Art & Creativity: Emptiness Dancing

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:

Swami Sarvapriyananda en Bernardo Kastrup - Uitgeverij Samsara

Non-Dualiteit - Psychologie - Kunst - Gezondheid

Uitgeverij Samsara

Meeting next week with Michael Levin is Wed, not Thurs

Wed 24th Sept: Michael Levin - On Intelligence, Life and the Platonic Realm

Weekly online meetings, special events, video archive and a dynamic community of scientists, philosophers, meditators and mystics

Bernardo Kastrup: With Reality in MindAmir Giles

Idealist Art from the Community

Bernardo's poem

Dana Lomas

Even as an innate Nature-given talent for drawing may have atrophied, perhaps it just transmuted into a love of photography...

Seasons of dream and desire

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.

Speakers

Bernardo Kastrup

Analytic idealism

Bernardo Kastrup is the Executive Director of Essentia Foundation and Founder/CEO at AI systems company Euclyd BV. His work has set off the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence).

As a scientist, he has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the ‘Casimir Effect’ of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). He has also been creatively active in the high-tech industry for almost 30 years, having founded parallel processor company Silicon Hive (acquired by Intel in 2011) and worked as a technology strategist for the geopolitically significant company ASML. Most recently, he has founded AI company Euclyd BV.

Formulated in detail in many academic papers and books, his ideas have been featured in Scientific American, the magazine of The Institute of Art and Ideas, the Blog of the American Philosophical Association and Big Think, among others. His most defining book is Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell: A straightforward summary of the 21st-century’s only plausible metaphysics.

Explore Bernardo’s work →