The Masters of Enlightenment: Albert Einstein

The Low Density Lifestyle book is now out! You can check out an excerpt from the book, and buy it, at the Low Density Lifestyle bookstore.

The series on the Masters of Enlightenment continues today with a profile of a man who was one of the greatest scientists of all time, and who, through his blend of logic, creative intelligence and intuitive insights, opened our minds to the way the universe operates, and in the process, opened the doors of perception to the realm in which science and spirituality merge.

Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 and died April 18, 1955. He was a German theoretical physicist who discovered the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics; his theories also provided the concepts and foundation for quantum physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics “for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.”

He escaped from Nazi Germany in 1933, where he had been a professor at the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and settled in the U.S., becoming a citizen in 1940. He taught physics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, until his death in 1955.

Einstein published more than 300 scientific papers along with over 150 non-scientific works, and received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities; he also wrote about various philosophical and political subjects such as socialism, international relations and the existence of God. His great intelligence and originality has made the word “Einstein” synonymous with genius.

Einstein was a scientist, an artist, a philosopher, a rebel, and a mystic. He was an original thinker, and left his indelible mark in the collective consciousness of the world.

His life’s work earned him Time Magazine’s award in 1999, in their retrospective issue that looked back at the 20th century, as “Man of the Century.”

While growing up, Albert Einstein had such a spotty track record as a student that no one would have predicted where he would end up. One teacher told the young Einstein, “You will never amount to anything.” Einstein was later expelled from high school and flunked his college entrance exam.

The issue for Einstein as a student was that he did not think in a purely linear way, which is the way the education system generally teaches.

Sadly, the way the education system is constituted these days, it plays a major role in the repression of genius, human potential, and the potential for self-realization and enlightenment.

Many brilliant thinkers who have done much to change the course of humanity are not linear thinkers. They are creative thinkers who see the world in original ways.

If creative thinkers are expected to adjust their thinking from a nonlinear way to a linear one, in order to conform to the one-size-fits-all method of teaching that is the norm in education, they eventually lose their capability for original thinking. And sadly, when this occurs, the world becomes poorer for the experience.

Albert Einstein pointed this out in the case of the 19th century scientist Michael Faraday, who discovered electromagnetism. Einstein said of Faraday’s discovery, “Faraday’s discovery was an audacious mental creation, which we owe chiefly to the fact that Faraday never went to school, and therefore preserved the rare gift of thinking freely.”

Because of his own spotty track record as a student, once he graduated college, it was only thanks to a family connection that he got a job, as a civil servant in a patent office in Switzerland.

It was while working there in 1905 that he changed the course of history with his discovery of Special Theory of Relativity, which he wrote about in a published paper. Over the next few years, he expounded on Relativity Theory with papers on the nature of light and the General Theory of Relativity.

Einstein’s theories changed the notion of space and time, the notion of mass and energy, the notion of matter and light, and the way they are all perceived.

He opened the door to the understanding that the universe we live in is one ruled by quantum laws, a universe in which matter is primarily empty space rich in information and consciousness. Einstein’s perceptions showed that at its core, matter is not solid but comprised of waves.

Faced with such bold new assertions, it is understandable how Einstein and other scientists of the era who built on Einstein’s theories came to adopt a mystical worldview. They realized the universe was much different than what they had been taught, and that this new conception of the universe was closer in line with the teachings of Eastern philosophies than anything existing science could define.

But Einstein himself was always a mystic. His way of learning and perceiving, as I pointed out earlier, was a nonlinear one. He was a visual thinker, and stated, when asked about how his thought processes worked:
“Words and language, whether written or spoken, do not seem to play any part in my thought processes. The psychological entities that serve as building blocks for my thought are certain signs or images, more of less clear, that I can reproduce and recombine at will.”

Einstein was a brilliant creative thinker, one who saw the universe with fresh eyes. He had beginner’s mind – the mind of an original thinker – and maintained it his entire life. At his memorial, the scientist Robert Oppenheimer proclaimed: “He was almost wholly without sophistication and wholly without worldliness . . . There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn.”

When you mix in his creative thinking and original mind with his tendency towards mysticism, you arrive at someone who is enlightened. And the beauty of Einstein’s enlightened mind was that he was able to articulate his vision clearly, for all to understand.

You may not be able to comprehend the profundity of his scientific achievements, but there are many other things that Einstein said that are equally as profound. Here is a sampling of them:

* “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”
* “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
* “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.”
* “I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”
* “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
* “The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
* “A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.”
* “God is subtle but he is not malicious.”
* “Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”
* “I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.”
* “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.”
* “Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.”
* “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”
* “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
* “Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.”
* “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
* “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
* “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
* “The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.”
* “Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”
* “Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”
* “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”
* “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
* “Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.”
* “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
* “Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.”
* “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.”
* “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
* “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
* “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
* “In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.”
* “The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.”
* “Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how passionately I hate them!”
* “No, this trick won’t work…How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?”
* “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”
* “The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking…the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”
* “Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.”
* “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
* “A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.”
* “The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.”
* “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
* “You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.”
* “One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.”
* “…one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.”
* “He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”
* “A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
* “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” (Sign hanging in Einstein’s office at Princeton)

Vision – Quotes of Noted Visionaries of the 20th and 21st Centuries

I’ve been talking for a few weeks about Creative Intelligence, and the last few days about Vision and how being a Visionary is something innate we all have brewing within.

So today for some inspiration I would share with you quotes of some noted visionaries of the 20th and 21st centuries. I hope this gets your wheels turning and encourages you to start cultivating and evolving your own vision.

Words of Visionaries

Muhammed Ali: To be able to give away riches is mandatory if you wish to possess them. This is the only way that you will be truly rich.

Winston Churchill: We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Albert Einstein: The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

Anne Frank: Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!

Buckminster Fuller: Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.

Mohandas Gandhi: An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Vaclav Havel: Genuine politics—even politics worthy of the name—the only politics I am willing to devote myself to—is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.

Helen Keller: No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

John F. Kennedy: The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.

Robert F. Kennedy: There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

Martin Luther King, Jr.: Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. The chain reaction of evil—hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars—must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

Dalai Lama: With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.

John Lennon: My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

Nelson Mandela: I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

Rosa Parks: I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.

Pablo Picasso: The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.

Jackie Robinson: A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

Eleanor Roosevelt: Do what you feel in your heart to be right—for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer: By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world. By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep and alive.

Dr. Benjamin Spock: Happiness is mostly a by-product of doing what makes us feel fulfilled.

Mother Teresa: It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.

Desmond Tutu: If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

Kurt Vonnegut: Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.

Creative Intelligence and the Creative Process

As a finale for the series on Creative Intelligence, here’s an excellent talk given in Feb. 2009 by Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert about the creative process.

In the talk she states the same thing I have been getting at in this series on Creative Intelligence – that we are all geniuses, and that it is not just something that is bestowed on a select few.

We all have an inner Einstein, an innate genius lurking within. You just have to tap into its potential. The best way to do so is by living a Low Density Lifestyle.

By the way, this talk on Creative Intelligence and the Creative Process by Elizabeth Gilbert comes from the TED conference.

The TED conference is an annual conference that brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.

Imagination and Creative Intelligence

Check out those crazy hamsters! That’s really creative and imaginative.

“An act of imagination, a speculative adventure…underlies every improvement of natural knowledge.” – Sir Peter Brian Medawar (1915-1987) British Zoologist

“The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself.” - William Blake

As I mentioned in my articles on Creative Intelligence and I.Q. Part 1 and Part 2: Imagination is an important part of creative intelligence.

And to repeat what I said in the articles on Creative Intelligence and I.Q., imagination, in combination with creative and logical thinking is what creative intelligence is about. And using creative intelligence is much more important than I.Q. in being able to access your innate genius potential.

The Imagination

So let’s talk some more about the imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge, Albert Einstein once said.

All the great artists and scientists throughout time have understood how important imagination is. Most great ideas don’t come when we use only our logical thinking capabilities. They mostly come when we let down our guards, enter into a Low Density Lifestyle, and let the imagination take hold.

Nicola Tesla, the great scientist and inventor, once said, “Creative ideas come to us like a bolt of lightning.”

Steven Weinberg won a Nobel Prize for physics for his electroweak theory and said the idea came to him in a flash one day, while he was driving his car.

Albert Einstein once wondered, “Why is it I get my best ideas in the morning while I’m shaving?” This is because when we allow ourselves to relax and let the mind space out, the imagination can take over.

History is filled with many stories of creative insights that arrived like flashes of light, whether in daydreams, creative reveries or dreams. When you let go of your current way of thinking in order to see something new, you are letting your imagination take hold.

Imagination is Infinite

Imagination is infinite. All it takes to touch it is to close the eyes, quiet the mind and be silent – in other words, to enter into a Low Density Lifestyle. And then it flows – it may be images, thoughts, ideas or whatever, but the key is not to silence it or to criticize it. You may then want to express what you imagined – through written or spoken words, images, musical notations, or however you are most comfortable.

The key is to go and use your imagination. We are not encouraged to. But it is an important part of our lives.

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious…He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.” - Albert Einstein

Creative Intelligence and I.Q.: Part 2

Creative Intelligence and I.Q.: In yesterday’s post, I told you that I.Q. is not the true test of whether a person is a genius. I told  you about Albert Einstein, and how not-very-bright he seemed growing up.

I also told  you that the key to tapping into your inner Einstein, or your innate genius capability, is using your creative intelligence, which is a combination of creative thinking, logical thinking and imagination.

Now I want to talk about this more, and discuss two types of tests.

Test Your Intelligence

An I.Q. test is what is called a convergence test. It is where you sort through the answers and converge on the right answer.

To test your creative intelligence you would take a divergence test. A divergence test asks you to use your creative intelligence and take your mind in many different directions. There is no single right answer in this kind of test.

In a divergence test, the tester is looking for the number and uniqueness of your responses.

Here is a question from a divergence test. Try it out yourself:

A Brick, a Blanket and Two Students

Write down as many different uses that you can think of for the following objects:

1. a brick

2. a blanket

This question comes from an actual divergence test that an English researcher named Liam Hudson used for a study of creative intelligence and I.Q.  He found that average students had much more diverse answers than students with high I.Q.’s. Here’s an example of answers:

A student named Poole said for a brick:

To use in smash-and-grab raids. To help hold a house together. To use in a game of Russian roulette if you want to keep fit at the same time (bricks at ten paces turn and throw – no evasive action allowed). To hold the eiderdown on a bed tie a brick at each corner. As a breaker of empty of Coca-Cola bottles.

And this same student said for a blanket:

To use on a bed. As a cover for illicit sex in the woods.  As a tent. To make smoke signals with. As a sail for a boat, cart or sled. As a substitute for a towel. As a target for shooting practice for short-sighted people. As a thing to catch people jumping out of burning skyscrapers.

Pretty creative, wouldn’t you say?  This student with an average I.Q. has really high creative intelligence.  (Then again, we all have high creative intelligence).

Now, another student named Florence, who had one of the highest I.Q.’s in the school,  answered the question with these answers:

Brick: Building things, throwing.

Blanket: Keeping warm, smothering fires, tying to trees and sleeping in (as a hammock), improvised stretcher.

And that’s all his answers to the two. He was very functional, but he lacked creative intelligence – he showed no imagination with his answers.  And this was from a high schooler who was considered one of the top students, based on his I.Q.

Use Your Intelligence

I.Q. isn’t it.  Creative intelligence is.  I.Q. tells you how smart a person is within a limited scope.  But it tells you nothing of their imagination and their range of thought.

You want to use your innate genius potential? Forget trying to raise your I.Q.  Instead raise your C.Q. – your creative intelligence.  You do this by thinking creatively, thinking logically and using your imagination.

Using your creative intelligence – how radical a thought.

Living a Low Density Lifestyle – how radical a thought too.

Creative Intelligence and I.Q.

Creative intelligence and IQ: Which do you think is more important in telling us whether a person has genius capability?

Why IQ, right?  Everybody knows that.  Why just in the news recently was this:

Older Fathers Linked to Lower I.Q, Scores
The children of older fathers scored lower than the offspring of younger fathers on I.Q. tests and a range of other cognitive measures at 8 months old, 4 years old and 7 years old, according to a study that added to a growing body of evidence suggesting risks to postponing fatherhood.

The study is the first to show that the children of older fathers do not perform as well on cognitive tests at young ages. Although the differences in scores were slight and usually off by just a few points on average, the study’s authors called the findings “unexpectedly startling.”

I.Q. Tests Are Limited

Ok, so that must be the truth, right?

Wrong. I.Q. tests can only tell so much.  One thing they tell is whether a person is good at taking tests.  One thing they do is cause the person taking it, if their score isn’t at the high achiever level, to believe that they don’t have what it takes to be a brilliant minded person.

But they are wrong, dead wrong for that. Yes, if the score is high that does mean the person is very bright academically. But that’s not the full picture.

Albert Einstein

The story of Albert Einstein fits right into this. Growing up, his parents wondered if he was slightly retarded, because he had trouble doing mundane tasks. He was a slow learner and not very good at school.  His teachers told him he’d never amount to much.  He was expelled from high school and flunked his college entrance exam. Thanks to a family connection, he got a job as a civil service worker in a patent office. It was there that he devised one of the most famous theories of all history, his relativity theory.

His advances, light years (pun intended) ahead of contemporary theories, seemed to have come out of left field, because he was an unknown with no academic credentials.  But Einstein had something going for him, and it wasn’t I.Q. It was his creative intelligence.

Creative intelligence is a mix of logical thinking, creative thinking and the imagination. It is when you use these three components in some combination that you can access your genius potential.

It’s precisely what Einstein did, and it’s how you can tap into your inner Einstein.

Here’s what Einstein himself had to say about it:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world.”

Here’s another thing: creative intelligence is not linear and not neccessarily accomplished by thinking in words. Often times, to use your creative intelligence, you think visually, using images.

Here’s Einstein again, talking about his thinking processes:

“Words and language, whether written or spoken, do not seem to play any part in my thought processes.  The psychological entities that serve as building blocks for my thought are certain signs or images, more or less clear, that I can reproduce and recombine at will.”

So forget I.Q., and instead use your creative intelligence. It will help you tap into your innate genius ability, and help you live a Low Density Lifestyle.

The Coming Paradigm Shift in Health Care – Part 2