Figure 2.1 shows creativity development to be measured in terms of what I call the three extrinsic “I’s” of integral creativity: invention, interactiv-ity, and individuation. Invention entails the capacity to generate and real-ize ideas. Interaction is characterreal-ized by heightened sensitivity, listening capacities, and ability to adapt spontaneously to one’s environment. Indi-viduation is the cultivation of a distinctly personal voice within a field.
We will see that as an individual voice emerges that is grounded in, and reflective of, both contemporaneous and interior, transcendent dimen-sions, growth in this direction takes on self-organizing qualities. In other words, individuation elicits self-motivational and self-navigational (abili-ties to chart their own pathways) tendencies in practitioners, which in turn fuel further individuation.
Consciousness development is measured here in terms of self- realization, diversity intelligence, and critical inquiry faculties. Self- realization refers to the degree of transpersonal penetration as the self fathoms its true nature as an aspect of the Self that is the source of Being. Diversity intel-ligence pertains to capacities to experience and appreciate the multitude of connections—disciplinary, multidisciplinary, multiethnic/cultural, spiri-tual—as inextricably linked aspects of the ever-evolving self-Self structure.
Critical inquiry involves the capacity to step back and critically examine both exterior phenomena and the subjective vantage point, again the self-Self union (or disunion) from which one engages in the analysis. Although our focus is on creativity and consciousness development as catalyzed by a given line or area of activity as it is approached integrally, the ramifica-tions for broader growth in these dimensions are likely evident.
Figure 2.1. Indicators of Creativity and Consciousness Develo
Let us consider how an integral view of these creativity-conscious-ness features expands upon, and sometimes modifies, conventional per-spectives of them. Two general points may be noted at the outset. First, whereas the integral always embraces exteriors and interiors, thus the entire first-second-third-person (or all-quadrants) spectrum, conventional research tends to focus on exteriors at the exclusion of interiors. This leads to a second point, that conventional perspectives tend to therefore view areas in isolation, which is inevitable when phenomena are only considered in terms of exteriors, whereas the integral inner-outer syn-thesis enables an understanding of connections between phenomena. In this way, all facets of the creativity-consciousness spectrum are not only seen as interconnected, but more importantly, they are all enlivened in the parts-to-whole, whole-to-parts creativity-consciousness developmen-tal thrust.
Creativity research, for example, with a few notable exceptions, tends to avoid transcendent experience, even though many creative practitio-ners—jazz musicians foremost among them—regard these dimensions as important aspects of the process.9 Instead the focus is on “psychometric”
problem solving, “biometric” correlations between mind and brain that are enlivened during creative activity, and “historiometric” influences of time and place on creativity, among other angles.10 The integral viewpoint situates these within a more expansive framework.
Creativity research also exhibits exterior confinement when it limits itself to products at the expense of processes, as evident at times in con-ventional music education research.11 A result, which is perhaps inevitable, is the tendency to assess creativity in terms of degree of “novelty,” which is another exterior consideration that limits the broader significance of creativity as revealed in an integral perspective. I believe the novelty cri-terion is a kind of ontological blind alley that raises more questions than it answers and narrows the scope of considerations that come into play in our hopes to understand this important aspect of human experience and potential.
This becomes apparent when, from the integral standpoint being advanced, creativity is understood as much an interior process as an exterior result. From this perspective, we shift our gaze from product to transformational process and ongoing development, which does not neglect product but situates it within a broader range of considerations.
The futility of the product/novelty premise is underscored in the recog-nition of the possibility that, in a given moment, the exact replication of an action, idea, or structure that one may have enacted previously may still be a profoundly creative act due to the fact it is rooted in an
integrative, transcendent state of awareness that enables such an expres-sion to manifest not as the result of conditioning but radical, mindful presence. While this argument, in a limited capacity, might be extended to illuminate creativity in interpretive performance of classical repertory, important distinctions might be noted—prominent among which are that the interpretive performer has no choice as to whether or not to play a given idea (which has already been fashioned by the composer), whereas the improviser does. This is not to suggest interpretive performance is devoid of creativity, a point that we will take up shortly.
Shifting our attention from exterior product to interior process, and its interaction with product, we are then also able to see the exquisite silence of pure consciousness,12 in which there is no exterior product, as a form of creativity. Pure consciousness, to be explored more fully later, is the experience of nothing but consciousness itself, a state at once pristine-ly silent and devoid of mental content, yet radiantpristine-ly wakeful. At this point the issue of whether or not something is creative is replaced by two more far-reaching, and in my view, productive principles: First is that every-thing is creative, and second is that creativity can be cultivated through diverse process engagement and corresponding structural study. Every facet of reality, or as Whitehead might term it, “occasion of experience,”
is creative. And creativity can evolve. And, therefore, instead of attempting to delineate parameters by which a given phenomenon might or might not be deemed creative, our attention goes more toward delineating param-eters that define how individuals, and fields, may grow creatively.
When it comes to consciousness research, an integral perspective similarly cedes great importance to interior dimensions that tend to be neglected, if not downright dismissed, in conventional research. While it is interesting to note that a much more robust cadre of consciousness researchers who firmly embrace interiority is found in consciousness stud-ies than creativity studstud-ies, “materialism of one sort or another,” which Daniel Dennett describes as “a received opinion approaching unanimity”
in academic circles, continues to overshadow nonmaterialist perspec-tives.13 We will explore materialist and nonmaterialist perspectives further in the next chapter.
Diversity, included as noted earlier within the consciousness domain, also takes on broader dimensions from an integral perspective. Typically construed largely in terms of demographics (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender), diversity from an integral viewpoint also encompasses knowledge dimen-sions, which can be thought of in terms of processes and content. Integral Methodological Pluralism, considered previously, exemplifies epistemolog-ical or process diversity. Moreover, the integral perspective takes diversity
to its innermost foundations, where inherent in growth of creativity and consciousness are tendencies to embrace, if not thirst for, engagement with diverse ethnic, racial, cultural, gender, intellectual, and other expressions.
From a general educational standpoint, among the important ramifica-tions from the integral perspective are that interdisciplinary and transdis-ciplinary exploration are intrinsic to learning models that encompass the process-structure scope necessary for creativity and consciousness growth, thereby establishing an interior foundation for multiethnic/cultural and other kinds of integration. This perspective yields particularly important ramifications for musical study given the urgent need for the field to broad-en its monocultural horizons, and prevailing tbroad-endbroad-encies for such efforts to amount to little more than “superficial skimming” of diverse sources.
“Multicultural music education,” Terese Volk reminds us, ought not to be approached as “a musical supermarket” where students gain “a touch of this and a taste of that.”14 However, without establishment of the internal basis for genuine multicultural infusion—which requires at the very least the situating of improvisation studies at the core of the musicianship model, and ideally also incorporates meditation practice—the supermarket syn-drome is inevitable. Diverse structural integration requires diverse process foundations (not just cursory exposure to improvising and composing).
When these foundations are intact, musicians begin to perceive the mul-tiethnic riches of the musical world, and their cultural backdrops, as just as intimately connected to their artistic growth as the influences of their own cultural heritage. To deny diversity is to deny a fundamental aspect of one’s own being, which the premise of consciousness as nondual and intersubjective reminds us is more than a fashionable metaphor but a direct commentary on the very nature of consciousness.
Critical inquiry is another area within the consciousness domain for which an integral approach provides an expanded perspective. Much along the lines of John Dewey’s perspective, we will view this as syn-onymous with critical thinking and critical reflection, sharing his view that these are essential aspects of educational development.15 However, whereas conventional approaches to these areas tend to focus on third-person, objective-exterior thinking processes, with some second-third-person, intersubjective consideration, an integral approach is unique in both extending each of these domains beyond conventional parameters and, most notably, taking the critical reflection enterprise into the innermost, first-person dimensions of consciousness.
This can be understood in terms of the enlivenment of three kinds of critical inquiry faculties, corresponding respectively to third-person, second-person, and first-person realities, the totality of which is central to
paradigmatic change. Rigorous engagement in the kind of wide-ranging, third-person/craft studies (technical and theoretical) that are character-istic of an integral approach allows familiar and new concepts and skills to bump up against one another, thereby dislodging conditioned patterns and yielding composite structures that shed new light on prior ones. I call this object-mediated critical inquiry. Process-mediated critical inquiry, sec-ond-person oriented, also upholds a kind of liberating function due to the sheer movement of awareness inherent in robust creative activity, which is exemplified in a systematic approach to improvisation. Most unique to the integral framework is first-person, self-mediated critical engagement. Here awareness takes recourse, through meditation, to a realm of consciousness entirely transcendent of mental activity.
Accordingly, whereas the conventional approach focuses on critical examination of one’s own and others’ beliefs and assumptions, an integral framework also involves penetration to strata of consciousness that lie deep beneath those considerations. How can critical reflection occur without access to domains of mental activity that underlie those at which ideas and convictions take hold? That conventional critical inquiry discourse has not posed this question suggests that it is deficient in the very enter-prise it seeks to elucidate.
A view of critical inquiry from this expanded perspective may shed new light on debates among conventional researchers in the area. It sup-ports the idea shared by Dewey that critical thinking is an inherent poten-tiality in human awareness, one that needs nurturing,16 by revealing the capacity as directly related to the self-referral foundations of creativity and consciousness. In other words, the merging of the relativistic self with the transcendent Self that is its source, characteristic of transcendent or higher states and stages of creativity-consciousness development, is the basis for human self-awareness, of which critical inquiry faculties are a direct manifestation. This in turn supports the idea that development of these faculties may be generalized so that manifestation in one area might apply to another. Although, as Betty Anne Younker notes, recent decades have seen embrace of the view that critical thinking is field specific, with the recognition that “knowledge of subjects and not some general ability to think well differentiates experts and novices,”17 the integral perspec-tive’s recognition of interior foundations points to underlying common ground. In no way, however, is this to suggest that field-specific knowledge is unnecessary to critical reflection in that field—as always, the integral vision cedes a place for the broadest range of engagement.
The interplay of the three approaches (object-/process-/self-medi-ated) contribute to a critical faculty that is particularly important to
paradigmatic change—what I think of as anomaly centering. This involves shifting some idea, finding, or possibility at the outermost fringes of one’s imagination to front and center where it can be critically scrutinized and either embraced as a platform for further exploration (which is highly unlikely as long as the anomaly remains uncentered), dismissed as non-viable, or tucked away for further consideration. As considered in the introduction to the present volume, Thomas Kuhn’s analysis of scien-tific revolutions revealed receptivity to anomalous possibilities as key to important strides.18 Here it thus interesting to note educational tendencies to herald discoveries of the past, yet impede the exploratory dynamism that gave rise to them. The parts-to-whole/whole-to-parts process thrust of the jazz-inspired integral framework provides a powerful means for rectifying this problem and upholding robust critical-inquiry faculties.
This process scope gives rise to an axiom that clearly distinguishes conventional from integral notions of critical thinking: The extent to which practitioners may critically examine their work and the field at large is directly predicated on the extent to which engagement in a discipline situates that field within the broader knowledge base, which must always include the innermost dimensions of consciousness.
Engagement in the parts-to-whole/whole-to-parts process scope therefore provides a unified framework in which important groundwork for critical thinking and the array of other creativity-consciousness fac-ulties is established. That conventional academic institutions proclaim strong commitments to areas such as innovation, diversity, and critical thinking, but minimally recognize these as inextricably linked, under-scores this point and suggests ways the integral framework can greatly impact the educational enterprise. This will become further evident as we consider in our overview of creativity-consciousness indicators how process breadth promotes structural breadth, a look at which underscores connections with the previous chapter.