CHAPTER V
Genius, Precocity and Reincarnation
"Man's genius is a deity.
-- Heraclitus
"Talk not of genius baffled.
Genius is master of man.
Genius does what it must.
Talent does what it can.
-- Bulwer-Lytton
5.0) Introduction1
Let us first define our terms. By "genius" we shall mean "possession of genii" (rather than a very high I.Q.). By "precocity" we shall mean not only accelerated accomplishment of developmental tasks, but the perfected completion of some extraordinary social skill at an amazingly young age. (These definitions avoid, to some extent, the tautology that if genius is defined as having a very high I.Q., and precocity is defined as a very high first derivative of intelligence with respect to time, namely rate, they are essentially the same.) Furthermore, our definition of genius is perhaps a poetic way of saying that access to right-hemisphere function is operant. Finally, let us define reincarnation negatively as disbelief that the soul is created at birth or conception, and that it cannot return to another reincarnation.
One reason that we favor the definition of genius as "possession by genii" rather than merely a very high I.Q. is that certain characteristics of genius point to access to transcendental power. This power reminds one of Otto's "numinous element" (Gowan 1975:3ff) in that it is possessive, overpowering, fascinating, and mysterious. But it also seems beneficent and revivifying, and while it appears to use the individual for its own expression, it revitalizes him in the process. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in J. W. N. Sullivan's biography of Beethoven (1927:63):
It is probable that every genius of the first order becomes aware of this curious relation towards his own genius. Even the most fully conscious type of genius, the scientific genius, as Clerk Maxwell and Einstein, reveals this feeling of being possessed. A power seizes them of which they are not normally aware except by obscure premonitions. With Beethoven, so extraordinarily creative, a state of more or less unconscious tumult(page 262)
must have been constant. But only when the consciously defiant Beethoven had succumbed, only when his pride and strength had been so reduced that he was willing, even eager, to die and abandon the struggle, did he find that his creative power was indeed indestructible and that it was its deathless energy that made it impossible for him to die.
The juxtaposition of the three words, genius, precocity, and reincarnation,
in the heading require an explanation from the author who has been an avid
student of the first two and a very reluctant one of the third. If one
honestly faces the brutal question: "Why do you have the mind of a genius,
and I have the mind of a cretin?" one is compelled either to abandon the
concept of justice in the universe, or the idea that this is the first
time around. This essay is hence an apologia for having opted for
the side of justice.
Once the plunge is taken, it is rather easy to assign reincarnation as the reason for the precocity of genius. If geniuses merely grew wiser for longer periods than ordinary men, one could, of course, not make this connection; but the fact is that they have incredible rates of intellectual development, much as if they were recalling mental powers, rather than learning them for the first time. It was Socrates who first told us that, "The soul doth remember what she has learned before."
The previous point is important enough to state in another way. There seems to be no a-priori reason why genius should require precocity; it would seem just as feasible for the genius to continue developing after others had left off. But this is never the case. There is elevation both in the variable (intelligence) and in its derivative (rate of development), - thus the hint that there is a third variable (reincarnation) affecting the behavior of the other two is given.
Let us imagine that the principle of reincarnation contains a grain of truth, and that evolving entities whose capacities compass a much larger sweep of abilities than is generally shown in mortal personality desire to incarnate, which is for them a kind of imprisonment in time, space, and personality. Of these three, the last is the most constraining for it involves throwing the dice of the chromosomes so that what is expressed in the mortal personality is but a fraction of what is latent in the entity.
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Let us imagine that occasionally one of these entities is of a higher order, and has so many emergent powers activated that even the random mitosis of the genes results in many unusual abilities. Let us further imagine that of these nascent abilities, which must be developed by the environment to become fully manifested, society esteems only a few, leaving the others as odd, eerie, or discounting them altogether, and concentrating on only the most prosaic, in which the individual may excel.
We now have painted a pretty clear picture of the exotic powers of genius, which have been described heretofore. Moreover, we have provided a rationale for them, and have shown why they are more likely to occur in the able and talented.
If genius means "possession by genii" one may well ask, What produces in able persons the beneficent possession? What activates a gene to become expressive instead of dormant?
Those who believe in control/assistance from relatives and friends beyond the veil may retort that it is due to these effects; those who believe in reincarnation may aver that it is due to the cumulative effect of past lives; those who feel the wish for more personal control of destiny may state that it is due to the will of the individual calling forth those particular preconscious processes which can be beneficial in realizing a strongly held wish to dream. What is incontestable is that of two men equally endowed by nature, one will flower in adulthood, and one will wither; and both the efflorescence and the blight seem to come from other than obvious personal sources.
It may be asked, "What is the task of consciousness in the normal state in the physical world?" The Bible says it is to "build a house, not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." Troward (1909:31) says that it is to develop "subjective will," so that in effect the conscious mind can control the subconscious ability to will and discriminate.
If we consider that in the normal state, consciousness is locked in a triple prison of time, space, and personality, so that it is in effect confined to a single individual cell in a multidimensional space-time, it would seem logical that its task, in the manner of a multiple mathematical integration, is to become aware (and hence functional) throughout time, space, and in every personality. This
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consummation "devoutly to be wished" is indeed de Chardin's "Omega Point," so progress toward it by any one personality in any one incarnation must be necessarily partial and incomplete.
If we admit that the vast majority of humans cannot and do not come to perfection or Buddhahood in a single lifetime, and if we also stipulate that there is some task to be accomplished here in line with the previous argument, then it must follow that those who do not succeed on the first try are enabled to try again. But this is tantamount to admitting the possibility of successive incarnations.
Which is more likely - that a merciful Supreme Being condemns all of his creatures (save the very elect who make it on the first try) to chaotic nescience, or that they are mercifully permitted to try it again? If we answer to the second alternative, we are accepting reincarnation over the one-shot Christian view. Surely, if there is reincarnation, a merciful and just Deity would allow some advantage to carry over from the former trial, not require a start from scratch so to speak. This admission allows for the inheritance of differential aptitudes, i.e., intelligence. And finally, if intelligence, more properly mental age, is a function of time, then its first derivative (precocity) will also be in evidence. We now have shown the connection between the three variables which form the title of this essay.
There is a fairly simple test of the previous argument. If humans of high intelligence are older hands in the incarnation process, then they should, on the average, exhibit more escalation into the creative, psychedelic, and unitive stages than others. The first witness for the affirmative in this matter is, of course, Bucke (1901:81) who clearly defines his 45 elect illuminants as being of greater than average intelligence, indeed most of them remarkably so. Au contraire, it may be argued that those whose theophany became a matter of historical record had the presence of mind to write it down, hence verbally facile to start with. The second witness for the affirmative is none other than Maslow (1954:199-234) in his famous "Characteristics of Self Actualizing People." If you look at his list of 85 or so people, all admittedly creative, they are all very much above average; he also notes that a number of them confessed to the "oceanic" experience of illumination.
It is possible to bring forward examples of men who were
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more saintly than bright, The Cure of Ars, and St. Joseph of Cupertino being two notable examples. In general, however (even without the use of reliable statistical treatment), we must say that the evidence, such as it is, indicates the more frequent propensity of the ablest to escalate into the three highest Eriksonian levels. This is true, moreover, of some very positivistic scientists, men whose scientific creed did not allow them to believe in such things. It may be instructive to take some testimony in this area.
The wise Jefferson believed in a natural aristocracy of man. In an egalitarian society it is not fashionable to think along these lines, but as any animal breeder knows, such inequalities exist among other species, and it is hard to see why they do not exist in ours. Sheldon (1947) called this fineness of texture the "t-component," and believed he could measure it somatically. In a perfectly open society (without caste, and where vertical movement was completely free) socioeconomic class would be correlated with this aspect, which is perhaps one reason why it has always correlated so well with intelligence, though the fact is generally unnoticed. The author is well aware the elitism and racist aspersions may be cast upon anyone impolitic enough to voice these ideas, yet while such egalitarian tendencies prevail in this area, it is at least inconsistent that no such onus attaches to being a powerful football player or a stunning actress. As usual, our prejudices are capricious rather than consistent.
While the "t-component" of fineness of protoplasm, as Sheldon remarks, is obvious in racehorses and show dogs, and putative in man, its temperamental component, natural socio-economic status, is something we fear to talk about in this egalitarian democracy. Nevertheless, the theory of reincarnation gives a logical explanation for this natural regality (an even better word is the original meaning of the word "geniality"). The Hindu four caste system was an early and mishandled attempt to activate this concept.
The relationship of SES to other variables such as intelligence is a very proscribed subject, though there is good evidence that the correlation is substantial. Havighurst's work Growing Up in River City contains some of the best statistics. If the Warner six class socioeconomic taxonomy is set with the lower middle class average IQ at 100, the deviation jump per class is between seven and nine points of IQ.
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To illustrate the power of the SES variable, we quote three isolated
pieces of research:
1 ) Bonsall and SteffIre (1955) found that when gifted children and average children were matched on SES, and then given a personality test, the previous significant differences between gifted and non-gifted children became insignificant.2) When Kinsey brought out his famous study of sexuality in males in 1947, to blunt criticism, he used excellent statistical controls, one of which was SES. One table in his book shows that when a youth of low SES background is to escalate upwardly mobile into a high SES adulthood, his earliest sex habits are those of the group into which he is moving.
3) When the children of the "Termites," (140 I.Q.), were tested, 33% of them were found to be gifted. This frequency is 16 times that in the normal population.
The variable we are talking about here is "natural" SES (the kind
measured by a personality test), not the family SES. If genius, precocity,
and natural SES are often found together, the reincarnation explanation
is reinforced.
Supernormal powers are not always epiphenomena of yoga practices. Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, Book IV, No. 1 (Aranya 1977: 386) indicates that "they come with birth or are attained through herbs, incantations, austerities or concentration."
The eastern view is that powers evident from birth are products of past lives. The western view is that it is due to genetic endowment. The Goertzels (1978:313) after a survey of some psychics in their sample concluded, "There is a tendency for special abilities to run in families." While psychic powers may be explained as developmental (Gowan 1974:ch. 2), there are examples of at least some psychics (v. Eileen Garrett), who had such powers in childhood.
Underhill (1960:77) reports of St. Hildegarde: "Hildegard, plainly an unusual child, says she first experienced this when only three years old, and at five began to understand the visionary world in which she lived. . ." A similar precocity in regard to visions is also reported of St. Catherine of Siena (Underhill 1960:153):
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Even as a child, Catherine, like Hildegarde and other mystics, is said to have received vivid religious impressions... Her precocity was extraordinary. Before she was sixteen she had determined to consecrate her life to God....
The fact that precociousness exists with respect to psychedelic
powers as well as with other intellectual powers, in no way negates the
Developmental
Stage Theory, but is simply another example of the influence of reincarnation
(in this case highly developed incarnations) breezing through a quick review
of previously acquired abilities and skills (much as a review of formerly
learned material brings it above the memory threshold again, while taking
much less time than on the first learning). Indeed, the evidence that these
powers obey the same psychological laws as high talents in music or mathematics
(namely occasional extreme precocity) is merely another indication that
they are all of the same ilk.
It is possible that one cannot properly understand reincarnation from the point of view of individual personality. Let us imagine the existence of a tutelary spirit interested in building a multipersonal or transpersonal corporate entity out of the incarnations of an allied group of persons, much as an ideal number is built out of a family of complex imaginaries. Such a tutelary deity would have the same relationship to individual incarnations as the entire coral has to a single coral cell.
Suppose intelligence of high order represents merit stored in genes from previous incarnations. This results in precocity and escalation into higher stages, which is like the "kicking-in" of overdrive in a powerful automobile with automatic transmission. In humans, such mystic experience is an intuition of the reference beam in the hologram model, in place of the virtual image of physical reality.
Spiritual cloning could then begin. The first step in this process would be the development of synchronous neurone EEG firing in the individual brain and then between individual brains, which would lead to telepathy and hence group order in some sort of depersonalization process.
This writer is certainly not the first to link genius and precocity with reincarnation. Consider the following from Johnson (1953:379):
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A special form of the previous argument concerns the appearance from time to time of infant prodigies. We have a Mozart or a Chopin composing symphonies of great musical maturity or playing an instrument with outstanding skill at an early age, when the teaching or environment are completely inadequate as explanations. We occasionally come across mathematical prodigies - mere boys who can perform elaborate mathematical operations without any adequate teaching or training. We are told of Sir William Hamilton, who started to learn Hebrew at the age of three, and 'at the age of seven he was pronounced by one of the Fellows of Trinity College, Dublin, to have shown a greater knowledge of the language than many candidates for a fellowship. At the age of thirteen he had acquired considerable knowledge of at least thirteen languages. Among these, beside the classical and the modern European languages, were included Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Hindustani and even Malay.... He wrote at the age of fourteen, a complimentary letter to the Persian ambassador who happened to visit Dublin; and the latter said he had not thought there was a man in Britain who could have written such a document in the Persian language.In his classic Human Personality and its Survival after Death, (1903), F. W. H. Myers (himself one) wrote a chapter on "Genius." In view of his interest in parapsychology, one would'A relative of his says, 'I remember him a little boy of six, when he would answer a difficult mathematical question, and run off gaily to his little cart.' Dr. Brinkley (Astronomer Royal of Ireland) said of him at the age of eighteen, 'This young man, I do not say will be, but is, the first mathematician of his age'.2
Genius at an early age cannot be conveniently ignored because of its rarity. It calls for an explanation. By recognizing preexistence, we may reasonably suppose that such outstanding gifts represent an overflow into the present life of great prior achievement in particular fields. In this connection we may recall Plata's theory of Reminiscence: the view that knowledge we acquire easily is 'old' knowledge with which our enduring self has in a previous state of being been acquainted. On the other hand, knowledge which we find difficult to assimilate, or in which we lack interest, may be that which we meet for the first time. So, too, Intuition is possibly to be regarded as based on wisdom assimilated through the experience of past lives.
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expect it to be impregnated with other-worldly concepts. We quote some
excerpts (Myers 1961:74- 83):
When I say 'The differentia of genius lies in an increased control over subliminal mentation,' I express, I think, a well-evidenced thesis, and I suggest an important inference, namely, that the man of genius is for us the best type of the normal man, in so far as he effects a successful cooperation of an unusually large number of elements of his personality reaching a stage of integration slightly in advance of our own. Thus much I wish to say: but my thesis is not to be pushed further: as though I claimed that all our best thought was subliminal, or that all that was subliminal was potentially 'inspiration.'
The monitions of the Daemon of Socrates - the subliminal self of a man of transcendent genius - have in all probability been described to us with literal truth; and did in fact convey to that great philosopher precisely the kind of clairvoyant or precognitive information which forms the sensitive's privilege today. We have thus in Socrates the ideal unification of human powers.It must, however, be admitted that such complete unification is not the general rule for men of genius; that their inspirations generally stop short of telepathy or of clairvoyance. I think we may explain this limitation somewhat as follows. The man of genius is what he is by virtue of possessing a readier communication than most men possess between his supraliminal and his subliminal self.
The present writer does not agree with Myers that easy access to
the right hemisphere is the only necessity for genius; he does agree
that it is the sufficient one. The genius must have the talents of the
left hemisphere which enable him to make thorough preparation in some chosen
area of expertise. Then he must be able to enter the Cave of Aladdin
through right hemisphere excitation and its consequent imagery. It is the
easy access to both these tasks in genius which raises the suspicion that
it is mere rehearsal of a previously learned lesson.
When the sculptor Vigeland was commissioned to do a statue of the great Norwegian mathematician, Abel, he boldly discarded conventions of the past, and posed Abel naked upheld by two gigantic forms. Stang (1965:83) describes Vigeland's concept:
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The two wingless figures which carry Abel on his flight were termed genii by Vigeland. This vague concept, these genii, occurs constantly in the artist's works - only occasionally in the finished work, more frequently in the studies in the round, and repeatedly in the drawings. As a rule these genii are symbols of poetic inspiration, sometimes of germination and growth, and occasionally of ideas themselves.
Speaking of the same genius or daemon, Oliver Wendell Holmes in
a Phi Beta Kappa paper at Harvard said in part:
The more we examine the mechanism of thought, the more we shall see that the automatic, unconscious action of the mind enters largely into all its processes. Our definite ideas are stepping stones: how we get from one to the other, we do not know: something carries us; we do not take the step. A creating and informing spirit which is with us, and not of us, is recognized everywhere in real and in storied life. It is the Zeus that kindled the rage of Achilles: it is the muse of Homer; it is the Daimon of Socrates . . . it shaped the forms that filled the soul of Michelangelo when he saw the figure of the great Lawgiven in the yet unhewn marble... it comes to the least of us as a voice that will be heard; it tells us what we must believe; it frames our sentences; it lends a sudden gleam of sense or eloquence ... so that ... we wonder at ourselves, or rather not at ourselves, but at this divine visitor who chooses our brain as his dwelling place, and invests our naked thought with the purple of the kings of speech or song.
Sullivan (1927:124) discusses the microgenic and ontogenic aspects
of evolution as seen in the life development of a genius (Beethoven):
The human consciousness is a developing thing. It is nourished and fructified by experience but there must be, in addition, an inner principle of growth. A marked increase of consciousness, so far as the human race as a whole is concerned, seems to take aeons to manifest itself. But great artists appear who possess a higher degree of consciousness than that enjoyed by the ordinary man. And amongst such artists are some whose growth in awareness, in sensibility, in power of coordination, is apparent during their lifetime.Geniuses are also apt to escalate fully to the creative and psychedelic developmental stages (Gowan 1974:48ff) and this is perceived by Sullivan (in discussion of the Beethoven Quartets),
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as A new level of consciousness (Sullivan 1927:125):
The actual process of what we have called a growth of consciousness is extremely obscure. When we speak of a new synthesis of spiritual elements, whether these elements be emotions or states of awareness or whatever we choose to call them, we must remember that the synthesis corresponds to a definitely new state of consciousness and is not to be described by tabulating its elements.
Harding (1973:151) also echoes this "otherness" of the artist's
genius:
To the creative artist, his art (or his genius) is like a non-personal creative spirit, almost a divine being, that lives and creates quite apart from his ego consciousness. While the creative urge is on him he feels lifted out of himself; he is exalted, inspired by a spirit breathing through him. What he portrays is not invented by himself; it comes to him he knows not whence.Hirsch (1931:321-31) described certain personality traits of genius as "oversensitive and bashful, sincere but melancholy, requiring solitude, and valuing friendship."
Arieti (1976:340-1) in distinguishing between talent and genius quotes
Hirsch (1931) and Shopenhauer:
Some authors have felt it advisable to stress again the difference between talent and genius or the highest degree of creativity. Talent is seen as an inborn characteristic that has to be cultivated in order to bring about (in some cases) genius or great creativity. In his book Genius and Creative Intelligence (1931), Nathaniel Hirsch discussed, among many other aspects of the problem, the difference between talent and genius. He wrote (pp. 288-289): 'Geniuses themselves ... know that they are not of the same breed as talented persons and are cognizant of greater differences in relation to the talented than to any other group, including the peasant and the prince, the insane and the imbecile. By inherent nature they are antagonistic: the genius creates, the man of talent improves; the genius intuits, the man of talent analyzes and explores; the genius aspires, his life goal is creativity; the talented are animated by ambition and their life goal is power; the genius is ever a stranger in a strange land, a momentary sojourner in a strange inter-(page 272)
lude; the talented are those for whom the earth is a paradise and social adjustment a natural and frictionless vocation. But the genius also has talent, and the development of his talent enables him to objectify his creativity and render it permanent. Genius with but little talent is like a great intellect with poor linguistic abilities; talent without genius is like a brilliant tongue attached to a feeble head.'
Hirsh quoted the philosopher Schopenhauer, who wrote, '. . . talent is an excellence which lies rather in the greater versatility and acuteness of discursive than of intuitive knowledge. He who is endowed with talent thinks more quickly and more correctly than others; but the genius beholds another world from them all, although only because he has a more profound perception of the world which lies before them also, in that it presents in his mind more objectively and consequently in greater purity and distinctness.' Hirsh seems to approve of the concept of genius to which Schopenhauer, himself a genius, adhered. In The World As Will and Idea (Vol. IIII, on Genius), Schopenhauer wrote that the fundamental characteristic of genius is to see the particular in the universal. I believe that implied in Schopenhauer's statement is the qualification 'when such insight is not apparent.' One such case would be that of Newton, as reported in Chapter II, who saw the falling apple as a particular of the universal 'body subjected to gravity.'Hirsh also wrote (pp. 291-292), 'Another characteristic of genius, according to Schopenhauer, proceeding from their unique kind of knowing, is objectivity of the mind of the genius. This is natural, since their thinking is separated from the bodily inclination and subjective desires. The works of genius are produced by an inner or 'instinctive necessity'; genius never proceeds from intention or choice, nor from utility nor gain. For the genius, his works are an end, sufficient and necessary in themselves; for others a means. '
5.1) Genius and its Relationship to Precocity and Reincarnation
In a short section, it would be impossible to discuss fully the psychology
of genius; other more eminent authors have taken whole books for that purpose.
Our task in this limited space is to advance two particular arguments:
1) Genius is precocious, and this relationship has significance.(page 273)2) The behavior of geniuses indicates much more likelihood of "possession by genii" (i.e., easy right hemi-
We shall attempt to forward this line of reasoning with examples of genius from history. Since precocity is particularly found in non-verbal areas of mathematics and music, many of our cases will be drawn from these areas.
Tyrrell (1946:30-36) in an admirable passage, gives examples of the
amazing powers of genius, and then tries to explain them as the synergic
operation of right hemisphere inspiration and hemisphere cognition:
Out of this treasure-house much else may come besides the gems of literature and music. Lord Kelvin had a power of divination. He had 'at times to devise explanations of that which had come to him in a flash of intuition.' 'Edison had 'a weird ability to guess correctly.' ' 'Reiser states that Einstein, when faced with a problem, has 'a definite vision of its possible solution.' ' Sir Francis Galton thought without the use of words: 'It is a serious drawback to me in writing,' he says, 'and still more in explaining myself, that I do not so easily think in words as otherwise. It often happens that after being hard at work and having arrived at results that are perfectly clear and satisfactory to myself, when I try to express them in language I feel that I must begin by putting myself upon quite another intellectual plane. I have to translate my thoughts into a language that does not run very evenly with them.' ' Here again consciousness figures, not as the originator of thought, but as its struggling exponent.(page 274)There have been men possessing extraordinary powers of grasping intuitively the result of a calculation. Bidder could determine mentally the logarithm of any number to seven or eight places, and could instantly give the factors of any large number. 'He could not,' he said, 'explain how he did this; it seemed a natural instinct with him.' Myers gives a list of thirteen such persons, two of whom were men of outstanding ability (Gauss and Ampere), three of high ability (including Bidder) and one, Dase, little better than an idiot. 'He (Dase) could not be made to have the least idea of a proposition in Euclid': yet he received a grant from the Academy of Sciences at Hamburg on the recommendation of Gauss, for mathematical work. In
twelve years he compiled tables which would have occupied most men for a lifetime. It is interesting to observe that the powers of seven men out of this list persisted only for a few years.
F. W. H. Myers, in his excellent chapter on Genius in Human Personality, says that, to be genius, a work must satisfy two requirements. 'it must involve something original, spontaneous, unteachable, unexpected; and it must also in some way win for itself the admiration of mankind.'
Does genius, then, consist of the entry of something into consciousness from beyond the conscious threshold? That in part may be; but it is surely not in itself sufficient to constitute genius. Things may enter into consciousness from without which are not of a particularly admirable kind. Genius, on the other hand, has been defined by Carlyle as 'an infinite capacity for taking pains.' But taking pains will not by itself induce inspiration; it is more likely to kill it. What, then, constitutes genius? I suggest that it is the combination of the two at their best. First the idea must well into consciousness from without; then consciousness must labor to express it. This needs an 'infinite capacity for taking pains.' The technical ability must work on the inspiration. Technical skill alone can produce a flawless piece of work, but not true greatness. That comes from beyond. Yet that which comes from beyond, if bereft of worthy expression, is not great, though it may be suggestive of greatness. Perhaps Coleridge's Kubla Khan was an example of this latter. In genius, inspiration and intelligence are united.
Bell (1937:149) describes the astounding memory of the mathematician
Euler:
All his life Euler had been blessed with a phenomenal memory. He knew Virgil's Aeneid by heart, and although he had seldom looked at the book since he was a youth, could always tell the first and last lines of any page of his copy. His memory was both visual and aural. He also had a prodigious power for mental calculation, not only of the arithmetical kind but also of the more difficult type demanded in higher algebra and the calculus. All the leading formulas of the whole range of mathematics as it existed in his day were accurately stowed away in his memory.(page 275)As one instance of his prowess, Condorcet tells how two of Euler's students had summed a complicated convergent series
(for a particular value of the variable) to seventeen terms, only to swer was found to be correct.
Allison (Scientific American 66:276, 1892) tells of the mathematical
prodigy Reuben Field:
Reuben Field is a native of La Fayette County, Missouri, a very strong, heavy set man, about forty-five years old. He never went to school, even a day, for the sole reason that he was always regarded an idiot. He can neither read nor write, and his reasoning powers have never developed beyond those of a child of the most ordinary intellect. In the face of these facts, however, he has the keenest perception of the relation of numbers and quantities, and is able, as if by instinct, to solve the most intricate mathematical problems. He does not know figures on a blackboard, but he understands them perfectly in his mind. No one has ever been able to 'catch him' in multiplication or in division. He has been given problems as 'The circumference of the earth is, in round numbers, 25,000 miles. How many flax seed, allowing twelve to the inch, will it require to reach around it?' Within a minute he returns the answer: 19,008,000,000. If the distance to the sun or to any of the planets is taken, he answers with as great ease. If given the day of the month and the year on which an event occurred, he instantly gives the day of the week. But what is yet more remarkable is that he can tell the time at any hour, day or night, without ever missing it even a minute. If awakened out of a deep sleep in the darkness of night, and asked the time, he gives it at once. Once in my office I asked him the time. He replied at once: 'Sixteen minutes after three.' In order to test him, I drew him off upon some other question, not letting him know my object, and when seventeen minutes had passed, I looked at my watch, and asked him the time. He said: 'Twenty-seven minutes to four.'
Scripture (American Journal of Psychology 4:1-59, 1891) describes
the remarkable powers of some mathematicians:
It is much to be regretted that no adequate life of Gauss has yet been written; nevertheless, the story of his discoveries is too well known to need mention. We are here interested in his talent for calculation, for Gauss was not only a mathematical genius, --- he was also an arithmetical prodigy, and that, too, at an age much earlier than any of the others.(page 276)
An anecdote of his early life, told by himself, is as follows: His father was accustomed to pay his workmen at the end of the week, and to add on the pay for overtime, which was reckoned by the hour at a price in proportion to the daily wages. After the master had finished his calculations and was about to pay out the money, the boy, scarce three years old, who had followed unnoticed the acts of his father, raised himself and called in his childish voice: 'Father, the reckoning is wrong, it makes so much,' naming a certain number. The calculation was repeated with great attention, and to the astonishment of all it was found to be exactly as the little fellow had said.At the age of nine Gauss entered the reckoning class of the town school. The teacher gave out an arithmetical series to be added. The words were scarcely spoken when Gauss threw his slate on the table, as was the custom, exclaiming, 'There it lies!' The other scholars continue their figuring while the master throws a pitying look on the youngest of the scholars. At the end of the hour the slates were examined; Gauss's had only one number on it, the correct result alone. At the age of ten he was ready to enter upon higher analysis. At fourteen he had become acquainted with the works of Euler and Lagrange, and had grasped the spirit and methods of Newton's Principia.
He was always distinguished for his power of reckoning, and was able to carry on difficult investigations and extensive numerical calculations with incredible ease.
Of Dirichlet it is said that he possessed an 'extraordinary power of memory, by means of which he had at every moment completely before him what he had previously thought and worked out.'The Scientific American (66:230, 1892) gives account of the lightning calculator, Inaudi:Euler had a prodigious memory for everything; this gave him the power of performing long mathematical operations in his head. While instructing his children, the extraction of roots obliged him to give them numbers which were squares; these he reckoned out in his head. Troubled by insomnia, one night he calculated the first six powers of all the numbers under 20, and recited them several days afterwards.
(page 277)
Dr. Marcel Baudoin, who has submitted Inaudi to a special examination, describes the latter's astonishing operations in the following words:We must now make known what extraordinary feats Inaudi is capable of performing. Standing upon the stage near the prompter's box, he turns his back to the blackboards placed in the rear of the stage, and upon which the manager writes the known quantities of the problems given, in order to permit the audience to take account of the calculations effected. With his hands crossed upon his chest, he listens with extreme attention to the question addressed to him, repeats it, and has it repeated, if necessary, until he understands it perfectly. He furnishes a correct solution almost immediately, without ceasing to look straight into the faces of the spectators, without writing anything (he never writes in calculating), and without being disturbed, whatever noise be made. Do you wish an example? He adds in a few seconds seven numbers of from eight to ten figures, and all this mentally, through means peculiar to him. He subtracts two numbers of twenty-one figures in a few minutes, and as quickly finds the square root or the cubic root of a number of from eight to twelve figures, if such number is a perfect square. It takes him a little more time when in this extraction of square or cubic roots there is a remainder. He finds, too, with incredible celerity, the sixth or seventh root of a number of several figures. He performs an example in division or multiplication in less time than it takes to state it. What is still more astonishing, an hour after performing all these mental operations, and after finding a solution of problems that are very difficult to solve by arithmetic, he recalls, with most remarkable precision, all the figures that he has had to operate upon.
Scripture (American Journal of Psychology 4:1-59, 1891) after
a long review of mathematical prodigies, has this to say about their unique
powers of right-hemisphere visualization:
Imagination. One peculiarity in the imaginative powers of the arithmetical prodigies is worthy of remark, namely their visual images. Bidder said, 'if I perform a sum mentally it always proceeds in a visible form in my mind; indeed, I can conceive of no other way possible of doing mental arithmetic.' This was a special case of his vivid imagination. He had the faculty of carrying about with him a vivid mental picture of the numbers, figures and diagrams with which he was occupied, so that he saw, as it were, on a slate the elements of the problem he was(page 278)
working. He had the capacity for seeing, as if photographed on his retina, the exact figures, whether arithmetical or geometrical, with which he was occupied at the time. This faculty was also inherited, but with a very remarkable difference. The younger Bidder thinks of each number in its own definite place in a number-form; when, however, he is occupied in multiplying together two large numbers, his mind is so engrossed in the operation that the idea of locality in the series for the moment sinks out of prominence. Is a number-form injurious to calculating powers? The father seems to have arranged and used his figures as he pleased; the son seems to be hindered by the tendency of the figures to take special places. It would be interesting to know if the grandchild, who possesses such a vivid imagination and in whom the calculating power is still further reduced, also possesses a number-form. The vivid, involuntary visualizing seems to indicate a lack of control over the imagination, which possibly extends to figures, and this perhaps makes the difference.
Colburn said that when making his calculations he saw them clearly before him. It is said of Buxton that he preserved the several processes of multiplying the multiplicand by each figure of the lower line in their relative order, and place as on paper until the final product was found. From this it is reasonable to suppose that he preserved a mental image of the sum before him.Of the other calculators we have no reports. Children in general do their mental problems in this way. Taine relates of one, that he saw the numbers he was working with as if they had been written on a slate.
The well-known case of Goethe's phantom, the case of Petrie, who works out sums by aid of an imaginary sliding rule, the chess-players who do not see the board, etc., are instances of the power of producing vivid visual imaginations that can be altered at will.
Reed (1974:87-8) in The Psychology of Anomalous Experience,
says:
As far as adults are concerned, there have been several studies published of 'memory men' and 'lightning calculators.' Some of these have examined the nature of the visual imagery which often facilitates the remarkable skills of such people. For example, the calculating virtuoso Salo Finkelstein was found to(page 279)
image key numbers and the results of certain calculations whilst he continued to calculate. He could hold these images long enough to refer back to them, thus leaving himself free to concentrate on further stages of calculation. The images could be evoked voluntarily over a period of hours. They were projected at a convenient reading distance from his eyes. But such images were not 'photographic,' for subsequent learning could adversely affect the accuracy of the image of earlier material (retroactive interference). Furthermore he did not acquire an image of visually presented material by any instant 'snap-shot.' He seems to have learned digits by actively organizing and interrelating them in certain practised combinations. Finally, his visual images did not take the form of the original presentations. They appeared to him as though written in chalk on a freshly washed blackboard in his own handwriting. The Russian mnemonist, S. V. Shereshevskii (,S'), utilized voluntary visual imagery as a basic method in his astonishing displays of recall over many years (Luria, 1969). The material imaged included not only series of digits and written material, but scenes and personal situations.
To balance the testimony, we now turn to verbatim statements of
some of the greatest of modern musicians and composers. We are primarily
interested in the mechanics of inspiration, and the process by which the
right hemisphere receives the information. Since most of these nineteenth
century composers were orthodox Christians, we must expect that their words
will be clothed in religious forms.
Here is what Brahms says (Abell 1964:19-21):
To realize that we are one with the Creator as Beethoven did is a wonderful and awe-inspiring experience. Very few human beings ever come into that realization, and that is why there are so few great composers or creative geniuses. . . I always contemplate all this before commencing to compose. This is the first step. When I feel the urge I begin by appealing directly to my Maker ... I immediately feel vibrations which thrill my whole being ... In this exalted state I see clearly what is obscure in my ordinary moods; then I feel capable of drawing inspiration from above as Beethoven did. . . Those vibrations assume the form of distinct mental images... Straightaway the ideas flow in upon me, directly from God, and not only do I see distinct themes in the mind's eye, but they are clothed in the right forms, harmonies, and orchestration. Measure by(page 280)
measure the finished product is revealed to me when I am in those rare, inspired moods . . . I have to be in a semi-trance condition to get such results - a condition when the conscious mind is in temporary abeyance, and the subconscious is in control, for it is through the subconscious mind, which is a part of Omnipotence that the inspiration comes (lbid.:19-21).
R. Strauss in talking about two operas (Elektra and Rosenkavalier)
(Abell: 1964:145-6) has this to say, comparing the two:
While the ideas were flowing in upon me - the entire musical, measure by measure, it seemed to me that I was dictated to by two wholly different Omnipotent Entities . . . I was definitely conscious of being aided by more than an earthly Power, and it was responsive to my determined suggestions. A firm belief in this Power must precede the ability to draw on it purposefully and intelligently . . . I know I can appropriate it to some extent . . . I can tell you from my own experience that an ardent desire and fixed purpose combined with intense resolve brings results. Determined concentrated thought is a tremendous force, and this Divine Power is responsive to it. I am convinced that this is a law, and it holds good in any line of human endeavor.
The great Puccini has much the same story to tell (Abell 1964:156):
The great secret of all creative geniuses is that they possess the power to appropriate the beauty, the wealth, the grandeur, and the sublimity within their own souls, which are a part of Omnipotence, and to communicate those riches to others. The conscious purposeful appropriation of one's own soulforces is the supreme secret . . . I first grasp the full power of the Ego within me. Then I feel the burning desire and intense resolve to create something worthwhile. This desire, this longing, implies in itself the knowledge that I can reach my goal. Then I make a fervent demand for and from the Power that created me. This demand or prayer must be coupled with full expectation that this higher aid will be granted me. This perfect faith opens the way for vibration to pass from the dynamo which the soul-center is, into my consciousness, and the inspired ideas are born . . . The music of this opera (Madame Butterfly) was dictated to me by God; I was merely instrumental in putting it on paper and communicating it to the public ...(page 281)
Here is the composer Humperdinck, quoting his friend, the even greater
composer, Richard Wagner (Abell 1964:181-7):
I am convinced that there are universal currents of Divine Thought vibrating the ether everywhere and that anyone who can feel these vibrations is inspired provided he is conscious of the process and possesses the knowledge and skill to present them . . . I have very definite impressions while in the trancelike condition which is the prerequisite of all true creative effort. I feel that I am one with this vibrating Force, that it is omniscient, and that I can draw upon it to an extent that is limited only by my own capacity to do so . . . One supreme fact which I have discovered is that it is not will-power but fantasy-imagination that creates ... Imagination is the creative force ... imagination creates the reality.
Now we hear from none other than Mozart who says in a letter to
a friend (quoted in Vernon 1970:55):
All this fires my soul and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodized and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or a beautiful statue, at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is I cannot tell! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing, lively dream.And finally, Tschaikowsky, from another letter (quoted in Vernon 1970:57-8):
(page 282)
Generally speaking, the germ of a future composition comes suddenly and unexpectedly . . . It takes root with extraordinary force and rapidity, shoots up through the earth, puts forth branches and leaves, and finally blossoms. I cannot define the creative process in any other way than by this simile . . .It would be vain to try to put into words and immeasurable sense of bliss which comes over me directly a new idea awakens in me and begins to assume a definite form. I forget everything and behave like a madman; everything within me starts pulsing and quivering; hardly have I begun the sketch, ere one thought follows another. In the midst of this magic process, it frequently happens that some external interruption awakes me from my somnambulistic state ... dreadful indeed are such interruptions . . . they break the thread of inspiration ...
Table I3 indicates some of the many commonalities in these remarkable testimonies. For most, it will be seen that the process of such high creativity consists of three phases:
(1) the prelude ritual, which may be conscious or unconscious, ending often with an invocation,(2) the altered state of consciousness, or creative spell, during which the creative idea is born, starting with vibrations, then mental images, then the flow of ideas which are finally clothed in form. This syndrome often proceeds with extreme and uncanny rapidity in what is always referred to as a trance, dream, revery, somnambulistic state, or similar altered condition, and
(3) the postlude in which positive emotions about the experience suffuse the participant. Both Brahms and Puccini enjoined on Arthur Abell a wait of a half-century before this testimony could be published, so sacred and private did they feel this revelation to be.
Let us analyze the initial effect experienced in the altered state
of consciousness. It is vibrations, (the very word is used by Brahms,
Puccini, and Wagner, while Tschaikowsky speaks of "pulsing and quivering").
For anyone familiar with physics, vibrations immediately suggests a resonance
effect. (We all know how through sympathetic vibrations, that a depressed
silent piano key will begin to sound when that exact pitch is played on
another nearby instrument.) "Being in tune with the Infinite" may be more
than a mere religious figure of speech of yesteryear. For the nearest modern
physical model is that of a radio receiver, which, when tuned to the exact
wavelength of the sending station, can amplify and recover sound made miles
away. Resonance effects are also playing an important part in the development
of recent particle physics, so it is clear that these statements of creative
composers have guided us to an important behavioral science principle completely
congruent with physical science models.
Let us now examine the function of very high intelligence in furthering
this creative afflatus. The following are some speculations which need
to be verified by future research:
1 ) High intelligence may be necessary for the energy and amplification necessary to receive the signal at all; this would correspond to the power aspects of a radio receiver.(page 283)2) High intelligence may be necessary for the ability to translate the vibrations into images and then to musical
notation. This would correspond to the high fidelity aspects of the receiver.3) High intelligence may be necessary for the intuitive leaps by which creative geniuses reach fully formed conclusions.
4) High intelligence is necessary for storing the memory bank with the words, notes, and numbers which can be actuated by the flash of inspiration.
Nowhere else is precocity found so abundantly as in music. Indeed,
Fisher (1973) devoted an entire book to this subject alone, listing several
hundred who acquired fame for composing or performance before their majority,
and sometimes in childhood. We learn (p. 17) that Handel was considered
"a first-rate musician at the age of fifteen," that Mozart (p. 19) "at
the age of eight played in London." Of his performance Bach declared, "it
surpasses all understanding." Mozart composed operettas before eleven,
and at fourteen was admitted to two Philharmonic Academies. Schubert (p.
20) had a precocity which "would be incredible were it not verified by
many of his contemporaries." He produced over 250 songs when seventeen
and eighteen while holding a full-time job. In the case of Mendelssohn
(p. 27), "By twelve his output included piano trios, a violin and piano
sonata, quartets, fugues, motets, symphonies, operettas and a cantata."
Paganini (p. 37) wrote his first sonata at eight and made his violin debut
at nine. Liszt (p. 43) at the age of nineteen "was already a famous prodigy
pianist and composer." Rubenstein (p. 46) made his debut at nine. These
are only a few of the more famous musical prodigies.
We are fortunate to have a modern researcher who specializes in case histories of geniuses - Kathleen Montour (cf Stanley, George and Solano, Eds. 1978). We quote from Montour's account of two such who died young (1978:68ff):
The Histories of
Chatterton and Galois
Chatterton(page 284)Thomas Chatterton was born in Bristol, England on November 20, 1752, a few months after his schoolmaster father had died and left his widowed mother to raise her impoverished family alone. Hardly any other fatherless boy from such poverty could have managed the success he did, but from the age of five Thomas had pride and ambition to exceed the expecta-
tions of his class. Above all he had a burning need to earn recognition of his superiority. This was not satisfied during his brief stay on earth, but how many boys who died in a London slum before their eighteenth birthday were lauded by Dr. Johnson, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats?(page 285)At age four Thomas was called a confirmed dullard until some brightly colored capitals in one of his father's folios caught his eye and he was willing to learn his letters. His mother, realizing her son's distaste for primers, taught him to read with a blackletter Bible whose medieval script awakened in him an enduring love for antiquity. The former dullard, who Cox estimated had a childhood IQ of 170 (Cox, 1926, p. 663), now read continuously until bedtime. When he was eight he was sent to a charity school, Colston's Hospital, whose monkish blue uniform delighted the little antiquarian. But the school's rudimentary curriculum had been conceived to instill conformity and was entirely unsuitable for Thomas. He was not taught the classics or Latin and Greek, so he could never qualify to enter a university, which was impossible anyway since Colston's did not even supply scholarships. The little Bristolian supplemented this dry regimen by spending his pocket money to borrow books; between the ages of ten and eleven Thomas read at least seventy books on theology, philosophy, divinity, and history, not the usual boyish fare. By now his Muse, versifying, had seized him. When he was ten years and two months old his first little poem, piously entitled The Last Epiphany, appeared in Felix Farley's Journal. Some more religious verses of his were accepted by the Bristol newspaper. By the time the boy poet was eleven he was also writing satires.
When he was fourteen Thomas was apprenticed to a scrivener, condemned to spend his days copying documents instead of writing poetry. For all his talent and charm, the lowly apprentice knew that the gentry would not accept at its real worth poetry coming from a boy of his station. So he invented the fifteenth century poet-priest T. Rowley and presented as the work of Rowley his own production ingeniously disguised by elaborate forgery. He searched for a patron who would bring him quick wealth and acclaim but got nowhere. A group of Bristol men brought the clever youth into their society, lending him books and giving him stimulating company, but they exploited him by taking his 'Rowleys' for a fraction of their value. In retaliation Thomas published stinging satiric poems attacking their personalities. Having alienated the locals, he tried to interest Horace Walpole by corresponding with the famous critic and sending him Rowleys. The vain aristocrat
was flattered and praised Thomas' efforts until the boy confessed he was only a poor sixteen-year-old apprentice, whereupon Walpole dropped him flat. Walpole was also stung by Thomas' poetic barbs. The latter thought his situation so grim that suicide seemed to be the only escape from his dismal surroundings. Twice Thomas left suicide notes lying about to be found. His master, Lambert, fearing a scandal, let Thomas out of his indenture. The boy was glad to win his freedom from Lambert, who had the effrontery to treat the haughty boy like a servant.Much of the teen-aged author's writings were published in many London journals, for which he got little remuneration but many promises. With this encouragement and borrowed money he set off there to make his fortune. Initially, the great city was very receptive. For the first time in his life Thomas had his own money and could send presents back home to his doting family. The people with whom he mingled were more exciting than any he had known in Bristol. He had contacts with influential political editors and was even acquainted with Lord Mayor Beckford, the liberal hero of London. But the political winds changed and his publishers were imprisoned. Things got steadily worse. Beckford died suddenly. Thomas was not paid money owed him for his writing, so he could not pay his small but insurmountable debts. His last hope was that his Bristol surgeon friend, William Barrett, would recommend him as a ship's doctor because of his small knowledge of medicine, but Barrett refused to help him. Thomas had nowhere else to turn, and everything had gone wrong. In his last few days with no money for food, he was actually starving. He was still seventeen when he took his own life with arsenic.
Galois(page 286)Evariste Galois had a more secure start, but he came to know as much hardship as his English literary counterpart. He was born to the comfortable life of an upper-middle-class major's son on October 25, 1811 in Bourg-la-Reine, a town near Paris. He too had pride, ambition, and a sense of superiority like Chatterton's, but he also inherited political fervor and hatred of injustice from his parents. These qualities would ultimately lead to his undoing, as they had for Chatterton.
Evariste's educational picture was bright in the beginning, but only briefly. Until he was twelve he was educated at home by his mother, a woman with an excellent classical education. Then he was sent to the Lycee Louis-le-Grande in Paris. At
first a good dutiful student who took all the prizes, he changed when he saw real tyranny for the first time as the school director mercilessly put down a student revolt. The boy was embittered against authority for good. But it was the awakening of his mathematical genius that was the greatest influence on his life.(page 287)His first exposure to mathematical writing was not just any ordinary text, but Legendre's elegant geometry. It took good students two years to master Legende but he read it from cover to cover as easily as a novel. With Legendre under his belt young Galois could not be satisfied with mere schoolbooks from which to learn algebra, so he read the original works of the best mathematicians of France. By the time he was fourteen he had mastered algebra at the level of a mature mathematician while his peers plodded along at the basics. His teacher, Richard, who had given France some of its best mathematicians, realized that the brilliant young pupil's thought inhabited the highest reaches of mathematics, but his other teachers demanded the youth comply with a curriculum he rightly viewed as inadequate for him. Instead of giving him the freedom to explore mathematics, they piled more and more onerous tasks on the recalcitrant youth.
The rebellious lad knew there was only one place where he belonged, the famous Ecole Polytechnique; not only would it serve his gifts, but also his politics, for the Polytechnique was a hotbed of republican sentiment. Galois had already made significant mathematical discoveries by the time he was seventeen, and on March 1, 1829 had published in the Annales de Mathematiques his first paper 'dealing with hitherto unprojected problems in equations' (Davidson, 1939, p. 97), so no one deserved to be there more than Evariste did. But because of his quirk for working mentally, he made a poor showing on the entrance examination, failing it twice and was never allowed in. Even more frustration buffeted the poor boy. Twice his submissions to the Academy of Sciences were carelessly lost by the referees, the great mathematicians Cauchy and Fourier. To the boy who was already beside himself by not winning recognition, it must have seemed like a conspiracy to keep him down. Then his father committed suicide over something his political enemies did to him. Following the Revolution of 1830 Evariste's sharp pen got him expelled from the university after only two semesters. He tried to support himself by giving private lessons on what are now considered important ideas in algebraic theory but got no takers then. His last desperate attempt to receive his due in mathematics from the Academy
was returned by the famous mathematician Poisson with the comment 'incomprehensible'; it is now Galois theory, or the general solution of equations. He had had enough from hated academicians and society in general. Feeling oppressed because his mathematical genius was unappreciated, he turned away from it and devoted his energy to radical politics instead.
Though after his death he earned lasting repute for his mathematics, during his life Evariste received more acclaim as a patriot than he ever did as a mathematician. At the time he wrote the memoir rejected by Poisson he was a member of the artillery of the National Guard, which called itself the 'Friends of the People.' He was arrested twice, once for threatening the king and another time on a trumped-up charge. It was only on the second charge that he was actually put in prison, but the government now regarded him as a dangerous revolutionary. His short stay in prison was highly traumatic for the proud, sensitive youth. After his release he had an affair with a low woman who disillusioned him with love. Unfortunately, it was also a part of a plot to lure Evariste, frail and nearsighted, into a duel against two men. Knowing he would lose, Galois frantically scribbled down his ideas so that future mathematicians might decipher this issue of his desperation and allow them to survive him. The next day the young duelist, wounded in the intestines and left to die in a field, was found and brought to a hospital. There he died of peritonitis on May 31, 1832. A few days after the twenty-year-old youth had succumbed, Evariste Galois was given a heroic funeral for his patriotism, his genius overlooked by the mourners. The life of this tormented pioneer of algebraic theory was so brief that the work he left behind amounted to only sixty-one pages.Montour (1976:173ff) also followed up three precocious modern youths in an article from which we quote:
History and biography are bountiful resources of precocity for this purpose. Catharine Cox's The Mental Traits of Three Hundred Geniuses (Cox, 1926), revealed that a number of historical figures had dramatically shortened their academic training (even by early standards), thereby becoming able to start their careers much sooner. Paul Dudley, who according to Sibley was the youngest person to enter Harvard College (at age ten), received his A. B. degree at age fourteen in 1660 and went on to become a prominent jurist in colonial Massachusetts (Shipton, 1933). John Trumbull, the Early American lawyer-poet who authored M. Fingal and the Progress of Dulness, passed the entrance examination to Yale College when he was(page 288)
seven and a half but waited until he was thirteen before he entered. He remained there as a student, then as the recipient of a bachelor's degree, and after that, as a tutor for nine years (Bowden, 1962). Verrill Kenneth Wolfe, the modern counterpart of Dudley and Trumbull, graduated from Yale College in 1945 at the age of fourteen. He majored in music at Yale and spent seven more years studying it after graduation before entering medical school. He is now a professor of neuroanatomy at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
In more recent times we have seen the likes of three other remarkable
men who entered college notably young and began to make their marks early
in life because of it. The late Norbert Wiener, father of cybernetics,
graduated from Tufts College at fourteen and wrote a book about his early
life as a child prodigy called Ex-Prodigy (Wiener, 1953). A. A.
Berle, Jr., Secretary of State under Franklin D. Roosevelt, entered Harvard
College at age fourteen and graduated cum laude from Harvard Law
School, - also as precocious. Robert B. Woodward, the Nobel prize-winning
chemist, graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the
age of nineteen in 1936 and was awarded his Ph.D. the very next year.
Three Examples of Verbal Precocity from 1920
An article published in the Literary Digest (November 13, 1920) provided the most finds when it came to tracing the typical grown-up 'child genius.' It gave the names of three boys who entered Harvard and Columbia while still rather young and who are still alive in 1975. 1 was able to ascertain what became of all three. It was possible to interview one man personally when he was on the Hopkins campus. Another has corresponded with me a few times. In the case of the third man, Who's Who in America contains an extensive listing on how his career has progressed.
L, Now a Physician
The first man, L., was twelve years old when he passed the Harvard entrance examinations and fourteen when he was admitted. At age three he was fluent in German and English, could read anything put before him in either language, and could answer questions about what he read. When he entered the first grade at age six he suffered the not uncommon fate of the advanced gifted child: the teacher did not realize that L could already read and more. His situation was finally improved only after he was seen by his teacher reading a newspaper in his father's office. During the months after that incident he(page 289)
was promoted until he was placed at his proper level in the fourth grade. He entered high school when he was about nine.L's ambition right from childhood was to become a professor of classical languages. As a pre-schooler he began to teach himself Latin by translating books from Latin and back again, then comparing his versions with original Latin sources. When he entered the first grade he knew as much Latin as the average college sophomore did. In the same way he taught himself Greek and could compose Greek poetry by the time he reached high school.
M, Now a Professor
L's fellow underage member of the Harvard Class of 1924 is now a professor of classics at the University of California at Los Angeles. M was fifteen when he entered Harvard. He did this by skipping two grammar school grades and by telescoping his high school years from four years to three by carrying an extra load. He got his A. B. degree when he was eighteen, his M.A. at nineteen, and his Ph.D. at twenty-one in 1927. That year he became a member of the UCLA faculty, but his promotions came at an unusually slow rate because, beyond coauthoring two books, he did not publish much. This was probably due to his overwhelming interest in music, rather than teaching, research, or other professional concerns. He was made a full professor at age sixty-five.
Though he makes claims to be the contrary, M is an impressive letter writer and has made to me what seems to be very astute observations regarding success. He credits his 'family background of unstinting encouragement and sympathetic tastes' as an immeasurable asset to intellectual endowment, which the unfortunate L never enjoyed. He also mentions that gifted persons still face the fight 'to obtain a living, sometimes at the cost of unremunerative 'talents'.' M himself decided to defer to his all-exclusive interest in music, which was apparent from his early youth, over professional consideration.
Hollingworth's Child E, Now Dean of a College at Cambridge University
E, the third person in the article, was a man who was able to combine both a 'favorable background' and the right compromise of his 'unremunerative talent,' serving as proof of the validity of M's formula for success. In a book entirely devoted to children with IQ's over 180, Hollingworth (1942, pp. 134-158) recorded the details of his life as the case history of Child E. He was enrolled at Columbia University in 1920 at age twelve.(page 290)
Having been elected to membership in the Phi Beta Kappa Society, he graduated in 1923 at age fourteen. Shortly after his A.B. (which took him only three years), he earned more degrees; his master's degree from Columbia in 1924; his Ph.D. at Columbia in 1931; Master of Sacred Theology, General Theological Seminary, 1933 and 1934; and an honorary Doctorate of Sacred Theology degree in 1956 from General Theological Seminary. In 1969 he received an M.A. from Cambridge University.E's parents took great pains to provide their unusual son with special educational advantages, including a trip to Denver in 1918 to witness a solar eclipse. His father wanted his son to enter Harvard and his mother favored New York University, but both allowed their son to go on to Columbia, his own choice. In turn, E became a minister in the Episcopal Church, his mother's fondest wish for him. By this move, E might have done a disservice to his visible creativity, but he found an outlet for it in his work as a theological scholar on such topics as Byzantine Egypt. His entry in Who's Who in America contains a long list of publications. In 1969 E was a lecturer in Divinity at Cambridge. Today he is Dean of Chapel of Cambridge's Jesus College, a position he has held since 1972.
Emerson like Jefferson believed in a natural aristocracy of intellect
in "Politics and Society" (Miller 1967:286-307). Discussing "the permanent
traits of the aristocracy" he called them "model men," "true pictures of
excellence," and "living standards" (ibid:287). This caste is "not
a man of rank, but a man of honor" - a gentleman. Speaking of "the terrible
aristocracy that is in nature," he states (ibid:290): "I affirm
that inequalities exist not in costume, but in powers of expression and
action." He also declares (p. 291 ), "The existence of an upper class is
not injurious as long as it is dependent on merit." Then he gives his prescription
by which men may be recognized to enter this "superior class" (p. 292-8):
1 ) "a commanding talent" (which is used as with inventors to benefit all.)2) "genius ... the power to affect the imagination." These powers "raise men above themselves," the first example of which is eloquence.
3) "elevation of sentiment, refining and inspiring manners."
From all this it is clear that Emerson viewed aristocracy of intellect
as made up of three components, talent, eloquence, and moral
(page 291)
ascendency. His definition of genius as eloquence is somewhat strange to our ears, although "power to affect the imagination" speaks to empery over right hemisphere functions of imagery and the like, and coincides from at least one point of view with Socrates' definition of his genius or daemon, as a familiar and benevolent attendant spirit.
5.2) Precocity as the End Product of Foetalization or Neoteny
If a "genius is a forerunner," is it possible the precocity in genius is an ontogenic earnest of neoteny in the species? We know that the evolution of human beings has telescoped the latter part of primate life in favor of a stretching out of the adolescent part. In work elsewhere (Gowan 1972:91-5) it was said:
"Man represents a unique combination of an animal base and a consciousness which soars to the stars. Nature produced him by a process which Bolk (1926) called the 'foetalization of the ape.' This involved an enlargement of the immature phase of primate development and its more prominent emphasis in the life span which made possible new and increased opportunities for complex learning and experience. Foetalization in man, then, describes a stretching out of the docile learning period into a larger proportion of the whole life span. During this plastic dependency and apprenticeship, mammalian family life and play extended conditioning and more complex learnings into developmental changes which transformed the primate into a human being.
"In all humans, this lengthened span of immaturity which reaches into the first three decades is devoted to learning and education, and hopefully to creative performance, before man becomes in senility more like an old ape - taciturn, solitary, hairy and immobile. Through foetalization, evolution provides opportunity for man to develop a creative mind before he degenerates into a reactive ape-like creature. Man, of course, does not become an ape, but without stimulation of his higher faculties, he, too, may experience premature senility (like the ape at an earlier age).
"Human beings often feel that they are the final and perfect product of evolution, which has somehow ceased with the production of this masterpiece. There is no reason to believe, however, that the forces of evolution are no longer in operation. Evidence of this continuation may be seen in differences between superior
(page 292)
and more average individuals in any society, for the life style of the superior individual points the directional thrust of evolutionary progress for all mankind. Nature seems to have granted superior youth a little more time in the foetalization process and to have placed more emphasis on this period. In consequence, such fortunate individuals tend to have a youthful aspect, even in maturity.
"Furthermore, bright young males go through a process of continued foetalization which makes them appear younger and less mature (viewed in relation to their own ultimate growth and attainments) than more average youth. The Kinsey and Pomeroy study (1948) was one of the first to report this in regard to differential sexual practices, but such differences may well extend to other aspects of human behavior.
"Nature has also favored the superior youth by giving him more 'peak' to shoot at. In other words, because of the increased range of development for him, he is longer in the process of getting there, and being longer in process, he reaps the multiple benefits of that process. A third advantage results from individual efforts made by persons themselves, while in process of growth, to create new experiences and responses, preventing them from a premature atrophy into an unself-actualized old age. These efforts are interactions with the environment and are not concerned (as are the previous) with hereditary or genotypic characteristics.
"Perhaps it is desirable again to emphasize that foetalization is not feminization, but a process of slowing up of aging in superior males. It does not refer to effeminacy or to homosexuality. Superior male adults evidence a youthful quality which preserves their verbal ability, creative power, and dynamic process. John F. Kennedy represents a good example of this process which gave him a youthful vitality when he was actually in middle age. He is also a good example of male heterosexuality.
"It is possible that W. T. Sheldon came as near as anyone to identifying this quality when he talked about the 't-component' (1949, p. 21 ). He calls it 'the component of thorobredness' or 'the physical quality of the animal,' and he distinguishes it from gynandromorphy (or having a female type figure). This index of 'tissue fineness' has a psychological correlate in the 'occupational level' scale of the Strong Vocational Interest Blank. Males high in
(page 293)
intelligence or the professions tend to show feminine interests (and females show the opposite). Indeed Walberg (1969), in a study entitled Physics, Femininity, and Creativity, traces the interesting relationship between these variables.
"We know that the relationship between an abnormal (XYY) chromosome male and the average (XY) male is that the latter compared with the former is brighter, more docile, more social and less destructive. Can we not extrapolate that the relationship between the average male and the superior individual is at least a small continuance of the same process, so that the latter becomes brighter, more docile, more social, and less destructive (more creative)?
"Indeed, it is remarkable that in many creative men, one finds a conscious attempt to explore 'feminine' interests and to gain the 'balance' and 'receptivity' which psychological femininity adds to the individual's powers. Interestingly enough, no less a person than Erikson studies this very facet in the heroic life of Gandhi (1969). Gandhi, as revealed by Erikson's psychoanalytic biography, deliberately sought to 'mother' his parents and early in life to assume nurturance of others. This in-depth analysis of a modern saint makes fascinating reading because of its uncovering of the developmental process and the conscious effort at feminization in Gandhi's life. (Our cultural values force us to regard this process as 'feminization,' but actually full paternity in the generativity stage involves nurturance, 'succorance' and other gentle virtues toward one's children which are undervalued or underemphasized in our violence-prone culture so that we regard expression of them as somehow 'feminine.')
"Some aspects of Gandhi's childhood and parental relations, as revealed by Erikson, provide a picture of a bright, precocious and creative child who early assumed a protective relationship toward others. Especially significant to Erikson are Gandhi's relationships with his mother and father. The close mother-son bond, often seen in creative men, is found here, but the specific trend in Gandhi's life appears to have evolved out of his special attachment-ambivalence toward his father whom, Erikson suggests, Gandhi sought to 'redeem.'
"Surely this process, for which we have used the somewhat inappropriate words 'foetalization' and 'feminization' (because no
(page 294)
better ones exist), is far more a positive integration and summation of both sexual roles rather than a regression toward effeminacy or homosexuality. It is seen in the peculiar and concomitant relationships which such men have with their fathers - as that of equal. It is as if they wish to become their own fathers or to redeem the father. Thus Erikson says of Gandhi (1969, p. 102): 'The child is the father of the man makes new, special, and particular sense for special men; they indeed have (i.e.) become their own fathers, and in a way their father's fathers while not yet adult.' "
A similar idea was echoed by Professor Sylvester in a presidential address
to the British Mathematical Association in 1869 as quoted by Bell (1937:405):
There is no study in the world which brings into more harmonious action all the faculties of the mind than mathematics ... or . . . seems to raise them, by successive steps of initiation to higher and higher states of conscious intellectual being . . . The mathematician lives long and lives young; the wings of the soul do not drop early off, nor do its pores become clogged with the earthy particles blown from the dusty highway of life.We are here dealing with profound issues, which are not easy to understand fully. Let us recapitulate the effects seen in male geniuses, (we omit the females out of ignorance, not prejudice). We find a higher level of neoteny than the average, an increased youthfulness, more evidence of the "t- component" in the body, a certain "feminization" of interests, more nurturance and compassion, a more balanced character structure. Is it not possible that all these effects are derivatives of a long series of incarnations, which has mellowed and smoothed the psyche like oak charcoal smooths out Bourbon Whisky? (The increased feminization could be caused by the input of feminine incarnations.) If we look at the phrase "gifted children," we are talking about "gifts" (i.e. something, not earned, at least in this life). Is there not some presumption that these gifts may have accumulated from merit acquired somewhere else?
Let us now turn from these fanciful speculations to more solid research.
(page 295)
Cartmill, in a scholarly review (Science 199:1194-5) 1978 of
S. J. Gould's Ontogeny and Phylogeny says in part:
In the second half of the book, Gould lays out his own ideas about ontogeny and phylogeny, which represent an exceptional creative synthesis of developmental biology and ecological theory. He begins by drawing a fundamental distinction between somatic growth and reproductive maturation. When the former is accelerated relative to the latter, ontogenetic trends are continued further in the descendant than in the ancestor, and recapitulation results; if the absolute time from conception to maturation stays constant, we get Haeckelian recapitulation by terminal addition and condensation. Evolutionary change that speeds up reproductive maturation relative to somatic growth produces the opposite result, pedomorphosis - that is, an adult descendant that looks like a juvenile ancestor. Gould is mainly interested in pedomorphosis, and he distinguishes two processes that yield it: progenesis (absolute acceleration of maturation, without comparable acceleration in somatic growth) and neoteny (retardation of growth without comparable retarded reproductive maturation).
The conclusion of the book, in which Gould tries to revive Bolk's theory that people are neotenic apes, is less convincing. Somatic growth in Homo, Gould notes, is both absolutely and relatively retarded compared to that of apes, and we retain into adulthood the short faces, bulging brain cases, hairless skins, and slender erect necks of fetal apes. Gould accounts for all this by showing that fetal rates of brain growth, facial elongation, and so on continue far longer after birth in Homo that in other anthropoids.
Gould acknowledges that some of man's distinctive traits cannot be explained by invoking neoteny, but argues that most of the standard counter-examples to Bolk's theory can be analyzed as effects of retarded somatic development.
(page 296)
The bright group evidenced formal operations far more frequently than the average groups of the same age. Thus the
major finding was that brightness, psychometrically defined, implies cognitive developmental precocity within the stage theory of Piaget.He summarizes (ibid.:98):
This research again confirms the empirical relationship of brightness and precocity and does so across differing traditions. Although it can offer no explanation of this relationship, it does allow for speculation on the topic. It seems that brightness leads to precocity.
Cohn (1979:317) notes the relationship between genius and precocity:
The argument that individuals experience different rates of intellectual development has been well established in the 20th century. Recently, Keating (1976) has shown that . . . 'brightness as measured by psychometric testing implies developmental precocity in reasoning.' 'Students . . . selected for high scores on psychometric tests . . . are indeed precocious in cognitive development, and not just good 'test-takers.' He adds: 'Since, according to Piaget, cognitive development proceeds as an interaction of the organism and the environment, the brighter individual would be at an advantage moving through the successive stages more quickly.' In addition, Keating's work (pp. 97- 98) suggests that such acceleration should occur within developmental stages, such as concrete operations or formal operations, rather than across stages.
We should not conclude this section without giving a few examples
of precocity in different areas.
Underhill (1960:77) describes the psychic precocity of St. Hildegarde:
During childhood and adolescence she had constant interior visions and premonitions of the future, accompanied by much ill-health. Before dismissing these stories as absurdities we should remember that her career proves her a woman of genius; and that such spiritual and psychical precocity undoubtedly exists, and is the raw material from which a certain sort of mysticism may develop. A long series of instances, from the call of Samuel to that of Florence Nightingale (visited by an imperative sense of vocation when six years old),(page 297)
warns us that we are far from understanding the conditions underlying human greatness.Hildegarde's account of her visions is unsensational and exact. They were pictures, she says, seen within the mind, 'neither in dream, sleep, nor any frenzy,' involving no hallucination and never interfering with her outward sight.
Another testimony to a child's ability to see through the sensory
hologram is found in Wilson (1971:537):
In Man's Latent Powers (1938), Phoebe Payne describes the 'psychic aura' of living things: 'I remember well that as a tiny child my absorbing interest in flowers was due not only to their beauty, but to the curiosity of 'watching their wheels go round' in the form of their different emanations, some of which showed as a fuzz of luminous mist, while others radiated in a shower of minute sparks or 'prickles,' and I soon learned to associate a 'nice smell' with a flower from which there rose a column of silvery smoke. In the same way, my delight in playing with any kind of animal was partly caused by the fun of experimenting with different effects produced by tickling or clutching at the responsive 'something' with which it was surrounded. Throughout my early years I was unaware that not everyone experienced such contacts.'Bell (1937:340ff) tells us of the precociousness of the Irish genius, W. R. Hamilton:
The tale of Hamilton's infantile accomplishments reads like a bad romance, but it is true: at three he was a superior reader of English and was considerably advanced in arithmetic; at four he was a good geographer; at five he read and translated Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and loved to recite yards of Dryden, Collins, Milton, and Homer - the last in Greek; at eight he added a mastery of Italian and French to his collection and extemporized fluently in Latin, expressing his unaffected delight at the beauty of the Irish scene in Latin hexameters when plain English prose offered too plebeian a vent for his nobly exalted sentiments; and finally, before he was ten he had laid a firm foundation for his extraordinary scholarship in oriental languages by beginning Arabic and Sanskrit.
The tally of Hamilton's languages is not yet complete. When William was three months under ten years old his uncle reports that 'His thirst for the Oriental languages is unabated. He is(page 298)
now master of most, indeed of all except the minor and comparatively provincial ones. The Hebrew, Persian, and Arabic are about to be confirmed by the superior and intimate acquaintance with the Sanskrit, in which he is already a proficient. The Chaldee and Syriac he is grounded in, also the Hindoostanee, Malay, Mahratta, Bengali, and others. He is about to commence the Chinese, but the difficulty of procuring books is very great. It cost me a large sum to supply him from London, but I hope the money was well expended.' To which we can only throw up our hands and ejaculate Good God! What was the sense of it all?By thirteen William was able to brag that he had mastered one language for each year he had lived. At fourteen he composed a flowery welcome in Persian to the Persian Ambassador, then visiting Dublin, and had it transmitted to the astonished potentate.
On July 7, 1823, young Hamilton passed, easily first out of one hundred candidates, into Trinity College. His fame had preceded him, and as was only to be expected, he quickly became a celebrity; indeed his classical and mathematical prowess, while he was yet an undergraduate, excited the curiosity of academic circles in England.
Myers (1961:76-7) gives two examples of arithmetical prodigies:
I shall now endeavor, in response to your request, to give some account of my late brother Benjamin's faculty of arithmetical calculation. My brother very early manifested a marvelous power of mental calculation. When almost exactly six years of age Benjamin was walking with his father before breakfast, when he said, 'Papa, at what hour was I born?' He was told four A.M.(page 299)
Ben - 'What o'clock is it at present?'
Ans. -'Seven fifty A.M.'
The child walked on a few hundred yards, then turned to his father and stated the number of seconds he had lived. My father noted down the figures, made the calculation when he got home, and told Ben he was 172,800 seconds wrong, to which he got a ready reply: 'No, papa, you have left out two days for the leap years - 1820 and 1824, ' which was the case.In the year 1837 Vito Mangiamele, who gave his age as 10
years and 4 months, presented himself before Arago in Paris. He was the son of a shepherd of Sicily, who was not able to give his son any instruction. By chance it was discovered that by methods peculiar to himself he resolved problems that seemed at the first view to require extended mathematical knowledge. In the presence of the Academy Arago proposed the following questions: 'What is the cubic root of 3,796,416?' In the space of about half a minute the child responded 156, which is correct. 'What satisfies the condition that its cube plus five times its square is equal to 42 times itself increased by 40?' Everybody understands that this is a demand for the root of the equation x 3 + 5x 2 - 4 2x - 40 = 0. In less than a minute Vito responded that 5 satisfied the condition; which is correct. The third question related to the solution of the equation x5 - 4x - 16779 = 0. This time the child remained four to five minutes without answering: finally he demanded with some hesitation if 3 would not be the solution desired. The secretary having informed him that he was wrong, Vito, a few moments afterwards, gave the number 7 as the true solution. Having finally been requested to extract the 10th root of 282,475,249 Vito found in a short time that the root is 7.
Bell (11937:221 ) describes the precocity of the mathematician Gauss
who, before he was three, corrected his father:
One Saturday Gerhard Gauss was making out the weekly payroll for the laborers under his charge, unaware that his young son was following the proceedings with critical attention. Coming to the end of his long computations, Gerhard was startled to hear the little boy pipe up, 'Father, the reckoning is wrong, it should be . . . .' A check of the account showed that the figure named by Gauss was correct.Before this the boy had teased the pronunciations of the letters of the alphabet out of his parents and their friends and had taught himself to read. Nobody had shown him anything about arithmetic, although presumably he had picked up the meaning of the digits 1, 2.... along with the alphabet. In later life he loved to joke that he knew how to reckon before he could talk. A prodigious power for involved mental calculations remained with him all his life.
Scripture (American Journal of Psychology 4:1-59, 1891) describes
the precocity of the French electrical savant, Ampere:
Ampere.---The first talent shown by Andre Marie Ampere, 1775, at Lyon, 1836, at Marseilles, was for arithmetic. While(page 300)
still a child, knowing nothing of figures, he was seen to carry on long calculations by means of pebbles. To illustrate to what an extraordinary degree the love of calculation had seized upon the child, it is related that being deprived of his pebbles during a serious illness, he supplied their places with pieces of a biscuit which had been allowed him after three days strict diet.As soon as he could read he devoured every book that fell into his hands. His father allowed him to follow his own inclination and contented himself with furnishing him the necessary books. History, travels, poetry, romances and philosophy interested him almost equally. His principal study was the encyclopedia in alphabetical order, in twenty volumes folio, each volume separately in its proper order. This colossal work was completely and deeply engraved on his mind. 'His mysterious and wonderful memory, however, astonishes me a thousand times less than that force united to flexibility which enables the mind to assimilate without confusion, after reading in alphabetical order matter so astonishingly varied.' Half a century afterwards he would repeat with perfect accuracy long passages from the encyclopedia relating to blazonry, falconry, etc.
At the age of eleven years the child had conquered elementary mathematics and had studied the application of algebra to geometry. The parental library was not sufficient to supply him with further books, so his father took him to Lyon, where he was introduced to higher analysis. He learned of himself according to his fancy, and his thought gained in vigor and originality. Mathematics interested him above everything. At eighteen he studied the Mecanique analytique of Lagrange, nearly all of whose calculations he repeated; he said often that he knew at that time as much mathematics as he ever did.
Remarkable memory for long passages - an ability akin to eidetic
imagery - is particularly pronounced in children, between the ages of five
and nine. Like eidetic imagery, this mnemonic ability often fades in adolescence.
There are several possible explanations:
1) it is a carry-over from pre-literate times when the young were expected to learn the oral tradition by heart;(page 301)
2) it is an ability that expresses itself early but is not then continuously stimulated by the culture;
3) it is an effect of transient memory of skills of past lives, which fades after early evidence, much as the recall of dreams fade after early morning.
'We know very little about this ability, and more research into it would be useful.
At four, Francis Galton (Forrest 1974:6), who later was to be the first
man to study genius psychologically wrote the following:
I can read any English book. I can say all the Latin substantives and adjectives and active verbs besides 52 lines of Latin poetry. I can cast my sums and multiply.... I can say the pence table. I read French a little, and I know the clock.
Forrest's biography of Galton's amazing versatility in later life
confirms that he was a genius of the first order.
Arieti (1976:343) reports that "John Stuart Mill was reading at three," and learned algebra at eight. Goethe wrote Latin poetry at eight.
In each of the cases of Galton and Mill we are witness to very high ability of genius level coupled with very rich and concentrated early environmental stimulation.
Montour (Stanley, George and Solano 1978:59) describes the remarkable
childhood of the youngest full professor:
Charles L. Fefferman appears to be the youngest person in recent history to be appointed a 'full' professor at a major university. Fefferman was born in Washington, D.C. on April 18, 1949, which means that when he became a full professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago in 1971 he was only 22 years old. To have achieved this honor at the age when most students are only receiving their baccalaureate, Fefferman had to have been both extremely precocious mathematically and highly accelerated educationally.(page 302)Fefferman first showed a strong interest in mathematics when he was around nine years old. At that time he had begun studying science independently, but found that his rudimentary arithmetic would not explain college-level physics. His father, a Ph.D. in economics, taught his son as much mathematics as he knew. Very soon, however, it became necessary for a University of Maryland mathematics professor, James Hummel, to take over the boy's tutoring. As a junior high school student, Charles won a regional science fair with his mathematics ex-
hibit. By the time he was 12 years old he was taking courses at the University of Maryland campus near his Silver Spring home. At Hummel's urging, Charles bypassed high school and entered college as a full-time student at 14 years of age.As a student at the University of Maryland, Fefferman combined his studies with an active, normal life while making the first strides that would lead to a phenomenal career. He lived at home, socializing with friends still in junior high school, and yet found time to write his first scholarly article (this appeared in a German journal when he was 15). In 1966 he became the youngest student in the University of Maryland's history to receive a bachelor's degree. The barely seventeen-year-old youth had majored in both mathematics and physics. At the ceremony he was also awarded his high school diploma.
In 1969 Fefferman received his Ph.D. degree in mathematics from Princeton University shortly after his 20th birthday and stayed on there a year as a mathematics instructor. Subsequently, he became an assistant professor on the University of Chicago's faculty in 1970. 1n 1971 he won the Salem Prize for his outstanding work in Fourier analysis. That same year, one year after his appointment as an assistant professor, Fefferman was promoted to the rank of full professor. Fefferman has since returned to Princeton as a full professor of mathematics. In 1976 at barely age 27 he became the first recipient of the $150,000 Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation.
Montour (Stanley, George and Solano 1978:57) describes the amazing
development of another prodigy:
In September of 1945 Merrill Kenneth Wolf of Cleveland, Ohio, became quite possibly the youngest American ever to receive the baccalaureate when he took his B.A. in music from Yale College at the age of barely fourteen (his birthdate was 28 August 1931). Because Yale was on a special accelerated schedule during W.W. II, Wolf completed his degree requirements in less than the usual number of academic years.(page 303)Prior to his Yale career, Wolf had a most amazing development history, being highly precocious both verbally and musically. When he was an infant of only four months he began to speak his first words. At the age of six months he said his first full sentence, 'Put on another record.' In a personal communication to the writer dated 3 February 1976, Dr. Wolf explained the context of this remark: 'Phonograph recording was still a
very imperfect technique in 1931, and the pianola, which we now think of as a saloon accessory, was an important medium of classical musical reproduction. It was another pianola roll I was asking for, and the device served as my first - in some ways, my best - piano teacher. About a year and a half later, my mother discovered me playing the piano myself, and apparently imitating tolerably well what I had seen the mechanical device do in the way of depressing given keys to obtain given sounds. Confronted with this, my father taught me to read music, and lessons with a professional teacher then followed, at age 3.' By this time his non-musical education had commenced; his father was using flashcards printed with whole words, not just letters, to teach the baby how to read. On his first birthday Kenny was given a first-grade reader, for which he was by then ready.When he went to school for the first time at the age of six he was placed in the sixth grade. On his first day of school his classmates were being given a final examination, which the little boy took and easily passed. His presence disrupted the class, however, and therefore his parents were asked to take him home. When he was eight he found the junior high school mathematics class he was attending so boring that he lasted only two days before asking to be kept home.
Montour (Stanley, George and Solano 1978:54) tells of the precocity
of Phillipa Schuyler:
In 1940 Phillipa Schuyler was nine years old, but according to the Clinic for Gifted Children at New York University she had the mental age of a sixteen year old, which meant that her IQ was 185. At that age she read Plutarch for fun, wrote poetry dedicated to her dolls, and had composed more than 60 piano pieces. The little girl who had a contract to create new compositions for an NBC radio program was generally acclaimed as a genius, but her parents disagreed. To George S. Schuyler, a black journalist and former H. L. Mencken protege, and his wife Josephine, the daughter of a white Texas banking family, their child's precocity was largely due to the special diet of uncooked meat and other raw foods she was raised on.(page 304)Whatever the reasons for Phillipa's achievements were, her parents succeeded in helping her to grow up right and begin an eventful career (perhaps partly by the way in which they kept her unaware of the publicity she received). Phillipa graduated from her convent elementary school when she was ten, and was educated at home after that so she wouldn't feel out of
place. The girl liked to describe her experiences with music, and became well-known as a pianist and composer. She was placed on the National Guild of Piano Teacher's honor roll after she entered their tournament at age four and played 10 compositions, six of which she herself had written. She was so popular that when she was nine a day in her honor was proclaimed at the New York World's Fair. At age fifteen she made her professional debut as a pianist-composer in the Lewisohn Stadium with the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra.Further information of Phillipa as a musical prodigy is given by Fisher (1973:74-5):
Philippa knew all four alphabets (printed and written-capital and small) and the numerals as well, by the time she was eighteen months old. Not long afterwards a writer for the New York Herald Tribune devoted two columns to her achievements, headlining his story 'NEGRO BABY 21/2 READS, WRITES, SPELLS, AND QUOTES OMAR KHAYYAM.' Her spelling vocabulary of several hundred words included such choice tidbits as Constantinople and rhinoceros.Montour (Stanley, George and Solano 1978:55) describes two "Quiz-Kid" prodigies:
The same interviewer who saw Philippa at 2 1/2 visited her again when she was five. She could now add, subtract, multiply, divide, and so on; but she could also discuss such things as cosmic rays, and the difference between war and revolution. In between she dashed to the piano, playing, singing, doing dance steps while the adults talked. Her compositions ran the gamut from 'Nigerian Dance' to settings of nursery rhymes and fairy tales to 'Vegetable Dance,'
Philippa finished grammar school when she was ten, even though she had spent part of each year giving solo piano recitals (mostly for charity) all over the country. Deems Taylor, who had interviewed her reluctantly on radio when she was six, discussed music gravely with her between her selections, coming to the startling conclusion: 'This is no infant. This is a born musician.'
(page 305)
Joel Kupperman, who was called a 'midget Euclid' by Time magazine (Time 1943), reportedly had an IQ over 200 and was
able to hold his own with older contestants when he came on the show at age seven. In an effort to keep him in a grade lockstep with his peers, Joel was given special work. Somewhere along the line, however, he opted to accelerate his school progress. He got his A.B. (Bachelor of Arts) degree from the University of Chicago at barely eighteen, an S.B. (Bachelor of Science) degree a year later, and a master's degree the following year. He went to Cambridge University to study philosophy and received his Ph.D. in 1963 at age 27, after taking a couple of years off. He was made a full professor at the University of Connecticut in 1972 at age 36. He has a number of publications in his specialty, ethics and aesthetics.In the opinion of Life magazine (Life 1940), George Van Dyke Tiers was also something of a prodigy. He took his S.B. degree at age 19, his S.M. (Master of Science) at age 23, and his Ph.D. at age 29, all from the University of Chicago. He had a Coffin fellowship during his graduate study years and received the Carbide Award of the American Chemistry Society in 1959 at approximately age 32. He has been a research associate with the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company since 1951.
The case of William James Sidis, son of Harvard psychology professor
Boris Sidis, is sometimes held up as a horrible example of the supposition
that prodigies burn themselves out at an early age. Montour (Stanley, George
and Solano 1978:53) after reviewing Sidis' life has this to say:
Sidis always expressed great animosity towards his father for parading his accomplishments and having him branded as a freak. As a result, he strenuously avoided academic life and all publicity until his death in 1946 at age 46. Although it meant dying penniless and alone, Sidis managed to thwart his father's aim to produce the ideal man in his son.We do not detail here the unhappy life of William Sidis as a proto-typical example of the burnt-out prodigy. On the contrary, William Sidis, often taken as the norm, was a notable exception. Sidis is the only celebrated prodigy who we know failed almost totally intellectually and vocationally. We do not know how he might have turned out with far less parental pressure. Children of his extreme cognitive ability need much thoughtful loving help in order to develop well intellectually and personally.
Montour (1978:68) quotes Sarton on the precocity of genius:
(page 306)
When it 'explodes. . at the beginning ... of life' (Sarton, 1921, p. 373), youthful genius allows its possessor no escape from the tumult of mental activity it brings. Sarton, who recognized that there were distinctions in the nature of genius, held genius to be less adaptable to environment, less tractable by education, and far more exclusive and despotic. Of its intensity he said: 'if the necessary opportunities do not arise, ordinary abilities may remain hidden indefinitely; but the stronger the abilities the smaller need the inducement to awaken them. In the extreme case ... of genius, the ability is so strong that if need be it will force its own outlet.'
She also talks about some of the problems of precocity (ibid:74):
The ambitious youth who comes into his gift early and who has an honest assessment of his intellectual powers is in a difficult position, because whichever way he turns he is resented. If he does not want to waste time furthering his career and tries to move ahead like any grown-up with talent would, adult society views him as an impertinent upstart. Likewise, because he has a sense of purpose and superiority, his carefree peer group, unaware of matters with which he is concerned, finds their brilliant member smug and insufferable.
Koestler (1964:703-4) relates:
A related phenomenon is the dazzling multitude of infant prodigies among scientists. For every Mozart, there are about three Pascals, Maxwells, Edisons. To quote only a few examples: the greatest Renaissance astronomer before Copernicus, Johann, Mueller, from Koenigsburg, called Regiomontanus (1436-1476) published at the age of twelve the best astronomical yearbook for 1448 ... went to the University of Leipzing when he was eleven, and at seventeen enjoyed European fame, he died at forty. Pascal had laid the foundations for the modern treatment of conic sections before he was sixteen. Jeremiah Horroacks (1619-1641) applied Kepler's laws to the orbit of the moon, and made other fundamental contributions to astronomy before his death at the age of twenty-one.... Clerk Maxwell ... had his first mathematical paper read before the Royal Society at the age of fifteen....In this section we have attempted (albeit clumsily) to deal with an important but obscure subject. Evidence from biology suggests that nature telescopes the time allotted for the accomplish-
(page 307)
ment of developmental tasks which the organism finds simple, and spreads out the time allotted for the accomplishment of higher tasks which the organism finds difficult. (One may recall that in Huxley's Brave New World, new lives were decanted as adolescents, having passed childhood in utero or more accurately in vitero.) If geniuses are earnest of future course of evolution, then we may expect to find similar trends in their lives, and these characteristic effects may give us clues as to the ongoing course of developmental progress both in the individual and in the species. Precocity, as the derivative of development with respect to time is the measure of this change.
5.3) Reincarnation or Something Grander?
It is best not to pour new wine into old bottles. Reincarnation is an old bottle since it assumes the reality of successive incarnations following one another in an orderly sequence. But, if in accordance with the Pribram-Bohm hologram model we locate the theater of real action outside of time and space, then we reduce the holographic virtual image which appears in time and space as a multiple-manifesting appearance - an explicate apparition in the world of effect which only mirrors the permutations of an implicate reality in the world of causes. Instead of the successive reincarnations as the reference standard, we are then enabled to regard the subtle prototype as the template which gives form to the other appearances - remembering always that this ideal is outside of time and space and in another order of reality.
Let us consider the time sequence in a dream, calling it t1. Now compare this sequence t1with real time when the dreamer awakes, which we will call T1.It is obvious that t1 bears only an imaginary relationship to T1, since it is not in any past, present or future segment of T14. Now let the dreamer fall asleep again on night 2 and dream another dream whose time sequence is t 2. He again awakes to real time T 2 ; and again there is no real relationship. Let us repeat this cycle at pleasure, and an interesting conclusion will emerge: Not only does tx bear no real relationship to Tx, but the relationship between the various t's (the dream sequences) is random, whereas the relationship between the various T's is real and sequential.
Let us now compare the successive dreams to successive incarnations so called of an entity which is awake in some transcen-
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dent real time. Whereas the real time sequence is real, it is impossible to say the same of the dream sequences: each separate incarnation has its own separate time. Herein is one of the pitfalls of looking at reincarnation as a series of sequential incarnations.
Neo-Platonism of every variety has always insisted that this world is
a dull and adumbrated counterfeit of a shining higher vivency wherein the
very stones are precious. Countless mystics bear witness to this phenomenon.
Miller (1957:84) quotes Thoreau:
We get only transient and partial glimpses of the beauty of the world. Standing at the right angle we are dazzled by the colors of the rainbow in colorless ice. From the right point of view every storm and every drop in it is a rainbow. Beauty and music are not mere traits and exceptions; they are the rule and character... I have seen an attribute of another world and condition of things. It is a wonderful fact that I should be affected, and thus deeply and powerfully, more than by aught else in all my experience - that this fruit should be borne in me, sprung from a seed finer than the spores of fungi, floated from other atmospheres!. . . Here these invisible seeds settle, and bear flowers and fruits of immortal beauty.Nowhere is there a clearer vision of this paradise than that of the English mystic Thomas Traherne (Happold 1970:369):
The corn was orient and the immortal wheat, which never should be reaped nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting. The dust and stones of the street were as precious as gold; the gates were at first the end of the world. The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me... The men! 0 what venerable and reverend creatures did the aged seem!... And the young men glittering and sparkling angels, and maids strange seraphic pieces of life and beauty!... Boys and girls tumbling in the streets and playing were moving jewels. I knew not that they were born or should die. All things abided eternally as they were in their proper places...
Leuba (1972:255) calls this phenomenon of a peculiar appearance
of light or brilliance like gemstones in common objects "photism" and he
describes many instances of it in both religious and non-religious subjects.
As a skeptic of things mystical, he regards it as a mental aberration.
That this occasional ability to see ultimate reality behind
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the hologram of sensuous reality is not confined to mystics like Traherne,
but is (as Wordsworth said), often found in our childhood is seen in the
following from the autobiography of the psychic Eileen Garrett (1968:24):
It soon became obvious that I saw things differently, and knew things instinctively. I saw people, not merely as physical bodies, but as if each were set within a nebulous egg-shaped covering of his own. This surround, as I called it for want of a better name, consisted of transparent changing colors, or could become dense and heavy in character - for these coverings changed according to the variation in people's moods. I had always seen such surrounds encircling every plant, animal and person, and therefore paid less attention to the actual body contained within. When I referred to these misty surrounds, no one knew what I meant, although it was very difficult for me to believe that others did not see these enveloping each living organism. From their tone and color, I could tell whether a person was ill or well, and this was equally true of the plants and animals.
In a lecture on "Visionary Experience" (Huxley 1977:191 ff) asked
the question, "Why are precious stones precious?" His answer:
Why should precious stones have always been regarded as extremely precious? Well, this question was asked some fifty years ago by the distinguished American philosopher, George Santayana, and he came up with this answer. He said, I think, that they are precious because, of all objects in this world of transience, this world of perpetual perishing, they seem to be the nearest to absolute permanence; they give us, so to say, a kind of visible image of eternity or unchangeableness.And here I shall quote from another philosopher of antiquity, Plotinus, the great neoplatonic philosopher, who in a very interesting and profoundly significant passage says, 'In the intelligible world, which is the world of platonic ideas, everything shines; consequently, the most beautiful thing in our world is fire.'
Now, it is an interesting fact that we will speak about diamonds having fire, that the most precious, most valuable diamonds are those with the greatest amount of fire, and the whole art of cutting diamonds is of course the art of making(page 310)
them as brilliant as possible and making them show off the greatest amount of fire within. And indeed it can be said that all precious stones are in a sense crystallized fire. It is very significant in this context that we find in the Book of Ezekiel, when he is describing the Garden of Eden, he says it is full of stones of fire - which are simply precious stones - so that we see, I think quite definitely, that the reason why precious stones are precious is precisely this, that they remind us of this strange other world at the back of our heads to which some people can obtain access, and to which some people are given access spontaneously.
In Heaven and Hell, Huxley (1963:100-109) returns to this
theme:
Every paradise abounds in gems, or at least in gem-like objects resembling, as Weir Mitchell puts it, 'transparent fruit.' Here, for example, is Ezekiel's version of the Garden of Eden. 'Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold.'(page 311)
In describing their Other Worlds, the Celts and Teutons speak very little of precious stones, but have much to say of another and, for them, equally wonderful substance - glass. The Welsh had a blessed land called Ynisvitrin, the Isle of Glass; and one of the names of the Germanic kingdom of the dead was Glasberg. One is reminded of the Sea of Glass in the Apocalypse.Most paradises are adorned with buildings, and, like the trees, the waters, the hills and fields, these buildings are bright with gems. We are familiar with the New Jerusalem. 'And the building of the wall of it was of jasper, and the city was of pure gold, like unto clear glass.... And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones.'
Hence man's otherwise inexplicable passion for gems and hence his attribution to precious stones of therapeutic and magical virtue. The causal chain, I am convinced, begins in the psychological Other World of visionary experience, descends to earth and mounts again to the theological Other World of heaven. In this context the words of Socrates, in the Phaedo, take on a new significance. There exists, he tells us, an ideal world above and beyond the world of matter. 'in this other earth the colors are much purer and much more brilliant than
they are down here.... The very mountains, the very stones have a richer gloss, a lovelier transparency and intensity of hue. The precious stones of this lower world, our highly prized cornelians, jaspers, emeralds, and all the rest, are but the tiny fragments of these stones above. In the other earth there is no stone but is precious and exceeds in beauty every gem of ours.'In other words, precious stones are precious because they bear a faint resemblance to the glowing marvels seen with the inner eye of the visionary. 'The view of that world,' says Plato, 'is a vision of blessed beholders'; for to see things 'as they are in themselves' is bliss unalloyed and inexpressible.
These views are very near to those of Transcendentalism, as we hear
from Miller (1957:23) quoting C. M. Ellis:
That belief we term Transcendentalism which maintains that man has ideas, that come not through the five senses or the powers of reasoning, but are either the result of direct revelation from God, his immediate inspiration, or his immanent presence in the world.
In Transcendentalism, with Emerson and Thoreau we get echoes of
Eastern reincarnation, as witness the obscure transcendentalist poet, Hedge
(Miller 1957:271):
Will its life with mine begun
Cease to be when that is done?
Or another consciousness
With the self-same forms impress?Or - more wonderful - within
New creations do begin;
Hues more bright and forms more rare
Than reality doth wear,
Flash across my inward sense
Born of mind's omnipotence.
In introspecting on the elements making up a reincarnation, Johnson
(1953:384) wrote as follows:
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We are, of course, here in a region of speculative thought, and the ideas put forward are of the 'revelatory' character on the value of which each person must form his own opinion. In
two interesting books of Geraldine Cummins5 which are the product of automatic writing, there are given communications purporting to come from F. W. H. Myers, one of the distinguished scholars who founded the London Society for Psychical Research. He made the following writings: 'As there are certain centers in the brain, so in psychic life there are a number of souls all bound together by one spirit, depending for their nourishment on that spirit.... It explains many of the difficulties that people will assure you can only be removed by the doctrine of reincarnation.... Many soul-men do not seek another earth-life, but their spirit manifests itself many times on earth. There may be contained within that spirit twenty souls, a hundred souls, a thousand souls. The number varies. What the Buddhists would call the karma I had brought with me from a previous life is, very frequently, not that of my life, but of the life of a soul that preceded me by many years on earth, and left for me the pattern which made my life.... When your Buddhist speaks of the cycle of births, of man's continual return to earth, he utters but a half-truth. I shall not live again on earth, but a new soul, one who will join our group, will shortly enter into the pattern or karma I have woven for him on earth. . . . You may say to me that for the soul-man, one earth-life is not enough. But as we evolve here we enter into those memories and experiences of other lives that are to be found in the existence of the souls that preceded us and are of our group. I do not say that this theory which I offer you can be laid down as a general rule. But undoubtedly it is true in so far as it is what I have learned and experienced.'
Whiteman (1961:81) from his "separation (OOB) experiences" is another
writer who believes in the "monad" theory of personality:
All these types of experiences ... thus point to a very great difference in structure between our free personal consciousness in a separated state . . . and the normal state of our personality when we are immersed in the world. If the former be described as a monad which is the expression of our proper personality, then these experiences . . . exhibit the physical personality ... as a constellation of monads.... The process of separation is essentially a simplification of the physical personality by the sloughing off of some or all of the improperly harmonized monads in it.This view is better explicated by Prof. Price in the introduction to Whiteman (1961:xvi):
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Dr. Whiteman's own theory of these sub-personalities is formulated in terms of the Leibnizian terminology of monads. A person's true or higher self is one single monad. Let us call it A. But in earthly life it is combined with several other monads, B, C, and D, and the lower self is a rather loosely unified group consisting of the higher self together with these others.... In other-worldly experience, however, this rather loose-knit combination is temporarily dissolved ... and then these monads B, C, and D are liable to present themselves.We may compare this construct with the Kahuna view of the high spirit, the middle spirit, and the low spirit in man (Long 1954:100ff).
Krippner (1975:183) advances the theory of the late William Wolf with
regard to the reincarnation of energy complexes:
His paper, which appeared in the Journal for the Study of Consciousness, was titled 'Are We Ever Reborn?' In it, he described how during the body's disintegration and diffusion at death, many of the energy complexes and combinations that had constituted the body during its lifetime do not break down completely into elementary particles. Instead, they remained as structured, combined entities for varying periods of time.Those energy clusters from human beings who lived some years ago, according to Wolf, might well float around in the cosmos, ready to be picked up and then assimilated by some organism that happens to be present. Not only must the organism be present at the right time and place to assimilate the energy complex, but its process of development must be such that the assimilation can take place. If this occurs, the energy cluster becomes a part of the living person and may function as a quality of that person's memory. Wolf described the energy complexes by stating: 'We might best view them as configurations, structures, or organized units of primary undifferentiated energy, which may have become assembled thousands of years ago and may have been part of succeeding generations of human or any kind of nonhuman organism.... Such a transmitter might well be an energy configuration, a pattern or template for something like DNA, RNA, an enzyme, a protein, polypeptide or similar compound.'
Wolf reiterated that these complexes could be picked up by an organism providing that they would 'fit a lock' or 'fill a vacuum,' reflecting a particular need of the organism.(page 314)
The idea of reincarnation as the reason for genius is reinforced by
Stearn (1976:72-3) who is asking a scientist for his reasons for believing
in reincarnation. The reply:
We are always meeting people we feel we have known before. Some people discover talents and powers at an early age they had no way of acquiring in this world, like Mozart's writing music at the age of five, and another child prodigy of eighteen months playing popular tunes on the piano.
When we reflect on the enormous loss to the psyche when it leaves the state of the numinous element and dips into spacetime and the existence of an individual ego, there must be some countervailing advantage to this perilous descent into mortality and finiteness. That advantage is clearly the cognitive consciousness, whose possession gives not only the opportunity to observe and experience nature, but also to co-design the world of experience. It is this latter opportunity which is the precious one, for it takes the conscious will to direct the numinous element to manifest events.6(page 315)Let us remember that human life is but the projection of a greater individuality into the restricted cognitive ego, bound into space-time, where it takes a flight through the eight developmental stages, hopefully to return again to the Spacious Now, having completed the developmental cycle in ego-integrity and altruism. Presumably, this process is to gain the cognitive experience which this life affords as an added facet of the larger individuality. But consider some of the difficulties that can befall during this mortal interlude. For one thing, the ego may get enmeshed in mortality, arrested in the developmental process and fail to complete it, thus being consigned, (as the Bardo Thodol tells us) to an endless recyclement until it breaks out of its circle. But there is an inverse peril for those who become developed. It is that the individuality, while still in its ego dream, will become enough enlightened to understand that the laws of physics which govern the spacetime world are only a special case of the laws of metaphysics which govern the domain of the Eternal Now.
We have called this partial awakening orthocognition, and like the lucid dream (in which the dreamer knows he is dreaming) this insight gives the option of conscious use of the expanded laws of metaphysics to the still partly selfish ego-consciousness; in short the creative man gains psychedelic powers over his environment. The danger of not renouncing the world
before we gain power to transcend it is that we will never want to renounce it at all, and that the individuality in the diminished form of an incompletely developed ego will trap itself in a garden of earthly delights. This is why true mystics would rather endure suffering than suffer the temptation of enjoyment. It is also why orthocognition, despite its wakening powers, should be used with wise restraint. For power corrupts, and we must be sure before we use it that our hearts and desires are pure. A worse fate than not getting one's desire is to get it and find it was the wrong thing to have in the first place.(page 316)At intervals during this ordinary-reality dream, certain aspects of the psyche gain the upper hand, so that the ego (either in trance or meditation) does not pay attention to ordinary reality. When this happens, the larger individuality takes over, and the person is not bound by the laws of ordinary reality. Hence, these people during this situation (which we call dissociation or trance), may walk on fire, levitate, prophesy, become clairvoyant and telepathic, and influence nature directly to name some of the more important examples. To be sure, in the prototaxic mode, these effects can be accomplished only by the temporary exclusion of the ego (which because of its reality relating properties could not tolerate consciousness under these circumstances). But in the syntaxic mode when the ego expands to greater understanding, it can be allowed to remain though with various degrees of light dissociation. The proper function of altered states of consciousness, which allow the operation of the laws of non-ordinary reality, is to permit the conscious ego to design and order the natural events or ordinary reality in harmony with goodness.
It is the business of the ego to attend to ordinary reality; it is the business of other parts of the psyche to relate to nonordinary reality, that is, the noumenon outside our space and time. While we may look at our ordinary reality as 'real,' it is actually the other way around, for it is non-ordinary reality that is the ultimate real. Actually the laws of physics in our ordinary reality are only a special case of the laws of metaphysics in non-ordinary reality, for our ordinary reality is but a special and restricted area in the larger domain, with special and restricted laws. During our little life here, the ego appears as an artifact of the eight developmental stages, rising in the first and setting in the last, in order to gain cognition and will in a space/time-bound situation, hopefully to return to the Eternal Now fortified with the cognitive experience gained here. But all the while the real existence of the individuality is in the Spacious Present of Non-ordinary reality.
Suppose it is determined that the best way for the numinous element (which appears to us in a present state of hypnotized and unindividualized subjective preconsciousness) to gain rational consciousness is to project a series of nascent individualized egos into time/space experience. There, hopefully, they develop, effloresce, and eventually return to the undifferentiated spirit fortified with the jeweled experience of initiation and selection in will and consciousness. (At least this is one way of looking at it for us in the dream.) This, then, is the experience which we call life.
5.4) Conclusion7
"I dreamt I was walking through an enormous field of wild red roses. 'How many roses are there here?' said a voice. 'Oh, at least a million,' I answered. 'Are there any sports among them?' the voice queried. 'Yes, here is one,' said 1, appropriately sighting one which had flects of white on its petals. 'And how many such sports do you think there are here?' asked the voice. 'Oh, probably a thousand, if one assumes that once every thousand roses there is some mutant variation.' 'And could these mutants be developed into distinctive colors and patterns?' inquired the voice. 'Of course, for that is the way our domestic varieties originated,' I replied. 'Ah,' said the voice, 'but you had to have a gardener who believed in the possibility of such development and then set about to accomplish it.' 'That is true,' I agreed.
"There are many more children than roses, and they are much more important. Do some of them have talents and potential in exotic abilities which we do not even understand, and so cannot begin to stimulate? The gardener has produced a domesticated rose much bigger and more beautiful than the wild variety; could we do the same with children? But who will be the gardener for humanity? What are the talents of man? Are we sure we know them all? What if any are the boundaries of his abilities? Or are they as evanescent as was the limit of the four minute mile? What might we accomplish if we truly educated our children for the maximization of all talents which they possess?
"A century ago lightning calculators were exhibited as sideshow freaks. Since my dream I am haunted by the nagging possibility that some children possess similar exotic talents, which, because they are not appreciated by society, are not cultivated or stimulated, and we are therefore back looking at the wild rose
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mutation, rather than visualizing what it might become with husbandry. What are some of the possible powers of mankind?
"Could empathy, for example extend to telepathy? Could spatial visualization extend to non-spatial visualization? Could intellectual accretion and learning become telescoped into instantaneous knowledge and understanding? Some otherwise saintly and truthful mystics have told us that this is so. And it might not be amiss to check out this possibility.
"Hunt and Draper (1977:20) tell us of the powers of the electrical wizard
Nicola Tesla:
He was conscious of certain phenomena before his eyes which others could not see. He envisioned objects and hypotheses with such reality and clarity that he was uncertain whether they did nor did not exist."Before we regard Tesla's powers as miraculous or his biographers as liars, let us remember that when a picture of the scene is chromokeyed behind a newscaster as he describes a news event, we do not react in disbelief, nor do we when we see a virtual image in a holographic display. Science has sanctified these miracles, so we believe them though most of us cannot explain their technology. If geniuses like Tesla are forerunners, then it might be useful to recognize the possibility of such unusual talents and begin to study how to develop them in others.
"in conclusion, let me go back to the speech of Huxley's minister of
education (1963:208) on the child and his potentialities:
How does he do his thinking, perceiving and remembering? Is he a visualizer or a non-visualizer? Does his mind work with image or with words, with both at once, or with neither? How close to the surface is his storytelling faculty? Does he see the world as Wordsworth and Traherne saw it when they were children? And if so, what can be done to prevent the glory and the freshness from fading into the light of common day? Or in more general terms, how can we educate children on the conceptual level without killing their capacity for intense non-verbal experience? How can we reconcile analysis with vision? "(page 318)
1 We exclude from this discussion the putative relationship between genius and madness. For such a study, see Becker (1978).
2 Quoted in "The Ancient Wisdom" by A. Besant, from North British Review, September 1866.
3 Table 1 is here suppressed. It may be found in The Gifted Child Quarterly 20:4:384, Winter 1976.
4 An exception may be made here for precognitive and retrocognitive dreams.
5 Geraldine Cummins: The Road to Immortality, Beyond Human Personality (Nicholson, 1932 and 1935 respectively). (5pring, 1978).
6 This and the next five paragraphs are quoted from earlier work (1975:385ff).
7 Quoted from the author's earlier work, Gifted Child Quarterly
22:11:20-22.