Art - real art - connects artists, and their art, and those who experience their art, to the metaphysical background of the world, to the imaginal world that lies deep within the physical. That is, in part, its ecological function. And that is why the continuing assaults on the imaginal (and its explorers) are so pervasive, why the schooling of artists - of writers, musicians, painters, sculptors - has become so mechanical, so oriented toward surfaces, toward form. For if we should recapture the response of the heart to what is presented to the senses, go below the surface of sensory inputs to what is held inside them, touch again the 'metaphysical background' that expresses them, we would begin to experience, once more, the world as it really is: alive, aware, interactive, communicative, filled with soul, and very, very intelligent - and we, only one tiny part of that vast scenario. And that would endanger the foundations upon which Western culture, our technology - and all reductionist science is based; for as James Hillman so eloquently put it, 'It was only when science convinced us that nature was dead that it could begin its autopsy in earnest.' A living, aware, and soul-filled world does not respond well to autopsy.
Stephen Harrod Buhner
Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm: Beyond the doors of perception into the dreaming of the earth