... on the nature of Intuition.
“... there is something absurd in the notion that the secrets of the universe are available in paperback at good stores everywhere.” June Deery
Over the last hundred years or so the status of intuition has declined somewhat in deference to logical argument and tendency of scientists to rely more on measurement and observation to reach their conclusions. In philosophy the term intuition is used to refer to an attribute of mind which enables it to see certain self-evident truths. Indeed, from a philosophical point of view intuition has occupied an important position in logic, metaphysics and in the theory of knowledge. Generally the term is used to describe a situation in which the mind arrives at a conclusion without any conscious effort or without any intermediate conscious awareness. Because of this it has often been the case that decisions or conclusions arrived at intuitively have been given greater weight than those arrived at by careful thought. Whatever stance the current establishment takes on the matter, however, there is no doubt that intuition has been involved in some of the world’s greatest scientific discoveries. Einstein said that the relationship between space and time came to him, not by reasoning (he claimed, perhaps over-modestly, to be a poor original mathematician), but as the result of a transcendental experience whilst riding on a tramcar. Philosophers, writers of prose, poets and painters have described the flash of inspiration (intuition) which has led them to produce some of their finest work. The words inspiration and spiritual come from the same Latin root, ingenii. Since the thesaurus classifies both the terms intuition and inspiration as being synonymous with insight then it could perhaps be argued that intuition is, by definition, a spiritual insight or a spiritual attribute. Fortunately for lesser mortals intuition is not the prerogative only of the creative or the religious. Many can clearly recall the circumstances in which the answer to a difficult problem came to them ‘out of the blue’.
The phenomenon of intuition poses several questions concerning the ability of mind amongst which are:
“Did the answer come purely as the result of a function of reason...?”
“Was the answer there all the time...?”
Aldous Huxley says ... “We know that human minds are in some way associated with human brains, and we have fairly good reasons for supposing that there have been no considerable changes in the size and conformation of human brains for a good many thousands of years. Consequently it seems justifiable to infer that human minds in the remote past were capable of as many and as various kinds and degrees of activity as are minds at the present time.” 1 The reason that many activities were not undertaken, says Huxley, is because “...certain thoughts are practically unthinkable except in terms of an appropriate language and within the framework of an appropriate system of classification. Where the necessary instruments do not exist, the thoughts in question are not expressed and not even conceived.” 1
This is a compelling argument which, if applied to the uncertainties about intuition, seems to provide the basis of an answer to the first question. The mind cannot reason without the necessary instruments therefore intuitive thought does not occur as a direct function of reason.
So...was the answer there all the time ?
The Australian born philosopher, Karl Popper, drew attention to what he called ‘implicit memory’ which is present in all of us, which is just ‘simply there’ and available to influence us and determine in part what we do. This is largely associated with what he also refers to as ‘inherited knowledge’ about which he says “Without this background of inherited knowledge, which is almost all unconscious, and which is incorporated in our genes (or so it would seem) we would not, of course, be able to acquire any new knowledge. I should be intuitively inclined to say that the huge amount of information which any of us can acquire in a lifetime through our senses is small compared with the amount of this inherited background of potentialities.” 2
Karl Pribram, a neuroscientist at both Yale and Stanford, demonstrated in the late 60s and early 70s by means of a beautifully detailed series of experiments that the human brain stores memories in a way analogous to the storage of a holographic image on a photographic plate. Viewing a hologram under normal light reveals a bewildering and complex pattern of swirls and wave shapes. View the hologram under laser light however and a three-dimensional image springs into view. Break the plate and the whole image remains, even in the smallest piece. Similarly with the brain. Remove a large part of the brain which, according to traditional teaching, is devoted to memory and, contrary to expectation, memory is scarcely impaired. Pribram postulates therefore ... “...that the brain responds to sensory stimuli by a complex mathematics occurring as the nerve impulse travels along and between cells through a network of fine fibres on the cell surface. The fibres move in slow waves as the impulse travels along them and take up standing patterns, dispersed throughout the brain, in an analogue of a holographic image. With an appropriate subsequent stimulus the nerve fibre pattern will, by means of an inverse mathematical transform, be re-converted as memory recall.” 2
At a later date it occurred to Pribram “... that the brain’s mathematics may comprise a form of lens. The transforms make objects out of blurs or frequencies, making them into sounds and colours and kinesthetic sensations and smells and tastes. Maybe reality is not what we see with our eyes. If we did not have the lens - the mathematics performed in our brains - maybe we would know a world organized in the frequency domain. No space, no time - just events. Can reality be read out of that domain ?” 3 This is an interesting view from a contemporary scientist which comes close to the controversial idealism of Berkeley (1685-1753) or the sceptical empiricism of Hume (1711-1776).
Pribram went on to suggest that transcendental experience - mystical states - may allow us occasional glimpses into that realm. Certainly, subjective reports from such states often sound like descriptions of quantum reality, a coincidence that has led several physicists to speculate similarly. Bypassing our normal, constricting perceptual mode - what Aldous Huxley called the reducing value - we may be attuned to the source or matrix of reality. The brain’s neural interference patterns, its mathematical processes, may be identical to the primary state of the Universe. That is to say, our mental processes are, in effect, made of the same stuff as the organizing principle. This is not so far fetched as it may seem. Whatever theory is accepted as representing the origin of the Universe there is no doubt that we are made of the same ‘star dust’, albeit arranged rather differently but obeying the same rules, as all the other ‘star dust’ comprising all the other components of the known Universe. The same immutable laws which govern the structure of the stars and which hold them in their positions in the heavens are working in the same way within our own bodies. Einstein professed a sense of awe in the face of this harmony. Astronomer James Jeans said “... the Universe is like a great thought rather than a great machine.” Another, Arthur Eddington, said “...the stuff of the Universe is mind stuff.” More recently the cyberneticist, David Foster, described an intelligent Universe whose apparent concreteness is generated by cosmic data from an unknowable, organized source.
If, on the basis of these speculations, we can find acceptance of a continuing reality, independent of space or time and outside our normal and restricted limits of perception, then we can perhaps infer not only that the answer was there all the time but that it was, by some means, made available. This raises two further possibilities. The first is that the brains neural hologram mechanism might be responsive to stimuli from an external source. (We are, after all, under constant bombardment from countless thousands of sources of radiation of all kinds.) The second possibility is that we might have the ability, given the right conditions, of reaching outwards with mind to tap the source of all knowledge. June Deery paraphrases Huxley : “ I take it that mystical experience is essentially the being aware of, and while the experience lasts, being identified with a form of pure consciousness, of unstructured transpersonal consciousness which lies, so to speak, upstream from the ordinary discursive consciousness of everyday. It is non-egotistic consciousness, a kind of formless and timeless consciousness, which seems to underlie the consciousness of the separate ego in time.” 4
Around 1970-71 Pribram began to be troubled by a distressing and ultimate question. “... if the brain knows by mathematically transforming frequencies from ‘out there’ - who, in the brain, is interpreting the holograms ?” It is the age old question of the ‘ghost in the machine’, the ‘that art thou’ with which Huxley opens his narrative on the Perennial Philosophy. “What is the That to which the Thou can discover itself to be akin ? To this the Perennial Philosophy has at all times and in all places given the same answer. The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute, ineffable in terms of discursive thought, but (in certain circumstances) susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being.” 1
The Spiritual Absolute has not only a place in all the great religions of the world but also in the more prosaic realms of self-knowledge and practical psychology. It is described variously as God, Universal Mind (Brahman), Higher Self or Ultimate Consciousness. It is often portrayed as the peak of a pyramid depicting levels of existence in which each level includes but transcends the one immediately below. Thus a lower level can have no knowledge of the one above although the separate levels are not separated spatially but mutually interpenetrate each other.
“The higher worlds (dimensional levels) completely interpenetrate the lower worlds which are fashioned and sustained by their activities. What divides them is that each world has a more limited and controlled consciousness than the world above it. The lower consciousness is unable to experience the life of the higher worlds and is even unaware of their existence although they are able to interpenetrate it. But if those in a lower world can raise their consciousness to a higher level then that higher world becomes manifest to them and they can be said to have passed to a higher world even though they have not moved in space.”
A number of the Eastern belief systems suggest that consciousness can be depicted as existing on six levels (some traditions sub-divide these still further). In the Western world we can offer approximations for the main levels as follows:
The lowest level depicts purely physical existence, a material plane.
Next comes the level of sensory perception - the Buddhists in fact depict the first two levels as the five ‘vijanas’ or five senses.
The third level is the level of ‘mind’, the thinking level. It is on this plane of consciousness that the vast majority of mankind live out their lives.
The fourth level is said to extend far beyond ordinary ego, or mind. It is the ‘subtle’ level of mystical experience, extraordinary awareness and intuition.
Above the ‘subtle’ level lies the fifth ‘causal’ level, a realm of perfect transcendence beyond the experience and imagination of the ordinary individual.
Finally to the uppermost level of ultimate consciousness, all pervading, the source of all being, timelessness.
As the antithesis of the above model which denies exchange communication between lower and higher levels, Margaret Isherwood presents an alternative hypothetical six-level representation of a human mind in which there is an interplay between each layer like an osmosis and extending beyond into what she calls the Mind-at-Large or Psychic Ether. In this model Isherwood is saying that the substratum or Mind-at-Large is open to all and receives from all so that there are no impassable barriers anywhere. 5
Darryl Reanney describes a hierarchical consciousness as a metaphor to illustrate or differentiate the levels of reality perceived by different eyes. He is at pains however to instruct his readers not to get carried away by the concept and accept ideas associated with a literal interpretation of the metaphor. The principle is what matters; it is consciousness which constructs our reality and “different eyes see different wavebands see different worlds.” 6
This belief in the hierarchical structure of consciousness is so widespread that it cannot be ignored. At the very least it provides a framework of explanation, however inadequately portrayed here, for those people who seek to verbalise, in quasi-practical terms, experiences outside their normal boundaries of perception. Both models described would allow this to happen in different ways although the Eastern model appears to more restrictive in its application.
Some years ago when Sir Alister Hardy resigned his chair in Natural History at Oxford he remained at the University to establish what he called the Religious Experience Research Unit. He did this because he had been fortunate enough to have had several mystical experiences himself and he knew from discussions with colleagues and others that he was far from alone in this respect. In his first report of the activities of the unit Hardy confessed astonishment at the volume of mail received in response to a once only advertisement appearing in some of the national newspapers. Broadly speaking the legitimate (non-crank) responses fell into two groups. There were those that described ‘out-of-body’ experiences in many respects similar to dream-like events. Another category that occurred when the participant was fully awake described a sense of ‘oneness with nature’ which was characterised by a stillness, an awareness of knowing and a feeling of deep contentment. 7 Psychologist Nicolas Humphrey finds Hardy’s published report rather disturbing. He calls Alister Hardy’s Spirituality of Man an intellectually shallow book because many of the descriptions of mystical or religious experience in the book are closely paralleled by recognized symptoms of illness. He does not necessarily say that Hardy’s correspondents were sick but that they might have been on the verge of sickness.
Humphrey’s opinions aside, the sense of knowing is of particular interest because this describes exactly the process of intuition. The answer is found, as it were, in the abstract, without form or definition. A mind properly attuned can, in some circumstances, grasp the instantaneous thought and reformulate it in a discursive way so that it might be identified and practically applied.
Intuition might thus be described as an involuntary and tantalising glimpse of reality. A transient excursion into another world, or into the hidden recesses of inherited memory, where the mind can, for an instant, enjoy a period of freedom from the constraints and conditioning imposed at its normal level of consciousness. Should we treat these experiences with equal importance as for each new and awesome discovery of science? Cyril Garbett suggests that “... every discovery should be regarded both as a further revelation of the Majesty of God and of the greatness of the human mind.” 8 The problem is, as Anthony de Mello puts it, that there is a barrier to God and that comprises simply the word “God” which is a label, or a concept, to which we have become conditioned. He goes on “... you don’t need to be a mystic to understand that reality is something that cannot be captured by words or concepts. To know reality you have to know beyond knowing. Poets, painters, mystics and the great philosophers all have intimations of that truth -of that phrase."
If we accept that there is a hierarchical structure to consciousness then does the process of intuition represent a short step closer to a higher level, or to ultimate reality, or is it a genetically mediated method of implicit memory recall.? There is no easy linguistic way to respond to this question. The answer can probably be found only on the basis of a personal level of experience - by intuition perhaps.
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2004 Commentary:
This essay draws together ideas from several schools of thought as to the nature of intuition and then ends in a riddle. Thirty years ago when it was first penned I thought the ending to be quite clever and liberal. Now I don’t. It’s time to come down off the fence.
The original essay posed two questions regarding “answers” derived via the phenomenon of intuition:
(1) “Was the answer there all the time...?” Yes, I believe that, in a manner of speaking, it was. But not writ large in a cosmic book of instructions as some people would have us believe. All the answers to our perceived world of reality outside the boundary of our skin are there for us to find if we are able to look for them in the right way. A great many answers are gained through personal experience and effort whilst many, of a more esoteric type, are gained via third-party experience, through teaching or reading.
(2) “Did the answer come purely as the result of a function of reason...?” With regard to intuitive answers the response is still, by definition, “no” but not for the explanation originally given. The crux of the early argument was that reason cannot function outside a framework of language and without a framework of classification. Reason was always believed to be, and indeed is defined as, the power of the mind to think and to form judgements from a process of logic. And the act of thinking, together with the development of thoughts, has always been associated with conscious awareness. In recent years, however, there is some evidence pointing to the fact that a form of reasoning, examination and evaluation, can occur below the level of conscious awareness and can emerge to full awareness in the right circumstances. In other words an “intuitive” answer can arise as a result of a form of reasoning, or mind function, about which we are normally unaware. The answer appears, as it were, “out of the blue”.
In a recent television series on “The Human Mind”, Lord Robert Winston described how human experience, in all its forms, creates synaptic links between neurons thereby laying down the basis of memory. Where there are multiple pathways leading to a specific group of linked neurons then memory recall tends to be relatively easy. Where there is only a single pathway then memory recall can be difficult unless there is a clearly defined stimulus. Winston’s view is that we constantly evaluate our instant by instant experiences unconsciously, comparing them with our stored memories and, if and when there is a co-incidence, this can sometimes impel us to carry out an action without a conscious reason for doing so. Such actions are described as intuitive because they are in response to something which may prove to be self evidently true. This provides a plausible, and biological, description of intuition which, I suggest, is a great deal more worthy than some of the rather vague, metaphysical explanations offered elsewhere.
Bibliography ....on the Nature of Intuition
1 The Perennial Philosophy: Aldous Huxley; Chatto & Windus 1946
2 The Self and its Brain: An Argument for Interaction. Karl R. Popper & John C. Eccles, Routledge & Kegan Paul 1983
3 The Holographic Paradigm and other Paradoxes: Ken Wilber (Editor); Shambala Publications 1982
4 Aldous Huxley and the Mysticism of Science: Professor June Deery; 1996
5 Faith Without Dogma: Margaret Isherwood; George Allen & Unwin 1964
6 Music of the Mind: Dr Darryl Reanney; Souvenir Press Ltd 1995
7 The Spirituality of Man: Sir Alister Hardy; Clarendon Press, Oxford.
8 In an Age of Revolution: Cyril Garbett (Archbishop of York); Hodder & Stoughton 1952
9 Awareness: Anthony de Mello S.J.; Doubleday 1990
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