A: This is a very important question, right at the heart of spirituality. We all know the difference between imagination and reality, or think that we do. But we imagine a clearer distinction than really exists. We want to enhance our perception of the real world rather than strengthen the apparent reality of our fantasy world.

1. Imagination can help us discover the world. Reality is too complex and vast for us to perceive as a whole so we perceive a slice of it where our attention is focused. Imagination helps us to notice things that may lie outside the area of our attention. For example, in meditation it is possible to feel your heartbeat. If you don't feel it immediately, you can search for it in your awareness by imagining your heartbeat. Meditation instruction has to include a vision of what is going to happen. To avoid fooling yourself, you should limit your imagination to what is real but imperceptible or barely perceptible, like a blind person might imagine colors.

2. Your imagination also limits your perception by interpreting it. For example, at dawn it appears that the sun is rising over the horizon because that's what we imagine is happening, but it's not. The Earth is revolving and the horizon is tilting downward. When you understand that the sun is at the center of the solar system, you can imagine that the sun's location is relatively fixed and then you can see the Earth revolving against the sun.

3. The experience of reality breaks through as a surprise. You know it's reality because it's so much stronger than anything you could imagine, and it's not the way you thought it would be. If everything that happens to you is predictable, just as you thought it would be, you are probably imagining the way things are and blocking out what doesn't fit. The experience of continually learning is one of awe and wonder. Reality breaks through in your mind as a surprise, upsetting your model. The surprise is that you had assumed your perceptions and beliefs were already based on reality, and yet here is an event, a challenge, or an idea that cannot be accommodated. One of two things happens next: either you expand your model of reality, or you deny the new event and freeze your model. The first path leads to insight.

4. Initially imagination limits reality, forcing reality to break through and overwhelms us. Eventually imagination creates reality. The world begins to develop according to the way you see it. Your vision becomes creative and your dreams become predictive and prophetic. At this advanced stage, you are a co-creator of reality, dynamically shaping the future world by your imagination.