Creation and Creativity
TRANSMISSION AND CREATIVITY
Life is no cruel burden imposed upon human beings by some
capricious external power, but rather a festival in which there is
continual learning and living and loving. But these cannot occur
without unlearning, unloving and undoing the excess and illusion of
the past. It is a cleansing process of transmission and continuity;
it is, ultimately, a great sacrifice. Instead of sacrificing
ignorantly and impulsively, unwittingly and feebly, one can make
everything one has to offer count in the larger context of the vast,
ceaseless sacrifice. This can be known only in solitude, at dawn or
sunset, in meditation or during deep sleep, wherever one draws within
the very depths of one's inmost self and feels closer to the core of
every being. It is known to Krishna and Buddha and all the Mahatmas of
boundless compassion who are such magnificent evergreen examples of
sacrifice, with both the great fruit of immense, painfully won
experience, the wisdom born of suffering and struggle, and also with
the eyes of a child capable of looking with wonder and freshness at
every moment.
Like the poet, "Look thy last on all things lovely." Look at
every moment as if it will never come again. At the same time, do not
live by breathless, feverish anticipation. Live at a distance from
what men who hug this painted veil call life, and then one will
discover that there is a deeper life. There are others who have gone
before in that undiscovered country of the unmanifest. There are
those who have kept the fires burning through the long night of
history, through the cycles of rise and fall of cultures and
civilizations, who have stood apart from Atlantis and Athens, from
the great pyramids of Egypt and Central America, who have
contemplated on the banks of the Ganges and watched over the temples
and the pagodas of the East, because they knew that these were part
of a larger sacred history which will unfold itself through millennia
in the future.
RAGHAVAN IYER
CREATIVITY
In everything sparkles the shimmer of living creation, and never the coarse finality of the created. Creativity is endless flux, the imposition of the ever-changing upon the changeless, the grafting of movement upon the silent stillness. Creativity in the deepest sense is not the construction of that from which we are detached, but rather of that which affirms its intrinsic connection to the unity of being, linking disparate points to the central nexus, binding the momentary within the eternal. Creativity is kriyashakti, the self-informing energy that derives from thought, and it is Eros, the self-determining energy from which thought derives. And the use of this term 'energy' is both advised and significant because creativity shares the quintessential attributes peculiar to the physical energy which governs our universe. Just as physical energy cannot be constructed or created - it can only be transferred, exchanged or re-directed, with a process of transmutation conferred upon it by agents of growth and agents of movement (heat, light and electricity - or ichchashakti, parashakti and kundalinishakti) - so too, creativity cannot be materialized out of nothing.
It is ubiquitous and ever present, can only be elicited when activated by one of those same agents. It can be generated by movement, by a mobility and fluidity of perspective. So, too, it is generated by heat, by spiritual warmth, and by the catalytic fire of which Simon Magus, Jacob Boehme and many true mystics speak. And, just as heat can only be channelled from a hot body to a colder, so too creativity represents the evolutionary course downwards, the bequeathal from the divine above to the unrealized divine below. Like light, creativity is irreducible, concerning itself as much with intention as with the ability to actualize that intention; the very fact of saying "Let there be light" kindles an inner strength and light within, regardless of whether any material light accrues - it is a self-perpetuating process in which every creative urge or impetus engenders a new source of creative potential and birth.
PICO IYER
PLASTICITY OF IMAGINATION
The sculptor exemplifies the creativity of purifying, sifting,
structuring and refining, resting in the unusual position wherein the
acts of creation and of appreciation inconspicuously merge, so that
every gesture of the sculptor is tending towards his conception of
beauty and perfection. He adapts the human form to the divine purpose
and at the same time disseminates divine ideas in a self-aware, but
ego-less, activity. Leonardo would often give up sculptures midway
because he felt he could not do adequate justice to his notion of
divine perfection. Equally, Michelangelo, whenever he saw a thick and
uncarved block, felt that he perceived a spirit waiting to be
released. The sculptor is in the unusual position both of rendering
beauty and attenuating the redundant dross into a pure refined truth.
By reducing the excesses of self, he is subjugating self in order to
release it. Eye and hand are perfectly attuned, the emotional
elaboration upon the rational theme; he shows a sureness of vision but
a plasticity of imagination. One could relate this to the Taoist
notion of the uncarved block, which respects the integrity of the
block, whether individual or collective, but also apprehends the
sympathy that flows from non-being so that, when a sculptor is
cutting away at himself to come to a chaster whole, he is also
indirectly contributing towards the creativity of society.
The sculptor obviously provides an important model for
self-examination if you think of the way he must move around his
object in order to see it from every angle and from every
perspective. So, too, when we are engaging in the process of
self-scrutiny, it is necessary not merely to consider ourselves in
terms mental, physical, spiritual, rational, but also to have an
empathic distanced grasp whereby we can see ourselves from the
perspectives of other people and from each angle, and thus come to a
rounded wholeness while cutting away that which is superfluous. The
sculptor involves himself in a symmetrical flow whereby he is
fragmenting in order to make whole, a process pregnant with important
corollaries. Man is at the gateway between mortal and immortal, and
the sculptor is poised on that threshold, trying to bridge the gap
between a perceptible humanity and a dimly apprehended divinity. We
think of Goldmund trying to sculpt and shape the perfect feminine
spirit, the feminine principle that guides the universe, although the
only way that he can approach the divine conception is by
amalgamating all the women that he has known and the creativity from
them that he has been privileged to receive. The prominent
characteristics of the sculptor are detachment, beauty of ideal and
clarity of vision.
PICO IYER
IMAGINATION
This spiritual Love acts not nor can exist
Without Imagination, which, in truth,
Is but another name for absolute power
And clearest insight, amplitude of mind,
And Reason in her most exalted mood.
This faculty hath been the feeding source
Of our long labour: we have traced the stream
From the blind cavern whence is faintly heard
Its natal murmur; followed it to light
And open day; accompanied its course
Among the ways of Nature, for a time
Lost sight of it bewildered and engulfed;
Then given it greeting as it rose once more
In strength, reflecting from its placid breast
The works of man and face of human life;
And lastly, from its progress have we drawn
Faith in life endless, the sustaining thought
Of human Being, Eternity, and God.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
DIVINE MANIFESTATION
The Creation of the whole Creation is nothing else but a
Manifestation of the all-essential, unsearchable God; all whatever he
is in his eternal unbeginning Generation and Dominion, of that is
also the Creation, but not in the Omnipotence and Power, but like an
Apple which grows upon the Tree, which is not the Tree itself, but
grows from the Power of the Tree: Even so all Things are sprung forth
out of the Divine Desire, and created into an Essence, where in the
Beginning there was no such Essence present, but only that same
Mystery of the Eternal Generation, in which there has been an Eternal
Perfection.
For God has not brought forth the Creation, that he should be
thereby perfect, but for his own Manifestation, viz., for the great
Joy and Glory; not that this Joy first began with the Creation, no,
for it was from Eternity in the great Mystery, yet only as a
spiritual Melody and Sport in itself.
The Creation is the same Sport out of himself, viz., a Platform
or Instrument of the Eternal Spirit, with which he melodizes: and it
is even as a great Harmony of manifold Instruments which are all
tuned into one Harmony; for the Eternal Word, or Divine Sound or
Voice, which is a Spirit, has introduced itself with the Generation
of the great Mystery into Formings, viz., in to an expressed Word or
Sound: And as the joyful Melody is in itself in the Spirit of the
eternal Generation, so likewise is the Instrument, viz., the
expressed Form in itself, which the living Eternal Voice guides, and
strikes with his own Eternal Will-Spirit, that it sounds and
melodizes; as an Organ of divers and various Sounds or Notes is moved
with one only Air, so that each Note, yea every Pipe has its peculiar
Tune, and yet there is but one Manner of Air or Breath in all Notes,
which sounds in each Note or Pipe according as the Instrument or
Organ is made.
Thus in the Eternity there is only one Spirit in the whole Work
of the Divine Manifestation, which is the Manifestator in the
expressed Voice and also in the speaking Voice of God, which is the
Life of the grand Mystery, and of all that is generated from thence;
he is the Manifestator of all the Works of God.
JACOB BOEHME
CREATION
Now the time passed quickly over,
And the years rolled quickly onward,
In the new sun's shining lustre,
In the new moon's softer beaming.
Still the Water-Mother floated,
Water-Mother, maid aerial,
Ever on the peaceful waters,
On the billows' foamy surface,
With the moving waves before her,
And the heaven serene behind her.
When the ninth year had passed over,
And the summer tenth was passing,
From the sea her head she lifted,
And her forehead she uplifted,
And she then began Creation,
And she brought the world to order,
On the open ocean's surface,
On the far extending waters.
Wheresoe'er her hand she pointed,
There she formed the jutting headlands;
Wheresoe'er her feet she rested,
There she formed the caves for fishes;
When she dived beneath the water,
There she formed the depths of ocean;
When towards the land she turned her,
There the level shores extended,
Where her feet to land extended,
Spots were formed for salmon-netting;
Where her head the land touched lightly,
There the curving bays extended.
Further from the land she floated,
And abode in open water,
And created rocks in ocean,
And the reefs that eyes behold not,
Still unborn was Väinämöinen;
Still unborn, the Bard Immortal.
Kalevala
SUBLIMITY
THE CREATIVE is strong.
THE CREATIVE works sublime success.
Great indeed is the sublimity of the Creative, to which all
beings owe their beginning and which permeates all Heaven.
The clouds pass and the rain does its work, and all individual
beings flow into their forms.
Because the Holy Man is clear as to the end and the beginning, as
to the way in which each of the six stages completes itself in its
own time, he mounts on them towards Heaven as though on six dragons.
The Way of the Creative works through change and transformation,
so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into
permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and
what perseveres.
The Sage towers high above the multitude of beings, and all lands
are united in peace.
THE RECEPTIVE brings about sublime success.
Perfect indeed is the sublimity of the Receptive. All beings owe
their birth to it, because it receives the heavenly with devotion.
The Receptive in its riches carries all things. Its nature is
harmony with the boundless. It embraces everything in its breadth and
illumines everything in its greatness. Through it, all individual
beings attain success.
A mare belongs to the creatures of the earth; she roams the earth
without bound. Yielding, devoted, furthering through perseverance:
thus the Superior Man has a direction for his way of life.
I Ching
