CREATIVITY

Nikola Tesla

The problem he had became a resource

Perhaps you don't know that our electric power system, based on alternating current, was possible due to Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), who discovered the rotating magnetic field. His more than 700 inventions include basic developments of the electromagnetic motor, the turbine motor, wire-less transmission and remote control devices. The first hydroelectric plant, in Niagara Falls, was his project, that defeated Thomas Edison’s, based on continuous current. All this was possible due to his phenomenal capacity of using the imagination in a productive way.

But in adolescence, Tesla suffered with the appearance of images and light flashes, that interfered in his thought and in his action. Like he told, when he heard a word, the corresponding object image showed vividly, and he was unable to distinguish whether what he saw was tangible or not. Because of this, he felt anxious and uncomfortable.

To be free of these tormenting appearances, he tried to concentrate his mind in some other thing that he had seen, and thus he obtained temporary relief. But to achieve this, he had to produce continually new images. As he knew just his house and the surroundings, soon his “stock”  of new images exhausted, and the medicine lost its force.

Instinctively, Tesla started to do incursions besides the limits of his small virtual world, and he saw new scenes, at first obscure and indistinct, that passed quickly when he tried to concentrate his attention in them. Gradually he succeeded in fastening the images, that got force and definition, until they seem as concrete as real things. And he discovered soon that he felt more comfortable when simply continued deepening the vision, obtaining new impressions all time, literally traveling in his mind. In this journey he saw new places, cities and countries – lived there, knew people and made friends, that were to him as dear as those of real life.  

Soon Tesla noticed that he had also great facility to connect cause and effect, and also that each of your thoughts was suggested by an external impression. This ability to tie his mental processes and internal maps to physical reality, combined with his practice in built images, drove him, in adult life, to success as an inventor. He didn't need to do experiments: he conceived, improved and tested his inventions using only imagination.

His annotations are studied until today, and if he lived now, still some of his ideas would be ahead of his time.

V. V. Vilela

Editor

Based in Strategies of Genius, Volume III  

Photo: http://home.earthlink.net/~tesla/

Picture: http://home.earthlink.net/~drestinblack/teslatoc.htm (also link list)

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