The Crack in the Cosmic Egg (11 page)

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Christian, the withdrawn Hindu, may each find their respective pearls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.