1
The true self is the creative centre within us.
2
The creative mind brings forth the Eternal Present
out of the unlimited; the ordinary mind brings forth mere echoes out of its
limited past experiences alone.
3
A work is creative if it is originally conceived,
that is, if the process of giving its basic and fundamental ideas birth is an
intuitive, illuminating, and inspirational one.
4
It is a mistake to believe that this creativity
comes only by a sudden flash. It may also come by graduated degrees. The
difference depends on the resistance met.
5
The original creative mind initiates its own ideas,
but where do they come from? You might as well ask where does all inspiration
come from. There are deeper levels of the human consciousness which feed the
inspired person at times. It is beyond emotion and beyond thinking, although we
express its promptings through these things.
6
No artist really creates anything. All he can do is
to try to communicate to others in turn what has been communicated to him.(P)
7
If he succeeds in transmitting through the medium of
his work something of the inspiration he receives, be he priest or artist, he is
truly creative.(P)
8
A true artist will search for forms worthy of his
inspiration, its beauty and power.
9
Those who write, paint, draw, compose, and sculpt
should bring their creations from spheres of inspiration which are radiant with
light. Yet too many do the very opposite and present us with misshapen figures,
patterns, poems, and musical pieces which nullify hope, meaning, and order and
enshroud gloom.
10
The creative power of man, working through
imagination or sensitivity, has brought to birth the musical composition, the
painted picture, the written novel, and other great forms of art. They are the
forms which move feeling and inspire action.
11
The artist who is inspired by nothing higher than
the thirst for dollars and cents, fame and notoriety, power and influence, will
never produce the highest possible art.
12
It is the task of a creative thinker to give out
new ideas.
13
The creative faculty should be cultivated and
developed as both a great aid to, and an expression of, spiritual growth.(P)
14
The processes of meditation are analogous, up to a
certain point, to the processes of artistic creation.
15
The need of self-expression in creative effort is
paramount with the artist. His job is his joy. This inner relationship to his
work is important and satisfying.
16
It is not enough for the writer, the poet, the
painter, or the composer of music to be original, for some men have found
original forms of murder and of robbery. Moreover, insanity has not seldom
passed among the artists for originality. Also it has been associated with
exhibitionism and with neuroticism, with the desire for publicity, to draw
attention to oneself. In short, it can be a malady of the ego. He who is truly
original learns to think for himself and especially to be aware for himself -
resisting the influences, the suggestions, and the pressures of his
surroundings. All human beings are destined to develop until they acquire this
kind of originality, for then they will come close to the fulfilment of the main
purpose of human existence.
17
Originality is certainly and eagerly to be
welcomed, but when it means sacrificing everything worthwhile, when its
revolution is aggressive only in order to surprise by its ugliness or shock by
its coarseness, when it becomes meaningless to the audience and insulting as a
so-called artistic production, it ought to be firmly rejected.
18
Why should we not give a great genius a little
extra latitude to break society's rules? In a few years he will be gone forever
but the power of his work will continue to impregnate so many minds for so long
a time. And it is this that really matters to us, not his brief peccadilloes or
shortcomings.
19
For the sake of a few possible geniuses who might
appear among them, the hordes of pseudo-, mediocre, uninspired, or untalented
artists have to be endured. Alas! we wait and wait for their masterpieces. Most
perhaps have a shallow sincerity, being young and lured to art as a seemingly
easy means of making a living or acquiring fame; but they have too little
knowledge, no real creativity at all, and only a capacity for imitation. This
explains why their work lacks quality and will pass away: an imitated
eccentricity is not fresh discovery nor true vision of the universe's order.
20
Their self-conscious attempts to appear original
may justify criticism but at least they show appreciation of the idea that
originality is creative, is a ripple from the higher levels of our being, is
something to be admired, valued, and sought for.
21
To be creative in the full sense it is not enough
to put the thought into words: the picture must summarize and suggest it. Both
must go deep down and touch, even disappear into, the Stillness.
22
To stimulate his creativity in whatever field he
engages in, he should bring a more loving interest into it. For instance, the
artist who loves his work is likely to be more creative than the one who engages
in it without such feeling.
23
The two things which anyone needs to become
creative, whether in any of the arts, sciences, or crafts, in professional
skills, or even in the art of living itself, are first, the instrument, and
second, the inspiration. Technique, talent, ability are not enough. Originality,
freshness, great power, genius come from above.
24
The artist, the writer, or the composer who feels
that he is getting into his stride on a piece of work, feels also an exultant
joy.
25
An artistic production that is really inspired
must give joy to its creator at the time of creation equally as to its
possessor, hearer, or beholder. If it does not, then it is not inspired.(P)
26
The imagination can people a man's atmosphere with
creations that are devilish or heavenly, can draw other men downward or lift
them upward. Being a creative artist does not entitle anyone to complete license
or justify his claim to being the highest type. There are other considerations.
27
His art is made out of his inner life. If that is
crooked, insane, or horrible, if thoughts and feelings are in a tangled mess,
then the poems, pictures, or music will correspond to it and be just as
distorted or unbalanced.
28
Let a man withdraw far enough from the active
world and the impetus for creative work will withdraw with him. For, belonging
no more to that life, he loses interest in it.
29
It is not only the mystic and the meditator who
may pass through a dark night of the soul, but also the artist. He may find that
his creative faculty seems to have deserted him. Either he will do no work at
all or discontinue what he has been trying to do and change to a different work
in which he can summon up an interest. He knows that one day the phase will pass
and this may be in a matter of days, weeks, or months.
30
Another cause of unequal value in productions, of
deterioration in form and spirit, is that the artist or writer may outlive his
creative powers.
31
Those sterile weeks are known by every artist,
when words are dragged out from the pen as though they were teeth, and when
inspiration turns disappointingly into a mirage.
32
Most of us know that inspiration flickers - or it
simply dries up. At such times the object is usually put aside until the light
returns. This procedure is quite sensible from a practical working standpoint.
However, it ignores the fact that there are layers of consciousness, and that
when one layer dries up, it's worthwhile to penetrate the deeper one - for it
exists.
33
Genius flashes from facts to conclusion, while
argument slowly labours step by step in sorting them out.
34
What is it that manifests itself during the
creative moments of genius? A current of force from the Overself! Its
inspiration acts as a catalyzer, that is, it releases the creative imagination,
which sets to work to provide an appropriate form for its manifestation.
35
It is from this level of consciousness just before
that of the Overself that all great art and all great ideas derive, presenting
themselves to the conscious mind as inspirations or intuitions.
36
All great drama did not die with Shakespeare, and
all great philosophy has not perished with Plato. Perhaps there are brighter
souls than theirs waiting to be born during this century. The infinite
storehouse whence genius draws its wealth is not less infinite in the twentieth
than it was in the sixteenth century.
37
The genius is both receptive and expressive. What
he gets intuitively from within he gives out again in the forms of his art or
skill.(P)
38
The most valuable contribution which any artist or
writer can make to the world is to let himself be carried away by inspired moods
when he can give utterance to the Overself's voice, radiate its beauty, dispense
its wisdom, and show its benignity.
39
The artist must raise the cup of his vision aloft
to the gods in the high hope that they will pour into it the sweet mellow wine
of inspiration. If his star of fair fortune favours him that day, then must he
surrender his lips to the soft lure of the amber-coloured drink that sets care
aflying and restores to the tongue the forgotten language of the soul. For these
sibylline inspirations of his come from a sky that is brighter than his own, and
he cannot control it.(P)
40
The inspired individual does not need to rehash
and deliver other people's ideas. His power is creative; through his medium,
truth or beauty are born anew.
41
He creates, not to express his small personality
as so many others do, but to escape from it. For it is to the divine which
transcends him, which is loftily impersonal, that he looks for inspiration.(P)
42
The inspired man does not work in order to submit
his pages to the fine taste and delicate nose of the literary critics; nor does
he write to entertain the bored or to provide fresh subjects for the
tittle-tattle of parlour and club. He writes because he MUST.
43
The supremely gifted artist who works primarily
out of pure love of his art - whether it be writing, painting, or music - rather
than out of love of its rewards, sometimes approaches and arrives at this same
concept through another channel. Such a genius unconsciously throws the
plumbline of feeling into the deep mystery of his being. He is lifted beyond his
ordinary self at his most inspired moments. He feels that he is floating in a
deeper element. He receives intimations of the pure timeless reality of Mind,
whose beauty, he now discovers, his best works have vainly sought to adumbrate.
The flash of insight is granted him, although if he is only an artist and not
also a philosopher he may not know how to retain it.(P)
44
The actor who never loses his own ego in the
personage he is portraying may be a man of much talent, but he may not be a
genius.
45
The artist has this advantage over the
intellectual, that he recognizes sooner, obstructs less often, and obeys more
quickly the intuitive prompting.
46
If the artist becomes truly inspired he will not
seek to bring horror to men but rather beauty. This will be so whatever way it
shows itself - colour, sound, word, or form. The final step is not with beauty
for its own sake but for what it points and leads to - the beautiful
Consciousness which awaits man, the inner beauty.
47
If he composes, paints, sculpts, or writes as the
light within shows him the thing or thought to be depicted - not as opinion,
bias, or untruth urges him - he will be truly inspired.(P)
48
There is this quality about an inspired work, that
you can come back to it again and again and discover something fresh or helpful
or beautiful or benedictory.(P)
49
Such an inspired production gives out a form of
energy which makes those who can receive it with enough sympathy feel and see
what its creator felt and saw. There is an actual transmission.(P)
50
The inspiration will come to the extent that he
lets go of himself when he opens the piano, to the degree that he forgets that
he is the artist, the writer, when he takes up the brush, the pen.
51
Perhaps it is a matter of sustained power of
concentration. Perhaps the genius has this ability to maintain steady and
unbroken concentration upon the part played without a break so that thoughts of
self-consciousness or of what the audience is thinking do not have the power to
enter in. Therefore, the artist who has successfully mastered the art of
meditation should be able to transfer the qualities so developed to the work of
creation or of composition in his art and thus attain a state of genius. For to
sit without moving, intensely concentrated, held completely by the object of
concentration, is one way of providing part of the necessary conditions for
artistic creativity.
52
His objective is to receive a communication whose
inspiration remains pure, uncoloured, and undistorted, whereas too many others
use their art as a pretext to put forward the twisted constructions or illusory
imaginations of their own little egos.
53
He will express himself and his aspirations fully
only when he, his body, and his thoughts are unified.
54
It would be hard to find and state new
metaphysical or spiritual truth at this late date of human culture. But a
brilliant mind may state it in such an unexpected and perceptive way as to give
it the force of a new revelation.
55
Artistic composition and production, aesthetic
style and method, involve the artist's freedom if he is to do really worthwhile
creative work originating in his own deepest inner life, that of his secret
spiritual identity. He must be determined to keep uncommitted.
56
If imagination is permitted to wander unbalanced,
unchecked, totally free, it may lead to genius, inspiration, or to lunacy,
disorder.
57
Sensitivity and passivity are needed to absorb
inspiration. If they are not inborn, they will have to be studied and copied for
a long while before they can appear of their own accord and be truly personal.
58
The creations of inspired art deserve appreciation
for that which is beyond their technical excellence.
59
He is ever alert for that faint but fascinating
beginning of an intuitive thought.
60
Those art productions which emerge from this
higher state of consciousness have a quality which the other kind lack.
61
Whatever medium an artist works with, whatever
sounds or words or sights, and whatever technique he develops and applies, he
still needs both concentration and inspiration.
62
A pet cat often settled on the long and broad cuff
of Muhammed's sleeve when he was writing, thus interrupting his work in Arabia,
but a butterfly occasionally settled on the pencil of W.H. Davies, the tramp
poet, and perhaps assisted his verse-making in a little Kentish cottage. Yet who
knows, the pauses of inaction may have allowed Muhammed to relapse into
meditation and thus, indirectly, assisted or enriched the subsequent writing.
63
The singer gifted with a voice which can exalt and
inspire men, the artist endowed with a talent which compels them to pause and
behold, may each be used as a channel for the Overself.
64
The quality of sublime inspiration distinguishes
the true artist from the mere technician.
65
Even the most inspired mystic needs technical
skill and developed intellect to convey his message adequately to his readers.
The more he lacks them, the more inarticulate will he be - no matter how strong
his inspiration. The more that adequate experience and competent technique are
missing from his equipment, the more will he fail to fulfil his own intention
and the less will his readers be able to gather in whatever values he represents
to them. To know is one thing; the talent to present what you know is another.
66
It is true that education gives a man the power to
express in word forms or artistic productions what he thinks or feels. It is
also true that an uneducated man may have a far deeper content much more worth
expressing. But unless the latter is able to radiate some of this content by
silent look, glance, or touch, he will actually not be able to give others as
much as the former.
67
The artist, the craftsman, or the writer who has
mastered his professional technique remains a workman if he stops there. But if
he learns to enter into the spiritual part of himself, if he practises going
into its creative quiet before he begins producing anything, he becomes
something more and his production becomes inspired.
68
In matter and manner, in content and technique, in
substance and style, the productions of the faultless artist who is only
technically competent will never equal those of the faultless artist who is also
spiritually mature.(P)
69
The creative mind needs several conditions to
promote its work. Among them secrecy during conception and solitude during
inspiration are helpful.
70
The creative poet, writer, or artist who
meditates, even for a short while, before his work begins gains proportionately
in the visible results.
71
The creator of inspired music, poetry, pictures,
and books must work alone if his production is to keep its high quality. If he
works in a group he has to struggle to keep his inspiration, as well as to avoid
distraction.
72
The skill of the artist, craftsman, poet, painter,
composer, or whatever must meet and unite with the inspiration of the glimpse:
then there is true creativity in his work.
73
The artist has two functions: to receive through
inspiration and to give through technique.(P)
74
Inspiration for a writer does not necessarily mean
that the sentences come tumbling through like poured water, or for a painter
that the brush-strokes rush across the canvas. It may, but also it may not. What
it does mean is an inflow from a deeper source, neither a calculation by the
intellect nor a movement by the egoistic emotion. Its first sign is that it is
really a smooth flow, whether slow or rapid or waited for. Its second sign is a
freedom from doubts, the presence of certainty, sureness, and a sense of
rightness. Its third sign is the quiet joy which either accompanies or ends the
work, for it is truly a creative act.
75
The author who asks for light on the subjects in
his book, who prays for guidance in the writing of it and for inspiration in the
doing of it when the little ego cannot see its way, can gain truth and power
from on high to do a really outstanding creative job if he knows the technique
of inducing the "Interior Word" to speak within Him. This Voice, heard in
meditation, is so compelling and so inspirational that it will provide all that
he seeks.
76
The superior artist in China is more of a
mentalist than his Western equivalent. For he does not just sit down and paint
what he sees, whether model or landscape. He sits down quite a few times but
makes no attempt to record what he sees. He lets his mind's eye do that. When
the time comes to paint the picture, he remains alone in his studio and
transfers the mental record.
77
For an aesthetic work to be born, one should first
turn the mind inward, get it quiet, and then let the mind go back and let the
senses reveal what they can of full and real beauty.
78
The happy and unusual satisfaction which the
creative worker of any kind - and especially the artist or writer - feels when
he has become deeply immersed for hours in a particular piece of work is a
remote ripple of the bliss in which the second self is always itself immersed
and to which his prolonged concentration brought him nearer. Again and again
through this concentration he stumbles against and unwittingly opens a door in
his mind which gives access to the ante-court of the Overself. In the creative
experience he begins to find fulfilment but in the spiritual he completes it.
79
What he feels is one thing; what he can express is
another. The distance between these two depends on his command of technique not
less than on his receptivity to inspiration. The great artist is great in both
these respects.
80
The way a thought is expressed, the style in which
a teaching is conveyed, possesses a value which is highly exaggerated by the
intellectualistic or the artistic but highly undervalued by the mystic and
ascetic.
81
Although technical equipment is not all there is
to the practice of art, it must be mastered. Without it, inspiration suffers
from a faulty or deficient medium.
82
Creative work, insofar as it truly touches the
depths and heights of inspiration, takes our minds out of our personal troubles
and thus gives us temporary peace - for it brings the impersonal Overself into
contact with our troubled person and the contact provides us with a higher point
of view. Those moments of artistic inspiration when the mind becomes almost
incandescent are always moments of intense concentration and rapt absorption.
"It is from this condition of their being (trance), in its most imperfect form,
that Poetry, Music, Art - all that belong to an idea of Beauty - take their
immortal birth." - Lytton's Zanoni
83
Inspiration gives a man the strengthened faith and
virile force to work; but he himself must find the words or sounds for the
results - the written poem or musical piece.
84
Creative inspiration can charge words, sounds,
paint, or stone with magical power.
85
The composition is technical but the inspiration
is mystical.
86
Skill with the use of an author's pen does not
necessarily indicate a higher consciousness.
87
Buddha says in the Lankavatarasutra:
"Mahamati, it is like the mastery of comedy, dancing, singing, music,
lute-playing, painting, and other arts, which is gained gradually and not
simultaneously; in the same way, Mahamati, the purification of the Tathagata of
all beings is gradual and not instantaneous." Years of practice give the
sculptor or the painter a dexterity of the hand which is a marvel for witnesses
of his work.
88
A genius who possesses poor technique and
deficient mechanism will never be a complete master of his art. His productions
will always be imperfect ones.
89
He who puts his skills as a craftsman, an artist,
or a public servant to the service of his essential self, his diviner self, puts
them to the best use.
90
Good art is not complete unless it has both
praiseworthy technique and inspiration, form and content.
91
A writer's or artist's value depends not only on
his technical equipment but also on his being manipulated by the Overself.
92
If he lacks this inspired creativeness he will
produce mere toys to entertain people, not spiritual treasures to enrich them.
93
The true artist - that is to say, the inspired
artist - must necessarily be sparse in his output. So alone can he keep up the
choice quality of his work.
94
The truth can be put in short plain words and
short easy sentences or it can be put in polysyllabic words and long winding
sentences. It is not the higher power which uses the one kind or the other, but
the author himself.
95
The inspiration comes from beyond time; the
formulation in thought, picture, pattern, or sound takes place in time.