The Source and Action of Inspiration

NIkola Tesla revolutionized the ability to harness electricity, through the development of alternating current, which is the basis of our entire electrical grid in the modern world. At one point he described how he received the inspiration for this possibility: “The idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagrams shown six years later in my address before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers… The images I saw were wonderfully sharp and clear and had the solidity of metal and stone.”

Elsewhere he described the visions he received during his youth: “In my boyhood I suffered from a peculiar affliction due to the appearance of images, often accompanied by strong flashes of light, which marred the sight of real objects and interfered with my thought and action… When a word was spoken to me the image of the object it designated would present itself vividly to my vision and sometimes I was quite unable to distinguish whether what I saw was tangible or not.”

Albert Einstein also had something to say about the source of his inspirations: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

“I believe in intuition and inspiration… At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason.”

Einstein recognised a force other than the mind as the source of his inspiration: “The desire for guidance, love, and succor provides the primary source of religious experience… But there is a third stage of religious experience… I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it… The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image.”

When we view these experiential statements by two of the most recognised scientists of the West, we can recognise that they are relating their own interpretation of something that Western philosophy, psychology and science has not heretofore fully explored. We must turn then to the yogic sciences to gain a deeper insight into how these experiences relate to the deeper psychology and the evolutionary development of consciousness.

In each case, with different methods of action, these two individuals describe an action that bypasses the normal step by step, logical, inferential process of the mind. The limitaitions of the mental process were unable to receive these inspirations. It took another form of awareness to receive and make them real for them.

We see in Einstein’s statement his reference to what he called a “cosmic religiouis feeling’. He shows this developed through what we might call an aspiration for a higher guidance. Such an aspiration comes from the psychic being.

In the Rig Veda, Agni represents the flame of aspiration and it is that aspiration that calls for the various other higher powers to manifest. This provides insight to the process whereby the psychic being comes into contact with higher planes of consciousness and brings them forth, with a mechanism of action that falls outside the normal mental framework, in what Sri Aurobindo calls the action of the higher mind, the overmind, the supermind, as further stages of consciousness awaiting their time of complete manifestation in our world.

The Mother writes: “I have also been asked if the psychic being or psychic consciousness is the medium through which the inspiration is perceived.”

“Generally, yes. The first contact you have with higher regions is a psychic one. Certainly, before an inner psychic opening is achieved, it is difficult to have these inspirations. It can happen as an exception and under exceptional conditions as a grace, but the true contact comes through the psychic; because the psychic consciousness is certainly the medium with the greatest affinity with the divine Truth.”

“Later, when one has emerged from the mental consciousness into a higher consciousness beyond the mind, beyond even the higher mind, and when one opens oneself to the Overmind regions, and through the Overmind to the Supermind, one can receive inspirations directly. And naturally at that point they become more frequent, richer, if one may say so, more complete. There comes a time when inspiration can be obtained at will, but this obviously demands considerable inner development.”

reference: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Psychic Being — Soul: Its Nature, Mission and Evolution, Section 6 More Lights on the Psychic Being, pg. 184