Talk: Where Do Ideas Come From?

This is the second of a series of conversations that I had with fellow author and channel Susie Pearl back in 2010. I found them on my hard drive recently and discovered their wisdom, being as old as the hills, is still very relevant today. They were originally entitled, The Genie and The Wizard ... as that is who we each are.

Photo by Júnior Ferreira on Unsplash

Transcript

So Tom,

Thank you for joining me to find out where do good ideas come from.

I'd like to ask you a few questions because I know that you've researched this area and to find out really what you can share with us about ideas,

Where they come from,

What it feels like and so on.

Oh yes,

It's a fantastic question Susie.

I think one of the main thrusts of research into brain and mind research tends to work like this,

Is that because the brain is such a complicated device,

The way that people have approached it in the past is actually to study the non-functioning brain and by looking at people that maybe got mental illness or perhaps they've had some sort of accident or a stroke,

Then the neurologist has been able to work out what bits of the brain do what and then when they're damaged,

What functions disappear.

Now we don't have to be quite as extreme as that to work out where ideas come from but by looking at what stops ideas,

We can start to get a clue as to how to get into the state where ideas can flow more freely.

So for example,

Imagine if you're suffering from,

You just have a bout of road rage and you're pretty angry,

Someone's cut you up and you're out for revenge and you try and overtake this person or whatever,

It's hardly a time is it to have a great idea.

That's right.

Or imagine that you just had a phone call with some bad news or somebody's annoyed you or what have you,

Then your creativity goes out the window and if you think about what's happening in those moments,

You're being thrust into what we call internal dialogue.

We might spend half the day thinking about a conversation that went badly or worrying about an interview that we got and rehearsing our answers.

You know,

I might have spent some time before this call thinking about what I was going to say and if I was going to do that,

That's going to block any form of idea coming in.

Does that make sense?

Yeah,

It does.

Or would it activate bad ideas or ideas that aren't going to work?

Yeah,

I think it makes bad ideas persist and it makes that internal dialogue,

You know,

Let's say,

Especially if it's got an element of worry or concern or fear,

It will allow the bad idea to persist.

You know,

Our brains are only programmed at the moment to have one thought at a time and many people don't even realise that.

If you have a thought,

Then another thought can't come in.

So if you think about something different,

The original thought disappears.

So if these thoughts are all about,

Oh,

Woe is me or where's the next paycheck coming from or what have you,

Then there's no space at all in your brain for good ideas to come in.

Right,

I understand.

So we can hold just one thought at a time.

I've never really considered that,

But I guess that's true.

Yeah,

I've got a meditation that's based on that and it's entitled Quantum Collapse of Thought and it's based on Heisenberg's uncertainty principle where you can't measure the position and the velocity or momentum of an electron at the same time.

And thoughts are quanta,

They're like atomic particles or waves.

And as a thought comes in,

Then that replaces the thought that you were thinking about.

And this is the basis of counting sheep at night.

Yes.

So we want to get to this state where ideas come in.

We've got to almost get our thoughts to cancel them,

To annul.

And obviously one way to do this is the meditative state,

But a lot of people have trouble making their brain go quiet.

But if you think about it,

You know,

Have you ever driven somewhere and not known how you got to the other end?

Very often.

Yeah.

And in that state,

You were in what's called a meditative state,

Even if you weren't aware of it.

And so we are all natural meditators and that meditative state is exactly the sort of mental framework you need to let ideas come in.

So where do they come from?

There's theories about this.

My belief is that we share a connection to a collective consciousness.

And this is all knowledge,

All wisdom,

Past,

Present and future from all people.

And in fact,

All beings as well,

Because animal life and plant life are all part of this too.

And in the meditative state,

You can tap into this.

And it's how people like Leonardo da Vinci perhaps got the vision of a helicopter and a parachute,

You know,

Years before his time.

So if we can tap into future thought,

That carries with it quite a lot of interesting possibilities.

Yeah,

Well,

Obviously the person that you resonate most closely with is the version of you,

Which is a few seconds into the future.

So as I'm speaking now,

I'm almost morphing into the future version of me as you are with you and as the listeners are with them.

And so if you can actually morph with the person,

The version of you,

Which is a second away from now,

There's no reason why you can't connect with the person that's a year away from now or two years from now.

And what good would that do to be able to morph with a year ahead?

It might not be that good,

Tom.

Well,

The future you,

Especially if you set some good goals,

Could know exactly the things that you need to know now to get to be the future you.

Isn't that a bit scary?

It's a bit weird,

But it's just a thought.

It doesn't matter if it's a real thought or a non-real thought,

So long as it produces results.

And what's a non-real thought?

Well,

A good question.

So,

You know,

Do you know your thoughts are real at all?

Do you know that when you're dreaming,

It all seems very real,

Doesn't it?

And you think you're in that dream and when you wake up,

You think you're in this,

You think you're awake.

But we don't know for a fact if we're not in a dream state at the moment.

So thinking about your thoughts is problematic,

I guess,

When we're going this deep into what ideas are.

Well,

It doesn't have to be problematic.

What's interesting about it is that when you've experienced the idea kind of thought,

What happens is you tend to notice it's actually got a slightly different flavour to it and it's got a different sound.

And most people don't even think what accent they speak to themselves in.

If you think about that,

It might not even be the accent that you hear through sound waves.

Oh,

That sounds interesting.

So explain a bit more about that.

Yeah,

Well,

What happens is when you get these ideas,

They kind of come in as a whisper and they come in against the grain of your current thought process.

So I call them lightbulb moments and they've got other names like eureka moments and aha moments and what have you.

And because they come in against the run of your normal thought process and they're a bit of a sort of flip,

If you like,

Then they're absolutely worth paying attention to.

So this is where the problem disappears.

So the thoughts coming in,

They're of different natures.

You've got the internal dialogue,

You've got the whisperings of your unconscious mind that might be warning you about things or asking you to pay attention to things.

You know when someone says your name's Susie in the hubbub of a party,

You can actually,

You pick it out amongst all the noise.

That's your unconscious mind just telling you you need to pay attention to something.

And then you get these thoughts which I call ethereal whispers.

And they're the thoughts which are potentially from the future you or from the collective consciousness.

And they're the ones which are the things that you should really pay attention to.

They're the gems that can take you in absolutely brand new directions and open up amazing happy stances for you.

So should we be paying more attention to the little quiet whispering thoughts that are bubbling under?

If you can,

But we're in this,

Maybe in this imperfect world where people have got jobs to do,

They've got kids to take to school and those activities.

So I don't think it's a question of just sort of flipping into some sort of meditative state 24 hours a day.

I think it's just a question of making sure that every day you generate a bit of me time.

And that could be five minutes of meditation or it could be a 10 minute walk.

You know maybe a commute.

A good idea is to get off the train station earlier or get off the bus early and just walk for a mile or so.

And looking up is really important.

If you look down,

Especially if you look down to the left,

Then that state is when you're in internal thought.

And if you look at a lot of communities,

You can see everybody is in that sort of mode.

Whereas if you look up slightly,

Bearing in mind you might have to look out for tree roots and paving slabs and what have you,

It tends to get you into this mode where these ideas can pop in.

And why is that Tom?

Is that to do with eye accessing or where we're coding information in the brain?

Yeah,

I think it's a very old neurological pattern that probably goes right back to primeval days,

You know,

That maybe that when,

I don't know,

Chickens are looking down for grains of rice or grains on the floor,

They're in that internal mode.

And when they're looking up,

They're looking at opportunities or looking for premises or whatever.

So it's a very basic coding I think to do with sort of being alive on the planet.

Wow.

Well,

In there are some tremendous pieces.

And from pecking our grain off the ground through to looking up to new opportunities,

We've got some wonderful stuff to consider and think about thinking.

Tom,

Thank you so much.

Until the next time,

I look forward to talking to you.

My pleasure.

Reviews

Another sparkling talk from Tom Evans and his friends. I always enjoy and learn from you, Tom. With gratitude, Hannah

Wow. It's like Tom's usual offerings but more intense. Love, love, love. Will have to listen to this one again - so much that resonates for me here, with some additional information on many points that I am ready to hear more about. A gem! Thanks so much, Tom and Susie!

One thought at a time, very interesting. 🤔
Really enjoyed hearing these "thoughts".
Thank you so much Tim to illuminate more of what is going on in our brains. 🙏🏼😊

You offer several great neuro hacks here. Thanks Tom!
Love and blessings to you

Thanks Tom, this was very interesting a lot to digest.

Where do ideas come from? Ethereal whispers as Tom put it. I’ve never contemplated it, Maybe the inner nudge from our soul to move forward. Just think of how human beings have evolved, came from an idea. Thank you Tom Bravo 👏

Interesting. Do you have a talk to update this to the present time? Are you thoughts exactly the same or has there been changes in your thinking. I know the talk description says that it’s still very relevant, but I can’t help feeling the ideas have been enhanced over the years.