Creative Vision of the World

Creative Vision 

A person’s creative vision of the world is a complex hierarchical system, including value and worldview attitudes, emotional relationship to the world, as well as creative method, understood as a multilevel system of techniques, as a tool and means of its transformation.
The basis of the holistic creative vision of the world is creative interaction with it, which has a complex, multilevel character, reflecting the universal structure of all holistic objects.
This fundamental, transversal structure is reflected in the creative attitude of the personality to the world, which includes axiological, cognitive, affective and behavioral components, where the first component is not the highest level of the structure, but its main system-forming factor, the core and the center of organization. Each of these components is manifested through corresponding pairs of opposite, complementary mechanisms of creativity:

Table 1. Complementary pairs of creative vision mechanisms

Components      Pairs of Mechanisms
Axiological Idealization  –  Problematization
Cognitive Decentration –  Simplification
EmotionalIdentification –  Meditation
BehaviouralSelf-actualizationPersonification
These components are realized using the following social psychological mechanisms of creative activity:  idealization, decentration, identification and self – self-actualisation, and each of its mechanisms manifests itself in real creative activity in the form of concrete means, rules and techniques.
The essential condition of the creative interaction of a personality with an external world is the realization of a unified system of mutually connected mechanisms.
Idealization is understood as a vision, search and revealing of the ideal essence of the object and mental construction of its ideal image, which harmoniously combines the highest values, productively resolves the key and most urgent contradictions. This is the creation and realization of an ideal plan and supertask, the construction of bold hypotheses, the embodiment of pragmatic and aesthetic ideal, the realization of an ideal final result.
Problematization is the identification and aggravation of key contradictions of the object, the process of finding and determining the problem. It is the perception and search for the object’s shortcomings, its gaps, disharmonies, asymmetries and imperfections. It is a striving for splitting the holistic object, finding its opposite qualities, seeing its dark sides and “shadows”.
Decentration manifests itself as a process of creating different approaches to an object, changing one’s attitudes and taking into account various points of view. This mechanism is a process of mentally replacing habitual connections with unusual ones, deviating from traditional patterns of thinking, destroying traditional perceptions, overcoming the inertness of thinking and stereotypes. It is a process of creating various unconventional ideas and unusual images.
Simplification is understood as getting rid of all complicated, inconsequential, tangled, insignificant and confusing, as the achievement of clarity and elegance of the form and at the same time depth and accuracy of the contents. It is the ability to concentrate upon the essence of an object and express its complexity by means of simple and clear notions. It is the capacity to choose the best combination, based on criteria of hidden order, harmony and beauty.
Simplification is understood as getting rid of everything complex, unessential, tangled, and insignificant, as achieving clarity and elegance of form and at the same time depth and accuracy of the content. It is the ability to focus on the essence of an object and to express all its complexity with simple and clear concepts. It is the ability to select the best combinations based on criteria of hidden order, harmony and beauty.
Identification is accomplished through active immersion and embodiment in objects and their circumstances, merging with them and experiencing emotional resonance. With the help of this mechanism, the personality is immersed in the objects of animate and inanimate nature, reincarnates in them and cognizes their inner impulses, circumstances and logic of development.
Meditation manifests itself as a detachment and sensual isolation from the external and internal world, as a distancing from the objects of interaction, a dispassionate and fresh perception of their essences, connections, beauty and harmony. This is seeing the world and oneself in a new light, with the help of the technique of “defamiliarization”, by making familiar things and phenomena unfamiliar.
Self-actualization is understood as a process of the fullest revelation and development of personal potential, as a productive and holistic self-realization of creative abilities. The mechanism of self-actualization reflects not only the free and spontaneous self-expression of the subject, but also his internal activity, the ability to make efforts aimed at self-mobilization and the ultimate realization of his own creative potential.
Integral self-actualization implies the realization of ideal projects, plans and models, spontaneous self-expression, independent deployment, self-determination and self-assertion.
Personification is the revitalization and spiritualization of objects, giving them human properties and characteristics of the subject, recognizing their independence and the right to self-determination and self-development. It allows objects to move along their own trajectories, giving them the right to free activity.
In addition, this mechanism is manifested in the creation of independent and self-developing structures capable of independent progress towards the ideal goal, the construction of integral, balanced systems capable of independent search and productive resolution of contradictions.

Major stages, mechanisms and techniques of
Creative Vision

Creative interaction with the world is rich not only in content but also in temporal structure,  which includes a series of consecutive stages: perception and emotional experience of objects, their analysis, comprehension and operation of them.

Creative Perception
of reality starts with releasing from the traditional systems and notions, stereotypes returning to the primordial ignorance, to “nothing”, to the origin and source of the world aloofness from the world is naturally replaced by insight, ecstasy a surprise at the riches and beauty the world.
The complete renunciation from one’s “Self” with its distortive internal impulses and a load of acquired knowledge gives rise to the new world, in all its cleanliness freshness and beauty.
Creative consciousness independently reduces the threshold of sensation, increases their intensity concentrates attention on each of them,  simultaneously synthesizing them into a bright unified image.  The activity of the perception reveals itself in consideration of the object from different angles, it allows one to notice something new, mysterious, handsome, subtlety and details, predict their future and the ideal essence.
Creative Emotional experience. The creative perception of reality is full of emotional experience and enjoyment of the colours, sounds and shapes of an object. As a special kind of trans-personal experience, we define blending, unification with an object of perception, up to complete immersion into its space, time and essence.
Hence, the complete saturation of the peak experiencing, “assimilation” with another object, is naturally followed by the cognitive removal, impassive contemplation of its structure, harmony and beauty.
While creative perception starts with getting rid of stereotypes and fixations, the creative analysis of reality is caused by doubts released from the captivity of common sense and denial of traditional theoretical concepts.
Creative Thinking consists of abilities to penetrate the essence of the object, to separate the signs and to single out strong opposite and also masked but useful ones.  At the same time, it reveals itself in free transition to its over – and under-systems,  to understanding the causes and consequences of their activities, unfolding of temporal structures de-termination of the trajectory of their development.
The volumetric and polyphonic vision of the objects is maintained by means of the creation of different approaches to their exploration application of various points of view of professionals, dilettantes, geniuses, children, and living and inanimate natural objects.
The creative analysis also implies the revelation of all contradicting systems, allocation and intensification of the main, vital elements, that determine the line of development.
Creative Comprehension of the objects and phenomena of reality consists of the prediction and anticipation of their future conditions and the mental creation of ideal properties and circumstances.  It also includes resacralization of the objects, acceptance of their universal value, understanding it as a necessary link in the  Universal chain of events, the embodiment of the clots of the human spirit, labour and emotions in it reflecting the essence of the Absolute.
Creative Manipulating. Creative interaction with the world consists not only of perception and recognition of its ideal essence and submission to its main laws but also of spontaneous, expressive self-revelation striving to play with the essence and forms of the world and a wish to break usual connections to overcome causality and time and of experience its pliability and plasticity.
Creative attitude towards the world always includes some elements of the game, risk and humour acquisition of fantastic power ability to manipulate its objects ideals and laws. Creative personality consciously brings intrigue mystery and paradox into its attitude towards the world fills it with problems, intensifies conflicts, endows the objects with the subject’s attributes and determines the rules of the game.
It revives inanimate objects reinforces and strengthens their essence fills them with the signs and properties of the ideal, sets them in paradoxical situations, and splits them into numerous constituents, creating new and useful combinations and patterns out of them.
In this case, the desire for creative manipulating of the objects of the world is based on the realization that reality already implicitly contains in itself its own future, that everything in nature exists only in an extremely enlarged or reduced, expanded or collapsed over time, that all is connected to everything and just the natural evolution or deliberate experimentation with reality can arouse and build new relationships, substance and form.
The complexity, multilateral and informative riches of personality’s interaction with the world are compressed, summarized and lined up by means of a special method, represented in an unfolding algorithm that includes a  series of consecutive operations and directed intellectual efforts.

Method of Creative Dialogue Personality with the World 

1. Creative Perception
1. Purification. Return to the beginning. Stop the time, tear all existing connections, return to the originality of primordial ignorance,  to “Nothing”, emptiness and silence of the world.
2. Sensation and perception. Bright, clear and keen perception of the surrounding object’s signs.
2.1. Sounds.
a) Percept solely sounds, absorb them and dissolve into them.
b) Single out each separate sound, in turn, and be able to increase its intensity.
c) Apprehend new, unknown noises, and space vibrations.
2.2. Colours.
a) Percept solely colours.
b) Single out each colour and be able to increase its intensity.
c) See the luminescence and the twinkling of the Space colours.
2.3. Smells (a,b,c).
2.4. Tastes (a,b,c).
2.5. Touch sensation (a,b,c).
2.6. Configurations (a,b,c).
2.7. Motion of the object (a,b,c).
2.8. Percept all object signs together. a) Synthesize all sensations, and create a unified, polyphonic image. b) Break the borderline between oneself and the world, be open to its rhythms, and feel oneself the inseparable part of it.
2.9. Surprise and ecstasy. Discover the world in a new, give it a new and fresh look, and see things around you as they are.
3. Isolation and perception of the separate qualities of the object.
3.1. See solely new qualities.
3.2. See the beauty and harmony.
3.3. Find a mystery and enigma.
3.4. Notice the subtlety, details and nuances.
4. Spatial decentration.
4.1. See the object: a) from above b) from below c) from the inside…
4.2. Percept object from the position of a) a small insect, b)  a huge mountain. c) any other object and subject
Percept object: a) as an insect-small, b) as a mountain-big compared to the object.
5. Temporal decentration.
a) See the object in its past and in the future
b)   see germs of the future and traces of the past in the object.
6. The expansion of Vision
a) See the objects located in the room altogether, b) See simultaneously all the events happening in the house at the moment, c)…in the town, d)…in your country, e)…on the Earth, f)…in the Universe.

b)   See the history of the object, its origin, Culmination and completion on the “unfolded time screen”.

2.  Creative Emotional Experience
1. Enjoying the play of colours, sounds and shapes, the delight of the world’s beauty and harmony.
2. Emotional decentration. Emotional attitude towards the object: a) Love, b) Hatred, c) Indifference, d) Irony, e) “Sub specie aeternitatis”
3. Identification with the object, immersion and assimilation with it, and intuitive comprehension of its unique essence.
4. Cognitive self-division from the object, holistic, simultaneous perception of the object’s connections, harmony and symmetry.
5. Enjoyment of the play with the object: manipulation of its qualities and perception of its unexpected manifestations.

6. Transpersonal, peak experience of its original and exceptional value.

3.  Creative Analysis
1. Doubt the existing conceptions, and be free from the imposed settlement of common sense.
2. Determine the nature of the object.
2.1.What’s its main function?
2.2. What are its main needs and goals?
2.3.What does it produce?
2.4. Simplify the object in the imagination, put aside everything secondary, and unimportant. a) Express its essence in one word,  b) by symbol,  c) by a metaphor (including that containing paradox ) d) in a formula, e) on a diagram.
3. Split the object into its constituents, define a) substantial, b) opposite, c) weak but useful
4. Comprehend the whole complex of connections and relations with other objects.
5. Define the structure of the object.
5.1.Distinguish between the structural levels. a) What is the over-system and its goal, b) What are the under-systems and their goals (determine how the system transforms the matter, energy and information)?
c) What are the anti-system and its goals?
5.2. Define the temporal structure.  a) Imagine the object in the past and in the future,  b) Define the line of development: the beginning, the peak and the end.  See the point where the object is located at the present moment.
6. Semantic decentration.
6.1. Apprehend how the object is treated in different sciences: philosophy, economics, psychology, physics, mathematics, etc.
6.2. Unified, the polyphonic vision of the object, creation and application of different points of view of a) a genius,  b) a professional, c) a layman, d) a child, e) an animal, f)  an inanimate object.
6.3.Place the object in different imaginative paradoxical, fantastic situations.
6.4. Semantic “rotation” of the object through different lists of test questions.
7. Determine the main contradictions within the object between:
a) Ideal and reality,
b) Aims of system,  over the system  and under the system,
c) The present, the past, the future,
d) Recourses and their use,

e) Opposite signs.

4. Creative Comprehension
1. The vision of the ideal nature of the object, the mental creation of its ideal image and the conditions of its realization.
2. Resacralization of the object, admission of its undoubtful value.
3. Treating the object as a necessary link in the history and the reflection of the Absolute.

4. Blending in and assimilation with the Absolute, acquisition of the unified, cosmic consciousness, cosmic consciousness, reception of the energy and information streams from the superior worlds.

5. Creative Manipulating And Handling
1. Free, profound and sincere self-expression and affirmation of one’s own genuine nature, enjoyment of liberty, ability to create,  overcome causality and time, reinforce the essence of objects and bring them closer to the ideal.  Dizzy realises that “Everything is possible”  and  “Everything is achievable”,  “Everything is going”.
2. Free handling with the object.
Table 2. Major Techniques of Creative Vision 
Space TimeContent
 Idealization  
1. Insert parts of the space into each
other like a set of nesting dolls.
2. Go to the super-system.
3. Used the superior higher dimension.
1. See the process as the temporal
integrity: the beginning,
the culmination and the end.
2. Start from the endpoint.
Techniques:
a). Preliminary actions.
b).” Pre-planted pillows”.
1. Imagine that everything has been achieved, and all contradictions resolved.
2. Start from the endpoint.
3. Give the object the ability to independently resolve contradictions and problems, and imagine that everything comes true by itself like in a fairy tale.
Techniques:
a). Creation of the perfect plan;
b). “Universal Action” – object performs the functions of any other object and can be whatever you like.
Problematization  
1. Giving asymmetry to the structure of the object
2. Restructuring: a whole – performs one function part – opposite.
1. Swinging open of opposites in time: the principle of periodic action.
1. Increase and sharpening of differences.
2. Creating a collision between two harmful factors.
3. The principle of paradox, of the “explosion”, is an incident and catharsis.
Decentration    
1. Change the dimension of the object.
2. Turn the object inside.
3. Resize the object and its parts
from 0 to ∞.
1. Watch the object from the future and the past.
2. Turn the time back.
3. Change the time of the events from time 0 to ∞.
4. The principle of “breakthrough”.
1. Put an object in the most unexpected situations.
2. Using the transition states.
3. The principle of partial or excessive action.
4. Implement the opposite effect and anti-function.
5. Change the price and basic function from 0 to ∞.
Techniques: a). do the opposite b). turn harm in favour,
c). increase a harmful factor and use the energy of injury
d). compensate one harmful factor by others.
Simplification  
1. Getting rid of needless parts.
2. The “carrying out” principle.
3. Mediator’s principal – manipulation with a copy of the object.
1. The principle of “substitution expensive longevity on the cheap short-lived sequence”.
1. Deliverance from internal and external constraints.
2. Getting rid of false assumptions and redundant information.
3. Getting rid of the usual terminology, the creation of neologisms.
Identification  
1. Take up the object’s position in space and see other objects from its point of view.
2. Adopt the shape and dimension of the object.
1. Feel the object’s rhythm and natural frequency, and enter into resonance with him.
1. Get used to the object, and re-embody the object.
2. Using the principles of uniformity, synchronization and resonance.
Techniques: a). personal analogy
b). “Method of Little Men” – imagine oneself like the team
of little men who become a part of the object.
Meditation  
1. Removal from objects in space.1. Keep a distance from the past and future.
1. Anaxiomatization – a temporary aloofness from the problem, devaluation of the problem and conventional ways and methods of its solving. Solving the problem by means of their elimination, through complete rejection of them. Solving the problem by its elimination, by avoiding and ignoring.
2. Cognitive exclusion and alienation from the subjective “Ego” also from the object and the relationship with him.
Self-actualization    
 1. Unfold  the  object into separate parts and shuffle it:
a). among themselves;
b). with parts of other objects.
2. Turn from a single object into the form of another.
1. Fragment process at the stage (periods of time) and shuffle its:
a). among themselves;
b). with the stage of other processes.
2. Turn the temporal order and rhythm of one object into the order of another one.
1. Single out the object attributes, properties, and functions and shuffle its:
a). among themselves;
b). with the properties and functions of other objects.
2. Transform the qualities of one object into another one, to see the transition point.
3. Endow the object with the senses of other objects.
Personification
   1. The minimizing of Intervention principle.
2. Principle of Non-interference.
1 Principle of Dynamization: make immovable objects or their separate parts – mobile.
1. The principle of  “wu-Wei” (non-action). Eliminate idle actions.
2. Creating such kind of a structure, which itself resolves emergent contradictions.
3. Implementation of the principles of self-service, self-correcting and independent use of resources.
The method described above can serve as a form of creative self-training or meditation where the sequence value and velocity of the stages can be changed depending on conditions and qualitative kinds involved in the interaction.
By means of mechanisms of immersion, coagulation and automation it is appropriated by the personality, consolidated and turned into a steady personal structure the creative position of the personality.
At the same time, this method is the way of a unified creative vision of reality and serves as a basis for the definition and revelation of vital contradictions of the object and presents the possibility of creating different methods of solving specific life problems.

Sergey Markov
1. Markov, S.L. (2011) Formuvannia tvorchogo bachennia osobystosti jak universalnyi metod aktivizacii tvorchosti [Formation of creative vision of an individual as the universal method of enhancing creativity]. In S.D. Maksimenko & L.M. Karamushka (Eds.), Actualni problemy psichologii. Vol 1. (pp. 374-380). Kyiv: Publishing House “A.C.K”.