Principles of the Creative Process – Chicago, April 1970

I just stopped and spoke to Ginger Hansen. Ginger and I took a trip to Europe this spring. We had a very lovely time and we met some very lovely people. It was quite a memorable trip with all the people that we did meet and all the things that went on, on the trip or the inner experiences that we had, and knowing what the people were doing in that part of the world. And, I suppose a little irreverent point that I make here was one of the funniest things that I ever saw. We went out one day to , on one Sunday as a guest of a young attorney, he and his family there in Oslo, and he had a water spaniel that was quite a big dog, I would say, big as a full-grown police dog and he showed us how this dog retrieved things. So, he picks up a log which, I suppose, was about five feet long and round as my body. And, he tries, himself, to throw this some distance and he must have thrown it about five feet. And, the dog runs over and he gets ahold of the log some way and he jerks and he pulls and he pushes on this log until he finally gets it back to his master. And, I thought this was one of the funniest things I ever saw. That dog HAD to do that, whether it had been a small stick or not. That dog still had to go and get that because it was thrown. See? And, it was his duty to get something for his master. See?

Now, in a way perhaps, that is something apropos to all of us, in a sense, that if the Master or the ECK puts something out for us, we should take it to ourselves and we should keep it for ourselves and not return it to anyone else because it is ours. Now, in a sense, I want to say here that the subject, which is a very warm one in my own heart and I spoke about it over in London this year when we met with our own Chelas there. and, it was the principles of the creative process or the creative faculty within the individual. And, it’s very important to everyone in ECK. This creative process that is in man is in each of us. No matter what we are doing, this process works or how little we think we have this process or faculty within ourselves, it is a part of us. Whether we are painting a picture or whether we are working on any mundane job, sweeping floors or anything else, this is working. Now, this creative faculty is not the imaginative faculty but it’s that faculty and it’s that urge which pushes us and shoves us into doing something that is beyond our own capacity.

So many of us, hundreds and hundreds of times, will go into doing something which we believe that is beyond ourselves. And, we have that faculty that it seems like that this push within ourselves is something that is driving us and it’s the driving force to do something. Whether it’s the man who is racing in a professional automobile race or he’s playing tennis, he’s painting a picture or he’s sitting in his contemplative period trying to do the spiritual exercises or any of these things. This urge and this drive is moving him.

Now, we’ll take the extreme case of Paul Gauguin, who was the great painter. He was the Impressionist painter of a number of years ago who went to the island of Tahiti. And, he painted about the native life and during his lifetime he hardly got anything for his paintings. But, when he left this earth or when he died, suddenly, his paintings jumped up to 35,000 franks. I don’t know, maybe that’s about 8 to $10,000 a painting. And, I mean right after his death. It didn’t wait for any period of time to get this. But, his wife was so surprised that her husband, who had left her years before in order to get himself into being a painter and she had always condemned him for this and the two children that he had left her with, suddenly found out that her husband was famous and his paintings were a great source of income, which made her modestly wealthy.

This man was what we call, in the terms of a Sunday painter, He painted pictures. He was an investment broker and at the age of 42 when most of us are beginning to think, well, here’s one of these days we are going to retire and we’re looking in this direction and we’re thinking about our family. And, many a time our family has begun to grow up and go to college and many of these things. And, they’re getting married and preparing their life.

This man had this great creative urge so strong that he walked out on his family ignoring what kind of a life he was going to have. His life went into absolute abject poverty. And, the only way that we could get his paintings, or his paint and all the instruments for painting, was to sell something that he might have had as his own possessions, maybe his shoes or maybe some little thing of that nature. Or, maybe try to teach and work with somebody to teach them a little about painting. And, his struggle between the time when he left until the time that he died was absolutely fantastic to know that a man went through all of these problems in order to become a painter or an artist, rather.

But, the point that I’m trying to make, this creative drive within him was so much that it wouldn’t turn loose of him. And, this is what the ECK does to people. So many times, it takes us and it drives us beyond that point of endurance. And, it reminds me of this cartoon I saw the other day in which the little boy who was the manager of the baseball, his little baseball team, was trying to get his team onto a winning mood and he was telling them that they had to suffer and go through hardships and these things in order to win. And, the team rebelled and said, “Why should we go through hardships and suffering? All we want to do is win.”

And, this is very true of ourselves. We want to win but when this thing takes a hold of us and starts working within us and starts driving, we, ourselves, then have no control of it. It takes control of us. I do see a great bit of this among those Chelas in ECK whom this has seized. I had one of our Chelas who is quite prominent in the work of ECK, has now been taken over by this spirit or ECK, of itself, and he has now begun to do miraculous things. And, yet, on the other hand, he feels, as I do at times and you do at times, that how can we take one more thing from it? Because it pushes us beyond our limit. And, it pushes us beyond our own endurance. And, we think that we cannot take one more step and we take that next step.

This creative process, now within ourselves, is that which says, “This must be done the way we are as the individual, the way that we are formed as the individual, according to our talents, according to our environment, according to the way that we have come together in this life as the individual and we are at this point.” It puts together everything and starts using us according to our own abilities. If it’s a housewife it uses her to the extent of bringing out something greater in that individual. If it’s another one, a doctor or anyone in the professional field, it brings it out greater in that individual to push himself beyond endurance.

And, I had a letter the other day from this, the one I was speaking about a moment ago, who said, “You told me a long time ago that when I went into the work of ECK that there would never be any peace or quiet for me.” And, he says, “I’ve found that out because there’s so much to do and so much service to give.“ And, this is what this, of itself, does for us as a creative process. It drives us to give service in some form. If it’s the writer, the author, it does this. And, the very strange thing about all this work, that when the man feels that this has left him, he does something to himself in hopes that he will either end his torment because he can’t find it again or that he will be able to find it beyond himself again. And, I’m talking about those who have entered into suicide.

Now, take the case of Ernest Hemingway, the man who surprised the world who we thought was most successful, had everything in his life that he wanted to have, honor, fame, wealth and then he commits suicide. The reason that this man did this was because that he was driven by this force to do this, to perfect himself in the art of writing, when he came to that point to where it could no longer use him or there worked within him a blocking of this process, he knew no other way to do it. So, he began to think about the ways out of this. And, I have found, that so many times, those who were highly creative people seem to think, this is the way it should be done. They’re not willing to wait to the time when it will return to them because they know their physical energies are running out and they must do it now, They must work now or they will not have it at all.

Now, this process within us is that which gives us the opportunity to get a greater expansion of consciousness or move from state to state in the consciousness. And, I find this that when those people begin to limit themselves to the drive to do something and get it into the physical as the people I spoke about, sometimes they turn to drugs and to alcohol. They turn to all of these things because they are getting a hopelessness in life. And, this is why that I’m here is to give you the opportunity to find a hope , to find something in which we, ourselves, can do these things and move into these higher states of consciousness. And, I have so many thousands of letters that come to me from those people who are hopeless in their attitude and say, “What has life given me? I cannot do anything with life. All of the problems I’ve had in life are now whipping me.” What is the difference in that person and the person who is highly creative?

When looking at the physical on the outside, we’ll say that this physical creative man has, of himself, been successful and the other person hasn’t. Inwardly, neither one of them have been successful, So, we have to begin to think on this level, of this creativeness within each of us and this principle, that we can use it to begin to move to an outer world or the world of the spirit, the heavenly kingdom or whatever you want to call it, and move from this position, from the physical, into that. And, how do we do this? And, how do we take this creativeness and move ourselves from this position to that position?

There’s a lot of psychology that enters into these sorts of things which I think it complicates things, to try to stand on a platform and tell you about them and the different types of individuals and how they work individually with these things. But, in the general way of saying, we, ourselves, must take this when the urge comes, when we have this desire, make this movement within ourselves, or within our state of consciousness into this area. Then we must, ourselves, flow with it. And, we, ourselves, must ride with it and not be disturbed by it. Because when we are becoming disturbed by this sort of thing, then the problems begin to arise. And, we do not feel that we can be successful. But, we should feel, in the sense, that it’s there. And, if someone else has done this, we, ourselves, can do it also.

When the person in a class can stand up and describe all his experiences in the inner worlds, we, ourselves, sit there and say. “Why can’t I do all of that?” Like the individual who is saying that is defeating himself because he has a special way of doing it that the other fellow didn’t. And, if he has become a person who could not enter into these other planes through the normal techniques, through the normal contemplative period, through the usual way, then he should begin to think and work in other areas, in which that can say, fits his own personality.  Now, when Socrates spoke about, “Know thyself,” I am of the opinion that he gave a great wisdom which every ECK student should know. Because we, ourselves, without becoming introvertive, or introverting ourselves, should try to take an objective look at ourselves and say, “Perhaps, this is why that I’m not doing this.”

And, all of these discourses and all of the books and all of the words I have given, perhaps, 200 techniques, I’ve always said that, if you couldn’t use one, perhaps, there was another one that you could use. You can go the whole gamut and you could try one or the other and give them a reasonable bit of practice in order to determine what we, ourselves, could use, as the individual, in order to get some degree of success from it. I get letters from people who say, “Well, this month I spent a half hour or a month or an hour or so on this particular technique. Now, what’s the next one? I didn’t succeed with this one.” It’s a matter of not being impatient but it’s been the matter that most of us have been taught, that anything within the inner is easy. It isn’t. This is the hardest part of what we have to do in life, mainly the creative process or the thinking.

If you stop to think how long it takes, so many, many years of the individual becoming a professional man or becoming a success in a creative field of some nature like the art or the writings or any of these, one begins to know then that the inner, of itself, is not easy for anyone. If you are in advertising you know how many ideas, you know how much work goes in working out one idea for a client. And, the factor is the controlling of this outflow. And, this is all that comes back into the work of the creativity, in trying to move from one area to another area.

Now, I’ve described and I’ve laid out and given a mass of information. And, of course, I’ve found too much, and this is a normal factor of life, that people do not read or study a great deal. And, I suppose the anyone who is in the field of education can say this is one of the great factors that we have, is the fact that people have this barrier to reading and studying. And, I suppose this is the reason why that they have now begun to do a great deal of teaching by TV or movies or slides in the visual field in order to get across the idea of what is possible to be taught. And, this is why, what I want to get into in my next move in this work through the classwork, is to try to get into the visual field so that I can try to get these ideas across a little better.

Now, when I have to stand in front of an audience and talk for 45 minutes or more and try to get across my point to people, it’s a little better than trying to read it off a piece of paper but you must remember that I still am working in the field of the word. And, as long as we are working in the field of the human consciousness this will always be the factor that bothers us, is because no two of us have the same level of understanding. There are groups that come to a level of understanding, a general understanding. But, on the whole, within that group, there will be varying levels of understanding.

So, these are the ways that I have to work, these are the ways of people. I have to come to that point, which is the level of whatever that person is on, then I must, of myself, reach him some way or touch him. And, the very factor that you and I, both, can work on this level of the emotion of love, the detached love with one another, can then begin to work in a level of a greater understanding than we can by standing away, detached, and doing it on a mental or an intellectual level. Because then we become interested in one another to see that we get the greatest good from one another as we can because we are interested in one another then. And, since this is the way I try to work with people on this level, then I feel that I can touch the people on the lowest level of understanding to, perhaps, a high level of understanding with each and every one that I feel there is a difference. And, this difference can be overcome by this level of love in which that I am interested in your welfare. I am interested only in seeing that you have what is known as a spiritual invest.

Now, because this principle, as a creative principle, it can seize you in different ways and it can do it at particular times. But, the best time is when you have set a certain time of day to do your spiritual exercises or your contemplation exercise, as we call it. But, you have to do it at a particular time because inspiration has to be channeled as well as physical effort has to be channeled. There is a saying that Somerset Maugham, who was a great writer of our times, that he went to his desk every morning at a particular time and sat at his desk and wrote for so many hours, perhaps, 4 hours a day. And, the flow came through at that particular time. And, then he turned it off in the sense of the physical effort. And, it was said that he made the statement that he had to do this and that inspiration had to be channeled in order to get the best good out of it.

So, therefore, we know, ourselves, and I know too that if we have a particular time that we can sit down and work and this expects to be channeled at this particular time, we have the greater opportunity to get the greater out of it. And, this is what we should do. We should set one time during the day, whether it’s morning, noon or night to spend the time in doing the exercise. Because if we do and if we go at the time when we think we want it or when the inspiration strikes us, then I think we’re doomed to failure because it’s a human nature to always procrastinate and say, “Well, I’ll do this later.” Because there is an effort in it and I think everyone who has ever worked in a field of creativity has discovered this whether anyone has told them or not.

I have developed some new techniques which I am putting in the latest discourse, the Master’s discourse, about working with both the physical effort and the creative flow. You take the athlete upon the court in which he has to also be a trained man. He, himself, uses this creative flow to the extent that he knows from his timing, all of these things that go to make up a good basketball player, he knows that, that when he leaves that court, that he must shut this off. But, he works with his physical energies. And, we know, most of us, when we used to be more active, physically, that a lot of us could think well when we were in action, And, some people can work better when they are in action than they can by sitting still. And, therefore, I have begun to try to work out some techniques which would work with walking, with other certain other physical means and put the two together in order to have degrees of experience. And, I’m always working and I’m always going into deeper ideas in order to get something that is going to help the individual and help you and help myself more. Because it is always this way that, whenever I am put into position to begin to do something that is greater and do it for you, then I also grow. Because if you don’t grow, I do not grow.

It’s always been said that the leader has to keep ahead of the others by at least two steps. And, if they catch up with him, he’s not the leader anymore. So, that means then that I have to put the effort into laying out the varied things in order to give it to you and by doing this, I too grow. And, like all leaders who’ve ever been in any of the work, anywhere, any time before, we always know that none of us, regardless of where we’ve been, how much we have developed, or any of these things, that there is another step or another level that we have to take. Because none us us, regardless, of what is being told to us by all of the works today, all scriptures or any of that, the reference being made that we are reaching perfection and I’ve made the statement too, but the statement was made because there wasn’t any other way of explaining it, but we never reach perfection.

If we reached this perfection, and reached this state which we call the Absolute State of God, then in a sense, we would be God, ourselves, And, I do not know, of myself, that anyone who has ever been in the human state of, whoever reached this state. Now, I can be challenged for this statement but, on the other hand, you must remember that I am making this statement of myself. And, I’m making this statement out of my own knowledge and my own experience. Someone else who has far greater knowledge that I may know of those who have reached that state. But, we must think then in the whole of that, which is God, is so great and so magnificent, that we, in having no conception of it, how are we ever going to reach this complete state?

And, if we do, what are we going to do? See? We are not going to become atoms which float around there in space with bliss and joy. But, when we do reach into certain perfections and we go into these heavenly worlds, we’re becoming the coworker with God. And, we’re sent back into this world to be the coworkers. And, to help and give to the world that which we learn and become the channel in which that, of itself, can flow. And, this is the creative channel which I am trying to speak about in a sense. And, it came out through Gauguin, through Van Gogh, through Dickens, through all of these people who have advanced us in life in some manner. And yet, we, ourselves, are capable of reaching this someplace in our own way. Because what we are doing here and now within our own positions, we are acting as a channel in our own position. And, you are very important in this position.

I have so many people who come to me and it’s a great restlessness today and this is true, most anyplace, that people want to change jobs. They are not happy where they are anymore. And, of course, this is due to the fact, I think, the more we go into these, the more unhappy we become with life because we, ourselves, in becoming unhappy with, or rather, unfolding and growing greater spiritually, we do become dissatisfied with social conditions, with our own facts in life, with our jobs, with all of these things.

But, on the other hand, we must remember one thing. That in the position that we are in, here and now, we have the greater opportunity to help. And, so many of these people who want to change jobs and who have no abilities to go to other places and, if they do leave their job, they’re going to suffer and, perhaps, their families are going to suffer, they are doing greater or having greater opportunities where they are than they would by going someplace else. And, I’m not speaking of the fact of the economic opportunities. I’m speaking of the fact of serving spiritually in which they become the channel and which they have the opportunity, by letting this flow through them and letting this, which we call the ECK or the Spirit, change the environment and the conditions. And, it will do it. And, we, ourselves, act only as the channels. We don’t do all of the changes and trying to make them vocally or through our physical actions or anything. We go quietly about our job and see these subtle things begin to move and to change.

And, I’ve seen this within families, where one gets in a family begin to take up the work and he has everyone against him within the family. And, he quietly just goes about it and he keeps himself very quiet and not trying to advance and try to get anyone in the family interested in this at all. And then, suddenly one day, he sees a change in someone within the family. They say, “Gee, I’d like to read that book you’re reading on ECK.” Or, “What is this about?” Or, they’ll ask a question. And, then the opening comes and just tiny and tiny and tiny like this. And, then it opens into the areas, then it becomes the holder of the family. And, they begin to base their lives upon it.

Now, I’m going to switch off of the subject for a moment and I want to talk to you about this. It’s all a connecting factor. And, it’s a factor of a state in which that we know, in society, since the beginning of time, as the marriage state. And, it suddenly occurred to me in this that I should say something about it. In the beginning, when two people come together and go into the marriage state, they build, what is known in the field of the spiritual works, as an aura. This aura is their home. It can be a tent. It can be a palace. It can be any of these but the aura is actually the home. I don’t have a blackboard in order to show you this but I’ll try to, graphically, do it with words.

The idea is that, in this state, the two build the aura. And, the aura of itself, is the protection of the two against the world. And, I suppose, in the beginning, that when man and woman made the wows to continue with one another in this marriage state that they would, someday, build this aura and this aura would be their whole protection against the world. And, then, when the first child came, it built again a stronger aura. Wife was the center of the aura in the fact that she, herself, was the homemaker. She was the one who always was the inspiring one to the husband. And, when he came home and he had all the bumps against that he had met that day in his work and she polished him up and she shines him up and she gets him back into the great feeling to go back out again the next day and face the world. And, the way that the aura was broken was one of the mates to leave and then it was shattered. And, I wonder a great deal whether the enemies of the Western Society had ever discovered this as one of the psychological factors of life because they wanted to put people into communes. They wanted people to be separated and become the wards of the state at birth and put the husband in one commune and the wife in another commune and let them labor for the state which is the old Plato idea.

Now, I’m saying this because this is an important factor of society. And, society is built upon this one point. And, if those who are living in marriage bring about a divorce, this aura is shattered. If wife or husband leaves it and then returns, it can be repaired and put back together again. This is one reason I have, so often, would not initiate anyone into ECK unless the couple or the family as a whole family would be initiated. Or, if a mate wanted to be initiated, she had to have either the consent of the other mate or they had the knowledge of it and did not object. Because the moment that we begin to split the two in a religious factor, then we begin to shatter and break up the aura. Now, the form of the marriage ceremonies and the vows of the marriage are only the outer part, in which are laid down by civil law and that sort of thing, in order to build the inner. And, two people who come together, build this aura, they build a channel for this which we call the ECK or the spirit to flow through. And, if they are people who are in the work of ECK, it becomes stronger. And, it flows out into the world, to the community, to the neighborhood and it, of itself, can begin to make the changes.

Now, it’s a funny thing and it’s a rather humorous thing I have had. I remember someone, here in the audience, saying to me, a few years ago when I was in Chicago making a talk, and they said, “How did you get in old sin city, Las Vegas, as a headquarters?” And, I explained how I went through all this. But then again, I had said and I said last year at the ECK council meeting when someone brought it up again, I says, “Where else should ECK be?” Right in the den of iniquity, in the sense of stating it. But, then do you notice something? We’ve only been there for a period of about maybe 4 years but have you noticed the changes that have come about? It seems as if now that they have tried to make a clean-up of the city in a number of ways. I admit, like any other city, it still has its problems and its faults. But, there has been the advent of a new idea and a new spirit into there to give the sucker a better break, in other words.

But, really, there has been, in that time, and I do not say that ECK was responsible for this but I do want to point out the coincidence of what happens here. But, the factor, that about two years ago, this had begun to make the move. And, the state board began to make different codes and different laws within the state in which that the individual can look at it, especially the ECK people, and can begin to see the change in there. Now, I go in about once every 3 or 4 months and I, myself, can feel a difference within the atmosphere there. Now, we do this because I say that we have formed a channel and a collective channel within ECK to make changes at varied places. And, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we are the total responsible cause of such things.

But, on the other hand, I have seen this change move within families who all became, the families interested in ECK, have become a channel, And, I have seen what it has done in communities and I’ve seen what it has done in neighborhoods. And, all of these things from the subtle side which makes it for a better and a greater individualization of the individual and a better environment for himself to live in. I do hope that you’ll grasp the point, which I’m trying to say and to have found this in what I’ve spoken about the Creative Interest or the Creative Process that’s within the individual. And, in, all in all, I say to each of you, if you can find something, within what I have said, to take home with you then I think it has been well worth my time to be here and to speak before you. May the blessings be.