EP 118 - Self Bestowed Genius (Reprise)

As we continue shaping the introduction to NeuroHarmonics, we’re presenting a three-part series on Walter Russell. We touched on his work a few years ago, but we’re returning to it now because his life so clearly illustrates what our method is all about.

Since NeuroHarmonics blends timeless human wisdom with insights from modern brain science, we’ll begin with some core wisdom principles and then see how Russell’s extraordinary life embodied one of its deepest truths.

Here are a few key teachings to consider:

1.    There is an infinite intelligence behind all creation—call it God, or any name you like.

2.    Our understanding of this power is always limited by our finite minds.

3.    This remarkable power lives within every person and can be called the “Indwelling God Presence.”

4.    Because it is always within us, we can choose to uncover it and connect our awareness to it.

5.    Focusing on it makes us better human beings and greatly increases our inner fulfillment and happiness.

Now, how does Walter Russell fit in? Born in poverty in Boston in 1873, he left school after the fourth grade. Yet he became a world-renowned painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, and spiritual philosopher. He was also a multi-millionaire New Yorker and a close friend of presidents, kings, poets, and artists.

So how did this disadvantaged fourth-grade dropout achieve such heights? Amazingly, Russell claimed it was simple: he tapped into the Indwelling God Presence within him, which was the source of his wisdom, creativity, and initiative.

This first episode in our Walter Russell series offers the amusing story of how I first heard of him, along with an overview of his extraordinary life. As it unfolds, keep in mind that he credited everything to the Indwelling Presence he contacted within himself. And most important of all, he insisted that anyone could do the same.

In his view, the question was never if it works—the only question was whether you will try it.

Enjoy the story… 

 

Episode 40 – Self-Bestowed Genius

           

            I have found that every once in a while, some unexpected information can come from an unexpected source and make an unexpectedly major change in your outlook on life. Something like that happened to me a few years ago.

            I was in the pool behind our condo and a stranger came over and introduced himself to me.  We struck up an informal conversation with one random topic casually leading to another. At one point he asked me if I had ever heard of someone named Walter Russell. I drew a complete blank. The name meant nothing to me at all and I said so.  

          Looking surprised at my ignorance, he launched into a string of hyperboles about this person I’d never heard of - that he was one of the most multi-talented people who ever lived, that his rags-to-riches story was one of the classics in American History, that he was a teacher of Consciousness Evolution, who claimed that we can all become geniuses if we want to and that Walter Cronkite had called him the “Leonardo DaVinci of our time,” when he announced his death on national TV in 1963. And on and on and on. 

          Then, he said with a sly smile, that Walter Russell was so brilliant and so prolific that he made Benjamin Franklin look like a “schlepper.”

          Now, I’m pretty familiar with US history and culture, and I’ve been aware of Consciousness Evolution since the idea first caught my eye in the early 70s, and in all this time, I had never once heard of Walter Russell. So naturally, I was skeptical. After all, if this Russell guy was so great, how come I had never heard of him?

          The stranger’s looks didn’t help dispel my doubts either. He was obviously a bit “out there.” A not-quite-former hippie in his mid-sixties, it seemed like he had not-quite-returned from wherever it was that his last acid trip had dropped him off. 

          And frankly, his Ben Franklin “schlepper” comment rubbed me the wrong way. Schlepper is a fairly nasty Yiddish term with a host of meanings, one more pejorative than the next.  It’s basically a lazy dim-wit who can only perform menial tasks and can’t be trusted. Just your average dolt. Now, I have always been a huge fan of Franklin’s, and idea of applying the term to him just didn’t sit well with me.

          Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the stranger in the pool did a perfect Groucho Marx impersonation. It turned out that he did Groucho impressions for a living, and he broke into a string of jokes that were actually pretty funny. Impersonation seemed like it was second nature to him.   

          Then, he looked over to the far corner of the pool, rolled his eyes, sang “Hello, I must be going” and swam away. An instant later, he was playing Groucho to a few well-groomed ladies who had just come into the pool.

          It was a mildly amusing event at the pool during a pleasantly uneventful summer, and I made a lukewarm mental note to look this Walter Russell up someday. I jotted the name down, stuck it in a junk drawer and forgot about it.

          At least six months must have gone by before I stumbled on the note again. I was sort of killing time, which is something I’ve been known to be a master of, so I thought I’d do a quick Google search.

          I was expecting to find a few miniscule bits of information that I’d browse for a few moments, then move onto something else. But what I found really was something else and in a matter of seconds, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. And I don’t mean that as a figure of speech. What I mean is that I actually couldn’t believe what I was reading. It seemed preposterous, like it couldn’t possibly have been true. I had never seen anything quite like it before.

          Walter Russell had been a prominent 20^th century figure, a self-made millionaire who lived in New York City and had a studio in Carnegie Hall.  A master painter and sculptor, he had also started a large architect firm in the city and had been intimately involved with the construction and financing of seventeen significant buildings. He owned a stable of Arabian horses in Central Park and was a renown equestrian. He took up figure skating in his forties and won the US national championship against competitors in their twenties. And later in life, as he got involved in the study of chemistry, he helped upgrade the periodic table of elements.

          His name was always in the papers and he ran with quite a crowd - Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Edison, Nicola Tesla and FDR, to name just a few. Not to mention his close friend Thomas J. Watson, Sr., who founded IBM.

          And yet not one person that I knew had ever heard of him. It was incredible.

How could someone who had accomplished so much, in so many different fields, on such a grand scale, be so unknown? It didn’t make sense. After all, this wasn’t ancient history and it certainly didn’t happen in a vacuum.

          I was astounded and kept reading. Two books that were several decades old caught my eye – “The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe,” and “The Secret of Working Knowingly with God.” The titles surprised me. I didn’t see their connection to the subject matter I had been reading.

          I looked them up and the price was right, so I ordered them blind. When they came a few days later, it was immediately clear that this whole story ran much deeper than I thought.  I was stunned by the books and couldn’t put them down.

          To begin to grasp the depth of the story, the first thing to understand is that Russell was basically uneducated. Born into a very poor family in Boston in 1871, his parents got him in a job in a grocery store when he was about 10 years old.  To help support the family, he dropped out of school after the fourth grade and never went back. So, amazingly given all that he had accomplished, he had no college, no high school or even junior high.

          Yet, he went on to become one of the most accomplished people in history - a self-made millionaire, friend to presidents and kings, an internationally renowned painter, sculptor, musician, architect, scientist, sportsman, businessman, and master teacher. His resume was obviously well-documented and his vast accomplishments were completely verified.

          Although what he did was truly amazing, even more amazing was how he said he did it. According to him, from the time he was a young boy, he experienced a series of inner illuminations that continued throughout his entire life. And these inner illuminations tapped him into a vast storehouse of wisdom, indeed the wisdom of the universe.

          It all started when he was seven years old.  He was playing marbles with some friends and suddenly, “Something tremendous happened to me, something indescribable, something so beautiful, so wonderful, a sort of complete blotting out of everything concerning the physical universe, concerning my body.

          “A great burst of changing colors – blue, violet, orange seemed to fill and pervade all space and me. I was swallowed up in it. Then that ceased and there was a blinding flash and I stood motionless.”

          He couldn’t function at all for several hours and it took him over a week to recover his normal consciousness. But he really wasn’t the same. In fact, he was never the same again.

          It happened to him again the following May. And then it happened every May for the rest of his life. Every seven years the episode would be particularly intense, lasting for several days at a time. Once, he was in the altered state, in tune with this universal intelligence for 39 days.

          Following each experience, he would find that he was different, as though his whole being had been elevated. Sublime understandings would crystallize in his mind. He seemed to have direct access to new levels of information. His existing talents would deepen or he would develop new ones.

          For example, he could play the piano at a young age, but following one of the episodes, he was suddenly able to write and play advanced musical compositions, with a depth of emotion and pathos that was extraordinary. Everyone noticed the changes and several of the formal pieces he composed were played by symphony orchestras throughout the world.

          The exact same thing happened with his skill as an artist. He had some talent and training, but it expanded exponentially after one of his episodes and he started churning out masterpieces. He soon became the artistic director of Colliers Magazine, and his series of pictures called, “The most beautiful children in America” won several awards.      He drew a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt’s children that hung in the White House for a time.  

          On another occasion, his talent as a sculptor manifested instantaneously. He created over fifty masterpieces including busts of Thomas Edison and Mark Twain that are breath-taking in their level of realism.

          Soon afterwards, in a completely different arena, he invented the concept of the co-op apartment in Manhattan and personally drew-up the first co-op lease in history, which his lawyer said was perfect in its legal detail.

          It was all so hard to believe, not to mention that it was all done by a fourth-grade dropout. But he said that he had been granted the ability to transcend his mind’s normal thought processes and tap directly into the intelligence of the universe which, he said, is all-knowing. 

          This intelligence is divine in nature and is the home of all our noble human virtues including wisdom, love and compassion, according to him.  He termed it the very life force which sustains us all and carries the genius of our consciousness on every plane - physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual.

          Russell’s work output continued to explode, much of which required extreme precision. And his incredible achievements were acknowledged at the highest levels. For twelve consecutive years, he was the main trainer of the entire IBM sales force. Thomas J. Watson, the company’s Founder and President, said that Russell’s accomplishments were equal to seven lifetimes of achievement, all performed at peak levels of excellence.

          His life became an example of a most lofty ideal – that of being able to live in a state that he termed “ecstatic joy,” while remaining completely grounded and succeeding brilliantly in his life. 

          According to him, this rarified state, where the inner and outer worlds are in complete harmony, is not only completely natural, it is the way we are meant to live.  And he said that it doesn’t diminish with age. In fact, it increases.    

          He was living proof. He remained in good health well into his old age, with his awareness fully intact, enjoying profound happiness and fulfillment. He finally passed away exactly on his 92^nd birthday, and that was in 1963, when the average life expectancy for an American man was sixty-six!

          He always held that this genius intelligence exists within every single one of us and we are each capable of connecting with it exactly as he had. We can all become much greater than we think, but we have to make the decision to open up to it ourselves to it and connect with it in a way that is our own.

          “Many have asked if I could more specifically direct them how to kindle that spark of inner fire which illuminates the way to one’s self. That I cannot do,” he wrote. “I can merely point the way and tell you of its existence. You must then find it for yourself.” And he famously added, “Mediocrity is self-inflicted. Genius is self-bestowed.”

          Now if you’re like I was when I first got exposed to this story, with all of its implications, you’re probably pretty blown out. It’s a lot to absorb, on many levels.

          He left behind an enormous amount of material on the subject of consciousness evolution and expansion.  His writings are vast and the subject matter is profound. A great place to start is with his “Five Laws of Success.”

           In the next episode, we’ll explore them and you may be surprised by how simple, natural and powerful they are. Like all of Russell’s teachings, they are meant to be practical. You just try them on for size and see how they fit.

          Well, that’s the end of this episode. As always, keep your eyes, mind and heart open, and let’s get together in the next one.