Imagination should not be discarded. Imagination becomes a ladder on the path of the mystic. Besides, if it were not for imagination there would have been no art, there would have been no literature, there would have been no music; these are all an outcome of imagination. When imagination can produce beauty outwardly in the form of poetry, music, art, or literature, it can produce beauty of much higher and greater value when it is directed inward. Someone may say, "If there is a God He should appear before me so that I may believe. I do not wish to take the trouble to imagine that there is one," yet if he lived on earth for thousands of years, he would remain where he is. First his imagination must help him to form an idea of the deity; then he will have made an abode for the deity to abide in. As Voltaire has said, "If God did not exist one would have to invent Him."