Intuition in Psychology and Philosophy and Mysticism

The opposition between intuitionism and empiricism in psychology and between intuitionism and analysis persists to the present day. In psychology, intuition had been concerned with the means by which that which is known comes to be known as opposed to questions of ultimate reality in philosophy.

In kantian philosophy, there were innate categories of mind which forced particular categories of perceptual judgement. Also it held a priori knowings of truth - intuitions of such truths as the basic axioms of Euclidean geometry.

The implicit metaphysical differences remain among pyschologists as they remain among philosophers: is there a reality to be discovered or are there multiple realities to be constructed ?

Those who take successful probabilistic prediction as equivalent to knowledge would maintain that they never do know anything with certainity and indeed that one cannot know anything with certainty. On the other hand, harmonious certainty has been the hallmark of intuitionism for centuries.

The opposition of the inference-prediction point of view and the comprehension-organization-understanding point of view is the old controversy in modern dress.

Chein(1945) says "while it is correct to attack any attempt to separate psychology from natural science or any attempt to place intuition and understanding above verification, it is the responsibility of the more gifted intuitive psychologist to strive to articulate his intuitive processes.

Jung's treatment of intuition may be seen as mainstream unto itself(1926). It shares much with philosophical theoretists, Bergson, Spinoza, and Croce. However Jung's theory of psychological types, which embeds intuition is a theory of personality rather than a theory of knowledge. For him, intuition is a cognitive event which occurs and must be accounted for. It is niether an occult gift nor reducible to more "basic" activities of mind. Rather it is one of four mental functions (thinking, feeling, sensation, intuition) as human constituition of all individuals.

1. Function of thinking involves judgements of true and false, logical deductions and inferences of objective fact.

2. The function of feeling involves judgements of pleasant and upleasant, acceptance and rejection, of like and dislike.

3. Sensation is a function which operates by receiving sense data and percieves sensory details, objective sensory facts, accepting these as truth.

4. Intuition function is the perception of possibilities, of implications, of principles, of objects as totalities at the expense of details.

As per M. Westcott, intuition may be described as the process of reaching a conclusion on the basis of little information which is normally reached on the basis of significantly more information. He summarizes intuition in the following words:

"There are apparently no writers who deny that humans sometimes reach conclusions which later are proven to be accurate, without being able to explicate the bases for the conclusions. It also appears that there is sometimes an affective component of pleasure and satisfaction in the conclusion reached, and sometimes a subjective feeling of certainty. It also seems reasonable, if not evident, that some people do this more often than others. 

This view - intuition as a special case of inference which utilizes cues and associations not ordinarily used - has a long and respectable history, a history which is relatively unrecognized. On the other hand, the history of the development of the concept of intuition as a special road to a special kind of knowing is more coherent, cumulative, but the conception appears to have relatively less contemporary status."

Karl Pribram has written of the brain as a hologram. Intuition is the understanding of relationships before understanding all of the parts. The brain apprehends patterns in phenomena and in abstractions before it analyzes detail (Comfort, p. 29). Intuitive insight is apprehension of the relationship of the parts of information.

In this post, I wish to recollect how intuition was described by some of greatest minds in recorded history. It will include primarily philosophers in this post. Mathematician's, scientsist's, psychologist's mystic's and artist's views will be the topic of later posts.

Historically, philosophers, mystics, scientists, and mathematicians have relied upon intuitive insights for clarity, contemplation, revelation, decision, judgement, and apprehension of truth. Some writers assert that intuition is a real event in the real world of behaviour and experience while for others it is a logical necessity, a process to go beyond mere empirical observation by the senses.

Philosophers have been concerned with intuition as a way to the attainment of perfect knowledge of the ultimate reality, beyond the knowledge of senses. Mathematicians have been concerned with intuition as a special way of understanding mathematical proofs, and alternatively as a way of reaching fertile but imperfect formulations of problems. Psychologists have been concerned with intuition as a crowning step in the understanding of personality, as a manner of reaching global judgements in problem solving, in interpersonal processes, or in clinical practice. Educators have been concerned with intuition as a special case of learning, a kind of exciting event which sparks between a special teacher and a special student. In all this diversity there are some common denominators, some common threads, which run through the scattered literature on intuition.

While continuous lines of research exist there has never been a tradition in the sense of a community of scholars collectively and progressively advancing an area of knowledge. In the history of the development of human thought about what can know and how it can be known, intuition quite consistently holds a special place. The last word on intuition will be as far in the future as the first word on intuition was in the past. While the nature of intuition is seen differently by different philosophers, intuition as the route to knowledge of ultimate reality is a consistent theme.

Plato's Forms are some of the earliest references to intuitive knowledge. In his writings Plato discusses Forms as transcendental eternal patterns that the human mind has access to through unconscious memory. This access is intuition in a Platonic sense. Within these "Forms" Plato felt that ideas were the ultimate reality. Ultimate reality could be reached in two steps: inductive reasoning from the senses produces concepts, intuitions from these concepts create ideas.

                               inductive reasoning               intuition

Plato: Sensory world -------------> Conceptions ------------> Ideas.

For the Greeks and for modern Western civilizations, excellence includes health, beauty, and the well-being of the soul. That is, the soul is turned toward the right objects, the right Forms. For the early Greek, these abstract Forms or ideas were more real and more true than any objects of sense.

Aristotle explained Plato's insights as the intuitively known truth that must precede deductive reasoning. Aristotle proposed that intuitive insights are even more accurate than scientific reasoning. He placed great faith in intuitive insights in the form of inquiry, the leap of understanding.

Indeed Arendt neatly summarizes Plato and Aristotle on teaching intuition:

"Truth of the evidential kind, construed on the principle of things perceived by our bodily vision, [inner intuition] can be arrived at through the guidance (diagoge) of words in the dialegesthai, the discursive train of thought that can be silent or spoken between teacher and disciple, "moving up and down," inquiring into "what is true and what is false." But the result, since it is supposed to be an intuition and not a conclusion, will follow suddenly after a long period of questions and answers: when a flash of insight (Ehronesis) about everything blazes up, and the mind ... is flooded with light."

(Plato's Seventh letter as cited in Arendt, Hannah. Life of the Mind. Vol. 1: Thinking. New York and London: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1977, pp. 117-118)

After examining Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. Arendt concludes:
"If philosophy is the mother of the sciences, it is itself the science of the beginning and principles of science, of the archai: and these archai. which then become the topic of Aristotelian metaphysics, can no longer be derived; they are given to the mind in self evident intuition". (1977, p.120)

And, again, in examining Metaphysics:
"... it is worth recalling the strange turn that Aristotle, in the first chapter of the Metaphysics, gave to Plato's proposition that thaumazein. wonder is the beginning of all philosophy .... For knowledge comes through searching for what we are accustomed to call truth, and the highest, ultimate form of cognitive truth is indeed intuition." (1977, p. 121)

Descartes, Locke , Hume all were in at least partial agreement that knowledge from sensory impressions is given by intuition and it is on this foundation of intuitive knowledge that all other knowledge must arise.

For Descartes in particular linear reasoning was not sufficient to account for all knowledge. 

He emphasized: “Intuitive knowledge is an illumination of the soul, whereby it beholds in the light of God those things which it pleases Him to reveal to us by a direct impression of divine clearness.” (Nodding, Nel, and Shore, Paul J. Awakening the Inner Eye: Intuition in Education. New York: Teacher's College Press, 1984. p.13)

"By intuition I understand not the fluctuating testimony of the senses but the conception which an unclouded and attentive mind gives us so readily and distinctly that we are wholly freed from doubt that which we understand." (Goldberg, Philip. The Intuitive Edge. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1983. p. 33)

Kant held that ultimate reality consisted in things-in-themselves never to be known through ordinary sense perception but possibly knowable only through intuition. In 'Critique of Pure Reason' he defines intuition as non-rational recognition and awareness of individual entities. "Without sensibility no object would be given to us. Without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind" His notion intuition as an immediate source of knowledge, a priori insight into the world of ideal forms, clarifies some of Plato's frustration in describing pure rational thinking. Kant maintained for example that numbers are "given" in the interaction between mind and object which is made possible by a pure intuition of space and time.

Schopenhauer in 'The Will in Nature', defines will and intuition as the creative source of all phenomena in both nature and the moral life. Will is a form of restless and insatiable striving that is doomed to frustration. Contemplation or intuition is the sole mode of escape from will.  The mind may choose to reach for higher intuitions: altruistic ends, higher levels of awareness, artistic expression. Intuition makes access to the cosmic will possible. Schopenhauer clearly felt that intuition could lead to cosmic unity and truth.

Intuition then is not simply a passive reflection or reception of sensory objects but the active, personal seeking of understanding and meaning. It is in this personal quest that intuitive knowledge comes with such clarity and certainty. Another consistent element of intuition is the anticipation with which one searches for meaning and understanding. Schopenhauer was the first philosopher to describe anticipation and clarity revealed through intuitive insight.

Henri Bergson defined ultimate reality as movement, change, evolution. Intuition is then the faculty that spontaneously frees the mind to search for the nonintellectual apprehension of pure reality. Intuition is the synthesis of pure perception, a grasp of truth. Concepts are formulated from the intellectual analysis of intuitive insights. Intuition then is primarily an experiential event, private to the

intuiter and rarely observable or communicable.

 

As quoted in Goldberg, 1983, p. 71, Bergson defines intuition as follows:

"a kind of intellectual sympathy by which one places oneself within an object in order to coincide with what is unique in it and consequently inseparable. By thus 'entering into' the object, we can know it perfectly and absolutely."

He contrasted this with intellectual analysis, which he called a "translation" and a "represention" in symbols. The feeling of oneness and unity with the reality was Bergson's notion of the life force, elan vitale. The learner intuitively becomes one with the information to be learned. This sensation of unity and faith in the oneness of the universe leads to the mystical aspects of intuition.

According to Bergson there is a prime reality of unified events, objects and processes- a dynamic flux, change or perpetual evolution which is ordinarily masked from human knowledge by the intellect which imposes "patterned immobility" on that reality, distorting and separating it into discrete objects and processes. It persists because of its survival value and practical management of day to day activities. But the prime reality is beyond the grasp of intellect and a direct contact or experience of this reality is attained through intuition.

He laments that even philosophers in search of ultimate truth have given themselves over, almost wholly, to intellect, to reason, while intuition - the only way of experiencing prime reality - has fallen on evil days.

For Spinoza, intuition provides a superior way of knowing superior truth. It is a high road to ultimate truth other than reason. It leads to "knowledge of" rather than "knowledge about"; it is gained directly from the object without intervention of reason. The absolute knowledge gained through intuition brings with it complete conviction of truth.

Spinoza provides a single example of intuition over and over again. The example he uses is of four persons faced with the task of finding the fourth proportional when 3 nos are given.

1. The first person follows an uncomprehending but effective rule: multiply the second by the third, and divide by the first. He reaches correct solution without understanding.

2. The second explores the rule empirically, with several other sets of numbers, and also reaches a solution, but with some idea of generality.

3. The third person explores the rule rationally, and finds not only what the solution to the problem is, but what it must be, and further why it must be that solution.

4. The fourth person needs neither the rule nor its empirical or rational justification; he grasps the entire notion of proportionality intuitively, immediately, directly from the objects presented, without the intervention of experiment or reason.

Thus in both the examples of Bergson and Spinoza, intellect and reason must be abrogated for intuition to occur, but in both views intuition may stand in a close harmonious relation to reason.

For Locke, intuitive knowledge is the irresistible and indubitable perception of the agreement of any two ideas without the mediation of any other. This is the clearest and most perfectly certain of all degrees of human knowledge. It accounts for our assent to self-evident truths and serves as the foundation up-on which all other genuine knowledge must be established. [Essay IV ii 1]

Croce holds that intuition is the attainment of aesthetic truth, of ultimate beauty. Beauty is intuited through expression; it is experienced as a consequence of this act performed by the beholder. Beauty is a consequence of intuition, not a property of nature.

Even for more contemporary critical philosophers (Stocks 1939, Ewing 1941, Bahm 1961) intuition rather than being a direct experience of ultimate reality is at least "the immediate apprehension of a justifiable belief".

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Continuing the series of posts describing how intuition was viewed by great minds, this post will collect few thoughts of mystics on intuition.

Nietzsche in his critique of philosophers:

"After having looked long enough between the philosopher's lines and fingers, I say to myself: by far the greater part of conscious thinking must still be included among instinctive[intuitive] activities and that goes even for philosophical thinking . . . most of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly guided and forced into certain channels by his instincts [intuitions].

What provokes one to look at all philosophers half suspiciously, half mockingly, is not that one discovers again and again how innocent they are— ... They all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic (as opposed to the mystics of every rank, who are more honest and doltish—and talk of "inspiration"); while at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of "inspiration"—most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract—that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact."

Philosophers as academicians even if lately have disassociate themselves from mysticism and religious connotations, it can be as seen while dealing with the subject of intuition, they cannot avoid addressing unity, ultimate reality, or goodness as the end result of what they report to be their purpose in living or searching.

Philo of Alexandria was perhaps the first in modern history to effectively link philosophy and religion in his efforts to attune his Jewish creed to his Platonizing philosophy. He was still aware of the distinction between a Hebrew truth, which was heard [but not seen], and the Greek vision of the true, and transformed the former into a mere preparation for the latter, to be achieved by divine intervention that had made man's ears into eyes to permit greater perfection of human condition ...
Medieval efforts to reconcile Biblical teaching with Greek philosophy testify to a complete victory of intuition or contemplation over every form of audition. (Arendt 1977, p.111)

"Seeking oneness with a God seems to be the guiding force of all peoples, regardless of the religious trappings required to reach that end. The intuitive leap of faith referred to by several philosophers is the foundation of mystical life. Could it be that early 13th to 9th century B.C. men and women literally heard the gods instruct them? Could it be that there was a time when men and women consistently heard their intuitions,named them gods, and followed their every direction with great faith?" (Harlan Thesis 1986)

Indeed this was alluded to by the occult mystic Helena P. Blavatsky (in ISIS Unvieled) during the revival of theosophical movement in modern age emphasizing that God is nothing apart from living superconscious Nature itself.

The transition from philosophies of intuition to religious and mystical intuitions is significantly noted by (Jaynes 1982) :

"Greek gods cannot create anything out of nothing, unlike the Hebrew god of Genesis. In the relationship between the god and the hero in their dialectic, there are the same courtesies, emotions, persuasions as might occur between two people. The Greek god never steps forth in thunder, never begets awe or fear in the hero, and is as far from the outrageously pompous god of Job as it is possible to be. . . .
The strongest emotion which the hero feels toward a god is amazement or wonder, the kind of emotion that we feel when the solution of a particularly difficult problem suddenly pops into our heads, or in the cry of eureka! from Archimedes in his bath (a most popular reference to intuitive learning)."

...We might thus predict that one residual function of the right hemisphere today would be an organizational one, that of sorting out the experiences of a civilization and fitting them together into a pattern that could "tell" the individual what to do. Perusal of various speeches of gods in the Iliad, the Old Testament, or other ancient literatures [religious] is in agreement with this."

Such collection of experiences of civilizations of past gone ages and the pattern they form as realized by Janes is precisely what Blavatsky in her "The Secret Doctrine" describes.

As per Dr. Suzuki (Buddhism in the Life and Thought of Japan), intuition is man’s highest faculty of perception, a kind of spiritual illumination which manifests only when the thought and sense impressions of personal life have been brought into silence; the awakening of which leads to unfolding of a new world hitherto unperceived in the confusion and chaos of a dualistic-trained mind.

Jalal'Uddin Rumi, a Persian scholar poetically alludes to intuition : “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment: Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.”

In his book Zen Buddhism, Christmas Humpreys describes the faculty of intuition in the following words,

"Consider now the intuition, the faculty beyond the sway of the opposites, which moves on the plane of direct experience. Our knowledge is derived through one of two faculties, the senses and the intuition. Both are direct. But whereas the senses only give us knowledge of the things o f the physical plane, the intuition enlightens us at its own level. In the words of Plotinus, ' It is absolute knowledge founded on the identity o f the mind knowing with the object known.' It knows with an inner certainty quite maddening to the mind which, with intellectual arguments, dares to disagree."

Further comparing intuition with intellect he says:

Between the lower and the higher aspects of the mind is bridge in the crossing of which the faculty of Buddhi, the intuition, begins to illumine the intellect. The type of thought is immaterial, so that it be high, reaching ever for the abstract and impersonal ultimate wherein true wisdom dwells. On such a plane the musician, the mathematician, the philosopher and the mystic find they are walking and working side by side. Here self begins to doubt itself, and the vast sweep of the impersonal commands the attention of the awakening mind. Yet there is no severance between the two aspects of the mind however fierce the tension. The lower clings to the earth the higher strives for the splendour of the windy sky.

Such is the intellect, the field of the Opposites. Such is the intuition, where every two is One. The intuition is the light which illumines the intellect. Unless there is an intellect the light will no more be seen than electric light is seen in the socket of a lamp which has no lamp.

If the intellect measures all worth with the yardstick of its own creation, the intuition takes no measurements at all. It knows that all life is one yet separate, and that all the forms of life haven equal validity. It moves, serene with certainty, and therefore tolerant of all that lives. Unlike cold reasoning has no fear of laughter, and having risen above the ordered world in which the by-laws of logic decree without appeal what is "sense” , it is free to indulge in non-sense, for it shines upon a plane where every two are discounted as another of the endless, tiresome but no longer limiting pairs of opposites.

Evelyn Underhill in her work on Mysticism, describes why those who hear their intuitive inner voice or spirit find themselves at one with the active world of becoming, one with the Immanent Light from which life takes rise. "Stillness, unity and peace are humanity's best translation of its intuition of the achieved Perfection ..." (Underhill, p.38)

In theology, Early Judeo-Christian writings report various physical and experiential manifestations of the intuitive inner spirit/voice. The Bible is replete with visions and voices of God and angels. The prophet" and kings of the Old Testament communities had great faith in the intuitive inner voice and led the Jews by following the inner voice.(Reuther 1979,p. 41) Teresa of Avila's writings were the first to link human ecstasy with spiritual unity in the form of the spiritual marriage, the seventh mansion in her Interior castle. Saint Francis speaks of utter surrender in joy. Saint Catherine of Genoa reports of the "tearing away of the veil" and the "wound of joy."

The Gnostic gospels preached that one found the direction or purpose of life by searching for the truth within one's own soul. Various gnostic teachings maintained that man was capable of reaching the highest omnipotence and infinite wisdom through personal contemplation. Gnostics often found themselves more involved with philosophy than organized religion. As they lived their belief in the inner God they found themselves in direct confrontation with the institutional church. (Pagels, p. 147) The gnostics felt ignorance was the cause of suffering, not sin. Self-knowledge and insight were the keys to understanding and peace. Without this intuitive insight one wanders about with no purpose or understanding, full of doubt and confusion. The psyche or soul holds self-knowledge, and, as such, freedom from the struggles of the rational world. The gnostics proposed withdrawing from this conscious world to find truth within. Individual contemplation is the key to discovering the secret truths within and the truth of the universe. One criticism of the gnostics was that they had no program or teaching strategy for helping the faithful find these secrets and universal truths.

St. Francis of Assisi felt real pleasure and passion associated with the denial of his earthly needs.

There is a glory of peace and calm connected with cutting through all the trappings of daily life to the seat of the soul. The universal God may then be reached when one strips oneself of ego and pretense. This intuitive searching for inner truth can be the center of real personal freedom (Chesterton, p. 80). The freedom to reach for divine understanding must come through a personal sense of dedication to one's inner source of strength.

St. Augustine spoke at great length about harm in applying judgment and memory to the search for inner happiness. He maintained that real knowledge and happiness come from the elevated sense of truth within. Within, there is a calm sense of assuredness and success that can not be overcome by the fears and insecurities of the material world (Pine-Coffin, p. 225). Concern with the judgments of others and memory of rejection prevent finding the inner source of truth within. Divine truth comes from God and can be borne within (Pine-Coffin, p. 241).

Thomas Merton, in the tradition of Meister Eckhart, described contemplative (through intuition) as follows:
"a contemplative is one who has transcended division to reach a unity beyond division.... It is true that he [ she ] must begin by separating himself from the ordinary activities of men to some extent. . . . The true contemplative is not less interested than others in normal life, not less concerned with what goes on in the world, but more interested, more concerned. The "reality" through which the contemplative "penetrates" in order to reach a contact with what is "ultimate" in it is actually his own being, his own life. The contemplative is not one who directs a magical spiritual intuition upon other objects, but one who, being perfectly unified in himself and recollected in the center of his humility, enters into contact with reality by an immediacy that forgets the division of subject and object."
(Hayward, p. 259; from Shannon's Thomas Merton's Dark Path [New York: Penguin, 1982])

Gary Zukav a famous spiritual teacher say that the tone for investigating intuition in science is effectively set: "... a description of an experience is not the experience .... the message is not to confuse the type of dance with the fact that they [the Wu Li Master's and quantum physicists] are dancing" (Zukav, p. 43).

As Zukav cryptically notes: "The language of eastern mystics, and western physicists are becoming very similar" (Zukav, p. 54). He goes on to complete the heresy: According to quantum physics there is no such thing as objectivity.... Physics has become a branch of psychology, or perhaps the other way around..[if Jung and Pauli are correct] then physics is the study of the structure of consciousness. (Zukav,p. 51)