There have been child prodigies throughout the ages. There's the example of Mozart, composing music at age 6 or whenever that was. In high school one of my buddies fit that model, though not to the extreme that Mozart did. My friend was a science whiz, winning four years in a row the state-wide high school science competitions. He of course went on to Princeton and to earn a PhD in Astrophysics.

Eight-year-old physics genius enters university (The Korea Herald, Sunday, November 6, 2005)

Here's another, an 8-year old boy who was allowed early admittance to College. He was home-schooled by his parents and completed all 12 years of main education within one year. He's said to be planning to build flying cars through applying some superstring-like principles that he has yet to develop. Yup.

The article makes me think of the Indigo Child concept passing around the New Age community. The idea is that this period in human history is seeing rapid change and challenges. In this period, the Indigo Child proponents claim that many talented souls are being born on this planet at this time to help the people on this planet through these challenges.

We can clearly see that change, what with the new technologies, and the various societal challenges what with the war, global warming, disease threats, environmental challenges, and more. Clearly, as Einstein said, the level of thinking required to solve a problem is greater than the level of thinking that was required to create the problem. That is, humanity has created a bunch of crisis points, including the nuclear weapons Einstein had to be implying. To create these crisis points required a specific mode of thinking and behavior, e.g. with nuclear weapons it was to take human agression and dominance to extreme ends of technological might. But to solve the problem, e.g. of what to do with the nuclear technology that was bent to creating the weapons, means one must transcend the thinking that created the problem.

We're talking about society-wide thinking and behavior, though the principles hold at the personal level as well. The agressions of one society towards another resulted in society bending nuclear technology to be used only for agression. If the societies in question stay in their agressive patterns, that will result in the use of nuclear weapons, and we know from scientific studies this means nuclear winter and great damage to the ecosystem of this planet. We would die. To avoid that scenario our thinking must transcend the agressions so that our society can see other uses for nuclear technology, e.g. to create power. But using nuclear technology to create power isn't enough, because other thinking patterns must be transcended so that the society sees the importance of safe use of nuclear technology.

In any case, back to the Indigo children and the child prodigy issue.

Clearly child prodigies have existed for a long time. This is not a new phenomenon. Yet the Indigo Child proponents say this is something new that's happening, brought about as I said because of the period of growth and change.

In some cases the Indigo children are said to have great spiritual talents and are talking with one another through a wide-spread telepathic communication channel between these Indigo children.

This story is told in: Emissary of Love: The Psychic Children Speak to the World, James Twyman's book about finding some Romanian children with these talents.

Other books along these lines are The Crystal Children, The Care and Feeding of Indigo Children, Indigo Children, How to Raise an Indigo Child: 10 Keys for Cultivating a Child's Natural Brilliance, Edgar Cayce on the Indigo Children, Spiritually Healing the Indigo Children (and Adult Indigos, Too!): The Practical Guide and Handbook and others. The concept is demonstrated in this recent movie: Indigo

But I question this. As I said, child prodigies occur throughout history. Do we really know that this period has more of these children than other periods had? Are these just children being special? It's easily understood that childrens consciousness is more open to new ideas than adult consciousness, because as we go to adulthood our ego solidifies into a shell that interferes with our natural curiosity. Maybe the spiritually talented of these children are spiritual prodigies? This would be the spiritual equivalent to a science prodity like the kid described earlier or a music prodigy like Mozart or a golf prodigy like Tiger Woods.

In the books listed above an interesting question is raised. How do you raise a child to encourage or cultivate their natural brilliance? Speaking from my personal experience, my upbringing gave me beliefs that have hugely hampered my ability to bring my ideas to the world. I'm sure that if a beautiful brilliant child prodigy came to the world, and was actively discouraged and berated rather than encouraged and nurtured, that their potential would tend to be limited. Often genious comes with great personal cost, trial and tribulation.

By all means, everybody, nurture your children. Encourage their brilliance. It doesn't matter whether they're an Indigo child, Crystal child, or an Average child. We all have brilliance, we all have a gift to share with the world.