CREATIVITY + LEARNING

Critical Realism
02 June 2014
 References
Bhaskar, R. (2002). Philosophy of
MetaReality: Creativity, Love and
Freedom. London: Routledge.

Bhaskar, R. (2002). From Science to

Emancipation: Alienation and the
Actuality of Enlightenment. New
Delhi, Thousand Oaks, London: Sage.
 CREATIVITY

The prevalent construct of creativity as

necessarily socially recognised

A critical realist critique: Creativity

beyond & without social recognition

Creativity as ‘the discovery and

realisation of possibilities’
- Lee Martin
 CREATIVITY
- one of the ultimate & essential qualities of the
cosmos apart from Love and Freedom

- also an essential underlying basic property of

human being by virtue of our ground-state

- even if often dominated, occluded, &

concealed in the world by the surface
regimentation/fixation that is, however,
parasitic on it (TINA formation)

PMR
 Outline

• The concepts of absence & emergence

as essential to creativity & learning (self-
development)

• The 5 circles of creation (& learning)

• The goals of education

STADION OF THE ONTOLOGICAL- Elements of the Human
AXIOLOGICAL CHAIN/PHASE OF Dialectic of Learning!
PMR>CR! Creative Process!
1M NON-IDENTITY ! enfolded or implicit
will (initial impulse or calling)!
TR! knowledge!

2E NEGATIVITY ! discovery & recall or

creation (emergence) !
anamnesis (emergence of
CN! thought/unthought!
enfolded knowledge)!
3L TOTALITY! shaping (binding knowledge
formation, shaping feeling !
back into our innermost being -
EC! or emotion!
self formation - & elaborating it)!

4D TRANSFORMATIVE making (physical action ! objectifying knowledge in

AGENCY DCR! & objectification)! practice!

5A SPIRITUALITY! fulfilled or realised intentionality

(reflection of objectification ! reflection or fulfilment!
TDCR! to the maker)!
6R RE-ENCHANTMENT! enchanted resonance !
PMR! of fulfilled intentionality!

7A/Z NON-DUALITY! awakening to the non-dual ground of

fulfilled intentionality !
PMR! (self- & god-realisation)!
from M. Hartwig’s Introduction to PMR!
 The Bipolarities of ABSENCE & EMERGENCE

Human creativity implies change—the emergence of

something new, from Absence!
!
The idea of change involves absence/absenting:!
(a) absenting something which was previously there, and/or !
(b) presenting something which was not there (hence, an
absenting of the absence of what was not there)!
!
Hence, Absence is conceptually essential for a rational
account of change.!
!
The idea of change as involving emergence is essential for a
rational account of learning & education, growth &
development. !
 Change in Critical Realism:
Against Ontological Monovalence
ONTOLOGICAL MONOVALENCE: the most fundamental
error in western philosophy!

• the idea that a purely positive account of being is possible and

necessary!
!
• This embargo on conceptions of determinate absence
and change in philosophy generates TINA
FORMATIONS (splits, dualisms, alienations and
absurdities) within philosophy, reflecting and
underpinning those within substantive social life.!

PMR embraces ABSENCE in virtue of the priority given to

the concepts of Transcendence, Co-Presence, etc.!
 Change in Critical Realism:
Against the Subject-Predicate Distinction

The SUBJECT-PREDICATE DISTINCTION vs. change, process,

self-development, & creativity.!
!
Traditionally, in philosophy the subject is regarded as fixed. All
change is attributed to the predicate. !
!
But NO CHANGE unless there are changes in subjects. Only a
conception of change as internal & necessary, and not merely
external & accidental, allows us to make sense of self-
development and the notions of dialectical & organic consistency
& change, and the ideas of self-transformation, self-becoming. !
!
The Critique of the Subject-Predicate Form, which is a Critique of
Analytical Reasoning, allows for a rational account of change.!
!
 5 CIRCLES OF CREATION
Parallels with Human Act (including Learning)
1:!
CALLING or The immanent ground:!
the implicit, enfolded, potential!
FOUNDATION!
2:! The emergence/iruption of the new!
CREATION! through a transcendent cause!
3:!
FORMATION or A binding and elaboration !
into a new totality!
ELABORATION!
4:!
MAKING or Externalisation and manifestation!
of the agent’s intentionality!
OBJECTIFICATION!
5:!
REFLECTION or Reflection of the agent’s intentionality!
FULFILLMENT!
 5 CIRCLES OF CREATION
1: Calling or Foundation
• The immanently prepared ground: the essential
ingredient, the familiar, the raw material to be
transformed (‘material cause’)!

• Every new creation has an ontologically

immanent source.!
!
• PLATONIC ANAMNESIS: What is eventually
created—the new—is already implicit,
enfolded, potential—in the old. ‘It is already
(timelessly, embedded) there’. (Co-Presence)!
 5 CIRCLES OF CREATION
1: Calling or Foundation

• Learning is a process of recalling or

recollection—the eliciting or surfacing of
what was implicit or potential in an
enfolded state in the creator or the learner.!

• This first moment concerns the intention

and/or goal of the creator/learner: The
WILL in the human creative process!
 5 CIRCLES OF CREATION
1: Calling or Foundation

• In LEARNING: No one can teach you anything that

you do not already (implicitly) know. Education is
the bringing out of the implicit and enfolded in you.!

• But the knowledge is unmanifest, and thus requires

education, which involves an external stimulus/
teacher for the eliciting of what is already implicit or
known, in an unmanifest form.!
!
 5 CIRCLES OF CREATION
2: Creation
• The emergence of the new: de novo, ex nihilo
(‘out of nothing’) - from an epistemically
unknown and optically unmanifest source
(but ontologically immanent)!

• Through a transcendent cause (an external

stimulus or teacher), the ‘efficient cause’!

• What is created transcends and negates

what pre-existed it. Creation is an absenting
and transforming of what is already there.!
 TRANSCENDENTAL CAUSE !
(‘the gift of learning’)!
!
!
!
!
IMMANENT GROUND !

Learning is a spontaneous gift—but a gift given to a specially

prepared mind because the mind had toiled ardently, arduously,
prepared itself exhaustively. !
!
Newton had so thoroughly immersed himself in the subject matter
that in transcendental identity in consciousness (in a non-dual
transcendental moment), he apprehended gravity in a way only
possible for him. In this sense, the transcendent cause falls on an
immanently prepared ground.!
 5 CIRCLES OF CREATION
2: Creation
• The Primacy of Self Referentiality: The irreducibility of the
role of the embodied personality in creativity.!
!
• The irruption of novelty happens in the moment of
unthought (a suspension of discursive thought, between/
beyond/beneath thought): the ‘epistemically unmanifested’.!

• The discursive intellect includes not only the purely formal

analytical thought, but dialectical thought as well!

• But we need not only dialectical thought, but also

unthought. (a radical transcendentalisation of the
dialectical critique of analytical reasoning)!
 The intellect is our faculty of discrimination & choice. Both the Discursive Intellect &
Intuitive Intellect are necessary and need to be synthesised.!
DISCURSIVE INTELLECT! INTUITIVE INTELLECT!
(LEFT BRAIN)! (RIGHT BRAIN)!
formal & conscious activity!
spontaneous & tacit activity!
instrumental, manipulative!
unconditional!
sequential & linear!
simultaneous!
analogical/metaphoric/metonymic*!
holistic!
!
Dialectical* (vs. Analytic) Thought!
Concepts are stretched, teased and
distantiated, as in metaphor or poetry, !
so as to bring thought into line !
with a new or deeper level of reality.! !
Iconic* (vs. Sentential) Activity ! !
Pictorial, imaginative, visualising thought !
crucial in the ‘retroductive-analogical’ moment !
in scientific discovery, !
in which scientists picture plausible models.!

TRANSCENDENTAL CONSCIOUSNESS: !
- the ground of the Discursive & Intuitive Intellect!
- the supra mental state of consciousness linked to the ground-state!
- underpins THOUGHT: the source of INTUITION and guide for DISCURSIVE THOUGHT!
 Limits of Thought
Thinking, judging, naming…!
!
1. impedes or blocks creativity, love and right-action;!
2. consumes and drains energy; and!
3. sets up repetitive and manipulative patterns and
syndromes of thinking, feeling and acting.!
!
Nothing creative comes from thought. Creativity
always comes from the gap, the space between
thought (when we stop thinking).!

THOUGHT & UNTHOUGHT in the human creative

process!
 5 CIRCLES OF CREATION
2: Creation
• The need for passivity, receptivity, and openness to
the irruption of the new, which at this point may be
knowledge or information that is initially
heteronomous, externally given, second-hand.!
!
• The SELF-REFERENTIALITY of LEARNING, the direct
and non-substitutable Eureka experience of discovery
(‘I see it’, ‘I get it’). No one else can make you see or
understand or learn. !
!
• The wise man, the fool, and the moon: The wise man
can point to the moon, but the fool needs to see the
moon for himself—beyond the finger of the wise man.!
 5 CIRCLES OF CREATION
3: Formation or Elaboration
• A binding & shaping into a new Totality (‘formal cause’)!

• Elaboration of the discovery/invention & appropriation so

that it becomes part of one’s self—owned & claimed as
one’s own creation or knowledge/understanding. The
elaboration of the discovery leads to the self-formation of
the subject!
!
• VALUES & FEELINGS in the human creative process!

• In Learning: The student assimilates the new knowledge

& makes it his/her own, learning its implications &
applications. Meaning-making!
 5 CIRCLES OF CREATION
3: Formation or Elaboration

• Double Initiation: Although your ‘new’ knowledge has been

elicited from within you, it remains unfamiliar to your
conscious mind, & requires it to be in-grown or in-built until
you attain a level of ‘spontaneous’ knowledge &
application. The end of this process of double-initiation is
one in which you have all the knowledge and skills at your
disposal;!

• You already know it implicitly but need to know it again by

making the knowledge ‘part’ of your being. At the level of
the first initiation (the recall of Platonic anamnesis), you
just see it. On this level of second initiation, you internalise
it and incorporate it into your being.!
 5 CIRCLES OF CREATION
4: Making or Objectification

• Externalisation or objectification of the agent’s

intentionality. The physical manifestation of the
creativity in the world (‘final cause’)!

• Without basic action nothing can be done, proved or

known; hence, the limitations of the mind, the
discursive intellect and the left hemisphere of the brain
(all of which depend on basic action!). For
spontaneous right-action, all we have to do is to just
be, just be in our ground-state, to become what we
essentially are.!
 5 CIRCLES OF CREATION
4: Making or Objectification

• We think being not only in itself, not only as a process

and a totality, but also as incorporating or involving
transformative praxis—i.e., creative work.!

• MAKING or AGENCY in the human creative process!

• In LEARNING, the student, having incorporated the

learning as his/her own, now uses it and through an
application of his learning, expresses it in a product or
a performance.!
 5 CIRCLES OF CREATION
5: Reflection or Fulfillment

• The objectified product stands on its own & reflects (or failS to
reflect) back the intentionality & attributes of the creator.!

• FULFILLED INTENTIONALITY in the human creative process!

• The agent (creator or student) grows in self-awareness &

understanding through this objectification/act of one’s
intentionality.!

• The Unity of Theory & Practice: ‘the re-ascent of consciousness

to spirit, having emerged in human form from matter, reflexively
(reflectingly) looks back on the creator (god)’.!
!
 3 Phases of Knowledge
Phase 1: NO MIND (CREATION) - Openness & receptivity
required for the ‘I SEE IT’ experience of discovery &
recognition. Unthought in CREATION.!
!
Phase 2: MINDFULNESS (FORMATION or ELABORATION)
- ‘PLAY WITH IT'. Playful & disciplined experimentation with
the subject matter or skill.!
!
Phase 3: FREE MIND (OBJECTIFICATION) - Making things
through the application of the knowledge in different
situations. But also NO MIND (a state of being
characterised by no thought or unthought, in which we
‘unthink’ our way through life).!
 The Goal of Education
• The recognition of each person’s uniqueness is a
precondition for any pedagogy: Uniqueness as thematised
around the concepts of CONCRETE SINGULARITY &
DIALECTICAL UNIVERSALITY!

• The DIALECTICAL PROCESS OF LEARNING: The intuitive

‘seeing it’ becomes part of a process in which the
knowledge, still heteronomous, becomes part of the
students’ being. Through the full development of the process
of creativity they become empowered & skilled agents in the
world.!

• The goal of education is to encourage human beings to

come into their dharma (our concretely singularised inner
nature increasingly free of the attachments).!
 The Goal of Education
3 Levels of Action!
!
Level 1: Gift from the universe &!
offering to the divine or to nature, !
to fellow human beings, !
whatever it is that we love.!
!
Level 2: Transformation of the world!
!
Level 3: Struggle:!
the practice of emancipation!
!
 The Goal of Education

* Practical Mysticism: the link between Deep Spirituality and

Social Change

* Dialectic between education and emancipation: My Self

Realisation is achieved by the removal of heteronomies
(blocks to my freedom,), but my freedom will not be attained
only unless everyone else achieves self-realisation—i.e., the
removal of the blocks to the freedom of all—hence, Universal
Self Realisation.

* ‘To be a spiritual being.., you have to be a practical being’.

Learning as Re-Totalisation of the Self

When we learn something, we build the new

knowledge or skill into our unity. !
!
In the process of incorporating what is external to us,
we remain whole, and we embed—recursively embed
—the new development into ourselves and in this
manner, expand. !
!
We can be non-dual and growing beings at the same
time. Transcendental unity is consistent with
differentiated wholes and development.!
 Learning as Re-Totalisation of the Self
ABSENCE/ INCONSISTENCIES/!
INCOMPLETENESS CONTRADICTIONS!
!
!
!
NEW CONCEPT!
out of a moment of UNTHOUGHT!
(Epistemically Unmanifest or Absence)!
!
!
!
GREATER TOTALITY!
(Re-Totalisation)!
!
It is determinate absences that initiate and remedy the
process of learning—or any development for that matter.!
 Summary

Creativity & learning consists of an emergence from absence, de novo,

from the unmanifest, the merely implicit, enfolded, potential. !
!
In the human world, this moment of creation or emergence is!
!
(a) UNTHOUGHT (beyond discursive thought);!
!
(b) involves the breakdown or occurs outside the context of SUBJECT-
OBJECT DUALITY & DUALISM as such;!
!
(c) depends upon a moment of PLATONIC ANAMNESIS (a moment of
recall/recollection): the eliciting of the implicit or potential in an enfolded
state in the creator/learner, as assisted by an external stimulus or
‘teacher’; but!
!
(d) depends upon the irreducibility of ‘I see it!’, ‘I get it!’—i.e., the
PRIMACY OF SELF-REFERENTIALITY.!