Unlocking the Creative Mind

In this talk from 1977, Gururaj Ananda Yogi responds to a question about the nature of thoughts, the mind, and creativity.

Transcript

The question is,

Has thought quality and quantity?

And how can we use imagination in our daily lives towards greater creativity?

Let us ask the question first,

Have we got imagination?

Good.

Now,

What is the composition of thought?

And how does thought originate in man's mind?

Now if we know the origin of thought,

Then only can we find out if it has quantity.

And quality would be a simple matter to define if we can answer the first two questions.

The origin of thought is said by psychologists to originate in the subconscious mind.

And through a process of going through various layers of the subconscious mind,

It comes to the conscious mind where the conscious mind recognizes the current that the thought has produced.

And the conscious mind,

Through various processes with various combinations of certain kinds of chemistry,

Receives those currents and translates them into thought form.

And then we think that we are thinking.

Now I would say that the origin of thought is not necessarily from the subconscious mind,

Although certain thoughts of a lower level can come from the subconscious mind.

Yet behind the subconscious mind there is a mind which we could call a memory box.

Every thought that we think is never new.

It is not new whatsoever.

We have thought those thoughts before.

But what could be regarded as new would be the combination of two thoughts.

And the synthesis of those two thoughts could produce a third thought.

Now if we do go beyond the levels of the subconscious mind and come to the area where there is the subtle conjunction between the super conscious and the subconscious,

Where the subconscious just ends as the day would end,

Fading away into the night imperceptibly.

Now at that level we can cognize things,

Or thoughts could arise from that level which we can term the finest relative level.

Now at this finest relative level we are in communion with not only our mind,

But our mind has now expanded to the universal mind.

So no distinction would remain between the limitations of the mind as we know it and the universal mind because our mind has become one with the universal mind.

Now when a thought arises from that level at the finest end of the subconscious mind and having contacted or being one with the universal mind,

We are capable of the greatest amount of creativity as we would term it.

Because then we would have at our fingertips so to say all the knowledge that has ever existed not only on this planet,

But all the knowledge that has existed throughout existence itself.

And that is what we mean by direct perception.

You would find people trained,

Or people that have trained themselves in such a manner where they could cognize things directly.

As a common example you might find a genius at mathematics.

Now a problem could be set to that person which normally would require a computer several days to come to the answer.

And yet this person with the ability of direct conception would come to the answer immediately.

Now all these things function under a natural law and all laws that we don't understand we regard to be supernatural.

A hundred years ago when we would tell someone that you could take a 2000 ton machinery to fly through the air,

They would say we are mad.

And here we have hundreds and hundreds of planes flying overhead every day.

If you tell a person a hundred or so years ago that you could speak from San Francisco to New York,

3000 miles and have a person to person conversation,

They would regard that to be supernatural and it would be unbelievable.

Now contacting the finest level of the mind operates under a very natural law.

We call it supernatural because we do not understand the law that operates it.

But there are people,

Very few perhaps,

That could have the direct conception of all knowledge that could ever be.

Now knowledge can only be known to ourselves when it is formulated in thought form.

Now when we say thought form,

We add a form to thought.

When you think or try to think next time,

See that you are either thinking in pictures or in words.

You are thinking in pictures or in words because the word itself is forming a picture.

So in this case we could say that there is no difference between word and picture.

Or we could say that there are two aspects of the same thing.

Now in direct cognition,

The picture that is presented to us in thought form never works in a linear fashion.

By linear fashion I mean proceeding chronologically from A,

B,

C,

D to Z.

In direct conception or cognition,

The entire picture is conceived.

I think it was Mozart that said,

I might be wrong with the name,

That said he could conceive of the entire composition entirely within a moment and also its component parts at the same time.

The entirety and its component parts simultaneously.

Now this comes from the subtlest level of the mind.

There is a Sanskrit term for it,

Ritambaram Pragya.

That is the term applied to that area of the mind where direct cognition takes place.

Now when you find an artist or a poet or a composer composing great works,

Everlasting works,

Then be sure to know that he has contacted very deep levels of his mind.

And the deeper the level,

The greater the composition of whatever it is,

Music or poetry,

Or painting.

And the immortality of such work is in the fact that when you read the poem or you listen to a tape by a man who has direct cognition,

You don't only understand the words,

But it immediately touches the deeper level of yourself.

This can be seen in the form of painting,

It could be heard in the form of words,

Hearing,

And of course through sight one reads and then hears those words in one's mind.

So to develop in daily life the maximum amount of creativity for what we have to do,

And this of course I always bring in in every question that I answer,

Is to meditate.

When we meditate we reach the deeper levels of the mind.

And in my experience we have artists,

For example,

Radesha's most well-known artist,

Trevor Wood,

All his paintings which are very famous,

Have come to him,

The ideas,

The conceptions,

The colors have come to him in the process of meditation.

Now by constant practice,

By being regular in one's meditation,

The mind is set into a pattern where every thought becomes spontaneous,

Becomes creative.

What I am doing at this very moment is demonstrating to you creativity.

That is why I never prepare a talk.

That would be very easy.

Make half a dozen notes,

Memorize those notes,

And then speak on them from point to point to point,

And here you have a lecture,

I'll say Namaste,

Goodbye,

Off I go.

That is not creative.

Therefore I always encourage,

Come to a hall with a complete blank mind,

And there's not much there,

And ask you to ask a question.

And then I get lost in the question and I keep on talking,

Talking,

Talking,

Talking.

And most of the time I'm not aware of what I'm talking about.

Because when I speak to you I do not speak from mind.

The mind is dimly aware of what I have said.

It is only a few days later when I have a chance to listen to the tape,

Then I say,

Oh,

Did I say that?

Did I say that?

And that's how it works.

That is the basis of thought.

That is the origin of thought.

Thought has quantity.

Thought has quantity because thought is also matter.

Thought is also matter,

And as a matter of fact,

The mind,

That which we call mind,

Is nothing else but a collection of thought and thought impressions.

There is no substance in itself with diameter and circumference and length and breadth and all that which we call mind.

Mind is a collection of thoughts and of thought impressions.

Now,

I've said this before in other talks,

That there is no difference between mind and body.

The mind is only a subtler and finer extension of the body.

If it was a different entity,

Then when the body is dead,

When the body is dead,

Why does the mind not keep on thinking?

The thinking processes stop there in the mind.

Thinking processes stop in the mind because there is no conscious recognition of what is happening in the subtle body.

So therefore,

We call it that the mind is also dead.

And this is one of the criteria scientists use to prove clinical depth.

Let us get back to our point.

The mind is but a subtle extension of the body.

And the body being composed of matter,

Its extension is also composed of matter,

But subtle matter.

Now,

Wherever there is matter,

There is quantity.

Now,

The reason why scientists as yet cannot measure the quantity is because the extent of the mind is as vast as the universe.

At the level that we spoke of,

The finest relative level,

There the conjunction takes place between individual mind and universal mind.

So when they start measuring the mind,

They can only find certain waveforms.

Therefore,

The instruments that we have are limited and can only measure certain portions of the mind,

But a very small portion,

But not the entirety of the mind.

And because they cannot measure the entirety of the mind,

They have no way of measuring its quantity.

You asked about quality.

Now,

The quality depends entirely upon how creative,

Or how productive,

Or how uplifting,

Or how fulfilling,

Or how energizing the thought is.

There is quality.

So we have quantity,

And we have quality in the thought processes.

Reviews

Very enlightening. Makes me want to know more about direct cognitive contact. 🙏🏻

Excellent. Easy to follow and listen to. Thank you!

Must listen a second time.

Exceptional talk!

Enjoyed and reinforced a lot I've tapped into but wished it continued more into "quality ". I will revisit because it was uplifting to me. Thank You 😊 Namaste 🙏🏿

Wow. A lot here to think about. I think I need to return to this again to take this in. A lot of it resonated with me. Thanks for sharing this amazing talk!

Interesting, a little more of a lecture than g meditation but I like it. Thanks!

These insights go deeper each time I listen

Thank you wonderful!

Although this way of receiving creativity has been with me all my life, it is occurring more and more often in recent weeks. Your guidance has enlightened me to move into consistent practice with it. My heart is so happy right now. Thank you.

Superb. Just spent half an hour trying to process the explanations of mind, body, the subconscious and the universal mind. Searing clarity of delivery has blown my mind. Inspired to develop my meditation practice further. Thank you.

Very interesting, going to look into this more.

Interesting talk! Full of quality (haha) #meditation

A complicated idea, beautifully expressed. Many thanks!!

So good! Quality vs quantity

amazing thank you

Interesting lesson. Let's get creative.

Very well explained! Thanks for sharing!

Thank you very much this important and thoughtful share. I appreciate you.