The Imagination: A Path to Personal and Planetary Individuation

Abstract

This paper draws on Jungian psychology, neuroscience, and cosmology to explore the role of the imagination in facilitating individuation at personal and planetary levels. It proposes that the imaginative faculties are essential to overcoming not only the divisions within an individual’s psyche but also the alienating sense of disconnection that much of humanity currently experiences from the planet, a severance that paves the way for the continued destruction of the biosphere. If we can truly acknowledge that humankind was birthed by Earth, that we are in fact Earth in human form, then through us the planet acquires the capacity to imagine radically new futures for itself. In this symbiotic process, we too are gifted the possibility of living into our potential as the very heart and mind of our sacred planet.