" The imaginal penetrates this denser world in much the same way as the fragrance of perfume penetrates an entire room, subtly enlivening and harmonizing. My favorite image to begin to access this admittedly mind-bending notion still comes by way of a striking vignette in Isaak Dineson’s Out of Africa, in which she recounts coming upon a beautiful snake moving through the grass, its skin glistening with subtle, variegated colors. So taken with that snake was she that her servant killed it, skinned it, and made it up into a belt for her. But to her dismay, the once glistening skin is now merely dull and grey, because all along the beauty had lain not in the physical skin, but in the quality of the aliveness. The imaginal is that quality of aliveness moving through this realm, interpenetrating, cohering, filling things with the fragrance of implicit meaning whose lines do not converge in this world alone, but at a point beyond. As the Gospel of Thomas describes it:

I am the light shining upon all things,
I am the sum of everything, for from me
Everything has come, and toward me
Everything returns. Pick up a stone and there I am,
Split a piece of wood and you will find me there. "

― Cynthia Bourgeault