It is curious to note how most of the modern “discoveries” have nothing to do with discoveries. In the field of psychology, it is hard to find anything relevant that is not already outlined—and often better outlined—in the works of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, not to mention the oriental texts. But Dostoevsky’s “polar bear challenge,” or Nietzsche’s observation that “the best ideas come by walking,” rather than being immediately grasped by intuition, had to wait a century for them to be properly validated by idle experimentation. The misery of this time is that it demands that everything bear its distinctive stamp; otherwise it is worthless. So it seems that efforts are directed more at stroking a collective vanity than at widening the extent of what can be called man’s knowledge.
The Best Decisions Come After Long Meditation…
The best decisions emerge after long, albeit shapeless, meditation, which is slowly concentrated to a point where it violently spills over into an impulse that, by volitional action, is immediately allowed to flow out: it materializes in this impulse, and continues to bear fruit. Intuition, taken in the Jungian sense, when developed, is capable of manifesting itself laden with a certainty that surpasses reasoning. It is the flash of a precious faculty. To go against it, in these cases, is to squander it. That is why patience in important decisions is right—but sometimes the most profitable thing is to have the courage to follow the intuition.
The Western Specialist
I reread Patanjali’s sutras, this time commented by an Indian mystic. What a difference! What an abyss separates him from the master doctor specialized in metaethics and philosophy of language! I lack words… The mystic’s concise comments are intended to facilitate the practical understanding of the sutras; they aim, in short, to uncomplicate any ambiguity they may contain in the work. The confrontation with the master doctor is heartbreaking… It seems that the Western specialist puts himself in an intellectual distance that borders on stupidity. He isolates himself from what he analyzes, draws endless comparisons, as if he were aiming for perfect knowledge of the etymology of the words studied, but indifferent to grasping what they represent. He loses himself in an irrational subjectivity, because it is simply absurd to cut the link with reality from a serious study. It is the scientist who knows the technical details of an experiment whose purpose he ignores, the meditation expert who has never meditated. The three hundred pages of commentary to my Yoga Sutra teach less about yoga than Crowley’s one-line summary: “Sit still. Stop thinking. Shut up. Get out!”—a summary which, I bet my right arm, never crossed the master doctor’s mind.
Neuroscience and Art
I was pleasantly surprised to discover the conclusions that neuroscience has reached through encephalography. They all corroborate what, from experience, I have defined as the ideal working methodology. And there is much, much to conjecture… Neuroscientists tell us that, in the state of normal activity of the brain, when awake, there is a predominance in the emission of waves called beta, as well as in the execution of activities that require high concentration. On the other hand, in a state of relaxation, reflexive or meditative, there may be a predominance in the brain in the emission of waves of lower frequency, the so-called alpha waves. The most interesting—although it is not a novelty—is that neuroscientists have noticed a relationship between the emission of alpha waves and several brain manifestations, such as creativity. These observations come in support of the following theory: in art, there are two distinct moments of the creative process: ideation and realization. It is presumable that while realizing the work, the artist’s brain predominates in the emission of beta waves, since it is strongly concentrated on the details of what it is creating. It is not, therefore, the moment when the best ideas for the work will shine, if the observations of neuroscience are correct. Therefore, it is necessary for the artist to define a distinct moment to conceive them, or, in other words, to distribute the brain effort in stages in order to exploit it more intelligently. Neuroscientists have not said what I repeat: creativity does not function, in the brain, as the execution of precise tasks; this means that one cannot obtain immediate results and with the same regularity when stimulating it. But one can certainly stimulate it in a methodical way, letting it work in its own time. This is why for the artist whose routine regularly encloses semi-meditative states, creative explosions are very far from manifestations of God.