Intuition : The consciousness of synthesis

"Let me tell you this—this group now in process of becoming, will in time develop its own "yoga" and school of training which will gradually supersede that of the raja yoga and bhakti yoga schools. The method of training will only be given to those who have trained the mind and learnt to control the emotions. Hence the key to what is now going on. The mode of training will be no easy short cut to the goal. Only the intelligent can attain it and only coordinated personalities will be eligible to the teaching. The keynote of the new yoga will be synthesis; its objective will be conscious development of the intuitive faculty. This development will fall into two categories: first, the development of the intuition and of true spiritual perception, and secondly, the trained utilisation of the mind as an interpreting agent.

In the book Agni Yoga, some of the teaching to be given has filtered through but only from the angle of the will aspect. No book has as yet made its appearance which gives in any form whatsoever the "yoga of synthesis". We have had "bhakti yoga" or union through devotion. Raja Yoga is now receiving emphasis, which is union through the mind. It sounds like a redundancy to speak of union through synthesis, but it is not so. It is union through identification with the whole—not union through realisation or through vision. Mark well this distinction, for it holds the secret of the next step for the personalities of the race. The Bhagavad Gita gives us primarily the key to the yoga of devotion. Patanjali teaches us the yoga of the mind. In the Gospel story we have the portrayal of realisation, but the key or the secret of identification is still withheld. It lies in the custody of a few in this integrating group of mystics and knowers and will be brought out into manifestation in the furnace of their individual experience and thus given to the world. But the time is not yet. The group must grow in strength and knowledge and in intuitive perception." 

- Djwal Khul and Alice Bailey (The Way of Disciple)

A subjective definition: Intuition is a level in the ladder of consciousness which when awakened and functioning, one starts connecting various separated dots inwardly to paint a bigger connected whole picture. It is a faculty (known as Buddhi a sanskrit term used by Blavatsky and at times in DK Alice Bailey teachings) of holistic, integral thinking and synthesis. Thus separation and fragmentation is realised as limited and unity of life is directly experienced after intellect has done its work of analysis and cannot go any further.

Some definitions from great souls - 

Intuition is a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate to the original knowledge by identity; for it is always something that leaps out direct from a concealed identity. It is when the consciousness of the subject meets with the consciousness in the object, penetrates it and sees, feels or vibrates with the truth of what it contacts, that the intuition leaps out like a spark or lightning-flash from the shock of the meeting; or when the consciousness, even without any such meeting, looks into itself and feels directly and intimately the truth or the truths that are there or so contacts the hidden forces behind appearances, then also there is the outbreak of an intuitive light; or, again, when the consciousness meets the Supreme Reality or the spiritual reality of things and beings and has a contactual union with it, then the spark, the flash or the blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths.

                                                                                    - Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine.

"Intuition leads to true “seership”—and the seer is he who sees in every thing of Life a living significance. ....The words understanding and meaning are, unfortunately, generally used with little or no concern for what they should most characteristically refer to. "Understanding" basically differs from "knowledge", and "meaning" differs from "indication". Strictly speaking, "knowledge" is transmitted through "signs"; and "understanding" through "symbols." Knowledge implies a separation of the knower from the known. Knowledge is objective, while intuition is subjective. To understand, literally, is "to stand under" — thus to feel the weight and experience the "roots" (or causes) of what is being understood. A scientist knows many things he does not actually understand."

                                                                                                                - Dane Rudhyar

A deeper contemplation on some of the above subjective definitions will reveal to the reader that they are all pointing to the same concept. 

Some indications of awakening of intuitive insight

1. Knack for uncovering concept veiled by a symbol or form. As an example, a student in the endeavour of modern science is readily able to visualise the underlying geometry or picture veiled by the algebraic expression of a given abstract object. (Henri Poincare speaks of intuitive mathematicians as geometers because they frequently project visually and take visual evidence as direct intuitive proof) 

2. Intuition is the inner light which manifests on the physical plane as Illumination, Conceptual Understanding, Love by dispelling the glamour and illusion pervading material life.

3. Appreciation that Ideas come to humanity from the plane of intuition (especially when there is also soul contact, mind control, trained intelligence, purified emotional body, good glandular equipment) and no idea belongs to anyone but they are a universal gift and possession and never property of single mind.

4. Feeling of having a reasonably accurate instrument for discrimination and discernment gaining right recognition and an authentic psychological understanding of general humans. 

5. Dormant brain cells around the pineal gland become awakened and vibrant. When a man becomes an initiate, the exercise of true intuition becomes normally possible.

6. The initiate insulates or isolates himself from the world of illusion and from the attractive urges of a personality and comes into touch with underlying reality in all outer forms veiled hitherto by illusion, glamour and maya.

7. Ability to work patiently in the world, unrecognised and unsought by the nonthinking masses.

8. Capacity to tread the middle way between the pairs of opposite (a term Gautama used to describe the character of noble Eight-fold path) and handle force.

9. Ability to comprehend not only the processes of nature in its outer expression but also the underlying causes of these processes revealing them as effects and not as irrational random events.

10. Outline of future and nature of truth stands revealed to an initiate and outlook on life changes permanently, providing guarantee that all struggle in defending truth is warranted and will evoke its adequate reward.

11. Ability to penetrate into the laws of spiritual life governing the intelligent nature itself, conditioning Shamballa, and guiding the Hierarchy and appreciate some of the plans and purposes working out through the manifested created worlds and understand in what way he can co-operate to hasten the divine purpose. 

 The direct experience is the fruit of working via intellect for a long time, breaking the object into parts and analyzing them and then flashes of intuition connecting dots occur standing on the shoulders of all intellectual facts and other emotional experiences gathered earlier (usually over many life-times). Consequently the widespread distinctions between people (race, nation, family, profession, and so on), arising out of fragmented mindset (treating everything as inherently divided, disconnected, and broken up into constituent independent and self-existent parts) are directly experienced as limited. Indeed developing intuition will enable humanity to work together for the common good, even for survival and the current mindset of competition will be transcended into co-operation. This is I believe is the essential crux of teachings of the World Teacher (some call him Maitreya, a word derived from maitri in sanskrit denoting friendship) who is sending so many messengers, giving so many indications and motivating humanity to understand and experience it. Thus instead of competing, humanity must cooperate, share and save the world.  

I shall end this post by emphasizing that the subject of intuition in itself is immense and will require several posts for myself to understand how it is gradually developed as a life-long (several lives to be accurate) process.

As per the theosophical writings, the stage of average human development today is at the level of emotions and intellect. Unfolding of intuition (and therefore recognising science beyond matter informally termed as occult science) is described as the next step forward into the future.

The laboratory is not the only ground for experiment; science, we must remember, is derived from sciens, present participle of scire, "to know,"−−its origin is similar to that of the word "discern," to "ken." Science does not therefore deal only with matter, no, not even its subtlest and obscurest forms. Such an idea is born merely of the idle spirit of the age. Science is a word which covers all forms of knowledge. It is exceedingly interesting to hear what chemists discover, and to see them finding their way through the densities of matter to its finer forms; but there are other kinds of knowledge than this, and it is not every one who restricts his (strictly scientific) desire for knowledge to experiments which are capable of being tested by the physical senses.

The blog is also partly inspired by Alexander Grothendieck's "intuition and ingenuity" and his esoteric writings and also all the other esoteric material I have been contemplating while walking the parallel inner journey shared in another post. Some of my findings have convinced me that it was not by chance that at least 5 (Rudolf Steiner, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Mahatma Gandhi, Ramakrishna Paramhansa, P. Teilhard de Chardin) in the list of Grothendieck's 18 mutants in "La Clef des Songes" whom he saw as visionaries far ahead of their time were associated in some capacity with occult science and theosophy while the fourth was a mystic saint of Vedantism and and the fifth worked for a reconciliation of religion and science. 

Currently in 2023, I have initiated a major project on synthesis of theosophy and integral yoga through science of seven rays as a further challenge to my intuition and also to serve humanity in the process. 

Details will emerge gradually through this blog. My professional work is @  https://sites.google.com/site/salilsamant