Telling imagination from genuine awareness, and stretching the mind's limits

Frederic asks how to distinguish something imagined from a real perception, since observing where perceptions come from is not easy.

The Wonders reply with a question of their own: does it matter?

If it matters he is holding on to the illusion of separation and its limitations; if it does not, he releases himself from them.

They suggest he has probably already observed things beyond the limits of time and simply ascribed them to imagination, using the analogy of science fiction: writers and readers treat their ideas as invention, and while such books are rooted in the concepts of their own society, they often reach into other planetary systems, raising the question of where that imagination came from and whether an awareness of an existence held in the subconscious fuelled it.

Asked whether anything in imagination is unrelated to what already exists, they say that within third dimensional separation a great deal is imagined that has not been imagined before, but that removing the separations of space and time lets imagination transcend that normality.

They warn that the mind will refuse removals of separation past a certain point because that would create dysfunction it cannot operate through, and note some people end up in institutions because they can no longer imagine anything else.

Following their suggestions of the past 21 years stretches the imagination muscle and lets the mind go past limits it believes would shatter it; the mind sees itself as fixed with a limited capacity for acceptance, whereas in reality it is one of the most flexible tools in existence and can begin to stretch.