Chapter IX
Creativity
CHICAGO MUSEUM
Chapter IX
Creativity
CHICAGO MUSEUM
In Chicago the Vivekananda Vedanta Society sits on prominent South Hyde Park Boulevard, just a few blocks from the Museum of Science and Industry. Once in a while members of the monastery could find leave enough to spend an hour or more there, taking in the exhibits. One year the Museum put on a spectacular show of what it called Creativity, especially as manifested in the work of artists, craftsmen and inventors.
I have never regarded myself as a particularly creative person, although in childhood I may have been notorious for not caring much about the difference between imagination and what the family called truth. Be that as it may, there have been many demands upon me for creative thought or action, and I have spoken on its relation to spirituality in several contexts.
What follows incorporates that thinking, but owes considerable to the Museum display, at least as a springboard.
Probably all of us want to regard ourselves as creative persons. Disregarding commercial and self-promoting interests, the reason for this may be several: perhaps from a love of beauty we may want to be connected with, or producers of, attractive things; perhaps we think we shall leave the world richer for our having been here and left something new; there may be a conviction that this is the purpose of evolution, to have new products constantly emerge from the storehouse of human resource. Possibly some persons feel creative out of sheer boredom, with no better way to use their time. And then there are always some who will profess no motive whatsoever: they “just feel like it.” They “can’t help it.”
What is it?
What is creativity? Woodrow Wilson called it a fresh pair of eyes. Very often, surely, it starts with that. Einstein called it fantasy, drawing our attention to the role of imagination. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead allows that it contains an element of foolishness, especially in the beginning. It is well documented that creativity very often begins with an accident.
At any rate, here are six suggestions for those who earnestly wish to be creative:
Try to see in new ways. This is what Andy Warhol did, as did the
artists Seurat, Degas, Picasso and the Cubists.
Recognize patterns. There would be no constellations in the skies if our ancient ancestors had not connected the stars into patterns. Mendel saw patterns in the breeding of flowers. Sigmund Freud felt he had found them in human behavior.
Challenge assumptions. What a long list of them we moderns have blasted! Humans cannot fly. The world is flat. We need wires to send messages. We are born in sin. The “Big Bang” should not be doubted. And on and on.
Take risks. Do not be afraid to be wrong. Such is the mental make-up of all our great explorers and adventurers, in every field. The Greek scientist Eratosthanes (300 B.C.) amazes even now by his ingenious method of calculating the circumference of the earth, utterly without today’s instruments. He was ridiculed, his measurement not accepted in his time; only now do we know how close he came.
Make use of what people call chance. Learn to take advantage of the arrival of factors unexpected, recognizing that it may indeed be a case of serendipity and a new opportunity for you. A classic example is that of Charles Goodyear, who discovered the process of vulcanizing through an experiment that turned out a failure.
Construct networks. This means getting your ideas exposed to others; evaluating and appreciating the original ideas of others and getting yourself exposed to them and looking for encouragement. Here we can think of the French artists called “Les Six” and the association of Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Stravinsky and others.
Recognize patterns. There would be no constellations in the skies if our ancient ancestors had not connected the stars into patterns. Mendel saw patterns in the breeding of flowers. Sigmund Freud felt he had found them in human behavior.
Challenge assumptions. What a long list of them we moderns have blasted! Humans cannot fly. The world is flat. We need wires to send messages. We are born in sin. The “Big Bang” should not be doubted. And on and on.
Take risks. Do not be afraid to be wrong. Such is the mental make-up of all our great explorers and adventurers, in every field. The Greek scientist Eratosthanes (300 B.C.) amazes even now by his ingenious method of calculating the circumference of the earth, utterly without today’s instruments. He was ridiculed, his measurement not accepted in his time; only now do we know how close he came.
Make use of what people call chance. Learn to take advantage of the arrival of factors unexpected, recognizing that it may indeed be a case of serendipity and a new opportunity for you. A classic example is that of Charles Goodyear, who discovered the process of vulcanizing through an experiment that turned out a failure.
Construct networks. This means getting your ideas exposed to others; evaluating and appreciating the original ideas of others and getting yourself exposed to them and looking for encouragement. Here we can think of the French artists called “Les Six” and the association of Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Stravinsky and others.
What kind of expression?
With all this said, let us turn to spirituality. Suppose you are a spiritual aspirant: the question may arise, is all this creative activity not a barrier or a danger to our life in the spirit? The great teachers give us much to think about. There is folly in being over-optimistic about the objective benefit of our creativity; it also places more emphasis on form than on the formless, and as all forms are destined eventually for change or dissolution, on the temporal as against the eternal. Art tends to focus on the surface of things, it may be said, as against efforts to penetrate to the core. It may even be alleged that these are exactly the features of a restless mind. Life after life will go on, as you go on with your creative activity, becoming more and more deeply involved with objects and the particular, with appearance at the expense of Reality.
Even if we do not espouse such a negative view of art, it probably cannot be denied that the Freudians did a lot of damage in recommending the uninhibited expression of the creative impulse. It is not easy to forget an experience I had in my youth. A woman I knew had neighbors who were, both wife and husband, professors of psychology at the university nearby. One day their young offspring found their way into my friend’s back porch, breaking a number of pots and jars and growing plants. On discovering it she proclaimed, “I don’t mind those children ‘expressing their natural impulses’ in their own home, but they can’t do that on my porch!” When you come right down to it, there is a kind of universal ethic regarding the boundaries of creative activity.
Analyzing the ego
By a spiritual approach we do not mean “naturalism”, a view which regards all tampering with the given appearance of things as somehow devaluing and a mistake. Spirituality here means finding the balance between the power of creativity to enhance our life and environment, and its potency for trapping our mind and ego. Ego, by the way, is analyzed by Vedanta into three primary states: ego of the waking state, ego of the dream state and ego which is “absent” in the state of deep sleep. We spend a great deal of effort, in our creativity, in the waking state, i.e. identifying with the ego which accompanies body-consciousness. But consider the immensely greater power of the dream ego: there you can move in slow motion, produce new and very vivid colors, save yourself from danger in inventive ways—also frighten yourself, perhaps—and you can eventually see through this charade in lucid dreaming. The waking ego is hard put to write such scripts and bring them to credibility! The Western view of ego, based mostly on the waking state, is very limited. Freud at least acknowledged it to be at work in our dreams; Adler framed it in terms of the urge to power. Jung had various ideas of the ego; his definition of it as the “center of the field of consciousness” seems closer to the Vedantic analysis. Marlow acknowledges the role of ego in esthetic experience. Laing calls it “that which stakes out its private domain.” What is clear in all this is that the ego can isolate, alienate, and destroy as well as build, invent and create.
The problem then becomes: how can creativity be used so as not to be destructive of higher spiritual tendencies? Sri Ramakrishna is very helpful to us here. He speaks of the “green ego” and the ripe one, perhaps with mangoes in mind. Reminding us of how terribly difficult it is to uproot ego altogether, he asks us to “ripen” it, make it mature so that it loses its raw color and stringent taste, and becomes a tool helpful to us and to others. We learn to live from the Atman, the Self, the core of our being, rather than from the epicentric ego. Then our life takes on a creative and original flavor instead of a derivative one. We discover that introspection, far from hindering our creativity actually fosters it. The ego, ripened, need not be obliterated. Fritz Kunkel, an Austrian psychologist, calls this process “emerging from the shell of egocentricity to the abundant life of the ‘We’, the collective.” Some may be reminded of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars and his relation to “the Force.”
The cosmic mind, the real source
Now, what is “the Force” in the world of spirituality? It is the Cosmic Mind. As the Gita tells us, “Do your work, go on with your duties, your dharma , fulfill the conditions of your place in the scheme of things, but do not claim anything for yourself, as yours.” Recognize fully the sources of your energy, your talents and capacity—in short, the Force from which all these come (and where they will one day return), which defies your labeling it—especially as “mine.” And be prepared to relinquish it all at a moment’s notice, if the call for that comes. The wise artist also knows that if the creative talent is pressed into service for mercenary ends or confined in formal frameworks it is very likely to be stifled.
There is a legend in India about a disciple of the great Sankara, Pushpadanta by name. Poetic by nature and greatly devoted to Shiva, he composed a long Sanskrit poem in the Lord’s honor. Even today it is widely read and admired. Pushpadanta, however, being somewhat self-enamored over his creation, had to be taught a lesson. When he approached Lord Siva to present his poem, Nandi, the watchman who guards Siva in the form of a bull, opened wide his mouth. There Pushpadanta. to his amazement, saw one stanza of his composition engraved on each tooth in that great maw. Then he understood what wise originators have understood throughout the ages: that they had simply discovered a work wrought in eternity by powers far higher, or deeper, than their own.
Creativity of the spiritually perfected
Are the freed souls, the illumined ones, creative persons? Most certainly! It is realization that leads to the greatest creativity. I have known in the Ramakrishna Order men I am sure were realized, who drove “engines” of originality, invention and productivity. Their capacity is recognized throughout India and abroad. Swami Madhavananda, one of least conspicuous of monks, outwardly simple and austere, broke new ground in his translations of scriptures and his commentaries thereon. There are also rare and special souls who can see the whole universe as their creation; but then, in such a state of illumined awareness, Swami Vivekananda, scorning the mundane smallness of most of us who claim humanity, said: “Who are you? You, the cause of this universe, trying to reflect yourselves in little mudpuddles!”
To the spiritual artist the consciousness finally dawns that Perfection (by which is meant wholeness, realization of Truth,) is greater than creative excellence. There the ego need make no more claims; without his doing anything himself, the activities of such a one spread throughout creation. When the whole of our energy has been channeled into a spiritual current, our work is purified, enhanced, and immeasurably more effective. It was poet John Ciardi who said that art is not for the self-expression of the artist himself; it is for the use, the service, of the people at large.
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