My guest, Dr. Chris Earnshaw, has such a wide portfolio of creative pursuits:

• BA in Japanese and Chinese from London University, S.O.A.S.
• PhD in neuroscience and CEO of a medical device manufacturer, living in Tokyo, Japan - amateur cellist.
• Lecturer at the School of Social Sciences, Waseda University, Tokyo
• Former Professor of Asian Studies, Daito Bunka University, Tokyo
• BioMagnet therapist helping people living with Parkinsonism have a better QoL
• Past Grand Historian and 33° Freemason
• Author of books on pharmaceuticals, Tarot, Japanese art and Freemasonry;
• neuroscientist;
• cellist;
• Cordon Bleu licensed cook

Chris says, "I help run an organization that is 300 years old, but is always reinventing itself: Freemasonry. Our vision is to spread Light, and to teach “a system of morality,” but the bottom line is that we make “good men better,” by getting involved with their communities, charitable work, and education.

About Chris: "I have written extensively on the relationship between Freemasonry and spirituality - my four books are in a series titled 'Spiritual Freemasonry.' Freemasons are a select community of people who are truth seekers, and yet at the same time devote time and money to support charities around the world."

Dr. Earnshaw’s curious mind is his driving force. He is not content getting answers given to him by someone else but he prefers feeding his own curiosity of wanting to know and understand things at a deeper level.  

While at University, Dr. Earnshaw studied Japanese, Chinese and ancient Chinese literature with a focus on philosophers such as Confucius, Menzies, and Lao Tzu. The in-depth knowledge of these philosophers, and others like  Menzie, Edgar Cayce, Bruno Groaning, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.  Have inspired his creativity. Coming from a  freemason practice and having lived and traveled to China, since his retirement 8 years ago, Dr.Earnshaw has completed his quadrology on  Freemasonry called Freemasonry initiation by light, which he writes four books from the angle of  Freemason is based on Chinese Daoism.

According to Dr.Earnshaw, creativity doesn’t stem from one part of the brain, the brain has no demarcation. The brain is like the Chinese ying-yang symbol, they look like two fishes, one's black and one's white and they're connected, but inside the black, there's a little circle of white, and inside the white, there's a circle of black. 

Dr. Earnshaw’s creative writing process look like when writing this book -He first jots down his thoughts and ideas on paper, then he uses Microsoft word to put his written words into an electronic format which enables him to restructure, and arrange the information chronologically acceptable, which translate into a book. 

You may wonder how Dr. Earnshaw solves any creative challenges he comes across. He recommends: Stimulating or studying or thinking about a problem in-depth for at least an hour, a maximum of two hours, and then let it go and then going for a walk. You will find while you're walking, all sorts of ideas, pop into your mind.

In conclusion, In your creative space, whether it’s in the middle of the day or at 3 am in the morning, the creative brain is able to put you in a state of flow. Don’t fight it, just embrace it, because that’s when your inspiration is being delivered to you.

Dr. Earnshaw’s Book:Freemasonry Initiation by light

Chris Earnshaw Website: Chris-earnshaw.com

Twitter: @authorearnshaw

YouTube: Spiritual Freemasonry

TuneIn:Freemasonry in seven minutes or less

auto generated transcript

Welcome back friends to our podcast, unlocking your world of creativity. And today we're stamping our creative passports in Tokyo, Japan. And we're talking with Chris Earnshaw Dr. Earnshaw welcome to the program.

Thank you very much.

Well, in this program, listeners, as you know, we love to explore all avenues of creativity and where we come up with ideas and how we organize those ideas. And Dr. Earnshaw has such a diverse creative portfolio of pursuits. We were laughing just before I hit the record button. We don't often know where to start with folks like Chris, but he's authored books on pharmaceuticals, Japanese art, Freemasonry is a neuroscientist. He's a cellist, he's a licensed cook from the school of Cordon Bleu. It's just terrific. All the creative pursuits. What, do you think drives your curiosity, Chris? Where, do you derive these diverse creative interests?

Yes, I think it's a curiosity. I think that is probably the driving force. There are just so many interesting things that I want to know about and to understand I'm not content with some of the answers that people give me and I want to know for myself, and that goes from things like cooking to religion, to thinking about how things work. I want to be able to understand them for myself rather than being given a package from somebody else.

And so now you're reinventing yourself as an author. This is after many years in business your own entrepreneurial pursuits consulting. Why did you decide now is the time to really concentrate on writing?

Because I retired about eight years ago and I actually have the time to write. Writing is quite an intense business. I'd call it a pursuit. I don't like to think of it as a business for making money. Before, when I was full-time in the business, I was able to write a few books, but they took quite a long time because I wasn't able to allocate the time to do it. And now that I have the time, but then other things fill up my life, like going to the gym and things. So I really have to organize my life and block out things on my calendar. So I have time to write.

Yes. Well, what's on your desktop right now. What are you working on these days?

Yes, my recent adventure. So while I was work, I, I completed four small projects. I wrote a book about Japanese art. I wrote an autobiography. I wrote a book about the Japanese pharmaceutical industry that was actually more, a tariff, a book about all the different drugs that are available, but it's the first one in English. And also I created a tarot system. A new tarot card. It's called the tarot of revelation. It's also available in Japanese. And so while I was working, I was able to put these, get these projects done mainly weekends and stealing timing in coffee shops. But more recently I've just completed a quadrilogy I think that's what comes after the trilogy. But anyway, a book of four to do with Freemasonry is called Freemasonry initiation by light.

And I've reexamined the roots, the historical roots of Freemasonry. And I believe it's actually based on Chinese Daoism. And so this is such a tangent for people who are Freemasons. You're probably aware that Freemasonry is a very English institution. It was invented in London in 1717. So we've just celebrated 300 years as the world's oldest fraternity. And so the institution is a little bit stodgy, a little bit rigid. And so when I tell people, I believe Freemason is based on Chinese Daoism it's like throwing stones into a pool.

It's quite provocative. And was your thought that you wanted to dig into the roots of Freemasonry or was it almost, I'll call it a Venn diagram mindset that you said, wow, look at the overlap or look at the commonalities between the two. What prompted your research in that direction?

It's actually an inspiration. I was my background was at university. I studied Japanese and Chinese, and that's why I live in Japan, I suppose. I've studied ancient Chinese literature Confucius and Menzies and LAUSD. And so I particularly liked the works of Menzies. Menzies is, is very easy to read. And his book is called Menzies, his name is Menzies and he wrote about how people improve society and his ideas for statesmanship and things like that. And so three years ago, four years ago now I attended a lecture in Tokyo on Menzies, and the lecturer was a Chinese philosopher and he invited me to go to Taipei in Taiwan to attend a Daoist initiation ceremony, which only happens once a year in English, normally it's in Chinese. And when I went there, I recognized it as being exactly the same as Freemasonry.

So Freemasonry has three rituals that you have to pass through before you can call yourself a master Mason. And the first one is the transfer of light from the east, from the master to the candidate. And this is exactly what is happening in Daoism. The head of the temple was bringing light to the new candidate, to the temple, which was just so exactly the same as Freemason. And when I looked at all the components, there were at least 10 things that were the same, and I just couldn't understand this. So how could it be? Because nobody believes that Freemasonry comes from China, but it seems that the Freemasons in 1717 were actually stepped back a little bit at the time in England from about 1660 to about 1780, that's 120 years.

There was a boom in Chinese things. China just opened up to the west. We'd had a silk brought in via Venice and the silk road has been brought into Europe. But other things have not really arrived. And the first thing that came was tea, Chinese tea and tea shops started to proliferate in 1660. And then the east India company, which was actually originally starting, of course, trading with India, but then it is stretched further because, for several political reasons, it was very difficult to trade with China, but then trade opened up and then all sorts of things came in like silk, furniture. And then the aristocracy in England started to copy Chinese architectural things like the roofs and the gardens Chinese gardens, and they collected Chinese Ming ceramics.

So now England is one of the best places in the, to find Ming Chinawere because in China it's all gone, but we really collected it in a serious way in England. And so not only did things come in, but ideas also came in. In early China in the Ming area, China from something like the 1450s onwards, the Jesuits had been a very strong power in China. They had opened up Christian churches. They had like 300 churches across China and they were also introducing Chinese ideas and books back to the west. So they translated Chinese documents into Latin and in the 1600s in Europe, everybody spoke Latin. I mean, it was kind of the lingua franca. So even the aristocracy in England re-read and wrote, and to some extent spoke, even though it's a dead language, but they spoke Latin.

And so these ideas started to come in and then in the Royal Society, which had been established in 1660 there was a move to see if the Chinese philosophy couldn't be welded with Christianity because Chinese philosophy was, seemed to be such a superior meritocracy that they wanted to see if the two couldn't be made into a single religion which then would spread out across the world. Of course, we had a lot of issues with Protestantism and Catholicism at that time, including wars between the two religions in Europe. And so as Europeans we said, you know, we should be able to find a unifying factor and so we had this ideas of bringing Chinese philosophy into the country. So then the Freemasons in 1770, they reestablished their organization based on the, what we call operative masons people whose to make churches and castles and these massive mansions that we have in England. And so they use that structure to build this what I believe to be a sort of Chinese philosophy initiation and secret ritual. And so it doesn't seem out of place to me, but a lot of people may not believe that's kind of a long explanation,

Beautiful background, and I can see where that idea was inspired. So now, as you're thinking about organizing this into a series of books, what was your approach? Did you have the outline in mind? Did you have the chapter, the structure, the flow, or do you see it unfolding as this quadrilogy also unfold?

So first of all, I just had to get it down on paper. And so I used Microsoft word, which I like, I think people misunderstand Microsoft word and they think it's just a simple document writing system. But actually, it is really well structured. So I was able to put, many files and I just put it all down in as much as I could. And then I restructured and moved things around to make it chronologically acceptable. And then I made a single book and the book turned out to be about 600 pages of A4 and I showed it to a Masonic publisher. And they said it's probably too difficult to make into a single book and actually make any money because books are priced at. nowadays something like if you go over $35, that's the kind of limit, people are willing to pay for a hardcopy book. If you say 40 and 50 people start to worry about the bank account.

So he suggested that I divided it into four books and of course Freemason's ritual are three. And so then I was able to cut it up, but that was actually more work because I had, cross-referenced so many things in chapter three to chapter five and five to six. So I had to undo all of these cross-links and that took another six months, but it ended up as four books. And I'm actually happy because you don't have to buy the whole series. You can get one to get a flavor of what I'm talking about. And it brings the price down to $22, which is much more acceptable.

Yes. Well, we'll be sure to include a link to the books in our show notes so people can find them. So, Chris, I'm also curious, here are this creative right brain, wide-ranging creative interests. And yet when you look at your CV, it's a Ph.D. in neuroscience. CEO as a medical device and healthcare company. What people would say is more left-brain scientific, analytical. How did you see those two blending in a professional setting?

Well, I don't really deem make a demarcation like the left-right brain of course my background kind of requires me to look at the brain in that system. But I like to see them because we have this Corpus callosum, which connects the two sides. And I think it's actually, like the Chinese ying-yang symbol, which you may be familiar, of. You have these, they look like two fishes, one's black and one's white and they're connected, but inside the black, there's a little circle of white, and inside the white, there's a circle of black. And it's also been proved by some research that was done on Einstein's brain that inside the logical side of the brain, there is an element of the intuitive and the imaginative. And then on the other side of the brain, there is rational understanding. So they're kind of mixed up like that.

And so I don't see it as a demarcation. Also, something happened to me and I think this is quite an important milestone in my life. I was very ill in 1993, I was hospitalized for three months with a form of asthma. And I started to have adult-onset asthma when in my forties. And this really changed my life because I've been very active. I sail I do a lot of active sports and suddenly I couldn't. I had sometimes difficulty walking upstairs. And so I was hospitalized. It was diagnosed as something called Churg-Strauss syndrome which is a very rare form of advanced asthma, I suppose, is one way of putting it. And when I came out as a hospital a friend of mine said, well, perhaps there's a reason you are sick.

There may be some sort of psychological or something deep inside you that wants to express or to get out of your system. And I said, well, perhaps, but just give me the steroids. And so he introduced me to a tarot reader, and so, and he spoke very highly of this tarot reader. The tarot reader was just visiting from America. He was actually a German by origin, but he lives in San Francisco. And every year he spends the American winter. He goes to spends it in Australia, which is summer. So he gets summer all the time. And as he passes, he goes, stopped in Japan for one week. And I met this terror reader. I was very skeptical because I was trying to analyze everything. And I was frankly, to use the terminology. I was blown away.

I, there was times I couldn't talk. I couldn't just say anything. I was just dumbfounded. I was thinking, how does this person know so much about me? He was telling me things about my parents. We've never met. I think that kind of unlocked something in me. And so when I went home I started to investigate the tarot. How does it work? Why does it work? And who are the best people? Why are they the best people? And then after a few years, as I mentioned earlier, I wrote for my research the Tarot of the revelation, and this is sold quite well. In fact, there's no more it's sold out, but the books are still available on the internet. And I think that opened something inside me.

like a key. And then I started thinking in these ways, and then I realized, the brain as we often think of it like a machine or a computer, but it is, to me, I think it's more like an antenna, which connects us to the universe. And in the universe, of course, depends on how you use the terminology, but there is God and God is different things to different people, but part of God, is this creative spirit which we're able to tap into and we're able to download, downloads is a little bit strange. But we're able to access information. And I think that's how tarot works as well. They're able to connect on a different plane. So from studying the taro, is that I thought, well, I want to know more about this.

I'm always challenging things. So I started studying Edgar Cayce. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that name. Oh, well, this is somebody you really must know because he is just one of the world's marvels with Bruno Groaning is another one in, in Europe. These people are just outstanding. Anyway, EdgerCasey was born, I think in 1856. He died in 1945 ish. And he was what we call a sleeping prophet. He used to go into a trance and was able to access all parts of this universe or what we call Akashic records where everything that has happened and may happen is somewhere out in the universe as a kind of I'm not sure the word would be, but it's rather like a digital memory.

And so it seems strange to say that a person can lie down on a couch and then suddenly know everything about anything, but that is what has happened. And he was able to give medical advice to people who were thousands of miles away. They would write to him and say," I've been suffering XYZ. What should I do?" And he would say, "you need a bit of this, a bit of that, and you should, exercise more" or something like this. And for example, he, for one person, he had given some remedy, of course, in those days, medicine wasn't as advanced as it is now. The medicine medical industry didn't start seriously until the second world war before the second world war, we had very simple medications. And so he wrote to this person and said, "well, you go to the chemist and ask for this medication X."

And you got a letter back from the patient that said," well, I went to the chemist and the chemist didn't have it." So Edgar Cayce wrote another letter back. He said, "tell him to look properly. It's on the back shelf in the back of the room, it's on the second shelf, it's on the right-hand side, tell him to go look." Then he went and found it. But how does this happen? 3000 miles different from, he was based in Virginia Beach and people writing him from California. How did he do this? And he ended up writing 14,000 of these for different people. He calls them readings. But and this is a remarkable person. So I started studying cause it's sort of connected. And he also looked into religious things and political issues around the future of the world. And it looked at climate change. He had dire warnings about climate change. He said that parts of Japan was going to be under the sea very soon.

Incredible. It's deffinately somebody, I need to look up and learn more about.

Edgar Cayce is remarkable. And I enrolled in his university he has an online university called Atlantic university and I studied with them and it was really remarkable. A whole new world had been shown to me from the kind of scientific and logical thinking. I think he had to change 180 degrees.

Well, and it requires that kind of stimulation. Doesn't it? My guest is Christopher Earnshaw listeners, a real sort of Renaissance and broad spectrum. If I can use a medical term, broad spectrum, creative mind, but I want to go back to that visual analogy of the brain as an antenna, rather than this circuitry that we often see that it's really, that curiosity you spoke of at the outset, that if you put your antenna out, you've described some things and a metaphysical world, and the other things that come to you, these ideas and these other thoughts and these other creative inspirations and antenna attracts like sound waves.

Yes. So I found the best way to stimulate this, is to study or think about a problem in-depth for at least an hour, a maximum of two hours, and then let it go and then go for a walk. And then you will find while you're walking, all sorts of ideas, pop into your mind. And so it's a form of pressure. You pressure your mind to think about things and writing down questions and trying to see connections between things and then let it go. And then when you let it go, then your brain is able to, it seems that you have a certain form of energy that can only be formed focused in one direction, but when you release it, that allows it for two-way communication. And all the time, I just had just ideas pop into my mind, particularly at three in the morning, for some reason.

It happens.

It's the universe doesn't understand time. And so of course time doesn't exist. But anyway, so I keep a microphone icy recorder beside my bed. So I can record these ideas that come in. And some of them are just mind-blowing things that I wasn't even thinking about. And it'll just come in like two words or a sentence or an image or dreams. Don't get me started on dreams. Dreams are just so wonderful. I mean, it's just magic.

We'll, I have to have another conversation about that, but also all tongue in cheek aside, kind of continuing our medical analogy here. The side effects of being such creative. So many creative thoughts coming in at one time. we often say, I just can't turn it off sometimes,

Right. Yes. So the side effect is you get very excited. I find I get excited and I get so much energy. When I get really into a project and ideas flowing and things are popping, I got mess-making memos all over the place. I'm working something like a 14 hour day. I miss lunch. I miss supper. I just work straight through and I just think, oh, I don't need it. And just keep writing because the energy is there, is sustaining me. It's just so exciting. I love it. It's what this person's name I cannot pronounce, but it's a book about the zone. It's about being in the zone. It's a Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I know exactly the author you're speaking of

Yes, it's a Polish name. And I anyway, so people know who I'm talking about, and that's true when you're in the flow. It's, like being carried down a river, you don't have time to just go with the flow and because ideas are coming, you don't want it to stop. It's just, it's wonderful.

Wow. What a terrific conversation, Dr.Earnshaw. Ive enjoyed it so much. We're going to have to pick it up some other time, perhaps at a coffee shop in Tokyo. Well, what's the best place. Our listeners can connect with you and follow your work.

Well, I have, my website is Chris hyphen, Earnshaw, .com. . And I'm also on Twitter. I'm not a real social, I mean, I have other things to do than tweeting,, but I do tweet @authorearnshaw on Twitter. For Freemasonry, I have a YouTube channel called spiritual Freemasonry and I also have a podcast called Freemasonry in seven minutes or less.

Well, there you go. You can get, all those ideas in seven minutes or less. I don't know how you do it.

It's just one, one idea.

One Micro idea at a time. That's right. Yeah, exactly. That's very good. Well, Dr. Chris Earnshaw has been our guest. What a wonderful conversation. I've enjoyed it so much. Thank you for being on the program.

Been my pleasure.

Talk to you again. I hope. And listeners I hope you'll come back for our next episode. We're going to continue our around the world journey to talk to creative practitioners and creative thinkers. Like Chris, Earnshaw about how they get inspired, how they organize their ideas. And most of all, how they get the competence and make the connections to get their work up and out into the world. Because if we only keep to the thoughts and never hit the publish button they're only thoughts indeed. And we need to put them out into the universe just as the other inspiration came to us. I'm sure it will inspire others. So come back and join me on my next episode until then I'm Mark Stinson and we've been unlocking your world of creativity. See you soon.