The Sound of Creation

 Creativity does not happen inside people’s heads, but in the interaction between a person’s thoughts and a socio-cultural context.  It is a systemic rather than an individual phenomenon.

(Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: 23)

           

            The above quote from noted researcher on creativity, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, sets the tone for this post on creativity.  But whereas Csikszentmihalyi says creativity occurs within the silent interaction between an individual’s thought and a socio-cultural environment, I believe creativity is not a silent process, but a kind of auditory one.  I will discuss it through acoustical metaphors.

            For me creativity is the result of an intricate dialogue held among the human reality, the creation, and divinity.  Education is their language and process.  If education is to bring forth, then what is brought forth must already have been present.  But “what is brought forth” from what is already present is done through a reciprocal relation between the mind and creation, each calling to the other for completion.  Creativity is a mutual calling forth of spirit.    

            First, there is the call by creation to bring forth into manifestation the inner powers and abilities of the human spirit.  The other side is the call by the human spirit to creation to bring forth its hidden aspects.  Bringing forth the human spirit and the spirit animating creation via reciprocal relations makes the two invisibles visible: a hidden reality is forged by creative work into a manifest reality.  Mind and creation move toward each other through mutual attraction.  They hear each other’s call and navigate toward each other until they meet in the middle which is this world of actuality, for every aspect of the talismanic essence of the human soul has its equivalent in the creation. In order to be brought forth, the hidden parts of creation must, too, already be present.  Who or what put them there?

            Within the inner dimensions of the creation are the spiritual forms of things which human intelligence can, through a kind of harmonic resonance, activate.  These spiritual forms also activate human intelligence, building it, as a symphonic musical score, into more complex intellectual and social structures.  The highest level of this inner dimension of humanity and creation, the greatest and noblest call, I have called the divine, what religious scripture calls Revelation, the creative Word or force that puts things “there” by calling them into being.  When the divine call enters the world it does not fit into either established categories of human understanding or the natural world but retunes and transforms them.  The divine is creative, but for human knowledge it mostly creates and recreates contexts for human thought and experience, setting the mind and heart vibrating to new frequencies.  The creative Word transforms the spiritual environment which, in turn, generates a variety of effects both in the world and within us.  These effects activate the latent powers and energies of receptive minds to bring forth new manifest creations from the potentialities sown in creation by Revelation. 

            By the work of creativity I mean vision plus work fired by faith to bring forth novelty.  Creative work is the mining of the gems of the human soul and the spiritual forms of creation.  Creative work is the process of the realization of vision.  Work is the third step in a movement that started in faith—which “cometh by hearing”--in the hidden reality, which progressed through vision which sees the new reality, to creativity which manifests it.  As an attitude toward creativity, faith and vision provide what Rollo May calls The Courage to Create.  But creativity is the actual work of bringing forth. 

            Creative work also occurs at different levels.  First, there is the creation, the bringing forth, of a new thing.  But a higher level of creative work is to change the forms of expression of being.  I mean that if, in the evolution of human consciousness, some new power or faculty has through the action of the divine moved to the time of its birth, it will come forth and a new perception of reality results.  If the proper forms for the expression of this new perception are not fully present it will create them.  These are the changes wrought in human consciousness by those we call genius.  They are often not heard while they are alive, because, like all great explorers, no one else sees or hears what they do.  Great changes in forms of human expression are the kind of things that show up as new movements in the arts, in new scientific discoveries of a paradigm-changing nature, or in new philosophical movements.  The highest expression of this kind of change is that of the religious genius: the founders of the great religions.  Upon their creative genius whole civilizations are erected, for they are manifestations of divinity, speakers of the Word after having heard it.

            Every soul has a particular call.  Every thing has a voice.  As I said in a previous post, creativity is linked to engagement with work.  Our best work is more than mere labor, whether remunerated or not.  The best work has an inner spiritual dynamic to it that springs pure from a compelling inner purpose, and which is termed “a calling.”   

            The idea of a calling and devotion to labor in the calling has its roots in the western religious tradition.  Every individual has two callings, one general and the other personal.  The general calling is the primary task of spiritual self-development, the holy work of self-perfecting that everyone must attempt.  The second calling is the seeking after occupation, or what occupies ones time because it occupies ones full attention.  One's calling is literally one's vocation, for "vocation" is a form of "vocal."  If psychologist James Hillman is correct in believing that “what children go through has to do with finding a place in the world for their specific calling”, then educators must pay attention to this idea of vocation, not just in terms of finding gainful employment, but also in the context of  personal inner development. Within a calling personal spiritual development is inseparable from one’s labor, for work becomes a form of worship.  All work done in a spirit of service to the larger good can be a calling.    

            The other form of creativity I have discussed is the construction of human knowledge.  This brings us back to speech and dialogue.  We think of the world as a seamless thing.  But actually it is an infinitely graded series of discrete events and discontinuous spaces that harmonically resonate with waves and vibrations through the spiritual medium of love.  Love is the basic substance of the creation which mind fashions into forms.  The resonant discontinuities of the structure of the world are reflected in the resonant discontinuities of the metaphorical space of human language, for there are auditory intervals of space, time and meaning between our discrete words.  Discontinuity is a creative space that forms into a new integrity in dialogue, for dialogue, especially consultation, creates shared meaning, and thus overcomes dichotomy and separateness.  This overcoming we call insight, knowledge and understanding.  Dialogue is inherent to real comm-unication, and communication creates comm-unity.  Dialogue, whether between souls, or between the soul and the creation, or the soul and divinity, is the mutual revealing of selves in interaction.  In true dialogue the self achieves self-knowledge in what is echoed back to him. 

            Today the acceleration of the pace of change is such as to bring us close to the final limit of our known energy and knowledge, rendering us unable to respond creatively.  Without creative energy we cannot solve our problems, so they proliferate.  Lacking creative energy, we are easily bred to silence and passivity, products of an effective conditioning of our consciousness about reality.  Enclosed within our conditioning we can neither see it nor see anything but it, for it has become self-contained.  But through faith, vision and creative thought and energy we can transform this world.  We revive these powers by achieving new contact with the divine and starting a new social discourse.  To do that systematically requires a fourth power of transformation, reflection.  That is the subject of the next post.  Love to hear from you on this post.