There are many wonders in the universe: the fact that life exists, the amazing diversity of that life, the precisely balanced planet that we live upon that provides the extremely narrow range of environmental conditions that we require to live, the hyper-complex systems of sub-atomic particles, atoms, molecules, and chemicals that make up cells, organisms, animals, and people — all these things defy all odds and yet somehow exist anyway. They point to a designer, a vastly intelligent and powerful mind that created and guided it all. But there is one powerful sign of this Creator not in this list:
Art
The creation of a story, picture, video, song, or other things which we can appreciate and enjoy — these are completely unnecessary to nature. We can have layer upon layer of complexity, we can have an abundance of life everywhere, yet we could lack the ability to appreciate beauty, to be in awe of the grandeur, to enjoy life, to love and be loved. A world teaming with life wasn’t enough: our Creator wanted us to be “sub-creators.” J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings and other iconic literature, coined the “sub-creator” term, believing that we echo divine creation through our ability to create stories, art, music, and the like. He felt that we express the divine image through sub-creation, reflecting the creativity and order of God’s creation of this universe.
We could not understand the brain until we sub-created thinking machines, which we call computers, mimicking many brain functions. But even the immense complex of computers we’ve created that we collectively now call AI lacks the spark of life. Clearly those machines have more intelligence than us, if that can be defined as raw knowledge and thinking ability, but the one thing we have never been able to do from scratch is create life. We can manipulate the components of life that already exist, but we can’t take raw materials and create whatever it is that makes life unique. Yet we can create art.
Artists of all types talk about “inspiration”, the undefinable creative spark which seems to come from nowhere, yet without it art is meaningless. Computers can follow algorithms — sets of mathematical rules — to form art which is only doing what we sub-creators program them to do. We give them the appearance of the creative spark, but it is a hollow echo. What makes us different than our mechanical creations is the actual inspiration that we find so difficult to define. The mystery is something outside of mechanics. Our minds have what we call “thoughts”, but what is the origin of a thought, what chemical process births it? How does a thought form? A computer runs through its programming and acts upon it, but can it actually form thoughts on its own? To a computer, happiness and suffering are both meaningless. Both would distract from the task at hand. If a robot had a broken arm, it would reroute its function to avoid using the arm until it could get it repaired — it would not suffer in pain. Its sensors would just register the break and its programming would ignore the signal when it was not helpful. We, however, engage in the illogical feelings of happiness, suffering and sadness, love and anger. There is something unique about life which we cannot duplicate – we can only observe.
The source of inspiration
Inspiration shares its root word with respiration, the drawing in of breath. Breath is the essence of life. When a drowning victim is saved and gasps in a breath, life revives. We draw air in from the outside. In Middle English, inspiration meant “divine guidance” — it comes from outside of ourselves. Artificial Intelligence (AI) still draws its “inspiration” from us, the programmers. We give it directives; we set it on its missions. It doesn’t just decide one day that it wants to do something different, but once we set its course, its mechanical brain components engage to accomplish its task. We have sub-created the pattern in our image: computers get inspiration from us, and we get our inspiration from our Creator.
Brain research
If science cannot fathom how a thought can start or see inspiration enter the mind, it can at least see how the brain functions. Brain activity is readily monitored, and modern techniques allow scientists to see precisely where and when activity occurs. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can record brain activity of each region of the brain over time and see patterns. To gain an understanding of how flashes of insight — inspiration — activates the brain, researchers at Duke University conducted a study published in Nature Communications. Participants were given a tricky puzzle to solve, and the researchers discovered that flashes of insight trigger a burst of activity in the brain’s hippocampus, which is key in learning and memory. In the “aha!” moment, this burst would reinforce memorization of the insight. The amygdala would also show sudden activity, indicating that the aha moment had an emotional impact. And the prefrontal cortex showed increased activity before and after insight, indicating higher thought and also the generation of “reward” signals. All this activity showed the mechanics of the brain’s operation, but even the researchers could not see how the insight occurred. One researcher stated, “Insight is key for creativity.” Indeed — but other than seeing high brain activity, we still can’t see the formation of the insight.
Other research has documented both frequencies and areas of brain activity during insight. Published in Annual Review of Psychology is a review article describing findings from other studies. One finding: “EEG (electroencephalography) shows a burst of high-frequency (gamma-band) EEG activity over the right temporal lobe, and fMRI shows a corresponding change in blood flow in the medial aspect of the right anterior superior temporal gyrus.” They note that the right hemisphere of the brain contributes more to insight, while the left contributes more to analytical thinking. Clearly there is machinery in the brain that deals with the thought processes, but still no origin of creativity was isolated.
Look at it this way
Perhaps a better way to refer to inspiration or insight is “revelation awareness.” If we are simply the cumulation of millions of amazingly lucky chance occurrences of random nature, then we could say that we are fancy computers, lacking what we call a spirit. When we refer to the heart of a person, we are talking not about the physical heart, but the spirit. The undetectable aspect of inspiration, the spark of life and thought, is from the spirit. So when we say “follow your heart”, we are really saying to listen to your spirit which is in touch with your Creator. Our ability to calculate, to think rationally, is critical to our being, but like the computer, we need to be guided, led, inspired. Our purpose, our intrinsic value, and the leadings of our hearts need to come from He who is the source of all Truth. Without Him we would be heartless robots — if we could exist at all.
When we look at the source of inspiration in this light, we are seeing the answer to a fulfilling and healthy life. Our robotic brains have been programmed from our beginning with all sorts of input from the world around us, and some of those inputs were negative. Especially early in life we picked up a lot of baggage which integrated into our brains. That baggage comes back in negative thoughts, most of them subconscious. They cause our brains to send negative signals throughout our bodies. But when we tune our hearts to the love of our Father, we are inspired, we counter the negativity of our brains, and we can really live. We can live life abundantly.
Dr. Nemec’s Review
The word inspiration means to take in breath, which is the most fundamental necessity for life. Inspiration literally means divine guidance. So we are inspired, we received divine revelation from outside of ourselves. In the same manner, AI robot’s inspiration comes from what we programmed them with — also coming from outside of them.
What is the aha moment?
It can be called the light of understanding that came in the darkness. This can be a product of the mind-brain connection where information is organized and re-organized in the areas of the brain until a coherent common thread links them all. This usually involves multiple areas of the brain synergistically connecting for a multiplied effect. This usually involves various areas of the brain, including the hippocampus and the amygdala which are the memory and emotion centers of the brain — many times this also secondarily interconnects with the prefrontal cortex (the logic reasoning center) where the awareness is received. As the journal Annual Review of Psychology stated, specific frequencies are seen in specific areas of the brain, including gamma brain waves, which are high frequency waves.
The spirit aha versus the mind aha
There is a night and day difference between the inspiration that comes from the Spirit of God versus the inspiration that comes from the mind of man. One truly is divinely inspired, meaning the information was the truth that came from God and entered your spirit, which is called the heart. From the heart the information was stored in the brain and written in the neural pathways as a conscious program that uniquely did not come from thinking — it came from outside itself, it came from God, our Father. The other is just a coherent organization of information in the brain that brings a higher level of understanding similar to learning a complex mathematical formula and finally realizing what it means and how to use it. That is actually the connecting of all the pieces to finally gain understanding. This doesn’t really fit into the definition of inspiration because it’s source did not come from outside of itself, but from inside itself, whereas the true aha moment inspiration is revealed to our spirit through our Father who is God.
Something from nothing
What is true inspiration? It can be also seen as something coming from nothing because it’s not coming from within. It’s coming from without.
Where did Einstein receive the theory of relativity?
Where did Michael Angelo receive the vision for the Sistine Chapel painting?
When did all the great ideas that changed our world and continue to change our world originate from?
Let’s once again go back to the definition of inspiration: divine revelation from outside oneself…
Heaven coming to Earth
Jesus said to his disciples: with man, it is impossible, but with God all things are possible. This is saying that with man, there is only a limited number of possibilities to rearrange the information to come to a conclusion or outcome, but with God, the number is unlimited because truth is constantly being revealed, which opens the door to whole new possibilities. Our world changed dramatically with Einstein‘s discovery, which he said he received in a dream. It did not come just by re-organizing the facts that he knew; instead, he had to see a picture that he had never seen before — and once he saw it, he wrote it down in mathematical form. That vision is the revelation that unlocks the technology that we use today, and that has transformed our world.
The answers for the future
As we walk into tomorrow, it appears as if artificial intelligence will lead the way; but this can never be because we programmed artificial intelligence, so it’s possibilities are still limited. The only answer will be found originating from outside of ourselves: the pictures given to us from God, our Father. When we take those pictures and process them from our heart to our brain, then to our body, we will transform our world once again as Einstein did 100 years ago. How many times can this occur in our future? The answer is, there is unlimited potential as long as we stay connected to our source, our foundation, our Family of God.
The Spirit of truth will guide you into all the truth…He will tell you what is yet to come.
