Every exceptional human
experiencer (EHEer) is an explorer and a pioneer. This is because
they have a strong need to make sense of their exceptional experiences
and to integrate them, which involves finding inner and outer
connections in which to embed their experiences. Tufts University
developmental psychologist David Henry Feldman (1994) sets forth a
theory of creativity that elucidates both its societal and individual
aspects. Feldman's theory is highly pertinent to the process of
integrating and assimilating EHEs (i.e., the EHE
process).
Feldman's definition of creativity is "the purposeful
transformation is so significant that the body of knowledge is
irrevocably changed from the way it was before" (p. 86). this
is what EHEers who have potentiated their exceptional experiences
do, even if Feldman did not intend to view it on this individual
level. He describes the role creativity plays in introducing
changes in worldview at the societal level. But exceptional
experiences may play a similar role in changing individual worldviews.
This, in turn, may influence the larger collective worldview by creating
a critical mass of individuals who are motivated to find a new worldview
that is more hospitable to their seemingly authentic experiences than is
the current mechanistic and physicalistic
paradigm.
At the individual level, the person is confronted with an anomaly --
this anomaly can be something the worldview of one's society omits, such
as an angel, an apparition, a UFO encounter, or a precognitive
dream. Or it could be experience that radically disrupts one's
lifeway, or way of being in the world, such as disaster, abuse, or a
life-threatening illness. One could say the person is forced
to deal with an "irritant" that is considerably larger than
his or her ability to cope with , nor can one's society, including
trained experts, who view the person as deluded or mentally ill.
They do not honor the person's experience but instead try to talk
him/her out of it and back to consensus "sanity."
They attempt to get the person to deny or at least repress the
experience and will "help" by means of shock treatments and
drug therapy if necessary. But the experiencer cannot return to
the status quo until this irritant is dealt with in a manner that brings
closure and does justice to his/her significant experience.
If the person can do this, what actually happens is that the irritant
becomes transformed through a creative response of the individual.
Exceptional experiences are usually involved at this stage even if one
was not the initiating experience/event. The catch is that
when this happens the person's identity also becomes more or less
transformed. In the process of healing or integrating the
disruptive experience, the old status quo must be relinquished. It
no longer "works" for the experiencer. The experiencer
has become a new person with different needs, and his or her lifeway
changes accordingly. In the course of this process the person
gains valuable firsthand knowledge, including what one can only call
human wisdom, which goes beyond what one's society
provides.
The person to some extend becomes part of a network of people who have
found similar answers and who live from a new worldview that differs in
many respects from the one that undergirds society. Here the catch
is that at this individual level one can only gain the wisdom one needs
by undergoing the ordeal and finding the answers for oneself, each in
one's own unique way. In so doing, one reaches out to others who
have already undergone this transformative process. Sometimes the
right person or answer appears in most unlikely ways that themselves are
exceptional) anomalous_ experiences.
I suggest that in finding a way to grow beyond intolerable and
incomprehensible experiences/situations, people are weaving a new
Experiential paradigm that will eventually supplant the mechanistic one
that still reigns. The balance may already be shifting, thanks to
EHEers who make themselves known to others, rather than keeping their
experiences to themselves. The "body of knowledge" they
transform is the entire Western paradigm or worldview of the past 350
years.
Feldman says this world-changing form of creativity happens rarely, as
in the case of Darwin. I submit that today EHEers are making these
world changes at the individual level, and then they go on to leaven
society like worms aerate earth. As more people do not turn away
from their exceptional experiences but find and forge a unique way of
dealing with them, a critical mass will be reached that will usher in
the new worldview that intellectuals will have to recognize and
incorporate into their thinking, because it is everywhere. Those
intellectuals who are EHEers will lead in this reform at the societal as
well as the individual
level.
Feldman's view of creativity is in itself highly creative, because
instead of the traditional view of creativity as simply the ability to
be able to come up with unusual and apt ideas (a kind of piecemeal view),
he sees the world-changing aspect of creativity. He adds
that his definition requires a "quality of human purposefulness, an
unusual set of talents, and probably optimal circumstances for
developing those talents in a distinctive direction" (p. 86).
He seems here to imply that the necessary combination of
qualities/circumstances is rare. I suggest that as a species
people in great numbers today are being pressured from within and
without to find a new identity and a new way of being in the world.
Indeed, they are discovering a new worldview, but not by following what
they were taught at home or school. Rather, they do so by
responding to the unique challenges of their lives and personalities
with their unique experiences and identities. Everyone has had
exceptional experiences, even those who do not recall any at
first. Western society not only teaches us that such experiences
do not exist, but representatives of many social institutions (parents,
teachers, therapists, experts) in effect actively force individuals to
repress and deny their experiences. Sometimes they even punish
EHEers when they will not or cannot forget, by derision and being
laughed at to being institutionalized and/or administered
drugs.
Yet it seems to be the very experiences we are taught to deny that we
must build on, for they can provide the foundation for a new identity
and worldview that is more life-potentiating than the physicalistic
one. Instead of the teaching that we are nothing bit bits of dust,
exceptional human experiences can give us the experience of knowing that
who we are is everything that ever was or will be -- but filtered
through the unique lens of our individual selves, for no one ever will
have quite the same gene composition or life circumstances. There
is no cause here for feeling anyone is more special than anyone
else. Everyone is special, and through building on our own
uniquenesses, that which makes us different, we find and experience the
sameness we all are as surely as bodily knowing. When one part of
your body touches another, you know that place has been touched.
Similarly, when you experience the sameness, your whole attitude
toward other people (anywhere) and even other species is thereby
transformed.
Feldman shows the connection between creativity and changes in a domain
of knowledge, whether it is a special form of knowledge, such as playing
bridge or skateboarding, or a field of knowledge, such as molecular
biology or medical anthropology. I suggest that what humans need
most today in order to survive as a species as well as individuals, is a
new worldview that is based on everyone's uniqueness and creates a new
form of species knowledge that transcends and transforms the current
Western worldview. Any individual, whatever that person's genetic
endowment or life circumstances, can help create this new
identity/worldview.
I also suggest that the only way this much needed transformation
in a worldview can come about is through individuals. Special
people are indeed needed, but we all qualify as special to the extent
that we do what is necessary to find and build on our unique exceptional
experiences and from our unique viewpoints. Only in this way will
the world be significantly changed. We have to change ourselves
first.
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REFERENCE
Felfman,
D. H. (1994). Creativity: Proof that development
occurs. In D. H. Feldman, M. Csikszentmihalyi, & H.
Gardner, Changing the World (pp. 85-101). Westport,
CT: Praeger, 1994.
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