Imagination – the immensity of our minds

Maths – has predicted many of the key results of the way the Universe works, (a least we think). From Newton’s gravity to Bhor’s atom, from quantum theory to Schrödinger’s cat, black holes, and onto multi-universes and string theory. Many of these have now been experimentally 'proven' yet they were predicted just from our imagination, nothing more.

This is truly clever stuff.  For man to have created such mathematical 'understanding' in such a short time (in just 3,000 years of societal living) is quite breathtaking.
These have not been sterile discoveries, they form the basis of our modern technologies, everything from the radio to quantum computers could not have been achieved without such creative understanding of the underlying physics.

So what is the limit of our imaginative brains?
Interestingly, while most of us do not have a good understanding of the mathematics behind quantum theory, we can never-the-less wonder about many aspects of the world and universe generally that we have no experience of and likley never will have.

Yet, as peoples, we either take this for granted, or do not apply this amazing ability to our lives at all. Neither do we help our children extend this natural talent. We have clearly an incredible ability, yet in much of the training and nurturing we provide for our children, we choose to ignore it and concentrate on ‘facts’ and wrote learning as being more important.

This has to be missing a vital part of what truly makes us human, and let us remember - perhaps, the only sentient creature in the universe?

How perverse it would be, if eventually, we found that we are the only sentient creatures? Yet while we have the abilty to create fundamental understanding of the Universe from just our philosophical imagination - we almost disregard our imagination and its true worth. We live mostly without ever using our imagination day to day. What if it were to become second nature for all of us to do this, maybe it would open up new horizons and opportunities?

To highlight just how amazing our brains are consider our dreaming state. Most of us remember vivid dreams, whole new worlds that we create inside our head, to be marvelled at upon waking.
The ‘Lucid Dreamer’ can ‘wake’ within these dreams (we have direct personal experience of this) and can confirm that not only is the dream-world amazing, it is as solid, real, bright and loud as the real world. 

In fact, lucid dreamers create a virtual reality that they move within at will, seemingly in real-time and conduct acts such as flying that we have no experience of.  To create such a rich, realistic, virtual reality does seem somewhat incredible. However currently, there is very little research into this most amazing ability.

How does the brain achieve such imaginative and complex tasks? How can we nurture these incredible achievements?
How can we teach our youngsters to understand their abilities and like other abilites, practice and improve and use them in new and wondrous ways to improve their lives and help humans to move forward towards a richer twenty second century?