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Thread 0014: TSK and creativity
What's the source or cause of things? How does experience arise? How are things created? How do answers to these questions change as one changes?
entry 0001:
KTS, p. 19: When time's momentum is measured out as the lifeless ticking away of linear temporality, the intrinsic 'aliveness' of time is channeled into mechanisms for multiplication and duplication. Played out into a world of positions, time sets up boundaries, identities, partitions, and limits, affirming a 'from-to' order that moves away from the centerless center of time's flow. Filtered through such 're-presentations' of knowledge, the creative energy of time disappears from view, and bccomes inaccessible.
entry 0002:
KTS, p. 38: Shaped into a structured sequence, occupied by a 'bystander-self', permitting only the sequential knowledge available to the 'owner-occupant', time's creative potential is stripped away beyond the point of recognizing that anything has been lost.
KTS, p. 78: Creation, for example, is no longer a unique event that takes place at the beginning of time, or else through the inspiration of a mysterious force. Instead, as the momentum of 'time' it is freely accessible in each interaction.
KTS, p. 80 (From chapter titled Creativity of Time): Fully appreciated, the dynamic of second-level time offers a source of creativity that is never obstructed or defined as 'out of bounds'-a source inherent in time itself, and thus always accessible.
KTS, p. 81: If we could know directly time's presenting, time would express being as constant possibility. With no fixed positions and no intractable difficulties, no structures or limitations impede the flow of knowledge. Creativity reveals itself to be the natural unfolding of time's energy. Art, music, and poetry, new insights and inventions, spontaneous understanding, and compassionate action are the expression of tuning in to time on this second level.
KTS, p. 197: When the 'field-determined' mind, bound up with structures of existence, approaches the 'field' in terms of 'potential', issues of origin remain mysterious. Up to a certain point there is no existence; from then on, for reasons unknown, there is. Creation becomes an inexplicable primordial event: There is no way to determine how its potential is activated. The continuing moment-to-moment appearance of the known world--another kind of creation that usually goes unacknowledged--is simply another aspect of this mystery.
KTS, p. 200: Understood in terms of the 'field dynamic', 'creation' is the universal allowing of all possible 'field configurations', whether they 'did' exist, 'will' exist, or 'are' now in existence. Conventional temporal causality, with its structures of creation and destruction, simply expresses this patterning as it arises and takes shape.
entry 0003:
LOK, p. 290: The mind seems almost infinite in its power to produce thoughts, shapes, and forms that come and go, interacting too quickly to observe; yet typically this power is dispersed into the endless repetition of unsophisticated patterns of knowledge and action. On the one hand, the mind is creative at its root; on the other this creativity is channeled into rigid structures that throttle its vitality.
It is pleasant to imagine ourselves exercising the innate creativity of the mind in new and fruitful ways, gracefully interweaving thought and action like a gifted musician who takes up a simple theme and shapes it unerringly toward beauty. But when the mind is flooded with content and bound by old patterns, the path of beauty and spontaneous creativity can be elusive.
Is such proliferation and stagnation a part of mind from the
very beginning? Is there a 'place' within or beneath thought
where there are no thoughts and no perceptions, where the spontaneity
of the mind operates without restriction? Is such a place, if
it does 'exist', accessible to knowing? Or does knowing originate
with a call for positioning that already violates the absolute
stillness of 'no thoughts'?
entry 0004:
Some first-level statements related to creativity [Steve Randall, 8/24/98]:
There is an independent self or mind as the source or basis of experience. (p. 49, TSK)
In order to preserve its status as a continuous being in a stable, meaningful world, the self assumes a position. It must then freeze this position by considering it as an absolutely stable or motionless platform from which the changes and affairs of the world can be viewed. (p. 49, TSK)
The mind or some other psychophysical structure is the source of thoughts. (p. 50, TSK)
Thinking and observing in terms of cause-effect sequences is...characteristic.... (p. 73, TSK)
The common disposition to believe in 'outside-standers' makes it natural to try to locate the creative action of Great Space either 'in the beginning' of a linear time series or in 'the present'. (p. 78, TSK)
Our lives themselves are made up of typical law-like trends. But we have failed to perceive the real motive force or possibility for change and growth that is involved in such trends. Our 'self' or agent-oriented picture needs to be tempered by a greater appreciation of some subtle dimension of 'time'. (p. 121, TSK)
Time's 'flow' is arranged in an orderly way corresponding to what has been experienced or presupposed--and what has been repressed or avoided--regarding the founding dimensions of reality. (p. 126, TSK) [This seems to be a statement about the 'law of karma'.]
Ordinary knowledge is structured by the seductive, scattering effect of lower time. It is compounded out of past references and future expectations--both encouraging repetition. (p. xii, DOT)
Always present and always active for every human being, imagination loses its power as our lives progress. As we learn to be faithful to the way things are, we grow so accustomed to always creating the same that we no longer even notice that we are creating at all. (p. 7, VOK)
KTS, p. 56: Bound to repetition, the temporal order does not
naturally communicate new knowledge. Its onrushing momentum holds
knowledge in its grip, giving no opportunity to take in the whole,
to absorb or digest it through inquiry and appreciation. Time's
steady acceleration pushes knowledge back toward preestablished
positions. The knowing self is always one step behind its experience,
swallowing its food before tasting it. Predictable sequences
develop mechanically, freezing out otherways of knowing.
entry 0004:
Some second-level statements related to creativity [Steve Randall, 8/24/98]:
The 'person in a world' could more accurately be seen as a tendency toward consolidation or birth in (or as) what for that world are successive moments. The 'person' is then a summary notion describing the overall attempt to set up a frozen pattern or series of instants connected in an exclusive manner, in contrast to a more open and inclusive 'space'. (p. 33, TSK)
'We' can learn to allow brief 'knowings' which track more of 'time' and which are broad and impartial enough to take into account both our 'self', observed objects, and other background items as all being given with 'time'. (p. 143, TSK)
All drab items, facts, and trends can become alive, inspiring symbols....They are no longer seen as produced by--and tied to--a 'horizontal' temporal series. So they, in their givenness with us, can point in what seems at first like a different, more vertical and liberating direction. (p. 145, TSK)
'Time' at this second stage can be seen to be the essential force that lets moment give way to moment, and the factor which permits items within a situation or moment to have their own identities....An actual appreciation of 'time' shows that the way in which it presents identities, differences, and interrelations is a direct evocation of 'space', of 'no-things', of non-plurality. (p. 146, TSK)
The conventional content of the situation (the 'meanings' given by 'time' as forming a certain observed and existentially charged situation) does not in any essential way relate to that of any other situation or condition. (p. 194, TSK)
No factor of experience--whether subject, object, sense organ, sense datum, position, or basic fact of occurring--is more fundamental than (or prior to) the read-out wherein it takes on significance. (p. 198-p. 199, TSK)
From the moment we imagine our way into the heart of our own
being, the limits on our knowledge begin to lose their hold.
It is not a matter of discovering secret knowledge or arriving
at revolutionary insights. We simply find it available to us
to imagine that what has been constructed could be constructed
differently. With that simple move, the past and its structures,
the self and its identities, no longer bind us so tightly. .
. . To imagine fully that we conduct our own reality into being
is to imagine the power of imagination, and thus to multiply
that power. Imagination discloses that we are free to shape appearance
and to choose how we respond to what appears. . . . We can conduct
experience toward being, entering a realm of vision and wonder
where we can dwell in deep and joyful peace. (p. 7, VOK)
entry 0006:
Some third-level statements related to creativity [Steve Randall, 8/24/98]:
The source and resting point of all existence appears to be space. (p. 10, TSK)
The source of experience is not the self, the mind, some psycho-physiological apparatus, or any other item within the ordinary world view. (p. 49, TSK)
Great Space is not a separate thing or cause; it is not 'elsewhere', nor is its 'creative act' to be located in the time of the remote past. (p. 74, TSK)
We live in a very fantastic, magical world. There is no 'doer' or performer of the magic. (p. 107, TSK)
All drab items, facts, and trends can become alive, inspiring symbols....They are no longer seen as produced by--and tied to--a 'horizontal' temporal series. So they, in their givenness with us, can point in what seems at first like a different, more vertical and liberating direction. (p. 145, TSK)
There is no fixed world order that stands outside and around us, ensuring that our experience stays within proper limits. (p. 253, TSK)
We are not creatures, products of Space and Time. Nor were we caused at some time in the past and then left on our own. We are all being newly born within Space and Time, second by second.... (p. 300, TSK)
The less we insist, the closer we draw to the invisible energy of the Body of Time: the creative impulse through which appearance itself manifests. Allied with this creative force, we approach each challenge with new resources. Nothing is strictly impossible, for nothing is firmly established. (pp. 165-6, DTS)
Everything--whether past, present, or future--is seen to be unoriginated, because 'knowledge' perceives that, in point of fact, there is no moving time. (p. 54, DOT I)
Great Time, through the intermediary experience of 'time',
is the source of inspiration and spontaneity. It is the muse
that all artists seek, the feature which allows us to perceive
and celebrate the otherwise hidden dimensions of all the presentations
that constitute life. It is 'time' that inspires and brings to
life the essence of the vision here presented. Unless this vision
is perceived through the revealing quality of 'time', the full
and encompassing nature of the vision will remain only a shadow.
(p. 142, TSK)
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