Csikszentmihalyi Mihaly, Flow -The Psychology of Optimal Experience - 1

Disclaimer: The views expressed in my reviews are entirely mine and sometimes goes with and sometimes, also could contradict the views of the authors whose books I am reviewing. The author's own views can be found in their original quotations that I insert throughout the review.

As I am returning to review a book I have read years ago I am reminded of the flow it put me into, that took hold of me for more than a year, and indeed, passed into the substance of my being. At that time my attempts to write something like a review faltered due to the sheer number of insights I had obtained and that the book also had vouchsafed to me. As days passed, the effect distilled into my unconscious and slipped out of my consciousness. It no doubt surfaced from time to time and threw up bubbles of revelations that put me into flow once again. But it was only a year ago that it chanced that I was reviewing work of Abraham Maslow on Self-Actualization via Peak Experiences when it struck me that perhaps optimal experiences prepared the ground for peak experiences. For, wasn't it true that an optimal experience took the self higher up in the scale of development? And wasn't it equally true that crests in optimal experiences could be interpreted as peak experiences? Yes, something in me answered and that was all it took for me to set about investigating the connections between optimal and peak experiences. And lo and behold, the inquiries deepened. It was actually necessary for me to set down my insights on flow especially Csikszentmihalyi's book by the same name. It is of course Csikszentmihalyi who has elucidated flow so beautifully that the term has become one with his name. So here goes my review on his book Flow -The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

Csikszentmihalyi begins by a preface that "this book summarizes for a general audience, decades of research on the positive aspects of human experience -joy, creativity, the process of total involvement with life I call flow".

He immediately hastens to caution himself that

"To take this step is somewhat dangerous, because as soon as one strays from the stylized constraints of academic prose, it is easy to become careless or overly enthusiastic about such a topic."

Perhaps at the time of writing, Csikszentmihalyi did not anticipate that his book would become no mere academic treatise but a manual for personal development for inquiring individuals. He adds, 

"What follows, however, is not a popular book that gives insider tips about how to be happy. To do so would be impossible in any case, since a joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe. This book tries instead to present general principles, along with concrete examples of how some people have used these principles, to transform boring and meaningless lives into ones full of enjoyment."

It is in fact exactly this aspect, that he presents general principles along with concrete examples that make it possible to use the book for personal development by adapting it to varying human natures, needs and temperaments.

Csikszentmihalyi begins Chapter 1 with the prescient observation that with all due awe for our achievements in technology and innovation, when it comes to the important issue of the definition of happiness, 

"We do not understand what happiness is any better than Aristotle did, and as for learning how to attain that blessed condition, one could argue that we have made no progress at all."

And,

"Despite the fact that we are now healthier and grow to be older, despite the fact that even the least affluent among us are surrounded by material luxuries undreamed of even a few decades ago (there were few bathrooms in the palace of the Sun King, chairs were rare even in the richest medieval houses, and no Roman emperor could turn on a TV set when he was bored), and regardless of all the stupendous scientific knowledge we can summon at will, people often end up feeling that their lives have been wasted, that instead of being filled with happiness their years were spent in anxiety and boredom."

He goes on to ask,

"Is this because it is the destiny of mankind to remain unfulfilled, each person always wanting more than he or she can have? Or is the pervasive malaise that often sours even our most precious moments the result of our seeking happiness in the wrong places?"

Csikszentmihalyi recalls that twenty-five years before he began to write the book, he discovered that the question when do people feel most happy? had not been answered at all by the relevant branch of scholarship, psychology. Csikszentmihalyi discovered over the next quarter century that happiness was not the result of random chance. It is not the result of good fortune either. 

"What I “discovered” was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy."

And how does one prepare for happiness? Does one or should one, or could one, pursue it as a goal? Well, no doubt as one realizes later, happiness or if you will, success is the progressive realization of worthy goals and ideals as Earl Nightingale has said, it is something that cannot be pursued just for its own sake for,

"Yet we cannot reach happiness by consciously searching for it. “Ask yourself whether you are happy,” said J. S. Mill, “and you cease to be so.” It is by being fully involved with every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find happiness, not by trying to look for it directly. Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychologist, summarized it beautifully in the preface to his book Man’s Search for Meaning: “Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue…as the unintended sideeffect
of one’s personal dedication to a course greater than oneself.”

It is therefore, one's personal dedication to a course greater than oneself, and that means, making a difference, contributing to the larger world, in an ecologically sound manner that seems to be the way. Let however, Csikszentmihalyi lead the way in this.

Csikszentmihalyi recognizes that there are circles of control and circles of influence within which one may exercise one's reach. Yet, there are occasions when one feels on a roll, instead of being tossed around by the wheels of circumstance, one feels in control of one's actions to an uncommon degree. It is usually the case that during these eternity-moments the experience is to a great degree, free of time and free of self or ego as he later delineates. These optimal experiences or flow are the nearest one could come to describe happiness. Moreover, optimal experiences precede happiness. One only knows that one was happy. The moment one feels happiness as is, one dilutes the experience. So, is happiness only a past-tense? Perhaps, perhaps not.

Optimal experiences are not passive, receptive, relaxing times, however. They could be of accompanied by conditions of great physical or mental stress. And this stress is not that which leads to di-stress but eu-stress, a stress that accompanies the travails of creative endeavor.

"The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen."

Csikszentmihalyi begins

"by considering how consciousness works and how it is controlled because only if we understand the way subjective states are shaped can we master them. Everything we experience—joy or pain, interest or boredom—is represented in the mind as information. If we are able to control this information, we can decide what our lives will be like."

Consciousness! that last frontier, that ultimate mystery to the rational scientific mind and that panacea to the religious temperament in eagerness to solve the riddle of existence. But the final frontier eludes both and it is only for each individual in one's own subjective experience that it perhaps holds something of an answer. Now subjective experience is itself a mystery of sorts. There is as yet no rational-scientific method of exploration of subjective experience. No doubt Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) is often described as the study of the structure of subjective experience. That is the manner in which Bandler and Grinder introduce it in their book Neurolinguistic Programming Vol 1 -The study of the Structure of Subjective Experience. And it is admirable that NLP does have much to say about subjective experience and how to manipulate it toward personal development, excellence and achievement. In another sense, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali could be considered as nothing but the most thorough scientific (in the real sense of the term, if not in the sense of the methodology of modern science which is one of the deployments of the scientific approach based on western philosophical-scientific traditions of Plato, Galileo, Newton, Kant, Hegel, Mach, Einstein and Poincare...) exploration of the theory and practice of subjective experience.

For Csikszentmihalyi, the interest in consciousness is in the fact that optimal experience is related to a certain order in consciousness.

"The optimal state of inner experience is one in which there is order in consciousness."

One has not settled the meaning of consciousness and one is asked to think of order in consciousness. Let us for the moment, keep consciousness by, and take on order. Now the clearest definition of order I have come across is that given by David Bohm and David Peat in their beautiful book, Science, Order and Creativity. Bohm and Peat define order as 'similar differences and different similarities'. Order is related to entropy the measure of disorderliness in the physical universe. So order may be taken as the opposite of entropy or negentropy.  One may extend the meaning to fields other than physical science as is done in Complexity theory and introduce with Csikszentmihalyi the term psychic order as as directly, he himself does it, psychic entropy. With this, optimal experience becomes a state that ensues when there is order in consciousness, or, when psychic entropy is in a relatively minimal measure. This happens when,

"psychic energy—or attention—is invested in realistic goals, and when skills match the opportunities for action."

So goals play a key role in optimal experience. As Earl Nightingale says, "Success is the progressive realization of worthy goals and ambitions." As such, Goal Setting is one of the most important elements in personal development. In current times, this has been stressed mainly by Jim Rohn, Brian Tracy, Anthony Robbins, Bob Proctor, Jack Canfield, John Assaraf...Goals are important because,

"The pursuit of a goal brings order in awareness because a person must concentrate attention on the task at hand and momentarily forget everything else."

"A person who has achieved control over psychic energy and has invested it in consciously chosen goals cannot help but grow into a more complex being. By stretching skills, by reaching toward higher challenges, such a person becomes an increasingly extraordinary individual."

Continued in the next post.