Looking at the Masters, Einstein/da Vinci (Part 2)
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
Continued from Part 1. Click
Here.
Leonardo da Vinci
stands out as one of the most prolific and versatile people in history.
We are all familiar with the Mona Lisa or the Last Supper paintings. However,
he mastered many arts and sciences. He saw possibilities everywhere and
to him everything was interrelated. Art was not separate from science. He
invented and designed things that couldn’t be realized until hundreds
of years later. He devised the parachute and airplane, tanks and siege engines.
He was a master musician and singer, botanist, anatomist, astrologist and
responsible for planning parties for court events.
Our question has to be: “Is our premise that one is ‘lucky’
enough to be born a Leonardo? Or that you can you learn to be one?”
Certainly the Renaissance Men and Women of the day were creative and versatile.
Due to the increased prosperity of mercantile trade, the cultures of Europe
valued the art of education and knowledge as a means to enhance standing
and status. Today, with public libraries and internet, we have access to
information undreamed of in Leonardo’s time. Though he enjoyed his
comforts as did everyone, it was not until he was in his early sixties before
he had a soft bed to call his own, and time just to muse, think, draw and
invent for his own pursuit of knowledge. To him, the questioning and searching
for the Intelligence he saw behind all of nature was the utmost importance.
It might be said that he was searching for God, but instead of shutting
himself away from the world, he chose to immerse himself in it so that he
might see and therefore know more of the Creativity governing it’s
creation.
Aside from his art and inventiveness, another way that Leonardo blessed
us was that he was a compulsive writer and documenter of his thoughts. He
asked questions. He observed. He experimented. Then he asked more questions.
He wrote down everything he observed. Not just interested in being creative,
he was also interested in the creative process itself. He observed himself,
as well as those around him, and devised and adhered to seven principles
he found to be a guide to life, a guide to a creative life. They will be
covered shortly in this course.
Some other key points gleaned from Leonardo’s life include: Making
a choice…if your big challenge is to lead a balanced, fulfilling
life, beating back the stress of the world, you may find yourself merely
in retreat and isolation. The certain level of peace you may find or exhibit
comes at the expense of any real challenge to your own evolvement. It is
easy to be zen when you are by yourself and face no challenges. Detachment
is a form of ennui and a commitment to the dross. Though a perhaps noble
purpose, it is the effect of monasteries, locking themselves away to preserve
the knowledge that had accumulated (out of fear it would be lost). Though
repositories of knowledge, none of these places actually advanced and it
could be argued that they did not help the world to change. So too, we find
within families, organizations and governments, that when truth and the
sharing of truth is withheld, it produces adverse and destructive reactions.
There must always be choice and action taken through awareness.
The reality is that great creators rarely can “just create.”
Though we long for that time when we are free to idly pursue a chosen course
or pursuit, it is, to some extent, the intrusion of the world in its daily,
petty ways that propels and inspires us to action. If we are active and
aware, such occurrences and incidents are not random. How can they be when
all is part of an interconnected whole, a system? These petty annoyances
of daily intrusion into our great goals are actually the synergy of interconnectedness
giving us choices and lessons that can help feed our subconscious and our
creativity. Think here of Gershwin, who had been commissioned to write a
piece of music. However, he was busy and lacking in inspiration. On the
train ride cross country to present the piece he was subject to the noise
and rhythms of the train, the train whistle, the station stops and bustle.
Rather than bristling, the inspired Gershwin created Rhapsody In Blue,
incorporating all those elements and translated them into music.
Einstein actually lamented that when he became part of a “think tank,”
with nothing to do but dream up ideas, he had very few worthwhile ideas.
Arguably, his greatest idea came when he was a postal clerk scribbling on
the backs of paper during lunch breaks. Even greats such as Leonardo, far
from spending all his time sketching and inventing, had official duties
to function as a party planner, court musician and social host for royal
functions. Needless to say, his art was required to please commercially
and not just a select intelligentsia.