It is held by some that a persons’ minds and attitudes reflect the environment in which they are brought up and live. That is no doubt true of many who have not yet developed due to lack of education (or mal-education) and the means to enlighten themselves through travel or experience, and of those who remain in a narrow social setting (such as a sect or cult). However, as soon as a person has some wider life and reaches a certain level of maturity, the mind-set will have developed in at least some unique ways, to whatever degree and whether for better or worse. A mind that largely reflects its social surroundings like some kind of mirror – a conventional, passive receptor of what others think or do – is still under the sway of the herd. People who join religious sects and cults can often relinquish their own understanding in favour of faith in some other-worldly belief system that taught by a guru. They risk the complete surrender of their minds and lives to their guru. Take as a telling example, what is required by the ‘teaching’ of Sathya Sai Baba as analysed in many of the previous blogs on this site. This limits their creativity greatly, as is seen in their parrot-like writings and speeches where no new ideas or anything outside the scope of Sai Baba’s endorsed ideas occurs.
Lack of creativity is associated with narrow, unimaginative thinking and hence with provincialism, both literal and figurative, whereas ‘travel broadens the mind’. The person who has changed environments, lived in at least two different societies (or within it in different social classes and sub-cultures) has looked over the proverbial fence. This helps develop less one-sided attitudes and leads to more nuanced and inclusive thinking than that of those who stick at home. In former times, the practice of making pilgrimages was a wise expedient against local and national chauvinism, helping a person’s horizons to expand. This is almost a prerequisite of creativity nowadays… to have a sense of the multicultural world. Of course, to travel in itself is no solution, for the gaping tourist can be its end product. Yet even to gape can be better than being a know-all whose mind is made up in advance.
Any healthy person’s mind is a self-adjusting system that naturally develops more complexity. This is the key to personal development and a prerequisite of individual autonomy. It gradually rejects wrong information and discredits incorrect ideas through two processes. Ideas about the world or universe we live in are adjusted according to experiences or ‘feedback from the environment’. Ideas about the cosmos that we are partakers in, which thus obviously includes ideas about ourselves, are corrected according to reflection and intuition… in short, the mind feeding upon the ‘inner source’ of its own inspiration. In both cases, the progressive rejection of false ideas is a prerequisite of ‘creative’ thinking. Often the major creative step takes place with the removal of untrue ideas in the form of false impressions, wrong judgments, misinterpretations – which have entered the mind through a poor environment, unquestioning traditional acceptance, incorrect training, wrong education and so forth.
The combination of these two processes of outward and inward observation respectively to develop knowledge and insight produces the development of the intelligence and the growth of understanding. The one does not work well for growth without the other. Too much inward observation (reflection, meditation creative fantasy) makes one vulnerable to ideas, ideologies and systems of thought or religion which are over-speculative and unreliable for life guidance unless constantly informed – and preferably overshadowed – by investigation of the basis of one’s ideas in the real world. This combination results in more realistic and hence lasting creativity.
See further on this general theme Self-awareness in psychological understanding
Sathya Sai Baba Deceptions Exposed 