Writing is like producing movement. There is the
simplest kind of movement that is produced by the brain… it is produced as a
fast reflex to a shock received from the world. It involves no thought. It is a
simple conversion of one form of information into another, one form of energy into
another. The movement that is released is informed by the stimulus. In the
world of writing, certain kinds of translation work are similar to this
movement.
Then there are movements that are still dependent on
and are specified by the sensory information from the world. But these involve
thought, a certain permission from the will of the performer. But here too it is the world that does most
of the work.
The more serious kinds of writing, something that can
be said to be original, are like voluntary movements.
Here too there are types of voluntary
movements. In the classification of William James, the 19th century
American psychologist, firstly, there are the ideomotor movements in which
there is a pre-existing idea that guides the movement, like for example a well-practiced
dance movement. This is like writing about the visit to a monument, or at a
slightly grander scale about the history of a nation.
There is a second type of voluntary movement, - it is
as voluntary as voluntary can get – in which movement emerges purely from
within. Like a strong gush of fuming water from the depths of a geyser, it
issues out of the depths of consciousness. It flies unaided, propelled by
nothing but the strength of its wings, and soars free like a giant eagle.
Writing always needs a subject. One necessarily writes about something. But
there is a world of difference between writing that rolls out on a prefixed
idea, and writing, in its purest and most original forms, that leaps out of the
writer’s mind, charts out its own course, brings with it its own idea-companions,
chooses the vehicle that can carry and stabilize its movement, with the writer
remaining through the whole time a pure and transparent instrument and nothing
else.
The best and the truest kinds of writing simply writes
itself. The less the writer gets involved in the business the better. From
somewhere inside... ideas and words and lines emerge, like dainty objects from
a magician’s hat, from the depths of the writers being. Water molecules find
their own clever pairings and form the enchanting geometries of the snow
flakes, just when the weather is right. Likewise, in the purest forms of
writing, torrents of words self-organize into lines that are lyrical, apt,
shimmering with a supernal meaning. All that the writer has to do is supply
that inner atmosphere and remain calm.
Sometimes the first few lines might be triggered and
impelled by a few superficial objectives the writer may have on his mind. The
first few words that emerge might be a clothing on those first thoughts. The
Consciousness simply uses those thoughts as calling cards, an invitation for
the writer to tune into Itself. Once the connection begins, and the channels of
expression open, the river of meaning
that flows out is often vastly greater than what the writer originally intended
to write about. He is pleasantly surprised by page after page, tome after tome,
that seems to be welling up from within. Where is all this coming from? What
exactly is in him? He will find his own depths bewildering. Because these
depths are actually not “his” depths,
just as when you dig deeper than the foundations of your personal dwelling,
very soon you will find yourself in the bowels of the Earth far from anything
that is “yours.”
In this sense, writing is a form of exploration of the
Self. Very soon the writer will come to realize that there is a whole universe
of things inside, a universe that was there all along but he never knew. It
would be too vain to say that that universe is inside him. A more apt language
would be to say that the writer is only a channel, a willing or a fortunate
portal onto the infinite world of Consciousness.
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