A right-brained phenomenon in which profound insights, information, intuitions, and creativity burst through to the waking consciousness in startling clarity. Inspiration enables the great leaps of thought behind the genius, innovation, and invention in all manner of scientific and artistic disciplines. Virtually everyone experiences inspiration; individuals who work in creative or problem-solving occupations seem blessed with frequent inspiration. Some attribute it to divine sources, others to supernormal, spirit or psychic sources.

Research by the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) in the relationship between creativity and extra-sensory perception (ESP) shows three shared principles: positive motivation, relaxation, and dissociation. Positive motivation is the need to make contact with material distant from time and space. Relaxation of mind and body is a factor in the richest experiences of both psi and inspiration. In a dissociated state, the mind is passive and receptive. The same factors may be said to apply to many mystical experiences as well.

Inspiration usually occurs suddenly and often with overwhelming intensity, the proverbial bolt out of the blue. However, it is the product of a long period of incubation processes beyond the waking consciousness. English psychical researcher Frederic W.H. Myers likened inspiration and genius to an expression of "subliminal uprush," in which the unconscious self integrates and reorganizes information into new patterns, which are then pushed into the consciousness in a rush.

Like a mystical or psychic experience, inspiration is fleeting, lasting only a few moments or minutes. Ideas must quickly be written down or acted upon in order to be preserved, for inspiration left solely to memory will fade. Inspiration can fuel prolonged periods of heightened creativity...

The onset of inspiration sometimes is accompanied by physical sensations, such as chills, burning, tingling, "electric glows," and "fuzzy" feelings that something profound is about to happen...

Excerpted from Harper's Encyclopedia of Mystical & Paranormal Experience.
© 1991 Rosemary Ellen Guiley.

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