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.

Our present theory is that devotion to a task at hand puts us in harmony with our creative source. We dedicate ourselves to work itself, not to a false personality.

Among his [Douglas Harding] favorites were Zen koans, cryptic statements that challenge self-blinding concepts. See if your head can survive this one:

Find the face you had before you were born.

When you think about it, you realize that you have a head only when you consider yourself a separate, free-floating object; you are especially aware of your objective isolation when you see yourself in a mirror or photograph.

Each individual has a meant-to-be, a particular blending of talents and capacities that can guide him to achievement. Everyone you recognise as creative - not only our speakers but also such luminaries as Einstein, Picasso, Beethoven - has in common the amazing ability to express his own unique purpose here on earth. They have found that true creativity is being themselves. When Leonardo DaVinci was asked to name his greatest accomplishment, he answered, “Leonardo DaVinci.

It is a curious paradox that schizophrenia might be imagined as a condition of being both less or too much of whomever we might be. An intricate balance is lost.