Less than 30 years ago (1995), the episode "Explorers" from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine featured Commander Benjamin Sisko creating a replica of an ancient spacecraft powered by solar sails. Now, NASA has announced that a new spacecraft has successfully deployed its solar sails.
Also, 30 years ago (1993), Jurassic Park focused on recreating extinct animals, specifically dinosaurs, using genetic material. In that fantasy, with the right technology and setting aside ethical considerations, various species of dinosaurs were cloned. But according to the company Colossal Biosciences, we are now close to cloning mammoths.
In both cases (and in many other examples that could be given), the situation is the same: what was only science fiction a few decades ago, presented within the framework of an hour or two of entertainment, has now become a reality. Not a possibility. Not a topic of study, but a reality.
In the case of solar sails, NASA confirmed in a press release that at 1:33 pm (Eastern US time) on August 29, the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) successfully deployed the new technology. A day later, Ben Lamm, CEO of Colossal Biosciences, reported that the "de-extinction" of mammoths "is closer than people think."
When what was once unimaginable has already happened, when fiction becomes real, and reality surpasses fiction, when the boundaries between fantasy and reality, between the possible and the impossible, blur—this is the moment when we should open ourselves up to and connect with the imaginal. Read carefully: we are talking about the imaginal, not the imaginary.
Henry Corbin, a French philosopher and orientalist from the last century, developed the idea of the imaginal as a central concept in the context of understanding Sufi and Iranian Islamic mysticism and philosophy.
Corbin distinguishes between the imaginary, generally associated with fantasies or inventions without reality, and the imaginal, which refers to an intermediary reality, an autonomous and objective world as real as the material or spiritual world but perceived through active imagination. Opening up to the imaginal is learning to perceive a new level of reality.
Obviously, fiction in general, and science fiction in particular, exemplifies—just as art does—that mental and emotional openness, and in many cases even spiritual, to another level of reality, or, as Corbin said, to a "mundus imaginalis," where spiritual forms and symbols acquire a concrete presence beyond reason and sensory experiences.
In this way, the absurd, the impossible, and the unthinkable cease to be mere excuses for consuming entertainment, that is, they stop being an escape from reality, to become gateways to deeper levels of that same reality through experiences that cannot be reduced to abstractions or concepts.
As we stand at the intersection of fiction and reality, it is imperative that we consciously expand our understanding and embrace the imaginal as a vital aspect of our new and expanded perception. This is not just an intellectual exercise: it is a necessary evolution of our awareness as we navigate an increasingly complex and interconnected universe.
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