Esteemed physician, researcher and author Dr. Larry Dossey kindly agreed to allow me to excerpt a portion of his latest piece published in the Huffington Post entitled, Where Does Creativity Come From? In it he posits that our creative impulse may be derived from a broader spectrum of information; a field of sorts of which we have an intrinsic connection.
I had the pleasure of perusing this compelling post just yesterday and was particularly struck by his myriad examples that would lead one to truly contemplate the idea that our unique creativity may not necessarily originate with ourselves, nor be generated by our brain but rather gleaned from an infinite field of information that some refer to as the quantum field.
I’ve often contemplated this notion, wondering whether original creations are instead channeled from an all pervading and omnipresent source. This is an intriguing concept and one that allows us all to consider the true access we have to information based on the idea that we are innately hard-wired to this field.
Before we get into Dr. Dossey’s compelling piece, allow me to quote Intuition expert, Sonia Choquette whom I interviewed earlier this year about how we are indeed connected to this quantum field and how “invention” may not reside solely with the individual personality.
Choquette states…
“The heart wisdom of you is an intelligence that actually precedes your brain. It is a profound informing intelligence that works on a number of levels. First, it works on connecting you to information in this realm. So you can actually have telepathic crossovers. This is how two people discovered and argued for quite a time over who discovered the AIDS virus, an American or a Frenchman, because they both did…They were actually telepathically sharing information. We also have souls that have access to far more than our local brain consciously contains and that’s why when all of a sudden you start a new project and you just know how to do it. Get on the ski slopes, I know how to ski. I start renovating a house – all of a sudden I’m designing stained glass windows. How do I know? I don’t really know. Because we access the quantum field.”
…And now, let’s delve a little deeper in to where creativity comes from with Dr. Larry Dossey:
My online dictionary says that "create" means to bring into existence something that is new, something that did not exist before. We often imagine creators as solitary individuals struggling against great odds, trying mightily to craft new inventions, music, or art that is novel, fresh, unique. We assume that prior training and skills are crucial in the creative process. Someone who doesn't know arithmetic will never be a great mathematician. A tone-deaf person will never compose majestic music. Someone who is not grounded in the classics can never be a great philosopher.
So much for logic.
When developmental psychologist Joseph Chilton Pearce was in his early 30s, teaching humanities in a college, he was engrossed in theology and the psychology of Carl Jung. Pearce describes himself as "obsessed" by the nature of the God-human relationship, and his reading on the subject was extensive. One morning as he was preparing for an early class, his 5-year-old son came into his room, sat down on the edge of the bed, and launched into a 20-minute discourse on the nature of God and man.
"He spoke in perfect, publishable sentences," Pearce writes, "without pause or haste, and in a flat monotone. He used complex theological terminology and told me, it seemed, everything there was to know. As I listened, astonished, the hair rose on my neck; I felt goose bumps, and, finally, tears streamed down my face. I was in the midst of the uncanny, the inexplicable. My son's ride to kindergarten arrived, horn blowing, and he got up and left. I was unnerved and arrived late to my class. What I had heard was awesome, but too vast and far beyond any concept I had had to that point. The gap was so great I could remember almost no details and little of the broad panorama he had presented ... He wasn't picking up his materials from me. I hadn't acquired anything like what he described and would, in fact, be in my mid-50s and involved in meditation before I did ... My son had no recollection of the event."
Events like this pose deep questions for creativity. Where does the wisdom come from that makes creativity possible?
Baron Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, the renowned German physicist who was a contemporary of legendary physicists Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr, thought deeply about creativity in science. In any great scientific discovery, he said, "We find the often disturbing and happy experience: 'It is not I; I have not done this.' Still, in a certain way it is I -- yet not the ego ... but ... a more comprehensive self."
What is this "more comprehensive self"? I propose that it is a domain of consciousness that is nonlocal or infinite in space and time, in which all information resides. Throughout history it has been called many names -- the Source, the Absolute, God, Goddess, Allah, Universe. My favorite term is the One Mind, in which all individual minds come together.
The web site of Dr. Larry Dossey
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