2009-06-15

Nikola Tesla continued....

This quantitative regime was mounting force among academes, who were then attempting the total conversion of scientific method. Those who would not accept the new order were compelled to depart from academic pursuits. Tesla totally rejected these notions on the strongest of inner intuitions. Most of his instructors would have said that he was not University material. Tesla, sensitive to every such dogmatic wind, rejected their thesis and sought some better means for knowing nature. If he was to excel in engineering, there could only be cooperation with natural force, never violence. It was clear to him that the new scientific world-attack would ultimately lead to violent re­sponses from nature itself.

His inner conflict expressed itself openly and candidly, bringing young Tesla into certain disrepute among rigid University authorities. Universities were more like military academies than places where original thinking was conducted in open forum. Tesla challenged too many persons of esteemed rank with probing questions for which he was given rebuke but no real an­swers.

A gifted researcher and voracious reader, he chanced upon some forgot­ten volumes of natural science written by Goethe. He had not been aware that Goethe, long before he chose poetry for the vehicle of his scientific themes, had written several magnificent tomes on the natural world. Tesla found to his wonder that Goethe had experienced the very same emotions. When the new scientific dogma was just in its infancy, Goethe caught wind of it and reacted violently, even as one who stands watch in the night.

Goethe was well aware of the new scientific trend and its implications. The reduction of nature to forces and mechanisms was utterly revolting to Goethe. Now, Tesla found a notable compatriot in his experience. He secured a thorough collection of Goethe's scientific texts and read these to the exclu­sion of all other philosophies. It was through this window that we may com­prehend all of Tesla's scientific methods and later statements. For in Tesla we see the quest for communion with nature, one based on the faith that mind, sensation, consciousness, and ordained structure form the world-foundations. The sense-validating Qualitative Theme again appears in Nikola Tesla. Armed with this foundation, he was able to filter and qualify every other new study with which he was presented. In addition, he was irresistibly drawn into the study of electricity, the "new magick". In the following months, he absorbed the electrical engineering courses so rapidly that he no longer at­tended classes. He had taken a technical position in Budapest. Several new intuitions had seized him. Tesla became fascinated, obsessed with alternat­ing current electricity. The problem he faced was considered insurmount­able. Tesla was sure that he could devise an engine, which was turned, not by contact-currents, but by magnetic field actions alone.

The struggle toward designing such a device, begun as a puzzling amuse­ment, was now completely consuming his strength. The answer, tantalizing and near, seemed elusive. Under-girding all these efforts was the strongest desire to achieve something original, and by this, to attain financial indepen­dence for the sake of pure research. His only dream was to have a laboratory facility of his own.

The excessive labors and mental exertions nearly drove him to the brink of madness. He was, for as time, seized with strange maladies and sensitivities which physicians could not address. Reichenbach accurately describes these symptoms, characteristic of extreme sensitives. There come times when the neurological sensitivity of these individuals literally transforms and pro­cesses through their being. The emergence of these rare sensitivities affects such persons for the remainder of their lives. Tesla found that his senses were amplified beyond reason. He was terribly frightened at first, nervous exhaustion permeating his frail being. Eventually learning to manage these rare faculties, he again resumed his life. But the visions, which began in his youth, were now more vivid and solid than ever before. When they came, unbidden, he could literally touch and walk around them. Now also, he was equal to receiving them. He was waiting for the revelation by which his alternating current motor would appear.

Tesla's life came into a new focus while walking in a park with some friends, the year 1881. It was late afternoon, and Tesla became entranced with the sight of a glorious sunset. Moved to indescribable emotions, he be­gan quoting a verse from Goethe's "Faust";

"The glow retreats, done is our day of toil; it yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring, ah, can no wing lift me from this soil... upon his track to follow, follow soaring?"

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