Introduction

It is widely recognised that the best scientists are intuitive and that the ‘feel’ for the subject is important. This would not be apparent from reading formal scientific papers where the role that any intuition might play is omitted. Intuition is a subjective quality and yet an oft-stated goal of science is objectivity. I find this interesting, especially as, at the 2005 Hay Festival, I was present to hear Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society, and Sir John Maddox, former editor of Nature, agree that scientists cannot be truly objective. It is ironic that the detached and dispassionate tone required by scientific institutions and journals are part of the structure that supports the illusion of objectivity. True scientists are driven and passionate and they are as experimental and intuitive as any artist. Says Carlo Rubbia, Nobel laureate and former head of the prestigious CERN laboratory, “Scientific discovery is an irrational act. It’s an intuition which turns out to be reality at the end of it.”¹

The successful scientist has a passionate and persistent character often fuelled by a childlike exhilaration in the quest for knowledge. The scientist becomes completely involved in his or her subject and, over time, gets a feel for the patterns behind the facts. The full absorption of information and the individual’s aspirations within the particular discipline primes the mind for revelation. But these revelations tend to come when the mind is at rest and when there is room for something new, a space for some new influence to enter into. Sometimes it is after, perhaps in despair, the mind has stopped trying. Also, periods of relaxation and recreation, or periods of sleep, when the mind is more fully rested are common times of entry for the new. The solution, however contrary to the line of thought held before, seems to suddenly appear in the mind. Max Planck, the German physicist who framed the Quantum Theory in 1900 seems to have acquire the idea in this way. He said that he could never fathom why he thought such a thing. His discovery marked the beginning of quantum physics – a major turning point for science. However, ask any scientist what was the greatest scientific breakthrough of the 20th century and the reply would likely be Einstein’s work on relativity. Significantly, this major leap forward involved sleep related revelations.

“Ideas come from God”

In writing Einstein – a life,² Denis Brian brought in recollections of Einstein and his close associates, delving deep into the process that brought about the groundbreaking Theory of Special Relativity – perhaps the greatest leap in the history of science. It was early spring 1905 and Einstein was aged 26. He had spent an evening going over his ideas with a friend; they were looking for the missing pieces of the puzzle:“….. he returned home in despair, feeling he would never discover “the true laws, based on known facts’. There is no record of how late he went to bed that night. . . . . . He woke next morning in great agitation, as if, he said, “a storm had broke loose in my mind”. With it came the answers. He had finally tapped “God’s thoughts” and tuned into the master plan for the universe.”³

Einstein told his assistant and biographer Banesh Hoffman that “‘Ideas come from God.’” Hoffman was aware that Einstein didn’t believe in a personal God and explained that, “This was his metaphorical way of speaking. You cannot command the idea to come, it will come when it’s good and ready. He put it those terms: ‘Ideas come from God.’”⁴

Einstein’s sudden revelation as he woke that morning was transcendent. His ideas, or shall I say, the ideas received by him, reshaped the world and continue to have a huge impact on the whole of society.⁵

In the weeks following his revelation, using every spare moment, ‘as if possessed’ he put the ideas on paper, filling thirty-one pages. Denis Brian tells us that the final paper“..was strangely free of footnotes or references, as if the inspiration had indeed come, if not from God, from some otherworldly source.”⁶

Groundbreaking mathematician and author Gregory Chaitin of theIBM Watson Research Center explains it this way: “I don’t know where ideas come from. I can only look at my own experience creating a new mathematical theory and say I don’t know where it comes from. I don’t do it mechanically . . . my mind seems sharper and I seem more perceptive about everything. I seem to be in some kind of energized or more perceptive state and it’s a wonderful state to be in. It doesn’t last long. It feels wonderful.”⁷

In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James wrote of the four qualities ecstasy: ineffability, passivity, transience, and noesis.

Noesis comes from the Greek nous, relating to reason, intellect and understanding, particularly regarding to the understanding of basic principles or absolutes.Nous, along with gnosis can be traced back to the Sanskrit jna:to perceive, apprehend and understand.⁸From jna through gnosis and nous we have come to our word “knowledge,” originally referring to knowledge experienced directly; an enlightenment accompanied by a feeling of certitude. James wrote of the “noetic sense of truth” and the sense of authority implicit in these states, which he classified as mystical. “Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time.”⁹

Such an authority without a material basis may seem unreasonable, for nowadays, when we speak of reason we tend to think only in terms of forming an opinion. However, for the ancient Greeks, and for those before, there were two levels of reason. The higher reason is the reason that knows – gnosis, a state where the reason is given; experienced. The lower reason is the one that theorises and forms opinions, – doxa. Further back in time we find the Sanskrit jnana, which Monier-Williams defines as“the higher knowledge (derived from meditation on the one universal spirit)” and daksha: expert, clever; strengthening the intellectual faculty.

Regarding the word reason itself; I find it interesting that, in the Sanskrit, ‘ri’ is the word for heaven. When we look for ‘the reason’, we look for the ‘cause that explains something’. In the light of the ancient natural philosophy dictum ‘as above, so below’, this makes sense. Also we have the Sanskrit ‘rita’; true; enlightened; divine law, ‘rishu’: knowing, and ‘rishi’: saint; knower; seer– the one who directly experiences. Here again, at root, we see reason related to direct cognition. This broader understanding of reason and gnosis persisted for millennia, the Gnostics championing direct cognition well into Christian times. Perhaps they found inspirationfrom St John 14:17 where Jesus tells his Disciples: Even the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not; neither knoweth him: But ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. However, since the Church domination of the West and its hostility toward Gnosticism and its attendant nomenclature, the deeper meanings of gnosis and reason have become lost. Reason now only refers to the opinion forming, lower, reason.

Beyond the veil

Of late there has been recognition by scientists that ancient natural philosophers, up to and including Aristotle, acknowledged abilities to know the laws of nature through direct cognition. In A Brief History of Time, Hawking puts it this way: “The Aristotelian tradition also held that one could work out all the laws that govern the universe by pure thought: it was not necessary to check by observation”.¹⁰To the western mind, such ideas now seem a world away, but from ancient times to the present day, eastern philosophers have continued to address this subject frequently: The following is an example from China, found in stanza 62 of the Tao Te Ching [c.500BCE], where the Tao is ‘the unproduced producer of all that is’.¹¹

Why did the ancient masters esteem the Tao?

Because, being one with the Tao,

When you seek, you find.¹²

A clue to the process involved is given in Stanza 10:

Can you step back from your own mind

and thus understand all things?¹³

Stepping back from your own mind is crucial to gnosis. Of course, this stepping back takes place naturally during sleep and those, like Einstein,whose minds have been primed can, on occasion, take advantage of that process innocently. This may seem bewildering, after all, even for the gifted student, understanding Einstein’s work can be difficult enough, let alone understanding how it could have been cognised in the first place. Understanding requires humility. The word means ‘to stand under’. One cannot rise to greater knowledge when one already assumes superiority. The ‘beginner’s mind’ advocated in eastern philosophy speaks of the innocence required for success.

A similar stance is recommended by leading scientific thinkers. In their book, The Matter Myth, taking Einstein’s theories as an example, Paul Davies and John Gribbin give advice on how such knowledge, which defies everyday notions about reality, can come to be understood by students. They recommend ” . . merely inquiring about what is observed and not trying to formulate a mental model of what is, in some absolute sense.”¹⁴ Regarding the envisaging of Einstein’s ‘closed but unbounded’ universe, the writer says: “I remembered my resolution not to try to envisage an absolute reality, not to struggle for some sort of God’s-eye-view of the whole universe from the outside. Instead I would take the humbler perspective …..”¹⁵

Natural philosophers tell us that real humility releases us from attachment to all prior concepts; attachment to our own ideas or those of others. With this level of humility we discard all of our thoughts and imaginings. It allows us into the realm of impersonality where the non-relative, Absolute, can be contacted. Here, in essence, all things are found to rest.The Gnostics knew that any attempt at an intellectual construct of a big picture would be flawed because the intellect, which deals with the parts, would obstruct appreciation of the whole. Instead Gnostics used the mind as a receptacle. By this stage of mental development the use of the imagination has expanded the capacity of the mind, priming it for further use. Now the mind must be emptied and an innocence must be present, a state which allows the bigger picture to enter. As J B S Haldane said: “The universe may not just be queer to imagine, but queerer than we can imagine.”¹⁶And so, to sure-footedly approach the truth behind phenomena, use of the imagination is suspended. Rudolf Steiner explained: For the point is not that I arbitrarily create visions for myself, but that reality creates them in me.¹⁷ In order to help take this statement seriously we must acknowledge that successful natural philosophers such as Steiner were most sincere, thorough and scientific in their approach.

Another good example of this level of excellence would be Alice A Bailey. She was a well-known 20th century natural philosopher who claimed extra-sensory skills. She advocated White Magic: the use of hidden (occult) knowledge for the benefit of humanity. In A Treatise on White Magic she lists five things that those who choose to tread that path need to cultivate.

1. Consecration of motive.
2. Utter fearlessness.
3. The cultivation of the imagination, balanced wisely by the reasoning faculty.
4. A capacity to weigh the evidence wisely, and to accept only that which is compatible with the highest instinct and intuition.
5. A willingness to experiment.

She continues: “These five tendencies coupled with purity of life, and regulation of thought will lead to the sphere of achievement. Remember too that it is not purposed that you should find out all the knowable, but only just as much of as it may be employed wisely for the illumination of the race and of those whom you can each, in your own place, influence.”¹⁸

Anyone who has studied the life of Einstein will recognise that he applied all of the above. The appellation, ‘philosopher-scientist’ was well deserved. The evidence points to the fact that leading scientists, albeit unconsciously, use the attributes of the most mystical of natural philosophers as their aspiration for knowledge enlivens deeper cognitive talents. I believe that in the future, as science develops an understanding of consciousness, seekers after truth will use these attributes consciously.

Some 20th century philosopher-sages have been particularly helpful in relating their knowledge to that of modern science. Sri Aurobindo (1872 – 1950) explains the forces at work ‘beyond the veil’: “The wall between consciousness and force, impersonality and a personality, becomes much thinner when one goes beyond the veil of matter. If one looks at a working from the side of impersonal force one sees a force or energy at work acting for a purpose or with a result. If one looks from the side of being one sees a being possessing, guiding and using or else representative of and used by a conscious force as its instrument of specialised action and expression…. . In modern science it has been found that if you look at the movement and energy, it appears on one side to be a wave and act as a wave, on the other as a mass of particles and to act as a mass of particles each acting its own way. It is somewhat the same principle here.”¹⁹

Aurobindo’s biographer, Satprem, explains further: “A Christian saint, who has the vision of the Virgin, say, and an Indian who has the vision of Durga²⁰may be seeing the same thing, they may have contacted the same plane of consciousness and the same forces; but quite obviously Durga would mean nothing to the Christian, and moreover, were this force to manifest in its pure state, that is, as a luminous impersonal vibration, it would not be accessible to the consciousness of either the worshiper of the Virgin or the devotee of Durga, or at any rate would not speak to their hearts.”²¹

These two quotations touch upon fundamentals of perception, the possibilities of viewing frequencies in either wave or particle form and, furthermore, the interpretation of frequency in order to create a narrow but meaningful ‘reality’. In the previous article ‘Non-locality and Omnipresence’, I mentioned research that showed that the mind may affect outcomes in scientific research, and therefore we must ask: How then can direct cognition be trusted? This is where Alice Bailey’s prescription, “…. purity of life, and regulation of thought will lead to the sphere of achievement”, enters in. As with any experiment, the quality of the apparatus and the quality of control are of the highest importance. In this case, body and mind are the apparatus and the means of control. Neurophysiologically speaking, the apparatus requires pure foods and drink because it must not be distracted by discomfort or illness, and the mind requires the Great Peace, a mental equilibrium where, due to innocence and humility there is no agenda. To the deeply religious and the natural philosopher alike, access to the soul is the link to the Great Peace of pure consciousness. Here religion begins to reveal its original motivation. Satprem wrote on the phenomena of religious visions and their subjective nature but there are links here to the scientific world, starting with Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. It was established by German physicist Werner Heisenberg, and gave a theoretical limit to the precision with which a particle’s momentum and position can be measured simultaneously the more accurately the one is determined, the more uncertainty there is in the other.

Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Daniel Menaker homed-in on the subjective implications. He put it this way: “When Heisenberg threw this stone of hard mathematical precision into the pond of physics, he created a ripple effect that has spread far beyond his own discipline. For if the observer and the observed are inextricably linked at the subatomic level, then what about the macroscopic world? What about the world of human affairs? If the act of observation affects the thing being observed, then how can we ever be sure of what we are seeing? And if we can never be sure of what we are seeing, then how can we ever be sure of what is real?”