The Crack in the Cosmic Egg by Joseph Chilton Pearce Page B

however, and any kind of belief can stimulate

passionate work. Grace, unfortunately, is given according to the nature

of the faith, the content of the work, the triggers around which the

synthesis can organize.

The scientist, the idiot-fringe philosopher, the cult prophet, the devout

Christian, the withdrawn Hindu, may each find their respective pearls

in this same sea of thought. The function of question-answer is the

same in all cases. The triggering desires, the metaphors of allegiance,

the dictates of training, the techniques of attainment, may all differ

radically, and give correspondingly different products, but underneath

is the single function of representation-response, undergoing analysis

throughout this book.

Back in 1935, Bertrand Russell, in his book Religion and Science ,

pointed out that Catholics, but not Protestants, could have visions

in which the Virgin Mary appeared. Christians and Mohammedans, but

not Buddhists, may have great truths revealed to them by the Archangel

Gabriel. The list could go on, of course, and Russell was obviously right

-- but he was right for the wrong reasons. His conclusion was a product

of nineteenth century naive realism, and a defense of vertical thinking

as the only true indicator of "real things." In this chapter I hope to

show the sterility and narrowness of Russell's viewpoint, and to suggest

that his attack on religion was a case of pot calling kettle black.

Sir William Rowan Hamilton was professor of mathematics and astronomy

at the University of Dublin. His 'Quaternion Theory' has played a vital

role in modern mechanics. The theory "happened to him" as a Eureka! discovery, an illumination, while walking to Dublin one morning with

Lady Hamilton. As they started across Grougham Bridge, which his boys

afterward called Quaternion Bridge, right there, in such an unlikely spot,

the "galvanic circuit of thought closed," as Hamilton put it in metaphor

fitting to the interests current to his time, and the "sparks which fell"

from the closing of this circuitry were the fundamental equations making

up his famous theory -- a theory which generations of vertical thinkers

have happily explored.

At the very moment of illumination there washed over Hamilton the

understanding that an additional ten to fifteen years of his life would

be required to translate fully the enormity of the insight given in that

second. Marghanita Laski, investigating the nature of the mental maneuver

involved, notes that the experience itself filled an 'intellectual want'

of long standing. In a letter written shortly before the discovery,

Hamilton spoke of his long-cherished notion having "haunted" him for

some fifteen years. A recent renewal of his old passion had given him

a "certain strength and earnestness for years dormant." This renewed

diligence and application to the mathematics involved furthered the long

collection of material for the synthesis of the desired answer.

The historian, Arnold Toynbee, had a mental illumination of history ,

fittingly enough, and in the incongruously prosaic setting of Buckingham

Palace Road. There he suddenly found himself in "communion" not with

just some particular episode of history, but with "all that had been,

and was, and was to come," an apt description of a mystical-autistic

seizure. In that experience Toynbee was directly aware of the "Passage

of History" gently flowing through him in a mighty current, his own life

"welling like a wave in the flow of this vast tide." His communion both

verified his life investment, and furthered it as stimulus.

Albert Einstein spoke in reverent tones of his illumination giving rise

to his famous theory. He never doubted that he had been privileged to

glimpse into the very mathematical mind and physical heart of all things.

James R. Newman spoke of Einstein's 30-page paper "On the Electrodynamics

of Moving Bodies," as embodying a "vision." He observed that poets and

prophets are