Imagination, Creativity and Spirituality (They Go Together Well)

Why did God give us the gift of imagination?

If the idea of God giving us imagination puts you off, then why did evolution, or the universe, give it to us?

It seems to me that, fairly early on in human history, the ability to visualize something other than what is front of us must have had marvelous implications for thriving in the world. The ability to imagine something different is what lies at the root of technology (“wouldn’t it be good if I could create something to ward off that hungry tiger?”). To this day we human beings are inventors, but how could that capacity even exist without the prior capacity to imagine something different than what is in front of our noses?

The ability to imagine carries us further beyond than just the capacity to see our physical environment in new ways. Take dreams, for example. They are a function of the imagination, simply delivered to us while we sleep, and therefore unencumbered by the normal distractions of the waking mind, which is why they are so vivid and “real.”

We know that dreams can have a powerful impact on creativity (for example, it’s common knowledge that Paul McCartney first imagined the melody for “ Yesterday” in a dream) — well, so do daydreams (and the waking imagination in any form). Dreaming, or…