# Higher Creativity *By Willis Harman and Howard Rheingold. J.P. Tarcher, Los Angeles, copyright 1984; distributed by Houghton Mifflin. Marked on the book as an Institute of Noetic Sciences book.* > I did not read the book. It is still sold in paperback, has no ebook or audiobook that I found, and the only scan (Internet Archive `highercreativity00harm`) is lending-only / print-disabled; I did not log in or borrow it. What I could see: Library of Congress–style catalog records (NYPL, WorldCat OCLC 11187581, Open Library), the current Tarcher/Penguin publisher page, the Institute of Noetic Sciences' 2018 blog excerpt from the opening pages, Goodreads reader reviews (one of which names the last chapter), rheingold.com's bibliography note, Wikipedia on Willis Harman, and short OCR "search inside" snippets that Open Library returns from the Internet Archive scan — enough to recover most of the contents page and a few chapter openings, not the full argument. Chapter descriptions below are my reading of those titles, the publisher blurb, the IONS excerpt and the reviews, labeled as such. Related dossiers in this vault: Rheingold's [[Book Summaries/Rheingold, Howard/Excursions to the Far Side of the Mind - Howard Rheingold|Excursions to the Far Side of the Mind]] (whose "Dreamworks" essay, and Rheingold's later Medium retrospective, say the dream-journal habit and IONS staff writing led into this book), [[Book Summaries/Rheingold, Howard/Tools for Thought - Howard Rheingold|Tools for Thought]] (the computing book he turned to after leaving IONS when this manuscript was ready), [[Book Summaries/Rheingold, Howard/The Cognitive Connection - Howard Levine and Howard Rheingold|The Cognitive Connection]], [[Book Summaries/Rheingold, Howard/Mind Amplifier - Howard Rheingold|Mind Amplifier]], [[Book Summaries/Rheingold, Howard/Virtual Reality - Howard Rheingold|Virtual Reality]], [[Book Summaries/Rheingold, Howard/They Have a Word for It - Howard Rheingold|They Have a Word for It]]. The book is closely tied to the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which Harman later led. ## 1. Book facts | | | |---|---| | Title | *Higher Creativity: Liberating the Unconscious for Breakthrough Insights* | | Authors | Willis W. Harman (Library of Congress main entry, "Harman, Willis W.") and Howard Rheingold. Harman is named first on the title page and in library catalogs | | Publisher | Los Angeles: J.P. Tarcher; Boston: Distributed by Houghton Mifflin. Copyright page (from the scan's search snippets): "Copyright © 1984 by Willis Harman, Ph.D., and Howard Rheingold". Later kept in print by Tarcher / Penguin Random House. The Harvard MARC record notes: "An Institute of Noetic Sciences Book" | | Date | 1984 (copyright and first edition). Penguin's current page gives publication date December 1, 1984. Harman's signed note in the front matter is dated Stanford, California, August 1984 (from a search snippet) | | ISBN | Paperback 0874773350 / 9780874773354 (list price $8.95 in contemporary catalogs). Hardcover 0874772931 / 9780874772937 (list price $15.95) | | Other identifiers | LCCN 84016237; OCLC 11187581 (also 716342162, 251665093, 551102282); Dewey 153.3/5; LC call BF411 .H37 1984; Open Library work OL1889912W, edition OL2853820M; Internet Archive `highercreativity00harm` | | Physical | xxiv, 237 pages, 21–22 cm; bibliography pp. 227–231 (catalogs; the CIP line in the scan's OCR also says "Bibliography: p. 220"); index. Publisher and retail pages often say 272 or 273 pages, counting front matter. The IA scan has 270 images | | Subjects | Creative ability; Subconsciousness; Insight | | Language | English | | Translation | A Swedish edition appears in LibraryThing common knowledge as *Inspirationens ögonblick* (details unverified by me) | | Audiobook / ebook | None found | | Where it came up | Marshall asked for all of Rheingold's books on 2026-11-03 | | Cover | [Open Library cover image](https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/4721962-L.jpg) | ## 2. Book resources **Free (legal).** - **Internet Archive (controlled lending).** [Higher creativity scan, 1984](https://archive.org/details/highercreativity00harm). Access is restricted to borrowing and print-disabled readers. Loan status showed available when I checked the metadata; I did not log in or borrow it. - **Open Library.** [Work page](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1889912W); borrowable edition [OL2853820M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL2853820M) linked to the same scan. - **Libby/OverDrive and Hoopla.** Not likely: I found no ebook or audiobook edition. [OverDrive search](https://www.overdrive.com/search?q=Higher%20Creativity%20Harman) is the place to confirm with your own library. - **Project Gutenberg.** Not applicable (a 1984 copyrighted book). - **Full text posted by the authors or publisher.** None found as a free full book. The Institute of Noetic Sciences posted a short [excerpt from the opening](https://noetic.org/blog/higher-creativity-willis-harman/) in 2018. **Paid.** - **Publisher.** [Tarcher / Penguin Random House page](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/349466/higher-creativity-by-willis-harman/) (paperback, lists 272 pages, $27.00 on the page I saw). - **Amazon.** [Paperback, ISBN 0874773350](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0874773350). I built the link from the ISBN and did not open the live product page for price or Kindle stock; Goodreads/AbeBooks-style listings treat it as print. No Kindle edition confirmed. - **Audible.** None found for this title. **Catalogs.** [WorldCat, OCLC 11187581](https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/11187581); [NYPL research catalog](https://www.nypl.org/research/research-catalog/bib/b10944263); [Google Books search by ISBN](https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0874773350) (the Google Books API was quota-exhausted when I tried); [Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/724891); [LibraryThing](https://www.librarything.com/work/567525). ## 3. Author biographies **Willis W. Harman** (August 16, 1918, Seattle – January 30, 1997, Stanford, California) was an American engineer, futurist and author linked with the human-potential movement ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Harman)). He took a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Washington (1939), served as a Navy electrical officer (ashore near Pearl Harbor during the 1941 attack), and earned an M.S. in physics and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford (1948). He taught at Stanford (electrical engineering, later Engineering-Economic Systems), held a senior social-scientist post at SRI International (1967–1984), and was invited by astronaut Edgar Mitchell to join the Institute of Noetic Sciences in 1973; he served as IONS president from 1978 until his death. He co-founded the World Business Academy (1987) and was a University of California regent (appointed 1980). Books include *An Incomplete Guide to the Future* (1976), this volume with Rheingold (1984), *Global Mind Change* (1988), and later titles on business and consciousness. He died of brain cancer. Sources: [Wikipedia, Willis Harman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Harman); [World Business Academy memorial](https://worldbusiness.org/fellows/willis-harman-1918-1997/); [IONS note on this book](https://noetic.org/blog/higher-creativity-willis-harman/). **Howard Rheingold** (born July 7, 1947, Phoenix, Arizona; Reed College, 1968) is an American writer and teacher on the cultural and social effects of computers and communication media ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Rheingold)). His own [bibliography page](https://www.rheingold.com/howard/) lists *Higher Creativity* (1984) with Willis Harman among the early-1980s books that came from his interest in "the powers of the human mind," before *Tools for Thought*. In a 2017 Medium retrospective he says he joined IONS as a staff writer in 1982 and left in 1983 when *Higher Creativity* was ready, then did contract writing for Xerox PARC. Later books include *The Virtual Community* (1993), *Smart Mobs* (2002) and *Net Smart* (2012). Encyclopedia.com lists "(With Willis Harman) Higher Creativity… J. P. Tarcher, 1984" ([Encyclopedia.com](https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/rheingold-howard-e-1947)). ## 4. Author interviews and talks None about this particular book that I found. Closest Harman material from the same period and themes: - [Thinking Allowed / New Thinking Allowed: "Global Mind Changes" with Willis Harman](https://newthinkingallowed.org/global-mind-changes-with-willis-harman-1918-1997/) (Jeffrey Mishlove; recorded about 1988 for the original Thinking Allowed series; the page notes he is author of *Global Mind Change*, *An Incomplete Guide to the Future* and *Higher Creativity*). Streaming copy also listed on the Thinking Allowed channel. - [Scott London, "Business and Social Responsibility: An Interview with Willis Harman"](https://scott.london/interviews/harman.html): a late print interview at IONS about the role of business, drawn from London's radio series; not about this book. - [IONS blog excerpt, August 5, 2018](https://noetic.org/blog/higher-creativity-willis-harman/): not an interview, but the institute's own posting of opening pages from this book. For Rheingold in the same years, see the interviews already listed on the [[Book Summaries/Rheingold, Howard/The Cognitive Connection - Howard Levine and Howard Rheingold|Cognitive Connection]] and [[Book Summaries/Rheingold, Howard/Tools for Thought - Howard Rheingold|Tools for Thought]] dossiers (Fresh Air 1993; First Monday / Mindjack 1999). His Medium retrospective above discusses writing this book. ## 5. Summary **Thesis (from the publisher's description and the IONS excerpt).** Ordinary mental acts and rare "breakthrough" insights sit on one continuum of creative consciousness. Most people fail to have breakthrough insights more often because they do not believe they can, and because they do not use known techniques that invite them. The book argues for a larger picture of everyone's creative potential; surveys a "secret history" of inspiration through historical and contemporary accounts; and describes a simple, repeatable sequence — "historically validated procedures for reprogramming the unconscious" — that outstanding innovators in business, science and the arts have used, sometimes by accident. The IONS excerpt asks whether the part of mind that wakes you for a squeaky door is kin to the part that delivers a composer's melody, and whether genius is partly a learned way of attending to fleeting images and quiet intuitions. **Outline (titles and some start pages from Open Library search-inside OCR of the Contents page and chapter openings; incomplete).** - **Foreword by Frank Barron, Ph.D.** Barron was a major mid-century creativity researcher (Institute of Personality Assessment and Research). I did not see the foreword's text beyond the Contents line. - **Introduction / front matter.** A signed note by Willis W. Harman, Stanford, California, August 1984, appears just before Chapter 1 in the snippets. - **Chapter 1: The Spectrum of Creativity — From the Mundane to the Miraculous** (p. 1). Matches the IONS excerpt's continuum from everyday unconscious vigilance to breakthrough illumination. - **Chapter 2: Lightning Bolts and Illuminations — The Hidden History of Creativity** (running heads in the snippets show pages in the low 20s). My reading from the title, publisher blurb and Goodreads quotations: historical and biographical cases of sudden insight (reviewers and later books that cite this volume mention figures such as Kipling on his "Daemon," Wagner on the *Rheingold* prelude, Tesla, and dream/insight stories such as Kekulé and Loewi — those names appear in citing works and reviews, not as a list I took from this book's own table). - **Chapter 3.** Title not recovered from the snippets I got. The Contents OCR jumped from chapter 2 to chapter 4. - **Chapter 4: Opening the Mind's Gate** (about p. 60 in the Contents snippet), with **A Toolkit for Higher Creativity** appearing next in the Contents OCR (about p. 80). I am not certain from the OCR whether "A Toolkit…" is the subtitle of chapter 4, a separate chapter, or a section title; I have left that ambiguity marked. - **Chapter 5: The Still, Small Voice — Toward a New Science of …** (about p. 80; the subtitle is cut off in the OCR after "Toward a New Science of"). - **Final chapter: The Harvest.** Named as the last chapter by a Goodreads reviewer (Alexey, 2025) who said reading it alone was enough to recall what he already knew; I did not see its chapter number in the Contents snippets. - **Back matter.** Bibliography (catalogs: pp. 227–231); index. Front matter runs through p. xxiv. **Key ideas (inferred from the blurb, IONS excerpt, reviews and citing books; not from a reading).** - Breakthrough insight is a learnable use of the unconscious, not only a gift of a few. - Belief and technique both matter: self-limiting images of mind block the very experiences the book wants to normalize. - Historical "lightning bolt" stories are evidence that a reproducible pattern (preparation, incubation, illumination, and related practices such as visualization, attention to hypnagogic imagery, and openness to ambiguity) runs through science, art and invention. - The project is explicitly noetic: it sits with IONS' brief to study consciousness, and with Harman's wider "global mind change" argument that cultural assumptions about mind shape institutions. - Reception on Goodreads is mixed-to-warm (about 3.9 from ~50 ratings when I looked): some readers call it life-changing or "scientific insight for the average person"; others find it dated, long-winded, short on women in its examples, or heavy on altered-states material. ## 6. Fact-check I could check only claims that show in catalogs, the excerpt, or well-known history. None of these come from reading the book's argument in full. | Claim | Verdict | Evidence | |---|---|---| | Ordinary vigilance in sleep and creative inspiration may be ends of one continuum of unconscious mentation | Supported as the book's stated opening claim | [IONS excerpt](https://noetic.org/blog/higher-creativity-willis-harman/) | | Frank Barron wrote the foreword | Supported | Contents OCR from the IA scan via Open Library search-inside; Barron: [Wikipedia, Frank Barron (psychologist)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Barron_(psychologist)) | | Harman was president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences | Supported | [Wikipedia, Willis Harman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Harman); [IONS](https://noetic.org/blog/higher-creativity-willis-harman/) | | Publication year 1984, Tarcher, Harman first-named | Supported | NYPL/WorldCat/Open Library; copyright snippet | | Page count | Disputed between sources | Library catalogs: xxiv, 237; CIP OCR line "Bibliography: p. 220"; Penguin/Goodreads/Amazon ~272–273 | | Bibliography pages 227–231 | Supported by catalogs; CIP OCR differs | NYPL and related MARC; OCR CIP says p. 220 | | Historical insight anecdotes (Wagner *Rheingold*, Kipling's Daemon, Tesla, etc.) as used in the book | Unverified as to the book's exact wording | Appear in Goodreads quotations and in other books that cite this volume; I did not read the chapters | | A "simple reproducible sequence" for triggering insight | Unverified in detail | Publisher blurb only; method not read | | Claims about psychedelics / altered states (raised by some reviewers) | Unverified | Reviewer comments, not checked against the text | | Rheingold was IONS staff writer ~1982–83 while this book was finished | Supported for Rheingold's own account | [Medium retrospective, 2017](https://hrheingold.medium.com/the-past-futures-of-howard-rheingold-987a2117c79a), as already used in the Excursions dossier | ## 7. Citations and references **What the book draws on.** I could not see the bibliography. From reviews, the IONS excerpt and citing works, it uses historical cases of inspiration and the mid-century creativity / human-potential literature (Barron in the foreword; later books that cite it also put it next to Koestler, Assagioli, Hilgard's "hidden observer," and dream researchers). These are inferences, not entries I saw in its bibliography. **Who cites it (seen in other books' search snippets; details unverified):** Harman's own *Global Mind Change*; Frances Vaughan's *The Inward Arc*; books on channeling, spiritual emergency, intuition and creative thinking that quote pp. such as xxii, 8, 9, 14, 34, 36–39, 54, 134–135. LibraryThing tags it in "nonordinary states of consciousness" lists. **Links this note used:** - Catalogs: [Open Library work OL1889912W](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1889912W); [Open Library edition OL2853820M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL2853820M); [Internet Archive scan](https://archive.org/details/highercreativity00harm); [WorldCat OCLC 11187581](https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/11187581); [NYPL](https://www.nypl.org/research/research-catalog/bib/b10944263); [Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/724891); [LibraryThing](https://www.librarything.com/work/567525); [Amazon ISBN](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0874773350); [Penguin Random House](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/349466/higher-creativity-by-willis-harman/). - Authors and institute: [Wikipedia, Willis Harman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Harman); [Wikipedia, Howard Rheingold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Rheingold); [rheingold.com](https://www.rheingold.com/howard/); [Encyclopedia.com, Rheingold](https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/rheingold-howard-e-1947); [World Business Academy, Harman](https://worldbusiness.org/fellows/willis-harman-1918-1997/); [IONS excerpt](https://noetic.org/blog/higher-creativity-willis-harman/). - Interviews / talks: [New Thinking Allowed, Global Mind Changes](https://newthinkingallowed.org/global-mind-changes-with-willis-harman-1918-1997/); [Scott London interview](https://scott.london/interviews/harman.html); Rheingold [Medium retrospective](https://hrheingold.medium.com/the-past-futures-of-howard-rheingold-987a2117c79a). - Related dossiers: [[Book Summaries/Rheingold, Howard/Excursions to the Far Side of the Mind - Howard Rheingold|Excursions to the Far Side of the Mind]]; [[Book Summaries/Rheingold, Howard/Tools for Thought - Howard Rheingold|Tools for Thought]]; [[Book Summaries/Rheingold, Howard/The Cognitive Connection - Howard Levine and Howard Rheingold|The Cognitive Connection]]; [[Book Summaries/Rheingold, Howard/Mind Amplifier - Howard Rheingold|Mind Amplifier]]; [[Book Summaries/Rheingold, Howard/Virtual Reality - Howard Rheingold|Virtual Reality]]; [[Book Summaries/Rheingold, Howard/They Have a Word for It - Howard Rheingold|They Have a Word for It]].