“Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe—a spirit vastly superior to that of man.”
-Einstein, in response to a student asking him if scientists pray
I once spent a spring break vacation in Costa Rica with some friends from college. On the premises lived a mentally challenged, seemingly simple boy named Ricardo. One of my friends poked fun at this helpless boy only to find one morning that Ricardo took revenge by literally disassembling my friend’s rental car... piece by piece.
We were totally shocked by Ricardo’s amazing, autistic savant-like intelligence. I thus coined the term “A Ricardo Experience," which is when you have a life-changing moment of shock, insight, or clarity that knocks you to your knees in awe. In such a humbling moment, you are most open to Einstein's aforementioned reference to a "superior" intelligence.
There are countless examples of this intelligence in nature:
1. The Golden Number
The Golden Number 1.618 is seen throughout nature, whether it’s the proportion of female to male honeybees in any honeybee colony or the diameter of one spiral on a mollusk shell divided by the diameter of the closest spira. The Golden Number is part of a mysterious blueprint.
2. DNA
A strand of DNA 1/1000th of an inch can hold enough info to fill 600,000 pages. *
3. Human Being
No scientist or engineer could ever create a human being from scratch yet in the womb one develops from one cell into a complex organism… all by itself. The human brain is the most complex thing ever discovered in the universe. The brain's circuitry is so complex, if you took a piece of the brain no bigger than the tip of a pen and stretched out all the neurons, they would extend 2 miles in length. **
When life feels like a struggle, consider the Ricardo Experience. What in life do you consider a humbling experience? In your most humbling moments, you are most likely to stop resisting life and start opening to the mystery. Frank Zappa once said, “In the fight between you and the universe, back the universe.”
*Eckhart Tolle's THE POWER OF NOW
**Jeremy Narby's INTELLIGENCE IN NATURE