Two recent posts on the Quantum Revolution website were about imagination, creativity and innovation.
One was the recent interview with Keith Reinhard, for the Interviews with the Leading Edge series.
The other was a quote from the noted philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
Sartre said, “Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom.”
The importance of this quote cannot be understated.
Imagination, which is the ability to use your creative intelligence, is truly the key to the Quantum Revolution. If a Quantum Revolution is about the cultivation of enlightened minds that put into motion enlightened action which creates a more holistic and sustainable world, then imagination is the facilitator of that more enlightened thinking.
It’s as Einstein said, that problems can never be solved from the level of thinking that created them. If we keep doing the same old, same old, and use the same thinking to perpetuate that same old, then all we’re going to get is the same things that are already not working – and we have a lot of things/problems/crises these days that are not working.
In other words, we need to think different, and think in a more evolved manner.
So let’s talk some more about the imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge, Albert Einstein once said.
All the great artists and scientists throughout time have understood how important imagination is. Most great ideas don’t come when we use only our logical thinking capabilities. They mostly come when we let down our guards and let the imagination take hold.
Nicola Tesla, the great scientist and inventor, once said, “Creative ideas come to us like a bolt of lightning.”
Steven Weinberg won a Nobel Prize for physics for his electroweak theory and said the idea came to him in a flash one day, while he was driving his car.
Albert Einstein once wondered, “Why is it I get my best ideas in the morning while I’m shaving?” This is because when we allow ourselves to relax and let the mind space out, the imagination can take over.
History is filled with many stories of creative insights that arrived like flashes of light, whether in daydreams, creative reveries or dreams. When you let go of your current way of thinking in order to see something new, you are letting your imagination take hold.
Imagination is infinite. All it takes to touch it is to close the eyes, quiet the mind and be silent.
And then it flows – it may be images, thoughts, ideas or whatever, but the key is not to silence it or to criticize it. You may then want to express what you imagined – through written or spoken words, images, musical notations, or however you are most comfortable.
The key is to go and use your imagination. We are not encouraged to. But it is an important part of our lives.
“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious…He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead.” – Albert Einstein