Max Scheler’s (1874–1928) philosophy offers a viable alternative to modern theories of nature characterized by domination. At the root of our ecological crisis is the fallacy of mastery knowledge (Herrschaftswissen) being interchangeable with salvation knowledge (Erlösungswissen) and knowledge of cultural value (Bildungswissen). In this essay, I hypothesize that Scheler’s functional theory of imagination both exposes and corrects this lethal error. To defend this hypothesis, I begin with imagination in the embodied experience of living creatures, human, and non-human. Imagination is an irreducible phase of perception. I then examine Scheler’s second feature: The cosmos. The real is given as interwoven spheres of trans-conscious symbols (Bilder). Each symbol has its own unique unity (existence, meaning, and value); it is the unrepeatable result of various fields of force, drives, and resistances. We are symbols. We perceive other symbols as images. Scheler evokes the heterodox tradition of emblematic cosmology. The universe is neither mind nor machine. It is an organism with an infinitely productive imagination. However, his theory is neither idle nostalgia nor reaction. In the final section, I argue Scheler derives valid conclusions on human beings, life, and the cosmic imaginary from the most up to date mathematical physics of radical relational activity grounded in functionalization (Funktionalisierung). Functionalization belongs to our sacred sense of things and its corresponding worldly values, not only to the technical power to control and dominate nature. Science points beyond itself for proper sacred and cultural functionalization. Scheler’s project is to voice this realignment of the human place in the cosmos.