Concept essays
Imagination, images and perception
A reading of khayal that distinguishes the appearing image, the perceiving faculty and the judgment made about it.
Start with the term’s function
Khayal is not a general label for falsehood. A passage may concern a human faculty, a perceived image or an intermediate order. Ask how the image forms, which faculty perceives it and what it represents. A broad definition is useful only after these local functions have been identified.
What the mirror example establishes
A person recognizes an image in a mirror while knowing that its apparent size may vary with the mirror. The example joins real perception with distinctions concerning the image’s size and location. It neither moves the person’s body into the mirror nor denies that anything was perceived. The appearance of an image and the properties of the body it represents require different judgments.
Sensory sight and imaginative sight
The source distinguishes perceiving an image through the senses from perceiving it through imagination, and considers waking and sleep. Its account asks whether the experiencer knows which faculty was involved. A report of unveiling therefore does not remove the need to identify its claimed mode of perception. The author’s explanation of an experience is not an independent verification by the site editor.
Read imagination among the other faculties
Chapter 58 discusses senses, retention, recollection, image formation, thought and intellect within a wider account of knowledge. Trace what each receives, preserves, combines or judges. The intellect’s reception of what manifestation supplies raises a further distinction between producing a judgment through thought and receiving knowledge by another route. Images can support understanding without making every intelligible meaning a pictured body.
References from the Arabic article
These links reproduce the Arabic article’s references. A reader ID is a site identifier, not a printed page number.
Read in context
Cite this reading
Futmak, «Imagination, images and perception», 2026-10-25.
Adapted translation of an Arabic editorial article; not a translation of the Futuhat book text.
https://www.futmak.com/english/concepts/?id=encyclopedia-imagination