As reading an academic text can sometimes recall sensations of being bored with school, I invite the cursory reader to skip about and dwell upon those topics and paragraphs which are immediately inspiring.

For a more substantial understanding of my topic and my arguments, both implicit and apparent, I think like any monograph this is best absorbed in a linear fashion, from beginning to end.

I would like to offer thanks to Loree Lynn, Mickey Morgan and Rich Brunner, and to my University of California at Berkeley instructors Chris Herold, Lura Dolas, Carol Murota, Shannon Jackson, and Renate Holub, and at the National University of Singapore, Professors Jiuan Heng, Sarinandara Tagore, and Ahn Tuan Nuyen – for so much patient and inspiring education and mentorship in academic and creative subjects alike

The present paper was undertaken from the perspective that human creativity has been with us from the beginning. That is, no sooner did humans appear on the Terrestrial scene than did human creativity lift its magic fingers and begin making things. I consider it to be a fundamental faculty of the species, possessed to some degree by every individual member – possessed to an exceptional degree by those few who have sought its cultivation. Since that earliest time – be it conceived as primitive period or golden age – this faculty has manifest in the using of things and the making of things – tools, shelters, seeds, baskets, domesticated animals, new ideas and the application of those ideas. For even longer perhaps it has been used in the ancient tradition of storytelling and artistry. Circled round the campfire shadows danced on cave walls, animating paintings that made meaning of daily life, while the shamans and story-tellers of the tribe painted fantastic verbal portraits of the origin and purpose of the cosmos. The myths and the epics, the jokes and the songs of our ancestors were the first great ontological tapestry, threaded with understanding. It is my premise that only by means of a certain creative ability did these tapestries come to be.

The Greeks did not use the term “art” as we do today – for them art was the practice of activity – running, orating, dialectic, governing, reading, farming – any activity in which there might be learning involved was considered an Art. Plato suggested, ostensibly at least, that the poets and painters of society ought to be banished, for theirs was an imitative art, creating imperfect and false representations of life, dangerous to the republic. There was in this proclamation some suggestion that this imitative artistry might undermine the proper channels of authority – put ideas in heads of the people that were not properly in line with the governing body. Indeed, by the time of Aristotle this anti-political aspect of poetry and visual art had been turned quite around – the Poetics explicate in no uncertain terms the proper structures for imitative arts so that they should produce the proper effects and encourage the proper behaviors in the people. As civilization advanced, the creativity of the people was relegated, socialized, placed in proper channels. Creativity became an issue of politics.

It was not until the 18^th century, along with the birth of capitalism and the rise of the bourgeoisie, that the “fine arts” were conceived – that painting and sculpture, theatre and dance, literature – were understood to be a class of things unto themselves – a special class of beautiful things, the objects of the aesthetic. The creative arts were then at last dislodged from the realm of politics and thrown into the realm of philosophy. There, in formal Aesthetics, the great minds of the leisure classes pondered the meaning of beauty, composition, and synthesis. Eventually, they came to ponder this majestic creativity, within the artist, that could bring such beautiful things about. Civilization had all along been built upon the channeled creative energies of the species – it is only in the last 200 years that the creative faculties themselves have become a subject worthy of study in the western canon. Many a bright mind has since attempted to express the mysterious brilliance of our own generative potencies, the source of our aesthetic experience.

In 1950 the field of creativity research fell into the especially analytical hands of modern psychology. From here issued personality tests, clinical investigations and character studies in an attempt to isolate creativity as a chemist would an elusive chemical compound. But unbeknownst to the political scientists, sociologists, and psychologists of the ages, the study of creativity was in fact never completely removed from the arts. The stories are still told round campfires, in those small surviving tribes and in those pockets of modern culture that have not completely dislodged themselves from their creative origins. We modern citizens of earth believe our stories as surely as our ancestors – though all too often our modern stories come from our governments, our scientists, our money-driven media – and all too often we do not recognize that they are indeed stories. In the meantime there have sprung up countless conservatories protecting wealthy bodies of arcane creative practice – esoteric schools spanning the range of any aspect of the arts one might imagine – and also esoteric schools protecting worldviews incongruous with the governing bodies, much like the ancient Greek poets of whom Plato wrote.

The study and practice of creativity has continued to develop in the arts - for the arts, as a crafts of conscious synthesis, could not have survived without it. Likewise the field of Aesthetics has not been entirely plucked of its claims to the subject at hand. In Artistry and Philosophy the cultivation, practice, and metaphysics of human creativity have evolved quietly, arriving at conclusions both meaningful and fantastic – but conclusions nevertheless unsubstantiated by analytic clinical study. Modern psychology offers a most thorough examination of the subject – but also attempts to understand the topic from the position of farthest remove. As such psychology may well offer some heretofore unseen insights into creative ontologies – and all the same we might be wary about handing over all authority on the subject to a field of study that does not seek to participate in its subject of inquiry. There is an ever-present danger in those modern pretensions whereby we have no doubt that we know what we see – and fail to question if we are not simply seeing what we think we know.

In the meantime it is easy to identify active creativity manifest across several spheres of social activity. We can see it operating in any field of work that requires ingenuity and innovation – in business and engineering and gardening and retail management – and a plethora of other fields. Closely related yet somewhat in a sphere of its own we find a certain vocational creativity – whereby artists and craftspersons continue their age old traditions and peddle their creative works. These two spheres are by no means mutually exclusive – a musical composer constantly seeks stylistic innovation and ingenuity, and a talented chef is most certainly a fine artist. We may also view creativity in terms of scale – on the microcosmic level we may investigate the most minute processing of the mind, the little bits and scraps of creative consciousness that work to build a greater whole. Likewise on the macrocosmic level we may conceive creativity as a total sum of creative energies in a society, so that in periods of such scientific and artistic innovation as the Renaissance we may say that society as a whole experienced the onset of creative expansion (motivated though it was by sudden availability of government funds). To extend the macrocosm further we might yet think about creativity on the planetary level, the ways in which the species has effectively utilized its creative capacities for beneficial global effect. And far beyond the present accomplishments of humanity, this macrocosm might be extended even further to the conscious use of creativity on the galactic and cosmic scale – an imaginary journey which would eventually arrive at our apparent starting point – the myths of creation and cosmic genesis, told around the tribal flame.

And amidst this vast social context we must not forget the most immediately tangible manifestation of creativity – that which is manifest entirely in the subjective experience of the individual. One need not be a vocational artist to explore life through writing and music, to express oneself through photography or song. Beyond any specified craft, the individual creative capacity has a countless resource of possible applications – from cooking and decorating one’s home to the way in which one presents oneself in public, intonations of voice, posture, choice of clothing – even those conscious choices employed in shaping the meanings of one’s life – the ways that one reacts, the personal understandings one applies to daily flux of event and stimulation. In any area of life in which an individual is afforded some choice, there exists the seed of creative enterprise.

It is the purpose of this paper to explore an agent and existing conception of creativity that allows for multiple spheres and applications. I do not intend to set limits, theoretical, linguistic, or otherwise, on what creativity can en potentia accomplish. I do not believe it is necessary set limits a thing in order to understand it.

The word “creativity” may conjure up a great number of conceptions – we might begin to think on art, or scientific genius, or even the creation myths of the world’s religions. With such a wide potential scope, I wish to acknowledge immediately that “creativity” is a concept both expansive and hard to define. In the most general sense, we might say that creativity is that process by which a new thing or idea is generated. This tells us quite a bit, but also raises many questions – how for example, do we define what is new? And furthermore, if the making of a new “thing” is creative, what sorts of things shall we include? Can we really say that it is creative to make a photocopy? If a computer generates a grammatically correct poem at random, shall we say the computer is creative? And for that matter, when chromosomes meet and meld at the moment of human conception – or when the DNA molecule first synthesized and began replicating itself from the primordial ooze – might we say a creative act has taken place? Some of these questions are easier to answer than others – some may be impossible to answer in any sort of definitive manner. Perhaps the best way to consider a concept so broad as “creativity” is to allow for multiple models and perspectives – attempt to understand the synthetic whole by putting together its constituent parts. This is a bit like understanding a three dimensional sphere by looking to its two dimensional cross-sections. In Kant’s terminology, it might be said that creativity is the mother of all synthetic concepts* – that is, a concept which is anything but self contained – a concept that, by its very nature, constantly points to additional concepts outside itself. For this reason, this particular paper will seek to define creativity meaningfully without defining it exclusively.

Even so, a number of clarifications are in order. In the first place, we will deal here with creativity as a human faculty, leaving aside philosophical questions about creativity in molecular structures, animals, and machines, and religious issues about the creation of the cosmos. Religiosity may play some part in certain conceptions of creativity, but will be considered only insofar as it is directly involved with the human faculty. Likewise, some discussion of computers might be in order around the subject of creative cognition, particularly in the context of computers as human creations: extension of human creativity. Generally speaking, we will confine our investigation to human practices and human contexts.

It might also help us to distinguish between some vernacular terms often associated with creativity; notions of intelligence, genius, innovation, and talent. Our first and most important task will be to place creativity apart from the faculty of human intelligence. Intelligence, like creativity, can be understood in a number of ways, and some definitions of intelligence may attempt include creative faculties. Generally speaking, however, intelligence and creativity are understood to be distinct and overlapping spheres of human ability. Intelligence is not necessarily concerned with the synthesis of new things and ideas – rather we might say of an intelligent mind that it understands complex bodies of knowledge, and that it is able to quickly solve problems and equations regarding those bodies of knowledge. One can certainly have those abilities without also exhibiting a great capacity for coming up with new ideas. Likewise, a very creative mind may come up with new ideas, combinations, and inventions consistently, without demonstrating the ability to think quickly or analyze effectively. In fact, psychological studies of creativity show that while having some degree of intelligence is an indicator for creative ability, having a high degree of intelligence does not necessarily correlate with high creative ability – that is, so long as creativity has a sturdy intellectual foundation, it seems to develop as a faculty all its own*. While it might be reasonably argued that any comprehensive definition of intelligence should take creative capacities into consideration, for our present purposes we will attempt to isolate the creative faculty, apart from other mental and emotional attributes.

Genius is another word that often surfaces when discussing creativity, and in fact is sometimes used interchangeably with the term. During the Romantic period “genius” was used by Kant and Hegel, among others, to describe the mysterious process of the artist in generating new aesthetic works. Modern use of the word genius tends to denote exceptional ability in any field, and may in fact refer to intelligence or creativity, or some combination of the two. We might apply the term genius to an average fellow who is able to do complex mathematical calculations at tremendous speeds, or to a woman who has a remarkable ability to make money for her business, or to scientists such as Bohr and Heisenberg who were innovative enough to create the new and inscrutable field of quantum physics. The most comprehensive understanding of “genius” would allow its application in terms of exceptional intelligence, exceptional creativity, or as mentioned above, exceptional creative-intelligence. The rationale in studying creativity as opposed to genius is precisely that conceptions of genius too often deal in exception and exclusivity. Genius tends to denote a remarkable ability, whereas creativity denotes an ability which is present to some degree in all individuals. Although it might be argued that all individuals have the potential for genius, or moments of genius, it can be much more strongly argued that all individuals have creative capacities which can be employed on a semi-regular basis. Furthermore, genius, like intelligence, is sometimes thought to include creativity, and sometimes not – while our present purpose remains to isolate the creativity faculty itself.

Innovation, which denotes the creation of something new, unexpectedly novel, or never before seen, is certainly wrapped up in our notion of creativity as well. In fact it might be said that innovation is what creativity produces. However, such a general understanding would limit our conception unnecessarily, implying that innovation is the only result of creative process, as opposed to one result among many. Creativity has numerous qualities in addition to the “production of innovation” -- the most prominent of which is a notion of compositional synthesis, as discussed in formal aesthetics. Put simply, compositional synthesis involves putting something together so that it is more than the sum of its parts. The combinations produced in such a process will not necessarily be judged “innovative” when compared to similar combinations produced within the same field or genre -- but even lacking innovation, each one requires an initial creative process in order to come into being. Whether judged as innovative or no, every such produced combination is both complex and perfectly unique. Consider, for example, the production of a painting. A given portrait may not be considered innovative in comparison to other works painted within the “art world” at a particular point in time, but it requires nevertheless an elaborate synthetic process if it is to be created in the first place. Such a dull painting may not revolutionize or inspire local artistic communities and paradigms, but it is a complex and unique creative product regardless. The same would be true of a new novel, or for that matter, an academic paper – each requires a complex creative activity of putting-together, such that the results may or may not be judged as innovative by a third party after the fact. Innovation, as such, can be understood as always being the result of a creative process – bearing in mind that the results of creative processes, in general, are not always innovative.

A final differentiation can be made regarding the word talent. Like “genius” talent refers to a high degree of ability in a specific field or activity – although without connotations of exceptionality carried by the former term. Talent might be best understood as a high level of skill, either innate or learned, and does not necessarily imply creative ability. A talented mechanic or dancer is not necessarily an especially creative mechanic or dancer. We might assume that a person who has demonstrated creative ability within a given field must have some degree of talent in that field, and although this may be likely, it is not always the case – an uneducated writer might produce stunningly creative narratives and still have no grasp on grammar or literary devices. Conversely, there may be certain fields of activity that require creativity before any talent can be demonstrated; it would be very difficult to find a talented musical composer who cannot put-together a piece of music in the context of a creative process. Thus, as is the case with genius, talent and creativity have the potential to feed each other, but function as independent concepts. Whether it would be meaningful to posit a talent for creativity - a talent for creative process independent of field - remains to be seen. If such a talent is possible, it would be the starting point for an applied interdisciplinary creativity.

It may be helpful at this point to discuss what creativity is not. Our most general definition of the term tells us that creativity involves the genesis of something new – therefore any event which does not involve genesis can be said to be lacking in creativity. More specifically, we might say that inertia, as defined by Newton’s laws, is decidedly not creative. Individuals, objects, and events that continue to do what they are already doing, without change – an asteroid moving through space, free from gravitational pull, or a working mother who never varies her daily routine, even to try a new food or read a new magazine – can be said to fall under the law of inertia. In the abstract, it might be said that as inertia within a system increases, the creativity within that system decreases. Unvaried routine and unconscious repetition are never creative acts – rather, they are acts of replication. A process that repeats and reproduces itself without iteration is a closed system, permitting no spontaneous variety, and ruling out the possibility of growth. Computer programs, for example, often operate in just this way – they do not attempt to revise themselves, and in fact are not revised except by the creative intervention of the programmer (or at least this was true of most programs circa 2000 CE). It has been said of human beings that, at least occasionally, some of our mental activities resemble the functioning of computer programs*. This is not to say that human beings are living computers or mere biological machines – merely that some human mental activity has been shown to resemble some computational activity, some of the time. Using this metaphor, we can see that a human being who deals with certain areas of life with the unvarying monotony of a computer program, is not applying creative processes to those areas. In general, then, we might say insofar as human beings operate exclusively by psychological or neurological programs, they are not exercising their creative faculties. Becoming more creative, in the context of this particular metaphor, would involve the individual actively reprogramming – intentionally revising one’s established programs over time. This sort of reprogramming may very well happen at the hands of a third-party “programmer” – as is often seen in cult-like religious groups and in instances of outright brain-washing – but for the purposes of discussing creativity, it should be said that in order to truly exercise the creative faculties, the individual would have to reprogram itself.

We must be careful, however, that in isolating inertia, replication, and unvarying routine as antithetical to the creative process, that we do not include in this list the notion of imitation. The concept of Imitation, and its ties to artistic practice and creative process, have a long history in both eastern and western civilization. The Platonic dialogues refer often to the notion of imitation as being the basic activity of the artist in making art – that is, all works of art attempt to imitate reality. Although it might seem that imitation is a form of replication, in fact there is a great difference between the two ideas. Imitation is, after all, a conscious undertaking – one attempts to imitate something one has seen or heard. In fact an imitation cannot ever qualify as a replication, because every imitation is necessarily imperfect – it is impossible to paint a true replication of a sunset, because the painting will always be merely two dimensional, while the sunset exists in at least three dimensions. Likewise is it impossible for an actor to replicate the character of a particular individual – in order to do so the actor would have to literally become that individual. Thus imitation is always the attempt to make something new in accord with a particular model, whereas replication can be understood as the reproduction of the model itself. The value of imitation might be better understood in the context of eastern imitative traditions. East Asia has a long history of imitative art – whereby the novice cultivates his or her skill by attempting to reproduce exactly the works of masters. The closer the young artist comes to a perfect imitation, the more nuance of skill has been cultivated, and the better understood the master work becomes. While etching a perfect copy of an ink drawing may, by western sensibilities, seem anything but creative – in fact the process of understanding how to recreate the original work requires an elaborate creative process. So important is this process within some traditions of Chinese Literati that imitative works were often undertaken entirely under the context of self-cultivation – the conscious development of one’s being through mindful activity. This notion of using the imitative arts to develop and refine the self applies also in the careful aesthetic production of Chinese characters (letters) – so that the creative nuances of calligraphy alone became an avenue for personal growth*. Applying the values of this tradition to western practice we can see that, at the very least, an attempted imitation, undertaken with sufficient consciousness and complexity, can be a highly creative act.

Perhaps the most important distinction to be made regarding this subject is found in the modern polarization of creativity and analysis. For reasons that will become increasingly clear throughout this paper, creative process and analytic process have a somewhat antithetical relationship – and in fact, popular understandings of creativity often hold analysis as being the polar opposite of creativity. By this popular conception, it might be said that creative process puts things together, and analytic process takes things apart. Analysis by itself is a tremendously useful and widely used methodology, both for problem solving and for acquiring general understanding about the world. It is often associated with the logic of Aristotle, and in fact often employs formal systems of philosophical logic in order to draw conclusions. Many writers have attempted to contrast creative states of consciousness to the more rigid Aristotelian structures of linear thought, which adhere to such logical principles as “A is A” and “Either/Or*.” These modes of analysis are perfectly valid, self-contained systems for understanding the world by breaking it down into constituent parts. In fact, the formal systems employed in the natural and social sciences, and throughout academia in general, are firmly grounded in an analytic methodology - understanding a thing by breaking it down and studying the qualities and relations of its parts. For this reason, it might say that Analysis is a cornerstone of human thought and human civilization.

Analytic processes are also quite limited. Because the work of analysis is confined to the process of taking a system apart and putting it back together, analytic process does not, by itself, work to improve the system. Analysis may be able to explicate every minute detail of the functioning of a computer, but it cannot, of its own accord, design a better computer. This is because analytic solutions must work within the parameters of the problem and solution set for a particular system, as given – they will not “come up” with new ideas. By definition, they cannot “come up” with anything other than a body of detailed knowledge pertaining to the system in question. In order to actually improve the computer, something has to be done with this analytic information, and it is this second kind of process which begins, in some capacity, to work with creativity. Even if we posit a very advanced software program designed to analyze the efficiency of a particular system and suggest improvements, that analysis will still be confined to the parameters and valuations of the programmer – who may have put a great deal of creative energy into his design, or just as likely, none at all. In other words, the apparent creative output of the software program are ultimately derived from the creative capacities of the programmer. Furthermore, the more complex the system in question, the more limited the analytical approach becomes. In attempting to understand a kitten, for example, analytic processes might look for behavioral patterns, or even cut the kitten open and so “understand” it by classifying its internal processes, gland by gland. Conversely, the creative approach to “understanding” a kitten might involve playing with it.

To better understand the difference between creativity and analysis, let us consider the troubles of an individual who, for reasons not entirely clear, has some difficulty making financial ends meet at the end of the month. The problem, as this individual sees it, is a lack of funds – the cost of living exceeds the amount of money being generated. The analytical approach will seek a solution by means of breaking down the problem, examining the constituent elements of the situation. These elements would most likely include the following categories: current means of employment, other employment opportunities, the “job market” in general, the individual’s marketable skills, hourly wages, available hours, budgeting of income, the cost of living, and more ambiguously, social connections that might lead to additional funding, employment opportunities, or reduced cost of living (social capital). With the problem broken down into its constituents, analysis goes on to seek a solution within the established framework. By analyzing the factors that directly affect the financial equation, this individual may be able to re-organize factors so as to balance the equation in a different way. Potential solutions will include the obvious: finding a higher paying job, finding cheaper housing, buying less expensive food or fewer commodities. Other solutions will be more complex: Sell the car and use public transportation, use the money from the sold car to enroll in school in order to build a more marketable skill set. Many solutions will arise in the course of analysis; some of them will be better solutions than others.

The creative approach to this problem would operate somewhat differently. Although some analytical breaking-down might occur during creative problem solving, the creative approach will by definition refuse to stop at analysis. Once a sufficient number of concepts and relations-of-concepts have been identified and categorized, the creative process immediately begins reorganizing not only the contents of the categories, but also the categories themselves. In other words, while the analytical approach runs down known combinations of factors (or game rules) in order to better balance an equation, the creative approach will attempt to rewrite the equation itself, if not throw out the existing equation altogether and begin with an entirely new model. For the case in question, the creative approach might ask, why is it important to have more “money”, and how does that reasoning bear on the course of action taken? What are the qualitative factors that go into the selection of a job for this individual, i.e. what does “work” mean to the individual and what kind of “work” will this person find most meaningful? What personal or psychological factors have gone into the creation of this individual’s financial situation, and how might they be directly addressed? Is this person not getting enough sleep or too much sleep? Drinking enough water? Eating foods that are energizing for that individual body (free water or costly soda? Cheap fresh produce or processed and expensive fast food)? How is this person socially situated – are his friends wealthy or poor? Are they proactive or unmotivated? Does this individual enjoy the company of others? Does she have passions outside the workplace, meaningful hobbies? Might those hobbies and passions be related to an increase of income in some way? If there is no funding for additional education, is self-education a possibility? What does this person like to do on Friday nights? What kind of music does this person listen to, and when? Does this person consider himself to be happy? What does she dream about at night? What is his first thought upon waking in the morning? What sort of self-esteem does this individual have – what rigid personal beliefs about her own capabilities -- if not the nature of reality itself -- are closing potential avenues of solution?

The list of additional factors that may be applied to the situation might very well be infinite. Any number of these factors may show themselves to be part of a new understanding that will bring about increased income, just as any number of them may eventually be ruled irrelevant to the present situation. In this way, the key to creative methodology is a certain degree of flexibility. Rather than looking for the solution to the problem, the creative approach dissolves the boundaries of the problem and attempts to create a more functional, or at the very least, more meaningful model*. The important thing to understand about creative thinking is that it generates structures of meaning, whereas the process of analysis works to find solutions within established structures of meaning. Another way to restate this is that analysis breaks down the problem and finds a solution in terms of constituent parts, whereas creativity synthesizes new constituent parts in order to enable a more workable model. Furthermore, the creative approach will only view the problem as a “problem” and the equation as an “equation” if those metaphors are found to be useful and/or meaningful in understanding the situation.

Consider, in jest, the following question: which approach is better, creativity or analysis? The question is facetious, of course, but perhaps it serves a purpose. If we apply a strictly analytical approach to the question, we may come to the erroneous conclusion that, as the question implies, one approach is somehow superior to the other. Here we find the great shortcoming of analysis: So long as we assume that the solution is contained within the providence of the established problem, the best answers may be ignored by default. The fellow who is convinced that his lack of energy is due either to a genetic deficiency or to the fact that he is only sleeping eight hours a night, when really he needs ten, may never realize that in fact his lack of energy is due almost entirely to chronic dehydration. This fellow may never pick up a bottle of water for being so caught up in the analysis of a limited and faulty model. This sort of error occurs constantly across any and all fields where analytical thinking has taken up a tyrannical position as being the correct approach. Now, looking again at the question, “which approach is better, creativity or analysis?”, if we do not look beyond the stated problem, we will be forced to adopt a bias where there is no need to do so. Of course, analytical thinking is not superior to creative thinking, nor is creativity superior to analysis. Each has methodological strengths and weaknesses, and each will produce results of varying efficacy when applied to different kinds of situations.

In the example of the individual lacking in funds, the solution may be very simple indeed. Perhaps a careful analysis will open new doors for this person to reduce costs and secure a higher wage. In this case an overtly creative approach would be unnecessary – this individual needs analytic and cognitive clarity, not a fresh perspective or a novel idea. However, under very similar circumstances, a different individual may find reducing costs unacceptable to maintain a preferred lifestyle (a hypoallergenic diet, a love for music, anything really), and all the ostensible and available higher paying jobs appear to be physically or spiritually taxing. This individual may analyze the problem constantly and still find no workable solution. In this scenario the application of creative problem solving will help facilitate a more complex, personal solution – long term planning for a change in career, a different methodology around investing, a move to a different city, or more attention paid to personal issues which have been sapping this person’s time, energy and morale – perhaps this person should try life in a commune, perhaps a different job with a similar wage but a more pleasant working environment will bring more joy in life, and motivate the individual to stop spending money on cigarettes and alcohol, or perhaps this person can make some extra cash playing pool on the side – to name a few possibilities. The specifics are unimportant – they are entirely dependant on the individual in question – more important is an adoption of the open-minded and inclusive approach that creative problem solving engenders. Put simply, Analytic processes define and resolve finite systems, whereas creative processes dissolve and refine finite systems.

The efficacy of creativity lies first in the generation of new models of understanding, and second in the application of those models to the “unsolvable” system at hand. Whether that system lies in the realm of individual lifestyle, scientific study of the universe, business, resource management, the creation of great art and literature – the functional structure of generation and application remains the same. That a creative idea further requires a creative application is vital to our understanding – a great idea that cannot be used remains an incomplete creation. A man stranded on a desert island may dream up such solutions as growing wings and flying away or being rescued by aliens – these ideas are very creative, but unless he finds some way to bring them about, they are not applicable to the situation at hand – they do not solve the problem. Of course, such incomplete ideas may serve entirely different purposes and solve different problems – fantastical solutions may provide this fellow with hope, good humor, a sense of empowerment, and in this sense offer solution to a much older human problem: how to make meaning in the face of a tremendously confusing universe. I make this last point to illustrate that even when creative thinking does not have immediate application to the problem at hand, the application of creative thinking always has the potential to serve as an end unto itself – that is to say, the exercise of creative faculties is always likely to bring abut some kind of meaningful change, whether that change takes place in the targeted system or not*. In any case, a practical understanding of creativity demands that new ideas must also become applied ideas before we can consider a creative process to be complete. Our primary interest here is in applied creativity, although understanding inapplicable, generative creativity may also have some value, especially if it bears light on how applied creativity comes to be.

Now that we have established some abstract principles of creativity, and found creative process as generally antithetical to analytic process, our next step is to clarify the relationship that creativity and analysis necessarily share. In fact, it is only under extreme circumstances that creativity or analysis might be seen operating independently of the other; most of the time, when one type of process is used, the other will be used as well. Here we can happily apply Hegel’s model of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, to understand how creativity and analysis invariably work together to accomplish tasks, complete projects, and produce knowledge and meaning. Creative products are analyzed, and analyzed data are used creatively, in an ongoing dialogue. Writing a novel or painting a picture is often considered a primarily creative undertaking, but without some degree of analysis the artist will have no discernment about what is being produced. Likewise, a scientific study, generally considered an analytic process, will be fruitless if the creative faculties are not engaged in the synthesis of an initial hypothesis, and engaged again in the interpretation of data. In this way, it may be posited that any long term project, whether scientific, artistic or otherwise qualified, will proceed by an interchange of creative and analytic intervals. We may certainly find examples of analytic process seemingly devoid of creative thought and vice versa, although these are likely to be among the most alienating of works. In the case of extreme analysis, we will find a thing thoroughly broken down but not improved – a process which might go through cheerful stages of Socrates’ reductio ad absurdum, but will inevitably disintegrate into nihilism* in the most negative sense – where no meaning can be made because all potential meanings are further broken down. In the case of extreme creativity, we may find a work of such meandering magnitude that little or no significant form can be found within it – the plethora of meanings produced begin to resemble sheer chaos. In fact a creative process completely devoid of analysis might produce no tangible results whatever – as the act of bringing creative contents into concrete form implies at least some analytic discernment Those epic works of literary modernism that begin to approach this maelstrom of meanings - and here I am referring primarily to the multi-perspectival works of Joyce, Woolfe, and Faulkner* - are magnificent precisely because they demonstrate coexisting, multiple meanings while at the same time retaining deep, integral complexity of structure. Each of these authors took their creative process to new heights, but retained enough analytical discernment to make their works accessible to other minds. Likewise, in the mind of the scientific genius, we can only wonder at what point the cold analysis of data is put aside so that a new scientific paradigm can emerge in flashes of synthetic insight – the dawning of Darwin’s evolution, the Spiral of Watson and Crick’s double helix.

If analysis and creativity are such interdependent processes, what then is the use of isolating the creative faculty from its brother? We might as well ask the point in studying the hands after determining the hands to be complimentary to the feet. In the first place, although the “creative process” that an individual goes through in producing new things and ideas involves some interplay of synthetic and analytic processing, without the synthetic (creative) aspect, nothing would be produced. This internal “creative process” is the fuel for the external endeavor, and the more we understand the minute processes involved, the better our understanding of the larger picture. In the second place, and perhaps more importantly, processes of analysis have been formally recognized in western thinking for millennia. A recorded, codified, formal analytical logic finds its beginnings in Plato and is crystallized soon after in the elaborate systems of Aristotle. The western philosophical tradition has always honored the analytic process, while for the most part synthetic processes were considered a secondary – or as Baumgarten put it “minor” – aspect of human consciousness. The attempts made within formal philosophy to give equal treatment to creativity and creative methodologies are a relatively recent affair. Certainly there have been stirrings of a philosophy of synthesis with the advent of formal aesthetics in the 18^th century – although this emergent field concerns itself as much with art, beauty and perception as it does with creativity itself. Likewise, we might turn to early phenomenology and existentialism for thorough attempts at understanding the generative processes inhering in subjective experience – although here too “creativity” remains more of an implicit issue than an explicit one. These two philosophical branches aside, however, 20^th century philosophy has proceeded to divide itself into oppositional camps of “analytic” philosophy and so-called “continental” philosophy – neither of which have demonstrated a strong concern for a more thorough discussion of creative process*. Philosophically speaking then, if one now wishes to approach the subject of creativity, one is generally referred to the field of aesthetics. Those who seek further exploration within the field will inevitably find themselves in the provinces of modern psychology.

This lack of attention to creativity is a mistake; at least enough of a mistake to merit further investigation both into the processes themselves and into the social and intellectual climates that have relegated the processes to relative obscurity. It may be, and has in fact been posited by some psychologists, that not only is western society biased towards analytical process as the “correct” methodology, but in fact creative processes have been thoroughly repressed by an educational system that does not begin to understand them. The one area where creativity has officially been allowed to flourish under modernity is the arts; since the identification and grouping of the “fine arts” by Abbe Batteux in 1746, creativity has generally been claimed as the province of artists. Whether or not this is a worthy claim, the fact remains that for the past 200 years, the most systematic studies of creativity took place as a consequence of artistic practice – that is, as artists learned their craft and produced their works, they inevitably looked into the mental and emotional states that made such production possible. It was only economical to do so. (Even in the case of an upper class bourgeoisie of artists, for whom mere survival was not a concern, not one of them could advance socially – gain recognition – without some understanding of our mysterious subject; so that understanding creativity became pragmatic for the rich and the poor artist alike.) Thus, even if the relegation of creativity to the arts is ultimately judged to be a mistake, the result of that relegation is an increased consciousness of creativity within the artistic spheres. For this reason, artistry may be the best point of departure for a more thorough understanding of our topic.

This is not to imply that scientists, academics, politicians, and laypersons in general did not retain and practice creativity throughout modernity – nor that they didn’t think critically about how to do so. Rather, that these latter classes could survive with or without an explicit understanding of creativity – whereas for the artists, who had to produce creative products on a regular basis in order either to advance socially or to survive the winter, an explicit understanding and active dialogue about creative process became a much more important, not to mention lucrative, affair. The work of the scientist, lawyer or salesman is sporadically creative, as new ideas are periodically sought, and developed – the work of the painter, poet, actor is almost always creative, as the production of paintings, poems, and performances are contingent on a successful process of synthesis. Because the artist must sell creativity to make a living, capitalism has taught artists to learn about creativity as a matter of necessity. And because aesthetics often aims at being a philosophy of art and artists, it is in aesthetics that the most complex formal thinking on the subject has been done. Thus, it is to artists and aesthetics that we must inevitably turn.

“When a paradigm shift occurs – when we go from seeing things one way to seeing them another way – the whole world is remade.”

Now when the word “creativity” is employed in casual speech, it is often being used in reference to the practice of making art. Certainly, in the world where artistic products have been commercialized in any way – film and television, theatre for profit, publishing, photography, visual art printed on dog food cans or corporate public relations literature, even short bits of text in magazine advertisements – the individuals who generate the marketed material are often referred to as the “creatives.” When we talk about someone doing “creative” work, we usually mean that this person is involved in some kind of artistic career, most common among them might be writers, actors, dancers, singers, directors, choreographers, photographers, sculptors, visual artists, composers, musicians, designers, craftspersons, etc… . Alternatively, we might consider a more literal interpretation of the phrase “creative work” – it might refer to individuals who are very creative about their approach to the working world. This is a perfectly valid possibility, and certainly such individuals exist and make money using methods that most human beings would have trouble imagining; some even market themselves as being exceptionally creative problem solvers, regardless of field. Such “creativity specialists” are still rare at this point in history, however, and more generally speaking our “creative workers” are understood to be our artists. Or, it may be said with more certainty, the vast majority of creative practitioners fall into one artistic field or another.

Clearly, these artistic fields seem to have something in common, although what exactly this commonality is might remain a mystery. Ostensibly the act of dancing in ballet recital and the act of writing a novel are thoroughly different undertakings. A dancer works with his body; using canonized dance techniques and operating under the laws of kinesiology and physics, he endeavors to understand and express a specific choreography, and often performs the final results of this work for a live audience. A writer, by contrast, works with language, using her mind to translate images and concepts into words, she forms and reforms perceived realities into patterns of syntax, rhythm, metaphor, expressing a narrative or an argument, or perhaps an aesthetic concept that defies conventional logic – and when this process is done, the writer will often present her finished work to a public or private readership. Thus elaborated, dancing and writing seem to have very little in common. The dancer’s practice appears to be a performative exercise of the body, while the writer’s practice appears to be a private exercise of the mind. And yet since the 18^th century, both Dance and Literature have been considered cornerstones of “the Arts” - both practices are considered to be artistic by nature, and in more recent terminology those individuals who practice them have been named as “creative” individuals. From the perspective of the broader social context, writing and dancing appear to be very much the same kind of thing. Now why should this be the case?

Perhaps the answer is that, underlying all artistic fields, there exist some common points of methodology and structure. More specifically, across the artistic disciplines there is employed a uniform faculty of human creativity. This is what we mean when we use the term “interdisciplinary creativity” – it indexes those generative human faculties which enable the synthesis of novelty, new forms, fresh combinations, and highly individualized expressions -- regardless of field. The writer and the dancer, and for that matter, the actor, the painter, the filmmaker, and the composer, have each developed a means to tap this generative faculty and apply it to the specific structure of their craft. An easier way to understand this might be in terms of systems and game rules. All of the practitioners mentioned above work with a system of very specific symbol structures. The writer works with letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, abstract ideas, concrete narratives, and a plethora of literary devices such as metaphor, allusion, irony. Likewise, the dancer works with a vocabulary of physical movements which are strung together into a choreographic “phrase,” and applies to this phrase the laws of gravity, balance, the musculature and nuerosomatic symmetry of the body, as well as any number of personal emotions and interpretations, visualizations, and expressive nuances. And so on: the actor might work with vocal production, physical gesture, emotionality, and textual interpretation, the painter with form, texture and color, the composer with tonality, rhythm, melody, and harmony, while the filmmaker crafts his art from several disciplines at once. In every case, we see the artist working within a specific system of symbol structures, each made up of a variety of constituent elements (words, gestures, notes, etc…). Furthermore, each of these systems is organized by a variety of game rules that make certain combinations of constituents more meaningful than others. For example, the composer works with a system of clearly defined tones, and puts them together using a specific set of game rules in order to create a desired harmonic effect. And of course, as the systems of musical composition expand over time, new game rules are generated to encompass higher levels of complexity, so that the game rules for making harmony eventually develop into the game rules for writing a symphony, and so on*. Not all practitioners in a given field will use exactly the same system – some actors focus almost entirely on emotional expression and never receive vocal training, others base their work almost entirely on the nuances of vocal production. However varied the systems used by practitioners within a field, it may still be said with certainty that all artistic practitioners in any field must work with both a system and a set of game rules in order to practice their craft. Otherwise, there would be nothing to create with, and for that matter, nothing to create.

The creative process functions then as a broad application for the revision and expansion of systems and game-rules, regardless of the content of those systems. Applying creative process to dance is very much like applying creative process to writing – all the individual essentially needs is some familiarity with the specified system. Viewed in this context, the experience of writing is remarkably similar to the experience of dancing, for to each craft the artist is applying both the creative process and their own personal, self-expressive energy. That one practice works more with the body while the other works more with the mind is immaterial –or perhaps better put, it is merely a question of which materials one prefers to work with. Now if this is the case, another possibility becomes apparent: just as all forms of artistic practice are based in part on a shared foundation of creative process, “the Arts” by nature are prone to function as a collective interdisciplinary creative field. That is to say, those artists who are able to isolate and cultivate the creative process in application to one craft are likely to understand its application to other crafts. It is for this reason that the fields of visual art and literature are able to influence each other to the degree that they do. In fact, the great aesthetic innovations of recent historical periods have never been contained by one artistic field alone. The advent of artistic Modernism was manifest not only in the sphere of visual arts – it was simultaneously given voice in the novels of such writers as Virginia Woolfe and James Joyce, and likewise given body in the contorted and expansive motions of Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham and their dancers. Ideologies, concepts, values, and politics have historically seeped from one form of creative expression to another. In fact, “the Arts” as a whole may represent humanity’s best efforts to establish specific channels and structures for our creative energies to operate and evolve.

Thus it becomes clearer why creativity is so often associated with “the Arts.” Artistic Practice is founded on an understanding of creative process, so that all artistry represents an implicit attempt to cultivate a practice of creativity. It must be reiterated, however, that although the arts represent the most developed structures for applied creativity, creativity itself exists and works as a phenomena independent of any specific field, and as such it is applicable to a great multiplicity of fields, and in a multiplicity of ways. Just as it is possible for both the dancer and the writer to go through similar processes of creative cultivation, so too should it be possible for the scientist, the business executive, the politician to engage their creative faculties consciously. For that matter, the common individual, regardless of social status or occupation, should be able to apply the principles of cultivated creativity in order to live a more complex, nuanced, and fulfilling life.

It follows that we should be able to uncover a set (or sets) of principles that enable the conscious cultivation of creativity in the fields collectively referred to as “the Arts.” Furthermore, these principles should be applicable to “non-artistic” fields and in fact should be applicable to human activity in general, regardless of social sphere. Because “the Arts” represent the most highly developed systems for encountering and channeling human creativity, it is here that we are most likely to find such principles in a highly evolved state. Indeed, several books have been written on the subject of cultivated creativity for the artist. However, some of the greatest and most influential instances of creativity have emerged not through the arts, but in the spheres of philosophy, science, the social sciences, and politics. Creativity on this scale does not simply generate a new structure in a local system, such as a new play or sculpture – it has the potential to change systems on a global scale. In order to understand the enabling principles of creativity in their most rarified form, we must consider how, for example, the great minds of science arrived upon the technological innovations that have so transformed the face of our planet. This latter subject has not received as much attention, and understandably so – it is expected of an artist to generate novelty on a regular basis, whereas in those professional fields outside the arts, novelty comes only in moments of great insight and breakthrough. Such moments are difficult to capture, quantify and understand, and it is from the mysterious nature of these operations that we are eager to name such men as Einstein “Genius” in order to better comprehend them.

Our goal then will be to investigate principles and techniques for cultivating creativity as they are manifest across the multiple spheres of human life. By exploring the methods by which “creative” individuals carry on the practice of creative work -- as well as the ways in which individuals in non-artistic fields employ creative processes -- we shall begin to paint a more nuanced portrait of the basic faculties in question.

Responding to the subject of innovations in mathematics, Einstein once wrote in a letter about his own innovative thinking: “The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in the mechanism of my thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be ‘voluntarily’ reproduced and combined[1].” Here it would seem Einstein is attempting to describe a somewhat subjective phenomenon – one that does not readily lend itself to words. In fact, he describes his own creative thought process as lacking words almost entirely, being composed by ‘entities’ ‘images’ and ‘signs’ which, to some degree, appear to be under his conscious control. By conventional standards Einstein was no artist, and yet as the father of Relativity in physics, we might do well to consider him as one of the greatest artists ever to walk this Earth. Many have investigated into the nature of this fellow’s “genius” and Einstein himself often made attempts to explain the mechanisms of his own glorious mentations. We might expect from a man of such potent innovations that his mind functioned in a perfectly unique and incomprehensible way. To a certain degree this may be the case – but it is also the case that Einstein’s experience of creative processes has a great deal in common with the reported experiences of others.

What is immediately apparent in the quote above is that Einstein’s creative processing was nonverbal, image-oriented, and highly subjective. These are in fact very common themes among creative practitioners. They also pose a certain problem to any attempts to define or write about creativity – the subject appears to operate in a realm that by its nature resists the confines of language. At the same time, this realm can be described only through individual attempts to translate highly subjective experiences into words. The only alternative to these linguistic translations would be to communicate the nature of creative process through more artistic means – writing a metaphorical poem or painting a picture – a solution for the artist, perhaps, but of no use whatever to our present purpose. It is important then to recognize and consider the implications of a non-verbal creativity from the outset – doing so will allow us better to understand the peculiar challenges faced by individuals who attempt to describe, verbally, the non-verbal aspect of their creativity, as well as give the reader some opportunity to imagine what those non-verbal states of consciousness might be like. For reasons that will become increasingly clear, it appears any mind that insists on understanding creativity only through the mechanisms of language will most likely achieve a very limited understanding of the subject.

The subjectivity of the creative process is a bit more difficult to place in a meaningful context. Fortunately, the experience does not appear to be entirely subjective. Every individual will, to some extent, experience creative process in their own unique way – and some develop highly individualized methods and techniques for their own practice of creative cultivation. That said, there does appear to be a great deal of overlap in the structures of these individual creative processes -- so much so that we may attempt to speak meaningfully about the nature and shape of the “creative process” in general. What follows is a survey of three attempts to describe the creative process – beginning with a theory that situates creativity in a larger social context, and then examining in more detail the processes that take place within the individual.

In 1990 the Spencer Foundation financed a four year research project, helmed by Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, which aimed to investigate creativity through a systematic study of exceptional individuals. Ninety-one creative individuals were then interviewed – the criteria for their selection consisted primarily of their demonstrated contribution to a known field, including the arts, science, business, government, and human rights. Furthermore, selected individuals had to be actively involved in their work at the time of the study, and each of them was over sixty years old. By establishing these criteria, Csikszentmihalyi meant to focus on individuals who had a lifetime of experience with applied creativity. The resulting book, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, represents Csikszentmihalyi’s comprehensive analysis of the data collected in the course of this research.

One of the most striking aspect of Csikszentmihalyi’s creativity theory is the understanding of creativity as primarily a socially situated phenomenon. In fact, his theory is almost entirely unconcerned with what he calls “personal creativity” or creativity for the individual that operates without a tangible social impact. Although he highly recommends personal creativity as means to finding fulfillment and enrichment in life, his analysis focuses on the process whereby some aspect of the social fabric is actually remade. As such, his notions of “creative process” are tied into theoretical framework that takes both the individual and the larger social system into account – a framework which he calls “systems theory” but which I will continue to refer to as socially situated creativity. As he puts it, “Creativity with a capital C, the kind that changes some aspect of culture, is never only in the mind of a person … to have any effect, the [new] idea must be couched in terms that are understandable to others, it must pass muster with the experts in the field, and finally it must be included in the cultural domain to which it belongs. So the first question I ask of creativity is not what is it, but where is it.[2]” He goes on to define a system of three parts which produce creativity through a triangulation effect.

Outside the individual, the two fundamental aspects of this socially situated creativity are referred to as the domain and the field. Of these two, the necessity of domain is the more vital and more understandable concept. Simply put, the domain refers to a given symbolic system and set of operating game rules. Csikszentmihalyi refers to mathematics as a general domain, with algebra and number theory as smaller and more refined domains within the broader mathematical context. Other domains might include literature, biology, philosophy, marketing, music, theatre, architecture, city planning, publishing, martial arts, theology, gardening, occult sciences, social theory – again the list is potentially endless. Anywhere that a body of knowledge has been collected, a domain is likely to be found. The necessity of a domain to creative process has already been discussed – in the first place, without a system of symbols and game rules to work with, the creative process will lack the raw materials with which to produce a creative product. Csikszentmihalyi also points out the social function of the domain – without a shared domain, individuals would be unable to communicate their discoveries to one another. It is only by virtue of an accessible and objective domain that multiple individuals may make contributions and learn from each other within the same area of knowledge and practice. What this means to the “creative process” in general is that in order to be creative, one must have somehow acquired a certain amount of “domain knowledge” to begin with. This is obvious but important to keep in mind: one must learn the basics of physics or tonality before one can postulate new physical theories or write tonal music – so that indeed, the creative process almost always involves a certain degree of analytic understanding. On the more socially complex level, individuals often benefit from learning the recent innovations and discoveries within their domain before attempting to contribute to it – the deeper one’s knowledge of a domain, the more material one potentially has to work with*.

The “creative process” is therefore often intricately linked to at least one specific domain, although potentially it might work with several simultaneously. Furthermore, each domain is itself the product of numerous creative processes that have taken place over the course of time. I quote Csikszentmihalyi at length on this matter:

The existence of domains is perhaps the best evidence of human creativity. The fact that calculus and Gregorian chants exist means that we can experience patterns of order that were not programmed into our genes by biological evolution. By learning the rules of a domain, we immediately step beyond the boundaries of biology and enter the realm of cultural evolution. Each domain expands the limitations of individuality and enlarges our sensitivity and ability to relate to the world. Each person is surrounded by an almost infinite number of domains that are potentially able to open up new worlds and give new powers to those who learn their rules. Therefore, it is astounding how few of us bother to invest enough mental energy to learn the rules of even one of these domains, and live instead exclusively within the constraints of biological existence[3].

The implication here is that cultural evolution and the ongoing creation and revision of domains exist in a reciprocal relationship. Domains are the residue of creative process, and further creative process is engendered by exploring domain knowledge. Creativity helps culture to evolve, and a sufficiently evolved culture provides further opportunities for creativity. Of course, such theorizing immediately takes us into an understanding of creativity in the social macrocosm – a subject to which we will return later. In general, the most socially significant quality of the shared domain is that it allows creativity to be both a collaborative and inter-subjective process.

One final aspect worth noting about the relationship of the domain to the creative process is that the state or structure of a domain has the potential to affect the kinds of creativity that can take place. That is to say, a comprehensive and well defined domain, such as mathematics, allows for creativity in much more complex and specific capacity than does a relatively undeveloped field, such as cognitive science. Csikszentmihalyi tells the story of a graduate student in physics in Munich who, in the course of a lecture, suddenly raised his hand and communicated an insight about a new visual model for understanding sub-atomic particles. The idea was so effective that within two weeks, physicists all around the world were calling the professor to discuss the applications of the new model. This sort of chain reaction of rapid communication was possible because physics is such thoroughly defined and clearly structured domain. Csikszentmihalyi claims that this rapid communication of insight could never take place within his own field of Psychology, which is by contrast a much more “diffuse” system of thought, such that an individual must spend years working and writing before his or her insights can be effectively demonstrated[4]. The implication then is that there is more room for creativity in some fields than in others – or at the very least, the structure of the domain in question may limit how easily creative insights can be communicated.

The third and final key concept in this socially situated theory of creativity is the importance of the field. The field refers to the persons and social structures that officially work on and around a given domain – this may include any scholars, professionals, consumers, producers or otherwise ‘experts’ in the area of that domain. The field of film-making, for example, would include academic professors, vocational teachers, directors, editors, producers, actors, film critics, censors, etc… . In general the field represents the immediate social context for any work done in a domain. Csikszentmihalyi describes the field as carrying out a conservation effect: “the field … includes all individuals who act as gatekeepers to the domain. It is their job to decide whether a new idea or product should be included in the domain … what new works of art deserve to be recognized, preserved and remembered.[5]” This necessity of the field to creative process is ostensibly apparent but also highly problematic. The field is the official social forum in which new ideas and works of art are developed – this forum facilitates a context for work in a domain that has the potential to be either invigorating or stultifying for the creative individual. The beneficial aspects of the field might include agreed upon standards for criticism, community support in fostering work, and the potential for synergy between individuals working in related areas. Conversely, the danger of placing creativity in a dependant relationship to the field is the possibility of authoritarianism over the domain – if the parameters of a field become too rigid, creativity may become almost impossible. This danger is best exemplified in those cases where a field is administered by a thoroughly inappropriate authority, such as the historical problem of the church attempting to define and control the sciences, or the tendencies of modern psychiatry to define and control human spirituality. These are extreme examples, but they serve to illustrate the inherent flaw in field-dependant creativity – the field does not necessarily know what is right or what is best for the expansion of a given domain, and it is sometimes the work of creativity to defy the field in order to make true progress. Few would have dreamed that the probability logic behind quantum physics was viable, practical science – but thanks to the intrepid explorations of quantum physicists, our modern computers run on quantum technology.

Thus the most important relationship between the creative process and the field is that the state of the field has the potential either to encourage or inhibit creativity. Csikszentmihalyi argues that a field can “collapse” under conditions of being either too reactive or too proactive in its production of new ideas. Fields that operate so conservatively as to shut out any and all innovation are likely to fall into obscurity, while fields that are too liberal in assimilating new ideas will eventually degrade into a diffuse chaos. A final point to consider is that fields which are strongly tied into larger social systems may foster increases in creativity in accordance with larger social and political issues – for example, there was a great deal of funding invested in physics research after World War II, and this money made possible a great plethora of exploration and discovery in the area of nuclear physics[6]. Conversely, any field with political allegiance is likely to permit creative processes only when those processes are in accord with the established political aims. Here too, we see that the field often carries on an inexorable dialogue with the creative process of an individual, and this dialogue can affect both the quality and quantity of creative energies produced. It must be noted, however, that Csikszentmihalyi established this framework based on an understanding whereby creativity is only important where it makes social change. His notion of the field as being the “gatekeeper” that makes decisions about which ideas “deserve” to be allowed into a domain is a valid, if problematic, interpretation. We shall return to the problems of an exclusively socially situated creativity, and the problems of the “gatekeeper” scenario later in this chapter.

This particular creativity theory is completed by situating the “creative individual” as a sort of mediator between the domain and the field. Problems within the domain are taken up by individuals who work at them and occasionally find creative solutions, which are then presented to the field as potential contributions to the domain. It is here that the “creative process” actually takes place within the individual – an event that, at this point, still remains something of a mystery. However that process functions, Csikszentmihalyi stresses that a great deal of editing is required in handling the influx of creative insights that may emerge – many of them may be unworkable. Although it ultimately falls to the experts in the field to pass judgment on the viability of a new idea, it is also possible, and indeed necessary, for the individual to act as editor to his own creative output. A creative individual who does not wish to waste a great deal of time must learn how to recognize workable ideas from unworkable ones. This is accomplished by a process that Csikszentmihalyi refers to as “internalizing the system.” This means that the larger social relationship between a domain and the field must actually be internalized in the psyche of the individual – this person must have not only a sufficient degree of domain knowledge, but also a strong understanding of the criteria of judgment held by the field[7]. A physicist must know not only the nuances of recent physics, but also the criteria of the physics field for a workable physical theory. Likewise, a composer must have internalized not only the rules for writing a symphony, but also the state of symphonies in the field, and the standards by which a new contribution might be considered new and beautiful.

Although working within the confines of field standards is quite often the best way to proceed, I wish to emphasize again that it is not always the best way to proceed. By constantly deferring to the field, we might say that Csikszentmihalyi has a rather conservative interpretation of the creative process. During her youth, Martha Graham lived during a time when the field of dance was entirely dominated by classical ballet. Had Graham deferred to the ‘experts’ of her field, she would never have had opportunity to revolutionize the dance world with the stylistic and kinesiological innovations that have come to be known as “modern dance.” Far from weakening the field, the canonization of her work has invigorated the dance world with the possibility of new styles, and furthermore helped to clarify by contrast what the aesthetic of classical ballet is best suited to express. Despite the progress that Graham’s creativity has engendered, it is unlikely that, at the time of her rebellion, any but the most liberally minded ‘experts’ in the field would have supported her endeavor. This sort of innovation has occurred throughout history and across a great variety of fields. The authoritarian ‘experts’ of the old paradigm avidly resist and denounce the apostles of the new paradigm, for the perfectly understandable reason that they simply cannot comprehend such a radical change as being workable – much less an improvement on what came before. I must disagree with Csikszentmihalyi’s assertion that the creative individual can be reduced to an incidental intermediary between a developing field and domain. As he puts it: “Perhaps being creative is more like being involved in an automobile accident. … Accidents, like creativity, are properties of systems rather than of individuals … it is important to point out the tenuousness of the individual contribution to creativity, because it is usually so often overrated.[8]” Certainly, creativity is quite often fed by, and occasionally completely resultant from, the social context; behind every Nobel Prize awarded to an individual, there are great masses of creative minds who laid the groundwork for that particular accomplishment. However, I doubt it could be argued that, had Beethoven never been born, some other individual would have composed his symphonies instead.

So how did Beethoven compose his symphonies? Until now we have looked at creativity as an abstract theory and as a socially situated phenomenon. Still mysterious is that process which takes place within the individual creative mind – the process whereby a painting or novel is generated, a new marketing plan is crystallized, a new biological theory begins to take shape. In Shakespeare’s time this occurrence might be explained by the existence of the muse, a benevolent entity who carries new ideas into creative minds and so gives them their inspiration. Given the apparent inscrutability of the subject, we might be tempted to stop at that explanation. Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, might even suggest that literally believing in the existence of a muse could very well be the first step toward higher creativity. Fortunately she has a bit more to say on the subject; The Artist’s Way is perhaps the best known and best selling guide to cultivated creativity in western society. Julia Cameron penned the book after a decade of leading creativity workshops and seminars, and the book itself is designed to be a self-administered course in “freeing people’s creativity.” Cameron’s ideas and techniques are quite popular and apparently quite effective – she has worked with artists and non-artists alike, and in addition helping practitioners of art excel at their craft, she is also an advocate of “the art of creative living” – the application of creativity to the experiences and routines of daily life. Unlike Csikszentmihalyi, Cameron is not a scientist and is only occasionally an academic, and as such her creativity theory is both highly subjective and firmly grounded in her own field – the field of creativity cultivation itself. As such, her understanding of the creative process is based on experiential evidence and pragmatic problem solving for creative practitioners in general, and artists in particular.

Cameron makes no apologies for the somewhat ‘spiritual’ flavor of her theory. In fact she explicitly advocates a re-evaluation of ‘spirituality’ as it relates to the creative process. Early in The Artist’s Way she states “the heart of creativity is the experience of the mystical union; the heart of the mystical union is the experience of creativity[9].” Of course, the analytic mind will immediately ask, ‘mystical union’ with what? Without explicitly defining what exactly this ‘mystical union’ might be, Cameron endeavors to recontextualize both creativity and spirituality by making them synonymous terms*. That is, she means to show that creative practice is always an expression of “spirit,” and more radically, that spiritual experiences always involve creative energies. The implications of this recontextualization will be examined shortly – suffice to say that Cameron understands the creative process as relying in part on an altered state of consciousness. That is to say, an individual involved in creative process will experience a consciousness that is somehow different from the normal, rational, analytic mode we usually employ in seeing the world. This sort of “irrational” approach to personal development has been associated, with somewhat negative connotations, to the “new age” movement that began in the American 1960s. However, this line of thinking was pioneered over a century ago by psychologist William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience

Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness, as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation.[10]

Specifically, the altered state of consciousness that Cameron associates with creativity is both non-verbal and image oriented. “In order to function in the language of art, we must learn to live in it comfortably. The language of art is image … it is a wordless language, even when our very art is to chase it with words. The artist’s language is a sensual one, a language of felt experience.[11]” Cameron’s use of the term ‘language’ to describe a non-verbal consciousness is a perhaps a bit ironic. Yet in this instance the word ‘language’ also functions as a clever transitive metaphor – it attempts to describe, in analytic terms, what a non-verbal consciousness might be like.

Cameron’s approach to the creative process, then, is intricately linked to isolating this “creative consciousness” and allowing it to operate freely. She believes ardently that creativity is a natural human faculty, equally accessible to all, but that in the course of being socialized, many individuals find their creative capacities staunched. “Just as blood is a fact of your physical body and nothing you invented, creativity is a fact of your spiritual body and nothing that you must invent.[12]” The real work of creativity, at least initially, is the isolation of “creative blocks” within the individual that inhibit the natural unfolding of creative process. For this reason Cameron is a strong advocate of self-knowledge: “As we lose our vagueness about our self, our values, our life situation, we become available to the moment. It is there, in the particular, that we contact the creative self. … We become original because we become something specific: an origin from which work flows.[13] Vital to this approach is a willingness to withhold negative self-criticism until a substantial amount of creative work has already been produced. The reason for this is that most individuals have a great deal of trouble opening their creative channels at all – the first and foremost task of any creative process is to open that channel, an action which is easily prevented by preemptive criticism. Analysis and judgment are the second step in the process – the first step is to get the creative energies flowing and working on the subject at hand. In fact, the imagery of “flow” and “channel” are a recurrent motif in Cameron’s technique. She suggests that in many ways, creativity is not something that an individual does so much as something that an individual allows to happen.

Art is not about thinking something up. It is about the opposite - getting something down. The directions are important here. If we are trying to think something up, we are straining to reach for something that’s just beyond our grasp, “up there, in the stratosphere, where art lives on high….” When we get something down there is no strain. We’re not doing; we’re getting. Someone or something else is doing the doing. Instead of reaching for inventions, we are engaged in listening[14].

This “someone or something else” is very much like the muse of yore, situated in a more practical technique. By this theory, the creative process centers around “making contact” with the creative capacity, whether that capacity is understood as an altered state of consciousness, or the individual’s “creative self”, or even a “higher power” as such that the individual finds meaningful. As we will see, Cameron has a wealth of techniques for establishing such “contact” and using it consistently for the making of art and creative problem solving. The specifics of what exactly is being contacted are left to the individual practitioner – the specifics themselves must be created. Whatever this “it” is, it appears to exist in an image-oriented and non-verbal capacity, and for that reason does not beg of an analytical, verbal description.

Although this approach to creativity certainly fills in certain holes left by Csikszentmihalyi’s socially situated creativity, it still paints a rather vague picture of what might actually be happening within the individual when the creative process begins to occur. For an even more specific theory about creative process, we shall turn to an even more specific field – in this case, the practice of drawing. In Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Dr. Betty Edwards outlines a detailed structure for what happens in the moment of creation. Edwards, like Cameron, spent a decade refining teaching methods for her drawing students, and penned her book as the result of her practical research in this area. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain functions as a theory and lesson plan for increasing one’s ability to draw specifically, and increasing one’s creativity in general. Edwards also shares Cameron’s perspective that becoming more creative has less to do with learning how to do something, and more to do with letting go of things that inhibit a natural process. As she puts it:

The purpose of this book is not to teach you how to express yourself, but instead to provide you with the skills which will release you from stereotypical expression. This release in turn will open the way for you to express your individuality – your essential uniqueness – in your own way[15]

Edwards unique approach to drawing is based on a series of brain studies conducted around the middle of the twentieth century, by Roger W. Sperry and his associates at the California Institute of Technology. Drawing on the results of their research, Edwards devised a new theory for creative practice, with special emphasis on how visual processing in the brain affects one’s ability to draw.

Time and again, creative individuals have recognized the difference between the two processes of gathering data and transforming those data creatively. Recent discoveries about how the brain works are beginning to illuminate that dual process. Getting to know both sides of your brain is an important step in liberating your creative potential[16].

The “two processes” here mentioned seem in close parallel to our previous discussion regarding the interplay of creative and analytic process. According to Edwards’ creativity theory, the polarization of creativity and analysis is not merely an intuitive distinction between abstract concepts – in fact it is a duality supported by the very structure of our brains.

Without dwelling on the complexities of brain structure, it should be noted that the mammalian brain differs from its reptilian predecessors via the addition of an enormous cerebral cortex, folded intricately upon itself. The primary fold in all this added brain matter occurs right down the center, effectively dividing cortical functions into two neatly packaged and substantially independent brain hemispheres, left and right. In primate brains (i.e. in human brains) and possibly in the brains of highly intelligent marine mammals, it seems clear that the brain functions asymmetrically across hemispheres. That is to say, the left hemisphere is specialized for the facilitation of some cognitive functions, while the right brain is specialized to facilitate other cognitive functions*. As early as 1860 this notion was verified and popularized by Paul Broca, and at that time it was determined that the processing of language was primarily a left-brain activity. This has been studied and evidenced in numerous ways, the most accessible being the observation that individuals with severely damaged left-hemispheres consistently lose language processing abilities, while those with damage to the right hemisphere do not. Further differentiation between right and left hemispheric function has remained an ongoing investigation in the neurosciences for almost 150 years[17].

Edwards, as already mentioned, has drawn the body of her creativity theory from a line of scientific research undertaken by Dr. Sperry and associates in the 1960s. Beginning with their interpretations of the collected scientific data, and elaborating with insights of her own, Edwards proceeded to develop techniques for making visual art, based on the implications of hemispheric specialization. Her thesis, and subsequent theory, is centered around the notion that “normative” consciousness is primarily analytic and linguistic and is dominated by the left brain, whereas the “creative” consciousness involved in making art is primarily synthetic and image-oriented and is dominated by the right hemisphere. It is her contention that our society has a left brain bias; that the capabilities of the right brain are largely ignored, and as the result, most individuals are dominated by linguistic, analytic thought, and lack even a rudimentary understanding of nonverbal consciousness. By her conception, the right brain and left brain function almost as independent beings, each applying its own special skills to the task at hand, using its own specialized mode of consciousness. In fact these two contrary processors may compete with and attempt to control each other. This account begins to resemble a literary personification – although one can hardly imagine a more apt subject for personification than the human brain, which is, by most accounts, the center of consciousness in western civilization*. The problem for the struggling creative individual takes place when the dominant analytic brain attempts to prevent the sub-dominant synthetic brain from having its proper say – or even worse, when the analytic brain attempts to take over right-brain functions[18].

The left brain has been scientifically characterized as being verbal – using words to name, describe, and define – it generally understands the world only in terms of abstract linguistic categories. As mentioned, it is also said to process things in a linear, analytic fashion, proceeding step-by-step and part-by-part. Subsequently we find in this hemisphere our understandings of time as a quantifiable, passing substance; the general ability to count and demarcate both time and quantity resides in this arena. Finally, this hemisphere is said be highly rational, highly logical, and with a propensity for understanding things by abstracting them into recognized symbols (+ stands for addition, $ stands for money). In Edwards’ system the left-brain is understood as the favored brain in much of post-industrial society – in fact it is the only hemisphere properly attended to in most modern systems of education. As she puts it most schools are “ not equipped to teach the right hemisphere mode. The right hemisphere is not, after all, under very good verbal control. You can’t reason with it. You can’t get it to make logical propositions … the right brain is not good at categorizing and naming[19].” Without proper means of understanding and working with right-hemispheric functions, education has fattened the left hemisphere by way of compensation. This bias towards analysis is deeply ingrained in our culture – since Broca’s discovery, the left hemisphere has traditionally been named as “major” and the right as “minor” – a differentiation that might be traced historically all the way back to Baumgarten’s major and minor ways of knowing.

Data on the right brain characterizes it as a synthesizer – it operates by putting things together to form wholes. In this business it is primarily non-verbal – dealing with images and direct apprehension of sensory and cognitive information without dressing that information up in words and symbols. For this reason the right brain has been said operate concretely, seeing things as-they-are rather than abstracting them into symbolic data. This hemisphere has been shown to deal with association and metaphor – drawing connections and analogies between concepts, sometimes irrationally, and expressing one object in terms of another object (as opposed to in terms of a symbols). Interestingly, the right brain apparently has no conception of time as passing in a linear fashion – in this realm every moment is eternal – but is instead responsible for almost all processing of space and spatial relations. Finally, the right brain has been called both the “intuitive mind” – making great leaps of insight based on incomplete data – and the “holistic” mind – apprehending whole patterns at once, perceiving and comprehending total structures regardless of recognized constituent parts*. As Edwards interprets:

The right brain seems to regard the thing as-it-is, at the present moment of the present; seeing things for what they simply are, in all their awesome, fascinating complexity. It is not good at analyzing and abstracting salient characteristics … the right brain – the dreamer, the artificer, the artist – is lost in our school system and goes largely untaught. We might find a few art classes … but its unlikely we would find courses in imagination, in visualization, in perceptual or spatial skills, in creativity as a separate subject[20]

Insofar as this is true, it may serve as additional evidence for the proposition that art production is one of the few fields where individuals have been able to thoroughly exercise and develop their creative abilities, precisely because it is one of the few fields that honors a cultivation of right-brain consciousness. In fields where modalities of analysis are unquestioningly dominant, modes of synthetic consciousness may be perpetually repressed. “Drawing a perceived form is largely a right-brain function, we must keep the left brain out if it. Our problem is that the left brain is dominant and speedy and is very prone to rush in with words and symbols, even taking over jobs which it is not good at … the left brain likes to be boss, so to speak.[21]”

Returning then to our subject – the creative process – we see in Edwards a very specific methodology about “shifting brain hemispheres” – consciously moving out of analytical consciousness and activating our synthesizing consciousness instead. Although every creative project will require moments of analysis, the initial spark of creativity within the human individual is contingent on being able to shut the analytic faculties down. According to Edwards, the creative process begins when one successfully shifts one’s consciousness from the left hemisphere to the right.

We want the left mode mainly ‘off’ and the right mode ‘on,’ a combination that produces a slightly altered subjective state in which the right hemisphere ‘leads.’ The characteristics of this subjective state are those that artists speak of: a sense of close ‘connection’ with the work, a sense of timelessness, difficulty in using words or understanding spoken words, a feeling of confidence and a lack of anxiety, a sense of close attention to shapes and spaces and forms that remain nameless.

It’s important that you experience the shift from one mode to the other – the shift from the ordinary verbal, analytic state to the spatial, nonverbal state. By setting up the conditions for this shift and experiencing the slightly different feeling it produces, you will be able to recognize and foster this state in yourself –[22]

A major objection at this point might be that this model for understanding creativity works fine with visual and auditory practices, but seems to preclude language altogether – removing poetry, prose literature, scholarly and scientific writing from the realm of the creative. I think instead the implication of this theory is that even when words and abstractions are used as raw materials, the processes underlying creative genesis remain non-verbal. The writer deals in images, sounds, scents, and feelings – it just so happens that his particular craft is to translate these initial fruits into linguistic form. Even strictly analytical writing often has a non-verbal aspect in which abstract concepts relate to each other as non-verbal understandings and images – the “psychical entities” as described in the mind of Einstein. The importance of this distinction is, I think, a matter of isolating “directly-apprehended” information – as image, sound, feeling or entity – from the abstraction of language. The creative mind first knows what it knows intuitively and in totality, and only afterward proceeds with an elaborate communication through words.

It is interesting to note that, although Csikszentmihalyi makes no mention whatever of hemispheric specialization (or any brain function whatever), his study of creative individuals confirms several aspects the “creative consciousness” as described above. Most of the creative individuals interviewed experienced with the onset of creative process an altered state in which there was a strong sense of “connection” or “immersion” in the work, sometimes characterized by a loss of ego, as well as a direct apprehension of the materials being processed, and most importantly, an altered perception of time. In regards to this latter phenomenon, he describes, “hours may pass by in what seems like a few minutes. Or the opposite happens: a figure skater may report that a quick turn that in real time takes only a second seems to stretch out for ten times as long. In other words, clock time no longer marks equal lengths of experienced time; our sense of how much time passes depends on what we are doing[23].” As one interviewee, Poet Mark Strand put it, “The idea is to be so … so saturated with it that there’s no future or past, it’s just an extended present in which you’re making meaning. … it’s meaning carried to a high order. It’s not just essential communication, daily communication; it’s a total communication.”

Cameron addresses similar issues in her discussion of creativity cultivation – she even corroborates Edwards double-brained human – although she simplifies her own terminology to a discussion of “logic brain” and “artist brain.” As we might expect, the division is basically the same. “Logic brain is our brain of choice in the Western Hemisphere. It is the categorical brain. It thinks in a neat linear fashion. As a rule, logic brain perceives the world according to known categories … it looks at a fall forest and notes: red, orange, yellow, green, gold[24].” Cameron understands the logic brain to be deeply concerned with survival – first in the biological sense, and later in regard to social status. Whereas logic brain once scanned the meadow for potential predators before venturing out of the woods, it now analyzes out our actions and creative outputs, attempting to keep us safely in line. “Logic brain is our censor, our second (and third and fourth) thoughts. Faced with an original sentence, phrase, paint squiggle, it says, ‘what the hell is that? That’s not right!.’” One of the reasons Cameron believes so many people to be so deeply creatively blocked is because societal and familial criticisms become internalized and are then wielded by the logic brain as a means of self protection. Although this self-restricting approach may be useful in the short term, its long term effects can be devastating to an individual’s creative capacities – everything new is judged as wrong before it can develop into something right. Conversely, “Artist brain is our inventor, our child, our very own absent minded professor. Artist brain says ‘hey that is so neat!’ It puts odd things together … Artist brain is our creative, holistic brain. It sees a fall forest and thinks ‘Wow! Leaf Bouquet! Pretty! Gold-gilt-shimmery-earthskin-king’s-carpet! Artist brain is associative and freewheeling.[25]” We see here that Cameron has taken Edwards personification of brain hemispheres to a much more creative level – the image of the artist as a playful, imaginative, and delicate child is a recurring motif throughout her work. As to why it should be so important to distinguish the one type of brain from the other, Cameron remarks that the first step toward higher creativity is to “teach logic brain to stand aside and let artist brain play.”

Finally it is worth mentioning in regards to this subject that the right-left hemispheric divide as an indicator for creativity and altered consciousness did not originate in Edwards’ theory. The initial interpretations of the data were presumably made by the scientists themselves, and the writings of Dr. Jerre Levy were perhaps particularly influential in this regard. Just one of her conclusive statements: “the left hemisphere analyzes over time, whereas the right hemisphere synthesizes over space.[26]” The channels by which this theory traveled from that point onward are something of a mystery. Suffice to say that notions of right-brain as creative and left-brain as analytic surface constantly in various pockets of culture – sometimes associated with the “consciousness revolution” of the American 1960s. Whatever degree of scientific validity the theory is proven to hold in the years to come, it has in the meantime become something of a modern myth. This is especially true in artistic circles – Marni Wood, professor of Dance and Performance studies at UC Berkeley, has been know to remark to her students, regarding the most effective approach in executing complicated dance sequences, “left brain and right brain, working together!” In 1980 underground philosopher Robert Anton Wilson included in his Illuminati Papers a passage of general address to rationalists and mystics alike, entitled “is it possible you are using only half of your brain?[27]” More recently, and ostensibly of even less repute, the notion appeared in the October 2002 issue of the popular X-Men comic book*, in which one character telepathically communicates to a neurotic and uptight team-mate, “your left brain can handle him [talking]… your right brain needs all the help it can get.[28]”

Now that we have some degree of insight into what kinds of things might be taking place within the individual during a creative process, let us consider again the relationship between internal and external factors. Csikszentmihalyi includes in his theory a traditional five-step process that might be used as a generic model for most creative processes. This sequence begins with a period of preparation, proceeds through steps of incubation, insight, and evaluation before concluding with a period of elaboration. In reality this sequence may occur numerous times in the course of a single creative project – evaluations and elaborations constantly being punctured by new insights and stalled by necessary moments of incubation – with new information entering the system as additional preparation, as the work continues. Even so, any repetition of these individual steps can be modeled after the general context of this five part sequence.

The first stage, preparation, cay be understood as a necessary collection and initial processing of domain knowledge. During this time the individual becomes involved or immersed, consciously or unconsciously, within the domain and whatever specific set of issues will be attended to[29]. During this period, we imagine that the physicist studies the equations and works of her colleagues, comparing them to ideas of her own. For the scholar, this would be the period of initial research, where sources are first examined, collected, perused, and thought over. The undertaking need not be quite so conscious – for a painter or novelist, the process of preparation might be the collection of aesthetic impressions and experiences accrued in the course of a week – it might be an inspiring trip to France, a strange conversation, or a day of formal research into an historical period. As Csikszentmihalyi puts it, “usually insights tend to come to prepared minds, that is, to those who have thought long and hard about a given set of problematic issues.[30]” It is during the period of preparation that potential problems begin to appear and beg for solution. These problems may be actual deficiencies in the field – an incomplete theorem, outdated design, the need for a new model, an innovative perspective – or they may be personal problems for the individual – nagging questions, emotional catharsis, intellectual curiosity. Csikszentmihalyi differentiates between presented problems and discovered problems. The former of these are those already described – problems that are readily apparent in an individual or domain, the solutions to which are not immediately clear – for example: how to make solar power more cost effective. Discovered problems, on the other hand, are creative products themselves – they emerge when, during the course of the preparation stage, a complete new problem becomes clear within the individual mind – a new model of understanding is synthesized and demands further study. In this context, the notion that energy might be derived from solar rays at all would be the onset of a discovered problem. Csikszentmihalyi asserts that most creativity derives from presented problems, whereas the great creative achievements are most often the result of a discovered problems[31].Einstein himself remarked that the most important breakthroughs in science come out of the reformulation of old patterns and assumptions, not merely the solving of readily apparent problems.

Once the ground has been prepared – the seeds sown, so to speak – the second phase in this creative sequence is the period of incubation. This has also been called the period of “idle time” when the gathered knowledge is allowed to sit, ferment, and react just below the threshold of consciousness. The majority of subjects in Csikszentmihalyi study agreed that a certain amount of idle time is absolutely necessary for the successful fruition of insight. Incubation is generally evidenced by the common event whereby a long period of conscious processing takes pause without finding solution, and then without explanation, a solution presents itself in consciousness without any apparent intermediary step. Einstein is said to have remarked, “Why do I get my best ideas in the shower?” Julia Cameron also mentions this phenomenon – the frequency with which insights appear during such activities as showering, swimming, driving, needlework. Her explanation is that all these activities - in general ongoing repetitive undertakings that nevertheless require some degree of attention - have a tendency to tip consciousness out of logic process and activate the artist brain[32]. Not all incubation periods are catalyzed by such activity, however – some such periods may last minutes, while others take years before yielding useful insight. There are various accounts as to why idle time and unconscious processing seem to be such a common and vital aspect of creativity – psychoanalytic and cognitive approaches assume that during this time information is being re-associated and recombined continually until such time as meaningful new combination takes shape. By Edwards’ theory, we might say that the right-brain goes quietly to work and only speaks up when a stunning new solution has been synthesized. Assuming that mental activity must become unconscious to escape linear processes, Csikszentmihalyi explains, “Free from rational direction, ideas can combine and pursue each other every which way. Because of this freedom, original connections that would be at first rejected by the rational mind have a chance to become established.[33]” In addition to demonstrating how unconscious process can be vital to creativity, this statement echoes Cameron’s conception of an overly critical logic brain, which must be evaded during the course of creative endeavor. Of course, Edwards and Cameron might both argue that mental activity can shift from linear logic to associative synthesis without a necessary loss of consciousness. However, the fact that associative synthesis can, and so often does, take place unconsciously, is a cornerstone of creative processing in its own right. Whether we learn to be conscious of it or not, it appears to happen regardless.

Csikszentmihalyi says of incubation that it “has often been thought the most creative part of the entire process … what happens in the “dark” space defies ordinary analysis and evokes the original mystery shrouding the work of genius: one feels almost the need to turn to mysticism, to invoke the voice of the muse as an explanation.[34]” Whatever model we use to explain these period of mystery, eventually the incubation period ends, and the third stage in the sequence occurs – the moment of insight. This is, generally speaking, the moment when minute unconscious creative process suddenly yields a valuable new combination, solution, or perspective. It is the moment when the muse arrives to deliver her message. The classic story of insight dawning is the tale of Archimedes watching the water level rise and fall at the public bath, and suddenly understanding the solution to his present problem regarding density – at which point he cried out “Eureka!” The moment of insight is patterned after this archetypal victory, when all the pieces of the puzzle suddenly snap together in synthetic totality. In reality, such moments occur several times and to varying degrees within any creative process – although we may imagine that on occasion the classical example repeats itself just as dramatically, and total insight comes in one blinding flash.

The fourth stage in the sequence is the period of evaluation – placing the new insight in context. This may be a simple matter of deciding where the new combination fits into the grand picture. It may also be the moment when analysis comes back into the process – just because an idea is new and insightful does not necessarily make it workable, and it falls to the creative individual to examine his or her insights and determine if they are worth the time and effort of pursuing. In short, the synthetic product falls under analysis. “It is the period of self-criticism, of soul searching[35]” the point at which insight is ultimately accepted or rejected. This is not merely a moment of ideal judgment; many practical issues are here taken into account. Shall the writer take the time and energy to write the next chapter of his novel in accord with his most recent vision? Shall the scientist begin the long process of experimentation and analysis based on a sudden hunch? Will the business executive invest company money on her new idea? Evaluation will usually come into play at some point in any creative process – although it will be decidedly more important to some practitioners than others. Some impassioned artists no doubt get by with no evaluation whatever.

The final stage in this particular model for creative process is the period of elaboration. This is the long work process that accompanies most flashes of creative inspiration. The novelist writes the chapter, the scientist carries out the experiments, the executive makes the phone calls. Csikszentmihalyi refers affectionately to Edison’s famous phrase “creativity consists of 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration” to demonstrate the amount of work that is often required of creative individuals. This is of course something of an exaggeration, although there certainly are cases where vast mountains of work are required to follow through on a particular vision – one thinks of Proust and the elaboration whereby the first bright vision of Remembrance of Things Past was slowly transformed into thousands of pages of prose. Or in late 19^th century Russia, when Stanislavski took Chekhov’s play the Seagull, then a financial failure, and spent countless months of solitude reworking the staging in minute detail, eventually producing one of the great classics of Russian theatre. It has been argued that what distinguishes a creative elaboration from more monotonous forms of labor are sense of self-motivation and a great love for the work. In Csikszentmihalyi’s study of creative individuals it was found to be a unanimous agreement that “they experienced even the most focused immersion in extremely difficult tasks as a lark, an exhilarating and playful adventure[36].” Rather than resent this passion for work as the privilege of a “creative elite,” Csikszentmihalyi suggests we take such motivated activity as a source of inspiration – like Cameron and Edwards, he too believes that creativity is a capacity available to all.

These five stages of the creative process as discussed above may also be found verbatim in the 1999 MIT Encyclopedia for the Cognitive Sciences, under the heading “Creativity.” Looking further, this particular theory can be found in bits and pieces across a vast range of recorded thought, throughout several historical periods; the first formal, theoretical elaboration appears to have been done in 1926 by Dr Graham Wallas, Professor of Political Science at the University of London*. In his Art of Thought, Wallace explores the ways by which a thinker might consciously understand and control his own thinking process, and in the course of this discussion collects the sequential stages described above. These appear more or less in accord with Csikszentmihalyi’s appropriation, with the one major exception that in the original terminology, the stage of insight was instead named illumination. Furthermore, as Wallas was primarily concerned with conscious and controlled thought processes, he included under the heading of illumination a subsidiary process of intimation. This latter concept dealt with the possibility of processes occurring in “fringe-consciousness” just outside the central “focal” area of normal consciousness – exposing, to some degree, the elusive syntheses surrounding the moment of creative illumination. These processes are variously described as “a raising and falling of consciousness,” “dim feelings,” and “faint intuitions,” – they are not necessary for the illuminating moment to occur, but rather may be actively sought out and noticed by the thinker during the course of incubation. Wallas argues that with practice, these moments of intimation can be experienced with regularity and prolonged in the forefront of consciousness. Although he agrees that attempting too much conscious control of these intimations is likely to do more harm than good, he nevertheless argues that an increased consciousness of such borderline processes is likely to make for more effective thinking. He likens the Thinker to the Runner – each, when engaged in their activity, thinks only of the goal, not of the minute processes of mind and muscle that make the action move forward. However, in learning to think, or in learning to run, one must at some point become conscious of these minute processes in order to place them in their proper context. As he puts it, “the process of learning an art should, even in the case of those who have the finest natural endowment for it, be more conscious than its practice.[37]” So as the writer must first learn the alphabet, and later compose epics without thinking specifically of the letters employed, so too must the thinker learn his own deep processes, and later dream up great solutions without consciously operating his own mental mechanisms. In short, Wallas has painted a picture whereby the unconscious processes of incubation can, and perhaps sometime should, fall into the realm of conscious thought. This notion certainly works in accord with Betty Edwards, who has argued that right-brain (synthetic) process can indeed be right-brain consciousness. Julia Cameron might put it in more creative terms: just because logic-brain needs to be put to bed, doesn’t mean we can’t stay awake to watch artist-brain play.

Some final remarks regarding this “traditional” five stages of creative process should reiterate the fact that this particular model is after all only one model for understanding creative process – if applied universally it might tarnish our understanding of the subject. As Csikszentmihalyi remarked, even when this sequence is rigidly applied, one still finds instances of a more fluid process – an intermingling of stages, syncopated interplays of preparation-elaboration with illumination-incubation. But beyond this, we should keep in mind that some creative processes may do away with this system entirely. Some insights are born like the Goddess Athena – fully formed and with such force that no evaluation or elaboration is required. Some Artists require long periods of preparation, others simply follow their hearts in the moment – drawing on a wealth of ongoing experience such that a formal period of preparation is impossible to distinguish. It is in Art Practice, and with the notion of “creative living” in general, that we most often find these five stages altogether too restraining. Edwards would argue that, once the right brain has been activated, it simply goes to work, making art or meaning with or without formal preparation – and sometimes with such skill that no period of evaluation or elaboration is required (or desired!) after the moment has passed. We would see this kind of creativity working anytime a person spontaneously sets to work at drawing a picture, writing a story, singing a song, planning a party, baking a cake – the creative activities might involve some of the stages mentioned above, or they might simply come billowing forth in a flood of illumination – creating tangible effects in the world as if by “magic.” Suffice to say, the five stages above might be particularly useful in long term projects and creative problem solving, in which a specific solution is sought – or perhaps as guidelines for those individuals unable to procure the above mentioned torrent of insight. On the other hand, when employed indiscriminately this sequence would most likely serve to get in the way; like most analytic systems, it only applies some of the time.

To describe the creative process with words is nevertheless a meager attempt at explanation. Doing so conveys an understanding of somewhat paler hue when taken in contrast to such creativity as understood through execution and experience. We have said a great deal about creativity as a faculty that can be cultivated – much in the same way Buddhist traditions have attempted to cultivate mindfulness. As we might expect a Buddhist monk to shed light on how this cultivation occurs, so too will we now turn our exploration to notions of creative expansion. The three authors we have discussed at length did not stop at theorizing creativity; each of them has in their own way attempted to communicate various means by which creative ability can be acquired, uncovered, and expressed by the individual. In fact, both Cameron’s and Edwards’ most widely read works are designed with that purpose specifically in mind, described as “a spiritual path to higher creativity” and “a course in enhancing creativity and artistic confidence,” respectively. Even the clinical psychologist Csikszentmihalyi includes in his study an extensive section on techniques for increasing personal creativity – surprisingly so, as his formal creativity theory refuses to acknowledge any creative act that does not carry tangible social impact. It seems to be another point on which these three writers concur: that cultivated creativity leads to enriching experiences and fulfillment in life. As Csikszentmihalyi puts it, “When we live creatively, boredom is banished and every moment holds the promise of a fresh discovery. Whether or not these discoveries enrich the world beyond our personal lives, living creatively links us with the process of evolution[38].”

As Edwards is concerned primarily with visual art, she represents here the most specific application of principles. Although she believes her techniques can be applied to other fields, she finds it her own work to explore and refine methods for linking right-brain process specifically to the production of art. The exercises that appear in Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain are extensive and interdependent in their desired effect. Edwards laments occasionally that these techniques should be conveyed in words at all, and insists that the only way to fully understand them is by actually doing them, and so experiencing the altered consciousness of which she speaks. “I could go on describing the process over and over in words, but only you can experience for yourself this cognitive shift[39].” Hence, her first set of exercises are structured around activating the right brain in order to give the participant an ongoing experience of right-brain consciousness that will be refined and developed over time. Not surprisingly, her methods for turning “on” the right brain also involve conscious attempts to turn “off” the left brain. In one exercise, the student is asked to draw facial profiles while verbalizing the name of each feature – a left brain activity. Next, the student draws a mirror image of these profiles while resisting any mental verbalizations – reproducing the profile based on sight and spatial relations alone – a right-brain activity. Each time this exercise is done, the student makes note of the subjective qualities of verbal and non-verbal consciousness – the latter of which will become increasingly accessible over time.

Subsequent exercises involve activities deliberately designed to confuse the left brain and thus encourage it to take up a secondary position for certain tasks. Viewing and then drawing pictures that are upside-down are particularly confusing for the left brain, almost to the point of being incomprehensible. An upside-down image consists in known categories displayed in reverse – in the case of a human face, mouth above nose above eyes – and with the categorical information in such disarray, it falls to the synthetic, holistic operations of the right-brain to make sense of the perceived object*. Thus by copying drawings that are upside-down, the right-brain carries out its operations in terms of spatial relationships rather than known categories – the drawings produced are a synthesis of new information. The left-brain would have attempted to produce the drawing based on abstract notions of what it “should” look like – producing the comical abstractions so common in children’s early artwork. Further exercises aimed at escaping the abstract “should” of analytic categories include the now popular practice of drawing an image based on the perception of negative space (the open spaces in-between the contours of a chair, or the open sky surrounding a eucalyptus tree) – or drawing images without being allowed to look at the drawing until it is complete. In both of these techniques is contained a further attempt to confound the left-brain and encourage it to back off and let the right-brain do its work. Again, the rationale behind this is that most poor drawing is the result of a dominant left-brain attempting to construct pictures on the basis of what they are “supposed to” look like, rather than perceiving and producing them in totality through synthesis.

As the exercises proceed, they become increasingly esoteric, concerned as they are with developing a new set of skills and understandings for the artist. The first phase of her method involves recognition and cultivation of right-brain consciousness – subsequent phases include applying that consciousness towards increasingly complex and nuanced drawing tasks. She also offers interesting advice on how best to handle the left brain when it attempts to take-over these projects: “If your left brain intrudes with verbal phrases about the separate things [categories] try to quiet it down. Your hidden observer might say, ‘Just stay out of this please. The other side can handle the job. It won’t take long and then we’ll get back to you.’ (this may sound a bit odd, but it is necessary because the left hemisphere is not used to being shut out, and you must, in a sense, reassure it.)[40]” Edwards often provides suggested time limits for her exercises, although she strongly advocates setting an alarm so as to avoid any conscious marking of time. Linear time is after all a left-brain construction – genuine right-brain consciousness almost always involves a sense of “lost time” or “timelessness.”

Julia Cameron’s techniques for creative cultivation are less specific in scope, concerned as much with lifestyle and self-knowledge as they are with mental states. Because she believes that all human beings are fundamentally creative, but that most are unnaturally blocked (or alienated) from their creativity, the main thrust of her technique involves overcoming these creative blocks. Cameron also aims at procuring an altered consciousness, although she attempts to do so by encouraging a shift of fundamental beliefs, assumptions, and expectations related to notions of “creativity.” Her primary tool – incidentally the one that most resembles Edwards’ methods – is an ongoing practice of stream-of-consciousness writing. That is, an associative stream of writing that is produced naturally with no particular outcome in mind. Such writing is advocated by many and is certainly nothing new to the field of creative cultivation – However, Cameron makes the extreme prescription of suggesting that her students write three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing every morning for the rest of their lives. This practice is undertaken specifically in the morning so as to access the liminal states of consciousness that border sleep and dreams – it also tends to force students to be candid with themselves before the regular psychological defenses are up and running for the day. In Cameron’s words, “We are victims of our own internalized perfectionist, a nasty internal and eternal critic, the Censor, who resides in our (left) brain and keeps up a constant stream of subversive remarks that are often disguised as the truth. … By spilling out of bed and onto the page every morning, you learn to evade the Censor. Because there is no wrong way to write the morning pages, the Censor’s opinion doesn’t count.[41]” By consciously attempting to avoid self-censorship in the course of this morning writing, the contents of the unconscious are allowed to spill forth – repressed pains, buried dreams, unacknowledged opinions and desires. Beyond this outpouring of chaotic psychological minutia, Cameron believes we begin to discover a deeper sense of self. “Beyond the reach of the Censor’s babble we find our own quiet center that is at once our creator’s and our own[42].” In this sense, this practice of morning writing is meant to serve three functions, the first of which is an increased ability to allow ideas and emotions to flow freely into written form without undue interference from the inhibiting denizens of the psyche. The second function of this practice is an invited catharsis of psychological contents, some of which might be inspiring, and some of which might otherwise block the flow of creative energies. In their third and final primary function, the ever-expanding pages work as a map of increased self-knowledge – the more we write, the more we learn about out ourselves.

Cameron considers this morning writing to be a form of meditation: “Yes, we will alter our brain hemisphere, lower our stress, discover an inner contact with a creative source, and have many creative insights. Yes, for any one of these reasons, the pursuit is a worthy one. Even taken in combination, however, they are still intellectual constructs for what is primarily an experience of wholeness, rightness, and power[43].” As we have already seen, Cameron finds the concepts of creativity and spirituality to be closely related, and believes that increased creative ability is contingent, among other things, on an expanded awareness of personal beliefs, emotions, needs, and desires. “The pages are a pathway to a stronger and clearer sense of self. They are a trail that we follow into our own interior, where we meet both out own creativity and our creator*.” Cameron mentions that this practice must be undertaken privately and consistently for several weeks before any tangible results are to be gleaned.

Cameron’s second primary tool for creative recovery is a weekly practice whereby the student makes a solitary excursion to some place of interest. This “artist date” is meant as an entirely private dialogue with the self – an exploration undertaken by the student and his “inner artist” or “inner child.” This undertaking is intended as a time “especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness.” Like the morning writing, this weekly excursion is meant to promote an expanded awareness of self, as well as a fundamentally nurturing relationship between the self and this “inner artist.” Cameron believes the artistic nature of many individuals is thoroughly abused in modern western society – thus this private excursion should literally be viewed as time spent with a child in desperate need of love. As she puts is, “in looking for a parallel, think of the child of a divorce who gets to see a beloved parent only on weekends. (During most of the week, your artist in the custody of a stern workaday adult.) What that child wants is attention, not expensive outings … spending time in solitude with your artist-child is essential to self nurturing … a little fun can go a long way toward making your work feel like play[44].” In short the regularity of these “artist dates” is a guaranteed time for self-exploration and adventure – essential qualities for Cameron’s conception of the blossoming creative mind. For this reason, she insists that these periods of time must never involve any other person, and that they must never be avoided or put aside for other matters – “In order to have a real relationship with our creativity, we must take the time to care and cultivate it. Our creativity will use this time to confront us, to confide in us, to bond with us, and to plan[45].” She finds it common that her students try to avoid or skip this private time, especially when first beginning the practice. With this observation comes a general warning: the impulse to avoid private adventures is a manifestation of the old psychological caveat, fear of intimacy – in this case, self-intimacy.

The “artist date” has another function – after all, introspection and self-care hardly require excursions – and that is to provide a constant new stimulus to the creative mind. Nor is this a simple matter of seeking spectacle or entertainment – rather new ideas, images, feelings, and perspectives are actively sought after during this time. As we do creative work, we begin to use up our fresh ideas, lock ourselves into rigid structures based on what has already been made – in order to continue, must actively seek influx of new images and energies. “As artists, we must learn to be self-nourishing. We must become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on them – restock the trout pond, so to speak. I call this process filling the well.” To do this we must welcome new experiences and perspectives. Above all, we must remain attentive to the world around us, and to our reactions to it. In so doing, we shall being to notice those small details, images, and intimations that strike us as deeply meaningful or inspirational – in short we collect the psychic materials for our further work. “In Filling the well, think magic. Think delight. Think fun. Do not think duty. Do not think what you should do – spiritual sit-ups like reading a dull but recommended critical text. Do what intrigues you, explore what interests you; think mystery, not mastery[46].” Above all, Cameron urges her students to use this time to be open – to allow closed systems to soften, new associations to percolate – in short, time to let the mind play. Undertaken as such, this weekly practice is meant to work in tandem with the morning writing as a regular influx-outflux of creative energy. “It is a two step, two directional process: out and then in. Doing your morning pages, you are sending – notifying yourself and the universe of your dreams, dissatisfactions, hopes. Doing your artist date you are receiving – opening yourself to insight, inspiration, and guidance[47].”

With these two foundational practices set firmly in place, Cameron proceeds with a torrent of exercises in unblocking the creative energies. In general these exercises involve a great deal of introspective and imaginative writing tasks, as well as visualizations, re-organizations, short creative activities and miscellaneous projects. The process begins with positive thinking and affirmations – catalysts for unearthing repressed creativity – with a reciprocal process of identifying deeply ingrained negative beliefs about creativity and working towards conscientiously discarding them. In fact it could be argued that the efficacy of Cameron’s program lies in her efforts to teach her students to believe in themselves, their creative abilities, and the potency of those abilities in the world abroad. As we have seen with her use of the “Censor” metaphor, she argues that creativity will not flow naturally into a hostile psychic environment – that is, critical judgment must be withheld during the initial stages of creative process if a more prolific creativity is to be harvested in the long run. If the Analytic mind is allowed to break down (“attack” in her colorful terminology) every infant synthesis, no creative process can be brought to term. She does not suggest discarding analysis altogether, nor is she so naïve to think that creative works will not inevitably fall under the hostile psyches of third party critics. Rather, she reiterates that, precisely because the outside world can be so hostile, and creative works held up to such high standards, it is essential that we protect our vulnerable creative stirrings in those periods before they are fully formed. Under this context of self-protection and personal empowerment, Cameron provides her students with a series of writing exercises to uncover their deep desires, fears and dreams – useful for a more fulfilling life, and equally useful as fuel for the creative fire.

In all fairness, we cannot give a proper summation of Cameron’s methodology for creative cultivation without arriving upon the loaded concept of “God.” This particular word appears continuously throughout Cameron’s writing, and although she claims that no religious belief is required in order to glean the benefits of her method (open-mindedness in general is required), the strictly secular reader may have some trouble digesting her prose. Above all it should be noted that Cameron invites (and perhaps demands) that her readers define the “God” term creatively – she offers such alternative conceptions as “Goddess,” “Higher Power,” “Universe,” “Source,” “Flow,” or much more simply, “Mind.” Among these, the alternative term that seems best accord with her own purposes is to read “god” as an acronym for good orderly direction. Theoretically, however, any of these terms would do because they are all assumed to refer to the same thing – a timeless creative epicenter from which the universe is sprung. “Those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as the creator but seldom see creator as the literal term for artist. I am suggesting you take the term creator quite literally. You are seeking to forge a creative alliance, artist-to-artist, with the Great Creator.” Shunning the dogmatic and moralistic aspects so often associated with orthodox theism, Cameron rather invites her students to view the universe as an ongoing creative process, in which human beings exist in order to participate. Under this conception, creative individuals are doing “god’s work” simply by nature of their activity, regardless of final products or teleological ideologies. From the perspective of western religion- outside of the pagan and occult traditions - this notion of “a More Creative God” is somewhat innovative – although in all fairness the same idea has surfaced several times in the history of formal western thought. Friedrich Nietzsche, who built his career on such cryptic aphorisms as “God is Dead,” discusses a similar alternative conception of God in his attack on Christian morality. Regarding his Birth of Tragedy he writes, “indeed the whole book knows nothing but an artistic meaning and crypto-meaning behind all events – a ‘god’ if you please, but certainly only an entirely reckless and amoral artist-god who wants to experience, whether he is building or destroying, in the good and in the bad, his own joy and glory[48].” Likewise in the East, the fundamental Trinity of Hinduism conceptualizes God as manifest in the form of Creator (Brahma), Preserver (Vishnu) and Destroyer (Siva) – but even Siva is understood to be an artist, the god who destroys in order to create anew; Siva is often depicted as dancing atop a mound of human skulls*. And of course, the reason this Artist-God concept is so vital to Cameron’s program is that this particular God is not only the source of all creative energy, but also deeply supportive of any and all creative activity. As such, the unblocking of creative energies, and the cultivation and practice of those energies, is actively aided and nurtured by God itself. A sampling from Cameron’s basic principles include the statement “Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy” and later, “Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.[49]” Again, rather than making attempts at morality or dogma, Cameron suggests that creativity is a fundamental activity of the universe – an ontological principle, as it were – and thus, all that is required of an individual in becoming more creative is a re-alignment with this essential and pervasive force. The qualities that define how this re-alignment ultimately occurs, as well as what this faceless “God” is ultimately understood to be, are matters left entirely up to the individual to envision.

If one were to remark at this point that Cameron’s techniques for cultivating creativity seem a bit fanciful and imaginative, one would certainly be right – though if we fell to criticizing them for this reason, we might be missing the point. In a sense, a more imaginative world-view is exactly what she advocates. Precisely for this reason we might take care to distinguish dogmatic religion from creative spirituality – the former is often associated with control or placation – “the opium of the people” as Marx put it – while the latter might be understood as an open-ended and ongoing process of ontological liberation. Cameron’s argument is that a certain degree of the latter – an ontological open mindedness, or agnosticism – is the necessary foundation for a more imaginative world-view to take shape. This might also be understood as the need to remove “ontology” from an exclusively analytical standpoint. Science has historically tended towards a stance of atheism, although it might be argued that this position initially functioned to large degree as a political affiliation. That is to say, scientific ideologies became a workable alternative to religious authority, a means to escape the ontological tyranny of the Catholic Church. However, by definition the proper role of science is agnostic inquiry, not ontological authority. True Scientific Method has neither proved nor disproved the existence of “God,” spirits, or multitudinous dimensions – it is most likely well beyond the province of science to do so. Just as mathematic symbols are an awkward medium for telling a verbal story, science is an awkward medium for exploring ontology and spirituality. This is not to say that these spheres must be understood as mutually exclusive – rather there is simply no need to for the realm of science to fully encompass the realm of spirit – or vice versa – any more than one human being is the one correct human being and should encompass all other human beings. It would be nonsensical to say so. A creative spirituality would, by definition, have to take a plethora of possibility into account, I think, and for this reason it has been associated with a kind of liberation. Of course, true liberation of this ilk must include the freedom to secularize – and as such it might help us to attempt a secular interpretation of Cameron’s spirituality that is nevertheless meaningful for the purposes of creative cultivation.

We have mentioned briefly, in Part I, a Dr. John Lilly who has conceived of the human brain as an extensive biocomputer. Using a computational model, Dr. Lilly discusses the ways in which fundamental ontological beliefs determine the way in which reality is experienced:

If one plugs the proper beliefs into the meta-programmatic levels of the computer … the computer will then construct (from myriads of elements in memory) those possible experiences that fit this particular set of rules. Those programs will be run off, and those displays made, which are appropriate to the basic assumptions and their stored programming[50].

In other words, if a belief is ingrained deeply enough within the human psyche, it becomes paradigmatic – all experience, perceptions of past, present, and future, are organized around the operating principles of the belief. Thus, devout Christians see the world in terms of Christianity, devout Secularists view the world in terms of Secularism, Marxists see the world in terms of base-and-superstructure, American Republicans see the world in terms of protecting “financial interests” and Republican “family values.” These deep beliefs operate as such to screen out information that is not in accord with the organizing principles, while simultaneously acting to build perceptions and beliefs that support the organizing principles. Underground Philosopher Robert Anton Wilson has referred to this phenomenon as, “Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves[51].” Dr. Wilson describes this phenomenon in terms of psychoactive drug use and religious experience:

In other words, for those who took mind drugs in ancient Athens, with rituals to invoke Dionysus, the experience would have been Dionysian and included a “display” (vision) of a horned or bull-like God. If you took it in a 1960’s commune of nature mystics … you would have experienced the harmony and beauty of nature as a deity. And, if you took the same drug in a 1990s research lab, with a warning that it produces a psychotic reaction, you would have the experience of going mad for a few hours[52].

Using this model, we can see how a deep integration of Cameron’s spirituality would potentially have tremendous effects on applied creative practice. Here if one deeply believes that the universe is both fundamentally creative and supportive of creativity, one will begin to experience a reality that is fundamentally creative and supportive of creativity. If creativity is my nature, and God wants me to be creative and will support the liberation of my creativity – chances are I will come to experience more creativity rather quickly. So that, even in purely secular terms, we can see how belief in a More Creative God has the potential to awaken latent creative energies.

Cameron might remark that while the above approach is certainly valid, it stands in danger of intellectually distancing the individual from a direct experience of spiritual phenomena. All too often individuals block their creativity by associating the concept of “god” (conscious or otherwise) with a shaming and punishing authority figure – and then rejecting the concept of ‘god’ altogether – “Again, we are limiting our flow by anthropomorphizing God into a capricious parent figure. Remembering that God is our source, an energy flow that likes to extend itself, we become more able to tap our creative power effectively.[53]” She, in any case, seems to believe these things literally. In answer to the question of how the Artist-God supports creative human beings, Cameron suggests the phenomenon of Synchronicity – loosely defined as a fortuitous intermingling of events or meaningful coincidence. Synchronicity was initially pioneered by psychoanalyst Dr. Carl G. Jung, a colleague, friend, and mystic counterpart of Dr. Sigmund Freud. For Jung the term denoted a more nuanced relationship between the psyche and the material world, “Matter would therefore contain the seed of spirit and spirit the seed of matter. The long known “synchronistic” phenomenon … point, to all appearances, in this direction[54].” In accord with this phenomenon, psychic events coincide with external events in meaningful ways – dreams literally come true; good friends meet by chance in a foreign city; a mother is talking with her friend about her son, and at just that moment he calls on the phone; a man knows what a letter says before opening it; the waitress at a couple’s first date ‘just happens’ to be their waitress, in another restaurant, on their tenth anniversary. Metaphorically speaking, synchronicities might be understood as neural nets in the mind of god. For Cameron’s purposes the synchronicity phenomenon means that the universe supports the creative mind with helpful coincidences – new ideas at just the right time, unexpected opportunities for growth, chance meetings with inspiring individuals, recurring themes and motifs in day-to-day life, job offers, free concert tickets. As she puts it, “we change and the universe furthers and expands that change. I have an irreverent shorthand for this that I keep taped to my desk: leap and the net will appear.” This system, admittedly verifiable only through subjective experimentation, might be summed up as thus: as we unblock our creative energies, we allow the universe to unfold through us. Synchronistic events occur constantly for everyone but are lost to the unprepared mind - As the individual embarks down a creative path with commitment and attention, heretofore unimagined doors open along the way.

The present author has, as recently as 2004, visited and walked the streets of Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai (Bombay) – among the largest and most crowded cities of modern India. Having seen, smelt and touched the pollution, walked through entire neighborhoods built of tin and cardboard stretching for miles along freeways – having brushed away the pleading and monotonous advances of beggar children with my own hands – I certainly sympathize with a certain outrage that Julia Cameron’s assertion of a providential and synchronistic universe is likely to engender. One need hardly subscribe to Marxist Ideologies to recognize that economic and political conditions in some parts of the world as so severely limiting that, even if by some miracle one moneyless individual managed to fight her way to a higher social status, she would leave in her wake another thousand individuals for whom that singular route has now been eliminated. It is after all a very old religious question: where was divine providence and synchronicity for those Jews tortured and slaughtered by the Nazi’s? Certainly Cameron would not suggest that the victims of the world’s genocides, wars, and inequalities suffered and died for a lack of creativity? To say so would be to place our notion of creativity in the hands of another modern paradigm: creativity as manifest in Darwin’s Evolution. After all, Darwin’s impersonal natural order nevertheless rewards the “creativity” of those organisms which manifest useful innovations for success in a hostile environment. Likewise those proponents of a “social Darwinism” might argue that any disadvantaged groups of humans are simply they who have not been sufficiently creative in their social gaming. But whereas Darwin’s universe supports creativity in a mechanistic and rudimentary fashion, Cameron’s universe takes on the role of active beneficiary to creative consciousness. It is beyond the scope of this paper, and beyond Cameron’s expertise, to explain the great suffering of those who live in economic disadvantage or under tyrannical government. It is meant, however, as a meaningful positation, that creative consciousness is available in some degree to all, and that the more it is used, the more potential it has for further use. Cameron has summarized her viewpoint about the efficacy of prayer in the following statement: “pray to catch the bus, and then run as fast as you can.” We might do well to consider, if the downtrodden populations of the world together prayed for a more just society, and then worked to change that society as hard as they could – how much time would pass before a new social paradigm emerged. The future evolution of the species, a Paradigm advanced from Darwin’s embryonic theory, would then come to rest on the unfolding of applied and conscious human creativity.

Even the clinical psychologist, it seems, cannot sustain a discussion of creative cultivation without resorting to a rhetoric of creative energy. “I am assuming that each person has, potentially, all the psychic energy he or she needs to lead a creative life.” Csikszentmihalyi’s conclusions regarding effective cultivation techniques center around the familiar attempt to “liberate the creative energy we all have.[55]” His first suggestion is thus to make a conscious effort to redirect mental energies away from monotonous external activities in order to make time to develop the creative enterprise. His prescription further echoes Cameron in that this redirected energy should be applied first toward a cultivation of self-knowledge and curiosity about the world.

On this score, children tend to have the advantage over adults; their curiosity is like a constant beam that highlights and invests with interest anything within range. The object need not be useful, attractive, or precious; as long as it is mysterious it is worthy of attention …Creative individuals are childlike in that their curiosity remains fresh even at ninety years of age; they delight in the strange and the unknown.[56]

One may attempt to become more curious by allowing oneself to be surprised on a regular basis – by letting go of assumptions that one already knows everything there is to know about the world. Curiosity is engendered by seeking out the plethora of realities that one does not know, and perhaps has never imagined – whether this is an investigation into the species of frog that lives in one’s garden, a spontaneous trip to an unfamiliar destination, a book on a subject totally foreign, or an open-minded conversation with someone of radically different world-view. Csikszentmihalyi advises those who would become more creative to constantly seek to surprise themselves, and to surprise others – to be breaking always in small ways the mold of one’s life. Echoing Cameron again, he strongly suggests keeping a journal of these curiosities and discoveries. After this search has been undertaken for some time, “You should feel a stirring of possibilities under the accustomed surface of daily experiences. It is the gathering of creative energy, the rebirth of curiosity that has been atrophied since childhood.[57]”

In addition, he asserts that creative capacities are helped along in their development by an increased degree of self-knowledge, and the application of that self-knowledge. “Find out what you like and what you hate about life. …Be creative and invent your own method of self-analysis. The basis of ancient Greek philosophy was the injunction to know thyself. The first step toward self knowledge involves having a clear idea of what you spend you life doing and how you feel while doing it. Start doing more of what you love, less of what you hate.[58]” One of the most important ways an individual might apply this self-knowledge is by actively shaping one’s environment to engender inspired and concentrated creative work. On a broader scale, this may mean selecting an environment that suits the soul (so to speak) – bustling city, communal suburb, isolated wilderness, mountain or seashore, Mediterranean warmth, tropical humidity, or four full-bodied seasons? Perhaps more important is what is done with personal space – those objects that adorn our desks, the pictures and writings on our walls, the scent of cinnamon sticks, potted flowers, canned air-freshener, or incense, the music that plays beneath our work. Marcel Proust is said to have written his masterpiece in a room lined with cork to keep out the slightest distracting vibration; Stanislavski worked in an isolated stone tower amidst the Russian countryside while he perfected his staging of the Seagull. “As long as there is a roof overhead even the poorest among us can organize space and collect things that are meaningful and conducive to the use of creative energies.[59]” This of course offers little comfort to those individuals who do not have a roof over their head, or to those who share that roof with so many others that there is no opportunity for carving out a truly personal space. Although even in such dire circumstances the principle applies that any degree of personal aesthetic choice whatever is potentially empowering – even if so meager as how one ties one’s hair, or what is kept in one’s pocket. In this sense, Csikszentmihalyi’s method of creative cultivation is maintained through pragmatic applications of choice:

The only way to stay creative is to oppose the wear and tear of existence with techniques that organize time, space, and activity to your advantage. It means developing schedules to protect your time and avoid distraction, arranging your surroundings to heighten concentration, cutting out meaningless chores that soak up psychic energy, and devoting the energy thus saved to what you really care about. It is much easier to be personally creative when you maximize optimal experiences in every day life.[60]

Beyond this probing curiosity and knowing-of-self, Csikszentmihalyi recommends actively developing those traits that seem opposite to one’s established personality. That is, if an individual has always been very introverted, she might instead practice extroversion; if a fellow has always enjoyed art films, he might instead learn to appreciate big-budget action movies. If a woman takes a fundamentally intellectual view of life, she might take up martial arts to develop her physicality – or an especially masculine man might undertake to develop his feminine side. “When an extrovert learns to experience the world like an introvert, or vice versa, it is as if he or she discovers a whole missing dimension to the world. The same happens if a very feminine person learns to act in what we consider a masculine manner. Or if an objective, analytic person decides to trust intuition for a change. In all of these cases, a new realm of experience opens up in front of us…[61]” In fact, Csikszentmihalyi has concluded from his study of creative individuals that the “creative personality” is best defined not by a given series of defined traits, but by presence of dynamic, opposing traits within the same individual – that is, rather than being especially extroverted or introverted, or especially masculine or feminine, he found that the majority of creative individuals have heightened capacity for both extroversion and introversion, masculinity and femininity (See Table 4). In short, creative individuals tend towards a highly developed, complex, and dynamic personality, and as such, the development of creativity may involve a broadening of assumed personality traits. “Every person who wants to realize fully the potential of what it is to be human, and who wants to take part in the evolution of consciousness, can aim for a more complex personality.[62]” Csikszentmihalyi believes that creative problem solving is made possible through a developed capacity to see every problem from multiple perspectives simultaneously; multi-dimensional sight is most likely to find eyes in the context of a multi-dimensional personality.

A final factor worth mentioning in Csikszentmihalyi’s study of creative cultivation is role of external (i.e. non-personal) environment in the production of illumination or insight. Just as it is important to create a personal environment that supports the patterns and inspirations best suited to creative life, it is possible to seek out new environments for the express purpose of absorbing new patterns. This has been expressed for ages, of course, in the inspiring power of natural and sublime beauty. But it is not the mere presence of beauty that can engender creative inspiration – it is rather the living synthesis of an unknown aesthetic. Someone accustomed to peace and quiet of rural life may find the sights, sounds and smells of a nearby city to be inexplicably inspiring; in the meantime a person from that city may go for a weekend hike in a secluded valley and find sudden and unprecedented clarity of mind. There is, in this change of pace, a sudden exposure to an entirely new set of stimulants – the unfamiliar sounds of insects in the brush, rustling branches of unknown trees, amorphous cloud formations hinting at intelligible shapes, the neon lights of a commercial district at night, the oddly appealing scent of a New York City hot dog stand or a street hawker of roast chicken in Bangkok, the deafening rumble of rainstorm in Singapore - the ineffable super-organism of a living forest or bustling metropolis – in tandem every new environment has the potential to imprint upon the searching mind new possibilities, new patterns of motion and organization on which to model converging insights. “So the reason Martha’s Vineyard, the Grand Tetons or Big Sur may stimulate creativity is that they present such novel and complex sensory experiences … one’s attention is jolted out of its customary grooves and seduced to follow the novel and attractive patterns.[63]” Whereas the routine of day-to-day life promotes an inertia, a solidification of existential categories, the break into unknown sensory stimulation may indeed have the opposite effect. This effect is at the same time contingent on the notion of incubation discussed earlier – conscious effort to understand and control the syntheses taking place in the new environment may interfere with their natural development. Rather than attempt to regulate the dialogue between the internal and external worlds, one might do better simply to marvel.

It has been mentioned that Csikszentmihalyi theorizes creativity as an exclusively socially situated phenomenon – such that true creativity only occurs when change has been made in a domain, and when that change is approved by the authoritative social context of the field. This is a perfectly valuable method for understanding the operations of creativity as a social force – those operations whereby the social fabric is remade. And the remaking of social fabric, especially during this troubled era of relatively undeveloped human consciousness, certainly remains an endeavor of utmost import. We shall do ourselves a great disservice, however, to consider creativity as having no significance or meaning beyond social change. Social change is one meaningful endeavor – appreciation of culture is another, development of the self yet a third – and there are doubtless many other applications for this mysterious and pervasive creativity here discussed. To define this subject purely in terms of social results, and to leave those results under the authority of a self-legitimating field of “experts” puts unnatural and unnecessary limitations on our understanding and practice of human creativity. By Csikszentmihalyi’s theory, children are never creative, for their works are never accepted into adult fields – likewise, brilliant but unrecognized poets and painters whose works are lost to time are not considered creative, for they lack proper social recognition. The genius who discovers the key to clean nuclear fusion, and but who dies in a traffic accident on the way the symposium where he shall present his findings – he is not considered by Csikszentmihalyi to be creative either. To some degree we quibble here over words – Csikszentmihalyi is a proponent of a political creativity of social change, and defines the term for his purposes. Where I find his politics valid, I find his rhetoric irresponsible – the value of creativity goes beyond, must go beyond, social progress. Or shall we say the great stories of the Native Americans and the Australian Aborigines are meaningless? That a beautiful interpretation of a Sonata by Beethoven has no value if it takes place at a private funeral, and not a public concert hall? Or that the dreams of a child are not sacred simply because they cannot be quantified?

Clearly there is a high value in the existence of fields as the social context for domains – that in fact field and domain are inextricably linked. Obviously all social institutions must be self-protective, allowing only for those ideas and innovations which seem to make for positive change. Likewise the sciences and the arts must exist amidst a shared social context with standards for communication and advancement. We could have no computers without an agreed upon mathematics, no novels without communal acceptance of grammar and metaphor. The mistake, I think, lies in taking the necessity of the field and extending to it a power of authority. Socrates, Copernicus, Galileo all defied the “expertise” of the local intellectual authorities – all were threatened in no uncertain terms – their innovations were not allowed. But the tyranny of government and churches aside, surely we may see the same pattern recurring across any authoritarian social structure. Those in power will always have the option of keeping their power by proclaiming their own perspective as the correct perspective, and seeking to punish or discredit any alternative perspectives – regardless of validity. Even the hallowed halls of academia must constantly fall prey to an aristocracy of ideas, a strict regimen of accepted paradigms administered to students through graduate students aiming to please professors, by professors aiming to promote their own intellectual supremacy, by faculties desperate to please the powers that provide their funds. As long as human society is so vulnerable to the corrupting effects of authoritarian hierarchy, how can we trust creativity to the ultimate evaluation of any field whatsoever? In the midst of all this desperation to control, creativity seems to be a singular agent force for liberation – a capacity available to all, capable to of toppling the Tower of Babel, though it may be by such meager means as telling the right story. If we are to accept the value in allowing the “Art World” to judge the creativity of new art – must we not also see the vital necessity for new art to, on occasion, break with tradition and remake the Art World?

I prefer to define creativity as being those processes by which a system is revised, novelty is produced, or new forms are generated, regardless of context or scale. It is a concept that lends itself to multiple, overlapping definitions, and as such our broadest definition should allow us to view creativity across a longitudinal scale – from the miniscule mutterings and patterings of the individual subconscious, through the application of new ideas, all the way up to the collective genesis of new social paradigms.

I wholeheartedly agree with Csikszentmihalyi that among the most important aspects of creativity is its potential and propensity for improving the human condition. Civilization has been built on the foundation stones of great ideas – and it has been argued that more great ideas were generated in the past hundred years than in any other century. Technology, the internet, applied human rights, united nations – we now have more resource to make change in the world than at any other time in history, and most likely, the more creative minds we produce, the greater our capabilities will become. And yet, while social change may prove to be an undertaking of immeasurable value, I think it best to leave creativity and social progress as separate spheres of study, which, like most dynamic fields of study, often merge. Creativity may have tremendous and proven potential to make things better – but one cannot travel that road without asking the question, “better for whom?” Amidst the confusion of sorting through cultural relativities, national and internal politics, and personal preferences, we may forget that creativity also serves an apolitical function. Storytelling enriched the lives of tribal peoples for thousands of years prior to the advent of the wheel – creativity, sans any notion of social progress, has been a vital component of the human condition from as far back as we care to imagine. Primitive Art made meaning long before our modern economic disparities made so many lives feel meaningless. And should we succeed in our great work of improving the world – what shall we then use to make meaning on our perfected earth, if not the same creative faculties that worked to perfect it?

* Kant differentiated between analytic concepts, which are self contained, and synthetic concepts, which involve further concepts outside of themselves. The concept of “creativity” obviously belongs to the latter category. This analytic/synthetic divide in philosophy and aesthetics is discussed in more detail elsewhere

* The differentiation between creativity and intelligence in modern psychology dates to 1950, when formal creativity research began under the auspices of Dr. J. P. Guilford. The concept might be traced back even further to Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1790), in which synthetic and analytic processes are discussed at length in relation to art and art production.

* For a comprehensive account of this viewpoint taken to extremes, see Dr. John Lilly’s Programming and Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer.

* We are here speaking specifically of a tradition crystallized in the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368) and continued under the Qing dynasty through the early twentieth century. For a more nuanced account, see Jiuan Heng’s “Ritual and the Body in Literati Painting,” in Analecta Husserliana LXXIIII, A.T. Tyminiecka (ed.), [pg. 323-346] 2001. Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

* While principles such as “A is A” and “Either/Or” function perfectly so long as one employs the system of Aristotelian Logic exclusively, they have potential to fall under criticism when one adopts an alternative system of logic. States of consciousness generally associated with creativity represent just one alternative perspective under which Aristotelian logic appears unduly limited. From this perspective one might say, in the case of an acorn about to sprout, “well really, A is A only so long as you don’t notice it turning into B” and make easy fun of “Either/Or” by producing an example such as a Hermaphrodite and then questioning if this person is in fact either a man or a woman. In general we see that both of these cases are employing “real life” situations which make the logical system seem hopelessly abstract. However, even highly abstracted sciences such as Quantum Physics have expanded beyond this early form of logic, offering us photons that appear to be waves and particles simultaneously – whereas by the older systems of logic, it was would be assumed that they were either waves or particles. This is worth mentioning only because those minds which are biased towards analysis often assume that because classical logic works most of the time, it must then work all of the time. This, I believe, is a matter of perspective.

* This search for a new model is a different way of stating the “self-reprogramming” metaphor employed earlier – the replicating, inertial programs are identified, broken down, and revised.

* I speak here of creativity being an “end in itself” insofar as the creative process often produces some kind of tangible result, even if that result is not immediately applicable to the problem at hand. Julia Cameron refers to this as “shaking an apple tree and getting oranges” – the point being, it seems foolish to shake a tree in hopes of getting fruit and then discarding the oranges for not being apples. In this case we can still see the practical results of creativity – the fruits of our labor - although Csikszentmihalyi has gone so far as to say that, practical results aside, the creative process is almost always an autotelic experience – that is, subjectively speaking, creative processes are often experienced as meaningful and even pleasurable, regardless of final outcome or product. This notion will be discussed further subsequently..

* Late in his life, Nietzsche differentiated a positive nihilism and a negative nihilism. He was ostensibly a proponent of the former concept – the conclusion that “there is no truth” is an invitation for truth and meaning to be made (creatively) by the individual. Negative nihilism, by contrast, implies that “there is no truth” in the sense that no truth is possible, and from this we find our casual association of the term nihilism with the notion that “life is meaningless.”

* See Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake, and Woolfe’s To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, and The Waves, among others.

* Far from it; “analytic” philosophy seems wed to cognitive science, and in the case of such modern icons as John Searle, to the very lucrative pharmaceutical industry, which is, in the present author’s humble opinion, slowly attempting monopoly over human consciousness (quite literally, with pills) in the name of “science.” A cynical view of modern philosophy might hold that hyper-rational applications of mathematical and computational accounts of human consciousness have come to dominate the field in the one side, while in the opposing camp of “continental philosophy” a rampant and wild sea of “textuality” is navigated only through the arcane word games of such writers as Derrida.

* Of course the game rules of harmony might be considered a completed system as well. In fact, any set of established game rules may be systematized if there is no question as to how they may be used. The difference is this: a system is a self-contained set of symbols and relations between symbols, while the game rules for a system are an attempt to regulate how that system might be used. Once something is systematized, it is set in stone, and game rules show us what we might do with our stones. Part of the paradox of creative work is that it often attempts to reverse this process – to turn what is set in stone back into a pliable set of game rules. In the case of music, such attempts to undo musical systems have given rise to the use of dischord and a-tonality in composition.

* Of course, potentially, one might have a flash of insight and be able to make meaningful contribution to a domain without having a great deal of recent or in-depth knowledge. This is due to the simple fact that sometimes something is more easily comprehended from the outside than from within. In fact, becoming too involved with the minutiae of a domain has the potential to create a blinding effect – one cannot think outside the established domain (or “outside the box”) if the structure of that domain is perceived as too rigidly defined. Nevertheless, it is likely that increasing one’s knowledge of a domain will increase the potential complexity of creative process within that domain.

* The notion of “spirituality” is immediately problematic – as this is a highly individualized subject and those among us with secular tastes may find the term to connote a certain insubstantiality. It is important to note that Cameron invites her readers to view spirituality creatively – that is, to allow for a personal redefinition of “spirituality” so as to make the term function in a more meaningful way. One of primary uses of the “spiritual” outlook on creativity is that it suggests a personal, non-analytic, and non-verbal state of mind – precisely the kind of state that seems to accompany individual creative process.

* I use the word “facilitate” here quite specifically, as I do not wish with imply that brain function controls or causes (as opposed to influencing, coinciding-with, or being-caused-by) cognition, perception, and behavior. Such a claim is well beyond the scope of this paper and, in my humble opinion, beyond the scope of honest scientific inquiry.

* Generally speaking, Eastern traditions have been more comfortable distributing consciousness throughout the human body – understanding the brain as a computational and regulatory center, not a center of consciousness itself. Some sects of Hinduism and Buddhism actually hold that all matter is conscious.

* The results of Sperry research regarding the specialization of hemisphere function has been confirmed, in varying degrees, by numerous independent studies. Table 1 shows a general breakdown of these functions as derived independently by Springer and Deustch (1981,9183) published in John Dacey and Kathleen Lennon’s Understanding Creativity. Numerous scientific confirmations that the right hemisphere (as mapped by EEG) increases activity during creative process, as well as some evidence for frontal lobe activation, can be found in Colin Martindale’s “Biological Bases of Creativity” in Sternberg’s Handbook of Creativity.

* In tandem this may be taken as evidence that an initially sound scientific theory has fallen prey to diffusive effects of folk psychology – or – that the “consciousness revolution” as conceived in the American 1960s is still alive and well, perpetuating itself from the bottom up through underground literature and pulp fiction.

* Wallas himself credits this structure to a casual speech given by the German Physicist Hemholtz on his seventieth birthday in 1891. Hemholtz was at this time referring to his own method for problem solving, and detailed in his own words a three stage process of preparation, incubation, and illumination.

* It is widely accepted even among the most conservative brain researchers that the right hemisphere plays a special role in the ability to recognize faces.

* It should be noted that although Cameron does employ the notion of “creator” in a religious sense, she also does so in the context of Jungian Psychology – such that the “creator” here named represents not only a religious god, but also an archetypal essence within the individual psyche. Subsequent discussion of the “inner artist” and the “inner child” also fall under this context.

* Interestingly enough, Siva is also worshiped as the God of virility and fertility.

[1] Hadamard, Jacques, (1945) The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematic Field, Princeton New Jersey, Princeton University Press

[2] Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1996) Creativity: The Flow and Psychology of Discovery and Invention, New York, HarperCollins Publishers. Page 27

[3] Csikszentmihalyi Page 37

[4] Csikszentmihalyi Page 40

[5] Csikszentmihalyi page 28

[6] Csikszentmihalyi page 43

[7] Csikszentmihalyi page 46

[8] Csikszentmihalyi page 45

[9] Cameron, Julia, (1992) The Artists Way, New York, Penguin and Putnum Inc. page 2

[10] James, William, (1902) The Varieties of Religious Experience, Boston, Mentor Books.

[11] Cameron page 2

[12] Cameron page xiii

[13] Cameron page 82

[14] Cameron page 117

[15] Edwards, Betty,(1979) Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Los Angeles, California, J. P. Tarcher Inc. page 21

[16] Edwards page 26

[17] MIT page 372

[18] Edwards 32

[19] Edwards page 36

[20] Ewards page 37

[21] Edwards page 42

[22] Edwards page 46

[23] Csikszentmihalyi page 113

[24] Cameron page12

[25] Cameron page 13

[26] Levy, Jerre, (1974) “Psychobiological Implications of Bilateral Asymmetry” in Hemisphere Function in the Human Brain, edited by S.J. Dimond and J.G. Beaumont, New York, John Wiley and sons.

[27] Wilson, Robert Anton, (1980) the Illuminati Papers, Tempe Arizona, New Falcon Publications

[28] Morrison, Grant, New X-Men Vol.1 Issue 131, October 2002, Marvel Comics, New York

[29] Csikszentmihalyipage 79

[30] Csikszentmihalyi page 83

[31] Csikszentmihalyi page 95

[32] Cameron page 22

[33] Csikszentmihalyi 102

[34] Csikszentmihalyi page 98

[35] Csikszentmihalyi page 80

[36] Csikszentmihalyi page 106

[37] Wallas pages 93-107

[38] Csikszentmihalyi page. 345

[39] Edwards page 46

[40] Edwards page 49

[41] Cameron page 11

[42] Cameron page 12

[43] Cameron page 14

[44] Cameron page 19

[45] Cameron page 20

[46] Cameron page 21

[47] Cameron page 18

[48] Nietzsche, Friedrich, (1886) ‘Attempt at Self-Criticism,’ in the Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufman, New York, Random House 1967 [22-24]

[49] Cameron page 2-3

[50] Lily, John, [Citation goes here}

[51] Wilson, Robert Anton, (1983) Prometheus Rising, Tempe Arizona, New Falcon Publications

[52] Wilson, Robert Anton, (1973) Sex, Drugs, and Magic: A Journey Beyond Limits, Tempe Arizona, New Falcon Publications. Page 135

[53] Cameron page 92

[54] Jung, C. G., (1938) The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, New York, Princeton University Press. Page 109

[55] Csikszentmihalyi page 344

[56] Csikszentmihalyi page 346

[57] Csikszentmihalyi page 348

[58] Csikszentmihalyi page 357

[59] Csikszentmihalyi page 355

[60] Csikszentmihalyi page 358

[61] Csikszentmihalyi page 360

[62] Csikszentmihalyi page 363

[63] Csikszentmihalyi page 138

Table 1. Springer and Duestch’s Hemispheric Specializations

LEFT HEMISPHERE RIGHT HEMISPHERE

Verbal Nonverbal, visuo-spatial

Digital Analog

Logical, Analytical Gestalt, Synthetic

Rational Intuitive

Western Oriented Eastern Oriented

Intellectual Sensuous, Emotional

Convergent Divergent

Inductive Deductive

Rational Metaphoric

Horizontal Vertical

Discrete Continuous

Concrete Abstract

Realistic Fantastic

Directed Free

Differential Existential

Sequential Multiple

Historical Timeless

Explicit Implicit, Tacit

Objective Subjective

Successive Simultaneous

Table 2. Drawings by Edward’s Students

(The Drawings are currently not displayed pending copyright resolution)

The first two sets of drawings show work done by Edwards’ students at the beginning of her course, and at its conclusion, three months later. The course itself consists of three hours per week of instruction using Edwards’ techniques, for twelve weeks.

The third set of drawings shows work done by a student at the beginning of a course, and work done by the same student one year later.

Table 3. Julia Cameron’s Basic Principles

1. Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy

2. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life – including ourselves.

3. When we open ourselves up to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator’s creativity within us and our lives.

4. We are ourselves creations. And we in turn are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.

5. Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.

6. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.

7. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction.

8. As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.

9. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity.

10. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine Source. As we move toward our dream, we move toward our divinity.

Table 4. Csikszentmihalyi’s Dynamic Poles of the Creative Personality

Creative individuals have a great deal of physical energy, but they are also often quiet and at rest. … Without eros, it would be difficult to take on life with vigor; without restraint, the energy could easily dissipate.

Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naïve at the same time … Another way of expressing this dialectic is by the contrasting poles of Wisdom and Childishness. As Howard Gardner remarked in his study of the major creative geniuses of this century, a certain immaturity, both emotional and mental, can go hand in hand with deepest insights.

A third paradoxical trait refers to the related combination of playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility.

Creative individuals alternate between imagination and fantasy at one end, and a rooted sense of reality at the other. Both are needed to break away from the present without losing touch with the past. … the whole point of art and science is to go beyond what we now consider real and create a new reality.

Creative people tend to harbor opposite tendencies on the continuum between extroversion and introversion.

Creative individuals are also remarkably humble and proud at the same time. … Another way of expressing this duality is to see it as a contrast between ambition and selflessness, or competition and cooperation. It is often necessary for creative individuals to be ambitious and aggressive. Yet at the same time, they are often willing to subordinate their own personal comfort and advancement to the success of whatever project they are working on.

Creative individuals tend to escape … rigid gender role stereotyping. When tests of masculinity/femininity are given to young people, over and over one finds that creative and talented girls are more dominant and tough than other girls, and creative boys are more sensitive and less aggressive than their male peers.

Generally creative people are thought to be rebellious and independent. Yet it is impossible to be creative without having first internalized a domain of culture. … So it is difficult to see how a person can be creative without being both traditional and conservative and at the same time rebellious and iconoclastic.

Most creative people are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well.

Finally the openness and sensitivity of creative individuals often exposes them to suffering and pain yet also a great deal of enjoyment.

From Creativity, pp. 55-76

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