First, your inner creative Essence provides the quality of intuition: a direct knowing without conscious reasoning. Intuition has always been a powerful mainstay of great business, but until fairly recently it has been denied as a business tool in the era of overdependence of analysis…

A second quality, will, begins to fill in the picture. It is the part of you that can take responsibility. It is the ground of your creative actions. People who are creative in business have a compelling vision or mission, and this exemplifies will…

The third quality of Essence is joy. This book could have been called The Joy of Business because, for all the work and frequent difficulty that creativity entails, it always brings a sense of joy. When you get a hint of your own creativity or potential, you always feel this bright, shimmering quality of joy. It is best related to the art quality of balance. When you have balance within yourself and between all parts of your life, you experience the joy of the flow of creativity.

We often talk about creativity in terms of breakthrough. And to break through a wall of fear and criticism that might stop you, you need a fourth quality, strength. Creative business people take appropriate risks. Their strength allows them to do that without even seeing risks as risky. This inner strength overcomes fear….

Finally, you can draw on a fifth quality of Essence, compassion, to completely bring your creativity into the world. This compassion isn’t the mushiness of do-gooders. Instead it is loving kindness, first for yourself and then for others. When you operate from this compassion you nurture your own ability, recognise your own creativity and that of others. It causes you to experience the ultimate Eureka! feeling of “I Am.” Creative business people can implement their creativity so well because they have that confidence in their own creativity and bring it out in others too. Compassion of this sort is best related to the art principle of harmony, and you can see how it creates harmony, not only among all the qualities of Essence but also in your business life.

Strangely enough, the science they are trusting in is about three hundred years behind the times. If their science conforms with what their senses tell them, they are subscribing to Newtonian views developed during the seventeenth century. This mechanistic science leads us to view humans as machines that respond to internal and external stimuli, each living in a separate corner of a larger machine: the physical universe. Such a view leads us to believe that we are completely separate, self-animating beings. Our bodies house brains, but our thoughts are only side products of our physical machines; consciousness, free will, divine purpose, and Essence are superfluous at best. The mechanistic view has led us to try and predict and control nature rather than harmonize with it. We strive rather than surrender.

The new physicist’s picture of reality is very much like that of many Eastern mystics and Western sages. They now agree that each individual has the potential for performing the godlike functions found at the level of universal consciousness and in the minute world of quantum mechanics. They validate the inner creative potential that seems so incredible to everyday, nonscientific, nonspiritual thinking.

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake, in taking the ideas of physics into the biological and physiological realms, offers a strong case for considering seemingly random chance events as dependable energy manifestations.

The new physics indicates that tremendous energy resources lie within each of us and that we are united with energy patterns in the universe. Sheldrake proposes that there are morphogenic fields, or “invisible organizing structures that mold or shape things like crystals, plants, and animals, and [that] also have an organizing effect on behavior.” He posits that these fields contain influences from all of history and evolution. As such, they begin to explain the “lucky coincidences” that sometimes solve our problems.

Countless spiritual leaders make this clear in their writing and in the process agree with modern science. Swami Muktananda says:

Man goes to great trouble to acquire knowledge of the material world. He learns all branches of mundane science. He explores the earth, and even travels to the moon. But he never tries to find out what exists within himself. Because he is unaware of the enormous power hidden within him, he looks for support in the outer world. Because he does not know the boundless happiness that lies inside his heart, he looks for satisfaction in mundane activities and pleasures. Because he does not experience the inner love, he looks for love from others.

The truth is that the inner Self of every human being is supremely great and supremely loveable. Everything is contained in the Self. The creative power of this entire universe lies inside every one of us. The divine principle that creates and sustains this world pulsates within us as our own Self. it scintillates in the heart and shines through all our senses. If, instead of pursuing knowledge of the outer world, we were to pursue inner knowledge, we would discover that effulgence very soon.