True personal growth ultimately will lead to fulfillment, and it's my intention with these podcasts to connect more deeply with you. Thank you for joining me, Anne Corbin, and my guests, and welcome to this episode. Nikola Tesla. One of the greatest brains of all time and he was almost airbrushed from history. Loads of his inventions were credited to other people and when I was at school, we weren't even taught about him.
So that's changed now, thanks to Elon Musk and his vehicles, which he chose to name Tesla. But let's talk now about the man himself. He was a visionary and his inventions changed the course of history. And if only he had been allowed and financed to create everything that he had the potential to create, wow, life would be so much better. But we have him to thank for alternating current, which we have to pay for through the nose. He wanted to give everybody free electricity.
And he invented the radio, he had a lot to do with invention of the television, wireless energy of course, and the Tesla coil. But there's one story about Tesla that certainly most people will not know, and the story is so strange off the wall, if you like, that it's been kept secret for more than a century and not financial reasons. It's the story of Tesla's mysterious encounter with a being that he would later describe as the devil. Yes, you heard that right.
But before you jump to any conclusions about what this means and why I'm talking about it, let's take a closer look at the context and the man behind this story. By nineteen o seven, Tesla was already struggling with personal and financial challenges.
Although he was one of the most brilliant minds of all time or of his time, whatever way you want to look at it, he was frequently in debt because his experiments were costly and frequently more than he could afford, not to mention various well known names who cheated him.
But his groundbreaking work, although it was revolutionary, it was too expensive to maintain really and ironically it was that expense that was preventing him from capitalizing on what could and should have made him a very wealthy man. But still, he wasn't one to let setbacks stop him and he pressed on regardless. In fact, his relentless dedication led him to pursue some of the most dangerous experiments of his career.
And one of the most famous and chilling was his willingness to expose himself to very high voltage electrical discharges, which he knew perfectly well could have been fatal. He once allowed a 50,000 volts to pass through his body in an experiment which nearly killed him, but it left him in a state of lethargy for days, I believe. And it was in this state, kind of at the very edge of consciousness, where the boundaries between life and death were beginning to blur.
And it was in one of those peculiar moments that Tesla had this encounter. He was alone, he was surrounded by the of the bits of machinery in his laboratory and he felt an unfamiliar presence, just a sensation that something was watching him. But it wasn't the feeling of being observed by another human, it felt different. It was as though something non human, something outside of the physical realm was just quietly observing him. Now Tesla was no stranger to the unknown.
He was a man who had often glimpsed beyond the veil of normal understanding, so when he felt this presence, he did not dismiss it. Instead, he focused intently, trying to connect with whatever it was. And what he saw next would stay with him for the rest of his life. It wasn't a figure with horns or a fiery image of evil or anything like that, that we might associate with the devil in modern culture. No, What Tesla saw was far more complex, far more baffling. It was a glowing, cloud like entity.
It wasn't blinding or dazzling, but he said it had the distinct presence of something that was alive. And he described this entity as not being evil or threatening, but it was something far beyond human comprehension of good and evil. And as he reached out mentally to this being, a flood of information poured into his mind, not in words, not in spoken language, there were no questions.
It was more like an overwhelming clarity, sudden profound realization sounds to me rather like a near death experience, it probably was. But Tesla reported that he understood on a deep level that this Being was indeed the devil, not in the way that most of us think of the devil, it wasn't something that existed to destroy or corrupt, was rather well, Tesla perceived it as somebody who was tasked with overseeing the world.
And it wasn't a force that would destroy creation, but it was one that would test humanity. What's remarkable about this encounter is that the devil or whatever this being was did not try to influence Tesla's decisions. It didn't interfere or tell him what to do. Instead, Tesla was shown the future, the potential consequences of his own inventions. He saw that his breakthroughs could change the world and also that they could be misused in ways that would cause significant harm.
So the responsibility of his inventions from then onwards weighed very heavily on him. And this revelation affected him profoundly. Up until that moment, he had been driven purely by his intellectual curiosity. He was chasing the knowledge of the universe, but now, Tesla understood that his discoveries were not just tools, they were powerful forces. And with that power came a profound moral responsibility.
And this was a burden that he would carry with him for the rest of his life, because the encounter gave him a new understanding of the weight, the gravity of his work. Now, Tesla's later years were marked by this internal struggle. Some of his more ambitious projects, like his plans for wireless energy transmission all that time ago and his so called death ray machine, were never fully realized. But Tesla did not destroy the records of these inventions, merely out of concern for his safety.
He feared that the misuse of such powerful technologies could bring about unimaginable consequences. And in fact, Tesla was so cautious that he destroyed all the plans for his wireless energy project before he passed away. He was quite a good age when he passed away, forget offhand, but you must have seen those pictures of him as a very thin, gaunt, old man.
It's also interesting to note that Tesla, although he was initially skeptical, he came to believe that his discoveries were not merely the products of his own genius. He began to see them as gifts and divine gifts, in fact. He believed that his greatest inspirations did not come from intellect alone, but from a higher source. Tesla was a very spiritual individual. And over time, he grew to see himself not as a lone genius, but as a channel for greater universal intelligence.
Tesla's life serves as an important reminder. True greatness is not just about technological achievement or invention. It's about understanding the moral implications of those achievements and accepting the responsibility that comes with them. In Tesla's case, his encounter with the devil was the moment that shifted his perspective. He understood the power of his creation, and he understood the risks that the world would face if many of the inventions got into the wrong hands.
And it's not just Tesla's inventions that are the focus of this story. It's his ability to balance that genius that he had with his sense of moral duty, and this makes him stand out in history. Tesla didn't simply shape the future of science and technology. He also grappled with the existential implications of his own work. He didn't just create for the sake of creation, and he definitely didn't do it for self aggrandismal.
He created with the knowledge that his inventions could change the world and that the change could be for better or for worse. I believe that Tesla himself didn't leave any records of his encounter with the devil, and the reason that it's been passed down is thanks to Mark Twain, because although there was a significant age gap between them, when they met, I believe Tesla was 54 and Twain was an old man, he was 75.
But they just immediately recognized that they were soul mates or something, they shared a deep bond. I think it was a question of a mutual admiration society, they both shared the same kind of curiosity and respect for each other's achievements and each other's interests. And it was in the final years of his life that Mark Twain remember he was an author he was so captivated by Tesla's story that he decided to pass it on as a legacy, but the details were never written down.
So it was only through Mark Twain telling his stories that this information has filtered through. And as we reflect on Tesla's encounter with the devil, we're reminded that the line between progress and destruction can be a thin one. This is so relevant to our times now. Tesla's cautionary tale is more relevant now than ever as our technological advance continues apace.
Just like Tesla, we we as a species must remember that knowledge comes with responsibility and we must choose to use the power that we hold wisely. Tesla's story shows us that while we may be driven by our desire to innovate and to create, we must always keep in mind the greater good and the potential consequences of whatever actions we take. And just like Tesla, we all face choices that can change the course of our future.
So let's ensure that whatever choice we make is guided by wisdom and compassion and of course the very deeply entangled relationship between power and responsibility. You can set yourself up to win at the game of life. Become familiar with the laws of the universe. You have infinite potential. You can reality. Quantum growth and connection explores success strategies, power principles, relationship rescue, and the quantum field.