We go through this experience often. Something which seems tough and difficult happens just the way desire. Our reservations are dispelled. Within the mind we get surprised ( as we feel ourselves lucky ), but rarely try to understand – why. The doubts of the mind, always emerge out of lack of clarity in the mind. The smaller sensory inputs, which we do not recognize, gets added into memory bank available just to our subconscious. Our subconscious, which it’s omnipresence, has access to the other set of memories and therefore, has different interpretation and vision about the same situation. It is in such situations, we feel presence of the external power that helps us like this – “I always appear in one form or another…a solution or a good idea.. Making things happen..” A conspiracy of the universe.. No doubt when we do not know the minds different ways of working, this is just the explanation we come out with - luck.
We fail to imagine and accept our own capabilities and intelligence and bring in hand of some mystic power in the process; though in reality is it is our subconscious which plays this role. George Washington Carver is one such person, who acknowledge such individual powers, but not the luck factor. Many writer, musicians, painters, scientists have demonstrated the presence and strength of subconscious mind.
A lot can be discussed in this context, as there is immense amount of research findings available now. Scientifically it is called as a “Peak Experience”
This experience is play of creativity of that part of human mind, which is rarely invoked in the normal life by human being. This creativity is manifested through an event or experience about which normal senses hardly have a clue – how and why it happens that way.
The creativeness of the subconscious mind is generally recognized. The act of creation and genius involves an element that rises above the mere superior technical achievement. Artists in the various arts testify to their creation as a work of invisible hand, as if the spirit takes over and endows it with a sublime quality, transforming it to a masterpiece, inspiring the hearts of man. Authors find figures created in their books assume a personality of their own and guide the author to unexpected plot developments. Tesla saw his inventions (alternating current generator) completely at work before his mind's eye.
So many great composers have testified that melodies presented themselves spontaneously in their mind. They felt being partaken in an inspiration that seemed to be outside of their own reach.
Musicians experience that during performances, the spirits seem to merge with the music they play, transforming and adding to it an extraordinary spiritual quality. It is as if their play develops by itself taken over by 'something else' beyond them.
The experience of subconscious interplay in human life has been extensively studied by experts. Advent of modern investigative technologies like EEG, MIR has made these researches more meaningful where the knowledge can now be shared by common people in support to their efforts to seek the fulfillment in the life.
Consciousness and 'presence' remain unfathomable qualities of life. One may wonder, going further on the path of speculative thought, whether the phenomena discussed are all part of a broader fundamental issue: 'What is the nature of consciousness'?
As we have seen earlier, the 'spirit' apparently enriches them with a mysterious quality. Behind the facade of apparently mechanical / physical forms lies a manifestation of unseen interplay of conscious mind with force like a spiritual Internet.
Brain's of people in general, might shut out consciously irrelevant information through a process called "latent inhibition" - defined as an unconscious capacity to ignore stimuli that experience has shown are irrelevant to its needs. Through psychological testing, the researchers showed that creative individuals are much more likely to have low levels of latent inhibition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology says the brains of creative people appear to be more open to incoming stimuli from the surrounding environment.
This means that creative individuals remain in contact with the extra information constantly streaming in from the environment, the normal person classifies an object, and then forgets about it, even though that object is much more complex and interesting than he or she thinks. The creative person, by contrast, is always open to new possibilities. A smarter mind can handle the effects of taking note of a larger number of stimuli and even find interesting and useful patterns by continually processing a larger quantity of familiar information.
Creativity of highest order - Psychologist Abraham Maslow labeled the phenomena 'peak experiences' (PEs). Peak experiences are those moments, lasting from seconds to minutes, during which we feel the highest levels of happiness, harmony and possibility. They range in degree from intensifications of everyday pleasure, to apparently 'supernatural' episodes of enhanced consciousness which feel qualitatively distinct from, and superior to, normal experience.
Some people regard PEs as a norm in a truly healthy, ideal human life. Everyday life is semi-human, and only during peak experiences total human being is fully awake, alert, aware, conscious, alive. PEs are need to be viewed as a privileged insight into 'reality'. Because they represent a higher state of consciousness, knowledge obtained in this state has greater validity than the insights of the normal level of consciousness associated with unexciting and normal life. Therefore, peak experiences constitute some of the most memorable and subjectively significant events in life.
Peak experiences do not strike at random; they are associated with particular circumstances aimed at transformation in personal behavior or goals.
A recent memorable example of a peak experience was reported in an interview on BBC televisions Horizon program in which the mathematician Andrew Wiles described the moment when he solved 'Fermat's Last Theorem'- a problem that has exercised the minds of the greatest mathematicians for three centuries. After working on the problem for seven years in solitude and secrecy, Wiles announced success - only to find a flaw in the reasoning. Another year of tense and desperate work ensued. Then: 'Suddenly, totally unexpectedly, I had this incredible revelation… It was so indescribably beautiful; it was so simple an so elegant. I just stared in disbelief for twenty minutes'. As Wiles recounted his peak experience, he became overwhelmed with emotion at the recollection.
Leo Szilard, the discoverer of the principle of the nuclear 'chain reaction' wrote: 'I remember that I stopped for a red light… As the light changed to green it suddenly occurred to me that if we could find an element… which would emit two neutrons when it absorbed one neutron this could sustain a nuclear chain reaction'. Thus was discovered the concept which led directly to the atom bomb.
Scientific theories, music creations and work of art are even more mysterious than experimental discoveries, in that a breakthrough surfaces without any insight into the steps by which it was reached. Only afterwards attempts are made to assemble a rational pathway by which this insight was attained.
Einstein had key insights into relativity as a very young man (eg. when he imagined what it would be like to ride a beam of light) but several years of work were necessary to turn that insight into published science. And Richard Feynman was using his diagrams to solve problems of quantum electrodynamics theory for several years without being able to explain what he was doing, or why it worked.
The typical insight associated with a PE is integrative in nature, with the sense of meaningfulness that comes from assembling the right things in the right order to make some kind of sense from them. So as well as integration of previous knowledge, the PE is typified by a sense of possibility. The PE can be conceptualized as a point of stillness, where an understanding of the past and the potential of the future intersect. So the PE is a way of reaching of conclusions which have implications. The PE is therefore a kind of symbolic narrative - with roots and branches. It is not simply a pleasant event in a life; it is an experience with the potential to lead onto other things. PE is some kind of personal guarantee of the subjective truth of an insight.
The PE is therefore a signal that states: 'This is good stuff, by your standards - maybe the best you are capable of, under current circumstances. Don't ignore it, don't forget it, and try to understand it'. The PE seems to function as a means of focusing attention - the characteristic emotion asserts that the marked insight is something we should dwell upon. The PE is not - or should not be - simply a passive feeling of happiness and insight.
The crucial variables relate to knowledge base and brain state. A peak experience cannot generate valid new theories unless the person has sufficient knowledge of the field. There has to be something dissolved in the solution before crystallization can occur. The peak experience had the effect of releasing this perceptual valve and allowing more of reality to get through to awareness; giving access to otherwise arcane knowledge concerning events and entities in the universe of which we have no direct experience.
Knowledge is certainly not out there waiting to burst in on our minds when desired. The capacity to attain knowledge, to perceive, and to be aware of our perceptions, is all adaptations that have been painstakingly constructed over an evolutionary timescale. Neither is scientific creativity spontaneous, natural or pre-formed; it is attained by constructive human efforts - something made, not a spontaneous fact of nature.
The neural mechanism associates perceptions with emotions in working memory, so that thought is accompanied by a flow of emotions. These emotions in turn generate a flow of expectations or predictions, which the story may either confirm, or else contradict in interesting ways. What makes a story is essentially this flow of linked emotions, a bodily enactment of physical states that have been associated with those propositions that we use in internal modeling.
Consciousness is not content with recording detached representations, but works by synthesizing events into a linked linear stream which is then projected into the future as a predictive model to guide behavior. As bodily emotions fluctuate, feedback to the brain will monitor and interpret this flux in terms of the meaning of perceptions - the emotions interpret the perceptions. Since the somatic marker mechanism is a device for using emotions to infer intentions and other states of mind, then sequences of emotions will automatically create inferred stories.
Theoretical science works largely by analogy, by modeling as nobody can reason in utter abstraction. Scientists build simplified working models of reality, and map these models onto reality to make predictions - seeking a one to one correspondence between the model and the world.
So it is a fusion of constrained reality, trained aesthetic appreciation and emotional preference that makes possible the scientific peak experience. The peak experience is that moment when analogy strikes us - we see underlying unity, similarity in difference, meaning emerging from chaos - a bunch of disconnected facts coalescing into a story.
The significance of a peak experience is essentially subjective. The apparently self-validating emotion of deep and profound significance which sweeps like a wave across clear consciousness is probably a somatic marker informing us that we have performed cognitions of special importance and significance to our own goals - and to reward us with ecstatic feelings for having done so. It is similar to the satisfaction of a good story, well-told - a story with the ring of truth to it.
The objective validity of the peak experience is determined by a fact whether it stands up to testing by peers. The predictive value identified with a hypothesis attained during a peak experience is not wholly arbitrary, however; it is a product of total awareness. In the first place a person must be competent to assert the hypothesis; he should have a mind that is informed and unclouded. The probable objective validity of a peak experience is affected by the quality of thinking and preparation, and how well he has internalized the processes and constraints of the requisite discipline.
Peak experiences are the result of a 'significance alarm' going off in the brain. When things are working properly, this alarm will only be triggered when something 'important' has happened, that is worthy of continuous attention. So it is often right to take peak experiences seriously - yet their 'significance' is seldom transparent, and one cannot take the insights of peak experiences at face value. Perhaps the best approach is to regard them as a fascinating enigma, a code which may contain a message of profound importance.
Above note is based on an article by Dr. Bruce G Charlton, MD
