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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Consciousness Research
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1388789

Contrasting a Cassian-Merton Model of Mystical Prayer with Moments of Big-C creativity in Contemporary Music

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
  • 2 Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, East of England, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Within the psychology literature there is a dearth in understanding how and why instances of heightened creativity, or 'Big-C', may manifest randomly, often at an early age with minimal practice and experience. In contrast to ordinary "little-c" creativity, depictions of profound creative moments and the means by which they can be attained therefore remain as enigmatic as acts of mystical prayer. Pursuing this metaphor: with little-p equating to ordinary prayer and Big-P equating to mystical prayer, from the work of St. John Cassian and Thomas Merton, we contrast the developmental path of prayer with subjective accounts of little-c and Big-C moments of creativity in the lives of famous 20 th century Anglophone artist-musicians. Here, we identify a symmetry between the aetiology of prayer and creativity. As with little-p, the development of little-c creativity is sequential, tracing a path from authenticity to task motivation, to practice and then experience. By contrast, akin to Big-P, Big-C creativity may be obtained moving from authenticity to task motivation, but thereafter circumventing the requirements of elevated practice and experience. Moreover, in moments of extreme creativity, artists manifest a profound surrender of agency as Big-C emerges spontaneously with minimal deliberate thought and an absence of ownership. Thus through Cassian-Merton we offer an historically cohesive insight on the emergence of Big-C creativity.

    Keywords: creativity, Mysticism, prayer, Music, interdiscipinary

    Received: 20 Feb 2024; Accepted: 31 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Priilaid and Callaghan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: David Priilaid, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

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