The Imaginal Realm: Insights from Carl Jung, James Hillman & Henry Corbin | Tom Cheetham

Tom Cheetham is an author, teacher, biologist, and poet whose work navigates philosophy, systematic entomology, complexity sciences, and depth psychology. Today his work centers on the ideas of Henry Corbin, Carl Jung, and James Hillman — exploring creative imagination, the soul, and the imaginal in human life and culture. He writes and lectures on these topics internationally and is the author of "Boundary Violations," "All the World an Icon," and "Imaginal Love" among others.In this conversation, we explore imagination through the lens of three towering figures — Carl Jung, James Hillman, and Henry Corbin — and what their work reveals about the nature of psyche, soul, and reality.We get into the pathology of literalism and whether it leads to depression, literalism as reification, and the crucial distinction between feelings and emotions — what Hillman called thinking with the heart.We also explore fear, openness, wonder, and hermeneutics, the central insights of psychedelics, Buddhism, and the imaginal and how they converge, Tom's Iboga journey in Brazil and what it revealed, aliveness, Eros and death, and a message of optimism in a time of crisis.A rich and intellectually demanding conversation for anyone drawn to depth psychology, archetypal psychology, and the imaginal.🔗 LINKS & RESOURCES 🔗Imaginal Love — Tom Cheetham, in-depth book summary The Test of the Veil — Tom Cheetham Blue Fire — James Hillman The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World — James Hillman Alone with the Alone — Henry Corbin Re-Visioning Psychology — James Hillman The Matter with Things — Iain McGilchrist Matter and Memory — Henri Bergson The Jazz of Physics — Stephon Alexander High Weirdness — Erik Davis The Super Natural — Jeffrey Kripal & Whitley Strieber Swimming in the Sacred — Rachel Harris Luce Irigaray Flesh of My Flesh — Kaja Silverman Gloria E. Anzaldua Relateful — platform for Circling🕰️ TIMESTAMPS 🕰️0:00 - Introduction1:16 - Imagination in James Hillman, Carl Jung and Henry Corbin19:09 - The pathology of literalism36:28 - Does literalism lead to depression?52:42 - Literalism as reification56:18 - Distinguishing feelings from emotions — thinking with the heart1:12:13 - Fear, openness, wonder, awe and hermeneutics1:27:22 - The central insights of psychedelics, Buddhism and the imaginal1:37:02 - Tom's Iboga journey in Brazil, High Weirdness and Jeffrey Kripal1:57:09 - Aliveness, Eros and death2:00:17 - A message of optimism in a time of crisis — rethinking the nature of relationship*Subscribe to my YouTube channel to watch the video versions of the Elevating Consciousness Podcast *Subscribe to the Insighter Substack to get in-depth articles on the theory and practice of human transformation through a post-conventional