Involuntary Spontaneity

Reading time: 8 minutes

Ask a hundred people the most beautiful moments of their lives and by far the largest part will describe unexpected events. A chat with a neighbour that spontaneously transforms into a street party, meeting an old girlfriend that ends in an old-fashioned evening of bar-hopping, or someone strumming a guitar in a park on a summer evening that spontaneously ends in an hours-long jam session; all are so highly valued because of their spontaneous, unexpected nature.

On the other hand, we try to plan everything in advance as much as possible. Ask a hundred people how many empty days are on their calendar and most will be able to find few to none. There is then hardly any time left to be surprised with a spontaneous event. Yet if we all enjoy that so much, why are we filling up our agendas so far in advance? What keeps us from leaving empty gaps in our calendar where we can explore what happens when nothing is planned? A clue can be found in our deep conviction that the world is malleable, or at least ought to be.

One of the sources from which this conviction could have arisen is found in the Christian story of creation, in which the universe was ‘made’ in a week. That implies the presence of a plan, a time schedule and a certain force (anthropomorphic or not) that would have put it all into action. In it lies the idea that everything is mechanical in nature, and we can have total control over it after obtaining or discovering the blueprint. If we are brought up with such convictions and beliefs, it is not so strange that we have forgotten how to be spontaneous and why we value unplanned events so highly; after all, they occur as often as Halley’s comet sightings.

In Eastern religions and traditions, on the other hand, the spontaneous nature of life is emphasized and celebrated. If there is already talk of a form of control, it is in particular self-control, because it holds the key to peace of mind and soul in order that we no longer have to go through life in a state of anxiety. However, even the tendency towards self-control is considered a spontaneous event, because what else is our decision to a somewhat more modest attitude?

The spontaneous nature of life and the universe is described in an interesting creation story from the Hindu Kālikā Purāna.[1] This scripture emphasizes the feminine power as the central creator of the universe that can take any form, according to what is needed at the time. The story carries within it the seed of the message that the development and growth of the universe proceed rather differently than through tightly controlled planning. Here is a shortened, paraphrased version of the story:

Before time and space exist, there is the creator Brahma.[2] Deeply immersed in meditation, Brahma is all that is and there is complete calm and peace. However, it is disturbed when movement arises in his mind in the form of visions that take on an embodied forms outside his will.

Brahma is surprised when he suddenly finds himself surrounded by ten sons who have just been born out of his mind, the ‘Kings of Creatures’ (also the ancestors of the sacred Brahmin caste in India). A little later again ten embodied visions appear in his mind and just a second later he sees them as apparitions next to the first ten sons. These lesser versions of himself assist in the later stages of creation and thereafter oversee the natural process of the cosmos.

The next vision his mind conjures up concerns a beautiful lady, who is so enchantingly described in the extensive version of the story that the word ‘beauty’ says as much about her as the word ‘rich’ says about Elon Musk. Her name is Dawn and she will play a crucial role in the creation and further development of the universe.

Now that visions seem to appear so generously from Brahma anyway, why not add another one. This time, a handsome youth appears. Brahma crowns this young man Kama, god of love. He is the similitude of Eros and is known by such names as The Desire of Love and The Intoxicator. His arrows enrapture all beings and since Brahma cannot tell lies, he lets the young man know that even himself, Vishnu and Shiva cannot resist them.

Since our young man is full of swagger (a trait that is not strange to many young men), he likes to quickly test the power of his arrows. The revelations of Brahma are regarded as a license to do so immediately on the small group of beings present. The arrows hit both Brahma and his twenty spirit-born sons, after which they all suddenly look at Dawn in a very different way than just before.

As droplets of sweat begin to appear on a number of foreheads, the accumulated tension in the atmosphere is enough to awaken Shiva from his unrelenting state of meditative self-absorption. In Lotus posture, he whizzes through the air to where he finds Brahma in a precarious state and immediately bursts into a contemptuous, incessant fit of laughter.

“Well, well, well! Brahma, what is going on here? What brought you into this pretty pass? Your own daughter? Tsk tsk tsk.”

Image of *Brahma – Vishnu – Shiva* from entremitosyleyendas.com

Brahma is ashamed after Shiva’s slap on his wrist and goes into deep meditation to control his feelings of lust. In the end he succeeds but he breaks out in a sweat while suppressing his desires, because they don’t just disappear from his system like that. From his drops of sweat, the ‘spirits of the deceased’ are born. They are the ancestors of humankind.

Sweat also breaks out in a number of Brahma's sons while suppressing their desires, and from the sweat of Daksha, the eldest of the Kings of Creatures, a beautiful woman arises. From the sweat of the rest come even more ancestors: ’Who died when their hour came’ and ‘Who eat the offerings.’ With that, the whole range of created beings, born of Brahma's spirit and scattered throughout the world, is complete.

Properly speaking, all beings are brought into being by the beautiful woman Dawn, for the arrows cause desire for her that makes her father and brothers sweat. But since all the apparitions start out as visions which arise spontaneously and without premeditation from the mind of Brahma, just as our thoughts arise almost continuously involuntarily, it can be argued that creation is an involuntary process.[3] Moreover, not only involuntarily, but eternally.

For this is how creation proceeds according to this remarkable myth: through surprises, involuntary acts and abrupt reversals. The creation of the world is not a single task to be done which is completed in a certain period of time (say, 7 days), but a process that continues perpetually throughout history; remodelling and pushing the universe forward over and over again. Like the human body, the cosmos is partially recreated every day; it remains alive through an infinite process of regeneration. However, the way of growth and development is not through orderly planning, but through abrupt events, crises, surprising acts and even humiliating accidents.

From this point of view, it does not seem very wise to want to arrange almost everything according to tight schedules, because its sheer impossibility is almost a law of nature. We see that extreme weather conditions ceaselessly cause a lot of delays. We see that armed and geopolitical conflicts have a direct impact on our energy prices. And we see how little control we have, as a rule, over the behaviour of our loved ones or even ourselves. The tighter we try to arrange everything, the greater the frustration and stress when once again we experience that everything turns out differently than we would have liked. In addition, the chance of surprising moments drops to far below zero.

Now the temptation may arise to move to the other extreme and just throw the agenda in the trash. We renounce any kind of responsibility and from now on get up daily without having an idea of what the day will bring. However, many before us have already tried this and for the most part ended up in a certain form of gutter. Except for those to whom this might sound appealing, I feel most of would wouldn’t be too jolly about that.

As is so often the case, the power lies in the middle. Merely waiting to see what the next day will bring eventually leads to pollution. Yet planning every day from dawn to dusk for years in advance, deprives us of the possibility to experience spontaneous events or meetings in which so much beauty can be found. Planning is part of being human and can be a lot of fun, just like gaps in our agenda harbours the possibility of unexpected surprises. The trick is to make an arrangement that works for us. That can only be done through practice and that means stepping out of our comfort zone a little, especially for those of us who religiously live by their agenda. However, we all know that development and growth are only possible by occasionally stepping out of that comfort zone.

So do yourself a favour and keep the agenda empty for a couple of days a month. Give yourself the space to investigate and find out what happens on such a day. How do you wake up? What do you feel like doing? Where are you going? Who are you running into? What did you expect? What was unexpected? How was the weather and did it play a significant role? Allow yourself such wonderful moments of letting go and enjoy them, even when it turns out disappointing. Because in that case you know that there are expectations for that day, and that means that there is still no complete openness to receive and accept everything such a day has to offer.

Enjoy playing!

Jolly greetings,
Erik Stout

[1] The full version of this creation story can be found in the book The King and the Corpse by Heinrich Zimmer (edited by Joseph Campbell). Based on Eastern and Western myths and legends, he presents a selection of stories connected by their common concern with the problem of our eternal conflict with the forces of evil.

[2] In Hinduism, Brahma stands for the creative or creating force, Vishnu for the preserving force and Shiva for the destructive force, i.e.: creation, preservation, destruction.

[3] The verity that our actions find their origin in our thoughts is well portrayed in this myth.