"Creative imagination" is not something reserved for the poets, the philosophers, the inventors. It enters into our every act. For imagination sets the goal "picture" which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of "will," as is so commonly be­lieved, but because of imagination.
A human being always acts and feels and performs in accordance with what he imagines to be true about him­self and his environment.
This is a basic and fundamental law of mind. It is the way we are built.
When we see this law of mind graphically and dramati­cally demonstrated in a hypnotized subject, we are prone to think that there is something occult or supra-normal at work. Actually, what we are witnessing is the normal operating processes of the human brain and nervous system.
For example, if a good hypnotic subject is told that he is at the North Pole he will not only shiver and appear to be cold, his body will react just as if he were cold and goose pimples will develop. The same phenomenon has been demonstrated on wide awake college students by asking them to imagine that one hand is immersed in ice water. Thermometer readings show that the temperature does drop in the "treated" hand. Tell a hypnotized sub­ject that your finger is a red hot poker and he will not only grimace with pain at your touch, but his cardiovas­cular and lymphatic systems will react just as if your finger were a red hot poker and produce inflammation and perhaps a blister on the skin. When college students, wide awake, have been told to imagine that a spot on their fore­heads was hot, temperature readings have shown an actual increase in skin temperature.
Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a "real" experience. In either case, it reacts automatically to information which you give to it from your forebrain.
Your nervous system reacts appropriately to what "you" think or imagine to be true.