Anatoliy Kharkhurin

Track: New Horizons in Science and Cosmology

Transpersonal model of creativity

Contemporary creativity research seems to have reached its epistemological cul-de-sac. This could result from perceiving human cognition as a closed system. Creativity researchers working under this assumption look for the source of creativity within this system (i.e., within individual). However, it is entirely possible that the source of creativity lies beyond human cognition (e.g., divinely inspired creativity).To integrate individual and divine approaches to creativity, the present work frames itself in a transpersonal psychology paradigm. It views creative capacity as a property of normative human cognition, which emerged from transcendental source. The proposed model employs the analogy with Lurianic Kabbalah and asserts that human creative act starts from the urge to reenact the act of Creation. It is composed of four creative spheres: transcendent, intellectual, emotive, and active. The transcendent sphere relates the human creative act to the divine act of Creation and represents an authentic impulse to create, a creative faculty. The realization of this faculty at the conscious level emanates three other spheres that emerge as a two-stage process. First, emergence of intellectual sphere stipulates idea conception. Second, emergence of emotive and active spheres stipulates idea realization and production. These spheres represent epistemological and empirical aspects of creativity. They account for personality traits, cognitive functions, and environmental factors, which are necessary to realize the creative urge. The conscious layer addresses the empirical findings in contemporary creative research. The model presents these spheres like Chinese puzzle balls, one contained within the other, with the transcendent sphere at the most inner layer and the active sphere at the most outer layer.

I consider myself both an artist and a scholar. I cannot disentangle these two endeavors and I believe that my artistic and academic works complement and inspire each other. I am professor of psychology and researcher in psychology of creativity and multilingualism; my scholarship has appeared in edited volumes, scientific journals, and encyclopedias. I have developed a new Bilingual Creative Education program that combines foreign language learning and creativity fostering techniques in a unified curricular approach. I am a published poet; my book of poetry has been published in Russian. I am an artist constantly looking for new means of creative expression. In search for these methods, I shifted the focus of my work from traditional poetics to alternative utilization of poetic text. I work at the borderline of visual art and poetry and actively participate in the projects combining poetic text with various art media. I am an artist and curator at the Leize Jenius collective (Berlin, Germany), which has curated a number of exhibitions in various geographic locations.