P.S.: Live spots for the upcoming course "Seeing God" are sold out! But…

…if you still want to learn what it means to detangle the existing frameworks in our culture of understanding God and religion (to resituate spirituality within a scientific and philosophical worldview)—the self-study version is now available: lectern.johnvervaeke.com/p/sgaft

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More from @DrJohnVervaeke

Jul 2
We tend to think that if we just adopt the right beliefs—we’ll somehow reconnect with the sacred.

But this arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of the condition we find ourselves in:

The Enlightenment radically transformed the very grammar by which we once oriented ourselves to the sacred.

Let me explain…Image
Our culture has undergone a threefold reduction (initiated by the Enlightenment):

Firstly, we’ve reduced ontology (our understanding of Being itself) to a single level—reality was flattened, its many levels of depth dissolved into the merely material.

Second, our culture reduced knowing to a single form: the knowledge that something is the case.

Last but not least we’ve reduced intelligibility itself (what it means for something to be understood) to generalizability. That is, only what can be abstracted, formalized, and universally applied is deemed worthy of understanding.

These reductions blind you to…
…the fullness of being and obscure the pathways by which you can come into contact with religio.

Religio as the experiential connectedness to being—the dynamic coupling of agent and arena in which the world discloses itself as meaningful.

We might get a glimpse of it during an artistic performance, or a moment of awe in nature, or an intimate connection with another person.

But after all we lack…
Read 7 tweets
Jun 28
What does the word "sacred" conjure for you?

Maybe distant images of divine beings—or felt notions of untouchable realms?

But what if you tried looking at it differently?

What if the sacred was a kind of felt depth—that calls you to attention and transformation?

The following is an invitation…Image
…a way of approaching the sacred with a new perspective—not an attempt at a final definition:

This notion of the sacred (as a kind of felt depth) is based on converging arguments from different thinkers.

One of them is the quadruple of ultimacy—an expansion of Schellenberg’s “triple transcendence.”

In this framework, you are invited to discern four dimensions through which the sacred becomes accessible as a participatory reality.

Let me explain…
J.L. Schellenberg’s notion of the triple transcendence includes the following:

That which is most real, most orienting, and most transformative.

Also known as The True, The Beautiful, and The Good.

These are not metaphysical absolutes but modes of contact.

They are the qualities you intuitively seek when you yearn for depth, meaning, or something “more” than the flatness of everyday distraction.

These three dimensions form a powerful triad—but something essential is missing…
Read 10 tweets
May 25
If I say:
When people are hungry—they eat

You don’t go:
Oh that's really profound!

Why?

Because you don’t find it highly plausible—where plausible means:

I take it very seriously

You want something that empowers you

So how do you discover something that is profound? Image
First of all profundity is part of how we sense that things are real

Let me explain:

Real is comparative

Real isn’t like red—real is like tall

Something is more real or less real than something else

For example…
You think the dream is real while you're in it—but then you wake up and you move to a bigger frame

And from that bigger frame you see the limitations and biases of the dream world

You say: The dream wasn't real

This is also a metaphor people use for meaning in life…
Read 13 tweets
Feb 2
We often reduce mental images to visualization—replaying a memory or envisioning an ideal future.

But mental images may not be tied to "seeing" at all—pointing to something more profound…🧵 Image
Traditionally there are two camps:

One camp views mental images as "inner pictures"—a seemingly intuitive notion since many experience visual-like imagery in their minds.

However—the existence of conditions like aphantasia (where individuals cannot form such visual images) complicates this perspective…
When asked to visualize a sunset—they may not "see" anything in their mind’s eye.

Despite this—people with aphantasia can still reason spatially and navigate their environments.

For example…
Read 9 tweets
Jan 26
We typically think of reality as something that we simply observe and understand.

But when you're deeply engaged in an activity—something more complex is happening.

It’s a deeply embodied experience—a sensed presence.

This is how it shapes your way of being in the world…🧵 Image
The imaginal is a mode of cognition where we engage with reality through imagination (not as a departure from the real) but as a deeper exploration of it—enabling us to "be" in a situation and interact with it meaningfully.

Sensed presence emerges from this process as an experiential anchor…
…it provides a felt sense of realness within the imaginal—making abstract or inaccessible dimensions of reality tangible to us.

For instance…
Read 7 tweets
Jan 22
If you want to increase your cognitive agency—practice at least these two things… 🧵

Why at least 2 practices?

So you have 2 things that are in opponent processing (meaning they work together to make you adaptive—but they’re doing opposite things)

The first one is…
You are within a frame and you're very carefully moving step by step through an inferential argument (what we typically call reasoning—although that's a bit of a mistake)

Let's call that inference (to make it clear)

Then you have a different thing—which is…
Read 12 tweets

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