LOVE Creates - HATE Destroys

An Abridgement from 'Creative Image Therapy'

By VOLNEY G. MATHISON

GREAT achievements, the work of the great
men and women of this world, have not
been accomplished through philosophical
introspection or the ladling about of
words. Great achievements, great events are
the outcome of motional creative ACTION. Action, first on the psychical image level, then
on the physical level. Only creative action is
productive of immortal works.

What is the function, the true basic purpose of creative action? It is obviously not
to be undertaken for itself as some idle,
time-wasting "game". The disclosure of the
answer to this question reveals the tremendously illuminative resolutions obtainable by
posing the problem NOT in words but in mental
image constructions. This can be accomplished
by observing any creative action in ain image
pattern. Is the creative action primarily for
the benefit of the originative actor,. or the
person creating the action? Not With the exception of the process of self-healing, creative action is solely for the aid and benefit
of others. Really the self-healing processes
may be included as tending toward the 'Welfare
of others -- for a whole and sound human being
can render more useful aid to others than one
who is ill. Examine any proposed creative
action, and you will find that it comprises
doing something that will be of benefit to
others.

After obtaining this clear and illuminating insight on the image-action level, one may
bring the question -- what is the true purpose
of all creative action? -- down once more to the
weaker level of words and language and present
the answer:

Creative action is an action of LOVE.

Love in all languages implies, in its
best sense, actions of caring for, actions
revealing concern for the welfare of another --
or for many others.

Every entertaining, useful, beautiful
object or event created by man is an expression of love -- of caring about the well-being of
others.

The seamstress nas an image of a happy
girl wearing the dress she is creating. And
the machine on which she sews was created by a
man who visualized first on the psychic level
a way of relieving the tedious toil of the
seamstresses of his day. The thresher and the
reaper were invented by men who sought to relieve the back-breaking labor of other men in
the fields. Edison created psychic image patterns of the first phonograph, the first motion picture machine -- devices that provided
pleasure, relaxation, and entertainment for
most of the present inhabitants of the entire
world. He did not image up these instruments
primarily for himself or for his own benefit
-- but for the good of others. The worker in
industry engaged in producing any good non-military product has both conscious and subconscious pride in aiding in the creation of
beautiful and useful things for others.

This principle that the great enduring
creative actions of this world are loving
actions for the welfare of others is startlingly illustrated by considering the opposite
type of actions -- actions aimed at the injury
and the destruction of other human beings --
the appalling actions of HATE.

The major actions of hate are those of

rapine, murder, and of WAR. And the term "war"
includes, of course, the production of murderous implements thereof.

The writer once was engaged briefly during World War II in the installing of electrical components in a big warship. When one
walked in through the shipyard gates in the
morning, one felt as if one were entering suddenly into an ugly, evil nether world of tension, suspicion, apathy, and fear -- all manifestations of HATE. Here there was no enthusiastic driving common urge to produce, to
create. Here there was mainly a sort of orderly confusion. Men malingered, hiding in
out-of-the-way compartments to shoot dice or
to sleep. Those who worked seemed to do it in
slow motion. There were interminable errors,
mistakes, false starts on structures that were
dismantled again. In the morning one got one's
blueprints from heavily guarded rooms. Each
print was checked and rechecked, signed for,
re-signed for. In the evening each print had
to be returned, again checked, rechecked,
signed, and re-signed back in. And those
sternly guarded blueprints, many of them, were
not worth the paper they were printed on. Some
were nightmares of confusion; they brought
structures into impossible and grotesque relationships. For example, a group of electricians would painstakingly put up a complex
switchboard panel, and next week could come to
work to find it all cut away with acetylene
torches by a group of steam-fitters who had
other prints showing a huge high-pressure
steampipe had to pass through the very same
space occupied by the switchboard.

On this job one would go to a procurement
office for some component one was ready for,
and the officer-in-charge would consult his
stacks of records and assert flatly that the
item was not in stock in the warehouse. Yet
one could by certain maneuvers get into the
warehouse and lay one's hand on crates and
crates of the allegedly "out-of-stock" items.
If this fact were to be reported back to the
procurement offices one could and undoubtedly
would have been arrested for espionage.

It sounds like but it was not enemy sabotage. It was a manifestation of the psychical
effects of being engaged in an industry of
HATE. On the subconscious level, the draughtsmen, the lay-out men, and acetylene cutters
who were discovered to have placed portholes
below the water line did not want that ship of
HATE to float.

These subconscious psychical effects prevail throughout the whole business of war.

Millions of dollars worth of heavy, costly, useful equipment lies abandoned and rusting
in the jungles of the South Sea islands. Millions of high-priced articles, paid for involuntarily by the taxpayers, are annually destroyed, concealed, burned, or thrown into the
seas. A soldier patient of mine who was at
Corregidor in the Philippines when the Japanese
invaded related in detail how masses upon
masses of costly equipment in those fortifications were so rusted and neglected, so uncared for, that it was in the main unusable