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Many creative persons have recognized and spoken of the spiritual as a creative force within them. They have spoken of the spirit and the power of it and of awe and the mystical. Pianist Arthur Rubinstein tried to define what he called “this thing in us, a metaphysical power that emanates from us.” Often at his concerts he had felt this tangible energy or spirit reaching out from him into the audience: “It is something floating, something unknown that has no place to disappear to.” In his Nobel prize acceptance speech (Ferguson, 1980), novelist Saul Bellow declared, “The sense of our real powers, powers we seem to derive from the universe itself, also comes and goes …. We are reluctant to talk about this because there is nothing we can prove, because our language is inadequate, and because few people are willing to risk talking about it. They would have to say that there is a spirit, and that is taboo.”
Arieti (1980) has written of the person's spirituality as potential for creativity and refers to spirituality as a process that is directed to greater common goals, a process that transcends the interests of the individual. The creative dimension in spirituality, according to Arieti, wants to change reality in order to beautify it or to enlarge the field of human knowledge or experience in order to provide usefulness, understanding, and predictability or to evoke a universal response.
Austrian composer Joseph Haydn arose early each morning and was on his knees in prayer shortly thereafter to let the transcendent
Dr. Knight is Professor of Psychiatry and Medical Ethics, Louisiana State University School of Medicine, New Orleans, Louisiana 70112.