THE CREATIVE VOID

Emptiness or void is not exactly an experience of absence but is a much deeper level of presence, a pausing quest into the vast expanse of creative wisdom stored within all of us, which rarely translates itself into creative manifestation owing to our over indulgence with the workaday realities. The energy of the void, both philosophically and scientifically, is much more potent than the energy of the motion that drifts us all our life in mindless haste. Unfortunately, the process of socialization, particularly in more sophisticated advanced societies, leads to brutal regimentation of mind, leaving very little room for the creative void to exhibit its myriad forms. Since we are not equipped in our socialization process to recognize the power of the void, when for some reason the void encompasses us, we develop a run-away-syndrome, not knowing how to handle this-- to use a term from astrophysics, "the dark energy". In very commonplace description we embrace it as boredom, which is a devastating state of mind leading to intoxication, low self-esteem and at its extreme to suicidal tendencies. Somewhere down the line, in our process of growing up we have learnt the inverted language of the void-- particularly through the religious precepts of nihilism. Colin Wilson describes this very aptly in his book: "Beyond the Occult" as "the Ecclesiastes effect" referring to the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes. As a matter of fact, most of us feel helpless on the face of the void as we have very little positive knowledge to recognize its immense depth and potential. In many cases, therefore, it turns out to be symptomatic of "fatigued intellect", a state of drained out mind.

Not much research has been made to understand this deep abyss of the mind and how to harness its energy for creative and motivational purposes. The Greek philosopher Plato postulates that we are trapped in the world of "becoming", which is the world of brute matters. What he said more than two thousand years ago was a very incisive understanding of our mind dynamics. Inside this trap of brute matters we relate all our life situations to the material world around us, thereby any void in our inner world of "being" reflects as a crisis on the material level of understanding. Even some highly creative people have ended their life not being able to handle this void-- the "creative block". Creative geniuses like- Nietzsche, Van Gogh, Dostoevsky, Blake etc groped in utter frustration and could never see the glimpse of light in the encircling darkness of this void.