Keep in mind that genuine intelligence comes in riddles; that genius strokes its brush only on minds that are open to the strange and unexpected. This head of ours, fiddling as it does with old associations of what was, is not the source of true solutions. Creativity finds its way not through a mental factory, churning out bricks and mortar, but from a mind forced to a standstill. The noise never stops; its gears never end their flips and movements; the thoughts pass one to another as an endless procession of grey clouds. The song in the background, the subtle and sweet music which binds and winds the forces of nature together, is altogether left unheard.

There must be a distinction between product and creation. A man’s machinery produces by its programming a predictable set of reactions that any puppet can be expected to carry out by rote. Underlying what and who we are there however is a possibility that lies as a hidden potential. If a space is made to exist, this sweet song will fill it with silent inspiration and allow a man to create by law of something far more subtle than the crude conditioning of a tamed human being. What that certain thing is which fills the void with its refined scent and essence, where it comes from and how it comes into being, is a matter left for another musing, or another lifetime. Of more immediate and practical concern is how our psycho-soil can be prepared for such a visitation to be welcomed with an open embrace.

Aside from doctrines of religion and the back-and-forth notions of philosophy, there is a formless idea of mystic origin which pops his head into history from time to time. It refers to a visitor, a guest, a master of the household, who at the height of human potential may make itself known. A host of practices appear in our history, focused on mastery over the postures and flexibility of the body, and the harmony of the mind and heart, together as partners in some divine ballet. Scores and lines of teachers and pupils appear, teaching and learning, passing one generation’s understanding and practice to the next. All of it, designed with a precise plan in mind, is carried forth for the sake of encouraging men and women to adopt a way of living which maximizes the potential for this visitation of something higher to take place.

It has to be kept very close to the heart that the actuality of such an event is unknown to us. The nature of genuine creativity, its source and origin, is of a design very far removed from our ordinary level of understanding. If everything from our world view and the practical application of our doings in life were related as the horizontal, then creativity and higher intelligence would be the vertical, a perpendicular reality entirely outside our frame of mind. From a vertical point of view, the laws and rules from which we draw upon to live out our lives have no relevance. What we know of time and space play no reliable part from which to depend on in that world. Very sincerely we must accept that it is unknown and strange, and that the only way to approach it is to clear the space of what we are doing at this very moment and welcome what may appear.