The depiction of Archimedes jumping out of his bath tub shouting "Eureka!" because he had a creative breakthrough does not tell the whole story. It is easy to conclude from this depiction that success is largely a factor of luck. In The Biology of Transcendence (Park Street Press, 2002), Joseph Chilton Pearce presents Margharita Laski's six steps to revelation as a framework from which to explore the relationship between the search and the answer, the asking and the receiving. Laski's process suggests that the road to the Eureka Moment is often long, and riddled with setbacks that are ironically necessary for the success of the journey. She outlines six steps: (1) asking the question (2) searching for the answer (3) hitting the plateau period (4) giving up all hope (5) breakthrough (6) translating the answer into the common domain (187-8).
What do her six steps tell us about the Eureka Moment?
The Eureka Moment Relies on Hard Work and Discipline
The quest is never easy. Mathematician William Hamilton worked on the notion of a quaternion function in mathematics for 15 years before he decided to give up the search. At that moment when he surrendered his quest, the answer came to him in a flash of insight (189). Joseph Chilton Pearce claims that the search is a crucial part of the process because the action of accumulating possible answers builds up neural circuitry in the brain, which prepares the brain to pick up the answer (195). All the more reason for us to believe that luck favors the prepared mind.
Failures and Mistakes are Part of the Eureka Moment
The plateau period indicates that frustration, despair and disillusionment are all part of the process of success. The difference between the one who finally makes it and the one who doesn't can often be found in the number of times the former returns to the drawing board and starts again.
Why Giving up Leads to Creative Breakthrough
William Hamilton gave up his search and found the answer. Kekule, the Belgian Chemist, spent years pursuing a special designation in molecular structure without success. Defeated, he gave up and fell asleep before the fireplace. It was then that a snake with its tail in its mouth appeared to him in a dream. This snake became the foundation of his benzene ring (189). Pearce claims that giving up clears the mind and makes room for answers to appear (188). However, this is only possible if the mind has been prepared beforehand. If answers reside in "fields of intelligence," they are accessible only to those who have built specific neural circuitry in the brain to attract them. If "like attracts like,"(192), he suggests, then neural circuitry built from hard work and persistence increases the likelihood of breakthroughs.
Can answers come to us magically from the sky? Some may think so, but the prospect is unlikely. For Joseph Chilton Pearce, what one reaps is dependent on what one sows: "only a neural system long immersed in the field related to the quest is capable of attracting and receiving the field's answer when it does form"(194). What emerges as a miraculous flash of insight has already lived through a history of incubation.
