Automatic Writing — Who’s Doing It?
A new article by Brenden Weber contains this quote from Goethe: “I wrote a book almost unconsciously, like a somnambulist, and was amazed when I realized what I had done”. This immediately made me think of the parapsychological phenomenon of automatic writing, and the obvious question this implies, who or what is doing the writing? Obviously not the conscious self, what we commonly call the ego; it would have to be some kind of deeper, hidden self.
Goethe uses the word ‘somnambulist’. Other stories that occur during sleep are dreams. To state the obvious, we (our conscious selves) do not create dreams, we receive them.
To return to literature, let’s not forget that the ancient Greeks thought that the conscious mind was not responsible for creativity, rather attributed this to the Muses, who were the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. Maybe they had a more sophisticated understanding of the creative process.
All this leads one to suspect that consciousness is a receiver, it does not create.
I once had a very weird experience of automatic writing. I described it on Medium here.
