Ineffable Ontological Detanglement .: Introspective Assistance & Mental Analysis Manual
Lateral thinking is basically stepping outside the linear. Some are only capable of a single line of thought, all they're ever going to be able to do with the problem in front of them is solve it with the thought process in front of them, they have one way of doing this and if it doesn't turn out to be this way of doing this they're in a bit of trouble. After awhile, they may find a new line, however in the moment they are only ever operating within their line.
The higher you are within inherent lateral thinking capabilities, the more lines of thought are available to you in the moment, the more capable you are of just flying from one line to another line, often times not even really noticing you have entered into a new line of thought this is just the way you think it's only natural. In regular conversation, you're just bouncing from line to line, you don't notice, nobody notices, you're just capable of elevated conversation.
Most of the time you're simply bouncing from line to line, however some minds can maintain up to four lines simultaneously, it's never a comfortable thing to do. I generally only ever hit two at once and I don't really like it, Dane Marshel can do four it's pretty much always autism that will let you do that and he likes it even less. It feels like BWAH brain breaking and it pretty much always ends in "Why did I produce that?" Particularly if you lack a certain mental organization. You may see some autistic weirdness within it. It doesn't happen very often.
On a line of thought is whatever happens to be in your bank of thinking methods within habit formation.
With regular use of psychedelics, the linear thinker can learn how to lateral think, to them it's just mind blowing they have tapped into a new dimension outside of anybody's comprehension. The first time trying psychedelics they learn it's a thing, your brain can just do this that's amazing, after a few sessions it becomes them, they can now think laterally while sober. Somebody naturally capable of lateral thinking finds similar feelings, their lateral thinking capabilities become enhanced by regular use of psychedelics.
At four lines of thought, you're pretty much set, any more than four is generally pretty redundant. In a moment, you could spark a genius that requires more than four lines of thought. The highest you'll ever need is six.