Ananda Sangha of Portland--Secrets of Creativity by Swami Kriyananda

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Secrets of Creativity
by J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda)
Excerpts from Chapter 9 of Art as a Hidden Message

Our experiences should be lived for themselves; they should not have to be validated by the experiences of others. Art, too, should be judged for itself, and not by reference to the works of others. The more deeply we learn "to see infinity in a grain of sand," the better we shall be able to understand from that grain whatever it has to teach us. Wisdom comes not by counting an infinite number of grains, but by probing the mystery of one single grain, even, to its final essence.

Realistically, of course, comparisons cannot be ignored altogether. They simply reflect the way the conscious mind works. Only in superconsciousness will they be forgotten completely.

Realistically, then, what we must do is try not to define art only in terms of technique, of outward form, and of adherence to objective norms. The conscious mind will always look for pigeonholes in which to store things, but one should make a conscious effort to broaden his perspective. The neatest filing system can be no substitute for the information it categorizes. The most precise definition of a tree cannot substitute for planting and growing a live tree. Understanding never comes by definition: It comes by experience.

...

One of the secrets of creativity is to live in the moment, and in the work of the moment. A work of art must be a projection outward from one’s center within. And the inspiration behind it arises from an act of communion between one’s own center and the center, so to speak, of the subject he is describing. If he is painting a tree, he should feel in his heart a connection with the psychic center of that tree. Even if his subject is something abstract, he can feel its heart intuitively, in its essence.

I realize that I am being abstruse, but I don’t know how to express this thought more graphically. And I know from experience that what I am stating is true. The artist needs to perceive inspiration itself as having a center. He must then try to communicate with that center from a central point in his own heart.

Every time you finish an artistic work, wipe your mental slate clean, as though you’d never done anything at all. Indeed, the more you can rid yourself of the thought of yourself as the creator, the better your art will be. Think of yourself as simply a channel for whatever is being expressed through you, After finishing a work, then, cleanse your heart of any lingering thought that that work is yours.

Welcome every inspiration as it comes, as the unique moment in time that it truly is. No two inspirations, and no two moments in eternity, are identical. If two works resemble one another too closely, consider whether you have not plagiarized yourself.

Faith is necessary to creativity. Have faith that inspiration must and will come to you, if you ask for it sincerely, and with full, joyous expectation. It will come to you, if your invitation to it is tendered with deep trust in a will higher than your own.

Paramhansa Yogananda was once asked, "Is it possible to attract inspiration at will?"

"Most certainly!" he replied. "Let me show you. Take down this poem."

Though busy at the time, he stopped briefly and focused his attention inwardly.

"Father," he dictated, "when I was blind I found not a door which led to Thee, but now that Thou hast opened my eyes, I find doors everywhere: through the hearts of flowers, through the voice of friendship, through sweet memories of all lovely experiences. Every gust of my prayer opens an unentered door in the vast temple of Thy presence."

This poem appeared later in a book he titled, Whispers from Eternity. A reviewer praised the book, then added, "There’s one of these poems that I can’t resist quoting." And this was the poem he selected.

How many artists have endured long periods when, try as they would, they felt no inspiration. Perhaps it was their very fear of losing inspiration that undermined their faith, and thereby paralyzed their will power.

Will power is the key to awakening energy. Yogananda used to say, "The greater the will, the greater the flow of energy." We can apply this principle to the task of keeping the body in good health and healing our illnesses. We can apply it also to drawing inspiration at will. For energy in the body, like electricity in a copper wire, generates a magnetic field, and that magnetism attracts to itself its own affinities, and repels that for which it has no affinity. A strong thought, when directed by will power, can generate the magnetism necessary to attract solutions to any problem one faces. That magnetism can attract true friends, hoped-for opportunities, and success in any undertaking.

Will power, combined with faith, directs a clear, unwavering flow of energy. Doubt, on the other hand, interferes with that flow, weakening it, for it creates vortices of indecision. "Is this really what I want to do?" people ask themselves even as they strive for achievement. "Am I capable of doing it? What if I fail? What if better ways exist for approaching this problem? Am I sure this way is the best?" Energy vortices of this nature interrupt the flow of energy, and disturb the flow of inspiration.

I mentioned earlier the importance of seeking superconscious, rather than merely subconscious, inspiration. Superconscious inspiration functions in a way quite different from the rational approach of the conscious mind, or the irrational meandering of the subconscious. The conscious mind, which understands things by analyzing and comparing them, is naturally problem-oriented. Superconscious awareness, on the other hand, is solution-oriented. The more problem-conscious we are, the less it is possible for us to function superconsciously.

Don’t ask yourself, then, as you set out to create an artistic work, "What do I do about this problem?" You might go in circles indefinitely with that thought. Ask your higher Self, rather, "I have this need to address. Give me a solution." The more you think in terms of solutions, and seek them with faith, the more certain you will be of doing the right thing. But if you tell yourself, "I must be realistic, and I know I have problems, so let me think what to do about them," the consciousness of those problems will develop a magnetism of its own. All you will see is more problems.

The clearer your idea as to the kind of inspiration you need, the greater the likelihood that your answers will appear in your mind as it were full-blown.

...

It is important not to be emotionally involved, even though the feelings are awake, and perhaps intensely so, with the inspiration you are expressing. (Even tears don’t necessarily signify emotional involvement.) In the case of my melody, "Pompeii," its essence of course concerned a degree of detachment anyway, since the event it described occurred long ago. But the principle of non-attachment would have been as important had I been describing some recent tragedy such as the bombing of a friend’s home. The calmer my perception, the more clearly it would be able to depict that occurrence in the context of its inner meaning.

An emotion is not best expressed during the heat of the moment. Later on, when the heart is calm and relatively detached, and when we are able to view the episode as it were from above, we can communicate it more effectively to others. For when communicating, the realities of others have to be taken into account also. At the peak of emotional intensity, or even of calm, intuitive inspiration, the focus is not on communication, but on absorption.

A warrior cannot fight effectively for his life [footnote: Swashbuckling movies to the contrary notwithstanding!] while at the same time composing poetry on the virtue of courage in battle. An artist cannot wholly immerse himself in the beauty of a sunset while hauling out his easel, setting up his canvas, and mixing paints. And a lover cannot fully convince his beloved of his love if, one second after kissing her, he cries out, "Wait a second! ‘Kiss ... kiss’: Hey, gimme a good rhyme for ‘kiss.’"

The best time for creativity, then, comes after, and not during, the moment of revelation. One may say, indeed, that art is remembered experience. The natural time for it comes afterward, during moments of reflective calm. Very rarely is the moment for artistic expression that of the actual experience which inspired it. When it is, it can only mean that the artist has achieved such a depth of inner calmness that he is able to distance himself from his experience even during its occurrence. For without inner detachment, there cannot be inner clarity.

Creative artists would like, of course, to express their creativity during the "heat" of inspiration. The higher that inspiration, however, the more silent the mind becomes. And the more silent the mind, the stiller—of necessity—the pen or the brush. Even Handel, while composing the Messiah, had to hold the divine beauty he perceived at arm’s length while he wrote. Otherwise, he could not have composed his oratorio.

Handel may be compared, in this respect, to the bodhisattva. A bodhisattva is a spiritual aspirant who, on reaching the state where his soul is ready to plunge into the ocean of infinity, suspends that immersion and turns back to tell others of the glory that awaits them in their eternal Self.

The mind of the artist is, as I have already indicated, a filter. It is the medium through which his inspiration pours, much as sunlight pours through the panes of a stained-glass window. Because the mind cannot but act as filter, what it expresses inevitably conditions what it receives, even as the colored panes of glass in a window change to some extent the rays of sunlight by admitting only one band of their color.

It is important, then, that the artist keep his mental filter as clear as possible. For even with seemingly perfect inner clarity, his art will represent a descent from subtle realms to one that is relatively gross. Art is, perforce, in this sense, a limited expression, and cannot be otherwise.

Art, to reiterate, is essentially a reflection upon experience. It is not only remembered experience: Rather, it is, or should be, the memory of that experience held up to the calmness within.

...

There is no getting around it: If an artist wants to reach people on any level, he must experience that level first in himself. He can’t expect to carry the torch of inspiration through the rain of diluting influences if the torch itself is only a sputtering match.

The artist must, in other words, be very clear about what he himself is trying to express. Vague impressions will simply translate themselves into even vaguer impressions.

Many an artist has given voice to his feelings in words something like these: "Well, man, I was standing up there on that mountaintop—you know what I mean?—and suddenly it hit me, like, you know, things just don’t have to be the way they are." No? Please tell me, how are things, that they need changing? Why don’t they have to be as they are? And how else might they be?

An artist doesn’t have to have rational answers to these questions. After all, he isn’t supposed to write a philosophical treatise when he sits down to write a poem or a sonata. He might even make some such statement as the one above, incoherent as it seems when verbalized, with a perfectly clear conception of what he is really trying to say. It may simply be that, for him, his clarity comes when he’s standing before a canvas, or thinking in terms of melodies and chord progressions. All this is quite possible, though certainly by his words alone he gives no hint that such is the case. Clarity on some level of awareness, however, is essential.

I remember a time several years ago, when I was composing an oratorio titled, Christ Lives. During that time, music was so much my focus of expression that I had difficulty tuning into the patterns of speech. One evening I hosted a dinner party, which had been previously scheduled. A woman friend addressed me at the table, and I found myself staring at her in a kind of bewilderment for a few moments before replying. Later she remarked to me that she’d had the feeling I was wondering, "Now, is she a B-flat?"

Music is its own language. It cannot easily be translated into words. Perhaps I’d have answered my friend better by singing to her!

That is why the play, and later the movie, Amadeus, was so absurdly inadequate in its portrayal of Mozart. For even if young Mozart did use coarse language (and if he did, I’m inclined to think it was only in naive reaction to intellectuals who dismissed his music as too innocent), words were not his true medium of self-expression. Speech was, for him, almost an alien tongue, with all the frustration that trying to speak in a foreign language can induce.

Painting and sculpture, too, are languages. Who can explain why a certain line conveys a sense of happiness, and another, a sense of loneliness, sorrow, or despair? They simply do. Who that has ever entered into deep attunement with the visual arts can deny that such is the case? But who can explain why it is so? Any artist so uninspired as to think, "Eureka! I have the formula!" would find that no amount of effort to reproduce that identical linear sweep could ever result in an identical effect.

Look at the movies put out by Disney Studios since the death of Walt Disney himself. Walt Disney was, in his own way, a great artist. He labored patiently and sensitively for many years to produce what were works of art in their own right. He had to discover for himself the rules of his art. What he passed on to his successors was an impressive legacy of creative fantasy, and of techniques for evoking that fantasy. It is easy to see their skillful use of his techniques in the films that have come out from Disney Studios since that time. Yet, somehow, his inspiration is lacking.

The inspiration in a work of art is vibrational, primarily. Even if its outer shell were to be reproduced exactly, its inner essence would be lost. It is as if art were imbued with a life of its own.

I remember when I saw the Taj Mahal in India for the first time. How uplifted I felt! Its sheer size, of course, must account for some of the awe one feels on beholding it. But there is more to it than that. How breathtaking the sight, as one stands before it! No model, no mere photograph could begin to convey that impression.

Go to Delphi, in Greece, if ever you get the chance. Stand in what today are only ruins. Feel the place; don’t merely stare at it. I can’t believe that you won’t be moved by the experience.

People riding the crest of a fad may paint blue paintings for the simple reason that "blues are in, these days." They may compose dissonant symphonies because dissonances are considered "avant-garde."

I remember seeing a picture window in San Francisco that looked out onto a street that was littered with newspapers and lined with unattractive houses. Why, I marveled, had the architect thought to put in a picture window? And then I remembered: Picture windows were "in" just then. It didn’t matter that the reason they were "in" was that they’d been featured first in country homes with beautiful views. "In," as far as this San Francisco architect was concerned, was "in."

Artists going at their work in this kind of spirit will never produce anything really worthwhile.

Whatever a person wants to express, regardless of his medium of expression, it can be stated successfully only if he is very clear in himself as to what he wants to say, why he wants to say it, and what is intrinsically true about this particular statement.

An interesting phenomenon of verbal communication is the fact that one of the best ways of getting a clear answer to a question is to state the question clearly. A well-stated question is already halfway to its own solution. In whatever form of art you are engaged, you will find, similarly, that the principal obstacle to creativity is not fatigue, nor even a feeling of being dull. The obstacle is being unclear in yourself as to what feeling you would like to express.

Once this clarity comes, inspiration flows.

Clarity begins with asking the right questions. It comes with knowing exactly what the problem is, and then offering that problem up into the creative flow, in the full expectation of receiving a solution.

Clarity comes, next, from one-pointed concentration. Nothing great can be accomplished in the arts without complete attention, any more than a camera will take clear pictures if the lens is out of focus.

If, then, an artist wants to improve his work, he will do well to devote himself not only to art itself, but to developing his own powers of concentration, and his own inner clarity.

We arrive, now, at the ultimate secret of creativity: High inspiration in the arts is, and must be recognized as, a descent into the mind from higher levels of consciousness.