Tapping into the wellspring: Art, creativity, consciousness, and education
by Craig Pearson, Ph.D., and Matthew Beaufort, M.A.

TM Magazine    Translate This Article
3 August 2012

The Excellence in Action page of Global Good News is featuring this article with colourful photos.

Please click on the following link to read more about Tapping into the wellsprings of creativity.

In a thoughtful new essay Dr Craig Pearson and Matthew Beaufort consider fundamental questions: Where does creativity come from? How can we develop our creativity further? And for those who want to be artists, is there an approach to art education that enables students to cultivate their creativity directly? Following are a few highlights from the first part of the essay:

The wellsprings of creativity and ''the heart of creation''

Many artists have recognized that art, whatever form it may take, arises from someplace deep within—sometimes a place so deep it seems beyond what we ordinarily think of as our self. For the Swiss-German artist Paul Klee (1879-1940), art springs ultimately from the ''source of creation'':

The artists with real vocations nowadays are those who travel to within fair distance of that secret cavern where the primal law is hidden; where the central organ of all temporal and spatial movement—we may call it the brain or heart of creation—makes everything happen. What artist would not wish to dwell there—in the bosom of nature, in the primordial source of creation, where the secret key to everything is kept? [1] —Paul Klee

Connecting with ''the infinite energy of the cosmos''

What [is] Klee . . . talking about? Is this just a philosophical idea or ideal? Or is there more to it?

The authors go on to quote German composer Johannes Brahms:

. . . . I felt that I was, for the moment, in tune with the Infinite, and there is no thrill like it. [2] —Johannes Brahms

Diving within—the Transcendental Meditation program

How do we get to the source of creation and fulfill the quest for our Self? How do we get ''in tune with the Infinite''?

Pearson and Beaufort explain that Transcendental Meditation allows mental activity effortlessly to settle down. As the mind moves inward, one experiences the source of thought, the field of pure consciousness—an infinite reservoir of creativity and intelligence.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi emphasized that the field of pure consciousness deep within everyone is not merely the source of our individual creative expression. Deep within we have direct access to the Unified Field of Natural Law that gives rise to the entire universe. . . .

This means that when we transcend, we experience the ''source of creation'' Paul Klee talks about and ''the Infinite'' that Brahms celebrates—within our own awareness.

Enjoy the full article on the Excellence in Action page.

REFERENCES
[1] Eric Protter, Painters on Painting (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 2011), 195.

[2] Quoted in Arthur M. Abell, Talks with Great Composers (New York: Philosophical Library, 1955), 11.

© Copyright 2012 Maharishi Foundation USA



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