The Spanish surrealist Dali used to run to his sketchbook or easel
every morning in order to record, as accurately and vividly as
possible, images from his previous night?s dream. (Along with other
members of the Surrealist and Dadaist movements, he shared a
conviction that the unconscious represented an ultimate source of
secret meanings and numinous revelations.) Similarly, Yeats dabbled in
a range of occult activities, from psychic channeling to automatic
writing, all aimed at tapping into some meta-rational or other-worldly
source of imagination and inspiration. In your view do such
deliberately unconventional efforts merely take ?thinking outside the
box? to a silly extreme? Or should artists and thinkers be willing to
leave no stone unturned in their search for new ideas and sources of
creativity?