Imaginative truth is the most immediate way of presenting ultimate reality to a human being... ultimate reality is what we call God.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that creativity and imagination are essential for understanding profound truths about existence and divinity.
R. S. Thomas posits that imaginative truth provides a direct connection to the ultimate reality, which he equates with God. This highlights the significance of creative thought in grasping complex spiritual concepts, indicating that our understanding of the divine is often shaped by imaginative processes rather than strictly rational or empirical ones.
In practice
In a discussion about the role of art in understanding spirituality.
The furies are at home in the mirror; it is their address. Even the clearest water, if deep enough can drown. Never think to surprise them. Your face approaching ever so friendly is the white flag they ignore. There is no truce with the furies. A mirror's temperature is always zero. It is ice in the veins. It's camera is an x-ray. It is a chalice held out to you in silent communion, where gaspingly you partake of a shifting identity never your own.
A recurring ideal, I find, is that of simplicity. At times there comes the desire to write with great precision and clarity, words so simple and moving that they bring tears to the eyes.
Man is a dream about a shadow. But when some splendour falls upon him from God, a glory comes to him and his life is sweet.
Poetry is that / which arrives at the intellect / by way of the heart.
Maybe right and wrong did not move, but understanding of them did. The wrenching pain of walking the same path, even for a short space, tore away the willingness to judge.
Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse
The seasons and the years came and went...and always...one was, as the crow flies, about 2,000 km away - but from where? - and day by day hour by hour, with every beat of the pulse, one lost more and more of one's qualities, became less comprehensible to oneself, increasingly abstract.
The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything. _x000D_ God is the ground, the substance, _x000D_ the teaching, the teacher, _x000D_ the purpose, and the reward for which every soul labors.
Defining myself, as opposed to being defined by others, is one of the most difficult challenges I face.
This is the work of Nâma-Rupa - name and form. Everything that has form, everything that calls up an idea in your mind, is within Maya; for everything that is bound by the laws of time, space, and causation is within Maya.
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