After Making the Intuitive Leap…
I meet a great many people who tell me that they have had a great intuitive insight into the nature of the universe, and that they just need a bit of help in proving that they are right.
Someone once went so far as to promise me a mention in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, if I’d just do all the work to prove his theories…
True story!
Next time that I get such a request I think that I’ll send back this quote by one of the great scientists of our time:
“…there is no prescribed route to follow to arrive at a new idea. You have to make the intuitive leap. But the difference is that once you’ve made the intuitive leap you have to justify it by filling in the intermediate steps. In my case, it often happens that I have an idea, but then I try to fill in the intermediate steps and find that they don’t work, so I have to give it up.”
–Stephen W. Hawking (English Theoretical Physicist and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, 1942-)
Taking Calculated Risks
“If the creator had a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely meant us to stick it out.”
–Arthur Koestler (Hungarian-born British Writer and Philosopher, 1905-1983)
Cooperation and Creativity
“Life is a triumph of cooperation and creativity. Indeed, since the creation of the first nucleated cells, evolution has proceeded through ever more intricate arrangements of cooperation and coevolution.”
–Fritjof Capra (Austrian-born American Physicist, Futurist and Writer, 1939-)
“The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems” (Fritjof Capra)
The Third Force
Here’s something that’s hardly ever discussed, yet it is critically important for everything from metaphysics to medicine:
“According to real, exact knowledge, one force, or two forces, can never produce a phenomenon. The presence of a third force is necessary, for it is only with the help of a third force that the first two can produce.”
–George Gurdjieff (Armenian-born Adept, Teacher and Writer, c.1873-1949)
Willpower: The Energy of the Creative Principle
“Willpower is the energy of the Creative Principle in the Universe. It is the power that creates, sustains, and destroys. Because everything is emanated from this principle, the Core of every atom, cell, form, entity, and soul has its own willpower.
It is the inner Core or inner Divine Spark that is a portion of that energy of the Creative Principle of the Universe. It is this willpower that gradually paves the way for you to direct your steps toward Home, toward the source of the Creative Principle.”
–Torkom Saraydarian (Armenian-born American Spiritual Teacher, Musician and Writer, 1917-1997)
Have You Heard the Call?
“Each of us is called from within to stabilize ourselves as co-creative humans, humans capable of accessing the eternal aspect of God and simultaneously awakening to the evolving aspect – humans expressing our God-given creative essence as Spirit-in-action in the world.”
–Barbara Marx Hubbard (American Futurist, Public Speaker and Writer, 1929-)
Creative Connections
“It is the power of creative men to perceive the relations between thoughts, or things, or forms of expression that may seem utterly different, and to be able to combine them into some new forms–the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.”
–William Plomer (South African Poet, Novelist and Editor, 1903-1973)
The Creative Unconscious
“Sometimes I observe with curiosity that uninterrupted activity which, independent of the subject of any conversation I may be carrying on, continues its course in that department of my brain that is devoted to music.”
–Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky (Russian Composer, 1840-1893)
The Mystery of Creation
“The creative element in the mind of man . . . emerges in as mysterious a fashion as those elementary particles which leap into momentary existence in great cyclotrons, only to vanish again like infinitesimal ghosts.”
–Loren Eiseley (American Anthropologist and Writer, 1907-1977)
The Far Side of Creativity
Most of us value creativity, but I wonder how many of us often think about the true implications of it? Sadly real creativity is rarely something that we can call upon at will, and sometimes it can consume us.
This must be one of the finest descriptions of a creative genius: Lord Byron:
“[The mind of Lord Byron] was like a volcano, full of fire and wealth, sometimes calm, often dazzling and playful, but ever threatening. It ran swift as the lightning from one subject to another, and occasionally burst forth in passionate throes of intellect, nearly allied to madness.”
–Lady Marguerite Blessington (Irish-born Writer, 1789-1849)
