Likutei Moharan 54:5/ליקוטי מוהר"ן נ״ד:ה׳

15. It is necessary to protect the eye from the imagination. Even someone who possesses a good eye has to beware of this. We see that even someone with good vision can make a mistake by looking from afar, so that what he imagines is the opposite of the truth. This is why one needs extra caution in this.

2For the imagination stems from slander. This is because the imagination is the power of animality; an animal too has this imagination. Thus someone who speaks slander succumbs to animality, and so the imagination, which is animality, overpowers him. For “someone who speaks slander is a fool” (Proverbs 10:18).

3{“My people are destroyed, because they had no knowledge. You have rejected knowledge, and so I have rejected you from serving Me” (Hosea 4:6).} And when the daat (knowledge) departs from him, his love of God declines and he succumbs to the love for animality <and the imaginary>, in the aspect of “You have rejected knowledge, and so I have rejected you from kahein (serving) Me.” “Kahein” is the aspect of “Avraham, My beloved” (Isaiah 41:8), corresponding to “You will be a kohein (priest)” (Psalms 110:4), and to “then the kohein shall scoop up” (Leviticus 5:12). Then the imagination, which is the power of animality, overpowers him, in the aspect of “My people are nidmu (destroyed), because they had no knowledge”— niDMu is the meDaMeh (imagination), <which comes in the absence of daat, as explained above>.