Psychology of Creativity. Light, Dusk and Dark Night of Soul. Monograph

Chapter 2

Creative State of Consciousness

Present-day European psychology lacks generally accepted classification of states of consciousness. A great many of them, situated somewhere between the normal, wakeful state and the deep sleep, are rated as altered states of consciousness.

The existing definitions of states of consciousness are ambiguous and inexact. They do not make it possible to see any clear difference between the states under study. It is often so for both the "unusual” states of consciousness of a healthy mind and pathological states (17).

As to the usual, healthy,“everyday” state of mind, I believe that it is more appropriate to use the term “a floating state”, as in such a state consciousness tends to change its depth from full consciousness to “zero consciousness”, including trance states.

G. Gurdjiev, a great philosopher and mystic of the East, believed that the unconscious is omnipresent in the life of people. According to his theory, practically all people are “machines” not conscious of themselves. Their behavior and activities are automatized, algorithmizated, predefined by social programs and genetic potential. On the one hand, I have to admit that G. Gurdgiev's metaphors are rather suitable to depict the "floating state" of consciousness.

On the other hand, here the great researcher runs to extremes. It is beyond any doubt that consciousness is present and that it is self-sufficient in the stream of everyday life, in which acquired skills, automatisms of social interaction and inner work have a positive sense in terms of mental and physical energy economy.

In order to give a more detailed description of the everyday state of consciousness it would be useful to turn to the notion of “hilotropic", coined by St. Grof (from the Greek "hile" - matter and "trepein" - moving in the direction of something), which suggests matter-oriented consciousness, characteristic of the majority of people in everyday life.

It is this consciousness that forms traditional attitude toward reality: the world is a combination of separate material elements. Time is linear and space is three-dimensional, a human is a physical body with certain boundaries and possibilities, an event is a cause-effect relationship.

According to the ideas characteristic of everyday state of ordinary consciousness, matter has density; two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time; past events are irreversible; future events cannot be accessed through direct experience; a person cannot be more than in one place at once; human is able to exist in only one dimension of time; the whole is bigger than its part; nothing can be both true and false at the same time.

Everyday state of consciousness reflects ordinary everyday experience of generally accepted reality. This state of consciousness lets us experience just a limited segment of the world of phenomena or generally accepted reality. The nature and amount of such experience is determined by our space and time coordinates in the world of phenomena, as well as anatomical and physiological limitations of our sense organs and physical characteristics of our environment.

Some of the ideas developed by the psycho-cyberneticist Gregory Bateson and the philosopher Michel Foucualt can give us a deeper insight into the nature of the everyday state of consciousness.

Gregory Bateson introduced the concept of reality editor or perception editor. The Big Reality becomes the world we actually perceive by means of this very mechanism. The concept of editing reality summarizes the following well-known ideas: our perception is determined by attitudes, values, education, the unconscious, i.e. it is closely connected with and conditioned by space and time, it depends on numerous historical and cultural factors. As a result, we perceive the edited version of the Big Reality.

It was Michel Foucault who developed this idea. He considered cognition in historical perspective and showed that discourses, fundamental human views of the world or methods of acting in the world, are being formed within culture, that they are closely connected with time, place, “Self” and authorities.

Foucault introduced the concept of “anthropological sleep”. It unites the ancient ideas of illusion, maya or sleep, that we all find ourselves in, and modern post-psychoanalytic concepts of projection and transference. The main point here is that we perceive only what we are able to perceive. The world that we perceive is the duplicate of our states.

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The objective world that exists independently from what our perception creates is a mere idealization. Our continuous perception of the world is “glued together” by our habits and the epoch we live in, it reflects the culture and the spirit of the age. It is just an illusion of perception, caused by our belonging to the “human, too human". That is why we do not perceive anything new. We perceive only what we are able to perceive.

Foucault called this state “anthropological sleep”. It implies self-consistent interaction between the person who perceives and the object that is being perceived in the act of perceiving. Nothing new can enter a personality that has already been formed. His or her perception has already been lulled to sleep by the machine of modern culture, which separates us all from the Big Reality and adapts to the habitual, conventional world.

An heuristic state of consciousness is a kind of a rebellion, a break in the continuity of the anthropological sleep, in the self-consistent pair of the perceiving and the perceived. Thanks to these bond ruptures, to this rebellion, to the collapses of sleep-like reality, the new can enter everyday human world. New knowledge, feelings and meanings become available to people.

It is like an evening in the mountains: you may choose to wander in the twilight, but there is as well a possibility to make an effort and climb the mountain where you will see the sun, the lucidity. However, there are situations when making an effort is not enough. It may happen that there is no sun on the mountain. Instead, it is cloudy and foggy. Or, perhaps, you are too slow. Heuristic state of mind is always a combination of intention, effort and chance.

Only breaks in the continuous conventional reality can induce creative states of consciousness. Such experience breaks usual stereotypes of perception and provides us for some time with a new way to look at the world. It breaks the homeostasis of perception and helps us to look at things in a different way, to see what we have not seen before. It eliminates the prejudices aroused by our "Self", culture, conventional reality, authorities and all conceptual and language aspects of perception.

When we cross the boundaries of common everyday experience we face paradoxes similar to those described by Nagarjuna, Kant, ancient Daoists and modern antinomies of set theory. We can call it the antinomity of mind on the boundaries, when concepts are being broken and we enter the unknown.

Creative states of consciousness always constitute an alternative, unusual look at the world. It is this experience that makes it possible to solve the mystery. In order to create, human has to awake from anthropological sleep, to tear the spiderweb of conventional reality, of the generally accepted model of the world, the generally accepted myth about the world, including the traditional concepts of “what is a human” and “who we are in the world”.

Creating is like jumping into Lake Baikal to embrace the solar disk. Instead of trying to create a version of conventional reality which would look passable and worrying about being like everybody else, - a normal person -, a creator breaks the traditional system.

We cannot create anything new in the everyday reality, without crossing its boundaries to explore the world of unusual heuristic states of consciousness.

Heuristic, or creative state of consciousness is a particular altered state of consciousness, which is induced when consciousness is focused entirely on the problem task or one experiences a deep absorption in some activity. The altered state of consciousness is a generic notion, it is wider than the heuristic state of mind and it includes such states of consciousness as meditation, trance, psychedelia and other unusual states.

Heuristic state of consciousness is characterized by the highest possible mobilization of reserve capacities of human psyche (cognitive, vital and orgasmic). Such states give access to unconscious levels of psyche, which is a complex integral formation, i.e. to persona, interpersonal and transpersonal levels. An heuristic state of consciousness has common emotional experience with deep hypnosis, trance, meditation and impairment of consciousness caused by alcohol, drugs and psychodelics. That is why many artists are vulnerable to substances which give surrogate experience of high creative activity.

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Chapter 3

Creative Work as a Flow

Experimental Investigation of Creative States of Consciousness

It is evident that the very act of doing something can bring delight, excitement and deep satisfaction. Game can be the most striking example of this.

There is a whole number of activities, which are oriented, first of all, towards the process (and not the result). Artists, sculptors, poets, composers, writers can spend whole days and nights working, unheeding and unseeing all around them. They are engrossed in the very process of creation to such point that they are able to make great sacrifices. It happens so that they do not sleep, do not eat and continue to work with no guarantees of recognition or material wealth. Art history books abound in examples of tragic life.

Making sacrifices is characteristic of people of different professions: film directors, scientists, architects, production managers, actors, sportsmen, dancers, - they all find themselves in the process of creation and often go through this experience with much worry and pain. However, in my opinion, such "engrossment" in the process can be observed not only among the representatives of the so-called "creative" professions. Even the most common occupations, like carpentering or cooking, can be thrilling.

S.L. Rubinstein pointed out that it was possible that the process became the major motivation of activity, and not the result. (28;p.176). His school proposed the theory of “psyche as a process”. On the one hand, it divided psyche into the process and its product; on the other hand, it was based on the idea of their unity. Consequently, it studied the product only in relationship with the psychic process. A.V. Brushlinskii, for example, writes that “psyche exists, first of all, as a process, which is active, extremely flexible, continuous, never fully predesigned and, consequently, undergoing development... only in the course of constantly changing interaction between an individual and the outer world” (2).

“In the course of continuous and ever-changing interaction between the outer and the inner world, new, never before existing products, means of executing a process and other determinants are being formed and later included in this process in the capacity of new inner conditions" (1). Brushlinskii considers this continuous interaction between the process and the product to be the main characteristics of psyche as a process: the product of the previous activity is the inner condition of the future activity. He believes that it is the basis of the psychic development of a person, the development of his character and abilities.

The American psychologist M. Csikszentmihalyi based his work on the same scientific paradigm, as he aimed at experimental investigation of the process-oriented activity (37). According to him, the product of such activity is personal growth and development of skills and abilities. Analysis of his works lets us single out the main characteristics and mechanisms of the process-oriented activity (3).

Our experimental investigation aimed at specification of psycho-physiological mechanisms which accompany flow-like states of consciousness. 42 pilots, aged 24-45, took part in the experiment.

We tried not to focus their attention on the aims of the experiment. Investigation was carried out as a part of professional qualities evaluation process and this ensured high level of motivation.

Participants’ skills were tested through flight simulation. The experiment lasted one hour. The participants had to solve a series of standard tasks, consisting in collecting and analyzing visual information on the flight as well as transform this information into figurative and verbal form.

After the experiment all participants answered a number of questions. Four of them showed the obvious presence of flow-like states of consciousness in the course of experiment. The same participants also produced the best results in all the characteristics under examination. And though the high level of professionalism let them cope with tasks easily, unusual conditions of the "flight", as well as their desire to win demanded continuous attention, high level of concentration and mobilization, i.e. deep engrossment in the activity.

Physiological characteristics research showed the following changes in participants’ physiological systems activity:

-high heart rate;

-high blood pressure;

-nervous and emotional tension;

-high myocardial oxygen demand;

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-high breathing rate and increased respiratory minute volume;

-signs of hyperventilation, disbalance between oxygen demand and carbon dioxide emission. Group

average of carbon dioxide emission was 510±67 ml.

The “physiological value” of experimental activity among the participants who showed presence of flow-like state of consciousness was considerably lower. However, they had the highest level of carbon

dioxide emission. It was much higher than the group average, 1250±83 ml and 510±67 ml, respectively (Besides, blood carbon dioxide tension was reduced, which was indicated by lower PET СО2 – from 41±2

to 30±3 millimeters of mercury).

External respiration analysis has revealed that hyperventilation is the reason of severe hypocapnia (a state of reduced carbon dioxide in the blood). No differences have been observed in respiratory minute volume. Detailed analysis of external respiration has revealed the alveolar ventilation increase and dead space ventilation decrease, as well as oxygen utilization coefficient increase. It all gives evidence to the heightening of pulmonary gas exchange efficiency.

The reason for such paradox was uncovered by respiratory phases rhythm and time characteristics analysis. Respiratory rhythm variability was two times lower and exhalation duration - 60-90% higher while respiratory rate stayed practically the same (as compared to the respiratory rate before the experiment). These facts led to the conclusion that "flow-like” participants’ respiration had some characteristics of “connected breathing” (Continuous breathing characterized by connecting the inhale and the exhale. It is practiced in a number spiritual traditions in order to induce altered states of consciousness. In modern psychology it is used in rebirthing, vivation, holotropic breathwork and other techniques).

Brains electrical activity analysis has as well revealed a few interesting regularities. After a period of alpha rhythm suppression and desynchronization and high-frequency signs, participants experiencing flowlike states of consciousness showed intensification of slow-wave activity in cerebral cortex, which is paradoxical in such situations.

As it is known, relaxed wakefulness state of the majority of healthy adult population is characterized by regular alpha rhythm with maximum amplitude (registered by electroencephalogram or EEG). This rhythm can sometimes be perturbated, probably in connection with inner psychic activity intensification.

The so-called desynchronization is detected when a person is involved in an activity which causes emotional tension or requires high level of attention. It is known that the “flattening” of EEG is caused by the intensification of brain activity. The amplitude of alpha rhythm rises as functional activity level becomes lower. These facts conform with research results concerning the correlation between EEG and different psychic processes. It was shown that mental work, for example watching or learning, i.e. doing something that requires high level of psychic activity, makes EEG amplitude fall and EEG frequency rise (see Mori F.P. 197-202, 39).

The presence of slow-wave activity under ordinary conditions is considered to be pathological and even when there are periods of high-amplitude discharge of delta and theta waves, decrease in the level of attention is being detected.

Our research contradicts the above mentioned data, as the “flow-like” participants (their performance being excellent and their "physiological value" being low), showed slow-wave brain activity. During the first 15-30 minutes of the experiment the level of slow-wave activity increased, along with the level of carbon dioxide deficit and hypocapnia.

It is worth mentioning that, in terms of its EEG characteristics, the activity requiring a high level of concentration, i.e. requiring a "flow", is very similar to non-deep meditation states (38).

Nowadays biological feedback and subliminal programming systems become more and more widespread in the European market. Let us look at the history of this issue.

Scientific research of Zen monks meditation showed that Zazen state leads to alpha rhythm intensification and synchronization of both right and left hemispheres biorhythm frequency. Usually they vary a little.

Soon after this research a portable device was developed within a framework of biological feedback ideas. It was designed to stimulate human brain with the help of electric sensors, headphones and lightemitting diodes. It was found that it was possible to impose rhythms, characteristic of various states of consciousness, on human brain.

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For example:

- high frequency beta rhythm (30 MHz) induces a state similar to the one that appears after cocaine

intake;

-low frequency beta rhythm (15MHz) induces a normal wakeful state;

-alpha rhythm with a frequency of 10,5 MHz induces non-deep relaxation state (preliminary research has shown that in that case human brain produces a large quantity of neuropeptides, which boosts immunity);

-theta rhythm with a frequency of 7,5 MHz induces a state similar to deep meditation;

-low frequency theta rhythm (4MHz) sometimes induces emotional experience which is called “out- of-body travel";

-frequencies lower than 4MHz lead to a strong desire to sleep and difficulty of maintaining wakeful consciousness.

With the help of modern portable devices, changing stimulation frequency, it is easy to induce the state of so-called "superlearning" or "subliminal programming". It has been found that such states facilitate memorization of new information. Nowadays there is a great number of various subliminal programming audio CDs (in such spheres as language learning, weight loss, giving up smoking, stress reduction, etc.).

Thus, using NLP terminology, we can say that connected breathing serves “to anchor” a “flow-like” state of consciousness. And as I have learnt from numerous intensive integrative psychotechnologies trainings, connected breathing also serves as a "trigger" of this state (i.e. a mechanism that launches “flowlike” state).

My experience as a training leader showed that there is a real possibility of creating physiological and neuropsychological preconditions for inducing flow-like creative states with the help of conscious connected breathing.

I would also like to add that even serious and responsible work performed by a person in a “flowlike” state can give much more satisfaction than some costly leisure activity and fill one’s life with meaning. And it is extremely important to assist self-actualization, all the more so if we can achieve it with the help of rather accessible to everybody connected cyclic breathing (17;c.126-129).

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Chapter 4

The Joy of Creation

Basic Characteristics of Creative States of Consciousness

The three most recent paradigms of psychology, that is humanistic, transpersonal and integrative psychology, are united by their similar understanding of the aim of human existence, which is selfactualization. It is seen as the realization of person’s potential, including the vital, intellectual and emotional sphere. And it does not always have to take the form of creative work, the result of which is an object of art. A parent, a sportsman, a student, a teacher or an industrial worker,- they all can achieve self-actualization by performing well at their work. Self-actualization can be achieved in a great number of spheres of human activity. And the character of heuristic states of consciousness is the same for all of them. We can say that even those who work in completely different spheres of life are very much the same when they achieve selfactualization.

We can single out two types of heuristic, or creative states of consciousness:

1.An insight - a flash of inspiration, an immediate and often sudden understanding of a complex situation or problem.

2.A flow-like state - a process of experiencing inspiration.

Now let us discuss each of them.

Insight

It is most likely that the state of clear, full consciousness is not the priority of the normal state of consciousness. I believe that it is rarely experienced in the normal everyday state.

The full, clear consciousness is characteristic of the insight - an intellectual phenomenon, the essence of which is a sudden understanding of a problem and finding a way to solve it. The concept of "insight" was first used in 1925 by Wolfgang Köhler; Gestalt psychology sees “insight” as the very moment of understanding or the very moment of solving a task, a sudden “closure of field”.

Insight is an immediate understanding of the essence, of common, significant and necessary characteristics and relations of the inner and outer reality. It is a peak state of consciousness in terms of its fullness and clarity. It is different from the concept of “guess” as it implies the use of different senses and is “experience of the truth”, which has the power of persuasion.

Preliminary analysis lets us single out five types of insights which correspond to the five spheres of

life.

1. Scientific Insight

This kind of insight is like a flash of light; it is immediate and sudden; it reflects the essence of the scientific discovery. A scientist expends much effort during a long period of time, hoping to find a solution to some problem, nevertheless, none of this results in success. Then there is a pause, a period of rest, after which the idea can suddenly come to his mind. A certain period of "incubation" is needed for it to appear, a period when a person does not undertake anything consciously, though certain inner work takes place, which leads to an “insight”.

One of the most striking examples of this phenomenon was described by the great mathematician Henri Poincaré: “...Then I turned my attention to the study of some arithmetic questions apparently without much success and without a suspicion of any connection with my previous researches. Disgusted with my failure, I went to spend a few days at the seaside, and thought of something else. One morning, walking along the bluff, the idea came to me, with just the same characteristics of brevity, suddenness and immediate certainty, the arithmetic transformations of ternary quadratic forms were identical with those of nonEuclidean geometry”(25, p.360).

In the same paper he describes another similar case, when the idea came to him while he put his foot on the step of an omnibus, immediately going on with a conversation already commenced.

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2. Personal Insight

Insight may occur not only in the outer sphere of life (concerning a scientific or technical problem situation), it may as well be connected with personal history. Some strange reminiscence, being sudden, emotional, fresh and deep, can completely change one’s self-image. The insight, in such a case, is the moment when old elements of self-image, emotions, relations and meanings fall as dry autumn leaves. Insight here leads to personal transformation and completely new synthesis and integration of personality.

3. Insight in the Framework of Psychological and Psychotherapeutic Practice.

I have been working in the field of applied psychology for already 25 years. The utmost aim of my individual psychological consultations and group trainings has always remained the same – to create conditions for personal insights. The whole process of practical psychological work has been arranged so as to induce sudden insights, sudden understanding and experiences, which would give a new vision of the determining factors and connections of one’s life, new understanding of one’s own behavior, a new way of looking at one’s own prospects.

The term "A-ha experience” is very appropriate here, as personal discovery is experienced as a unity of the affective, the physical and the cognitive.

I am absolutely sure that the cognitive realization itself does not lead to personal or therapeutic transformation. Moreover, the cognitive component of insight is being once again repressed in the process of psychic reorganization. The inner freedom, transformation and integration of personality are ensured by the feeling of insight, by insight-as-an-experience. It is the emotional component of insight that leads to the affective and behavioral transformation of personality. Understanding, realization, intellectual insight is not enough, it is the feeling itself that is essential here. Anyway, it would have been a mistake to absolutize the emotional component. I am sure that the emotional reaction does not produce long-lasting effects if it is not accompanied by reconsideration and appearance of new motives, new attitude towards other people, towards oneself, appearance of new behavior.

4. Spiritual Enlightenment and Insight

Spiritual enlightenment, which is considered to be the highest peak of personal development, can be singled out as a special kind of insight. The Sanscrit word “satori”, used in Zed Buddhism to describe such states, is very similar to the English word “insight”: it is translated as “immediate enlightenment”.

On the one hand, it is the experience of immortality. Enlightenment is characterized by experiencing immortality and at the same time being conscious of what is going on and conscious of one’s own existence.

What is nirvana, satori, life in Christ, achieving Tao, experience of Sunyata or of the Great Emptiness? It is a way of transcending the limits of time given to a person, transcending ego so that one may achieve immortality, the eternal state where there is neither death nor withering away.

On the other hand, it is a “liberation from duality”. In Christian mythology it corresponds to the notion of "the kingdom of God on Earth”. It is not exactly the presence of the positive or the absence of the negative, but rather "non-duality”or “non-opposition”. The Gospel of Thomas: “Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the kingdom." They said to him, "Then shall we enter the kingdom as babies?" Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter the kingdom."

A lot of examples of such insights can be found in the lives of orthodox saints, such as St. Sergius of Radonezh, St. John of Kronstadt, St. Seraphim of Sarov.

Roger Walsh writes in his book “The World of Shamanism”: “DeRopp explains that the basic idea underlying all the great religions “is that man is asleep, that he lives amid dreams and delusions, that he cuts himself off from the universal consciousness...to crawl into the narrow shell of a personal ego. To emerge from this narrow shell, to regain union with the universal consciousness, to pass from the darkness of ego centered illusion into the light of the non-ego, this was the real aim of the Religion Game as defined by the

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great teachers; Jesus, Gautama, Krishna, Mahavira, Lao-tze and the Platonic Socrates.”This emergence, reunion, and enlightenment are the aims of the Master Game. But although it has been taught for centuries by sages of all traditions, it remains much misunderstood”(p.40).

Having experienced enlightenment, an integrated personality transmits basic existential values and becomes a keeper of human spirituality.

Spiritual enlightenment can be a way to "loving-kindness” (“metta” or “maitri” in Buddhism), which is interpreted as love without attachment: love beyond passion and beyond any kind of attitude to the object of love. It is giving kindness and mercy, self-sacrificingness, it is ike love of Christ on the cross or like the merciful look of Buddha under the Bodhi tree... “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (the Gospel according to St. John, 3:16).

Spiritual enlightenment can lead to the experience of compassion (Karuna), a state free from suffering, a state of wisdom, of strength and clarity, of readiness to help other beings. Compassion exists beyond feelings and emotions, beyond sympathy, pity or empathy. Intense feelings and emotions lead to the loss of clarity and consciousness. When we compassionate, we are not involved in the feelings of other person, we do not experience any feelings aroused by a particular situation. Compassion is openness, readiness to help, it is beyond judgement, beyond any attitude to what person does. The great compassion is beyond good and bad.

Spiritual enlightenment can also result in the feeling of joy, which is a hymn to life. Joy is being free in the flow of feelings, it is a feast of life. It is when a person radiates the pure energy of life.

Equanimity, in my opinion, is the most powerful acquisition as a result of satori. It is a state free from thoughts about gain and loss, it is being free from clinging to faith as to the absolute truth. It is beyond attitude, anger and grief. Equanimity is meditation on peace and serenity. Practicing equanimity meditation lets one go beyond love and hate, cruelty and suppression, wealth and desire, and look at one’s life with perfect calm. Equanimity is associated with a calm and stable state of mind and it usually shows itself when people face misfortune and failure. Those who have cultivated this virtue are able to face any situation with calm, courage and without worry, despair and regret. Equanimity implies impartial thinking about actions (“karma”) and their results (“vipaka”). Equanimity breaks down prejudices and discrimination and leads to realization of the fact that everybody is the master of his or her actions and their consequences.

Life always means for us being involved in some kind of relations. We love some people, hate others, consider something to be right and something to be wrong...Equanimity encourages to see all people as equals, regardless of their sex, age, race, caste, ethnic origin, income level, education, relationships, etc.

The four “Sublime attitudes”, also known as the “Four Immesurables” – equanimity, joy, loving kindness and compassion – are considered to be virtues in Buddhism, Lamaism, Christianity, Mahometanism and other spiritual traditions.

5. Insight and Altered States of Consciousness

Now it is possible to experience insight with the help of special techniques which induce altered states of consciousness.

S. Groff notes that a great amount of new amazing information can be obtained as a result of insight induced by altered state of consciousness. We can get deep psychological insights on our personal history, on the unconscious forces that shape our lives, on our emotional difficulties and interpersonal problems. We are also able to have insights on different aspects of nature and cosmos, which is beyond our education and intellectual level. The majority of these insights are centered around philosophical, metaphysical and spiritual problems (16).

Creative Work as a Process:

Basic Characteristics

My seventeen years of psychological practice allowed me to observe the powerful attraction of creative (flow-like, heuristic or broadened) states of consciousness. Neuropsychological and sociopsychological experiments enabled me to single out the basic characteristics of these states.

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1. Transcending the Ego

Creative act is characterized by disappearance of the subject, that is the “feeling of self”, selfconsciousness and self-identity.

The lack of ego in one’s consciousness does not mean that the person loses control over himself (herself). The ego dissolves in the highest point of controlling the situation and person’s actions become a means of expression and realization of his own “Self".

Creative process implies such deep involvement that the person ceases to think of himself as separated from what he is doing.

Creativity has a distinct ontological character.

The person who makes something new (an piece of art, a scientific discovery, a text, a house project or some product) becomes the creator, the creator of his own life, the demiurge, the one who follows the plan of God. A single cognitive-mental structure is formed in the process of creation; on the one hand, it dissolves the “Self” in the activity, on the other – it dissolves the activity in the “Self”.

Creativity is always associated with forgetting or sacrificing one’s own self.

This transcending (transcending the limits of one’s own “Self”) brings to significant changes in the sphere of values and launches the mechanisms of the superconscious. At this stage, feeling a great distance between him and other people, the creator plunges into his own intellectual experience. Solitude becomes akin to creation, moreover, it is its necessary condition.

“The secret of writing lies in the eternal and involuntary music, which sounds in your soul", wrote the Russian philosopher and literary critic V. Rozanov; W. Kandinsky was looking for “spiritual laws” in art;

B. Shergin, a Russian-Soviet writer and folklorist, called to “spread the wings” of soul. The soul can be determined only in a process, never in a static state. According to Rozanov , “the soul is passion”, “a passion for “enjoying the world”(27).

Here I can’t but recall Maslow’s idea about the creative state of solitude. He argues that solitude is one of the attributes of self-actualization. “Young Newton never made friends with any of those children, he never participated in their noisy games. Thus began his solitude, a solitude lasting from birth to death...”(12). A person in such a state is a kind of a body-spirit continuum.

Creative state enables us to a give transcending meaning to the outer reality, as well as to get this transcending meaning from the outer reality. For example, a pouring rain is interpreted as sadness, the cry of a bird – as a call of destiny.

Here I would like to list my arguments for interpreting creative act as a flow-like state of consciousness:

-the ego ceases to be “under the skin”. Personality ceases to identify itself only with “what is under the skin”, it expands its boundaries, dissolves itself it sign systems (in science, literature, poetry), in other people (the joy of communication), in nature (aesthetic perception, meditation, extreme sports), in technical objects (a racer merges with his car, a programmer with his computer, etc.);

-personality becomes a part of the world, thus becoming bigger than the individual “Self”. The

Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Victor Frankle gave an excellent description of this phenomenon in his book "Man's Search for Meaning": “Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you will miss it. For success, like happiness, can not be pursued; and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself”.

-all the languages of consciousness (feelings, emotions, images, symbols, signs) become integrated with the sensory reflection of reality in person’s thinking. The synthetic ways of gaining new knowledge and interpreting the world become active with a lot of different kinds of sensory and logical experience involved.

-the person who creates becomes the source of his own power. The Russian actor and theater director K. Stanislavski noted: "Creative work requires total concentration of the whole organism”(30). The field of activity, which is being at the same time mastered and generated, becomes an adequate, true reflection of the inner intentions of personality, of its potentiality. The person creates reality and at the same time fully reflects himself in it.

-creative work gives an opportunity to use one’s vital resources, forces and energy. Creative process is associated with inspiration and a fit of energy, but it is as well a possibility to expend considerable and long-lasting effort and all this without food, sleep and rest.

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2. Transcendence of Time

In the early 1990ies in the framework of integrative psychology it has been experimentally proved that broadened states of consciousness can impair the perception of time. No doubt, such distortions are also characteristic of the “flow-like” states. Creative states make people lose the adequate sense of time. In general, it leads to underestimation of time intervals (a few minutes seem to have passed instead of the real hour). In some cases, the sense of time disappears completely and suddenly it "turns out" that it is already another time of day.

Impaired time perception is caused by the fact that sensor systems cease to perceive the information coming from the outside (including kinesthetic and auditory systems, which play the major role in time intervals perception). It is also caused by suppression of such psychophysical mechanisms of time perception as biological rhythms, which are connected with the satisfaction of biological needs.

Being involved in a creative process, people tend to “forget” to breathe with characteristic personal pattern, moreover, they pass to the biological (animal) connected breathing. Dietary habits also change. Very often people "keep the fast", "forget" to eat, can go without water for a long time; excretory habits are also disturbed. “Absorbed in his work, he forgot about food and sleep. His roommate Wikins often got to sleep in the light of Isaak’s candle and when he woke up, in the dim light of Cambridge morning he saw Isaak’s figure in the same posture, still at his desk. Isaak did not notice anything around him. He suffered from sleeplessness, headaches and weakness. He lost his sense of time, he lost his ability to perceive anything around him. He was completely happy"(12).

The transcendence of time, expressed in the change of its basic variables (duration, speed and sequence) in creative flow-like states influence psychophysiological processes and vital activity of a person.

The idiom “happiness takes no account of time” is an excellent description of the influence of emotional state on time perception in creative process.

The following conclusions I have come to are based on my experience:

a)Impaired time perception depends on the state of being absorbed in some activity. Integration of the inner world with the outer world of a person leads to suppression of everyday perception of time, which leads to its impaired perception;

b)The boundary between the object and the subject and between the reality which really exists and the one that is perceived disappears. Creative act exists in the “immediate”, in the " here and now".

Personality is being dissolved in the creative process. It is very similar to the archaic perception of reality, to the presentism of primordial thinking. “There is a gap between seconds, it is called eternity” (Kozlov, 1993). The habitual “past-present-future” ceases to exists. There is only “here and now”. Peak creative states open the gates of eternity. That is why creativity is so attractive;

c)The transcendence of time is also caused by a particular emotional state which accompany creative work. The “soul-filled flight”, as A. Pushkin describes creative process is accompanied by very peculiar emotions. B. Pasternak called it “the joy of life” and “the happiness of existence”. L. Tolstoy claimed that genuine art appeared as a result of inner need to express one’s feelings.

A whole range of feelings usually accompany the process of creative work: aesthetic delight, mystical ecstasy or instasy, awe, the feeling of mystery, the feeling of soaring, exultation, the pleasure of creating, being surprised at the discovery, thrill, the joy of being.

One should distinguish between the feeling of thrill and the feeling of pleasure. It is possible to experience the latter without expending effort. That is why it does not lead to personal growth and development. While the feeling of thrill is not possible without complete devotion to work.

The flow-like state of consciousness has a great emotional value. However, the concept of “pleasure” does not suit to describe its essence. In my opinion, there are two possible emotional patterns that usually accompany flow-like states:

- creative ecstasy, which implies intense excitement, often boundless energy and delight, loss of control, powerful emotions which border upon madness and social inadequacy (which is similar to religious ecstasy);

- instasy, which has a more disciplined, systematic character and therefore stays within. Deep truth meditation can serve as an example of instasy. It is characterized by contemplation and the feeling of being touched and delighted.

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