Insight
The Creative Soul
Abstract
One must be creative if one is not to become dead matter. Our inmost reality is a dynamo of creative energy and its matrix is our very soul. . There is genius in every soul. We have to pull ourselves out of the social maelstrom and be what we are. As we act through the soul and not through imitation we find the highest freedom and delight. This is the domain of the creative soul.
The difference between living organism and dead matter is that while the former is endowed with creative activity, the latter has only passive receptivity. Life adds, synthetises, new-creates – gives more than what it receives; matter only sums up, gathers, reflects, gives just what it receives. Life is living, glad and green through its creative genius. Creation in some form or other must be the core of everything that seeks vitality and growth, vigour and delight. Not only so, but a thing in order to be real must possess a creative function. We consider a shadow or an echo unreal precisely because they do not create but merely image or repeat, they do not bring out anything new but simply reflect what is given. The whole of existence is real because it is eternally creative
So the problem that concerns man, the riddle that humanity has to solve is how to find out and follow the path of creativity. If we are not to be dead matter nor mere shadowy illusions we must be creative. A misconception that has vitiated our outlook in general and has been the most potent cause of a sterilising atavism in the moral evolution of humanity is that creativity is an aristocratic virtue, that it belongs only to the chosen few. A great poet or a mighty man of action creates indeed, but such a creator does not appear very frequently. A Shakespeare or a Napoleon is a rare phenomenon; they are, in reality, an exception to the general run of mankind. It is enough if we others can understand and follow them — Mahajano yena gatah — let the great souls initiate and create, the common souls have only to repeat and imitate.
But this is not as it should be, nor is it the truth of the matter. Every individual soul, however placed it may be, is by nature creative; every individual being lives to discover and to create. The inmost reality of man is not a passive receptacle, a mere responsive medium but it is a dynamo — a power-station generating and throwing out energy that produces and creates.
Now the centre of this energy, the matrix of creativity is the soul itself, one’s own soul. If you want to create — live, grow and be real — find yourself, be yourself. The simple old wisdom still remains the eternal wisdom. It is because we fall off from our soul that we wander into side-paths, paths that do not belong to our real nature and hence that lead to imitation and repetition, decay and death. This is what happens to what we call common souls. The force of circumstances, the pressure of environment or simply the momentum of custom or habit compel them to choose the easiest and the readiest way that may lie before them. They do not consult the demand of the inner being but the requirement of the moment. Our bodily needs, our vital hungers and our mental prejudices obsess and obscure the impulsions that thrill the hidden spirit. We hasten to gratify the immediate and forget the eternal, we clutch at the shadow and let go the substance. We are carried away in the flux and tumult of life. It is a mixed and collective whirl — a Weltgeist that moves and governs us. We are helpless straws drifting in the current. But manhood demands that we stop and pause, pull ourselves out of the Maelstrom and be what we are. We must shape things as we want and not allow things to shape us as they want.
Let each take cognisance of the godhead that is within him — for self is God — and in the strength of the soul-divinity create his universe. It does not matter what sort of universe he creates, so long as he creates it. The world created by a Buddha is not the same as that created by a Napoleon, nor should they be the same. It does not prove anything that I cannot become a Kalidasa; for that matter Kalidasa cannot become what I am. If you have not the genius of a Shankara it does not mean that you have no genius at all. Be and become yourself — ma gridhah kasyachit dhanam, says the Upanishad. The fountain-head of creative genius lies there, in the free choice and the particular delight — the self-determination of the spirit within you and not in the desire for your neighbor’s riches. The world has become dull and uniform and mechanical, since everybody endeavours to become not himself, but always somebody else. Imitation is servitude and servitude brings in grief.
In one’s own soul lies the very height and profundity of a god-head. Each soul by bringing out the note that is his, makes for the most wondrous symphony. Once a man knows what he is and holds fast to it, refusing to be drawn away by any necessity or temptation, he begins to uncover himself, to do what his inmost nature demands and takes joy in, that is to say, begins to create. Indeed there may be much difference in the forms that different souls take. But because each is itself, therefore each is grounded upon the fundamental equality of things. All our valuations are in reference to some standard or other set up with a particular end in view, but that is a question of the practical world which in no way takes away from the intrinsic value of the greatness of the soul. So long as the thing is there, the how of it does not matter. Infinite are the ways of manifestation and all of them the very highest and the most sublime, provided they are a manifestation of the soul itself, provided they rise and flow from the same level. Whether it is Agni or Indra, Varuna, Mitra or the Aswins, it is the same supreme and divine inflatus.
The cosmic soul is true. But that truth is borne out, effectuated only by the truth of the individual soul. When the individual soul becomes itself fully and integrally, by that very fact it becomes also the cosmic soul. The individuals are the channels through which flows the Universal and the Infinite in its multiple emphasis. Each is a particular figure, aspect — Bhava, a particular angle of vision of All.The vision is entire and the figure perfect if it is not refracted by the lower and denser parts of our being. And for that the individual must first come to itself and shine in its opal clarity and translucency.
Not to do what others do, but what your soul impels you to do. Not to be others but your own self. Not to be anything but the very cosmic and infinite divinity of your soul. Therein lies your highest freedom and perfect delight. And there you are supremely creative. Each soul has a consort — Prakriti, Nature — which it creates out of its own rib. And in this field of infinite creativity the soul lives, moves and has its being.
Nolini Kanta Gupta. The Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta.Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education; 1970, pp. 7-9.
Nolini Kanta Gopta was a revolutionary, scholar and yogi who served as secretary and later trustee of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry until his passing in 1984.
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