classes ::: book, Arthur_Koestler,
children :::
branches :::
see also :::

Instances - Classes - See Also - Object in Names
Definitions - Quotes - Chapters


object:The Act of Creation
class:book
class:Arthur Koestler
subject:Psychology
published:1964

BOOK ONE ::: THE ART OF DISCOVERY AND THE DISCOVERIES OF ART

--- PART ONE - THE JESTER
    THE LOGIC OF LAUGHTER
    The Triptych-The Laughter Reflex- The Paradox of Laughter- The Logic of Laughter: A First Approach Matrices and Codes-Hidden Persuaders-Habit and Originality-Man and Machine

    LAUGHTER AND EMOTION
    Aggression and Identification-The Inertia of Emotion - The Mechanism of Laughter-The Importance of not being Earnest

    VARIETIES OF HUMOUR
    Pun and Witticism-Man and Animal-Impersonation The Child-Adult-The Trivial and the Exalted-Caricature and Satire- The Misfit- The Paradox of the Centipede-Displacement-Coincidence-Nonsense-Tickling- The Clown-Originality, Emphasis, Economy

    FROM HUMOUR TO DISCOVERY
    Explosion and Catharsis-'Seeing the Joke' and 'Solving the Problem'-The Creation of Humo11r-Paradox and Synthesis-Summary

--- PART TWO - THE SAGE
    MOMENTS OF TRUTH
    The Chimpanzee aud the Stick-Archimedes-Chance and Ripeness-Logic and Int1lition-Summary

    THREE ILLUSTRATIONS
    1. The Printing Press-2. Gravity and the Holy Ghost3 Evolution through Natllral Selection

    THINKING ASIDE
    Limits of Logic-The Unconscious before Fm1d- The Mechanization of Habits-Exploring the Shallows-The 'Hooked Atoms of Thought'-Exploring the Deeps-The Word and the Vision-The Snares of Language

    UNDERGROUND GAMES
    The Importance of Dreaming-Concretization and Symbolization-Punning for Profit-The Benefits of Impersonation-Displacement-Standing on One's Head-Analogy and Intuition-Summary

    THE SPARK AND THE FLAME
    False Inspirations-Premature Linkages-SnowblindnessGradual Integrations-The Dawn of Language-Summary

    THE EVOLUTION OF IDEAS
    Separations and Reintegrations-Twenty-six Centuries of Science-Creative Anarchy-'Connect, Always Connect' - The Thinking Cap-The Pathology of Tho11ghtLimits of Confirmation-Fashions itl Science-Boundaries of Science-Summary

    SCIENCE AND EMOTION
    Three Character- Types-Magic and Sublimation-The Boredom of Science-Summary

--- PART THREE - THE ARTIST
    A. THE PARTICIPATORY EMOTIONS

      THE LOGIC OF THE MOIST EYE
      Laughter and Weeping-Why do we Weep?-Raptness - Mourning-Relief-Pity-Self-Pity-Summary

      PARTNESS AND WHOLENESS
      Stepchildren of Psychology-The Concept of Hierarchy

      ON ISLANDS AND WATERWAYS

    B. VERBAL CREATION
      ILLUSION
      The Power of Illusion-The Value of Illusion-The Dynamics of Illusion-Escape and Catharsis-Identification and Magic-The Dawn of Literature

      RHYTHM AND RHYME
      Pulsation-Measure and Meaning-Repetition and Affinity
      -Compulsive Punning-Coaxing the Unconscious

      IMAGE
      The Hidden Analogy-Emotive Potentials-The Picturestrip-On Law and Order-On Truth and Beauty

      INFOLDING
      Originality and Emphasis-Economy-The Last Veil
      Summary

      CHARACTER AND PLOT
      Identification-Phantoms and Images-Conflict-Integrations and Confrontations-Archetypes-Cataloguing Plo
      Puppets and Strings

      THE BELLY OF THE WHALE
      The Night Journey-The Guilt ofJonah-The Root and
      the Flower-The Tightrope

      VISUAL CREATION
      MOTIF AND MEDIUM
      Looking at Nature-Pigment and Meaning-The Two Environmmts-Visual I1ifere1zces-Codes ofPerception-Convention 011d Creation

      IMAGE AND EMOTION
      Virtues of the Picture Postcard-Taste and Distaste-Motion
      and Rest-Ascending Gradients-Srmmary

      ART AND PROGRESS
      C111nulative Periods-Stagnation and Cross-FertilizationStatement and Implication

      CONFUSION AND STERILITY
      The Aesthetics of Snobbery-The Personal Emanation The Antiquarian Fall.lcy-The Comforts of Sterility

BOOK TWO ::: HABIT AND ORIGINALITY
  Introduction

    PRENATAL SKILLS
    Structure and Function- The Cell-Matrix-Nucleus and Cytoplasm-R1ulative and Mosaic DevelopmentOrganizers an Inducers-Summary

    THE UBIQUITOUS HIERARCHY
    Development of the Nervous System-Locomotor Hierarchies-The Goldfish and the Crab-Sh1dfling the Salamander's Limbs-Limits of Control

    DYNAMIC EQUILIBRI UM AND REGENERATIVE POTENTIAL
    Acting and Reacting-What is Equilibrium?-SuperElasticity and Regenerative Span-Physiological Isolation

    RECULER POUR MIEUX SAUTER
    Structural Regwerations-Reversed Gradients-The Dangers of Regression-'Routine Regenerations'-Reorganizations of Function-Reculer sans Sauter-Regeneration and Psycho therapy-The Routine of Dreaming-Regeneration and Creativity-Regeneration and Evolution

    PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION

    CODES OF INSTINCT BEHAVIOUR
    The Genetics of Behaviour-Instinct and Learning-Tinbergen's Hierarchy-Appetitive Behaviour and Consummatory Act-Lecrlauf and Displacemmt-Imtinct and Originality

    IMPRINTING AND IMITATION
    The 'Following-response'-Bird-song and Parrot-talk
    Urttapped Resottrces

    MOTIVATION
    Retrospect-Decline of the Reflex-Hunger, Fear, Curiosity-The Exploratory Drive

    PLAYING AND PRETENDING
    Difficulties of Definition-The Ludic and the Ludicrous

    PERCEPTION AND MEMORY
    Screening the Input-Strippirtg the Input-Dismarztling
    arzd Reassemblirzg-' Coloured Filters'-A Digression on
    Engrams-Tracing a Melody-Conditioning and Insight in
    Perception-Abstract and Picture-strip-Learning to See
    -Knowing and Seeing-Levels of Memory-Image and
    Meaning-Kiangbild and Wortschatz-Perceptual and
    CotUeptual Abstraction-Generalization, Discrimination,
    and Association-Recognition arzd Reca/l-S;tmmarj

    MOTOR SKILLS
    Learning Hierarchies-Summary: Rigidity and Freedom

    THE PITFALLS OF LEARNING THEORY
    A Glance itl Retrospect-The Denial of CreativityAdvent of Gestalt-Cotzditioning and Empirical Induction
    -Do Insects have Insight?-The Controversial Rat-The Cat in the Box

    THE PITFALLS OF GESTALT
    More about Chimpanzees-Uniform Factors in Learning - Criteria of Insight Learning-Preconditions of Insight The Ambiguities of Gestalt-Putting Two and Two Together

    LEARNING TO SPEAK
    Intending and Saying-The Dawn of Symbol Consciousness-Concepts and Labels-li!eation and Verbalization

    LEARNING TO THINK
    Ab straction, Discrimination, and Tranifer-The Magic of Names-The Rise of Casuality-Explaining and Understanding- The Dawn of Mathematics-The Dawn of Logics

    SOME ASPECTS OF THINKING
    Multi-dimensionality-The Experience of Free Choice
    Degrees of Self-Awareness-Master-Switches and Releasers
    -Explicit Rules and Implicit Codes-Matrix Categories

    ASSOCIATION
    Multiple Attunements-Types of AssociatioJ>

    HABIT AND ORIGINALITY
    Bridging the Gap-Seardling for a Code-Degrees of
    Originality-Association and Bisodation


APPENDIX I

ON LOADSTONES AND AMBER

APPENDIX II

SOME FEATURES OF GENIUS
I.

Tl!B SENSE OF

WONDER

Aristotle on Motivation-The Leaders of the Revolution
-Newton, Monster a11d Saint-The Mysticism of Franklin
-The Fundamentalism of Faraday-The Metaphysics of
Maxwel/-The Atheism of Darwin-The Faith of Pasteur

674
674

2. INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE

703

References

709

Works Mentioned in this Book

717

Acknowledgements

72 9

Index

731


description - wikipedia ::: The Act of Creation is a 1964 book by Arthur Koestler. It is a study of the processes of discovery, invention, imagination and creativity in humour, science, and the arts. It lays out Koestler's attempt to develop an elaborate general theory of human creativity.
   From describing and comparing many different examples of invention and discovery, Koestler concludes that they all share a common pattern which he terms "bisociation" - a blending of elements drawn from two previously unrelated matrices of thought into a new matrix of meaning by way of a process involving comparison, abstraction and categorisation, analogies and metaphors. He regards many different mental phenomena based on comparison (such as analogies, metaphors, parables, allegories, jokes, identification, role-playing, acting, personification, anthropomorphism etc.), as special cases of "bisociation".

link:https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30676.The_Act_of_Creation





questions, comments, suggestions/feedback, take-down requests, contribute, etc
contact me @ integralyogin@gmail.com or via the comments below
or join the integral discord server (chatrooms)
if the page you visited was empty, it may be noted and I will try to fill it out. cheers



--- OBJECT INSTANCES [0]




The_Act_of_Creation_text

--- PRIMARY CLASS


Arthur_Koestler
book
chapter
text

--- SEE ALSO


--- SIMILAR TITLES [0]


The Act of Creation
The Act of Creation text
select ::: Being, God, injunctions, media, place, powers, subjects,
favorite ::: cwsa, everyday, grade, mcw, memcards (table), project, project 0001, Savitri, the Temple of Sages, three js, whiteboard,
temp ::: consecration, experiments, knowledge, meditation, psychometrics, remember, responsibility, temp, the Bad, the God object, the Good, the most important, the Ring, the source of inspirations, the Stack, the Tarot, the Word, top priority, whiteboard,

--- DICTIONARIES (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)



--- QUOTES [0 / 0 - 61 / 61] (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)



KEYS (10k)


NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   3 Peter Thiel

   3 Neil Gaiman

   3 Henry Miller

   2 Madeleine L Engle

   2 Kevin Hearne

   2 Graham Greene


*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:The act of creation is singular, ~ Anonymous
2:The act of creation can be an extreme violent experience. ~ Nicolas Winding Refn
3:In the act of creation there is always, it seems, an awful selfishness. ~ Graham Greene
4:The Muse visits during the act of creation, not before. Don't wait for her. Start alone. ~ Roger Ebert
5:Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one. ~ Salman Rushdie
6:Your imagination creates the inner picture that allows you to participate in the act of creation. ~ Wayne Dyer
7:They say that the only immortality that can be achieved by mortal man is through the act of creation. ~ S A Hunt
8:Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one." ―Salman Rushdie ~ Jim Denney
9:The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange. ~ Peter Thiel
10:Acting is contained - you act for three months, then leave it - but writing is the act of creation. Writing is dangerous. ~ Sophie Marceau
11:The violence and obscenity are left unadulterated, as manifestation of the mystery and pain which ever accompanies the act of creation. ~ Anais Nin
12:An artist is a nourisher and a creator who knows that during the act of creation there is collaboration. We do not create alone. ~ Madeleine L Engle
13:Nothing can rival the incredible rush the act of creation brings. Of crafting something you know is destined to be great for all time. ~ Alyson Noel
14:we learn because in doing so we experience something like the pleasure God felt in the act of creation. We discover his handiworks with him. ~ Donald Miller
15:Every dawn renews the Beginning, and to behold the earth struggling out of the formless void, out of the night, is to witness the act of creation. ~ Sholem Asch
16:Worrying about what would become of her work once it was finished was a waste of time, she told herself. The act of creation was what mattered. ~ Jennifer Robson
17:It may sound affected - but it is the act of creation itself, and it is equally exhilarating whether one is working on a teaspoon or a national bank. ~ Arne Jacobsen
18:The act of creation, as you very well know, is a lonely and private matter and has nothing to do with the public area... the performance of the work one creates. ~ Edward Albee
19:But, when Scripture makes a clear distinction between the act of creation and the process of preservation, we cannot accept the idea of a progressive creation process. ~ Walter Lang
20:It was one way she had found to fill her solitary childhood, but it was more than that; the act of creation gave substance and shape to her life. It made order out of the chaos. ~ Cathy Holton
21:The act of creation is a kind of ritual. The origins of art and human existence lie hidden in this mystery of creation. Human creativity reaffirms and mystifies the power of 'life. ~ Keith Haring
22:For an artist is not a consumer, as our commercials urge us to be. An artist is a nourisher and a creator who knows that during the act of creation there is collaboration. We do not create alone. ~ Madeleine L Engle
23:Sex is life: The act of creation in pleasure, the loss of oneself in another, the coming together of opposites in a temporary union of yin and yang, that creates something other than either. What is life if not this? ~ Frederick Lenz
24:To continue the act of creation where God left off on the last day. To unlock the secret language of nature. I truly believe that every time I go deep enough to bring back a nugget of truth or beauty, God is making use of me. ~ Nancy Horan
25:I write because in the act of creation there comes that mysterious, abundant sense of being both parent and child; I am giving birth to an Other and simultaneously being reborn as a child in the playground of creation. ~ Francine du Plessix Gray
26:Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process. ~ Stephen King
27:but greatness is in the act of creation and not necessarily in the finished product. Creating is the yin to the yang of our consumption and the doorway to beauty that we all want to walk through. Creating is how I tell the world I love it.” I ~ Kevin Hearne
28:Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange. ~ Peter Thiel
29:It is my experience both as an artist and as a teacher that when we move out on faith into the act of creation, the universe is able to advance. It is a little like opening the gate at the top of a field irrigation system. Once we remove the blocks, the flow moves in. ~ Julia Cameron
30:Writing is the act of creation. Put words on a page, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to seven-book epic fantasy cycles with books so heavy you could choke a hippo. But don’t give writing too much power, either. A wizard controls his magic; it doesn’t control him. ~ Chuck Wendig
31:Now, I know I am not a craftsmen... but greatness is in the act of creation and not necessarily in the finished product. Creating is the yin to the yang of our consumption and the doorway to beauty that we all want to walk through. Creating is how I tell the world I love it." ~ Kevin Hearne Atticus ~ Kevin Hearne
32:In a world grown paralyzed with introspection and constipated by delicate mental meals this brutal exposure of the substantial body comes as a vitalizing current of blood. The violence and obscenity are left unadulterated, as manifestation of the mystery and pain which ever accompanies the act of creation. ~ Henry Miller
33:The act of creation, making anything, is an alteration. We cannot eliminate the medium or ourselves from the process, and both are limited. We create decisive moments by devoting our time and attention to specific things. This is the greatest gift we can give anyone or anything - pieces of our life. ~ John Paul Caponigro
34:The things I felt... about certain painters of the past that... inspired me, like Cezanne and Manet... that complete losing of oneself in the work to such an extent that the work itself... felt as if a living organism was posited there on the canvas, on this surface... That's truly... the act of creation. ~ Philip Guston
35:...the art of living involves the act of creation. The work of art is nothing. It is only the tangible, visible evidence of a way of life, which, if it is not crazy is certainly different from the accepted way of life... For the artist to attach himself to his work, or identify himself with it, is suicidal. ~ Henry Miller
36:A moment of complete happiness never occurs in the creation of a work of art. The promise of it is felt in the act of creation but disappears towards the completion of the work. For it is then the painter realises that it is only a picture he is painting. Until then he had almost dared to hope the picture might spring to life. ~ Lucian Freud
37:Now, I know I am not much of a craftsman,” I said, busily knotting the vines into a circle, “but greatness is in the act of creation and not necessarily in the finished product. Creating is the yin to the yang of our consumption and the doorway to beauty that we all want to walk through. Creating is how I tell the world I love it.” I ~ Kevin Hearne
38:Of course, it’s easier to copy a model than to make something new. Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange. ~ Peter Thiel
39:In the act of creation there is always, it seems, an awful selfishness. So Dickens's wife and mistress had to suffer so that dickens could make his novels and his fortune. At least a bank manager's money is not so tainted by egotism. Mine was not a destructive profession. A bank manager doesn't leave a trail of the martyred behind him. ~ Graham Greene
40:In the world to come, let us be brave – let us walk into the dark without fear, and step into the unknown with smiles on our faces, even if we're faking them.

And whatever happens to us, whatever we make, whatever we learn, let us take joy in it. We can find joy in the world if it's joy we're looking for, we can take joy in the act of creation. ~ Neil Gaiman
41:This act [creation], as it is for God, must always remain totally inconceivable to man. For we--even our poets and musicians and inventors--never, in the ultimate sense make. We only build. We always have materials to build from. All we can know about the act of creation must be derived from what we can gather about the relation of the creatures to their Creator ~ C S Lewis
42:She gives me a look I know so very well, the look of an artist talking to a civilian. It’s one of the reasons I’m so valued at my job. I supply what other artists and art professors cannot—a complete absence of experience in the act of creation. I offer tiny moments of superiority to people otherwise battered by doubt, the chance to believe in the depths of their soul. ~ S G Redling
43:[The laws of logic] were placed in our minds by the Creator during the act of creation. We speak because God has spoken. God is not the author of confusion, irrationality, or the absurd. Furthermore, his words are meant to be understood by his creatures, and a necessary condition for his creature's understanding of those words is that they are intelligible and not irrational. ~ R C Sproul
44:We understand God best, Dorothy Sayers suggests, by thinking of God as a creative artist. Imagine God as an engineer or watchmaker or immovable force, and you will go astray. God's image shines through us most clearly in the act of creation-comprising the three stages of Idea, Expression, and Recognition-and by reproducing this act we may begin to grasp, by analogy, the Trinity. ~ Philip Yancey
45:In meditation we experience the silence from which all creativity springs. The act of creation—whether from a blank page to a poem, an empty space to a building, a thought to a song or film—starts with a void. The more intimate a relationship we can build with that silent void, the more clearly the art can shine through and spring forth. Meditation is the vehicle to connect to that silence.” —Rick Rubin, Malibu 2013 ~ Russell Simmons
46:Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky . The glory of science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but in the act of creation itself. The scientist's discoveries impose his own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is based on the observer's frame of reference, which differs from period to period as a Rembrant nude differs from a nude by Manet. ~ Arthur Koestler
47:The intelligence that shaped the universe, shaped you. There is an inner part of us, for ever obscured, for ever mysterious, which is most alive during the process of composition. And that inner part, that inner glow, is timeless, and it functions beyond time. It drinks from deep waters. It has the stillness and the dance and the radiance of firmament. When one is most absorbed in the act of creation one almost feels that one is wandering in the great corridors of all minds. Creativity makes us part of it all. ~ Ben Okri
48:It’s a New Year and with it comes a fresh opportunity to shape our world. So this is my wish, a wish for me as much as it is a wish for you: in the world to come, let us be brave – let us walk into the dark without fear, and step into the unknown with smiles on our faces, even if we’re faking them. And whatever happens to us, whatever we make, whatever we learn, let us take joy in it. We can find joy in the world if it’s joy we’re looking for, we can take joy in the act of creation. So that is my wish for you, and for me. Bravery and joy. ~ Neil Gaiman
49:It’s a New Year and with it comes a fresh opportunity to shape our world.
So this is my wish, a wish for me as much as it is a wish for you: in the world to come, let us be brave – let us walk into the dark without fear, and step into the unknown with smiles on our faces, even if we’re faking them. And whatever happens to us, whatever we make, whatever we learn, let us take joy in it. We can find joy in the world if it’s joy we’re looking for, we can take joy in the act of creation. So that is my wish for you, and for me. Bravery and joy. ~ Neil Gaiman
50:According to the mystics, the obscure matter that creation presupposes is nothing other than divine potentiality. The act of creation is God’s descent into an abyss that is simply his own potentiality and impotentiality, his capacity to and capacity not to . . . In this context, “abyss” is not a metaphor . . . It is the life of darkness in God, the divine root of Hell in which the Nothing is eternally produced. Only when we succeed in sinking into this Tartarus and experiencing our own impotentiality do we become capable of creating, truly becoming poets. ~ Giorgio Agamben
51:One might say that the difficulty in rearing children has to do with the ambiguities of independence. The child must separate from the parents; the parent must allow the child to discover his or her own reality. Where there was one, there must be two. But this separation, though necessary, is a complex and often tormented experience. The relationship between separation and loving attachment has to be negotiated each time afresh... There is no theory that can totally guide the parent...In the act of creation, there is perhaps inevitable sadness…(p.20) ~ Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg
52:We are all haunted by the lost perfection of the ego that contained everything, and we measure ourselves and our lovers against this standard. We search for a replica in external satisfactions, in food, comfort, sex, or success, but gradually learn, through the process of sublimation, that the best approximation of that lost feeling comes from creative acts that evoke states of being in which self-consciousness is temporarily relinquished. These are the states in which the artist, writer, scientist, or musician, like Freud’s da Vinci, dissolves into the act of creation. ~ Mark Epstein
53:The art, the art of living, involves the act of creation. The work of art is nothing. It is only the tangible, visible evidence of a way of life, which, if it is not crazy is certainly different from the accepted way of life. The difference lies in the act, in the assertion of a will, and individuality. For the artist to attach himself to his work, or identify himself with it, is suicidal. An artist should be able not only to spit on his predecessor's art, or on all works of art, but on his own too. He should be able to be an artist all the time, and finally not be an artist at all, but a piece of art. ~ Henry Miller
54:the Sabbath is entirely independent of the month and unrelated to the moon.11 Its date is not determined by any event in nature, such as the new moon, but by the act of creation. Thus the essence of the Sabbath is completely detached from the world of space. The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel
55:I boarded the plane and kept writing, unable to stop. the ink flowing to the blank pages to the book were my lifeline. My IV, my only escape from collapsing. In that moment I understood something about my writer husband, that i had never understood before: i had a small glimpse on the act of writing something down as a direct, very viable escape from pain. I had no desire to publish this writing, I wasn´t thinking about an audience. I just needed to do it. Or else I´d weep and not being able to stop weeping. For the first time I experienced the physical truth of what was it like to dwell in the act of creation as an escape hatch from an unbearable reality. ~ Amanda Palmer
56:But Hannah's friend didn’t understand the volatile balancing act between art and sanity, that the act of creation was like walking a tightrope during an earthquake. She didn’t understand Hannah’s stupid need for validation, or that the size of the audience increased the stakes and multiplied the fear. She didn’t understand that creativity was dangerous, that, yes, there were some people who could stand before a canvas, paint a sunset that would bring the world to its knees, and return to their loved ones as a complete person who didn’t hurt, didn’t cry, didn’t spill blood to appease the host of fickle muses. But Hannah did. Hannah’s best ideas—sometimes her only ideas—were buried beneath the skin. ~ Jake Vander Ark
57:One of the strangest things is the act of creation.

You are faced with a blank slate—a page, a canvas, a block of stone or wood, a silent musical instrument.

You then look inside yourself. You pull and tug and squeeze and fish around for slippery raw shapeless things that swim like fish made of cloud vapor and fill you with living clamor. You latch onto something. And you bring it forth out of your head like Zeus giving birth to Athena.

And as it comes out, it takes shape and tangible form.

It drips on the canvas, and slides through your pen, it springs forth and resonates into the musical strings, and slips along the edge of the sculptor’s tool onto the surface of the wood or marble.

You have given it cohesion. You have brought forth something ordered and beautiful out of nothing.

You have glimpsed the divine. ~ Vera Nazarian
58:1. Mother Universe
The world generating spirit of the father passes into the manifold of earthly experience through a transforming medium - the mother of the world. She is a personification of the primal elements named in the second verse of Genesis - "the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." In the Hindu myth, she is the female figure whom the self begot all creatures through: more abstractly understood, she is the world-bounding frame: time, space, and causality. the shell of the cosmic egg. More abstractly still, she is the lure that moved the self-brooding absolute to the act of creation.
In mythologies emphasizing the maternal rather than the paternal aspect of creation, this original female fills the wolrd stages in the beginning, playing the roles that are elsewhere assigned to males. And she is a virgin, because her spouse is the Invisible Unknown. ~ Joseph Campbell
59:I sit here before my computer, Amiguita, my altar on top of the monitor with the Virgen de Coatlalopeuh candle and copal incense burning. My companion, a wooden serpent staff with feathers, is to my right while I ponder the ways metaphor and symbol concretize the spirit and etherealize the body. The Writing is my whole life, it is my obsession. This vampire which is my talent does not suffer other suitors. Daily I court it, offer my neck to its teeth. This is the sacrifice that the act of creation requires, a blood sacrifice. For only through the body, through the pulling of flesh, can the human soul be transformed. And for images, words, stories to have this transformative power, they must arise from the human body--flesh and bone--and from the Earth's body--stone, sky, liquid, soil. This work, these images, piercing tongue or ear lobes with cactus needle, are my offerings, are my Aztecan blood sacrifices. ~ Gloria E Anzald a
60:Only God was able to create a free creature, and freedom could only arise by the act of creation. Freedom is not the result or product of evolution. Freedom and product are disparate ideas. God does not produce or construct. He creates. We used to say the same for artists, for the artist who constructs does not create a personality but rather a poster of man. A personality cannot be constructed. Maybe sooner or later, during this century or after a million years of continued civilization, man will succeed in constructing an imitation of himself, a kind of robot or monster, something similar to its constructor. This human-looking monster may look very much like man, but one thing is certain: it will never have freedom. Without a divine touch, the result of evolution would not have been man, but rather a developed animal, a super-animal, a creature with a human body and intelligence but without a heart and personality. ~ Alija Izetbegovi
61:Creation is, on God’s part, not an act of self-expansion, but a retreat, a renunciation. God and all his creatures are less than God alone. God accepted this diminishment. God emptied Himself of part of His being. God emptied Himself in the act of His divinity. This is why St. John says, ‘The Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world.’ God permitted things to exist other than Himself and worth infinitely less than Himself. By the act of creation, God denied himself, just as Christ told us to deny ourselves. God denied Himself in our favour to give us the possibility of denying ourselves for Him. This response, this echo, subject to our refusal, is the only possible justification for the folly of love in the act of creation. Religions with this conception of renunciation, this voluntary distance, this voluntary effacement of God, His apparent absence and His secret presence here below … these religions are the true religion, translations of the Great Revelation into different languages. Religions that represent divinity as commanding wherever it has the power to do so are false. Even if they are monotheistic, they are idolatries. ~ Simone Weil

--- IN CHAPTERS (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)



0

   1 Psychology
   1 Poetry
   1 Philosophy
   1 Integral Yoga






change font "color":
change "background-color":
change "font-family":
change "padding": 108809 site hits