Tag Archives: East India

CHAPTER 16. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CREATIVITY

In the new, unified psychology of the self, to the two factors that contribute to human development—nature and nurture—an important third element is added: creativity. From a psychological point of view, nature includes the unconscious instincts that control us – what Freud called libido; Education includes environmental conditioning, most of which is also unconscious. In this context, creativity can be seen as an impulse emanating from the collective unconscious.

In the Eastern idealistic psychology of the Bhagavad Gita, three gunas are mentioned , somewhat similar to the three impulses discussed above). The urge that comes from past conditioning is called tamas; This is inertia, or education. The impulse of libido is called rajas; this is nature. The third impulse is called sattva: creativity.

Creativity is creating something new in a completely new context. The novelty of the context plays a key role. This poses a problem for people working with digital creativity. Computers are very good at shuffling objects around within contexts provided by programmers, but they cannot discover new contexts. Humans can discover new contexts thanks to our non-local consciousness, which allows us to leap beyond the system. In addition, we have access to a vast archetypal content of quantum states of mind (pure mental states) that extends far beyond local experience during a person’s lifetime. Creativity is a fundamentally non-local mode of cognition.

An impressive example of the nonlocality of acts of creativity can be the simultaneous discovery of the same scientific idea by people who are not locally connected – living in different times and in different places. This phenomenon is not limited to the field of science. The similarity in the work of artists, poets and musicians living at different times and in different places is so striking that it can also serve as evidence of a non-local correlation. Thus, there is at least indirect evidence that creativity is associated with nonlocal cognition, a third mode of cognition in addition to perception and representation.

Creative meeting

It is generally accepted that the creative process consists of at least three distinct stages. The first of these is the preparatory stage of information collection. The second – the main stage of the creative process – is the emergence and dissemination of a creative idea. In the third and final stage of manifestation, the creative idea is given form. However, I doubt that creativity can result from a sequential and orderly progression through these three distinct stages.

Instead, I propose that the creative act is the result of the meeting of the classical and quantum modalities of the self. There are stages, but they are all complex hierarchical encounters between these two modalities; the hierarchy is complex because the quantum modality remains preconscious. The unifying consciousness is the undisturbed level from which all creative action flows. Creativity has a complex hierarchical nature, since even from the point of view of classical modality there is a clear lack of continuity.

The classical modality of the self, like the classical computer, deals with information, but the quantum modality deals with communication. Thus, the first stage of creativity is a complex game of information (development of competence) and communication (development of openness). It is complex because it is impossible to determine when information ends and communication begins; it is a discrete process. Here the ego acts as a scientist in the service of the quantum modality – and a strong ego is needed to deal with the destruction of the old to make way for the new.

In the second stage, the stage of creative insight, there is a meeting between the painstaking work of the classical modality and the inspiration of the quantum modality. To get a sense of this meeting, let’s think about the details of a quantum mechanism—the details of a quantum leap in creative insight. When a quantum brain state, in response to a situation of creative confrontation, develops as a pool of potential possibilities, this pool includes not only conditioned states, but also new, never before manifested states of possibility. Of course, the conditioned states of our personal, learned memory have a higher probability, and the statistical weights of new, not yet conditioned states are small. Therefore, the problem of the second stage of creativity is how to overcome in this game of chance the overwhelming odds of the skill of the former memory in comparison with the genuine art of the new.

The solution to this problem is not that unclear. There are five non-mutually exclusive possibilities. First, one can minimize mental conditioning by consciously maintaining a non-judgmental stance to reduce the likelihood of (unconscious) conditioned reactions. (This is also recommended for the first stage of creativity.)

Secondly, you can increase the chances of a creative idea manifesting itself, which has a low probability, through persistence. This is important because persistence increases the number of collapses of the quantum state of mind in relation to the same issue – thereby increasing the chances of realizing a new reaction.

Third, since the likelihood of a new component appearing in a coherent superposition of the mind is higher in the case of an unlearned stimulus (one we have not previously encountered), creativity is facilitated if we expose ourselves to previously unknown stimuli. Thus, reading about a new idea can cause a context shift in our own thinking on a completely different topic. To open the mind to new contexts, new stimuli that seem ambiguous are especially useful – as in surrealist painting.

Fourth, since conscious observation collapses the coherent superposition, unconscious processes have a distinct advantage. Uncollapsed coherent superpositions can then affect other uncollapsed coherent superpositions, thereby creating many more choices in the eventual collapse.

And fifth, since a necessary component of quantum modality is nonlocality, one can increase the likelihood of a creative act by talking and working with other people – as in the case of brainstorming. Communication extends beyond local interactions and the locally learned bases of knowledge of the participants, and the likelihood is high that the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts.

Thus, while the quantum modality plays an important role in allowing us to make the leap beyond the system necessary to discover a truly new context (inspiration), the classical modality serves an equally important function in enabling the persistence of will (hard work). The way H. Spencer Brown spoke about the importance of this persistence evokes an unforgiving sense of what it means to have a burning question: “To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and did, requires years of thought. Not activity. No reasoning. Not calculations. Not painstaking work. Not reading. No talking. You just have to constantly remember what you need to learn.”

The ego of a creative person must have a strong will to persist and must be able to cope with the anxiety associated with not knowing—with taking a quantum leap into the new. The contribution of the classic ego is rightly assessed by the saying: “Genius is 2 percent inspiration and 98 percent hard work.”

The third and final stage of the creative process – the manifestation of a creative idea – is the meeting of idea and form. The primary responsibility for giving form to the creative idea generated in the second stage falls on the classical modality. It has to tidy up and organize the elements of the idea and confirm that the idea works, but there is a lot of back and forth between idea and form. This interaction process is of a complex hierarchical nature.

Thus, creativity is a complex hierarchical meeting of the classical and quantum modalities of the self: information and communication, labor and inspiration, form and idea. The ego must act – but under the direction of an aspect of the self that it does not know. In particular, it must resist reducing the creative process to a simple hierarchy of memorized programs. This reduction for the sake of efficiency is a natural but regrettable tendency of the ego. The following lines from Rabindranath Tagore sum up all these aspects of the creative encounter:

The melody tends to bind itself to the rhythm,
While the rhythm flows into the melody.
The idea strives to find flesh in form,
and the form strives to find freedom in the idea.
The Infinite seeks contact with the finite,
And the finite seeks release in the Infinite.
What is this drama between creation and destruction –
This endless oscillation between idea and form?
Boundness seeks to achieve freedom,
And freedom seeks rest in bondage.

Creative experience “eureka”

They say that when Archimedes, while in the bath, discovered the principle of buoyancy, he forgot about his nakedness and rushed into the street, joyfully shouting: “Eureka, eureka” (I found, I found). This is a famous example of the sudden guess experiment. How can this experience be explained?

The model of creativity as the meeting of the classical and quantum aspects of the self provides a succinct explanation of the eureka experience. Think about the time lag between primary and secondary experiences. Our preoccupation with secondary processes, which this delay indicates, makes it difficult to recognize our quantum self and experience the quantum level of our functioning. The creative experience is one of those few moments when we directly experience the quantum modality, with little or no delay in time, and it is this encounter that causes a “eureka!”

The “eureka” (or aha!) experience typically occurs during the second stage of the creative process; it is not the end product of the creative act. A very important part of the process is the third stage, which consists of giving explicit form to the creative idea generated in the eureka experience.

Therefore, Archimedes probably had a strong experience of the primary process, which caused him ecstasy. I have already mentioned Maslow’s work on peak experiences. What Maslow calls peak experiences can also be interpreted as creative “eureka” experiences, except that the people he writes about did not discover a new physical law. Instead, they demonstrated examples of inner creativity—the creative act of self-realization.

External and internal creativity

Understanding creativity as an ordinary expression of the quantum self can encourage anyone to engage in creative activities. In this context, a distinction must be made between external and internal creativity. External creativity involves discoveries in the external world; the results of external creativity are intended for the whole society. On the contrary, inner creativity is directed towards the person himself. Its result is a personal transformation of the context of a person’s life.

In the case of external creativity, the product we create competes with the existing structures of society. Thus, in addition to creative passion for the problem to be solved, we need talent or giftedness and knowledge of existing structures (including early conditioning). This combination may occur in relatively few people, although it does not have to be that rare.

Inner creativity requires neither talent nor erudition. All that is required is deep curiosity of an immediate, personal type (what is the meaning of my life?). It is only necessary to be aware that with the development of the ego there is a tendency to neglect our creative abilities – especially as regards further self-development – and, in fact, to declare – I am who I am, I will never change. For inner creativity, it is necessary to realize that life at the ego level, no matter how successful it may be, contains anxiety and is devoid of joy.

Inner creativity

The universe has a creative capacity; Our creativity is living proof of this. In a deterministic universe, the world mechanism allows us to develop only in its own image and likeness – as thinking machines. But in reality, there is no world mechanism. In our desire for harmony, prediction and control of everything that surrounds us, we created the idea of ​​a world mechanism and projected this deterministic image onto nature. However, a statistically harmonious, lawful universe would be a dead universe; our universe is not dead because we are not dead. However, we do have a tendency towards a static equilibrium, like death: this tendency is the ego.

They say that the Persian mystic Zarathustra laughed when he was born. Like many myths, this one contains an important meaning. He shows that consciousness, once it becomes manifest, finds itself in a difficult position – being ridiculous in its inability to escape conditioning. Only a baby can laugh at conditioning. By the time the baby reaches adulthood, he – like everyone else – will be conditioned by society and culture, civilization. After watching a Woody Allen film, we may well conclude that we have to pay for civilization, for social conditioning, with neurosis; and Woody Allen is absolutely right. There is a good chance that the child will grow up neurotically unable to laugh at his conditioned experiences.

Even under these conditions, our creative nature breaks through our conditioning every now and then. Some of us have creative ideas. Others shine with life through dance. Still others find creative inspiration in completely unexpected contexts. These are reminders. When creativity breaks through the ego, we are able to remember that there is something beyond the conditioned self. Then we can think about how to open this beyond. How to find a direct connection with the source of life-affirming meaning?

We very often admire ourselves and our manipulations. Often this admiration is strongest in youth. We become captivated by our creativity and use it to manipulate the world. For many of us, this self-admiration continues for quite a long time; for some people it never ends. Moreover, this admiration is often fruitful, and it has given us many of the wonders of our civilization.

But nothing lasts forever in this world. While yesterday I might have felt creative, today the bite of the three-headed demon of universal misfortune might fill me with sadness. The three heads of the demon are boredom, doubt (conflict) and suffering.

What do we do when such suffering floods us in our daily lives? If we are still fascinated by ourselves, we come up with ways to avoid it. In our sometimes manic escape from boredom, we chase novelty—a new partner or a new computer game—as a defense against this particular demon. To avoid the pain of discomfort, we seek pleasure – food, sex, drugs and the like. And we lock ourselves into rigid belief systems to ensure that doubt is prevented. Alas, all this effort is just additional conditioning.

Trying to resolve the problems of inner emptiness and doubt with the help of external fullness or internal strictness is the classic approach of materialism. If we can change the world (and other people as part of this world), then we do not need to change ourselves. And yet, because reality is not static, we do change: we become cynical or slip into overwhelming hopelessness. We fluctuate between ups and downs, mountains and valleys, and life becomes a roller coaster ride – a cheap melodrama, a soap opera.

Even our wonderful civilization, of which we are rightly proud, is constantly threatening us. The creativity of our fellow humans, which has created our entertainment industry to avoid sadness, has also created the means of destruction that promise and deliver suffering. This makes some of us wonder whether wise creativity is possible. Can creativity be used to gain wisdom? Can we express our creativity in constructive ways?

There is a story about Gautama Buddha: once upon a time in Bihar, in India, where Gautama lived, there was a very hot-tempered man named Angulimala, who vowed to kill a thousand people. As a reminder, and to count his victims, he cut off the index finger of each man he killed and made a necklace from those fingers that he wore around his neck (hence his name Angulimala, which means “necklace of fingers”). Quite cruel, isn’t it? Okay, after he killed 999 people, he fell victim to numbers (a phenomenon well known in sports circles – when it can be difficult to go on an unprecedented winning streak in baseball or win the last leg of a tennis tournament). No one came close enough to him to become his thousandth victim. Then Buddha appeared. Ignoring all pleas and warnings, the Buddha approached Angulimala. Even Angulimala was surprised that the Buddha came to him voluntarily. What kind of person is this?

“Okay, for your bravery, I will grant you one wish,” Angulimala generously offered.

Buddha asked him to cut off a branch from a nearby tree. R-time, and it was done.

“Why did you waste your wish?”

“Will you grant my second request, the request of a dying man?” – Buddha asked humbly.

“OK. What kind of request is this?

“Will you return this fallen branch to its original state on the tree?” – Buddha asked with absolute equanimity.

“I can not do it!” – Angulimala cried in surprise.

“How can you destroy anything without knowing how to create? How to revive? How to connect again? – asked the Buddha. They say that this meeting had such an impact on Angulimala that he became enlightened.

But the question that Buddha asked two and a half millennia ago remains relevant today. Imagine asking this same question to our scientists who are using their creativity to create weapons of destruction. How do you think they will respond to it?

Uncontrolled creativity is a double-edged sword. It can be used to enhance the ego at the expense of civilization. Creativity should be exercised with wisdom, which leads to the transformation of our being so that we can love unselfishly or act altruistically. But how does a person gain wisdom?

It is impossible to specifically describe what causes wisdom or makes a person wise. The Zen story puts it this way: a monk asks a teacher to explain the reality beyond reality. The teacher picks up a rotten apple from the ground and gives it to the monk; the monk becomes enlightened. The gist of the story is this: the heavenly apple of wisdom is perfection. The earthly apples of knowledge by which we understand the idea of ​​transcendence are rotten apples, merely misleading allegories and metaphors. However, this is all we have; we’ll have to start there.

If you are able to cope with the uncertainty of being beyond the ego, then you are ready for inner creativity. Methods of inner creativity include meditation, which could be defined as a practical attempt to achieve self-identity beyond the ego. Some inner creativity techniques, such as Zen koans, make use of apparent paradoxes. In other techniques, the paradoxes are more subtle.

One paradox is this: we use the ego to go beyond the ego. How is this possible? Over the centuries, many mystics have marveled at this paradox of inner creativity, but it disappears when viewed from the perspective of the new psychology of the self (chapters 12 and 13). Our self is not the ego. The ego is only a temporary, working identity of the self. As we try to shift the center of gravity of our being more towards the quantum modality, we find that we cannot cause quantum leaps by any conditioned maneuvers. So we methodically break the conditioning. We cannot gain greater access to the quantum modality if we constantly feed the demon of unhappiness – one of the agents of the ego. Therefore, we give up the pursuit of pleasure, the attachment to excitement, the frantic attempts to avoid boredom, doubt and pain. We let go of limiting belief systems like materialism. What’s happening? Are you ready to find out?

In other words, as we accumulate experience, changes constantly occur in our psyche, but usually these are low-level changes. They don’t transform us. In inner creativity, we direct our creative abilities precisely to self-identity. Usually creativity is aimed at changing the external world, but when we creatively transform our own identity, it is called internal creativity.

In external creativity, quantum leaps allow us to view an external problem in a new context. In inner creativity, a quantum leap allows us to break out of established patterns of behavior, which, taken together, make up what is called character, developed as we grow up. For some people, this requires a discrete eureka experience or quantum leap. For others, there seems to be a gradual turning around. This always involves a patient awareness of the immediate state of affairs, of what obstacles arise from our past conditioning and prevent us from living in the new context that we intuitively understand.

Remember Plato’s cave? Plato described the situation of human beings in relation to their experience of the universe: We are in a cave, tied to our seats, and our heads are fixed so that we are always looking at the wall. The universe is a theater of shadows projected onto the wall, and we see the shadows. We observe illusions that we allow to condition us. The real reality is behind us, in the light that creates shadows on the wall. But how can we see the light when we are so tied that we cannot turn our heads? What did Plato want to say with his allegory? And what about us people in the cave? We also cast a shadow on the wall – a shadow with which we identify. How to weaken this ego-identity?

The modern Plato – Krishnamurti – offers this answer: we need to make a complete turn around, and this requires full awareness of the situation, what we are, and what our conditioning is.

For example, imagine that you are jealous. Every time your significant other talks to someone of the opposite sex, you experience intense bouts of self-doubt and anger. You try to change your feelings and behavior, but you cannot change by thinking and reasoning alone. This is where inner creativity comes into play. Inner creativity techniques are designed to create a small gap between you and your ego identification. In this clearing you can use your free will – the birthright of your quantum modality.

So what does it take to achieve transformation? For external creativity, we develop talent or a certain competence, or both – but creativity is not limited to these things.

Likewise, for inner creativity, one develops and practices awareness of one’s conditioning—what is within. With external creativity, if we have enough talent and have developed a certain competence, if we are open-minded and have a burning question, then a creative quantum leap can occur. Likewise, in inner creativity, when we recognize our potential for inner growth but have no pretensions about ourselves, when we are vulnerable, change can occur. So in any case, what you do is just a trigger. Both internal and external creativity are associated with a lack of continuity and causality.

How do we know when we have made the transformation? We become aware of this as the context of our lives shifts from the level of our personal ego to the level of buddhi, from the predominance of the classical self to a more comprehensive functioning in both classical and quantum modalities. What does this mean? The simplest way to say it is to mean a general state of living with a natural sense of love and service to others—a natural surrender of one’s separateness in favor of the quantum self. Rabbi Hillel said:

If I do not exist for myself, then who am I?

If I exist only for myself, then what am I?

When both questions move us to action with equal urgency, transformation has taken place. However, transformation is an ongoing process, always defining an increasingly compassionate context for our being.

Stages of adult development

Perhaps of all cultures, the most extensive research into inner creativity has been conducted in Eastern India. One of their discoveries, now supported by science, is the connection between inner creativity and development. Hindu researchers of inner creativity have outlined four periods of its development:

1.  Brahmacharya (which literally means “celibacy”) is the period of learning and ego development (including initial initiation into spirituality) spanning childhood and adolescence.

2.  Garhastha (which literally means “life of a householder”) is the period of living in the world with ego-identity and enjoying the bittersweet fruits of the world.

3.  Banaprastha (which literally means “life in the forest”) is a period of self-discovery and cultivation of the awakening of buddhi.

4.  Sannyasa (which literally means “renunciation”) is the period of development on the level of Buddhi, leading to self-renunciation and transcendence of all duality, all various impulses and thus to liberation.

Today’s psychology paradigm typically recognizes only the first two of these levels of development. However, few researchers—notably Erik Erikson, Carl Rogers, and Abraham Maslow—have offered a broader context for human development.

Also noteworthy is the idea of ​​a midlife crisis or transition, which gained popularity in the 1970s. Obviously, this formulation concerned many people, as evidenced by the following joke: a priest, a pastor and a rabbi were arguing about the point at which human life begins. The priest gave the standard answer: “Life begins at the moment of conception.” The pastor avoided a direct answer: “Perhaps life begins in twenty days or so?” Finally, the rabbi said, “Life begins when your children pass away and your dog dies.”

In the next chapter I will explore the idea of ​​awakening buddhi in the light of the idealistic literature and insights presented in this book. Further development at the level of buddhi, leading to freedom, which in Hinduism is called moksha, and in Buddhism – nirvana, is extremely esoteric in nature and beyond the scope of this book.

The book “The Self-Aware Universe. How consciousness creates the material world.” Amit Goswami

Contents

PREFACE
PART I. The Union of Science and Spirituality
CHAPTER 1. THE CHAPTER AND THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER 2. OLD PHYSICS AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL HERITAGE
CHAPTER 3. QUANTUM PHYSICS AND THE DEATH OF MATERIAL REALISM
CHAPTER 4. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MONISTIC IDEALISM
PART II. IDEALISM AND THE RESOLUTION OF QUANTUM PARADOXES
CHAPTER 5. OBJECTS IN TWO PLACES AT THE SAME TIME AND EFFECTS THAT PRECEDE THEIR CAUSES
CHAPTER 6. THE NINE LIVES OF SCHRODINGER’S CAT
CHAPTER 7. I CHOOSE WITH THEREFORE, I AM
CHAPTER 8. THE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-ROSEN PARADOX
CHAPTER 9. RECONCILIATION OF REALISM AND IDEALISM
PART III. SELF-REFERENCE: HOW ONE BECOMES MANY
CHAPTER 10. EXPLORING THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
CHAPTER 11. IN SEARCH OF THE QUANTUM MIND
CHAPTER 12. PARADOXES AND COMPLEX HIERARCHIES
CHAPTER 13. “I” OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 14. UNIFICATION OF PSYCHOLOGIES
PART IV . RETURN OF CHARM
CHAPTER 15. WAR AND PEACE
CHAPTER 16. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CREATIVITY
CHAPTER 17. THE AWAKENING OF BUDDHA
CHAPTER 18. IDEALISMAL THEORY OF ETHICS
CHAPTER 19. SPIRITUAL JOY
GLOBAR OF TERMS