In this chapter I will elaborate on how the postulate, the Eureka! discovery, the illumination, of lateral thinking, come about. A few examples were given in Chapter Two, when I claimed that these "autistic eruptions" into logical thinking suggested a clue to the way reality shapes, the way the potential of the "dark forest" is given shape by ideas arising from our cultural clearings. The relation of questions and answers is an example of the mirroring function between the modes of mind. Answers are shaped by the questions demanding them, just as the question is finally shaped by the nature of the answer desired. In this way our experience shapes and moves as desire reaching for the unknown. A question is a seed of suggestion which we plant into that continuum of synthesis I have called autistic thinking. The question's germination takes place in ways unavailable to conscious thought, but only in a ground prepared and nourished by conscious thought. The synthesis flowers as the Eureka! illumination, that dramatic breakthrough wherein we are convinced of having received a universal truth. There are no limits to the kinds of Eureka! we may experience. Verification of any prejudice, fulfillment of any desire can be obtained. Polanyi pointed out that the procedure of mind involved here follows St. Paul's formula of faith, works, and grace. Faith is a neutral function, however, and any kind of belief can stimulate passionate work. Grace, unfortunately, is given according to the nature of the faith, the content of the work, the triggers around which the synthesis can organize. The scientist, the idiot-fringe philosopher, the cult prophet, the devout Christian, the withdrawn Hindu, may each find their respective pearls in this same sea of thought. The function of question-answer is the same in all cases. The triggering desires, the metaphors of allegiance, the dictates of training, the techniques of attainment, may all differ radically, and give correspondingly different products, but underneath is the single function of representation-response, undergoing analysis throughout this book. Back in 1935, Bertrand Russell, in his book Religion and Science , pointed out that Catholics, but not Protestants, could have visions in which the Virgin Mary appeared. Christians and Mohammedans, but not Buddhists, may have great truths revealed to them by the Archangel Gabriel. The list could go on, of course, and Russell was obviously right -- but he was right for the wrong reasons. His conclusion was a product of nineteenth century naive realism, and a defense of vertical thinking as the only true indicator of "real things." In this chapter I hope to show the sterility and narrowness of Russell's viewpoint, and to suggest that his attack on religion was a case of pot calling kettle black. Sir William Rowan Hamilton was professor of mathematics and astronomy at the University of Dublin. His 'Quaternion Theory' has played a vital role in modern mechanics. The theory "happened to him" as a Eureka! discovery, an illumination, while walking to Dublin one morning with Lady Hamilton. As they started across Grougham Bridge, which his boys afterward called Quaternion Bridge, right there, in such an unlikely spot, the "galvanic circuit of thought closed," as Hamilton put it in metaphor fitting to the interests current to his time, and the "sparks which fell" from the closing of this circuitry were the fundamental equations making up his famous theory -- a theory which generations of vertical thinkers have happily explored. At the very moment of illumination there washed over Hamilton the understanding that an additional ten to fifteen years of his life would be required to translate fully the enormity of the insight given in that second. Marghanita Laski, investigating the nature of the mental maneuver involved, notes that the experience itself filled an 'intellectual want' of long standing. In a letter written shortly before the discovery, Hamilton spoke of his long-cherished notion having "haunted" him for some fifteen years. A recent renewal of his old passion had given him a "certain strength and earnestness for years dormant." This renewed diligence and application to the mathematics involved furthered the long collection of material for the synthesis of the desired answer. The historian, Arnold Toynbee, had a mental illumination of history , fittingly enough, and in the incongruously prosaic setting of Buckingham Palace Road. There he suddenly found himself in "communion" not with just some particular episode of history, but with "all that had been, and was, and was to come," an apt description of a mystical-autistic seizure. In that experience Toynbee was directly aware of the "Passage of History" gently flowing through him in a mighty current, his own life "welling like a wave in the flow of this vast tide." His communion both verified his life investment, and furthered it as stimulus. Albert Einstein spoke in reverent tones of his illumination giving rise to his famous theory. He never doubted that he had been privileged to glimpse into the very mathematical mind and physical heart of all things. James R. Newman spoke of Einstein's 30-page paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies," as embodying a "vision." He observed that poets and prophets are not the only ones to have visions, but that scientists do so as well. They glimpse a peak perhaps never again seen, but the landscape is "forever changed." Their life is then spent describing what was seen, elaborating on the vision that others might follow. Nikos Kazantzakis was a Greek novelist and poet. He was an adherent to the Bergsonian concept of the élan vital, a spirit transcending matter and transforming it into spirit; an "onrushing force throughout all creation which strives for purer and more rarified freedom." In a final assault on the meaning of existence, Kazantzakis retreated to Mount Athos, that near-legendary Greek mountain where no woman has ever set foot, but ascetics and monastics abound. For two years Kazantzakis devoted himself to contemplation. He spent months teaching his body to endure cold, hunger, thirst, sleeplessness and every privation. Then he turned to his spirit, where, in painful concentration he sought to conquer within himself the "minor passions, the easy virtues, the cheap spiritual joys, the convenient hopes." Kazantzakis finally experienced a tremendous vision, in keeping with his desire for verification of his ultimate concern. In his numinous experience, his life-work, the belief he had hammered out all his years, was both clarified and verified. His illumination happened one night and he "started up in great joy," seeing the "red ribbon" left behind in the ascent, within us and in all the universe, by his "certain Combatant." Kazantzakis clearly saw those "bloody footprints ascending from inorganic matter into life and from llfe into spirit." It was this, the transmutation of matter into spirit that was the great secret. Here was the meaning of his own life, to transmute, even in his own small capacity, matter into Spirit, the highest endeavor, and by which he might reach a harmony with the universe. Jean-Paul Sartre had a diabolical mystical experience, an "extraverted," or conscious one, in which he "saw" the whole world to be a single, unified, grey, jelly-like protoplasm of pain, horror, and meaninglessness. This is completely opposite to the mystical experience of Jacob Boehme, also a conscious one. Walter Kaufman, with his Faith of a Heretic , claimed a negative experience that verified, that is gave a numinous, "universal" kind of rightness to, his agnostic position. St. Augustine was driven by his desire for religious conviction, but felt blocked by a myriad of minor allegiances inhibiting the single devotion demanded by Christian belief. Little by little he damped down and inhibited the various drives of ego and flesh that prevented his opening to transformation. Augustine knew what his goals were, however. He longed for a certain experience of total seizure because he had heard others speak of such an experience, and he had seen the evident results. His longing finally reoriented his own "hierarchy of mind," making his own "new-seeing" possible. (That what he finally "saw" was a synthesis of his own desires -- not some absolute or universal "out there" knowledge -- is clearly evident from the Stoic nature of the Christianity resulting from Augustine, a point to which I will briefly return in the last part of this book. ) Laski contrasts Augustine's complex personality and search with John Wesley's simpler one. Wesley was, though a sincere, practicing Christian, not one of the twice-born. He had simply never doubted God or felt removed from a divine presence. All around him his fellow workers were experiencing dramatic conversions, however, and Wesley wanted the same stamp of authenticity for his own formulations. He investigated in detail the moment he sought; he knew what it must feel like. He was moved by "appropriate influences at significant moments," according to Laski's study. He knew the question he was asking, and the answer desired. He finally achieved his conversion and it was just as dramatic as that hoped for, just as real as could be desired, precisely toward which he had long aimed. The asking of a question with passionate concern for its answer, a concern which demands life investment, suggests a door which will sooner or later be found. Whether it is successfully opened to the public is another matter, but if a current world view can accommodate a new synthesis, the new idea may prove to be the case. A new idea fails if it involves too great a sacrifice of invested belief. If the new idea triggers a passionate enough pursuit to make suspension or abandonment of previous beliefs, or current criteria worth the risk, however, the new idea can change the reality structure. Price spoke of an idea's propensity for achieving reality unless inhibited by other ideas. A new idea can be killed by the pressure of inhibiting investments. On the other hand, and happening a bit more as fate, a new idea can breed the very ecology necessary to its own translation, testability, and realization. In the next chapter I will explore this function as seen in the posing of the "empty category" in science, and how this can bring about the content needed to fall the category. A person with passionate concern for the successful translation of his Eureka! (itself produced by passionate pursuit of an idea) can transform the very common domain with which adjustment of his new idea is sought. Whether the energy equivalent of ten billion tons of uranium fission will ever be obtained from a single cubic centimeter of empty space, as proposed by Bohm, depends on how passionately such an idea might be sustained and followed by enough people long enough for sufficient realignment of a vast network of assumptions. If the current reality cannot contain a new idea, if the current allegiances inhibit the idea and prevent its completing its circuitry and fulfilling itself, never mind. Those current allegiances can be replaced, if slowly, until the new idea achieves its goal and is "real-ized," made real. Einstein's equations helped bring about the current scientific fabric that in turn verified Einstein's equations. New ideas must agree with this fabric or be discarded. On the other hand, for a new world view to develop, Einstein's ideas must be subtly changed or selectively abandoned. Such metaphoric mutations or discards require, however, a certain good taste, an esthetic protocol acceptable to the brotherhood of believers. Passionate conviction can change the very adjusted reality with which testable correspondence is needed. The true believer can bring about the very changes and adjustments within his reality that can fit his new idea into the then altered background. The double-helix formation for the chromosome gene was proposed as an "empty category" sixteen or so years before it was finally "photographed" and verified. Even then the photography was not direct, but only possible after suitable preparation allowed the photographing of an otherwise unphotographable entity. How does the mind arrive at such remote and difficult theories when there is no tangible sign or even rudimentary hint, and when no way exists for verifying even the first part of the newly-forming fabric? The Platonic retreat is an accepted evasion: Plato's God built into the mind the hidden idea of how he, God, created the mechanism to begin with. In a kind of Jungian extension of this, perhaps the mind itself, built up from the simplest combinations of a thinking phylum, contains within its labyrinthine corridors a kind of memory of its own structure. Or, of course, we can always attribute these Eureka!s to good, solid, scientific detective work and dismiss the problem. Pére Teilhard said that whatever was put together could be taken apart. But our method of taking apart plays an indeterminately formative role in what is then taken apart. The nature of question-answer, filling the "empty categories," indicates that a kind of thinking encompasses the most remote regions of energy organization, much as' Teilhard proposed. And the function of question-answer is an expression of the ontological, reality-shaping process itself. Common sense tells us that certain ideas are true because they prove to be backed by actual events; they were obviously triggered by real things. The "light of day" is the final arbiter. The cold facts of real things dispel the illusions of mind, and leave only the hard kernels of clear thinking. Piaget observed that we are continually hatching an enormous number of false ideas, conceits, Utopias, mystical explanations, superstitions, and megalomanic fantasies. All of these disappear when brought into contact with other people. They do not all disappear, however; some remain to change the very framework and criteria of what makes real and what makes fantasy. There is more than a fortuitous connection between science fiction and scientific fact, though a one-for-one correspondence would be magic. That which is superstition and fantasy to Piaget was obvious fact to a previous age, and many of Piaget's cherished notions will themselves someday prove amusing and quaint.