Whenever we meditate, we step into a portal of the sacred. When we experience essence, we stand at the entrance of the portal, feeling what emerges from that gateway of higher realms. In the Raphaelite Work, a stated purpose is to reconfigure our bodies to better open to Intelligences beyond and to develop new structures to replace outdated structures.

In the Ishraqi tradition, which is the Sufi illuminationist lineage which includes Ibn’ Arabi and Shahabuddin Suhrawardi, a world is described which is derived from the imagination- it fulfills the same function in the cosmic mind as an individual imagination fulfills in a particular being. That imaginal realm is seen as the intersection of the "world of the senses" - the material world - and the world of the Intelligences. All of our dreams, meditations, and visions take place there, and because it is a shared world, we can envision the dreams and visions of others as well. There are many levels of this world, some heavenly and some hellish. There are controls to help a person navigate the realms- that is your desire, your "ishq." In the Ishraqi tradition, it is called "the eye of the world beyond."

Multidimensional Realm
A key element in exploration of inner realms is the acquisition of a multi-dimensional imagination. If we have a more limited imagination, we could "download" a lot of information, as well as essence, from a portal, but access it one dimension at a time. This would seem like a long series coming through in a flash.

Think of a point- extend it out to form a line. Now extend each point on the line outward to form a plane. Extend these points outward in another dimension to make a cube. Can you imagine extending each point on within the volume of the cube outward in another dimension (this is not as easy) to make a whole world? Then imagine extending each point within that world to make another world? It is somewhat like looking at a "magic eye" book in which you learn how to focus differently to make a new picture. However, this time the effect is to open oneself up to a richer surface on which to receive and create divine imagery.

I had a dream that my deceased father was showing me "jewels" that he was polishing in an inner realm. The jewels looked like nebulae that I had seen before in a telescope. I could focus my eyes variously, as if I had adjusted the telescope before. Through practicing, I could somehow learn to see differently. Instead of seeing from one perspective, I could as Pir Vilayat as said, "toggle" between views. Now I was not seeing from one point, but from many points. It was a richer way of perceiving. In the dream, my father also responded to my request for water when I was feeling thirsty. He said, "How about this!" and showed me a tremendous waterfall which emerged from nowhere (or opened up out of a portal of our conjoined imagination) and satisfied my thirst, there in that place as well as in every place that I ever was, in the past, in the future - it satisfied every thirst I had ever had.

Since then I have dreamed in multiple dimensions, each element of the dream unfolding its own portal, which showed, for example, a woman who was old, young, and everything in between, and people who were simultaneously pure and sweet, devious and evil. Visions like these were probably what motivated writers of the Bible to use imagery of four heads facing different directions or multiple sets of wings on angels, etc.

Archetypes and the Royal Imagination
In the Ishraqi work, it is said that it is possible to work with ones imagination to produce a "true" or "royal" imagination which reflects things and events of this world in a pure mirror that reveals the angels and worlds within them, or what in our terminology we might say the royal imagination opens wide the portals of the sacred.

In the imaginal world, things exist as archetypes. My impression of archetypes was that they were a "pure" form of energy without any taint of energy. In my investigations, I have found instead that archetypes are actually almost the opposite of that because they exist in what could be called a multi-energetic state with, as it were, a face looking at every other archetypal form.

The ancient Sufis gave hints about how to perceive such forms. They said it was possible to trace things and beings manifest in our world, as if they were epiphanized on the surface that is our "world" of the senses, back to the place where they are not reflected on any other surface. There they are made "of themselves," not the material of the mirroring surface. They are completely, and richly, themselves. The world in which they exist is called Na Koja Abad by Suhrawardi that means The Place That is No Place. It unfolds as our desire dictates- and has the feeling of place yet cannot be found on a map of the five senses. It is a world of extension and can be explored by inner senses, but not in the usual way. It may be helpful to think of this world as existing "here" but just inside the material world. Physicists speak of the richness of the world we perceive just beyond what we usually see. Our ability to perceive (an aspect of the imagination) can either restrict or expand our world. We may be able to "boost" our senses to pick up what is usually on the fringes of our perceptual abilities, like being able to see ultraviolet and infrared light as well as the usual "visible" spectrum.

The goal of this exploration is to reconfigure our imagination, somewhat as we reconfigured the body in the Raphaelite Work. Perhaps such hints will be helpful in increasing multi-dimensionality, developing a "taste" for what to look for in inner realms, perhaps gaining more confidence in such exploration, and a developing a structure to support our work through the portals of the sacred.