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May 23, 2007 Two famous scientists-turned-mystics, Gustav Fechner and Emanuel Swedenborg, followed a similar career pattern. They were ingenious and scientific young men blessed with encyclopedic minds. As more aged human specimens, moreover, both men tried to understand the fully-functioning human psyche. Fechner's life is described here. Swedenborg's life is described here. Both Fechner and Swedenborg were intellectually superior men, and in science they both excelled. One way or another, however, both men became gravely disturbed and a mysterious mental and/or emotional illness ultimately led each one from an intense focus on the external world of science and technology to the other extreme of intense focus on the inner world of soul or spirit. Fechner and Swedenborg came to regard themselves as prophets or revelators inspired by God to reveal a new gospel to humankind. To me, however, it seems that such extremism is nothing new. If there is any resolution to the ages-old tug of war between materialism and spirituality, that harmonious peak is the actual integration of the physical realm with the nonphysical realm. The two bipolar extremes need to be understood as complementary functions providing a common means of peak experience. But neither Fechner nor Swedenborg defined this peak experience in clear language. Each man merely provided his own fantastic new ideas which might have become a new religion. Swedenborg's ideas actually did become a new sect of Christianity. At this point I need to mention something that every well-read adolescent knows: a great many different persons have had the same sense of immediate contact with a Higher Power, and the now-popular ideas each self-styled celebrated revelator regarded as divinely inspired fill volumes in other holy repositories. There are, in fact, many hundreds of religious sects! Moreover, the followers of one revelator either pay no serious attention to the other revelators or else they fight hard against them. Neither Fechner nor Swedenborg seriously addressed this ongoing issue of human divisiveness, exclusiveness, and war. Yet strangely enough, both men sometimes entertained messianic delusions! However there have been many other false teachers whose works are curiosities, but nothing more. Read about Martinus here! Read about Jakob Boehme here! Then there is Halle-Bopp or Heaven's Gate, you know, the mass suicide led by Marshall Applewhite. Indeed, the list of messianic leaders is long. There have been thousands of other self-proclaimed revelators. Efforts to integrate the soul with the brain and the spirit with the mind and the body continue. Swedenborg even designed an airplane, but his invention didn't really work. Brilliant scientist that he was, Swedenborg knew only some of the aerodynamic principles. And when it comes to putting together a fully functional human being, Swedenborg was fascinated by angels and claimed to talk with these winged messengers. To finish the job, however, and invent the new humanity freed from delusions, the man needed to study, develop, and use more of his own brain's innate functions. Besides Gustav Fechner and Emanuel Swedenborg, numerous other men have become famous as inspired revelators, teachers, inventors, and so forth. The public focuses more on the invented products than on the inventive process itself, however. The reason is probably because the inventor's products are so easy for people to sense directly. But creative inspiration works below the level of skin, muscle, and bone. Moreover the inventive process may carry the creative person so rapidly from idea to idea that many of his original ideas never get finished and presented to people. When it comes to imaginative ideation and research, indeed, the pioneer may be a perplexing character, as evidenced by the following quote borrowed from NASA Breakthrough Technologies: "The work style of pioneering for alternatives is different than the style for building mastery. The main emphasis of day-to-day engineering is to be a master of your chosen technology. Mastery is achieved through continuous improvements; refining, augmenting and finding new applications while sustaining expertise throughout this process. The work style depends on established knowledge and tends to be systematic, relatively predictable, and has a relatively short-term return on investment. Creating new and superior technologies, however, is a wholly different type of work. Going beyond the limits of an existing technology requires a pioneering spirit. It requires imagination to envision future possibilities. Pioneering requires confronting ignorance and creating new knowledge rather than just apply existing knowledge. It requires intuition and subjective judgments to navigate in the absence of an established knowledge base. And because progress is unpredictable and the returns on investment are long-term, it requires the ability to take risks." ------------ About the author: sixty-seven years of age, and still relatively vigorous in mind, body, emotions, and spirit, John L. Waters is an independent researcher on self-healing, integration, creativity, and unity. To help demonstrate the effectiveness of his research, John has created thousands of drawings, paintings, instrumental music pieces, songs, prose pieces, poems, and other inventions. John has also used his research to help persons remove a mental block and solve a difficult problem. John also gives personal presentations which explain his research and illustrate his research results. Each one of these works demonstrates the effectiveness of John's research. For more information, read John's letters of recommendation: about John's self-healing and integration: more about my work: about John's independent research: about John's seeking an agent or a publisher. Email: blueguntwo@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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