Adaptation of “Insight into Intuition” by Chris R Warnken FRC, Rosicrucian Digest of July 1976
Intuition is a condition or power little understood.
It is often relegated to the category of superstition. Empirical science, for example, could never agree to grant credibility to the use of intuition.
Many of us will use expressions like “gut feeling” or “a woman’s intuition” without giving a serious thought to the possibility that there may be such a thing.
Even the many who have studied intuition will not trust themselves to use it when it might be helpful.
What is the mystery?
Why is intuition so rejected by so many of us? Is there such a thing as intuition? How can it be understood and used?
At least the word is entitled to definition.
Intuition is a direct knowledge or awareness of something without conscious attention or reasoning, that is, nonintellectual perception or apprehension.
It is the ability or quality of perceiving without conscious attention or reasoning and derives from the Latin “intueri” which means to “look on.”
This may well be the necessary key to understanding intuition.
If intuition originally meant to “look on” we may ask to look on what?
This implies a vision that may be observed and consulted if we know where and how to look.
The sceptic will immediately declare it means one’s own creative imagination and fantasy. However, we do not look upon our imagination; we create it from unassembled elements.
In imagination or fantasy we assume the role of the artist or painter, not the onlooker.
We must admit, however, that there may be, and undoubtedly are, those who have never understood intuition nor sought to develop it, who would mistakenly identify their own fantasies as intuition.
Living as we do in a very materialistic world, it is quite understandable that an intellectual person finds it difficult to place faith in knowledge that cannot be intellectually explained or verified.
It is equally difficult for the Mystical student to realise that there are so many human beings who are convinced that the physical world and intellectual knowledge are the sum and substance of the entire universe.
Yet, the crass intellectual will admit to “having ideas.”
The word “idea” is from the Greek idein meaning to see. To see what?
Even the word “inspiration” is rooted in the thought to take in from without.
Our problem is that we have become accustomed, as a result of training, to think that we, as human beings, are the source and fountainhead of all wisdom and knowledge.
We believe that we actually create and develop all of our knowledge.
As we increase our education we accumulate, bit by bit, the knowledge “created” and developed by those who lived before us. At some future point we will have gathered all that is now known about some particular aspect of knowledge.
Yet, there always remain many unanswered questions.
Fortunately, for many who have been deprived of complete academic education, a natural development of inherent intuitive faculties has taken place within them.
Like the homing pigeon and the hibernating bear, they seem to possess an innate sense of what actions to take at the appropriate time.
They are accustomed to receiving hunches or ideas from within.
Because they lack sufficient intellectual reasoning to discard such hunches as foolish, they obey them and usually benefit as a result.
We refer to such persons as being “smart” or as having much “common sense.”
Basically, they are natural people who are sensitive and obedient to their inner being.
They have discovered that such inner promptings are reliable and beneficial guides in the many decisions of life.
As always, we can learn much from our animal neighbours and even plant life. Since these life forms are not subject to the conventions of civilisation, they live and develop according to innate instincts and urges, and many of them adapt to any and all changing conditions.
Earlier, man also lived by his inner promptings for he had nothing more to guide him.
We marvel at some of the survival techniques and life styles of our early ancestors who, as far as we know, had no books from which to learn. We are amazed at many of the clever and natural talents of our animal friends who have never known formal training.
We can benefit from perceiving ideas intuitively without conscious attention or reasoning, in addition to our best formal academic training.
Yes, there is definitely such a phenomenon as intuition.
Potentially, all of us have it and all of us can develop it.
As with a weak muscle, the more we exercise it, the stronger it will become.
Remember, we are not creating it; we are developing our ability to perceive it or attune to it.
The Mystic knows that the potential idea for all that was, is, or will be permeates the entire Cosmos or Universe.
This “ideal presence” archetype of Plato is not made or fixed; we can arrange its appearance as we will.
It is the source of the composer’s music, the plans of the architect, the story plot of the author, and the hunch of the intuitive person.
If we are inclined to reject intuition as superstitious, are we convinced it is based upon negative feelings like fear?
No. Intuition is our psychic contact with the eternal archetype in the unmanifested cosmos. Ask, or study the life of, any truly creative person.
If our intellectual materialism will not permit us to accept an intangible source of guidance, how can we explain the power of religious faith or the sacrifice and devotion of love?
If our test of intuition fails the first time we try to use it, recall how long it takes a child to learn to walk, talk, and dress himself.
Did we learn to write, drive a car, play an instrument, or accomplish any other achievement the first time we tried it?
We must eventually accept the fact that intuition is one of our natural talents, waiting to be developed and used.
We will observe that it becomes increasingly ready and reliable as we use it in our daily lives.
It is not a game to show off but a useful tool.
We can enrich our lives with an insight into intuition.