"In the beginning . . ." lights faded and the timbre of
anticipation congealed into a rhythmic clap.
Engulfed in darkness, a rhythmic pulse increased in speed and amplitude. Small beams of
lights appeared, swinging through space as if they were floating in the blackness. Each
moved hesitantly to a separate position and then disappeared again into the darkness. A
unified rhythm formed becoming still more thunderous until at last it broke into thousands
of smaller cadences babbling in a cacophonous roar. That, too, vanished into the darkness.
"In the beginning . . ." curiosity drew me to this place, a
chance invitation.
I knew little about what would unfold from the darkness before me but my hands, too,
joined in the rhythm of the night. They found their own cadence, and then settled back at
my sides in the silent cover of the night. Tints of lime green and a rich lavender slowly
appeared from the darkness, washed over the area, and flooded my eyes. Vivid colors
pierced my separateness and stirred the core of my being.
"In the beginning . . ." I was furious. Why him instead of me?
Why not me? If not me, what am I to do? No answers!
Internally, order crumbled; meaning I believed I had found, dissolved: again, I stared
into void. Two hours passed as the figure entranced the crowd. I hated the way I loved his
act. Still no answers! I recognized the way his music knew me. It touched me in spite of
my defenses. Out of order I returned to chaos and chaos I recognized. I wasn't at the end:
I was in transition. I hadn't stepped from the looking glass nor from the spotlight. I was
the receptive aspect of the creative process and just as vital in this moment of creation.
I was the living "feedback" in a system larger than the experience to which I
surrendered. I was personally "in the beginning . . ." .
Beginnings, like births, are hard painful experiences. The event described above
was for me a moment of re-creation, of re-birthing from a perspective as a performing
artist, to an understanding of the creative process as an inseparable duality. Creativity
is a spiritual process that unfolds around us and requires our action and compels the
participation of our audience. It is the dual dance of the spirit in the creative process
I wish to address in this writing. Creativity is ostensibly like a Mobius strip, the
one-sided plane of Euclidean geometry that casts the illusion of duplicity, yet, is
infinitely one.
Accessing our inner creator is a sympathetic process with which we learn to resonate.
Thus it replicates itself, and beginnings beget beginnings.
People commonly view creativity as something possessed by some (those in a
spotlight whether scientific or artistic), and not by others; yet, creativity equally
mystifies those "who have it," and those "who don't." Creativity is
transcendent yet it is our ground of being, natural and inescapable. Our human creative
ability is but a part of a larger universal pulse.
I do not claim to prove what creativity is; that continues to elude.
Rather, I seek to stimulate a new view of creativity that shows the unity in perceived
duality; and diminishes the separation between those who feel they lack creative ability,
and the artist-scientist-creators (from here on called creators), who are banished to live
in the spotlight.
It all starts....
. . . In the beginning this world was merely non-being. It was existent. It
developed....It was split asunder. (ChandogyaUpanisad)
. . . In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without
form and void . . . (Genesis 1: 1-2)
. . . In the great beginning, there was non-being. It had neither being nor name. The
One originates from it; it has oneness but not yet physical form....That which is formless
is divided [into yin and yang].... Through movement and rest it produces all
things....Being one with the beginning, one becomes vacuous (hsu, receptive to all), and
being vacuous one becomes great....one is then united with the universe. (The Chuang
Tzu)
There is a striking resemblance amongst creation stories: order emerging from
chaos. Balance is ever represented in them. Western religions focus more on order while
other religions see the void as the ultimate. They all indicate that polarities, whether
physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual, are attributes of creation. Creative
individuals also balance a paradox of polarities.
The ability to conceive of antithetical ideas simultaneously, that is, bringing
together "habitually incompatible frames of reference," for example, light and
darkness, is called "janusian thinking" or "bisociation" by Albert
Rothenberg and Arthur Koestler respectively. Creation involves polarities and the
emergence of form through their bisociation.
Taoism provides a clear example of this in the formless, nameless Tao, its
supreme ultimate. From the Tao emerge first yin and yang, and then form. Being from
non-being. One may think of the Tao as the chaos of non-being but the void is unitary. Can
there be chaos in unity? I believe this Chinese metaphor proposes another role for chaos
in the duality of the creative process.
Yin is the receptive principle and yang is the creative principle. (Since the name
creative principle may cause confusion I will refer to yang as the projective quality and
yin as the receptive quality. Creation involves yin and yang equally.) Interaction between
yin and yang produces form, and thereby, order: they are an intermediary step between
non-being and being. I suggest that chaos emerges from the Tao as duality and that from
the interaction of duality comes order. Chaos is fixation in either extreme of the
yin-yang polarity.
Figure #1 illustrates these fixated positions. Imagine, if possible, being
solely at either the yin or yang pole. The experience at either extreme is chaos.
return. It is like staring into the void.
an onslaught from which nothing escapes.
Within the physical universe, one might think of quasars (yang), "stars" that
seem to project matter endlessly, and blackholes (yin), gravitational fields that draw
matter in without escape, as metaphoric examples. Chaos has a distinctly different face at
either extreme.
If chaos exists at both poles, then form and order must inhabit the territory between
them; accordingly, form (whether a poem or universe), arises in the interactive tension
between the two extremes.
Figure #2 illustrates this range where order is created and suggests that
varying degrees of balance are possible between the poles. A contemporary creation story -
chaos theory - may be a metaphor to explore this range of tension. Chaos theory addresses
the multi-dimensional aspect of creativity, but for simplicity's sake I will discuss only
the original pair of opposites, the receptive and projective principles. I will first
detail the stages of the creative process and then relate them to the projective/receptive
duality.
Graham Wallas began a model of the creative process in The Art of Thought.
The stages in this model are: Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, Verification (see Figure3).
artistic, you formulate an idea, equip yourself, and try combinations of the collected
parts. Nurturing, research, and continuous input characterize this stage.
all is satiated to the point of compression. Incubation is the mysterious "black
box" stage in which the creation forms but remains inseparable, unknown and unable to
survive independently. It is symbiotic.
and settled, the accumulated resources thrust into a new state of being. It is independent
and takes on a "life"of its own. Illumination is glamorous, appearing easy, as
if the creative product springs forth effortlessly.
Illumination to the realities of reason: it must actually work in its applied field. This
stage separates fantasy from creation.
Unencumbered, creativity is a natural process that flows through the stages
repeatedly like a rhythmic pulse.
The wave form in Figure #4 shows the rhythmic pulse of the creative cycle
overlaying a simile of the Tai Chi, the Taoist symbol of the interplay of yin-yang. This
portrayal suggests the quality of the interplay in each stage of the process.
The I Ching (Book of Change), further illustrates the qualities of this
interplay. The I Ching uses lines depicting yin (-- --), and yang (-----) to build
hexagrams (six lines stacked vertically), that show the pattern of change applicable to a
specific question. The lines are either young (as shown above), or old, shown as follows:
yin(--O--), and yang (--X--). Old lines change into their opposite.
In Figure #4, preparation and incubation dip into the lower hemisphere: yin most
strongly influences them. Preparation is like young yin; that is, it is in the seductive
"flower of receptive youth." Incubation, like old yin, has matured and begun to
lose its attractive power. Illumination and verification arc into the upper hemisphere
which represents yang. Illumination, like young yang, is active, aggressive and projects
the ripened product outward. Verification then, like old yang, seeks validation as its
strength wanes until it reverts into yin.
The cycle requires both yin and yang: neither principle dominates exclusively. Form
dances on the border between the two faces of chaos.
Mystic teachings refer to this narrow path along the border. It is the terrain a
creator must traverse . . .
Christian mystics stress the importance of keeping to the straight and narrow
path, the center between the polarities of heaven and earth.
In A Treatise on White Magic, Alice Bailey teaches:
"Let the magician [creator], guard himself from drowning at the point where land
and water meet. The midway spot, which is neither dry nor wet, must provide the standing
place....there is the place for magic to be wrought."
An important word of caution: the duality of yin/yang and its myriad derivatives
in form is not, repeat is not, the same as the duality of good and evil. Good and
evil are both served by entraining with the power found upon the middle path: they both
unify the natural duality yin/yang in the act of creation. It is the intention
of the adept creator that separates good from evil. One fosters evolution toward harmonic
unity, while the other brings quick personal reward, stagnation and separation.
Gopi Krishna speaks of the awakening of the Kundalini force that lies sleeping
in human kind. He believes it is synonymous with creativity. It is a path of re-creation
that again involves the "bisociation" of opposites, Shakti and Shiva. He urges
aspirants to cling to the middle path and avoid the extremes they will meet. If an
aspirant directs the Kundalini upward, it is an evolutionary force that brings union with
the Divine. If the aspirant loses the balance on the middle way, the Kundalini force can
turn downward bringing destruction, separation, and madness.
Inward and outward, balancing opposites is the rhythm of mystic teachings and the
creative process; for creating, on every level of being, is a transpersonal act: it is the
domain of spirit, a land of magic that demands respect. With care we develop vision to
find the way between these polarities and participate in the act of creation.
Harnessing this creative force requires that we see more fully despite our
limited human perspective. We pursue such vision in a creative act through what St.
Bonaventure describes as: "the eye of the flesh, the eye of reason, and the eye of
contemplation." We must learn through which "eye" we perceive a given type
of reality, and in which realm a specific creative task lies. Thus, to be a creator is to
perceive knowledge with these three"eyes," give it meaning in the world, and
bring it to form.
Such knowledge applies to discrete realms of experience and of the creative process.
Failure to discriminate between the perceptions of these different "eyes"
results in what Ken Wilber calls "category error." It renders creation impotent,
if not destructive, and often fragments, blocks, or limits the creative processes of our
species. I will briefly describe these three ways of knowing and relate them to the act of
creation.
through the physical senses, or instruments that extend them.
ideas, impressions, and feelings. St. Bonaventure said this realm deals with the
"threefold activity of the soul"; that is, the psychic functions of memory,
reason, and will.
gnosis. It is the instrument of inspiration. In gnosis, one unites with the transcendent
realm of inspiration and illumination.
Religious traditions allude to transcendent states but debate their names and
descriptions perhaps because of our inability to convey ecstatic experiences adequately
through language: we only reduce them.
Ken Wilber explains how reduction takes place when information transfers from a
more complex, to a less complex dimension:
"Whenever higher dimensions are represented on lower ones they necessarily lose
something in the translation...whenever a three-dimensional sphere is reduced on a
two-dimensional surface it becomes a circle."
The next logical reduction is that the circle represented on a one-dimensional media
appears as only a straight line. "Higher" transcendent dimensions (inspirational
experiences), are similarly reduced, and abstracted through reason and empirical
application. It is often diminished to dogma.
The skill needed by a creator is to capture inspirational experience in its purest form
and transmute it so the eyes of reason, and of the flesh, perceive it. Creation myths are
products of Gnosis so transmuted to the "lesser" dimensions of reason and the
empirical flesh: they suffer from their reduction.
The three "eyes" described by St. Bonaventure have very practical
application for a creator when combined in a rhythmic manner. They offer you access to
your inner creator. I call this process Rhythmic Imaging.
determination you have.
of it in your mind's eye, the eye of reason. This impregnates your deep subconscious mind
by actively sending this image inward. You may find the contemplative state is more easily
achieved using a repetitive rhythmic event, for example, watching the waves, or the wind
blowing in the trees.
for after some time the eye of contemplation will return the symbol reformed.
"Imagine a great number of tiny bells hanging near each other.If some of these are
struck sharply, they will transmit their own resonance throughout the ensemble. No bell
will remain the same, thus creating a new state for the whole of them".- The
Universe Is A Green Dragon, Brian Swimme.
Like these tiny bells that are each responsive to the whole, humankind is inextricably
embedded in a universe of creativity: our independence is an illusion. Creators serve as a
vehicle through which information transfers from the infinite to humankind. In creators,
the first overtone of resonance appears: humankind, like the rest of the universe,
resonates in response, or be shaken from existence. Like the bells, when one creator
"chimes", a new state exists in us all.
The laws of physics explain the transfer of resonance between the bells, but the
information transfer in great creative works transcends physical law: it is transpersonal.
That is, it transcends individual personality and includes the interaction of spirit.
There are many examples of great artistic and scientific work that are remarkably similar,
though their authors have had no exposure to one another. It as if both creators perceive
the same information through the eye of contemplation and transmute it independently into
physical form.
Transpersonal creations go beyond physical, emotional and mental information exchange
to touch and alter our collective consciousness. We know them deeply and a new
consciousness emerges in the whole. Through them we entrain with one another and perform
"as if" one: through them we touch our common spirit.
Not all creators achieve this transcendent state nor transmute it in their work,
but when successful the transpersonal transfer includes the receiver. The experience
unites and changes both the creator and his/her patrons. Through this vehicle in its
highest form, creators inspire and evolve humanity.
Creativity is a universal process in which we participate. I have attempted to
synthesize diverse examples in this writing to reveal a common pulse: the creative pulse
upon which the myriad forms cavort. The pulse portends omnipresence; and entraining with
this rhythm, as we are able, may reveal a deeper understanding of creativity.
William S. Condon discovered that muscles in separate individuals entrain in
micromotions as they communicate with each other. We learn it as infants staring into our
mother's face. We must entrain in this way to understand each other in conversations.
Failure to do so causes miscommunication, conflict, or isolation.
How much more perilous is it to be "out of sync"with the beat of creation?
Like bells, we are "a chord" resonating in a universe of vibration.
Tung Chung-Shu said of harmonic entrainment twenty centuries ago:
"A beautiful thing calls forth things that are beautiful . . . an ugly thing . . .
things that are ugly . . . for things of the same kind arise in response to each
other."
By learning to entrain, or "tune into," the larger creative pulse, we
increase our individual creative expression. Taoists call this finding one's Te, one's
unique, individual expression of the Tao. A universe of rhythm is lacking without your
unique harmonious beat.
In The Silent Pulse, George Leonard expresses:
"At the heart of each of us, whatever our imperfections, there exists a silent
pulse of perfect rhythm, a complex of waveforms and resonance, which is absolutely
individual and unique, and yet which connects us to everything in the universe. The act of
getting in touch with this pulse can transform our personal experience and in some way
alter the world around us."
Participating in the dance of Shakti and Shiva, the dance of creation, requires
perception with the three "eyes" St. Bonaventure described.
provides entrance to the receptive womb that sustains the embryonic creation.
creation.
to the empirical world.
senses.
THE CYCLE OF CREATIVE CONSCIOUSNESS
and allow ourselves to merge with the unknown in contemplation.
in the Confirmation stage.
usefulness -- the Validation stage.
The creative process cycles through St. Bonaventure's three realms of consciousness, as
illustrated in the triangle above. There are various stages, as illustrated on the
circumference of the circle. I have adapted Wallas' four-stage model mentioned earlier by
expanding the verification stage. Confirmation is the internal process of
verification that uses the eye of reason. Validation occurs in the external
world and is the empirical verification provided by the world around us. Thus in
The Cycle of Creative Consciousness, creation takes place as the individual's
consciousness rises toward the apex of the triangle and then returns again to the
empirical world in the cycle shown circumnavigating the triangle. The successful
translation from one "eye" to the next is the key to creativity. (The Enter
Quest process described elsewhere in this site accelerates the entrance into reverie, thus
allowing access to the contemplative state in which symbols are transformed.)
A Course In Miracles describes our place in the creative process with
spiritual eloquence as follows:
"Creation is the sum of all God's thoughts, in number infinite,and everywhere
without all limits . . . God's thoughts are given all the power that their own Creator
has. For He would add to Love by its extension. Thus His Son [creation] shares in
creation, and must therefore share in the power to create (Anonymous, 1976).
In conclusion, I seek to empower you, the reader, with a new view of the
creative process. Through this new view, I hope you discover your own creative rhythm and
sound your own unique chord in a vibrant universal symphony.
As a creator, you do not create in a vacuum. Your work, like a stone cast upon the tiny
bells, resonates far beyond your view. A painting may inspire a song, a song may inspire a
book, a book may inspire a movement or simply a smile to someone who needs it and that
smile may inspire a song.
No matter what your work, you initiate a new state in us all.
already knows the dance.
1996 by Carlisle Bergquist. All rights reserved.
CARLISLE BERGQUIST, Ph.D.c.., M.F.C.C., is a psychotherapist
and creative theorist with a background as a creative and performing artist. Carlisle is
co-developer of Vantage Quest, a revolutionary new
personal creativity tool on compact disk, just released and available at this site. He
also offers individual work, workshops, and seminars on creativity, spirituality, and
organizational transformation, independently, or through sponsoring organizations. You may
contact Carlisle directly for workshops and
materials.