Raynor Johnson's (RCJ) reason for this book lies in his belief that the uncertainty of the age in which we live is so great
that there is a paramount need to combat it with a certain and sure
philosophy of life. He feels that modern man is suffering from much repressed anxiety and in retreating from this he involves himself in the worlds of sport and entertainment with the intervals in between reluctantly given over to 'business as usual'. However RCJ finds no security in this form of escape and suggests that the only security is in courage. An attitude more possible when it is backed by a strong philosophy of life and especially when it has been discovered, not by intensive reading, but when that which we research comes alive; when it 'connects' with our own inner knowing.,
To achieve a sound life philosophy one needs answers to the many faceted questions we pose concerning the purpose of life. Does it start and finish with our birth and death? If so what is the point? Is it just an accident of birth that determines why some have an easy and comfortable material existence whilst other suffer greatly?
Many philosophers have expounded theories in search of the truth but for Dr Johnson that of Douglas Fawcett and Imaginism seems to be worthy of extensive study. And it is to this study that he brings the trained mind of the physicist. dissecting, analysing and then projecting in a logical manner a philosophy that is both practical and rational.
Much has been taught and written about the power of thought. That it is the creative impulse behind most human endeavour but in Imaginism Fawcett and Johnson have gone back a further step to the idea, and the imagination preceding thought. As William Blake wrote 'What is now proved was once only imagined'.
From this human level of
Imagining which Johnson has postulated as the driving force behind all human endeavour it is not too far fetched to suggest that the Supreme Creative Force, or God, has, as its driving force, a Divine Imagining. But whereas the human act of imagination is a first step requiring additional steps to create the thing imagined, with Divine Imagining the imagining and the creation are instantaneous, at one each with the other. Furthermore Divine Imagining must have an additional attribute, that of a sustaining creativity. When man creates something he has imagined he does so using tangible material. In fact all man is doing is drawing together certain objects and re-fashioning those objects into something new and different. But Divine Imagining is a First Cause and its creation is truly new and can only be sustained by the sustaining creativity of the Supreme Creative Source, or the Divine Imagination.
Having established that Imaginism is humanity's primary impellent and that Divine Imaginism is the impellent of the Supreme Creative Source, Dr Johnson examines how this concept measures up to a scientific appraisal of the evolutionary processes by which various species have developed. He sets aside a purely mechanistic solution as highly improbable given that a series of 'happy accidents' involved in the development of, for example, the eye of a bird would have to differ from a similar series of chance mutations necessary for the human eye. These organs in both species, as well as countless others, did not start their development from the same point and yet the final end-products are not that dissimilar. Thus it is not absurd to postulate a theory whereby somewhere in the evolutionary chains of a bird's eye and a human eye there has been a Creative Intelligence at work imagining the next variation. A mechanistic chain of evolutionary 'accidents' will not stand up. However this assumes some kind of telepathic communication within a species so that there is a measure of simultaneous development. An assumption that prompts the author to examine research associated with the para-normal.
This research uses the experiences and findings of many notable scieofessor Rhine, Dr Soal, G.N.M.Tyrell, J.W. Dunne, F.W.H.Myers, Sir William Crookes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle et al as well as RCJ's own. The sheer volume of evidence quoted in this work is but a fragment of that which lies in the archives of the Society for Psychical Research and which provides irrefutable evidence of psychological processes a long way outside the normal. Today's world is then examined and questions asked about religion, no matter what the faith, and whether or not it is meeting the needs of today. Certainly his discourse on the nature of God follows on from the earlier comments about Divine Imaginism. Then, and using all the information so far gathered, Raynor Johnson proceeds to examine areas such as creation and its relationship with imaginism and probes the nature of evil and the reason for suffering.
In the final chapter he reflects that while imaginism and its study takes us some way further along the road in our understanding of Life in all its profundity it still leaves us with much that is currently beyond our understanding. Indeed he expresses sincere doubts that, in this life, we shall ever know all the answers. Our investigations can but help us to reappraise our attitudes, our morals, our faith and to understand the purpose of life a little more intelligently than hitherto.