Creative imagination is the supreme activity of the human mind. By using his imagination creatively, Man has been able to make many leaps forward, improving his existing reality to a better one. To use imagination creatively, a person must proceed from a series of known facts toward a series of supposed or invented facts or conditions. The supposed facts or conditions may end up  close to or far removed from the point of departure.

Imagination is the integral portion of creativity, which shapes a concept or course of action in advance of the event and directs activities. It conceives interpretations and translates an idea into action in a way that provides a person with a clear objective; a determinable goal toward which to progress.

Sometimes, imagination is thought to be functioning when reality has been left far behind and flights of fancy have taken over. This is because there are two types of imagination that function for all of us: fictional and factual. Fiction denotes something already removed from fact. If the basis for an act of imagination, itself a mental act beyond fact, rests on fiction, the result is twice removed from the original source.

Fictional imagination operates from assumed rather than observed and proven facts, or from assumptions that are false rather than true. Often fictional imagination creates images that are more a projection of a wish than of sound reasoning; images out of which dreams and madness are made. Fictional imagination is the primary source of fixed viewpoints, fears and beliefs ungrounded in reality. It is seldom of positive value.

Factual imagination operates from a basis of comprehended knowledge. It functions as freely as the fictional kind – as freely as the imagination must operate – but it is logical, based on fidelity rather than half truths. Factual imagination is based on truth, not fugitive from it. In this respect the extent to which creative imagination is stretched is not the critical factor in the soundness of its use: the degree of truth in the relationship to reality or proven facts determines the quality of creative imagination.

By differentiating and discriminating between these two types of imagination, you will be better placed to make the transition from a bounded reality to an unbounded reality, and to discard beliefs ungrounded in reality.