Art & Creativity: Emptiness Dancing
Who is the author and how to stay authentic - discussion with Bernardo Kastrup on 16th Sep 2025
Johann Sebastian Bach would would famously sign his manuscripts 'to God alone the glory,' perhaps echoing the sentiments of many of you artists who felt their best work occurred when their ego was most absent.
So who then is the author?
What is the ego's role?
How can we stay pure to its original intent?
Despite Bernardo doubting whether he would have much to contribute to this subject, I believe his reflections could offer much inspiration and guidance to anyone in the creative act, and I've paraphrased some highlights below.
Also included are more member's art, some important announcements, (next week's London meetup, and online together Wed instead of Tues with Michael Levin,) and of course, timestamps, transcripts and recordings.
Who is the author?
Anyone in creative flow will notice that this force has its own dynamic and simmers with its own energy. Because we’ve been culturally indoctrinated to think that only individuals can be conscious, it’s confusing to us when creativity seems to come from elsewhere.
Although the way nature expresses through each of us is unique, Bernardo doesn't believe this means it is personal. He explicitly defines the daimon as the impersonal. Like a volcano or storm, it may have distinctive characteristics, but no owner or individual agency.
Opening up to this force can be overwhelming. We may lose our bearings and moral ground in the face of it's scope and power. So although not metaphysically accurate, Jung advised us to personalise the movements of the impersonal, give it a name that allows for a conscious relationship, weather that name be the daimon, the siren, or the muse.
Art is a pure expression of the dance of creation
Whilst meditators may claim states of emptiness to be peaceful, Bernardo believes the primordial state of emptiness is not one of sufficiency. The peace experienced is simply a result of the stark contrast with neurosis of normal life. But deep within even the most silent subsided substrate there is a drive to self-knowledge. Subjectivity can only be known in its activity, and so emptiness needs to dance.
Artistic expression echoes this universal drive - a journey towards self knowledge by expressing what is within, without, so it can be perceived from without.
In essence all of existence is a form of art. This gets lost in utilitarian outlooks, an obsession with everything needing a purpose. But we can never pursue that line of enquiry to it's ultimate conclusion, it ends in infinite regress.
So what then is art for? It is it’s own object - it is the end of the road. It doesn’t need to be for the next thing. It is done for its own sake, to be discovered for what it is.
Will AI ever replace artists?
For Bernardo, AI may become one of the most important tools of future artists, but AI will never do art, only recycle it. If there was no initial picture it could not create one. It might simulate and stimulate creativity by finding new associations impossible for a human mind. But these are merely links between human created training sets. Without this, AI does nothing.
Bernardo emphasised - not ‘little’. But Nothing - zero. Fundamentally, and with no way beyond this.
But true creative expression? Even animals do it. Bernardo believes in evolution, but not to the point where every behaviour is reduced to a mating or survival mechanism. The bird song can be an act of pure creative expression.
The paradox is, that emptiness has attributes. The proof is that it expresses itself in a given way. Whilst self-awareness is not inherent to consciousness, the inclination towards self-awareness is.
How do we collaborate with the creative muse?
Some people believe the ego must be destroyed in the act of creativity.
But you are the most expensive tool in the workshop. Only a tool, but a tool nonetheless, built with purpose, and one that took several billion years for the universe to create.
So how to best be that tool? To honour the ego? To leverage being self aware?
It means to learn techniques. To apply what we know. Redo. Re-find. Be critical. Express ourselves as egos - nobody stands to gain if we just dissolve into a mush.
Bernardo reflected on how finding the balance between ego and daimon is hardly ever obvious. Examples such as Nietzsche and Van Gogh demonstrate you can not calibrate your compass to success - the daimonic perspective is from eternity.
In his own field of AI, writhe with irrational valuations and vast financial implications Bernardo weekly returns to the question, "am I succumbing to temptations I thought I had overcome? Am I still being honest to the daimon?"
It turns out Bernardo doesn't have a clear answer to this one. To me at least, it seems he is at least asking the right questions.
Also discussed in this meeting:
- The theatre of life
- Subjectivity is only recognised in its activity
- The pregnant nothingness - emptiness dancing
- Reasons to personify the impersonal
- The primordial state of nothing is not a state of sufficiency - rather, a primordial lack
- AI does do art, it recycles it.
- Animals engaged in natural art
- What is impersonal?
- The collaboration between ego and daimon
- How to stay to pure and engaged
- Why we should not calibrate our compass to success
Announcements
Members' In-person Meetup - London Tues 23rd Sept
Venue to be confirmed. Join this telegram subgroup to express interest and hear more!
https://t.me/c/1850749606/7473/7474
Bernardo and Swami Sarvapriyananda in Amsterdam this Sunday
All the details can be found at this link:
Meeting next week with Michael Levin is Wed, not Thurs
Amir Giles
Idealist Art from the Community
Bernardo's poem
Music copyright (C) 2014 by Jojobo Music, used with permission. Helices is the band behind it: http://www.helicesmusic.com and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Helices/241531349263627. Download the music at http://helices.aurovine.com/. Text copyright (C) 2014 by Bernardo Kastrup (http://www.iff-books.com/authors/bernardo-kastrup). All rights reserved. The full text is available here: http://www.bernardokastrup.com/2014/12/confessions-of-truth-seeker.html.
Dana Lomas
Even as an innate Nature-given talent for drawing may have atrophied, perhaps it just transmuted into a love of photography...
Dana Lomas
Santiago Lafee
This was a photographed captured on film during a music video in Arizona years ago — completely raw, with 0% editing or digital touch.
For me, it reflects the unconscious as a kind of lucid, glimmering reality that always lies beneath our archetypal “hero” selves — quietly vibrating underneath our perception. Moving as a natural force in life, connecting all who share consciousness, guiding us toward our truths in and out of space and time.
Fella Cederbaum
So many of my films and poems are about this subject matter - specifically the 3 short films The Orchid And The Daisy, Truth, Destiny (all between 3 - 6 minutes) - all featuring my 2 alter-egos - all exactly on target.
Elias Pratt
After I was initially exposed to the concept of the daimon by listening to Bernardo, I found “The Soul’s Code” by James Hillman, and I wrote this piano piece while reading that book. The piano piece reflects my desire to heed the call of the daimon in pursuing a more creative life. While I’ve been playing piano for years, this is the first time I’ve tried recording and releasing any of my compositions. It was a great learning experience, and I hope to continue to compose and release more music.
Time stamps
00:00:20 - Today’s theme
00:01:20 - Euclyd’s out of stealth mode
00:03:50 - This week’s announcements
00:05:50 - This week’s themes
00:08:00 - New member introductions: Art and AI
00:24:24 - Upcoming meetup in London
00:25:25 - Jung: levels of consciousness in the acting profession
00:27:50 - Life as a theater
00:29:00 - Something deep inside agreed to be here
00:31:00 - Holding all perspectives at once cannot last for too long
00:31:51 - Art: Reflecting the pregnant inner space
00:35:40 - Everything is an excitation of subjectivity
00:39:18 - Language and space as part of the Dashboard
00:40:00 - Absolute nothingness is inconceivable
00:40:50 - Empty space as the primordial state prior to excitation
00:41:00 - Art is the birthing out of the nothingness within
00:42:22 - Creation is the artistic impulse at the Cosmic level
00:42:42 - Who is the author?
00:44:07 - Unveiling the invisible
00:45:05 - Bernardo claims he never wrote a book
00:46:20 - Consciousness can only exist in agency
00:48:22 - Reasons to personify the impersonal
We've been indoctrinated to believe consciousness must be personal
00:49:40 - Artistic expression has no individual source; the source is the entirety of Nature
00:54:54 - Patterns of excitation: creation as birthing life from empty space
00:59:22 - Subjectivity as a field
01:01:20 - Everything and Emptiness are the same
01:02:00 - Emptiness dancing
01:03:40 - Why is there something?
01:04:39 - Emptiness is not sufficient or comfortable
01:06:40 - Is there contentment in Nirvana?
01:09:30 - The archetype of discomfort
01:10:00 - Art as a mirror where we can gaze into inner potentiality
01:12:00 - The "it" wants to infer its own characteristics
01:12:45 - The irresistible desire to figure out what it needs
01:14:00 - Art as the most fundamental form of expression
01:14:40 - All existence is a form of art
01:16:50 - Can AI do art?
01:18:53 - Why do birds sing?
01:19:37 - Nature painted the birds and the stars
01:21:00 - The aura of the work of art (Walter Benjamin)
01:23:00 - What is “it”?
01:25:55 - What is self-awareness?
01:29:44 - What is the Impersonal?
00:36:53 - Display of art by With Reality in Mind community members
01:40:02 - AI is the ultimate tool, not a creature
01:43:00 - The Daimon and the ego
01:43:40 - More art from community members
01:44:30 - Bernardo claims he never made philosophy
01:45:28 - Humans the most expensive tools of Nature
00:46:50 - Honoring our role as tools of Nature
01:49:19 - A new phase in Bernardo’s life
01:52:55 - Finding balance
01:56:28 - Glenn Gould's method (the pianist)
01:57:44 - Success is not a measure: Nietzsche and Van Gogh
02:03:23 - How to remain pure to the initial intent
02:06:40 - What will we do with the success we achieve
02:08:00 - Next week’s guest: Michael Levin
02:08:50 - AI’s capabilities and dangers
02:11:00 - The encounter with the Other under psychedelics
02:15:10 - The figure of the Other in Bernardo’s life
02:16:29 - Every creative action has its own time
02:20:30 - Bernardo’s poem
02:25:00 - Closing the session