A person lives by desires, and society by ideas on the basis of which concrete desires are also formulated. Ideas emerge seemingly from nowhere – but is that the case? I maintain that any development of human communities is initiated from above, and ideas are brought to the world by people who become conscious, or their unconscious conduits. The human mind operates from what is known, relying on notions received from outside and adapted to one’s own experience. When the mind finds a solution to an external problem – for example, how to build a bridge or a dam better, interference from above is not needed for this. But when an insight comes to a person, revealing an entirely new idea, concerning the community or the organization of people as a whole, then practically always, its appearance in the mind of a given specific person is initiated from above. This is well known to writers, philosophers and scientists who have discovered at least something new. Many of them have spoken about inspiration, but that does not always correspond to what I am writing about. Inspiration emerges from an impulse of energy, an impulse prompting a person toward creativity, demanding to express itself somehow. Often it is in no way connected with the reception of a new vision and a new understanding of things.
Graphomans and various types of arts craftsmen are sometimes visited by inspiration. Insight visits far from all, even the most talented creators. But it is through insight that new ideas come to people, which lead to changes in the life of large human societies.
The story of Albert Einstein is a vivid example of such an insight. By the time he was 25, Einstein had made five discoveries that changed physics and our notion of the world. He himself described the process of discovery of new truths as an act of contemplation, in which their vision was revealed to him. This process is known to each decent mystic, but Einstein came to it seemingly spontaneously. And here is what happened later: after becoming a world-famous person following the invention of the theory of relativity, Einstein headed off on a world tour, where he was feted in every way as a great scientist. It lasted three years, and by the time of Einstein’s return to Europe, scientists had been found who developed his ideas, establishing quantum physics.
And here is what is funny: Einstein could not understand their conclusions, nor quantum physics itself at all. He still remained an icon of world physics, but for all his subsequent life, he could not do anything especially serious. He tried to invent a unified field theory, but did not succeed in doing so. In other words, his genius was manifested exactly in that he could become a conduit for new ideas, and then either he lost this ability of perception, or he did what he was supposed to do. The life drama of a person who has become a conduit for a short time is expressed in the fact that he usually has nothing more to say. Either he develops the ideas that came to him, or he remains on the side, observing how others develop them.
A striking story of the development of ideas can be traced through the example of the theory of the origin of the species discovered by Charles Darwin. Of course, he, too, was a conduit, but he really tried to make “his” idea grounded. And that happens with everyone, because while an insight is an insight, any idea requires work to ground it. So thus, the idea of evolution proposed by Darwin not only overturned the notion of the world in which everything was created by God within seven days, but it provided other ideas that directly flowed from it, very impressive in results.
From Darwinism, for example, the idea emerged of the evolution of human races, presented by the Tibetan teachers through Blavatsky. Or perhaps she invented it herself. The theory of evolution of human races, the next stage of which must be prepared for, was supported by the Roerichs and to this day continues to ferment in the minds of people prepared to believe in messages from higher beings, no matter through whom they come. The idea of the origin of the species enabled the introduction of the concept of higher and lower races (in the sense of nationalities) and the justification of the claims of the Nazis to world domination, which led to a new world war and the Holocaust. Applied to the history of the development of humankind in the economic sense, the idea of evolution gave birth to Marxism, with its concept of classes and the theory of the development of society from bad to better. It is also alive to this day, although the social experiment set up on its foundations failed miserably. And this occurred for the very same reason: people may change themselves only to a certain extent, only within the framework of habits and sometimes reactions. But that is only in the cases of purposeful work on oneself, which is not encountered so often, and therefore the building of paradise on earth never succeeds.