The Rational Mind & the Creative Mind
Let's start on the common understanding that when I say Mind, we really refer to consciousness or Mental Activity. You cannot put mind outside of that, for all that is attributed to mental functions are as well functions of consciousness.
Now, the principle which is the law in application is that Consciousness is the One and Only Reality. This principle extends thus, "Consciousness is one, manifesting in legions of forms or levels of consciousness." (Neville Goddard, The Power of Awareness)
The rational mind is also a level of consciousness. I want to quickly highlight what the rational mind is and what its use is.
What Is the Rational Mind?
The rational mind is the aspect of consciousness that reasons for conclusions based on premises which are received from man's senses. Put in different words, the rational mind literally makes rations of what else can be known based on whatever has been known.
It is therefore the aspect of mind that manages the input or information collected by our senses of sight, touch, hearing, taste and smell.
In Neville's discussion of this aspect of mind, he said,
"Now, what is reason? The office of reason is simply to extract conclusions from premises...Your senses dictate what reason will allow, and your reason and your senses are bound together." (The Perfect Law of Liberty)
For example, you can wake and look out the window to see what the weather looks like. Without looking at your clock, you can either conclude or make a guess that it is 5 am or 7 am or 10 am. That is the rational mind.
You can eat your favourite meal which your mother has prepared. But you were not there when she prepared it. In fact, you had no idea she arrived in your home. But when you tasted it, you reasoned that your mother prepared this. You made deductions and concluded. These are all mental activities, but not creative mental activities.
The rational mind is not a creative mental faculty but a preservative mental faculty. This is the mind that preserves you, or makes conclusions by which you can make SENSE of the world of things which your senses cannot perceive. Because your senses are not perceiving what your rational mind makes you conscious of, it is a mental faculty. But because your rational mind draws such conclusions that it suggests to you based on what it has received from your senses, it is limited, not creative and simply preservative.
One final example to illustrate this. Suppose you left a bottle of water in your room. It was full when you left it in the morning. You returned in the evening and it was half-full. You know that someone had been to your room, touched the bottle and taken water from it. But you did not experience these with your senses. Yet, what your senses experienced was used by your rational mind to make these conclusions.
Now, that is as far as it goes. But as an awakened Imagination, you must not let the rational mind perform tasks which properly pertain to the office of the creative mind.
The rational mind cannot create. It is terrible at creating. And it would be a simply grave error to attempt to let it function for a creative purpose.
The Creative Mind
When you want things to happen, not when you want to make sense of things that have happened, but when you want things to happen, you do not use the rational mind. You use your creative mind.
The Creative Mind is simply you yourself. The creative mind takes information from Desire. Objects of desire are not based on sensory impressions, but on spiritual possibilities of replacement to sensory impressions.
For example, as you walk into your room to find the bottle of water already used, you may wish to have a new bottle of water which is still full. That wish is a desire and that communicates an idea or possibility to the creative mind.
When you give the impulse of your desire to the rational mind, it would mess it up. It is like giving a toddler a cheque you received for a million dollars, and you expect the toddler to keep it safe and intact. If it is torn or defaced, that is ALL that the child knows to do with it. You are the one who must know better than to hand a cheque over to the child in the first place.
The Creative Mind takes desire impressions and turns them to assumptions. That is what we call the creative process.
The Creative Process
The creative process is pretty straightforward.
1. Have a Desire. Know what you want.
2. Identify what it would be like if your desire is true.
3. Upon the PREMISE that your desire is true, identify what you would feel like.
4. Mentally BE and FEEL this way.
Similarities Between the Rational Mind and the Creative Mind
Sometimes, because of these similarities, a person could be using the rational mind for a creative task and think they are using the creative mind. For example, conditioned desires occur because a person is turning the conclusions of the rational mind over to an assumption.
1. Both of them produce ideas or conclusions based on premises.
2. Both of them take their premises or concepts from some impressions.
3. Both of them are purely mental activities.
Differences Between the Rational Mind and the Creative Mind
1. Number of premises: The rational mind uses two premises at least to make conclusions. The rational mind uses the current sensory fact and a past memory fact to make deductions or best guesses.
The creative mind uses only one premise. The creative mind needs no more than the premise of desire to process an assumption. All that matters is, "Do I want it?" If I can answer Yes to that, leave out buts and ands, and have no inner unrest for leaving out any other factor, the creative mind will use that premise successfully.
2. Nature of Conclusions: If the rational mind is used to process a desire, the rational mind concludes that something cannot be created until a second premise is in place.
The creative mind only uses one premise: "I want it", to produce the manifestation of desire. Once this premise is in place, the creative mind will proceed to assume I Have It!
Thus, we call the rational mind the doubter. It preserves old states. Remember that every creative solution you need cannot be found in your memory of personal events nor in the sensory facts. Thus, you must always live in imagination!
"We exist in a body. But we live in imagination." (Neville Goddard)
