articles & notes on Henri Corbins MUNDUS IMAGINALIS

1. Croner & Joshi, psychic opening and magical descent

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Henry Corbin’s Mundus Imaginalis, Sufism, neurological damage, psychic opening, and
imagination gone awry
by Barbara Croner & Sheila Joshi
http://neuroscienceandpsi.blogspot.com/2012/03/henry-corbins-mundus-imaginalis-sufism.html

A new map of new territory

This weekend we attended a lecture by San Francisco Jungian analyst Richard Stein, MD, who
introduced us to a way of thinking about reality that helped illuminate some of the problems that
come with a psychic opening that is brought about by neurological damage or is otherwise
distressing.

Dr. Stein introduced us to the work of Henry Corbin (1903 – 1978), who was a professor of
Islamic Studies at the Sorbonne, a Christian theologian, and an expert on 12th and 13th c. Sufism
and Persian mysticism.

Corbin coined the term “Mundus Imaginalis” to explain to Westerners the Sufi account of a
territory that exists between the physical, sensory world and the spirit world (which Plato saw as
consisting of ideal forms, but which some conceptualize as formless). This intermediate world
has its own consistent topography, but is also constantly influenced and shaped by the physical
and the spiritual worlds.

The Mundus Imaginalis is something like the Christian heaven; it’s the part of reality where
archetypes exist; it is peopled by beings, including angels.

We embodied humans both perceive this Mundus Imaginalis and we create in it. It’s where
synchronicities and creative leaps happen, where grace reaches us. It’s where the experiences we
call psychic happen, as well as dreams (Rossi, p. 4).

It’s a tricky term because Corbin seems to have had in mind a very real part of reality, but at
least one of the ways it is accessed and influenced by us is via our imagination. Yet, in some
ways, the Mundus Imaginalis is more real than the physical, sensory world we call real.

Corbin also used the term “active imagination,” which he may have got from Jung, or may have
developed simultaneously. It is a method of perception and exploration that is supposed to
straddle the physical world and the Mundus Imaginalis, allowing interplay between them (Voss,
p. 5).

British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott’s concepts of “potential space” and “transitional

phenomena” seem related. Transitional phenomena are objects or artistic products or ideas that
may be found or created by someone, which are both concretely real, yet also have innate or
endowed magic – like a baby’s favorite blanket.

Potential space is Winnicott’s conceptualization of a state or field where transitional phenomena

are found and / or created. An example of being in potential space would be the composer who
writes a piece of music, yet might also feel it was communicated to her by a Muse.

The use of transitional phenomena (like a comforting blanket or favorite piece of music) can also
prop up the potential space, making further play, creativity, and discovery even more likely.

Getting lost and scared in the new territory

Now, what happens if you have a psychic opening that is brought about by neurological damage
or is otherwise abrupt, distressing, and discontinuous with your previous weltanschauung?

Theoretically, you now have suddenly increased access to the Mundus Imaginalis. This is
supposed to be a desirable thing, expanding your capacity for creativity, grace, and mystical fun.
But, nooooooooo. We seem to experience it as frightening and overwhelming. And we imagine
the worst.

In fact, it seems like most people going through an abrupt psychic opening (including those of
us in recovery from psych med neuro damage) have too much imagination. And it all has a
relentlessly negative bias. To varying degrees, and with varying focuses, we all seem to start
creating / finding bêtes noires.

Richard Stein said that when you first encounter a repressed aspect of yourself or your culture, it
almost always comes up first as dark -- almost as if it were angry or vengeful for awhile for
having been neglected by you for so long.

Psychologist Kaye Rossi, Ph.D. made the very interesting claim that “hitting bottom” --when
someone’s life falls apart due to addiction such that they finally become able to stop being as
addicted -- occurs in the Mundus Imaginalis (p. 29).

According to one of the working hypotheses of this blog, distressing psychic openings happen
for reasons analogous to hitting bottom (see 29 Feb 12 post).

Rossi said that, when hitting bottom, the addicted person unwittingly co-creates with other
intelligences in the Mundus Imaginalis some kind of synchronicity or wake up call that makes it
possible and necessary to start letting go of the addiction (pp. 216-223).

Clearly, it is better to be admitted to this level of awareness than not, even if admittance is
initially frightening and requires painful purification and evolution. But, for some of us, it is, at
first, a perilous hero’s journey, fraught with terrors. Like Orpheus, you have to be careful where
you look.
English Religious Studies Lecturer Angela Voss, Ph.D. wrote that if active imagination “is solely
directed downwards toward matter it can only produce images which are ‘fantastic, imaginary,
unreal or even absurd’ whose attraction is surface-deep and which flutter on the walls of the cave
in which men are fettered. The task of human beings then is to purify and liberate the soul so
that it may begin to pick up, as it were, the traces of divine meaning behind the appearances of
things” (Voss, p. 5).

Finding and / or creating a wonderful home in the new territory

In other words, if we keep going, and purify ourselves neurologically, psychologically, and
spiritually, we become more proficient in the Mundus Imaginalis. Then, having a lot of
imagination starts to become a gift.

According to the 12th c Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi, it is our spiritual aspiration, or “himma” that
facilitates the presence of the sought-after through the very act of desiring it. Corbin says himma
can concretely create that which it seeks (Voss, p. 9).

“The himma of a mystic can create changes in the world through an intensity of imagination that
resonates on the plane of archetypal Ideas; he is thus himself a divine creator who establishes the
patterns from which material forms derive. What we call a miracle is the result of such a
capacity to bring spiritual power to bear on matter and cut through the literal dimension of cause
and effect” (Voss, p. 9).

Seth, the famous being channeled by medium Jane Roberts said something strikingly similar:
“Imagination and emotions are the most concentrated forms of energy that you possess as
physical creatures. Any strong emotion carries within it far more energy than, say, that required
to send a rocket to the moon. Emotions, instead of propelling a physical rocket, for example,
send thoughts from this interior reality through the barrier between nonphysical and physical into
the objective world — no small feat, and one that is constantly repeated” (Seth, The Nature of
Personal Reality, p. 95).

So, although at one point in the process we seem to have “too much” imagination, and it plagues
us, the solution may lie in having even more imagination. As we develop our relationship with
the Mundus Imaginalis, our imagination begins to come from a deeper part of ourselves, so that
what is found or created is more truly great for us, more individual, more apposite, than anything
we could have imagined for ourselves before we tumbled into the opening.

Sources:

Rossi, Kaye. (2004). Synchronicity and hitting bottom: A Jungian perspective on the return of
the return of the feminine through addiction and recovery. Pacifica Graduate Institute
dissertation.
Stein, Richard. (2012). The work of Henry Corbin: Reflections on Persian Sufism and Jung’s
psychology. Lecture, 17 March 2012, The C.G. Jung Institute, San Francisco.

Voss, Angela. (2007). Becoming an angel: The Mundus imaginalis of Henry Corbin and the
Platonic path of self-knowledge.

Barbara Croner, M.F.T. is a psychotherapist in San Francisco, and a co-founder of the

International Antidepressant Withdrawal Project.

2. SoulWork & the Mundus Imaginalis

https://www.selfsoulcenter.org/soulwork-the-mundus-imaginalis-introduction/

MI3Introduction: Throughout time the inner world has peeked through everyday reality. Spirit
guides, demons, fantastic landscapes and cities of the soul are experienced through near-death
experiences, shamanic visions, dreams, psychedelic journeys and deep meditative states. Contact
with the interior realms brings transformation forward into the present. The 20th century scholar
and mystic, Henry Corbin, named this inner realm the “mundus imaginalis” or world of images.
He describes this as “a truly real though subtle landscape located in a third domain that is neither
precisely spirit or matter, but lies somewhere in between the purely intellectual world of angelic
intelligences and the sensible world of material things and participates in both”. He found this
world was spatially within a person’s body and also a distinct region of the cosmos.

Today within the scientific and secular world many think of these other worlds as merely
symbolic descriptions of psychological states. Depth psychology might equate these worlds with
the collective unconscious, containing the archetypal forms of the psyche that are beyond the
emotionally charged impressions of the personal unconscious. The philosopher and quantum
physicist, Ervin Laszlo, hypothesizes parallel worlds exist within each person that he names the
metaverse, a place beyond ordinary time and space. If reality is a vast field of consciousness that
exists throughout the cosmos, there may be organizing patterns within this field that can be
accessed and experienced as the mundus imaginalis.

SoulWork, with its guided meditations and practices, teaches the way to slowly open to the lost
inner realm, bringing back a sense of depth and meaning to the emptiness of a life consumed by
this externally stimulating modern world. (Image by Carl Jung from the Red Book, his journey
into the mundus imaginalis.)

MInd & CosmosThe Mundus Imaginalis & The Senses (image Robby Donaghey)
In his book Science and the Akashic field Laszlo helps us understand new developments in
multiple areas of scientific inquiry. In the fields of cosmology, quantum physics, biology, and
consciousness research there seems to be a field of information, interconnection and coherence
pervading all levels of reality and existence.The Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi describes his meditative
contact with this field as the alam al mithal, or the world of real and substantive images –
Corbin’s mundus imaginalis. Here we have the meeting of modern science and ancient wisdom.
An image can be defined as an inner representation of an external form. Through SoulWork and
other deep meditations we turn our awareness towards this field of information/intelligence,
interconnection/love, and coherence/presence. The field can be experienced on an image level
through any of our five senses, not just visual! For some, visual images arise, or words, a deep
understanding can be heard, for others, taste, the smell of subtle fragrance, or a kinesthetic, felt
experience is sensed, for others movement, being directed or guided.

Perhaps because seeing is such an important sense in our culture we often limit our awareness of
our inner world to sight and those who do not have this as their strongest sense can quickly
become discouraged. In our SoulWork meditations we have learned to honor all the senses as
ways to meet the mystery of the Source.