WIRED FOR BLISS

Q. Is the joy of children or the disciplined acquisition of knowledge more important?

The American neuroscientist and pharmacologist, Candace Pert, author of Molecules of Emotion, made a ground-breaking discovery about a secret located in the prefrontal lobes of humans. The prefrontals, the latest-to-evolve brain lobes, are the seat of the profound intelligence that is equal to our greatest challenges. Some examples of the kind of thinking done by this most human part of the brain are self-reflection, the pondering of deep meanings, the envisioning of new possibilities; the flashes of insight that offer a new solution, design or invention; empathy (understanding + compassion) for the plight of another.

So what’s the groundbreaking knowledge? Candace Pert discovered that located in the prefrontal lobes is the largest, densest abundance of neural receptors and transmitters of bliss inducing chemicals, such as endorphins, found anywhere in the body. Could it be that we have been hard-wired to experience spiritual highs when we are doing our best thinking?

So, what might ecstatic flashes of sheer genius look like? Is the trigger the laborious plodding of the rational mind, or is it something else?

Nichola Tesla was genius of rare stature, who had spent his childhood contriving experiments that confounded, amazed and alarmed his elders. As an adult his discoveries were ahead of his time. When Tesla was a young man, scientists were discussing the possibility of an AC motor and the rotational effects associated with alternating currents. Tesla’s musings about the possibility led to a profound experience:

One afternoon … I was enjoying a walk with my friend in the city park and reciting poetry. At that age I knew entire books by heart, word for word. One of these was Goethe’s Faust. The sun was just setting and reminded me of a glorious passage:

The glow retreats, alone is the day of toil;

It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring;

Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil

Upon its track to follow, follow soaring!

As I uttered these inspiring words, the idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagram shown six years later in my address before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. The images were wonderfully sharp and clear and had the solidity of metal. “See my motor here; watch me reverse it.”

Pygmalion, on seeing his statue come to life could not have been more deeply moved.

Significantly, Tesla accessed the heart through poetry, even as he engaged the brain in an elusive design project. You may recall that in a past blog, we discussed the ongoing heart/brain dialogue. The heart, the organ of elevated feelings, is also the source of intuitive flashes. The Institute of HeartMath found that people’s heart beats would either achieve coherence or become erratic according to whether a scene that was disturbing or inviting would appear seconds later on a screen.

The heart intuits future events and energetic blueprints that elude the rational mind.

In Testla’s case, when the heart and brain communication were open and flowing, while reciting poetry in a beautiful park, the elevated feelings served as a conduit for an astonishing breakthrough. Nor did the solution come as a laborious sequence of logic, but as an instantaneous single picture and a simple phrase, “See my motor here; watch me reverse it.”

The accounts of the break-throughs of countless geniuses echo Tesla’s experience. Yet another genius, Albert Einstein made the following two statements that point to the cultivation of such brilliance:

Imagination is more important than knowledge.  

And …

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

Poetry! Imagination! Inspiration! What have these to do with genius? EVERYTHING!

What have these to do with the education of our children? EVERYTHING!

Apparently nature has hardwired human children to engage in pursuits that activate human brilliance. Children, who are free to do so, spend their time initiating activities that sync with the body/heart/mind flow. Our role as inspirers, i.e. suppliers of evocative stories, compassionate relationships and compelling indoor and outdoor environments, is to step aside for the experiments and expressions of genius.  When we whole-heartedly nurture each child’s will to imagine, explore, experiment, design, create and construct, we can slip in academics in service to the project. Then academics mean something to a child. 

Schooling that has lost sight of the gift, oppresses the spirit of childhood by confining its offspring to a mass monoculture of memorizers and rational thinkers. This force-feeding of the intellect, bypasses the most human part of the brain (the prefrontals); silences the heart/brain communication; and plods forward with the endorphin transmitters and receptors switched off.

When at last we give credence to avant-garde science and the wisdom of the world’s geniuses, we will delight in young faces that reflect the bliss of firing endorphins. Rather than mass-producing rational intellects propped by megabytes of ROM and RAM, we will free innate geniuses with as many unique modes of expression as there are children in the world.