David Shulman’s More than Real: A History of the Imagination in South India traces the development of the concept of imagination (bhāvanā, kalpanā, pratibhā) in South Indian thought over two millennia. This history has profound implications for understanding reincarnation: if the imagination is a faculty that can shape reality, then the soul’s journey through multiple lives can be understood as an imaginative process of self-creation and self-discovery.

Bhāvanā: The Power of Making-Real

In Sanskrit aesthetics and philosophy, bhāvanā means “bringing into being” or “making real.” The poetician Abhinavagupta (10th–11th century) developed a theory in which the poet’s imaginative act creates a world that is “more than real” — more vivid, more meaningful, and more true than ordinary reality.

Shulman shows how this concept expanded:

  • In early Sanskrit poetics, the poet’s imagination creates a secondary world within the audience’s consciousness.
  • In later developments (10th–16th centuries), imagination becomes a cosmic principle — the power by which consciousness manifests worlds.
  • In tantric and yogic traditions, bhāvanā is a meditative technique for realizing the nature of reality.

The Yoga of the Imagination

Shulman identifies a “yoga of the imagination” — a disciplined practice of visualization, mental absorption, and creative identification that transforms consciousness. This connects directly to reincarnation:

  • If reality is, in some sense, a product of imagination, then the world we experience in each life is shaped by the imaginative acts (including karmic traces) of previous lives.
  • The liberation of consciousness involves realizing the imaginative nature of reality and consciously directing the power of bhāvanā toward freedom.

The Sixteenth-Century Revolution

Shulman’s second section focuses on a transformative period in South Indian intellectual history (roughly 1500–1700 CE), when:

  • Telugu and Tamil poets pushed the boundaries of imaginative expression.
  • The concept of bhāvanā became central to both poetics and theology.
  • New models of mind emerged in which the imagination is the defining feature of the human being.
  • The boundaries between fiction, memory, and reality became fluid and creative.

Parallels with Yoga and Vedanta

The Yoga Vasishta — a foundational text of Advaita Vedanta — presents the world as a projection of consciousness (cid-vilasa). The protagonist Rama is taught that reality is a “long dream” and that liberation is awakening to the dream’s illusory nature — while simultaneously recognizing that the dream is real as a mode of consciousness.

This framework reframes reincarnation: the soul’s journey across lives is the dream of consciousness imagining itself into different forms, until it awakens to its own infinite nature.

Alain Daniélou and the Play of the Gods

Daniélou’s While the Gods Play presents the Shaiva vision of the cosmos as the lila (play) of Siva — a spontaneous, joyful, and purposeless manifestation of divine consciousness. In this vision, the soul’s journey through multiple births is part of the cosmic play, and liberation is the recognition of one’s identity with the playing god.

Ananda Coomaraswamy

Coomaraswamy’s Time and Eternity connects the imaginative and philosophical traditions of India with Platonic and Christian thought, showing how the imagination is the faculty that bridges temporal and eternal being. The soul’s journey across lives, in this framework, is not a linear progression through time but the unfolding in time of an eternal reality that the imagination — when awakened — can directly apprehend.

Implications for Reincarnation

The imagination tradition reframes the mechanism of reincarnation: what carries over from life to life is not merely karmic traces but the imaginative patterns — the ways of seeing, feeling, and creating — that constitute the soul’s identity. Liberation is the awakening of the imagination to its own creative power, enabling the soul to consciously participate in its own transformation.