On Art And Creativity

Dr. Michael LaitmanQuestion: We see many corruptions in human nature but we don’t have an example of the corrected state. So how can we clarify things? How can we draw our path from incompleteness to completeness? Why didn’t the Creator give us an example?

Answer: Indeed, we have no examples of the perfection of the goal. But let’s suppose that I study how to create a sculpture or how to draw. In Rodin’s Museum in Paris there are groups of students studying how to sculpt according to the famous statue of The Thinker. It’s probably a good way to study. They study the different elements and become familiar with the details of the human body in order to sculpt it.

But what if I continue to copy from a ready made model when I graduate? Would I be able to become a real, creative independent artist? No. The best I will be able to do is to copy what someone else does. But I will not be able to express myself that way, I will only make a certain duplicate and that’s all.

It turns out that if there is a ready model before me I will never understand what it means to be the Creator, and we want to resemble the actual idea of the Creator. On the way I correct what He has done, but it’s only a means, and theoretically it could also be different. The goal is to reach His level and to be there, to acquire the ability to make all of reality from nothing.

Question: What kind of stimulus for that can we find in our world?

Answer: First you have to start from nothing, like Him. In the same way a person in our world invents something that did not exist before.

Question: But how can I start from nothing?

Answer: That’s right, we don’t understand that. But without this I will not be like Him. Without this I will remain on the level of traditional science that copies and uses what it finds in nature, medicines, chemical substances, and different metalsall this is a complex, sophisticated copy of what we find in nature. I study different elements and then I learn how to put them together successfully. This isn’t real art, it isn’t creativity; by doing so I merely follow nature.

For example, we calculate the features required for the walls of a submarine and then we find the right combination of metals to build it, but we don’t build it from nothing since we use something that already exists in nature. In our world we simply don’t understand what it means to be the Creator. Even the most brilliant and ingenious ideas cannot compare to it.

Why do we need the Restriction and the Reflected Light, total darkness, and uncertainty with regards to the upper level? We do so in order to really create something that didn’t exist before.

What do we create? We create the Creator, design Him and make Him out of emptiness.
[124034]
From the 4th part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/27/13, Writings of Baal HaSulam “Introduction to The Book of Zohar”

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The Passage Through The Worlds
What Does It Mean To Be The Creator?
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