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THE MANSION OF SELF-ACTUALIZATION


Build thee more stately mansions, Oh my soul
As the swift seasons roll;
Leave thy low-vaulted past;
Let each new temple, nobler than the last
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outworn shell by life's unresting sea.

- Oliver Wendell Holmes
 

SELF-ACTUALIZATION DEFINED AS PERTAINING

TO THE LAST THREE STAGES

Self-actualization was defined by Maslow as the act of manifesting the capabilities for which one had the potentiality. The structure of our language predisposes us to think in terms of those who finally reach self-actualization, as contrasted with those who merely get to the vestibule of the mansion and wait. But like other more mathematical limits, self-actualization is better measured by the differential than the functional. Hence, a better way of conceptualization is to look ill

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at the process, not the end product, and to distinguish those in whom the process is wholly developed as self-actualized.

In discussion of the sixth (creative), seventh (psychedelic) and eighth (illuminative) cognitive stages, we are on new and insufficiently explored ground; hence, the reader must be prepared for some confusion in terms. Here the phrase "Self- actualization" will be used indiscriminately to refer to operations at all three levels. Actually, the upper reach of the continuum from the stage of creativity onward is open ended, for once an individual reaches the creative stage cognitively, his conscious mind is opened and enlarged, and he gains new horizons and options. The theory of stages becomes much less significant than the study of the process, and for all we know, looking at the system as it were from below, there may be advanced stages or processes that we cannot yet conceive.

We have tried to make tentative identification of the three advanced stages-the sixth or creative, the seventh or psychedelic and the eighth or illuminative. The creative stage has been well described in the literature and is treated at length in chapters I and 4. The psychedelic is just now being described in the literature of psychology (Tart, 1969), though it has long been known in the literature of mysticism. The eighth stage is still pretty much unknown territory. Although we can say little about the cognitive processes of the final stage, those processes which are occasional and transitory in the psychedelic period become habitual and fixed in the eighth stage, and thus the doors or barriers between the conscious and preconscious are done away with almost entirely. This stage or process may be referred to as "integral," since the person is truly "whole" or "holy."

Before passing to a detailed analysis of the psychedelic stage, we need to clarify the significance of the unusual. Self- actualization is an unusual process which happens to a few human beings at certain times in their lives. Processes which do not occur to many people, but only to a few, are often considered pathological because they are not "normal." Their rarity may allow them to be considered trivial. Yet giving birth is such a process, occurring to only half or less of the population, and then only at widely spaced times; yet it is perfectly normal, and while unusual is so important as to be vital. The unusual, then, may have extremely important consequences; and self-actualization is an example.

Surprising as it may seem, even the practice of creativity may have a stultifying effect on development and hence on self-actualization if it involves stagnation in the sixth developmental period instead of the face-to-face encounter with the "not me" required from most of us as a kind of initiation into the psychedelic aspects of the seventh period. Just as many an intellectual, too successful in formal operations to the detriment of his creative or divergent thinking, is content to "shoot fish in a barrel," so a considerable number of creative people seem content to dwell in that stage, occupied with the rationality of problem-solving, and the many outlets and activities which creative production affords for avoiding confrontations with one's preconscious. This portal to psychedelia is too frightening, too alienated from a still somewhat shaky sense of identity to risk such encounter. Such an individual, often the epitome of the Puritan Ethic, will be a real achiever who will dread "to lose control of himself"

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and who may foreclose psychedelic adventures and development because of this fear. It is hard indeed for humans to learn that each developmental gift is a loan, not a possession, that it is to be savored and sampled, and then traded in on the corresponding gift of the next stage. But a long time ago, somebody with insight about such matters told us plainly: "He that shall seek to save his life, shall lose

THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE

The psychedelic explanation of creativity is not just another way of looking at the subject; for some people it is the way. The mind-expanding aspect is seen as a fundamental property of life, with creativity the aurora of the new day. Barron (1968, p. 3 05) echoes this view:

The tendency of life then is toward the expansion of consciousness. In a sense, a description of means for the expansion of consciousness has been the central theme of this book, and it is in this evolutionary tendency that such diverse phenomena as psychotherapy, surprising or unexpected selfrenewal, the personally evolved and deepened forms of religious belief, creative imagination, mysticism, and deliberately induced changes of consciousness through the use of chemicals find a common bond.1

Barron sees creativity as one of the psychedelic aspects of the person. He is perhaps at his best in his research into originality (1968, chapters 16 and 17). He hypothesizes that persons characterized as originals have a greater preference for complexity, are more complex as persons, have independence of judgment, are self-assertive and dominant, and reject suppression to control impulse. He concludes (1968, p. 224):

Thus the creative genius may be at once more naive and knowledgeable, being at home equally to primitive symbolism and to rigorous logic. He is both more primitive and more cultured, more destructive and more constructive, occasionally crazier, and yet adamantly saner than the average person.2

Long ago Emerson described this when he remarked in "The Poet" (1950, p. 330):

It is a secret that every intellectual man quickly learns that beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect, he is capable of a new energy (as by an intellect doubled upon itself) by abandonment to the nature of things; that beside his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a greater public power on which he can draw, by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors, and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him.... For if in any manner we can stimulate this ... new passages are opened for us into nature; the mind flows into and through things hardest and highest and the metamorphosis is possible.



1From page 305 of Barron, F. Creativity and Personal Freedom, Copyright 1968, Litton Educational Publishing Co. Used by permission.
2Ibid., p. 224.

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is the reason why bards love wine, mead, narcotics, coffee, tea, opium and the fumes of sandalwood and tobacco, or whatever other procurers of animal exhilaration. All men avail themselves of such means as they can to add this extraordinary power to their normal powers; and to this end they prize conversation, music, pictures, sculpture, dancing, theatre, travelling, war, mobs, fires, gaming, several coarser or finer quasi-mechanical substitutes for the true nectar, which is the ravishment of the intellect....

Three terms are in use to describe these experiences:
(1) psychedelic or mind-expanding (which is preferred, because it clearly suggests the altered and enlarged dimensions made available to the conscious mind when the doors to the preconscious swing open);
(2) illumination (used by Bucke for much the same experience, but one better reserved for the steady state of the eighth stage); and
(3) peak experience (used by Maslow to indicate a special kind of affective experience with unusual, vivid, or highly significant import).

Maslow (Mooney and Razik, 1967, p. 49 ff) describes some of the characteristics of persons having peak experiences. He lists them as "giving up the past, giving up the future, innocence, a narrowing of consciousness, loss of selfconsciousness, disappearance of fear, lessening of defenses, strength and courage, acceptance thrust, receptivity, integration, ability to dip into the preconscious, aesthetic perceiving, spontaneity, expressiveness, and fusion with the world."

Foster (1968, p. 116) after a survey of the relationships of creative persons concluded: "Self-actualization, like true psychological health, requires both creativity and human relatedness."

Panhke and Richards (Tart, 1969, p. 406) point out nine qualities of the genuine mystic experience as:
(1) unity,
(2) objectivity,
(3) spatial and temporal transcendence,
(4) sacredness,
(5) positive mood valence,
(6) paradoxicality,
(7) ineffability,
(8) transiency, and
(9) positive later changes in behavior.
"One's faith in one's potential for creative achievement tends to be increased."

Mogar (Tart, 1969, p. 397) cites some research on the area.

With regard to positive revelatory experiences, Maslow recently developed the thesis that experiences referred to as religious, mystical or transcendental actually denote special cases of the more generic "core-religious" of peak experiences, described as the hallmark of self-actualized people (Maslow, 1964). Similarly, the extensive research done on creativity by MacKinnon and his associates indicates that the truly creative person is distinguished from the noncreative individual by his capacity for "transliminal experience" (MacKinnon, 1964). Following Harold Rugg's study of creative imagination the transliminal experience is characterized by an illuminating flash of insight occurring at a critical threshold of the conscious-unconscious continuum. MacKinnon's description of the transliminal experience bears a striking resemblance to the more inclusive peak experience. Interestingly, Maslow (1964) suggests that psychedelic drugs may offer means of producing a controlled
peak experience under observation, especially in "non-peakers" 1


1From page 397, R. F. Mogar, "Current and Future Trends in Psychedelic Research," in C. T. Tart (ed.), Altered States of Consciousness. Copyright 1969, John Wiley and Sons. Used by permission.

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Maslow himself (Anderson, 1958, p. 90) has this to say:

Since almost everyone I questioned could remember such an experience (peak), I had to come to the tentative conclusion that many, perhaps most people are capable of temporary states of integration, even of self-actualization, and therefore of self-actualizing creativeness.1
Maslow (Mooney and Razik, 1967, p. 53) also remarks:

Part of the process of integration of the person is the recovery of the unconscious and the preconscious, particularly of the primary process (or poetic, metaphysic, mystic, primitive, archaic, childlike). Our conscious intellect is too exclusively analytic, rational, numerical, atomic, conceptual, and so it misses a good deal of reality especially within ourselves.2

Again in describing peak experience Maslow (Mooney and Razik, 1967, p. 47) says:

It has always been described as a loss of self or ego or sometimes as a transcendence of self. There is fusion with the reality being observed, a oneness, where there was twoness, an integration of some sort with the non-self. There is universally reported a seeing of formerly hidden truths, a revelation in the strict sense, a slipping away of veils, and finally almost always the whole experience is experienced as bliss, ecstasy, rapture or exaltation.3

Bucke (1929) was the first to give a semipsychological explanation of some aspects of self-actualization with developmental overtones, although his book Cosmic Consciousness was heavily loaded with religious usage. While many of Bucke's ideas are ingenuous or outmoded, the volume deserves consideration because it was one of the first to investigate the topic; hence, a brief review of his ideas is in order.

Bucke felt that the development of superior individuals retraced the development of the race. He believed that as the race was in process of being given the gift of illumination, this phenomenon was now appearing in a few of the most superior individuals at the time of their greatest maturity and mental health. He defined illumination as a mystical conversion-hysteria type of experience, such as occurred to St. Paul on the road to Damascus, and saw it as of a profound religious nature, which afterward produced changes in the individual's life style. He professed to find more incidents of illumination now than in ancient times and concluded (rather ingenuously) that this indicated the race was in the process of receiving this ability. Most of the book consists of case histories of about 45 people, more than half drawn from history and the others known by personal acquaintance. (A similar method was later used by Maslow in his study of self-actualizing people.) Such incidents are more likely to be found in contemporaries; thus only major historical figures from earlier times have any



1From page 90, A. Maslow, "Creativity in Self-Actualizing People," in H. A. Anderson (ed.), Creativity and Its Cultivation. Copyright 1959, Harper and Row Publishers. Used by permission.
2A. Maslow, "The Creative Attitude," used by permission of The Structurist (Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan) 3:4-10, 1963.
31bid.

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chance of standing as examples.

Aside from the religious explanation, Bucke's book can be criticized psychologically on the ground that he did not realize that somatotypes apparently influence the kind of person who has the more dramatic illuminatory experiences. Thus Bucke leaves Emerson at the "twilight" level because this conversion hysteria was absent, while including others because it was present.

It seems to us that the conversion-hysteria phenomenon, complete with fire and all, may be inevitable for some personalities but unnecessary in others. Some natures require it because of rigid repression in the light of some religious or social code. Doubts or conflicting evidence inconsistent with that code are not forgotten or ignored but are stored in the preconscious. If enough of these pile up, the bonds of repression burst, and conversion to a fully developed code of more freedom and opposite to the previous restrictions seems suddenly to emerge. When the repressive forces are not so strong and clearly organized, the conversion phenomena need not occur.

The essential component of the psychedelic stage or process is a sudden opening of the mind to enlargement, to a grander vista than ever seen before, with a power surge which is analogous to shifting into overdrive in an auto. There has been an acceleration of process, and this acceleration becomes capable of occasional return under proper conditions of environmental stimulation. The interior conditions for this process are that the boundaries between the ego and the preconscious open up and the psychedelic mind expansion is felt because the conscious mind is suddenly master in an enlarged domain.

Despite its methodological limitations, Bucke's book made an early contribution which focused on development, on high mental health, on superior individuals and on rare talents. He realized that because an experience is rare, it is not unreal, but only unusual, and hence an excellent guidepost to new and uncharted developments. This is a scientific principle of the first magnitude, as useful in the behavioral as the natural sciences. (One has only to recall helium, radium and U-238 for illustrative purposes.)

Bucke often talked of superior individuals who lived in the "twilight" of illumination but on whom the full sun of enlightenment had never risen. This judgment was made because they never reported an ecstatic experience. Now we know that certain psychological types are more prone to these experiences than others, as Maslow (1967) reported. While experiences are often found in those in the process of self-actualization, nevertheless it seems also true that some in the process do not have them at all.

Evidently the process of self-actualization covers a wide track, broad enough for many different kinds of people. For one it will mean a continuous cycle of occasional creative flashes followed by longer rests; for another, genuine psychedelic or peak experiences accompanied by increases in power, energy and creativity; for a third it may mean an opening between the conscious and preconscious which either becomes systematic or habitual under certain stimuli or is amenable to control from the conscious side. None of these is to be preferred above the others, for all who dwell within the vestibule of the mansion are blessed. Those who come to self-actualization late in life, say, after 45, may

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never have the ecstasy appropriate for the generativist period, but live happy, constructive and productive lives nevertheless.

One aspect of the peak experience, whether mystic or otherwise, is that something happens to the ego. Some types of such experience enable the ego to merge with the experience; in others it becomes altered or changed. But however this may be reported, the psychologist realizes that there is communication difficulty because of the uniqueness of the experience, and he suspects that the dimensions of the narrator's own ego have been drastically altered. This inner change throws off his sense of reality orientation because he is, for the time, measuring experience with an expanded yardstick.

Indeed the peak experience is much like the Pentecostal experience and the group encounter experience, all of which depend on a syndrome which:

(1) brings together a group of lovers, athletes, novitiates, etc.;
(2) develops a high degree of group cohesiveness or esprit -
(a) resulting in a breakdown of barriers normally separating people so that
(b) there is fluidity and flow and relaxation of ego controls resulting in
(c) ecstasy much like a sexual climax
(d) followed by relief, quiescence and satiation and
(e) an invasion of energy, power or morale which
(f) results in a feeling of inner transformation and
(g) a changed behavior pattern with superior performance.

Another tendency in those approaching self-actualization often obscures progress. Commonly seen in artists and poets, the creative outpouring of the mind is often extensive during the intimacy period, giving considerable promise of continued rise into higher stages. Then success overtakes the man (more rarely adversity), either of which can stunt further development and deflect the artist from the kind of self-discipline required to activate self-actualization. Sometimes the powers of creativity are so enchanting to the individual that he prefers to toy with them rather than to integrate them into the next advance. Sometimes a too rigorous moral code, a too conventional wife or a too narrow religion keeps the man from the necessary bursting of his cultural bonds. Some famous men have exhibited these tendencies. Wordsworth is a nearly classic example of a poet with remarkable promise when young, whose fame made him conservative and extinguished his powers in the end. Coleridge ruined his artistic ability through drugs and O'Neill through alcohol. Mark Twain was another creative genius who was tortured by the restrictions of a conventional life and cultural mores. Many other examples could be adduced. Too much early success (as noted in a previous chapter) at a particular stage may very easily prevent the individual from leaving the stage easily. This is particularly true of the higher stages because there is often the cultural pressure to accede to them. One tends to want to stay where one's friends are.

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Adversity is bad enough for a person, but success is almost always fatal. Fatal to further development, that is, for nothing is more tempting to holding an individual in a given stage than public success or acclaim as a result of exhibiting the characteristic properties of that stage. (This is one reason why narcissistic actresses commit su←←icide with such frequency as their looks begin to fade.) At least in the lower stages, biological growth tends to accelerate us out of them. But in the higher areas, a man who has become markedly successful at any cognitive level from formal operations onwards may be very reluctant to escalate from that level. There seems to be no reason for him to do so. Life affords him many opportunities to shoot fish in a barrel with skills already honed and perfected. So it is often those who have not been overly successful at the fifth stage who are most ready to make advances which bring success at later stages. It is seldom the successful businessman who becomes the mystic.

This view suggests that there must be a combination of environmental stimulation and individual initiative which never allows a developing individual to relax or stagnate in any given stage. Erikson's study of Gandhi (1969) indicates how the Ahmedabad mill strike performed this service for the budding saint who had the courage to accept the challenge when it was offered. Similar challenges from the environment, and responses from the individual, are present in other historical examples of self-actualization.

ILLUMINATION

To talk about the eighth cognitive stage is a little like a small boy in the initiative period discussing the sexual problems involved in maturation and adolescence. Whatever he may have found out about them through whatever means, it is certain that he will lack the developmental status to make adequate evaluation and draw proper conclusions. Any pronouncements that a psychologist may make about this ultimate stage are as likely to be fraught with misconception like "Looking through a glass darkly." We may, however, draw on a few extrapolations for guidance.

In the first place, we feel that there is a tendency for most writers (and here we include Maslow, Bucke and others) to mistake "illumination" with the psychedelic stage. The dramatic openings of psychedelia are enough to awe anyone. When the mind suddenly finds itself master in an enlarged domain, it may easily suffer "delusions of grandeur." But majestic though this experience must be, it is not illumination. By whatever name the eighth stage is called, its primary characteristic must be that those processes which are spasmodic, occasional and irruptive in the seventh stage must become steady, constant and habitual in the eighth. Illumination means a steady light, not the flickering of a candle or the blinding of the off-again, on-again lighthouse beam. For those of us in lower stages, one can compare the difference between the psychedelic and illuminative states to be somewhat like the difference between the ups and downs of romance, the presence and absence of the beloved before marriage with the steady satisfaction, companionship and contentment of the state of married love.

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It is perhaps a mistake even to regard illumination as a stage. Mendeleev, an early work on his periodic table of the chemical elements, left the table en ended. He could not foresee that the very heavy elements were mostly radioactive and generally disintegrated into other elements lower on the table. Process is certainly likely to be more important than state in this ultimate stage. While ideally the state is a steady one, in practice it is approached by developing dividuals in whom the spasmodic and occasional enlightenment of the psycheJic stage tends to become more habitual, although perhaps not completely so.

We gain a bit from the koans of Zen Buddhism here-those mystic sayings id questions which seem to have no logical answer but whose interpretation rejires a higher understanding. The Irishman who said: "If you don't go to other -ople's funerals, they won't come to yours" uttered a statement literally logical but full of truth on a higher plane. In the illuminative stage, there is kely to be a taking over of the psyche by the preconscious which deemphasizes ie rational processes of the conscious mind in favor of intuition, precognitions nd an enlarged understanding of the Zen koan type, which throws a diffused ~oodlight on the world of experience rather than the concentrated spotlight of he rational mind.

There is also a change in ego structure in which the ego loses some of its 'I-ness' and becomes, in Roger's phrase, more "The subjective awareness of ~xperience"-in which there is less of the Hobbes "loose and separate" aspect ind more unity and connection with all mankind and nature. There is (because )f the periodic position of this stage in the identity column) a new identity ,risis which arises, but now it is released from its corporate bonding (which is its -hrysalis) and is free to become one with others and with the world. Having be-ome sure of who I am, I am now free to merge myself in love and freedom with others and all of life.

TECHNIQUES FOR FACILITATING SELF-ACTUALIZATION

The "American question,"' as Piaget called it, of whether a good thing can be speeded up developmentally is certainly appropriate. The psychedelic experience seems most likely to occur to young adults in good mental health between the ages of 30 and 40 (Bucke, 1929, p. 81), although it may, of course, occur later. Can we hasten or help this process in ourselves or others? 'Me verdict of history is that we can, and many religious and philosophical systems have been built on the relevant techniques.

These techniques may be divided into three categories: (1) psychomotor, (2) affective and (3) cognitive (which conform to the three areas of the taxonomy of educational objectives) (Bloom, 1956). The opening of research into these categories represents one of the real "fronts" of humanistic psychology.

Psychomotor and Physiological Means

(1) Drugs, especially LSD, marijuana and peyote. For adequate discussion of these, see Masters and Huston (1966) and Tart (1969). For research on

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enhancement of creativity through psychedelic experience see Tart (1969, p. 460 ff), also Krippner (1968) and Otto and Mann (1969, pp. 199-202). (It is important to remember that the word "psychedelic" refers to mind expansion and includes, but is not limited to, the use of drugs.)

(2) Breathing of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide or other prepared gas mixtures to produce mild anoxia. (This was the classic method of William James) (1958). See also Barron (1968), p. 148).

(3) Exposure of eyes to a stroboscopic lamp giving flicker fusion which interferes with EEG waves and produces the state in some (Barron, 1969, p. 148).

(4) Conscious control of automatic functions such as breathing and heart rate. This is reported in some literature and a focus for future investigation.

Religious, Mystic and Hypnotic Experience

(1) Religious exercises, especially prayer, fasting, meditation, with possible mortification. Reported in the mystic literature of all religions, especially Hinduism, Christianity and Zen Buddhism.

(2) Joe Kamiya's conditioning technique of the EEG alpha rhythm control through turning on a light bulb by meditation. This is a major psychological breakthrough since it condenses a long Zen technique of learning to meditate on nothing with only six weeks training; see Tart (1969, p. 507); see also Brown (1970) for further information on this subject.

(3) Hypnosis; see Tart (1969, pp. 229-321), also Krippner (1968).

(4) Group therapy experiences. This is essentially the basic encounter technique of Carl Rogers, which has many similarities to the closure of selfactualization. This process has been used by Schutz at Esalen, and by others in many other sections of the United States.

(5) Random group pentecostal experiences, which may be of a patriotic, erotic, athletic or social nature as well as religious. Individual barriers are temporarily broken down, allowing for a feeling of euphoria and power.

Before going on to cognitive processes, the writer feels it necessary to direct two asides to the reader. The first is that the previous two sections are in outline form only, since this book is not a treatise on either drugs or mysticism. The second point is that the writer has grave doubts that artificial means to secure self-actualization do not cause more trouble than they cure. It is all well and fine to feel that one is in the throes of the greatest experience in the world, but two ounces of alcohol can sometimes accomplish the same trick. The question is: "What happens after the experience is over?" Is the cognitive part of the mind really changed so that the interactions of everyday life have become transformed?

As one whose attitudes are clearly biased against the use of drugs to induce psychedelia, the writer feels that one of the best psychological reasons which can be given is that the use of drugs in young people for this purpose is developmentally premature. Psychologists are agreed that for a child to wake up and see parents in the sexual act is not good for his developmental process. He is not ready for this

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knowledge which comes as a shock to him at this time, whereas there would be much less trauma in a similar situation at adolescence.

In the same way premature introduction to the experience of psychedelia while one is fighting the identity crisis or still in the throes of the sexual adjustment may be equally damaging and traumatic. Bucke (1929, p. 81) reported the average age of his "illumination" to be 36 years, well into the generativity period. And it is interesting to note that the earlier examples of illumination tend to be highly pyrotechnic, Pascal and Blake being two cases in point. Apparently bourbon whiskey is not the only thing that smooths out with age. If a bridegroom needs an aphrodisiac on his wedding night, we may suspect that all is not well with his marriage; if another young person uses drugs to "turn on," we may wonder if he is not after thrills rather than self-actualization.

COGNITIVE TECHNIQUES FOR SELF-ACTUALIZATION

Self-actualization is a state of continual becoming in which one is thrown forward or caught up in the process of manifesting one's potentiality. While the process is heavily loaded with preconscious elements, it does appear that to some extent we can court the muse from the conscious side. To understand this mechanism it will be helpful again to review the process of creative openings from the preconscious.

Anyone who has experienced creative or psychedelic openings knows them to be far different from the more prosaic problem solving-for creative inspiration has a feeling quality all its own. It seems to fuse the Sullivanian uncanniness of the "not me" with the canniness of the me, which mutes the nightmare of the former into fantasy and elevates the pedestrianism of the latter into insight. The inspirational force accompanying this process is so strong that other sensory perceptions are dulled or stilled; ordinary biological drives such as hunger, thirst and excretion are forgotten; the individual is almost in a light hypnotic trance, paying complete attention to the inner voice. During this period of perceptual allay, a new flood of ideas, seemingly alien, come to mind so that it is all one can do to write them down. On such occasions, it appears as though one were taking down a message, striving to get it right, and being flooded with information which would be impossible to elicit at another time. Happy is he who under these circumstances is able to get all or most of the message on paper, for such openings are exceedingly difficult to recall and fade very rapidly.

Many people keep paper and pencil beside their beds so that if such inspiration comes at night they will be prepared. The scientist Loewi received such an opening about an important scientific formula and, when copying, forgot some of it. Fortunately, he was able to get the rest of it the next night in another dream.

Others have reported that such openings occur when they are released from tension such as on a vacation, in the presence of great natural beauty, after sexual intercourse, upon arising from sleep, upon hearing beautiful music, etc.

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The main plan for this book, plus six pages of detailed notes, was taken down one Sunday afternoon at a hotel in Bali.

A creative opening is best conceptualized as a merging of the conscious and preconscious minds in which a flood of material previously cataloged by the conscious mind is reorganized by the preconscious and then expelled into the conscious domain. With the requisite conditions of mental health and environmental stimulation, the process seems inevitable, and a periodic function of mind at maturity.

A good place to look for a spring is near the spot where a mountain rises out of a plain, particularly where there is an outcrop of porous rock. Creativity is like a spring, issuing forth from the porous rock of the preconscious, under the hydrostatic pressure of the mountain of conscious accretion. A spring of fresh water often is a nuisance when it first develops, starting in as a muddy quagmire until the dirt and debris has cleared away and a channel has been dug for the runoff. But when this is done and the bedrock exposed, the spring will run clear and increase in volume and will become a source of life for all in the vicinity. Our problem is to transform that muddy quagmire into a flowing spring of life and creativity within ourselves.

Emerson (1950, p. 126) spoke of this very metaphor:

When I watch that flowing river, out of regions I see not, pours for a season its streams into me, I see that I am a pensioner, not a cause, but a sur-
prised spectator of this ethereal water; that I desire and look up and put myself in the attitude of reception, but from some alien energy the visions come.

Let us examine the problem of becoming personally more self-actualized as itself a step in creative problem-solving technique. A problem is an experience conceptualized in terms of its symptoms; an opportunity is an experience conceptualized in terms of its potentialities. Frequently the same experience can be turned from a problem to an opportunity by flexibility on our part in making this necessary but not always easy transformation. The first thing, then, is to try to arrange the problem from "in terms of symptoms" to "in terms of possibilities."

(1) Many of us wish for good ideas, but often we do not recognize or nurture good ideas when they come. Creativity is not so much the having of good ideas as the process of nurturing them. Most of us are like some unfortunate women who find it easy to conceive but hard to carry to term; we continually get ideas, but we continually abort them. Often this is because the creative idea does not occur in a proper or "evening dress" form. Like most things just born, it needs to be nurtured, loved and cleaned up.

(2) We need to develop a quiet time, when ordinary routine may be stripped away. In short, we need to court the muse. There are two rhythms here - a daily rhythm and a much longer one. There is sometime every day, usually around the time of sleep-just before or just after-when the gates to the preconscious seem to fall open. We should find out when this is best for us and cultivate it. Some people find music very helpful for this purpose; eventually it may be discovered that a light hypnotic trance may be useful; play and playful regression is

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also desirable. author, personally, finds water and swimming helpful, probably because it is relaxing.

The other rhythm is a much longer one of alternation of work and travel. The power to travel, especially outside one's culture, to evoke the creative response is sometimes almost unbelievable. This kind of alternation between work and a vacation is extremely useful.

(3) Inevitably, in any creative functioning there will be a down cycle. The worst possible thing is to resist this tendency. Even a cow goes dry at times. Forcing will just result in the production of rubbish and in fouling the spring. The next worst thing at such a time is to resort to negative affective reactions or to believe that one is through. Hostility, resentment, envy, jealousy and other negative feelings dissipate the creative energy and result in destructive tendencies, often the self-destructive tendencies overtaking the creative ones.

To avoid this predicament, in the short term, one should seek non-hostile and nondestructive release of energy, consciously allowing oneself to play the

feel or descend to the lowest level of slapstick enjoyment. Next to splashing around in a swimming pool the author finds that low-life comedy of the Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello type is especially appropriate to the mood. One should not censor a rather immature and childlike regression in simple pleasures, such as going to circuses or watching inane antics of television. Whatever relaxes the individual in an innocent manner is enough.

On the long term, one should make a break with routine and travel abroad. Drastic change in one's living conditions is called for, and some methods for effecting this change have been detailed in the previous chapter.

(4) A prosaic but helpful method is the single-minded study of the issue with all its opportunities and facets. A curious thing about this process is that, if you study ichthyology, you do not become more like a fish but, if you study creativity and self-actualization, you are very likely to become more creative and self-actualized. To some extent the openings between the conscious and the preconscious can be sprung a bit from the conscious side. This is a gradual process, but it should never be overlooked.

(5) Kelly (1955) in his book on personal construct theory delivers a powerful axiom that the way we anticipate events constrains us to that type of experience of them. There is much psychological truth in this dictum which can be used to aid us in our search for self-actualization. Because we have been brought up to conform, we think we must eat, dress, talk and think like everyone else. Actually, our characters are formed and, indeed, our very lives molded by those things, events and persons to which we selectively give attention. We also tend to think of an individual "I" with its fears, greed and separatism, whereas we should think of group life as "bios" in which each individual has a connective part like branches on a tree. Life reaches for more creative perfection in individuals because only the individual has the capacity for self- actualization.

(6) Another mode of change has to do with ceasing to live in the past and starting to live in the future. The process of creative functioning is that of manifesting the future (helping the inchoate future become manifest). This is the

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real meaning of existentialism. The existential person is not bound by his past, for he is in a continual state of becoming in which he is thrown forward for definition into the future, and is better defined by what he may become than by what he is or was. When the writer gave his graduate students an assignment to write their own obituaries, he was surprised to find that there were those who seemed content to be killed tomorrow and had their funerals all figured out, but the more creative students thought of themselves as dying in the distant future after considerable escalation in their personal and professional lives.

The Hopi rain dance is danced to bring out or manifest the inner feelings and wishes for rain in the Hopi heart to actuality in the tribal experience. Our future indicative holds semantic traps. In using it (where most other cultures use the conditional), we ascribe reality and inevitability to the future, not recognizing that it is largely within our power to change it.

The key question is "Am I in control of my environment, or is my environment in control of me?" The creative person literally turns his dreams inside out; instead of being governed by them he is their master for he molds them and makes them come to pass. This possibility of intervention in one's future is characteristic of the self-actualized person. He sees future possibilities as inner realities and is able to make them actualities. Admittedly there are aspects of one's future over which one does not have control (such as the lack of control a mother has over the sex of her child), but just as the mother has much control over the health and, indeed, the life of the baby, so we have much control over future actuality because we can formulate our creative ideas. Many creative persons find that imagining pictures of things as one wishes them to be is helpful in making them more possible. First a trace, then a path, then a lane, finally a freeway. Or as Mark Twain said: "Everything goes through three stages: first people say it is impossible; then they say it conflicts with the Bible; finally they say they have always believed it."

Picturing in one's mind a desired end (such as seeing one arrive home after a long auto trip), as a means of creating or achieving, may seem dangerously near Coueism to some. But psychological investigation has increased our respect for the self-fulfilling prophecy. Such graphic representation of a future, even in one's mind, may set in motion many aids to reach that end (for example, in the case of the auto trip, one may drive more carefully). At any rate, if artists and architects picture their dreams first in their minds, then on paper, and finally in stone and steel, may not the rest of us recognize this as an effective procedure for realizing our dreams and wishes?

(7) We need to purify our lives. This will be a pejorative statement for many but, after a careful search, the writer cannot find a word which better describes the function. The word is not used in reference to sexual abstinence, for that use seems merely to be an Anglo-Saxon "hang up." Rather, purity as we use it refers to the elimination of hostility, violence, filth and depravity from one's perceptual intake. While these matters roil up the mind, whether they come from movies, TV, or interpersonal contact, it cannot remain tranquil enough to receive the faint signals of creative ideas. For the mind is a receiver which must be powered so that it functions like a radio receiving set for picking up creative thoughts, A good set has high selection, and so does a self-actualized person.

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Personal hostility in the family, among friends or in the office is extremely inimical to creative work. Even the atmosphere of hostility on a campus beset with unrest is enough to dampen most research progress. If one wishes to be creative, one must quiet the input from these areas so that one can march to the music of a distant drum.

Purification also involves the clearing up of lower order problems so that self-actualization, when it comes, will not be premature. The continually unsolved struggles of earlier tasks divert energy which should be channeled into new transformation. This is also one of the dangers of the use of drugs to achieve self-actualization.

(8) In preparing to be receptive to ideas, be sensitive to dissonance, discontinuity and small apertures. An aperture is a discontinuity in material which otherwise seems to fit well. But the aperture shows where the fit is less than perfect, and as Darwin said, it is the imperfections or flaws in the present theory which point to the genesis of the new or better theory. Our conceptualization of the world of experience is like so many stage flats, fitted together rather well, but with small apertures here and there (that is the only way we realize they are simulations of scenery and not scenery itself). By sensing the aperture, one gets a gestalt of the flat as distinct from the scenery it simulates; one is then on the road to reconceptualizing another scenery flat which will fit the position better without the discontinuity.

Apertures frequently appear as nuisance things (like the constant speed of light regardless of the emanating source), which one wishes would go away and about which one is not inclined to speculate (unless one is an Einstein). But if one wants to unravel the mystery, one had better start there and look for a loose thread. One pulls and pulls, and hopefully the thread does not give out until the knot is unraveled.

(9) The principles of psychotherapy are helpful in bringing groups or individuals from stasis into free flow and creativity; they can, hence, be used on some occasions for creative problem solving. We first get ourself and the participants to stop fighting the symptoms and each other and help them make an effort at more accurate communication. Ibis means first learning to value one another. A "hostillectomy" session may be necessary where everybody gets out his gripes. Toward the end of this period, the group should be given two ideas: (I) the leader is capable of helping them to something new, and (2) they are capable of more ingenuity than they have shown in solving the problem.

Get them to look at the general mess from new angles. Often this involves brainstorming or a group-directed, day- dream session. Conducting it requires relaxation of rigid old type positions so some flux can take place. This activity is equivalent to the preliminary exploration in a therapeutic session. One gets as much personal identification into this stage as possible with no negative or pejorative evaluation.

It should not be possible to go through the classic aspects of creative problem solving, fact finding, problem finding, solution finding and acceptance finding. If resentment rises or and spells occur, it may be necessary to go back to

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another group session to get things more in flux again. An exit session to bandage ego wounds and make maintenance of performance better may be desirable.

(10) Among elementary methods sometimes found for inducing creativity are those which depend upon an automatic systematized run-down of possible actions (modify, adapt, magnify, minify, reverse, rearrange, combine) or a random juxtaposition of wildly unusual descriptive process (what happens when a political polecat meets a traumatized tiger in a Hungarian haberdashery?). These methods constitute a first step, to be sure, in eliciting fluency and flexibility in those who are strongly compartmentalized.

True creativity goes beyond this automatic feeding of raw stimuli directly to the conscious mind. A better method is illustrated by Torrance's "Sounds and Images" or Khatena's "Onomatopoeia and Images" (1969) in which material is absorbed while in a revery or when day dreaming or in a relaxed mode where it gets into the preconscious there to be transformed to verbal output, which is the product of the individual not the stimulator. The essence of the creative act lies in the focusing and transformation of energy. This can only come when the preconscious has a chance to organize the percept into a new form. Wordsworth in "To the Daffodils" illustrates both process and product when he tells us:
And when upon my bed I lie In vacant or in pensive mood They flash upon the inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude. And then my heart with pleasure fills And dances with the daffodils.

(11) A final hint has to do with the sensing of unnamed processes, entities or relationships. The concept of escalation in chapter 3 is such an example. Another illustration is the fact that New York comes before Newark alphabetically because the character between the W and the Y (which has no name, since it consists of space) comes before the letter A. These unnamed entities, processes and relations are found in every discipline and often perform major functions. They only await our discovery of them.

Some readers may be disappointed in the pedestrian nature of these modest suggestions. Others may point out that they apply more to creativity than to psychedelia or illumination. Yet creativity is the first level of self-actualization, and it is here that we must start. We must set this system in "go condition" if we expect the higher openings to take place. The preconscious is like the cave of Aladdin - full of treasures and guarded by a genie. We must be prepared to take advantage of both before we rub the lamp.

SUMMARY

Piaget once stated that the course of human development is a way from egocentricity toward freedom. Every aspect of life shows this upward escalation. For as all life strives upward, each individual life tries, however briefly, to become

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a god before it becomes an ape. For if man is the foetalization of the ape, differential psychology would point out that the ablest among men represent an even more youthful stretch-out of the plastic periods. This allows for the full eight stages (and perhaps more) to be included in our life span.

We start by trying to perfect in our developing brain an imperfect isomorphism between the external world and our concepts. If we progress to the end, keeping up environmental stimulation after the biological development has left off, we can become saint-like both cognitively and affectively. The mind first becomes capable of full representation of the external world, then merges with it in experience, finally to become part of the noumenon of that experience and so capable of influencing external events.

These are brave words, but man is a brave species. We may come from dust, but our destiny is in the stars. Thoreau, that rustic seer, closed Walden on a similar optimistic note, for speaking of the future of mankind he prophesied:

"That day is yet to dawn, for the sun is only a morning star."

And old Socrates told us the same thing long ago:

"For if the man had this power to contemplate beauty absolute, unfettered and untarnished by all the colors and vanities of human life, dwelling in
that blissful realm alone, he would bring forth not images of beauty, but beauty itself, and so would become immortal and become the friend of the Gods."