Pearce

Has anyone ever seen the movie, The Jewel of the Nile? I know this might seem very random and fiction movies are rarely held to hold much truth value, but as I was reading the selection for this week, I couldn't help but think of a scene with Danny Devito walking across a pit of glowing coals. In the movie, the group he is with challenge him to let go of his thoughts and to walk across, but he refuses and is convinced he'll get burned. One of the other characters starts talking to him and takes Danny Devito's mind off the pit, which is when he realizes he is standing in the middle of the coals. This may not seem relevant, but it made me wonder what sort of suspension of belief is necessary to attain a state of consciousness where the physical environment no longer has an impact on us.
Pearce made many references to the Hindus who walk across those pits of charcoal, claiming that their suspension of an "average" state of mind allows them to contact these extreme heats without suffering. He also alluded his own experience with a suspension of consciousness, when he would repeatedly press cigarettes to his skin with no side effects. There were numerous references to many cultures that could use their minds to envision something so powerfully that the results were real, and even better and more real than the "real thing."
From what I could understand from the reading, these cracks in our cosmic eggs are good things that allow us to access autistic thinking, which Pearce seems to find ideal. I gathered from the reading that he finds the autistic thinking to be among the most pure, where one one can see things more clearly because one's mind is not clouded with the other mundane thoughts of life. It is in this state of mind that, he feels, one can experience physically demanding circumstances and not suffer for them.
He makes a few remarks about drug use (p 33) that state the drugs in question (such as LSD) may bring about a similar state of mind, but are it is artificial. According to Pearce, one's state of mind may be similar to autistic thinking, but they physical outcomes, if the body were put in a stressful situation, would be different.
I'm not sure how I feel about Pearce and his thoughts about cracks and cosmic eggs. He seems to believe that creativity is only by chance, that only someone experiencing autistic thinking can produce a successful idea and run with it. Indeed, he states that it was in one of these periods that he was first able to compile this scattered thoughts for this book; however, I do not believe that creativity is limited to those states of mind. There are moments when one, quite aware and in complete consciousness of every movement and physical surrounding, will successfully come up with a brilliant idea and continue to put it into action or into being.
I do agree that the autistic thinking does exist. In the little I know about autistic children, they usually display a high amount of intelligence or creativity, even if they do not have the ability to express it easily. As such, it seems to follow that if one were able to obtain this state of mind without being truly autistic, then one may also communicate one's conclusions effectively when no longer in that state of mind. But, as I stated above, it seems a little grandiose to believe that true creativity comes primarily in that state of mind.