Imaginative Insight
“Suddenly, in a flash of understanding, involving in essence no time at all, a new totality appears in the mind, in which this contradiction and confusion have vanished. This new totality is at first only implicit (ie unfolding) through some mental image which, as it were, contains the main features of the new perception spread our before our “mental vision” “ (ie it appears as an image). “Perception involving this display, which is unspeakable from the act of primary perception itself, is what may be called imaginative insight ( or creative imagination). Such as display plays a necessary part, because with its aid the mind can apprehend the meaning of what has been created in the flash of understanding.” “On Creativity”, David Bohm, p 44
Imaginative Fancy
From this “flash of understanding”, “the mind can go on to think and to reason out more and more of the consequences implied by the new insight.”
It then offers a new way of seeing the world which is available to others. From this new way of seeing the world, new insights will be gained.
An insight which offers a new way of seeing the world is “true” until there is a new insight which allows even more seeing. It doesn’t render the previous insight as invalid - it is still “relatively true” - ie true within the domain in which it was discovered…. But it not true outside that domain.
Intelligence v thought
“It is implicitly accepted in a large part of our common notions on the subject…that intelligence is an extension or development of thought. that is, thought is regarded as providing a sort of base or ground from which intelligence arises, and on which in turn it operates. It cannot be too strongly emphasised that what is being suggested here is that intelligence does not this arise primarily out of thought. Rather….. the deep source of intelligence is the unknown ad indefinable totality from which all perception originates.
Clearly then intelligence is not to be regarded as a result of accumulated knowledge with could be learned, for example, as a science or as a technique. Rather, it can perhaps best be regarded as an art - the art of perception through the mind. Such an art requires great insight and skill. When these are absent, thought quickly gets lost in confusion.” p 61