“If you’re thinking, you’re stinking” is a frequently quoted observation in Access Consciousness. The difference between the “aha” moment when everything falls into place is described as knowing, whereas thinking is trying to figure things out.

“If you could have figured out whatever’s bothering you, wouldn’t you have solved the problem a long time ago?” Access Consciousness facilitators often ask participants in their classes.

Now brain research reported in the September 23, 2013, Time magazine demonstrates the difference between what’s happening when we think to figure things out, compared to that “aha” moment known in Access as “trusting your knowing.” It turns out different areas and brain function are involved.

As usual, where consciousness goes, science eventually catches up.

So what are scientists discovering that Access practitioners already knew? University of Southern California neuroscientist Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, who studies creativity, used functional MRI (fMRI) to study the brain function of people involved in a creative task.

When they used thinking and logic to figure out a puzzle, like figuring out what word the letters LREFWO could spell, they used only one side of the brain.

This in itself demonstrates a limitation, since, as Access Consciousness Founder and best selling author Gary Douglas would ask, “Would an infinite being have a right brain/left brain function? Or would an infinite being have total choice and total access to all their capacities at all times?”

When participants in the study had an “aha” solution (known in the literature as a “pop out experience”), activity occurred in both hemispheres of the brain as well as in the insula and brain stem, both of which process emotion. Activity in these areas explains the “delicious thrill,” (as the magazine refers to the sensations that accompany that instant,) which Access would call knowing.

Even better, the more communication there is between the hemispheres, the more happy “pop out” experiences occur. In other words, this scientific research is saying, the less you think, the more you know and the more creative you become.

Further good news is the finding that as we get older, more communication occurs between the sides of the brain. In addition, another form of creativity also increases with age and the diminishment of logical thinking.

The occipital cortex, the area where vision occurs located at the back of the head, kicks into gear when we sleep. This provides lots of pictures and non-logical inspiration which can occur in dreams and just as we wake up.

The pre-frontal cortex, the area of the brain behind the forehead, which is responsible for logical thinking, shuts off when we sleep. This allows us to receive more of the non-logical inspiring “knowing” from the occipital cortex.

As we stop thinking, our creativity (what Access would call our knowing) actually increases.

The scientists are finding, just as Gary Douglas has been saying for years,

that thinking is actually over-rated.

Good news for all of us is that this kind of inspired knowing rather than thinking actually increases with age, which is part of what made late-life masterpieces by Frank Lloyd Wright, Picasso, and Grandma Moses possible.