Intuition and the Creation of a Better World
Alberts, Ton
Over the last couple of centuries our functional mind, our rational mind, has developed and one of the reasons why this has happened is the use of the right angle in architecture. If you are standing in a space of light with angles of 90 degrees, you immediately look for the co-ordinates: you measure the distance with your mind. You measure the distances to the floor, to the ceiling, and that's very easy, it's very rational. In architecture, as we became more rational so the next building we made was more rational than the former one. But by making that more rational building our mind became still more rational. So there was a kind of snowball effect, we became more and more rational.
It's been a very useful development. Our rational mind had to be developed. But the next step is to develop our intuition. By giving people angles where they cannot do this rational measurement, they are disoriented when they enter the building until the moment they discover that they have to use something else. Let's say that instead of the left side of the brain, they have to use the right side of the brain. Their intuition gives them the feeling of the place where they are, so the building helps develop their intuition.
That's one of the reasons I don't always use right angles. Another is that in English the word "angle" and "angel" are very much related to each other, so every angle has a certain power, a certain energy, a certain "angel energy". By using these different energies you give the people who have to work in that space another possibility, another energy for using in their lives·.
I believe that the next step for humanity is developing the intuition, bringing people into contact with their soul, with their higher mind. In buildings like the NMB bank in the Netherlands, all the employees are in these kinds of spaces and so everybody has the opportunity to develop their intuition. It's an enormous advantage for a bank, or for any company, to have a building that trains staff in creativity. We have the computer today and the computer does all the repetitive work we had to do before. So the only thing for the human being behind the computer is a new step, a creative step.
The moment we use our intuition we discover that love is the most rational thing. At the moment when architects as a whole, or society as a whole, can develop the intuition I think goodwill will be everywhere. The basic power in the intuition is that we discover that our purpose is not to have more but to give more. We will discover, for example, that it's much better for Mother Earth that we give instead of take.
I talk about architecture, but all forms of art can awaken the intuition. I always say that art is the language of God. Spirit and matter are brought together by art. We can see art as the soul, the Christ link between spirit and matter. Art is the bridge between spiritual philosophy and religion on the one hand, and science on the other. Through art the Gods talk; it can translate the spiritual, religious and philosophical into things that are understandable for people.
Ton Alberts, Architecture and the Intuition, World Goodwill Newsletter, 1995, No 4, pp. 3-4
