Marion Milner on Mysticism and Creativity

Since the capacity to symbolize is integral to interpreting religious phenomena, one can say that the ability to permit a confusion of "me" and "not-me" - to indulge in reverie - is necessary in order to make sense of mystical experiences, that is, to integrate them in a psychologically beneficial way.

Marion Milner on Mysticism and Creativity

(Field, 1937, p. 205). Real wisdom, writes Milner, only grows under the conditions of utter loss of all sense of purpose, standard or ideal.

Emptinesss is also a theme in On Not Being Able to Paint. Here Milner describes a process of "contemplative action," which involved giving up the wish to paint or draw an exact picture of everything she had seen. When she was able to break free from mechanical copying, she experienced a complete lack of self-consciousness, accompanied by the feeling that the ordinary sense of self had disappeared. Milner compares this to states of blankness referred to in mystical writings, such as the Tao te Ching. While analysts have correlated these types of experiences to the "satisfied sleep of the infant at the mother's breast" (Milner 1950, p. 154), Milner suggests that blankness is the beginning of "something," a necessary prelude to a new integration: "May they not be moments in which there is a plunge into no-differentiation, which results (if all goes well) in a re-emerging into a new division of the me-not-me, one in which there is more of the 'me' in the 'not-me', and more of the 'not-me' in the 'me'?" (Milner 1950, pp. 154-5). To explore a confusion of "me" and "not-me" also is key, for Milner, to experiencing joy in living. It is to indulge in reverie (Milner, 1950).

Dragstedt (1998) suggests that in calling emptiness a phase of the "fertility cycle of creativity," Milner meant a state of "expectant waiting." Milner acknowledged that sitting with emptiness could elicit considerable anxiety, both because it evoked childhood trauma and elicited feelings of voidness, uselessness, meaninglessness. However, from states of emptiness moments of transcendence could arise.

Thus far I have discussed Milner's view of emptiness in terms of relinquishing the clinging to self and as a phase of the "fertility cycle of creativity." A central distinction, however, must be made between regenerative and unregenerative emptiness, or "good" and "bad" emptiness, in her work. For Milner, only good, regenerative or "pregnant" emptiness is conducive to psychological and spiritual growth. In Eternity's Sunrise (1987a), for example, Milner distinguishes between pregnant emptiness and the traumatic effects of a mother's too soon or too sudden absence, which can result in painful experiences of blackness. These experiences, in her view, can be so unpleasant that unconscious memories of them can interfere with accepting them as "one phase of the fertility cycle" (Milner, 1987a, p. 164). The same is true in cases when emptiness or "nothingness" is based on a denial of "somethingness" - something one wishes not to see or know.

Dragstedt (1998) explains that for Milner, conscious imaginings are surrendered in a different way in regenerative versus unregenerative emptiness. In unregenerative emptiness, the reality of the world and body can be wiped out with unconscious hatred, potentially resulting in madness. In regenerative emptiness, the individual surrenders conscious imaginings not with hatred, but with a "willful kind of resignation." This kind of emptiness can lead to refreshed awareness, creative regeneration, and, in some cases, mystical awareness (Dragstedt, 1998). Good emptiness is exemplified in a quotation from one of Milner's patients, a boy who had told her when painting a house, "There are two kinds of black, horrid black and a lovely shiny black" (Milner, 1987a, p. 164). Milner believed that problems

Marion Milner on Mysticism and Creativity

emptiness, and investigations into emptiness led her to posit an "Answering Activity," an "inner fact" or an "intuitive sense of how to live." Through tracing this process we can gain a better understanding of Milner's growth into mysticism.

Letting go of Self: "I am nothing, I want nothing, I know nothing"

In her first diary A Life of One's Own, Milner states that she was trying to find her basis for living in what she imagined were the demands of other people rather than in her own inner needs. She writes: "I did not yet know how to obey my inner urges, I hardly knew that I had any" (Field, 1936, p. 41). She needed to realize that it was only when she stopped thinking that she would really know what she wanted. Much later in the book she writes of her fear of giving her up her desires, plans and intentions, lest she be lost: "I felt a desperate need to protect my ego by keeping the walls of my selfhood intact" (Field, 1936, p. 196). The following passage suggests how letting go of "I" helped her experience greater vitality in living:

I was afraid there'd be no "doing" if I did not say "I," brood over "I," fight for "I". Now I'm letting "I" go, but eat my breakfast just the same, and it tastes better, for I'm not impelled to hurry to distract me from the taste of my marmalade and crisp toast. And I get C.'s breakfast just the same. And as I glance out of the window I notice an apple tree, black branches against the white of frost-covered roofs - and it seems much better than brooding over my rights. (Field, 1936, pp. 196-7)

Quite early in her enterprise, Milner states, she discovered that do to things with the expectancy of happiness, or in other words to want results for herself, was generally fatal, for it made the "stream of delight dry up at the source" (Field, 1936, p. 210). It was alright to do things for other people as long as one did them for their own sake, for the act rather than the result. In particular, great delight was to be found in moments of "detached seeing," when she could recognize another mind yet want nothing from it. In this section of her diary, Milner is exploring finding joy in detachment from self. She states that in retrospect, the moments she was most happy were when she had "by some chance stood aside and looked at my experience, with a wide focus, wanting nothing and prepared for anything" (Field, 1936, p. 214). In this diary "wanting nothing and prepared for anything" became her modus operandi. She experienced happiness when she was the most widely aware.

In An Experiment in Leisure Milner again takes up the mantra "I am nothing, I want nothing, I know nothing." Saying it began as an experiment whenever she felt anxiety, particularly in relation to work. Instead of her usual pattern of straining harder, repeating the mantra "with a momentary gesture wiped away all sense of my own existence" (Field, 1937, p. 40). Not only would her anxiety leave her, but within a short time period her mind would begin to posit useful ideas on her current problem.