classes ::: power, capacity, plane, parts of the being,
children :::
branches ::: Intuition

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object:Intuition
object:the Intuitive Mind
class:power
class:capacity
class:plane
class:parts of the being
  Here is the one door in us that sometimes swings open upon the splendour of a truth beyond and, before it shuts again, allows a ray to touch us, - a luminous intimation which, if we have the strength and firmness, we may hold to in our faith and make a starting-point for another play of consciousness than that of the sense-mind, for the play of Intuition.
  For if we examine carefully, we shall find that Intuition is our first teacher.
  Intuition always stands veiled behind our mental operations.
  Intuition brings to man those brilliant messages from the Unknown which are the beginning of his higher knowledge. - TLD 1.08, 11-12
  In order to streng then the higher knowledge-faculty in us we have to effect the same separation between the intuitive and intellectual elements of our thought as we have already effected between the understanding and the sense-mind; and this is no easy task, for not only do our intuitions come to us incrusted in the intellectual action, but there are a great number of mental workings which masquerade and ape the appearances of the higher faculty. The remedy is to train first the intellect to recognise the true intuilion, to distinguish it from the false and then to accustom it, when it arrives at an intellectual perception or conclusion, to attach no final value to it, but rather look upward, refer all to the divine principle and wait in as complete a silence as it can comm and for the light from above. In this way it is possible to transmute a great part of our intellectual thinking into the luminous truth-conscious vision, -- the ideal would be a complete transition, -- or at least to increase greatly the frequency, purity and conscious force of the ideal knowledge working behind the intellect. The latter must learn to be subject and passive to the ideal faculty.
  - Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga
  There is, indeed, a higher form of the buddhi that can be called the intuitive mind or intuitive reason, and this by its intuitions, its inspirations, its swift revelatory vision, its luminous insight and discrimination can do the work of the reason with a higher power, a swifter action, a greater and spontaneous certitude. It acts in a self-light of the truth which does not depend upon the torch-flares of the sense-mind and its limited uncertain percepts; it proceeds not by intelligent but by visional concepts: It is a kind of truth-vision, truth-hearing, truth-memory, direct truth-discernment. This true and au thentic intuition must be distinguished from a power of the ordinary mental reason which is too easily confused with it, that power of Involved reasoning that reaches its conclusion by a bound and does not need the ordinary steps of the logical mind. The logical reason proceeds pace after pace and tries the sureness of each step like a marl who is walking over unsafe ground and has to test by the hesitating touch of his foot each span of soil that he perceives with his eye. But this other supralogical process of the reason is a motion of rapid insight or swift discernment; it proceeds by a stride or leap, like a man who springs from one sure spot to another point of sure footing, - or at least held by him to be sure. He sees this space he covers in one compact and flashing view, but he does not distinguish or measure either by eye or touch its successions, features and circumstances. This movement has something of the sense of power of the intuition, something of its velocity, some appearance of its light and certainty, arid we always are apt to take it for the intuition. But our assumption is an error and, if we trust to it, it may lead us into grievous blunders.
  - Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga
  But these two stages of the ascent enjoy their authority and can get their own united completeness only by a reference to a third level; for it is from the higher summits where dwells the intuitional being that they derive the knowledge which they turn into thought or sight and bring down to us for the mind's transmutation. 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. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.
  ...
Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much Minded by our ordinary or ignorant mind-substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of "stable lightnings''. When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing intuition or be able to call down a massed intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of Intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.
  - Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine

  Intuition has a fourfold power. A power of revelatory truth-seeing, a power of inspiration or truth-hearing, a power of truth-touch or immediate seizing of significance, which is akin to the ordinary nature of its intervention in our mental intelligence, a power of true and automatic discrimination of the orderly and exact relation of truth to truth,-these are the fourfold potencies of Intuition. Intuition can therefore perform all the action of reason, -- including the function of logical intelligence, which is to work out the right relation of things and the right relation of idea with idea, -- but by its own superior process and with steps that do not fail or falter. It takes up also and transforms into its own substance not only the mind of thought, but the heart and life and the sense and physical consciousness: already all these have their own peculiar powers of intuition derivative from the hidden Light; the pure power descending from above can assume them all into itself and impart to these deeper heart-perceptions and life-perceptions and the divinations of the body a greater integrality and perfection. It can thus change the whole consciousness into the stuff of Intuition; for it brings its own greater radiant movement into the will, into the feelings and emotions, the life-impulses, the action of sense and sensation, the very workings of the body-consciousness; it recasts them in the light and power of truth and illumines their knowledge and their ignorance. A certain integration can thus take place, but whether it is a total integration must depend on the extent to which the new light is able to take up the subconscient and penetrate the fundamental Inconscience. Here the intuitive light and power may be hampered in its task because it is the edge of a delegated and modified supermind, but does not bring in the whole mass or body of the identity-knowledge. The basis of Inconscience in our nature is too vast, deep and solid to be altoge ther penetrated, turned into light, transformed by an inferior power of the Truth-nature.


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now begins generated list of local instances, definitions, quotes, instances in chapters, wordnet info if available and instances among weblinks


OBJECT INSTANCES [0] - TOPICS - AUTHORS - BOOKS - CHAPTERS - CLASSES - SEE ALSO - SIMILAR TITLES

TOPICS
SEE ALSO


AUTH

BOOKS
A_Brief_History_of_Everything
God_Exists
Heart_of_Matter
Integral_Life_Practice_(book)
Kosmic_Consciousness
Letters_On_Yoga
Letters_On_Yoga_I
Letters_On_Yoga_IV
Liber_157_-_The_Tao_Teh_King
Life_without_Death
Modern_Man_in_Search_of_a_Soul
Process_and_Reality
The_Act_of_Creation
The_Divine_Milieu
The_Integral_Yoga
The_Wit_and_Wisdom_of_Alfred_North_Whitehead
The_Yoga_Sutras
Thus_Awakens_Swami_Sivananda
Toward_the_Future

IN CHAPTERS TITLE
01.04_-_The_Intuition_of_the_Age
1956-06-20_-_Hearts_mystic_light,_intuition_-_Psychic_being,_contact_-_Secular_ethics_-_True_role_of_mind_-_Realise_the_Divine_by_love_-_Depression,_pleasure,_joy_-_Heart_mixture_-_To_follow_the_soul_-_Physical_process_-_remember_the_Mother
1956-12-05_-_Even_and_objectless_ecstasy_-_Transform_the_animal_-_Individual_personality_and_world-personality_-_Characteristic_features_of_a_world-personality_-_Expressing_a_universal_state_of_consciousness_-_Food_and_sleep_-_Ordered_intuition
1958-07-23_-_How_to_develop_intuition_-_Concentration
30.04_-_Intuition_and_Inspiration_in_Art

IN CHAPTERS CLASSNAME

IN CHAPTERS TEXT
00.03_-_Upanishadic_Symbolism
0.00_-_INTRODUCTION
0.00_-_The_Book_of_Lies_Text
0.00_-_The_Wellspring_of_Reality
0.02_-_Letters_to_a_Sadhak
0.02_-_The_Three_Steps_of_Nature
0.08_-_Letters_to_a_Young_Captain
01.03_-_Rationalism
01.04_-_The_Intuition_of_the_Age
01.04_-_The_Secret_Knowledge
01.05_-_The_Nietzschean_Antichrist
01.06_-_On_Communism
01.07_-_The_Bases_of_Social_Reconstruction
01.09_-_The_Parting_of_the_Way
01.12_-_Goethe
0_1956-12-26
0_1958-07-06
0_1958-11-22
0_1960-10-11
0_1961-02-25
0_1961-03-25
0_1961-11-12
0_1962-07-21
0_1962-11-20
0_1963-03-13
0_1963-08-24
0_1965-03-24
0_1965-09-15a
0_1966-06-18
0_1966-09-30
0_1966-12-24
0_1967-04-05
0_1967-06-03
0_1967-06-21
0_1968-04-10
0_1969-02-08
0_1969-05-03
0_1970-08-05
0_1971-03-13
0_1971-04-17
02.01_-_Metaphysical_Thought_and_the_Supreme_Truth
02.01_-_Our_Ideal
02.01_-_The_World-Stair
02.02_-_Lines_of_the_Descent_of_Consciousness
02.03_-_An_Aspect_of_Emergent_Evolution
02.10_-_The_Kingdoms_and_Godheads_of_the_Little_Mind
02.11_-_New_World-Conditions
03.01_-_The_Evolution_of_Consciousness
03.02_-_Aspects_of_Modernism
03.02_-_The_Gradations_of_Consciousness__The_Gradation_of_Planes
03.03_-_The_House_of_the_Spirit_and_the_New_Creation
03.04_-_The_Other_Aspect_of_European_Culture
03.09_-_Sectarianism_or_Loyalty
04.01_-_The_March_of_Civilisation
04.02_-_A_Chapter_of_Human_Evolution
04.02_-_Human_Progress
04.09_-_Values_Higher_and_Lower
05.05_-_In_Quest_of_Reality
05.07_-_Man_and_Superman
05.07_-_The_Observer_and_the_Observed
05.11_-_The_Place_of_Reason
05.13_-_Darshana_and_Philosophy
06.09_-_How_to_Wait
06.35_-_Second_Sight
07.03_-_The_Entry_into_the_Inner_Countries
07.04_-_The_Triple_Soul-Forces
10.04_-_The_Dream_Twilight_of_the_Earthly_Real
1.00a_-_DIVISION_A_-_THE_INTERNAL_FIRES_OF_THE_SHEATHS.
1.00a_-_Introduction
1.00c_-_DIVISION_C_-_THE_ETHERIC_BODY_AND_PRANA
1.00e_-_DIVISION_E_-_MOTION_ON_THE_PHYSICAL_AND_ASTRAL_PLANES
10.15_-_The_Evolution_of_Language
10.17_-_Miracles:_Their_True_Significance
1.01_-_Archetypes_of_the_Collective_Unconscious
1.01_-_Foreward
1.01_-_Our_Demand_and_Need_from_the_Gita
1.01_-_THAT_ARE_THOU
1.01_-_The_Human_Aspiration
1.01_-_The_Ideal_of_the_Karmayogin
1.01_-_The_Unexpected
1.02.4.1_-_The_Worlds_-_Surya
1.02_-_In_the_Beginning
1.02_-_Isha_Analysis
1.02_-_MAPS_OF_MEANING_-_THREE_LEVELS_OF_ANALYSIS
1.02_-_The_Age_of_Individualism_and_Reason
1.02_-_The_Child_as_growing_being_and_the_childs_experience_of_encountering_the_teacher.
1.02_-_The_Development_of_Sri_Aurobindos_Thought
1.02_-_The_Doctrine_of_the_Mystics
1.02_-_The_Pit
1.02_-_THE_WITHIN_OF_THINGS
1.03_-_Meeting_the_Master_-_Meeting_with_others
1.03_-_The_Coming_of_the_Subjective_Age
1.03_-_THE_GRAND_OPTION
1.03_-_The_House_Of_The_Lord
1.04_-_Body,_Soul_and_Spirit
1.04_-_THE_APPEARANCE_OF_ANOMALY_-_CHALLENGE_TO_THE_SHARED_MAP
1.04_-_The_Divine_Mother_-_This_Is_She
1.04_-_The_Gods_of_the_Veda
1.04_-_The_Sacrifice_the_Triune_Path_and_the_Lord_of_the_Sacrifice
1.04_-_The_Silent_Mind
1.05_-_Adam_Kadmon
1.05_-_CHARITY
1.05_-_Hymns_of_Bharadwaja
1.05_-_Prayer
1.05_-_Qualifications_of_the_Aspirant_and_the_Teacher
1.05_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_-_The_Psychic_Being
1.06_-_Being_Human_and_the_Copernican_Principle
1.06_-_Man_in_the_Universe
1.06_-_On_Thought
1.06_-_The_Ascent_of_the_Sacrifice_2_The_Works_of_Love_-_The_Works_of_Life
1.06_-_The_Four_Powers_of_the_Mother
1.06_-_The_Objective_and_Subjective_Views_of_Life
1.070_-_The_Seven_Stages_of_Perfection
1.07_-_Hymn_of_Paruchchhepa
1.07_-_Medicine_and_Psycho_therapy
1.07_-_The_Ego_and_the_Dualities
1.07_-_The_Farther_Reaches_of_Human_Nature
1.07_-_The_Psychic_Center
1.07_-_TRUTH
1.08a_-_The_Ladder
1.08_-_RELIGION_AND_TEMPERAMENT
1.08_-_The_Depths_of_the_Divine
1.08_-_The_Gods_of_the_Veda_-_The_Secret_of_the_Veda
1.08_-_The_Methods_of_Vedantic_Knowledge
1.08_-_The_Supreme_Discovery
1.08_-_The_Supreme_Will
1.08_-_The_Synthesis_of_Movement
1.09_-_A_System_of_Vedic_Psychology
1.09_-_Kundalini_Yoga
1.09_-_The_Pure_Existent
11.01_-_The_Eternal_Day__The_Souls_Choice_and_the_Supreme_Consummation
11.06_-_The_Mounting_Fire
1.107_-_The_Bestowal_of_a_Divine_Gift
1.10_-_Conscious_Force
1.10_-_The_Image_of_the_Oceans_and_the_Rivers
1.10_-_The_Revolutionary_Yogi
1.10_-_The_Secret_of_the_Veda
1.10_-_The_Three_Modes_of_Nature
1.1.1.01_-_Three_Elements_of_Poetic_Creation
1.1.1.03_-_Creative_Power_and_the_Human_Instrument
11.15_-_Sri_Aurobindo
1.11_-_The_Master_of_the_Work
1.1.1_-_The_Mind_and_Other_Levels_of_Being
1.11_-_The_Reason_as_Governor_of_Life
1.1.2_-_Commentary
1.1.2_-_Intellect_and_the_Intellectual
1.12_-_The_Divine_Work
1.12_-_The_Sociology_of_Superman
1.12_-_The_Superconscient
1.13_-_Conclusion_-_He_is_here
1.13_-_Reason_and_Religion
1.13_-_The_Spirit
1.13_-_The_Supermind_and_the_Yoga_of_Works
1.14_-_INSTRUCTION_TO_VAISHNAVS_AND_BRHMOS
1.14_-_The_Book_of_Magic_Formulae
1.14_-_The_Supermind_as_Creator
1.14_-_TURMOIL_OR_GENESIS?
1.15_-_The_Suprarational_Good
1.1.5_-_Thought_and_Knowledge
1.15_-_Truth
1.17_-_DOES_MANKIND_MOVE_BIOLOGICALLY_UPON_ITSELF?
1.17_-_The_Transformation
1.18_-_The_Infrarational_Age_of_the_Cycle
1.19_-_The_Curve_of_the_Rational_Age
1.20_-_The_Hound_of_Heaven
1.21_-_My_Theory_of_Astrology
1.2.2.01_-_The_Poet,_the_Yogi_and_the_Rishi
1.22_-_EMOTIONALISM
1.22_-_The_Necessity_of_the_Spiritual_Transformation
1.2.2_-_The_Place_of_Study_in_Sadhana
1.23_-_Conditions_for_the_Coming_of_a_Spiritual_Age
1.2.3_-_The_Power_of_Expression_and_Yoga
1.25_-_SPIRITUAL_EXERCISES
1.28_-_Supermind,_Mind_and_the_Overmind_Maya
1.3.5.03_-_The_Involved_and_Evolving_Godhead
1.35_-_The_Tao_2
1.4.01_-_The_Divine_Grace_and_Guidance
1.4.03_-_The_Guru
1914_06_24p
1950-12-25_-_Christmas_-_festival_of_Light_-_Energy_and_mental_growth_-_Meditation_and_concentration_-_The_Mother_of_Dreams_-_Playing_a_game_well,_and_energy
1951-02-08_-_Unifying_the_being_-_ideas_of_good_and_bad_-_Miracles_-_determinism_-_Supreme_Will_-_Distinguishing_the_voice_of_the_Divine
1951-03-22_-_Relativity-_time_-_Consciousness_-_psychic_Witness_-_The_twelve_senses_-_water-divining_-_Instinct_in_animals_-_story_of_Mothers_cat
1951-04-12_-_Japan,_its_art,_landscapes,_life,_etc_-_Fairy-lore_of_Japan_-_Culture-_its_spiral_movement_-_Indian_and_European-_the_spiritual_life_-_Art_and_Truth
1954-11-24_-_Aspiration_mixed_with_desire_-_Willing_and_desiring_-_Children_and_desires_-_Supermind_and_the_higher_ranges_of_mind_-_Stages_in_the_supramental_manifestation
1954-12-08_-_Cosmic_consciousness_-_Clutching_-_The_central_will_of_the_being_-_Knowledge_by_identity
1956-06-13_-_Effects_of_the_Supramental_action_-_Education_and_the_Supermind_-_Right_to_remain_ignorant_-_Concentration_of_mind_-_Reason,_not_supreme_capacity_-_Physical_education_and_studies_-_inner_discipline_-_True_usefulness_of_teachers
1956-06-20_-_Hearts_mystic_light,_intuition_-_Psychic_being,_contact_-_Secular_ethics_-_True_role_of_mind_-_Realise_the_Divine_by_love_-_Depression,_pleasure,_joy_-_Heart_mixture_-_To_follow_the_soul_-_Physical_process_-_remember_the_Mother
1956-12-05_-_Even_and_objectless_ecstasy_-_Transform_the_animal_-_Individual_personality_and_world-personality_-_Characteristic_features_of_a_world-personality_-_Expressing_a_universal_state_of_consciousness_-_Food_and_sleep_-_Ordered_intuition
1958-07-23_-_How_to_develop_intuition_-_Concentration
1958-09-10_-_Magic,_occultism,_physical_science
1958-09-17_-_Power_of_formulating_experience_-_Usefulness_of_mental_development
1958_09_19
1958-09-24_-_Living_the_truth_-_Words_and_experience
1960_01_27
1963_08_11?_-_94
1.A_-_ANTHROPOLOGY,_THE_SOUL
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Case_of_Charles_Dexter_Ward
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Challenge_from_Beyond
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Last_Test
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Trap
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Tree_on_the_Hill
1f.lovecraft_-_The_Unnamable
1f.lovecraft_-_Through_the_Gates_of_the_Silver_Key
1.fua_-_Mysticism
1.jk_-_Sonnet_To_Homer
1.poe_-_Eureka_-_A_Prose_Poem
1.poe_-_The_Power_Of_Words_Oinos.
1.rb_-_Paracelsus_-_Part_V_-_Paracelsus_Attains
1.rb_-_Pauline,_A_Fragment_of_a_Question
1.tm_-_The_Sowing_of_Meanings
1.whitman_-_Passage_To_India
1.whitman_-_Thoughts
1.ww_-_Book_Eleventh-_France_[concluded]
1.ww_-_The_Excursion-_V-_Book_Fouth-_Despondency_Corrected
2.01_-_Indeterminates,_Cosmic_Determinations_and_the_Indeterminable
2.01_-_Mandala_One
2.01_-_On_Books
2.01_-_THE_ADVENT_OF_LIFE
2.01_-_The_Attributes_of_Omega_Point_-_a_Transcendent_God
2.02_-_Brahman,_Purusha,_Ishwara_-_Maya,_Prakriti,_Shakti
2.02_-_Indra,_Giver_of_Light
2.02_-_On_Letters
2.02_-_Surrender,_Self-Offering_and_Consecration
2.02_-_The_Ishavasyopanishad_with_a_commentary_in_English
2.03_-_Indra_and_the_Thought-Forces
2.03_-_Karmayogin__A_Commentary_on_the_Isha_Upanishad
2.03_-_On_Medicine
2.03_-_The_Christian_Phenomenon_and_Faith_in_the_Incarnation
2.03_-_The_Eternal_and_the_Individual
2.03_-_The_Purified_Understanding
2.04_-_The_Divine_and_the_Undivine
2.05_-_Apotheosis
2.05_-_On_Poetry
2.05_-_The_Cosmic_Illusion;_Mind,_Dream_and_Hallucination
2.06_-_On_Beauty
2.06_-_Reality_and_the_Cosmic_Illusion
2.06_-_The_Synthesis_of_the_Disciplines_of_Knowledge
2.07_-_On_Congress_and_Politics
2.07_-_The_Knowledge_and_the_Ignorance
2.07_-_The_Supreme_Word_of_the_Gita
2.08_-_On_Non-Violence
2.09_-_On_Sadhana
2.1.01_-_God_The_One_Reality
2.1.02_-_Classification_of_the_Parts_of_the_Being
2.1.02_-_Nature_The_World-Manifestation
2.1.03_-_Man_and_Superman
2.10_-_Knowledge_by_Identity_and_Separative_Knowledge
2.12_-_On_Miracles
2.1.2_-_The_Vital_and_Other_Levels_of_Being
2.1.3.2_-_Study
2.1.3.3_-_Reading
2.13_-_Exclusive_Concentration_of_Consciousness-Force_and_the_Ignorance
2.13_-_On_Psychology
2.1.4.1_-_Teachers
2.1.4.2_-_Teaching
2.14_-_The_Origin_and_Remedy_of_Falsehood,_Error,_Wrong_and_Evil
2.14_-_The_Unpacking_of_God
2.1.5.1_-_Study_of_Works_of_Sri_Aurobindo_and_the_Mother
2.15_-_Reality_and_the_Integral_Knowledge
2.16_-_The_15th_of_August
2.16_-_The_Integral_Knowledge_and_the_Aim_of_Life;_Four_Theories_of_Existence
2.1.7.08_-_Comments_on_Specific_Lines_and_Passages_of_the_Poem
2.17_-_December_1938
2.17_-_The_Progress_to_Knowledge_-_God,_Man_and_Nature
2.18_-_January_1939
2.19_-_Feb-May_1939
2.2.02_-_Becoming_Conscious_in_Work
2.2.03_-_The_Science_of_Consciousness
2.2.05_-_Creative_Activity
2.21_-_1940
2.21_-_The_Ladder_of_Self-transcendence
2.21_-_The_Order_of_the_Worlds
2.22_-_Vijnana_or_Gnosis
2.23_-_Man_and_the_Evolution
2.24_-_The_Evolution_of_the_Spiritual_Man
2.25_-_List_of_Topics_in_Each_Talk
2.25_-_The_Triple_Transformation
2.26_-_The_Ascent_towards_Supermind
2.27_-_Hathayoga
2.27_-_The_Gnostic_Being
2.28_-_The_Divine_Life
2.2.9.02_-_Plato
2.2.9.04_-_Plotinus
2.3.01_-_The_Planes_or_Worlds_of_Consciousness
2.3.02_-_The_Supermind_or_Supramental
2.3.03_-_Integral_Yoga
2.3.03_-_The_Mother's_Presence
2.3.03_-_The_Overmind
2.3.04_-_The_Higher_Planes_of_Mind
2.3.04_-_The_Mother's_Force
2.3.05_-_Sadhana_through_Work_for_the_Mother
2.3.06_-_The_Mind
2.3.06_-_The_Mother's_Lights
2.3.07_-_The_Mother_in_Visions,_Dreams_and_Experiences
2.3.07_-_The_Vital_Being_and_Vital_Consciousness
2.3.08_-_The_Physical_Consciousness
2.4.02_-_Bhakti,_Devotion,_Worship
2_-_Other_Hymns_to_Agni
30.03_-_Spirituality_in_Art
30.04_-_Intuition_and_Inspiration_in_Art
30.05_-_Rhythm_in_Poetry
3.00_-_The_Magical_Theory_of_the_Universe
30.14_-_Rabindranath_and_Modernism
30.15_-_The_Language_of_Rabindranath
3.01_-_Towards_the_Future
3.02_-_SOL
3.02_-_The_Practice_Use_of_Dream-Analysis
3.02_-_The_Psychology_of_Rebirth
3.03_-_SULPHUR
3.03_-_The_Consummation_of_Mysticism
3.03_-_THE_MODERN_EARTH
3.04_-_On_Thought_-_III
3.05_-_SAL
3.05_-_The_Divine_Personality
3.06_-_The_Delight_of_the_Divine
3.07_-_The_Ananda_Brahman
3.07_-_The_Formula_of_the_Holy_Grail
3.08_-_Purification
3.09_-_The_Return_of_the_Soul
31.01_-_The_Heart_of_Bengal
3.1.01_-_The_Problem_of_Suffering_and_Evil
3.1.02_-_Spiritual_Evolution_and_the_Supramental
31.03_-_The_Trinity_of_Bengal
31.04_-_Sri_Ramakrishna
3.1.04_-_Transformation_in_the_Integral_Yoga
3.1.3_-_Difficulties_of_the_Physical_Being
3.18_-_Of_Clairvoyance_and_the_Body_of_Light
3.2.02_-_The_Veda_and_the_Upanishads
32.07_-_The_God_of_the_Scientist
32.10_-_A_Letter
3.3.01_-_The_Superman
3.3.02_-_All-Will_and_Free-Will
3.3.1_-_Illness_and_Health
3.3.2_-_Doctors_and_Medicines
3.4.03_-_Materialism
3.4.1.01_-_Poetry_and_Sadhana
3.5.01_-_Aphorisms
3.6.01_-_Heraclitus
36.07_-_An_Introduction_To_The_Vedas
3.7.1.03_-_Rebirth,_Evolution,_Heredity
3.7.1.04_-_Rebirth_and_Soul_Evolution
3.7.1.05_-_The_Significance_of_Rebirth
3.7.1.07_-_Involution_and_Evolution
3.7.2.03_-_Mind_Nature_and_Law_of_Karma
3.7.2.04_-_The_Higher_Lines_of_Karma
3.8.1.01_-_The_Needed_Synthesis
3_-_Commentaries_and_Annotated_Translations
4.01_-_THE_COLLECTIVE_ISSUE
4.01_-_The_Presence_of_God_in_the_World
4.02_-_The_Integral_Perfection
4.03_-_The_Psychology_of_Self-Perfection
4.03_-_The_Special_Phenomenology_of_the_Child_Archetype
4.03_-_THE_ULTIMATE_EARTH
4.04_-_In_the_Total_Christ
4.04_-_The_Perfection_of_the_Mental_Being
4.06_-_Purification-the_Lower_Mentality
4.07_-_Purification-Intelligence_and_Will
4.1.01_-_The_Intellect_and_Yoga
4.1.1_-_The_Difficulties_of_Yoga
4.11_-_The_Perfection_of_Equality
4.1.2.03_-_Preparation_for_the_Supramental_Change
4.15_-_Soul-Force_and_the_Fourfold_Personality
4.18_-_Faith_and_shakti
4.19_-_The_Nature_of_the_supermind
4.20_-_The_Intuitive_Mind
4.21_-_The_Gradations_of_the_supermind
4.22_-_The_supramental_Thought_and_Knowledge
4.2.3.02_-_Signs_of_the_Psychic's_Coming_Forward
4.23_-_The_supramental_Instruments_--_Thought-process
4.24_-_The_supramental_Sense
4.25_-_Towards_the_supramental_Time_Vision
4.3.2.04_-_Degrees_in_the_Higher_Consciousness
4.3.2.09_-_Overmind_Experiences_and_the_Supermind
4.3.2_-_Attacks_by_the_Hostile_Forces
4.4.3.03_-_Preparatory_Experiences_and_Descent
4.4.4.08_-_The_Descent_of_Knowledge
5.01_-_EPILOGUE
5.02_-_Perfection_of_the_Body
5.03_-_The_Divine_Body
5.04_-_Supermind_and_the_Life_Divine
5.05_-_Supermind_and_Humanity
5.08_-_Supermind_and_Mind_of_Light
5.4.01_-_Occult_Knowledge
5_-_The_Phenomenology_of_the_Spirit_in_Fairytales
6.06_-_SELF-KNOWLEDGE
6.08_-_THE_CONTENT_AND_MEANING_OF_THE_FIRST_TWO_STAGES
6.0_-_Conscious,_Unconscious,_and_Individuation
APPENDIX_I_-_Curriculum_of_A._A.
Blazing_P2_-_Map_the_Stages_of_Conventional_Consciousness
Blazing_P3_-_Explore_the_Stages_of_Postconventional_Consciousness
BOOK_II._--_PART_I._ANTHROPOGENESIS.
BOOK_II._--_PART_III._ADDENDA._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_II._--_PART_II._THE_ARCHAIC_SYMBOLISM_OF_THE_WORLD-RELIGIONS
BOOK_I._--_PART_I._COSMIC_EVOLUTION
BOOK_I._--_PART_III._SCIENCE_AND_THE_SECRET_DOCTRINE_CONTRASTED
BOOK_I._--_PART_II._THE_EVOLUTION_OF_SYMBOLISM_IN_ITS_APPROXIMATE_ORDER
BS_1_-_Introduction_to_the_Idea_of_God
Conversations_with_Sri_Aurobindo
ENNEAD_01.01_-_The_Organism_and_the_Self.
ENNEAD_01.02_-_Concerning_Virtue.
ENNEAD_01.03_-_Of_Dialectic,_or_the_Means_of_Raising_the_Soul_to_the_Intelligible_World.
ENNEAD_01.04_-_Whether_Animals_May_Be_Termed_Happy.
ENNEAD_01.06_-_Of_Beauty.
ENNEAD_01.08_-_Of_the_Nature_and_Origin_of_Evils.
ENNEAD_02.03_-_Whether_Astrology_is_of_any_Value.
ENNEAD_02.09_-_Against_the_Gnostics;_or,_That_the_Creator_and_the_World_are_Not_Evil.
ENNEAD_03.06_-_Of_the_Impassibility_of_Incorporeal_Entities_(Soul_and_and_Matter).
ENNEAD_03.07_-_Of_Time_and_Eternity.
ENNEAD_03.08b_-_Of_Nature,_Contemplation_and_Unity.
ENNEAD_04.03_-_Psychological_Questions.
ENNEAD_04.04_-_Questions_About_the_Soul.
ENNEAD_04.06a_-_Of_Sensation_and_Memory.
ENNEAD_04.07_-_Of_the_Immortality_of_the_Soul:_Polemic_Against_Materialism.
ENNEAD_05.03_-_Of_the_Hypostases_that_Mediate_Knowledge,_and_of_the_Superior_Principle.
ENNEAD_05.03_-_The_Self-Consciousnesses,_and_What_is_Above_Them.
ENNEAD_05.05_-_That_Intelligible_Entities_Are_Not_External_to_the_Intelligence_of_the_Good.
ENNEAD_05.08_-_Concerning_Intelligible_Beauty.
ENNEAD_06.01_-_Of_the_Ten_Aristotelian_and_Four_Stoic_Categories.
ENNEAD_06.02_-_The_Categories_of_Plotinos.
ENNEAD_06.03_-_Plotinos_Own_Sense-Categories.
ENNEAD_06.05_-_The_One_and_Identical_Being_is_Everywhere_Present_In_Its_Entirety.345
ENNEAD_06.06_-_Of_Numbers.
ENNEAD_06.07_-_How_Ideas_Multiplied,_and_the_Good.
ENNEAD_06.09_-_Of_the_Good_and_the_One.
Liber
Liber_46_-_The_Key_of_the_Mysteries
Partial_Magic_in_the_Quixote
r1912_01_15
r1912_11_17
r1912_12_06
r1912_12_31
r1913_01_04
r1913_01_07
r1913_01_13
r1913_07_02
r1913_12_22
r1913_12_25
r1913_12_26
r1913_12_27
r1913_12_28
r1914_01_02
r1914_01_03
r1914_03_14
r1914_03_26
r1914_03_27
r1914_03_28
r1914_03_29
r1914_04_13
r1914_06_12
r1914_07_16
r1914_09_05
r1914_11_20
r1914_11_21
r1914_11_23
r1914_11_30
r1914_12_15
r1915_01_30
r1915_02_25
r1917_02_02
r1918_02_15
r1918_02_17
r1918_02_18
r1918_02_19
r1918_02_20
r1918_02_21
r1918_02_22
r1918_02_23
r1918_02_24
r1918_02_25
r1918_03_03
r1918_03_04
r1918_03_07
r1918_03_11
r1918_05_07
r1918_05_08
r1918_05_09
r1918_05_10
r1918_05_11
r1918_05_12
r1918_05_14
r1918_05_15
r1918_05_19
r1918_05_21
r1918_05_24
r1919_07_06
r1919_07_15
r1919_07_16
r1919_07_17
r1919_07_18
r1919_07_19
r1919_07_20
r1919_07_21
r1919_07_22
r1919_07_25
r1919_07_31
r1919_08_06
r1919_08_10
r1919_08_29
r1920_02_24
r1920_02_25
r1920_03_07
r1920_06_07
r1920_06_21
r1927_04_08
r1927_04_09b
r1927_04_13
r1927_04_22
Sophist
Talks_026-050
Talks_125-150
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_1
Talks_With_Sri_Aurobindo_2
The_Act_of_Creation_text
Theaetetus
The_Anapanasati_Sutta__A_Practical_Guide_to_Mindfullness_of_Breathing_and_Tranquil_Wisdom_Meditation
The_Coming_Race_Contents
The_Divine_Names_Text_(Dionysis)
the_Eternal_Wisdom
The_Library_of_Babel
The_Riddle_of_this_World
Verses_of_Vemana

PRIMARY CLASS

capacity
parts_of_the_being
plane
power
SIMILAR TITLES
Intuition

DEFINITIONS


TERMS STARTING WITH

Intuition ::: a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate than the lower ranges of spiritual mind to the original knowledge by identity; it gets the Truth in flashes and turns these flashes of Truth-perception into intuitions - intuitive ideas. Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light. What is thought-knowledge in the Higher Mind becomes illumination in the Illumined Mind and direct intimate vision in the Intuition.

Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into andmodified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and th
   refore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of stable lightnings.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 983


Intuitionism (mathematical): The name given to the school (of mathematics) founded by L. E. J. Brouwer (q. v.) and represented also by Hermann Weyl, Hans Freudenthal, Arend Heyting, and others. In some respects a historical forerunner of intuitionism is the mathematician Leopold Kronecker (1823-1891). Views related to intuitionism (but usually not including the rejection of the law of excluded middle) have been expressed by many recent or contemporary mathematicians, among whom are J. Richard, Th. Skolem, and the French semi-intuitionists -- as Heyting calls them -- E. Borel, H. Lebesgue, R. Baire, N. Lusin. (Lusin is Russian but has been closely associated with the French school.)

Intuition: (Lat. intuere, to look at) The direct and immediate apprehension by a knowing subject of itself, of its conscious states, of other minds, of an external world, of universals, of values or of rational truths. -- L.W.

Intuition "operating system" The {Amiga} {windowing system} (a shared-code library). (1997-08-01)

Intuition ::: (operating system) The Amiga windowing system (a shared-code library). (1997-08-01)

Intuition (revelation, inspiration, intuitive perception, intuitive discrimination) is Vijnana working in mind under the conditions and in the forms of mind.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 17, Page: 71


Intuition sees (he truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental Intelligence by seeking and reach* ing out by indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of Intuition ns compared with the supermind is that it secs things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming Into the mind it gets mixed with the mental move- ment and forms a kind of intuitive mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the hi^er Truth and the mental seeking. It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and (bat is practically Its function.

Intuition sees In flashes and combined through a constant play of light — through revelations, inspirations, intuitions, swift dis- criminations.

Intuition ::: see spiritualised mind.

Intuition ::: Spiritual intuition is always a more luminous guide than the discriminating reason, and spiritual intuition addresses itself to us not only through the reason, but through the rest of our being as well, through the heart and the life also.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 578


Intuition: The faculty or ability to be aware of facts, knowledge of which would or could not be conveyed by normal reasoning processes. The direct and immediate apprehension by a knowing subject of itself, of its conscious states, of other minds, of an external world, of universals, of values or of rational truths.

Intuition The working of the inner vision, instant and direct cognition of truth. This spiritual faculty, though not yet in any sense fully developed in the human race, yet occasionally shows itself as hunches. Every human being is born with at least the rudiment of this inner sense. Plotinus taught that the secret gnosis has three degrees — opinion, science or knowledge, and illumination — and that the instrument of the third is intuition. To this, reason is subordinate, for intuition is absolute knowledge, founded on the identification of the mind with the object. Iamblichus wrote of intuition: “There is a faculty of the human mind, which is superior to all which is born or begotten. Through it we are enabled to attain union with the superior intelligences, to be transported beyond the scenes of this world, and to partake of the higher life and peculiar powers of the heavenly ones.” From another point of view, intuition may be described as spiritual wisdom, gathered into the storehouse of the spirit-soul through experiences in past lives; but this form may be described as automatic intuition. The higher intuition is a filling of the functional human mind with a ray from the divinity within, furnishing the mind with illumination, perfect wisdom and, in its most developed form, virtual omniscience for our solar system. This is the full functioning of the buddhic faculty in the human being; and when this faculty is thus aroused and working, it produces the manushya or human buddha.

INTUITION. ::: Above illumined Mind which is simply higher

INTUITION—A conclusion which was arrived at without the conscious use of reason and not directly traceable to ordinary understandings of sensory experiences; the faculty of (unconscious). mind by which we arrive at intuitions, or know things without being taught; direct, or immediate knowledge of physical or moral values.

intuitional ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or derived from, intuition; characterized by intuition; perceived by intuition; intuitive.

intuitional gnosis ::: same as intuitional ideality.

intuitional ::: having the nature of intuition, as it acts on the level of intuitional ideality or another level of ideality or intuitive mind, often in combination with inspiration or revelation.

intuitional ideality ::: the lowest level of logistic ideality, where intuition (along with discrimination or viveka, the other component of smr.ti) determines the predominant character of the working of the luminous reason, the other faculties of jñana being inactive or subordinate to it.

intuitional ideal mind ::: same as intuitional ideality.

intuitional inspired ::: having the nature of intuitive inspiration.

intuitional inspired intellectuality ::: the lowest form of inspirational mentality, in which intuition is taken up into inspiration.

intuitional inspired logistis ::: the lowest form of inspired logistis, in which intuition is taken up into inspiration.

intuitional intellectuality ::: the lowest level of idealised mentality, the "primary intuitive action" of the intuitive mind, which "dealing with the triple time movement . . . sees principally the stream of successive actualities in time, even as the ordinary mind, but with an immediate directness of truth and spontaneous accuracy of which the ordinary mind is not capable".

intuitionalism ::: n. --> The doctrine that the perception or recognition of primary truth is intuitive, or direct and immediate; -- opposed to sensationalism, and experientialism.

intuitionalist ::: n. --> One who holds the doctrine of intuitionalism.

intuitional mind ::: same as intuitive mind.

intuitional reason ::: same as intuitional intellectuality.

intuitional revelation; intuitional revelatory ideality ::: same as intuitive revelatory logistis76

intuition :::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

intuition ::: direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process. intuition"s, intuitions, half-intuition.

Sri Aurobindo: "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. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.” *The Life Divine

   "Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind-substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of ``stable lightnings"". When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing intuition or be able to call down a massed intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of Intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.” *The Life Divine

  "I use the word ‘intuition" for want of a better. In truth, it is a makeshift and inadequate to the connotation demanded of it. The same has to be said of the word ‘consciousness" and many others which our poverty compels us to extend illegitimately in their significance.” *The Life Divine - Sri Aurobindo"s footnote.

"For intuition is an edge of light thrust out by the secret Supermind. . . .” The Life Divine

". . . intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data.” The Life Divine

"Intuition is above illumined Mind which is simply higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration.” Letters on Yoga

"Intuition sees the truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental intelligence by seeking and reaching out for indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of the Intuition as compared with the supermind is that it sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming into the mind it gets mixed with the mental movement and forms a kind of intuitive mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the higher Truth and the mental seeking. It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and that is practically its function.” Letters on Yoga


intuitionism ::: In the philosophy of mathematics, intuitionism, or neointuitionism (opposed to preintuitionism), is an approach to mathematics as the constructive mental activity of humans. That is, mathematics does not consist of analytic activities wherein deep properties of existence are revealed and applied. Instead, logic and mathematics are the application of internally consistent methods to realize more complex mental constructs.

intuitionism {intuitionistic logic}

intuitionism ::: n. --> Same as Intuitionalism.

intuitionistic logic ::: (logic, mathematics) Brouwer's foundational theory of mathematics which says that you should not count a proof of (There exists x such that P(x)) valid proof of (A or B) is valid only if it actually exhibits either a proof of A or a proof of B.In intuitionism, you cannot in general assert the statement (A or not-A) (the principle of the excluded middle); (A or not-A) is not proven unless you have a proof of A or a proof of not-A. If A happens to be undecidable in your system (some things certainly will be), then there will be no proof of (A or not-A).This is pretty annoying; some kinds of perfectly healthy-looking examples of proof by contradiction just stop working. Of course, excluded middle is a theorem of classical logic (i.e. non-intuitionistic logic). .(2001-03-18)

intuitionistic logic "logic, mathematics" Brouwer's foundational theory of mathematics which says that you should not count a proof of (There exists x such that P(x)) valid unless the proof actually gives a method of constructing such an x. Similarly, a proof of (A or B) is valid only if it actually exhibits either a proof of A or a proof of B. In intuitionism, you cannot in general assert the statement (A or not-A) (the principle of the {excluded middle}); (A or not-A) is not proven unless you have a proof of A or a proof of not-A. If A happens to be {undecidable} in your system (some things certainly will be), then there will be no proof of (A or not-A). This is pretty annoying; some kinds of perfectly healthy-looking examples of {proof by contradiction} just stop working. Of course, excluded middle is a theorem of {classical logic} (i.e. non-intuitionistic logic). {History (http://britanica.com/bcom/eb/article/3/0,5716,118173+14+109826,00.html)}. (2001-03-18)

intuitionistic probability "logic" Florentin Smarandache's representation of the probability of an event occuring, given by T, I, F which are real subsets representing the truth, indeterminacy, and falsity percentages respectively, and n_sup = sup(T) + sup(I) + sup(F) " 100 Related to {intuitionistic logic}. [Florentin Smarandache, "A Unifying Field in Logics. / {Neutrosophy}: Neutrosophic Probability, Set, and Logic", American Research Press, Rehoboth 1999]. (2001-03-18)

intuitionistic probability ::: (logic) Florentin Smarandache's representation of the probability of an event occuring, given by T, I, F which are real subsets representing the truth, indeterminacy, and falsity percentages respectively, and n_sup = sup(T) + sup(I) + sup(F) 100 Related to intuitionistic logic.[Florentin Smarandache, A Unifying Field in Logics. / Neutrosophy: Neutrosophic Probability, Set, and Logic, American Research Press, Rehoboth 1999].(2001-03-18)

intuitionist logic "spelling" Incorrect term for "{intuitionistic logic}". (1999-11-24)

intuitionist logic ::: (spelling) Incorrect term for intuitionistic logic. (1999-11-24)

intuitionist ::: n. --> Same as Intuitionalist.

intuition ::: n. --> A looking after; a regard to.
Direct apprehension or cognition; immediate knowledge, as in perception or consciousness; -- distinguished from "mediate" knowledge, as in reasoning; as, the mind knows by intuition that black is not white, that a circle is not a square, that three are more than two, etc.; quick or ready insight or apprehension.
Any object or truth discerned by direct cognition; especially, a first or primary truth.


INTUITION Refers to at least causal consciousness (47:1-3). Ignorance has idiotized this originally esoteric term so as to denote emotional impulses with a faint content of the lowest mental consciousness (47:7).

It is intuition that opens up the world of ideas for us. It is a special organ of knowledge that gives us correct ideas, correct knowledge of reality. Only a few men have worked their way up through the different &


INTUITION (T.B.) Has reference to two different kinds of consciousness:

intuition ::: the faculty of jñana that "suggests a direct and illumining inner idea of the truth, an idea that is its true image and index, . . . a representation, but a living representation"; one of the two components of smr.ti, it "does the work of reasoning without the necessity of reasoning to arrive at a conclusion"; also, an instance of the working of this faculty; sometimes equivalent to intuitional ideality, the lowest level of logistic ideality; (in 1927) same as gnostic intuition.


TERMS ANYWHERE

(1) In general: any philosophy in which intuition is appealed to as the basis of knowledge, or at least of philosophical knowledge.

(2) In ethics: in the narrower traditional sense, intuitionism is the view that certain actions or kinds of action may be known to be right or wrong by a direct intuition of their rightness or wrongness, without any consideration of the value of their consequences. In this sense intuitionism is opposed to utilitarian and teleological ethics, and is most recently represented by the neo-intuitionists at Oxford, H. A. Prichard, E. F. Carritt, W. D. Ross. It is sometimes said to involve the view that the organ of ethical insight is non-rational and even unique. It takes, according to Sidgwick, three forms. Perceptual intuitionism holds that only judgments relating to the rightness or wrongness of particular acts are intuitive. Dogmatic intuitionism holds that some general material propositions relating to the rightness or wrongness of kinds of acts may also be intuited, e.g. that promises ought to be kept. Philosophical intuitionism holds that it is only certain general propositions about what is right or wrong that are intuitive, and that these are few and purely formal. In the wider more recent sense, intuitionism includes all views in which ethics is made to rest on intuitions, particular or general, as to the rightness, obligatoriness, goodness, oi value of actions or objects. Taken in this sense, intuitionism is the dominant point of view in recent British ethics, and is represented in Europe by the phenomenological ethics of M. Scheler and N. Hartmann, having also proponents in America. That is, it covers not only the deontological intuitionism to be found at Oxford, but also the axiological and even teleological or utilitarian intuitionism to be found in J. Martineau, H. Sidgwick, H. Rashdall, G. E. Moore, J. Laird. Among earlier British moralists it is represented by tho Cambridge Platonists, the Moral Sense School, Clarke, Cumberland, Butler, Price, Reid, Whewell, etc.By saying that the basic propositions of ethics (i.e. of the theory of obligation, of the theory of value, or of both) are intuitive, the intuitionists mean at least that they are ultimate and underivative, primitive and uninferable, as well as synthetic, and sometimes also that they are self-evident and a priori. This implies that one or more of the basic notions of ethics (rightness, goodness, etc.) are indefinable, i.e. simple or unanalysable and unique; and that ethics is autonomous. Intuitionists also hold that rightness and goodness are objective and non-natural. Hence their view is sometimes called objectivism or non-naturalism. The views of Moore and Laird are also sometimes referred to as realistic. See Deontological ethics, Axiological ethics, Teleological ethics, Utilitarianism, Objectivism, Realism, Autonomy of ethics, Non-naturalistic ethics. -- W.K.F.

  6. An intuitional perception of one’s being the vehicle of the manifested Avalokitesvara or Divine Atman (Spirit);

ABOVE-HEAD CENTRE. ::: Above the head extends the higher consciousness centre, sahasradala padma, the thousandpetalled lotus, commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upwards to the intuition and overmind. The sahasradala centralises spiritual mind, higher mind, intuitive mind and acts as a receiving station for the intuition proper and overmind.
It is the seventh and highest centre. Usually those who take the centres in the body only count six centres, the sahasrāra being excluded. It is sometimes or by some identified with the brain, but that is an error; the brain is only a channel of communication situated between the thousand-petalled and the forehead centre. The former is sometimes called the void centre, śūnya, either because it is not in the body, but in the apparent void above or because rising above the head one enters first into the silence of the self or spiritual being.
Wide Crown centre.


According to the Vedas and Puranas was famous for being the first to produce the sacred triad of fires by the friction of two sticks as many finger-breadths long as there are syllables in the Gayatri, and made of the wood of the asvattha tree (the tree of wisdom). This legend is full of occult meaning hid under archaic allusions. Pururavas is a generalized name for the human monad which in imbodiment is at once the son of divine wisdom and spirit, and of space or mystic earth. The triad of sacred fires are the fire of spirit or inspiration and intuition, the fire of intellect, and the fires of matter or space; and the union of these three into the one generalized fire of the human constitution forms in a sense the field of self-consciousness as well as of the self-conscious ego itself.

A consistency proof evidently loses much of its significance unless the methods employed in the proof are in some sense less than, or less dubitable than, the methods of proof which the logistic system is intended to formalize. Hilbert required that the methods employed in a consistency proof should be finitary -- a condition more stringent than that of intuitionistic acceptability. See Intuitionism (mathematical).

actualistic ::: characterised by a working of intuition which, in dealing with the movement in time, lays "stress on the stream of immediate actualities".

actualistic ideality ::: an intuitional form of logistic ideality which, applied to the field of trikaladr.s.t.i and tapas, "depends upon the existent actuality, illumines it, goes a little beyond it but from it".

actualistic seer tapas ::: tapas acting in the actualist intuitional revelation, the lowest form of seer tapas. actualistic seer trik trikaladrsti

actualist intuitional revelation ::: actualistic ideality raised to the intuitive revelatory logistis.

ADESA. ::: Impulsion; inner command. The Divine speaks to us in many ways and it is not always the imperative ādeśa that comes. When it does, it is clear and irresistible, the mind has to obey and there is no question possible, even if what comes is contrary to the preconceived ideas of the mental intelligence. But more often what is said is an intuition or even less, a mere indication, which the mind may not follow because it is not impressed with its imperative necessity. It is something offered but not imposed, perhaps something not even offered but only suggested from the Truth above.

Adrishta (Sanskrit) Adṛṣṭa [from a not + the verbal root dṛṣ to see, learn, perceive with the mind or intuition] Unseen, unforeseen, invisible; an unforeseen danger. In philosophy, that which is beyond the reach or observation of the percipient consciousness. W. Q. Judge defines it as “the merit or demerit attaching to a man’s conduct in a former incarnation, and the corresponding (apparently arbitrary) punishment or reward in the present or a future incarnation” (WG 2). This is clearly seen in the compound term adrishta-phala (unseen fruit), karma not yet come into force. Hence the connotation of fate, luck (sometimes bad luck) that is attached to adrishta. (BCW 5:580 with Kanada as “unseen force”; 4:61 with Nyayas as invisible principle)

Aesthetics. Any system or program of fine art emphasizing the ideal (s.) is Aesthetic Idealism. The view that the goal of fine art is an embodiment or reflection of the perfections of archetypal Ideas or timeless essences (Platonism). The view of art which emphasizes feeling, sentiment, and idealization (as opposed to "literal reproduction" of fact). The view of art which emphasizes cognitive content (as opposed to abstract feeling, primitive intuition, formal line or structure, mere color or tone). Psychology. The doctrine that ideas or judgments are causes of thought and behavior, and not mere effects or epiphenomena, is Psychological Idealism.

A. Heyting, Die intuitionistische Grundlegung der Mathematik. ibid., pp. 106-115.

A. Heyting, Mathematische Grundlagen-forschung, Intuitionismus, Beweistheorie, Berlin, 1934. Intuitionism (philosophical):

A. Heyting, Mathematische Grundlagenforschung, Intuitionismus, Beweistheorie, Berlin, 1934.

aladr.s.t.i (trikaldrishti) ::: telepathic trikaladr.s.t.i in the intuitional ideality, a form of intuitional trikaladr.s.t.i. intuitive vij ñana

aladr.s.t.i (trikaldrishti) ::: trikaladr.s.t.i by means of intuition; the lowest level of ideal trikaladr.s.t.i.

aladr.s.t.i (trikaldrishti) ::: trikaladr.s.t.i in the actualist intuitional revelation.

aladr.s.t.i (trikaldrishti) ::: trikaladr.s.t.i (usually foreknowledge) of the exact time of events; "an intuition of Time which is not of the mind and when it plays is always accurate to the very minute and if need be to the very second".

Almost all Jewish philosophers with the exception of Gabirol, ha-Levi, and Gersonides produce proofs for the existence of God. These proofs are based primarily on principles of physics. In the case of the Western philosophers, they are Aristotelian, while in the case of the Eastern, they are a combination of Aristotelian and those of the Mutazilites. The Eastern philosophers, such as Saadia and others and also Bahya of the Western prove the existence of God indirectly, namely that the world was created and consequently there is a creator. The leading Western thinkers, such as Ibn Daud (q.v.) and Maimonides employ the Aristotelian argument from motion, even to positing hypothetically the eternity of the world. Ha-LevI considers the conception of the existence of God an intuition with which man is endowed by God Himself. Crescas, who criticized Aristotle's conception of space and the infinite, in his proof for the existence of God, proves it by positing the need of a being necessarily existent, for it is absurd to posit a world of possibles.

Amal: “There are several levels between the mind and the Supermind. One of them is that of the Ideal. A common classification by Sri Aurobindo is: the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, the Intuition, the Overmind Intuition, the Overmind, the supramentalised Overmind. In an early chapter of The Life Divine, there is a triple scheme: the Phenomenal, the Ideal, the Real. The Ideal here would cover all the planes between mind and Supermind.”

Amiga "computer" A range of home computers first released by {Commodore Business Machines} in early 1985 (though they did not design the original - see below). Amigas were popular for {games}, {video processing}, and {multimedia}. One notable feature is a hardware {blitter} for speeding up graphics operations on whole areas of the screen. The Amiga was originally called the Lorraine, and was developed by a company named "Amiga" or "Amiga, Inc.", funded by some doctors to produce a killer game machine. After the US game machine market collapsed, the Amiga company sold some {joysticks} but no Lorraines or any other computer. They eventually floundered and looked for a buyer. Commodore at that time bought the (mostly complete) Amiga machine, infused some money, and pushed it through the final stages of development in a hurry. Commodore released it sometime[?] in 1985. Most components within the machine were known by nicknames. The {coprocessor} commonly called the "Copper" is in fact the "{Video} Timing Coprocessor" and is split between two chips: the instruction fetch and execute units are in the "Agnus" chip, and the {pixel} timing circuits are in the "Denise" chip (A for address, D for data). "Agnus" and "Denise" were responsible for effects timed to the {real-time} position of the video scan, such as midscreen {palette} changes, {sprite multiplying}, and {resolution} changes. Different versions (in order) were: "Agnus" (could only address 512K of {video RAM}), "Fat Agnus" (in a {PLCC} package, could access 1MB of video RAM), "Super Agnus" (slightly upgraded "Fat Agnus"). "Agnus" and "Fat Agnus" came in {PAL} and {NTSC} versions, "Super Agnus" came in one version, jumper selectable for PAL or NTSC. "Agnus" was replaced by "Alice" in the A4000 and A1200, which allowed for more {DMA} channels and higher bus {bandwidth}. "Denise" outputs binary video data (3*4 bits) to the "Vidiot". The "Vidiot" is a hybrid that combines and amplifies the 12-bit video data from "Denise" into {RGB} to the {monitor}. Other chips were "Amber" (a "flicker fixer", used in the A3000 and Commodore display enhancer for the A2000), "Gary" ({I/O}, addressing, G for {glue logic}), "Buster" (the {bus controller}, which replaced "Gary" in the A2000), "Buster II" (for handling the Zorro II/III cards in the A3000, which meant that "Gary" was back again), "Ramsey" (The {RAM} controller), "DMAC" (The DMA controller chip for the WD33C93 {SCSI adaptor} used in the A3000 and on the A2091/A2092 SCSI adaptor card for the A2000; and to control the {CD-ROM} in the {CDTV}), and "Paula" ({Peripheral}, Audio, {UART}, {interrupt} Lines, and {bus Arbiter}). There were several Amiga chipsets: the "Old Chipset" (OCS), the "Enhanced Chipset" (ECS), and {AGA}. OCS included "Paula", "Gary", "Denise", and "Agnus". ECS had the same "Paula", "Gary", "Agnus" (could address 2MB of Chip RAM), "Super Denise" (upgraded to support "Agnus" so that a few new {screen modes} were available). With the introduction of the {Amiga A600} "Gary" was replaced with "Gayle" (though the chipset was still called ECS). "Gayle" provided a number of improvments but the main one was support for the A600's {PCMCIA} port. The AGA chipset had "Agnus" with twice the speed and a 24-bit palette, maximum displayable: 8 bits (256 colours), although the famous "{HAM}" (Hold And Modify) trick allows pictures of 256,000 colours to be displayed. AGA's "Paula" and "Gayle" were unchanged but AGA "Denise" supported AGA "Agnus"'s new screen modes. Unfortunately, even AGA "Paula" did not support High Density {floppy disk drives}. (The Amiga 4000, though, did support high density drives.) In order to use a high density disk drive Amiga HD floppy drives spin at half the rotational speed thus halving the data rate to "Paula". Commodore Business Machines went bankrupt on 1994-04-29, the German company {Escom AG} bought the rights to the Amiga on 1995-04-21 and the Commodore Amiga became the Escom Amiga. In April 1996 Escom were reported to be making the {Amiga} range again but they too fell on hard times and {Gateway 2000} (now called Gateway) bought the Amiga brand on 1997-05-15. Gateway licensed the Amiga operating system to a German hardware company called {Phase 5} on 1998-03-09. The following day, Phase 5 announced the introduction of a four-processor {PowerPC} based Amiga {clone} called the "{pre\box}". Since then, it has been announced that the new operating system will be a version of {QNX}. On 1998-06-25, a company called {Access Innovations Ltd} announced {plans (http://micktinker.co.uk/aaplus.html)} to build a new Amiga chip set, the {AA+}, based partly on the AGA chips but with new fully 32-bit functional core and 16-bit AGA {hardware register emulation} for {backward compatibility}. The new core promised improved memory access and video display DMA. By the end of 2000, Amiga development was under the control of a [new?] company called {Amiga, Inc.}. As well as continuing development of AmigaOS (version 3.9 released in December 2000), their "Digital Environment" is a {virtual machine} for multiple {platforms} conforming to the {ZICO} specification. As of 2000, it ran on {MIPS}, {ARM}, {PPC}, and {x86} processors. {(http://amiga.com/)}. {Amiga Web Directory (http://cucug.org/amiga.html)}. {amiCrawler (http://amicrawler.com/)}. Newsgroups: {news:comp.binaries.amiga}, {news:comp.sources.amiga}, {news:comp.sys.amiga}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.advocacy}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.announce}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.applications}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.audio}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.datacomm}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.emulations}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.games}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.graphics}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.hardware}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.introduction}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.marketplace}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.misc}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.multimedia}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.programmer}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.reviews}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.tech}, {news:comp.sys.amiga.telecomm}, {news:comp.Unix.amiga}. See {aminet}, {Amoeba}, {bomb}, {exec}, {gronk}, {guru meditation}, {Intuition}, {sidecar}, {slap on the side}, {Vulcan nerve pinch}. (2003-07-05)

Amiga ::: (computer) A range of home computers first released by Commodore Business Machines in early 1985 (though they did not design the original - see below). feature is a hardware blitter for speeding up graphics operations on whole areas of the screen.The Amiga was originally called the Lorraine, and was developed by a company named Amiga or Amiga, Inc., funded by some doctors to produce a killer game joysticks but no Lorraines or any other computer. They eventually floundered and looked for a buyer.Commodore at that time bought the (mostly complete) Amiga machine, infused some money, and pushed it through the final stages of development in a hurry. Commodore released it sometime[?] in 1985.Most components within the machine were known by nicknames. The coprocessor commonly called the Copper is in fact the Video Timing Coprocessor and is Agnus chip, and the pixel timing circuits are in the Denise chip (A for address, D for data).Agnus and Denise were responsible for effects timed to the real-time position of the video scan, such as midscreen palette changes, sprite the A4000 and A1200, which allowed for more DMA channels and higher bus bandwidth.Denise outputs binary video data (3*4 bits) to the Vidiot. The Vidiot is a hybrid that combines and amplifies the 12-bit video data from Denise into RGB to the monitor.Other chips were Amber (a flicker fixer, used in the A3000 and Commodore display enhancer for the A2000), Gary (I/O, addressing, G for glue logic), card for the A2000; and to control the CD-ROM in the CDTV), and Paula (Peripheral, Audio, UART, interrupt Lines, and bus Arbiter).There were several Amiga chipsets: the Old Chipset (OCS), the Enhanced Chipset (ECS), and AGA. OCS included Paula, Gary, Denise, and Agnus.ECS had the same Paula, Gary, Agnus (could address 2MB of Chip RAM), Super Denise (upgraded to support Agnus so that a few new screen modes were Gayle (though the chipset was still called ECS). Gayle provided a number of improvments but the main one was support for the A600's PCMCIA port.The AGA chipset had Agnus with twice the speed and a 24-bit palette, maximum displayable: 8 bits (256 colours), although the famous HAM (Hold And Modify) use a high density disk drive Amiga HD floppy drives spin at half the rotational speed thus halving the data rate to Paula.Commodore Business Machines went bankrupt on 1994-04-29, the German company Escom AG bought the rights to the Amiga on 1995-04-21 and the Commodore Amiga range again but they too fell on hard times and Gateway 2000 (now called Gateway) bought the Amiga brand on 1997-05-15.Gateway licensed the Amiga operating system to a German hardware company called Phase 5 on 1998-03-09. The following day, Phase 5 announced the introduction of a four-processor PowerPC based Amiga clone called the pre\box. Since then, it has been announced that the new operating system will be a version of QNX.On 1998-06-25, a company called Access Innovations Ltd announced to build a new Amiga chip set, the AA+, based partly on the AGA chips but with backward compatibility. The new core promised improved memory access and video display DMA.By the end of 2000, Amiga development was under the control of a [new?] company called Amiga, Inc.. As well as continuing development of AmigaOS (version 3.9 multiple platforms conforming to the ZICO specification. As of 2000, it ran on MIPS, ARM, PPC, and x86 processors. . . .Newsgroups: comp.binaries.amiga, comp.sources.amiga, comp.sys.amiga, comp.sys.amiga.advocacy, comp.sys.amiga.announce, comp.sys.amiga.applications, comp.sys.amiga.multimedia, comp.sys.amiga.programmer, comp.sys.amiga.reviews, comp.sys.amiga.tech, comp.sys.amiga.telecomm, comp.Unix.amiga.See aminet, Amoeba, bomb, exec, gronk, guru meditation, Intuition, sidecar, slap on the side, Vulcan nerve pinch.(2003-07-05)

Among his most important works the following must be mentioned: Paz en la Guerra, 1897; De la Ensenanza Superior en Espana, 1899; En Torno al Casticismo, 1902; Amor y Pedagogia, 1902; Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho, 1905; Mi Religion y Otros Ensayos, 1910; Soliloquios y Conversaciones, 1912; Contra Esto y Aquello, 1912; Ensayos, 7 vols., 1916-1920; Del Sentimiento Tragico de la Vida en los Hombres y en los Pueblos, 1914; Niebla, 1914; La Agonia del Cristianismo, 1930; etc. Unamuno conceives of everv individual man as an end in himself and not a means. Civilization has an individual responsibility towards each man. Man lives in society, but society as such is an abstraction. The concrete fact is the individual man "of flesh and blood". This doctrine of man constitutes the first principle of his entire philosophy. He develops it throughout his writings by way of a soliloquy in which he attacks the concepts of "man", "Society", "Humanity", etc. as mere abstractions of the philosophers, and argues for the "Concrete", "experiential" facts of the individual living man. On his doctrine of man as an individual fact ontologically valid, Unamuno roots the second principle of his philosophy, namely, his theory of Immortality. Faith in immortality grows out, not from the realm of reason, but from the realm of facts which lie beyond the boundaries of reason. In fact, reason as such, that is, as a logical function is absolutely disowned bv Unamuno, as useless and unjustified. The third principle of his philosophy is his theory of the Logos which has to do with man's intuition of the world and his immediate response in language and action. -- J.A.F.

anabuddhi (vijnanabuddhi; vijnana-buddhi; vijnana buddhi) ::: the intuitive mind, intermediate between intellectual reason (manasa buddhi) and pure vijñana, a faculty consisting of vijñana "working in mind under the conditions and in the forms of mind", which "by its intuitions, its inspirations, its swift revelatory vision, its luminous insight and discrimination can do the work of the reason with a higher power, a swifter action, a greater and spontaneous certitude". vij ñana-caksuh

IDEAS OF THE CAUSAL WORLD
The ideas of the world of ideas are objective forms as well as being subjective, and thus the ideas are faithful representations of enduring objective and subjective realities. Every intuition corresponds to a mental system of reality ideas. Lower worlds exist in the ideas of the world of ideas and thus the knowledge of these lower worlds is contained in the idea systems of the intuitions. &


ana ::: same as intuitional ideality.

Anschauung: A German term used in epistemology to mean intuition or perception with a quality of directness or immediacy. It is a basic term in Kant's philosophy, denoting that which presents materials to the intellect through the forms of space and time. These forms predetermine what types of objects (schemata) can be set up when the understanding applies its own forms to the facts of sense. Kant distinguished "empirical" intuitions (a posteriori) of objects through sensation, and "pure" intuitions (a priori) with space and time as the forms of sensibility. The characteristics and functions of Anschauung are discussed in the first division (Aesthetic) of the Critique of Pure Reason. Caird disputes the equivalence of the Kantian Anschauung with intuition; but it is difficult to find an English word more closely related to the German term. -- T.G.

anticipations ::: 1. Expectations or hopes. 2. Intuitions, foreknowledge, or prescience.

Anticipations of experience: In Kant's Crit. of pure Reason Antizipationen der Wahrnehmung) the second of two synthetic principles of the understanding (the other being "Axioms of Intuition") by which the mind is able to determine something a priori in regard to what is in itself empirical. While the mind cannot anticipate the specific qualities which are to be experienced, we can, nevertheless, Kant holds, predetermine or anticipate any sense experience that "in all appearances the real, which is an object of sensation, has intensive magnitude or degree." -- O.F.K.

A second meaning as a noun is one of the portions of Vedic literature containing rules for the proper chanting and usage of the mantras or hymns at sacrifices, and explanations in detail of what these sacrifices are, illustrated by legends and old stories. These Brahmanas are “pre-eminently occult works, hence used purposely as blinds. They were allowed to survive for public use and property only because they were and are absolutely unintelligible to the masses. Otherwise they would have disappeared from circulation as long ago as the days of Akbar” (SD 1:68). Though the Brahmanas are the oldest scholastic treatises on the primitive hymns, they themselves require a key for a proper understanding of them which Orientalists have hitherto failed to secure. Since the time of Gautama Buddha, the keys to the Brahmanical secret code have been in the possession of initiates alone, who guard their treasure with extreme and jealous care. There are indeed few, if any, individuals of the present-day Brahmanical cast in India who are even conscious that such keys exists; although no small number of them, possibly, have intimations or intuitions that a secret wisdom has been lost which is uniformly understood to have been in the possession of the ancient Indian rishis.

a ::: the higher knowledge; the knowledge of brahman, "the supreme supra-intellectual knowledge which concentrates itself on the discovery of the One and Infinite in its transcendence or tries to penetrate by intuition, contemplation, direct inner contact into the ultimate truths behind the appearances of Nature".

Aufklärung: In general, this German word and its English equivalent Enlightenment denote the self-emancipation of man from mere authority, prejudice, convention and tradition, with an insistence on freer thinking about problems uncritically referred to these other agencies. According to Kant's famous definition "Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority, which is the incapacity of using one's understanding without the direction of another. This state of minority is caused when its source lies not in the lack of understanding, but in the lack of determination and courage to use it without the assistance of another" (Was ist Aufklärung? 1784). In its historical perspective, the Aufklärung refers to the cultural atmosphere and contrlbutions of the 18th century, especially in Germany, France and England [which affected also American thought with B. Franklin, T. Paine and the leaders of the Revolution]. It crystallized tendencies emphasized by the Renaissance, and quickened by modern scepticism and empiricism, and by the great scientific discoveries of the 17th century. This movement, which was represented by men of varying tendencies, gave an impetus to general learning, a more popular philosophy, empirical science, scriptural criticism, social and political thought. More especially, the word Aufklärung is applied to the German contributions to 18th century culture. In philosophy, its principal representatives are G. E. Lessing (1729-81) who believed in free speech and in a methodical criticism of religion, without being a free-thinker; H. S. Reimarus (1694-1768) who expounded a naturalistic philosophy and denied the supernatural origin of Christianity; Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) who endeavoured to mitigate prejudices and developed a popular common-sense philosophy; Chr. Wolff (1679-1754), J. A. Eberhard (1739-1809) who followed the Leibnizian rationalism and criticized unsuccessfully Kant and Fichte; and J. G. Herder (1744-1803) who was best as an interpreter of others, but whose intuitional suggestions have borne fruit in the organic correlation of the sciences, and in questions of language in relation to human nature and to national character. The works of Kant and Goethe mark the culmination of the German Enlightenment. Cf. J. G. Hibben, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 1910. --T.G. Augustinianism: The thought of St. Augustine of Hippo, and of his followers. Born in 354 at Tagaste in N. Africa, A. studied rhetoric in Carthage, taught that subject there and in Rome and Milan. Attracted successively to Manicheanism, Scepticism, and Neo-Platontsm, A. eventually found intellectual and moral peace with his conversion to Christianity in his thirty-fourth year. Returning to Africa, he established numerous monasteries, became a priest in 391, Bishop of Hippo in 395. Augustine wrote much: On Free Choice, Confessions, Literal Commentary on Genesis, On the Trinity, and City of God, are his most noted works. He died in 430.   St. Augustine's characteristic method, an inward empiricism which has little in common with later variants, starts from things without, proceeds within to the self, and moves upwards to God. These three poles of the Augustinian dialectic are polarized by his doctrine of moderate illuminism. An ontological illumination is required to explain the metaphysical structure of things. The truth of judgment demands a noetic illumination. A moral illumination is necessary in the order of willing; and so, too, an lllumination of art in the aesthetic order. Other illuminations which transcend the natural order do not come within the scope of philosophy; they provide the wisdoms of theology and mysticism. Every being is illuminated ontologically by number, form, unity and its derivatives, and order. A thing is what it is, in so far as it is more or less flooded by the light of these ontological constituents.   Sensation is necessary in order to know material substances. There is certainly an action of the external object on the body and a corresponding passion of the body, but, as the soul is superior to the body and can suffer nothing from its inferior, sensation must be an action, not a passion, of the soul. Sensation takes place only when the observing soul, dynamically on guard throughout the body, is vitally attentive to the changes suffered by the body. However, an adequate basis for the knowledge of intellectual truth is not found in sensation alone. In order to know, for example, that a body is multiple, the idea of unity must be present already, otherwise its multiplicity could not be recognized. If numbers are not drawn in by the bodily senses which perceive only the contingent and passing, is the mind the source of the unchanging and necessary truth of numbers? The mind of man is also contingent and mutable, and cannot give what it does not possess. As ideas are not innate, nor remembered from a previous existence of the soul, they can be accounted for only by an immutable source higher than the soul. In so far as man is endowed with an intellect, he is a being naturally illuminated by God, Who may be compared to an intelligible sun. The human intellect does not create the laws of thought; it finds them and submits to them. The immediate intuition of these normative rules does not carry any content, thus any trace of ontologism is avoided.   Things have forms because they have numbers, and they have being in so far as they possess form. The sufficient explanation of all formable, and hence changeable, things is an immutable and eternal form which is unrestricted in time and space. The forms or ideas of all things actually existing in the world are in the things themselves (as rationes seminales) and in the Divine Mind (as rationes aeternae). Nothing could exist without unity, for to be is no other than to be one. There is a unity proper to each level of being, a unity of the material individual and species, of the soul, and of that union of souls in the love of the same good, which union constitutes the city. Order, also, is ontologically imbibed by all beings. To tend to being is to tend to order; order secures being, disorder leads to non-being. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal each to its own place and integrates an ensemble of parts in accordance with an end. Hence, peace is defined as the tranquillity of order. Just as things have their being from their forms, the order of parts, and their numerical relations, so too their beauty is not something superadded, but the shining out of all their intelligible co-ingredients.   S. Aurelii Augustini, Opera Omnia, Migne, PL 32-47; (a critical edition of some works will be found in the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, Vienna). Gilson, E., Introd. a l'etude de s. Augustin, (Paris, 1931) contains very good bibliography up to 1927, pp. 309-331. Pope, H., St. Augustine of Hippo, (London, 1937). Chapman, E., St. Augustine's Philos. of Beauty, (N. Y., 1939). Figgis, J. N., The Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God", (London, 1921). --E.C. Authenticity: In a general sense, genuineness, truth according to its title. It involves sometimes a direct and personal characteristic (Whitehead speaks of "authentic feelings").   This word also refers to problems of fundamental criticism involving title, tradition, authorship and evidence. These problems are vital in theology, and basic in scholarship with regard to the interpretation of texts and doctrines. --T.G. Authoritarianism: That theory of knowledge which maintains that the truth of any proposition is determined by the fact of its having been asserted by a certain esteemed individual or group of individuals. Cf. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent; C. S. Peirce, "Fixation of Belief," in Chance, Love and Logic, ed. M. R. Cohen. --A.C.B. Autistic thinking: Absorption in fanciful or wishful thinking without proper control by objective or factual material; day dreaming; undisciplined imagination. --A.C.B. Automaton Theory: Theory that a living organism may be considered a mere machine. See Automatism. Automatism: (Gr. automatos, self-moving) (a) In metaphysics: Theory that animal and human organisms are automata, that is to say, are machines governed by the laws of physics and mechanics. Automatism, as propounded by Descartes, considered the lower animals to be pure automata (Letter to Henry More, 1649) and man a machine controlled by a rational soul (Treatise on Man). Pure automatism for man as well as animals is advocated by La Mettrie (Man, a Machine, 1748). During the Nineteenth century, automatism, combined with epiphenomenalism, was advanced by Hodgson, Huxley and Clifford. (Cf. W. James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, ch. V.) Behaviorism, of the extreme sort, is the most recent version of automatism (See Behaviorism).   (b) In psychology: Psychological automatism is the performance of apparently purposeful actions, like automatic writing without the superintendence of the conscious mind. L. C. Rosenfield, From Beast Machine to Man Machine, N. Y., 1941. --L.W. Automatism, Conscious: The automatism of Hodgson, Huxley, and Clifford which considers man a machine to which mind or consciousness is superadded; the mind of man is, however, causally ineffectual. See Automatism; Epiphenomenalism. --L.W. Autonomy: (Gr. autonomia, independence) Freedom consisting in self-determination and independence of all external constraint. See Freedom. Kant defines autonomy of the will as subjection of the will to its own law, the categorical imperative, in contrast to heteronomy, its subjection to a law or end outside the rational will. (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, § 2.) --L.W. Autonomy of ethics: A doctrine, usually propounded by intuitionists, that ethics is not a part of, and cannot be derived from, either metaphysics or any of the natural or social sciences. See Intuitionism, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics. --W.K.F. Autonomy of the will: (in Kant's ethics) The freedom of the rational will to legislate to itself, which constitutes the basis for the autonomy of the moral law. --P.A.S. Autonymy: In the terminology introduced by Carnap, a word (phrase, symbol, expression) is autonymous if it is used as a name for itself --for the geometric shape, sound, etc. which it exemplifies, or for the word as a historical and grammatical unit. Autonymy is thus the same as the Scholastic suppositio matertalis (q. v.), although the viewpoint is different. --A.C. Autotelic: (from Gr. autos, self, and telos, end) Said of any absorbing activity engaged in for its own sake (cf. German Selbstzweck), such as higher mathematics, chess, etc. In aesthetics, applied to creative art and play which lack any conscious reference to the accomplishment of something useful. In the view of some, it may constitute something beneficent in itself of which the person following his art impulse (q.v.) or playing is unaware, thus approaching a heterotelic (q.v.) conception. --K.F.L. Avenarius, Richard: (1843-1896) German philosopher who expressed his thought in an elaborate and novel terminology in the hope of constructing a symbolic language for philosophy, like that of mathematics --the consequence of his Spinoza studies. As the most influential apostle of pure experience, the posltivistic motive reaches in him an extreme position. Insisting on the biologic and economic function of thought, he thought the true method of science is to cure speculative excesses by a return to pure experience devoid of all assumptions. Philosophy is the scientific effort to exclude from knowledge all ideas not included in the given. Its task is to expel all extraneous elements in the given. His uncritical use of the category of the given and the nominalistic view that logical relations are created rather than discovered by thought, leads him to banish not only animism but also all of the categories, substance, causality, etc., as inventions of the mind. Explaining the evolution and devolution of the problematization and deproblematization of numerous ideas, and aiming to give the natural history of problems, Avenarius sought to show physiologically, psychologically and historically under what conditions they emerge, are challenged and are solved. He hypothesized a System C, a bodily and central nervous system upon which consciousness depends. R-values are the stimuli received from the world of objects. E-values are the statements of experience. The brain changes that continually oscillate about an ideal point of balance are termed Vitalerhaltungsmaximum. The E-values are differentiated into elements, to which the sense-perceptions or the content of experience belong, and characters, to which belongs everything which psychology describes as feelings and attitudes. Avenarius describes in symbolic form a series of states from balance to balance, termed vital series, all describing a series of changes in System C. Inequalities in the vital balance give rise to vital differences. According to his theory there are two vital series. It assumes a series of brain changes because parallel series of conscious states can be observed. The independent vital series are physical, and the dependent vital series are psychological. The two together are practically covariants. In the case of a process as a dependent vital series three stages can be noted: first, the appearance of the problem, expressed as strain, restlessness, desire, fear, doubt, pain, repentance, delusion; the second, the continued effort and struggle to solve the problem; and finally, the appearance of the solution, characterized by abating anxiety, a feeling of triumph and enjoyment.   Corresponding to these three stages of the dependent series are three stages of the independent series: the appearance of the vital difference and a departure from balance in the System C, the continuance with an approximate vital difference, and lastly, the reduction of the vital difference to zero, the return to stability. By making room for dependent and independent experiences, he showed that physics regards experience as independent of the experiencing indlvidual, and psychology views experience as dependent upon the individual. He greatly influenced Mach and James (q.v.). See Avenarius, Empirio-criticism, Experience, pure. Main works: Kritik der reinen Erfahrung; Der menschliche Weltbegriff. --H.H. Averroes: (Mohammed ibn Roshd) Known to the Scholastics as The Commentator, and mentioned as the author of il gran commento by Dante (Inf. IV. 68) he was born 1126 at Cordova (Spain), studied theology, law, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy, became after having been judge in Sevilla and Cordova, physician to the khalifah Jaqub Jusuf, and charged with writing a commentary on the works of Aristotle. Al-mansur, Jusuf's successor, deprived him of his place because of accusations of unorthodoxy. He died 1198 in Morocco. Averroes is not so much an original philosopher as the author of a minute commentary on the whole works of Aristotle. His procedure was imitated later by Aquinas. In his interpretation of Aristotelian metaphysics Averroes teaches the coeternity of a universe created ex nihilo. This doctrine formed together with the notion of a numerical unity of the active intellect became one of the controversial points in the discussions between the followers of Albert-Thomas and the Latin Averroists. Averroes assumed that man possesses only a disposition for receiving the intellect coming from without; he identifies this disposition with the possible intellect which thus is not truly intellectual by nature. The notion of one intellect common to all men does away with the doctrine of personal immortality. Another doctrine which probably was emphasized more by the Latin Averroists (and by the adversaries among Averroes' contemporaries) is the famous statement about "two-fold truth", viz. that a proposition may be theologically true and philosophically false and vice versa. Averroes taught that religion expresses the (higher) philosophical truth by means of religious imagery; the "two-truth notion" came apparently into the Latin text through a misinterpretation on the part of the translators. The works of Averroes were one of the main sources of medieval Aristotelianlsm, before and even after the original texts had been translated. The interpretation the Latin Averroists found in their texts of the "Commentator" spread in spite of opposition and condemnation. See Averroism, Latin. Averroes, Opera, Venetiis, 1553. M. Horten, Die Metaphysik des Averroes, 1912. P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin, 2d ed., Louvain, 1911. --R.A. Averroism, Latin: The commentaries on Aristotle written by Averroes (Ibn Roshd) in the 12th century became known to the Western scholars in translations by Michael Scottus, Hermannus Alemannus, and others at the beginning of the 13th century. Many works of Aristotle were also known first by such translations from Arabian texts, though there existed translations from the Greek originals at the same time (Grabmann). The Averroistic interpretation of Aristotle was held to be the true one by many; but already Albert the Great pointed out several notions which he felt to be incompatible with the principles of Christian philosophy, although he relied for the rest on the "Commentator" and apparently hardly used any other text. Aquinas, basing his studies mostly on a translation from the Greek texts, procured for him by William of Moerbecke, criticized the Averroistic interpretation in many points. But the teachings of the Commentator became the foundation for a whole school of philosophers, represented first by the Faculty of Arts at Paris. The most prominent of these scholars was Siger of Brabant. The philosophy of these men was condemned on March 7th, 1277 by Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, after a first condemnation of Aristotelianism in 1210 had gradually come to be neglected. The 219 theses condemned in 1277, however, contain also some of Aquinas which later were generally recognized an orthodox. The Averroistic propositions which aroused the criticism of the ecclesiastic authorities and which had been opposed with great energy by Albert and Thomas refer mostly to the following points: The co-eternity of the created word; the numerical identity of the intellect in all men, the so-called two-fold-truth theory stating that a proposition may be philosophically true although theologically false. Regarding the first point Thomas argued that there is no philosophical proof, either for the co-eternity or against it; creation is an article of faith. The unity of intellect was rejected as incompatible with the true notion of person and with personal immortality. It is doubtful whether Averroes himself held the two-truths theory; it was, however, taught by the Latin Averroists who, notwithstanding the opposition of the Church and the Thomistic philosophers, gained a great influence and soon dominated many universities, especially in Italy. Thomas and his followers were convinced that they interpreted Aristotle correctly and that the Averroists were wrong; one has, however, to admit that certain passages in Aristotle allow for the Averroistic interpretation, especially in regard to the theory of intellect.   Lit.: P. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l'Averroisme Latin au XIIIe Siecle, 2d. ed. Louvain, 1911; M. Grabmann, Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, Münster 1916 (Beitr. z. Gesch. Phil. d. MA. Vol. 17, H. 5-6). --R.A. Avesta: See Zendavesta. Avicehron: (or Avencebrol, Salomon ibn Gabirol) The first Jewish philosopher in Spain, born in Malaga 1020, died about 1070, poet, philosopher, and moralist. His main work, Fons vitae, became influential and was much quoted by the Scholastics. It has been preserved only in the Latin translation by Gundissalinus. His doctrine of a spiritual substance individualizing also the pure spirits or separate forms was opposed by Aquinas already in his first treatise De ente, but found favor with the medieval Augustinians also later in the 13th century. He also teaches the necessity of a mediator between God and the created world; such a mediator he finds in the Divine Will proceeding from God and creating, conserving, and moving the world. His cosmogony shows a definitely Neo-Platonic shade and assumes a series of emanations. Cl. Baeumker, Avencebrolis Fons vitae. Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Philos. d. MA. 1892-1895, Vol. I. Joh. Wittman, Die Stellung des hl. Thomas von Aquino zu Avencebrol, ibid. 1900. Vol. III. --R.A. Avicenna: (Abu Ali al Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina) Born 980 in the country of Bocchara, began to write in young years, left more than 100 works, taught in Ispahan, was physician to several Persian princes, and died at Hamadan in 1037. His fame as physician survived his influence as philosopher in the Occident. His medical works were printed still in the 17th century. His philosophy is contained in 18 vols. of a comprehensive encyclopedia, following the tradition of Al Kindi and Al Farabi. Logic, Physics, Mathematics and Metaphysics form the parts of this work. His philosophy is Aristotelian with noticeable Neo-Platonic influences. His doctrine of the universal existing ante res in God, in rebus as the universal nature of the particulars, and post res in the human mind by way of abstraction became a fundamental thesis of medieval Aristotelianism. He sharply distinguished between the logical and the ontological universal, denying to the latter the true nature of form in the composite. The principle of individuation is matter, eternally existent. Latin translations attributed to Avicenna the notion that existence is an accident to essence (see e.g. Guilelmus Parisiensis, De Universo). The process adopted by Avicenna was one of paraphrasis of the Aristotelian texts with many original thoughts interspersed. His works were translated into Latin by Dominicus Gundissalinus (Gondisalvi) with the assistance of Avendeath ibn Daud. This translation started, when it became more generally known, the "revival of Aristotle" at the end of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century. Albert the Great and Aquinas professed, notwithstanding their critical attitude, a great admiration for Avicenna whom the Arabs used to call the "third Aristotle". But in the Orient, Avicenna's influence declined soon, overcome by the opposition of the orthodox theologians. Avicenna, Opera, Venetiis, 1495; l508; 1546. M. Horten, Das Buch der Genesung der Seele, eine philosophische Enzyklopaedie Avicenna's; XIII. Teil: Die Metaphysik. Halle a. S. 1907-1909. R. de Vaux, Notes et textes sur l'Avicennisme Latin, Bibl. Thomiste XX, Paris, 1934. --R.A. Avidya: (Skr.) Nescience; ignorance; the state of mind unaware of true reality; an equivalent of maya (q.v.); also a condition of pure awareness prior to the universal process of evolution through gradual differentiation into the elements and factors of knowledge. --K.F.L. Avyakta: (Skr.) "Unmanifest", descriptive of or standing for brahman (q.v.) in one of its or "his" aspects, symbolizing the superabundance of the creative principle, or designating the condition of the universe not yet become phenomenal (aja, unborn). --K.F.L. Awareness: Consciousness considered in its aspect of act; an act of attentive awareness such as the sensing of a color patch or the feeling of pain is distinguished from the content attended to, the sensed color patch, the felt pain. The psychologlcal theory of intentional act was advanced by F. Brentano (Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte) and received its epistemological development by Meinong, Husserl, Moore, Laird and Broad. See Intentionalism. --L.W. Axiological: (Ger. axiologisch) In Husserl: Of or pertaining to value or theory of value (the latter term understood as including disvalue and value-indifference). --D.C. Axiological ethics: Any ethics which makes the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, by making the determination of the rightness of an action wholly dependent on a consideration of the value or goodness of something, e.g. the action itself, its motive, or its consequences, actual or probable. Opposed to deontological ethics. See also teleological ethics. --W.K.F. Axiologic Realism: In metaphysics, theory that value as well as logic, qualities as well as relations, have their being and exist external to the mind and independently of it. Applicable to the philosophy of many though not all realists in the history of philosophy, from Plato to G. E. Moore, A. N. Whitehead, and N, Hartmann. --J.K.F. Axiology: (Gr. axios, of like value, worthy, and logos, account, reason, theory). Modern term for theory of value (the desired, preferred, good), investigation of its nature, criteria, and metaphysical status. Had its rise in Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas (Idea of the Good); was developed in Aristotle's Organon, Ethics, Poetics, and Metaphysics (Book Lambda). Stoics and Epicureans investigated the summum bonum. Christian philosophy (St. Thomas) built on Aristotle's identification of highest value with final cause in God as "a living being, eternal, most good."   In modern thought, apart from scholasticism and the system of Spinoza (Ethica, 1677), in which values are metaphysically grounded, the various values were investigated in separate sciences, until Kant's Critiques, in which the relations of knowledge to moral, aesthetic, and religious values were examined. In Hegel's idealism, morality, art, religion, and philosophy were made the capstone of his dialectic. R. H. Lotze "sought in that which should be the ground of that which is" (Metaphysik, 1879). Nineteenth century evolutionary theory, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics subjected value experience to empirical analysis, and stress was again laid on the diversity and relativity of value phenomena rather than on their unity and metaphysical nature. F. Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-1885) and Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887) aroused new interest in the nature of value. F. Brentano, Vom Ursprung sittlicher Erkenntnis (1889), identified value with love.   In the twentieth century the term axiology was apparently first applied by Paul Lapie (Logique de la volonte, 1902) and E. von Hartmann (Grundriss der Axiologie, 1908). Stimulated by Ehrenfels (System der Werttheorie, 1897), Meinong (Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie, 1894-1899), and Simmel (Philosophie des Geldes, 1900). W. M. Urban wrote the first systematic treatment of axiology in English (Valuation, 1909), phenomenological in method under J. M. Baldwin's influence. Meanwhile H. Münsterberg wrote a neo-Fichtean system of values (The Eternal Values, 1909).   Among important recent contributions are: B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Individuality and Value (1912), a free reinterpretation of Hegelianism; W. R. Sorley, Moral Values and the Idea of God (1918, 1921), defending a metaphysical theism; S. Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), realistic and naturalistic; N. Hartmann, Ethik (1926), detailed analysis of types and laws of value; R. B. Perry's magnum opus, General Theory of Value (1926), "its meaning and basic principles construed in terms of interest"; and J. Laird, The Idea of Value (1929), noteworthy for historical exposition. A naturalistic theory has been developed by J. Dewey (Theory of Valuation, 1939), for which "not only is science itself a value . . . but it is the supreme means of the valid determination of all valuations." A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (1936) expounds the view of logical positivism that value is "nonsense." J. Hessen, Wertphilosophie (1937), provides an account of recent German axiology from a neo-scholastic standpoint.   The problems of axiology fall into four main groups, namely, those concerning (1) the nature of value, (2) the types of value, (3) the criterion of value, and (4) the metaphysical status of value.   (1) The nature of value experience. Is valuation fulfillment of desire (voluntarism: Spinoza, Ehrenfels), pleasure (hedonism: Epicurus, Bentham, Meinong), interest (Perry), preference (Martineau), pure rational will (formalism: Stoics, Kant, Royce), apprehension of tertiary qualities (Santayana), synoptic experience of the unity of personality (personalism: T. H. Green, Bowne), any experience that contributes to enhanced life (evolutionism: Nietzsche), or "the relation of things as means to the end or consequence actually reached" (pragmatism, instrumentalism: Dewey).   (2) The types of value. Most axiologists distinguish between intrinsic (consummatory) values (ends), prized for their own sake, and instrumental (contributory) values (means), which are causes (whether as economic goods or as natural events) of intrinsic values. Most intrinsic values are also instrumental to further value experience; some instrumental values are neutral or even disvaluable intrinsically. Commonly recognized as intrinsic values are the (morally) good, the true, the beautiful, and the holy. Values of play, of work, of association, and of bodily well-being are also acknowledged. Some (with Montague) question whether the true is properly to be regarded as a value, since some truth is disvaluable, some neutral; but love of truth, regardless of consequences, seems to establish the value of truth. There is disagreement about whether the holy (religious value) is a unique type (Schleiermacher, Otto), or an attitude toward other values (Kant, Höffding), or a combination of the two (Hocking). There is also disagreement about whether the variety of values is irreducible (pluralism) or whether all values are rationally related in a hierarchy or system (Plato, Hegel, Sorley), in which values interpenetrate or coalesce into a total experience.   (3) The criterion of value. The standard for testing values is influenced by both psychological and logical theory. Hedonists find the standard in the quantity of pleasure derived by the individual (Aristippus) or society (Bentham). Intuitionists appeal to an ultimate insight into preference (Martineau, Brentano). Some idealists recognize an objective system of rational norms or ideals as criterion (Plato, Windelband), while others lay more stress on rational wholeness and coherence (Hegel, Bosanquet, Paton) or inclusiveness (T. H. Green). Naturalists find biological survival or adjustment (Dewey) to be the standard. Despite differences, there is much in common in the results of the application of these criteria.   (4) The metaphysical status of value. What is the relation of values to the facts investigated by natural science (Koehler), of Sein to Sollen (Lotze, Rickert), of human experience of value to reality independent of man (Hegel, Pringle-Pattlson, Spaulding)? There are three main answers:   subjectivism (value is entirely dependent on and relative to human experience of it: so most hedonists, naturalists, positivists);   logical objectivism (values are logical essences or subsistences, independent of their being known, yet with no existential status or action in reality);   metaphysical objectivism (values   --or norms or ideals   --are integral, objective, and active constituents of the metaphysically real: so theists, absolutists, and certain realists and naturalists like S. Alexander and Wieman). --E.S.B. Axiom: See Mathematics. Axiomatic method: That method of constructing a deductive system consisting of deducing by specified rules all statements of the system save a given few from those given few, which are regarded as axioms or postulates of the system. See Mathematics. --C.A.B. Ayam atma brahma: (Skr.) "This self is brahman", famous quotation from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 2.5.19, one of many alluding to the central theme of the Upanishads, i.e., the identity of the human and divine or cosmic. --K.F.L.

A view of the nature of mathematics which is widely different from any of the above is held by the school of mathematical intuitionism (q. v.). According to this school, mathematics is "identical with the exact part of our thought." "No science, not even philosophy or logic, can be a presupposition for mathematics. It would be circular to apply any philosophical or logical theorem as a means of proof in mathematics, since such theorems already presuppose for their formulation the construction of mathematical concepts. If mathematics is to be in this sense presupposition-free, then there remains for it no other source than an intuition which presents mathematical concepts and inferences to us as immediately clear. . . . [This intuition] is nothing else than the ability to treat separately certain concepts and inferences which regularly occur in ordinary thinking." This is quoted in translation from Heyting, who, in the same connection, characterizes the intuitionittic doctrine as asserting the existence of mathematical objects (Gegenstände), which are immediately grasped by thought, are independent of experience, and give to mathematics more than a mere formal content. But to these mathematical objects no existence is to be ascribed independent of thought. Elsewhere Heyting speaks of a relationship to Kant in the apriority ascribed to the natural numbers, or rather to the underlying ideas of one and the process of adding one and the indefinite repetition of the latter. At least in his earlier writings, Brouwer traces the doctrine of intuitionism directly to Kant. In 1912 he speaks of "abandoning Kant's apriority of space but adhering the more resolutely to the apriority of time" and in the same paper explicitly reaffirms Kant's opinion that mathematical judgments are synthetic and a priori.

BAhiya-DArucīriya. (C. Poxijia; J. Bakika; K. Pasaga 婆迦). A lay ARHAT (P. arahant), who is declared by the Buddha to be foremost among those of swift intuition (khippAbhiNNAnaM). According to PAli accounts, BAhiya was a merchant from the town of BAhiya (whence his toponym), who was engaged in maritime trade. He sailed seven times across the seas in search of profit and seven times returned home safely. On an eighth journey, however, he was shipwrecked and floated on a plank until he came ashore near the seaport town of SuppAraka. Having lost his clothes, he dressed himself in tree bark and went regularly to the town to beg for alms with a bowl. Impressed with his demeanor, the people of SuppAraka were exceedingly generous, offering him luxurious gifts and fine clothes, which he consistently refused. Over time, he came to be regarded by the populace as an arhat, and, infatuated with his growing fame, BAhiya also came to believe that he had attained that state of holiness. A BRAHMA god, who had been BAhiya's friend in a previous existence, convinced him out of kindness that he was mistaken and recommended that he seek out the Buddha in sRAVASTĪ (P. SAvatthi). The BrahmA god transported BAhiya to the city of RAJAGṚHA (P. RAjagaha) where the Buddha was then staying and told him to meet the Buddha during his morning alms round. BAhiya approached the Buddha and requested to be taught what was necessary for liberation, but the Buddha refused, saying that alms round was not the time for teaching. BAhiya persisted three times in his request, whereupon the Buddha consented. The Buddha gave him a short lesson in sensory restraint (INDRIYASAMVARA): i.e., "in the seen, there is only the seen; in the heard, only the heard; in what is thought, only the thought," etc. As he listened to the Buddha's terse instruction, BAhiya attained arhatship. As was typical for laypersons who had attained arhatship, BAhiya then requested to be ordained as a monk, but the Buddha refused until BAhiya could be supplied with a bowl and robe. BAhiya immediately went in search of these requisites but along the path encountered an ox, which gored him to death. Disciples who witnessed the event informed the Buddha, who from the beginning had been aware of BAhiya's impending demise. He instructed his disciples to cremate the body and build a reliquary mound (P. thupa, S. STuPA) over the remains; he then explained that BAhiya's destiny was such that he could not be ordained in his final life.

Bard [from Latin bardus from Gaulish and old Brythonic probably bardos cf Welsh bardd] Exalted one, initiate, teacher; one of the three holy orders of Druidism — Druids, Bards, and Ovates. The Bards had the duty of keeping alive among the people the knowledge or intuition that there is a path that leads to wisdom and initiation. They carried this out largely by telling stories: a Mabinogi, according to Sir John Rhys, was a story belonging to the equipment of the Bards. These stories were told in such a way that their symbolic meaning might be apparent to those with intuition, but hidden from the mass. In telling the stories they used verse form a good deal, so that now in every country but Wales bard has come to mean poet. In Wales, however, it retains some relic of its original meaning: a Bard is a member of the Gorsedd, and may or may not be a poet; no poet is a Bard unless the Gorsedd has admitted him to its ranks. The Bard’s robe was of blue; that of the Druid was white; the Ovate’s green.

Basic Moral Intuition (BMI) ::: A person’s intuition to protect and promote the greatest depth for the greatest span. Also summarized as the depth of “I,” extended to the span of “We,” embodied in an “It” objective state of affairs.

BhaddA-KundalakesA. (S. *BhadrA-KundalakesA; C. Batuo Juntuoluojuyiguo; J. Batsuda Gundarakuikoku; K. Palt'a Kundaraguiguk 拔陀軍陀羅拘夷國). A female ARHAT whom the Buddha declared foremost among his nun disciples in swift intuition (khippAbhiNNA). According to PAli sources, BhaddA was the daughter of the treasurer of RAjagaha (S. RAJAGṚHA). She witnessed once from her window a handsome thief named Sattuka being led off to execution and instantly fell in love with him. Pleading that she could not live without the young man, she persuaded her father to bribe the guard to release the thief into his custody. Sattuka was bathed and brought to the treasurer's home, where BhaddA bedecked in her finest jewelry waited upon him. Sattuka feigned love for her, all the while plotting to murder her for her jewelry. One day he informed her that he had once promised the deity of Robbers' Cliff that, if he were ever to escape punishment, he would make an offering to the god, and that now the time was at hand to fulfill his promise. BhaddA trusted him and, after preparing an offering for the deity, she accompanied Sattuka to the cliff adorned in her finest jewelry. Once they reached the edge of the cliff, he informed her of his real intentions, and without hesitation, she begged him to let her embrace him one last time. He agreed and, while feigning an embrace, BhaddA pushed him over the cliff to his death. The local deity commended her for her cleverness and presence of mind. BhaddA refused to return to her father's house after what had happened and joined the JAINA nuns' order. As part of her ascetic regime, she pulled out her hair with a palmyra comb, but it grew back in curls, hence her epithet KundalakesA, "Curly Hair." BhaddA was exceptionally intelligent and soon grew dissatisfied with Jain teachings. She wandered as a solitary mendicant, challenging all she encountered to debate and quickly proved her proficiency. Once she debated SAriputta (S. sARIPUTRA), one of the Buddha's two chief disciples, who answered all her questions. He then asked her, "One: What is that?," which left her speechless. She asked SAriputta to be her teacher, but he instead brought her before the Buddha, who preached her a sermon about it being better to know one verse bringing tranquillity than a thousand profitless verses. Hearing the Buddha's words, she immediately became an ARHAT and the Buddha personally ordained her as a nun in his order.

bhas.asakti (bhashashakti) ::: linguistic faculty; the power of underbhasasakti standing languages, especially by intuition, inspiration and other means proper to vijñana.

Binah ::: (Heb. Intuition, understanding, intelligence) A quality that women supposedly have in greater degree than men. Also, in kabbalistic thought, one of the ten sephirot.

BinProlog ::: (language) Probably the fastest freely available C-emulated Prolog. BinProlog features:logical and permanent global variables; backtrackable destructive assignment; circular term unification; extended DCGs (now built into the engine as invisible grammars); intuitionistic and linear implication based hypothetical reasoning; a Tcl/Tk interface.Version 3.30 runs on SPARC/Solaris 2.x, SunOS 4.x; DEC Alpha 64-bit version; DEC MIPS; SGI MIPS; 68k - NeXT, Sun-3; IBM RS6000; HP PA-RISC (two variants); Intel 80386, Intel 486/Linux, MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows 3.1 (with DOS-extender go32 v1.10).Multi-BinProlog is a multi-threaded Linda-style parallel extension to BinProlog for Solaris 2.3. .E-mail: Paul Tarau . (1995-04-04)

BinProlog "language" Probably the fastest freely available {C}-emulated {Prolog}. BinProlog features: logical and permanent {global variables}; backtrackable {destructive assignment}; circular term {unification}; extended {DCGs} (now built into the {engine} as "invisible grammars"); {intuitionistic} and {linear implication} based {hypothetical reasoning}; a {Tcl}/{Tk} interface. Version 3.30 runs on {SPARC}/{Solaris} 2.x, {SunOS} 4.x; {DEC Alpha} 64-bit version; {DEC} {MIPS}; {SGI} {MIPS}; {68k} - {NeXT}, {Sun-3}; {IBM RS6000}; {HP PA-RISC} (two variants); {Intel 80386}, {Intel 486}/{Linux}, {MS-DOS}, {Microsoft Windows 3.1} (with DOS-extender {go32} v1.10). {Multi-BinProlog} is a {multi-threaded} {Linda}-style parallel extension to BinProlog for {Solaris} 2.3. {(ftp://clement.info.umoncton.ca/BinProlog/)}. E-mail: Paul Tarau "tarau@info.umoncton.ca". (1995-04-04)

b. "Intellectual Intuition" turned objective is esthetic intuition (Schelling). -- L.V.

Intuition ::: a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate than the lower ranges of spiritual mind to the original knowledge by identity; it gets the Truth in flashes and turns these flashes of Truth-perception into intuitions - intuitive ideas. Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light. What is thought-knowledge in the Higher Mind becomes illumination in the Illumined Mind and direct intimate vision in the Intuition.

Intuition is above illumined Mind which is simply higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration.” Letters on Yoga

Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind-substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of ``stable lightnings’’. When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing intuition or be able to call down a massed intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of Intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.” The Life Divine

Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into andmodified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and th
   refore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of stable lightnings.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 983


*Intuition is in direct contact with the higher Truth but not in an integral contact. It gets the Truth in flashes and turns these flashes of Truth-perception into intuitions—intuitive ideas. The ideas of the true Intuition are always correct so far as they go —but when intuition is diluted in the ordinary mind stuff, its truth gets mixed with error.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 28, Letters on Yoga-I, Page: 159


Intuitionism (mathematical): The name given to the school (of mathematics) founded by L. E. J. Brouwer (q. v.) and represented also by Hermann Weyl, Hans Freudenthal, Arend Heyting, and others. In some respects a historical forerunner of intuitionism is the mathematician Leopold Kronecker (1823-1891). Views related to intuitionism (but usually not including the rejection of the law of excluded middle) have been expressed by many recent or contemporary mathematicians, among whom are J. Richard, Th. Skolem, and the French semi-intuitionists -- as Heyting calls them -- E. Borel, H. Lebesgue, R. Baire, N. Lusin. (Lusin is Russian but has been closely associated with the French school.)

Intuition: (Lat. intuere, to look at) The direct and immediate apprehension by a knowing subject of itself, of its conscious states, of other minds, of an external world, of universals, of values or of rational truths. -- L.W.

Intuition "operating system" The {Amiga} {windowing system} (a shared-code library). (1997-08-01)

Intuition ::: (operating system) The Amiga windowing system (a shared-code library). (1997-08-01)

Intuition (revelation, inspiration, intuitive perception, intuitive discrimination) is Vijnana working in mind under the conditions and in the forms of mind.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 17, Page: 71


Intuition sees (he truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental Intelligence by seeking and reach* ing out by indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of Intuition ns compared with the supermind is that it secs things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming Into the mind it gets mixed with the mental move- ment and forms a kind of intuitive mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the hi^er Truth and the mental seeking. It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and (bat is practically Its function.

Intuition sees In flashes and combined through a constant play of light — through revelations, inspirations, intuitions, swift dis- criminations.

Intuition ::: see spiritualised mind.

Intuition sees the truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental intelligence by seeking and reaching out for indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of the Intuition as compared with the supermind is that it sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming into the mind it gets mixed with the mental movement and forms a kind of intuitive mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the higher Truth and the mental seeking. It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and that is practically its function.” Letters on Yoga

*Intuition sees the truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental intelligence by seeking and reaching out for indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of the Intuition as compared with the Supermind is that it sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming into the mind it gets mixed with the mental movement and forms a kind of intuitive-mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the higher Truth and the mental seeking. It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and that is practically its function.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 28, Letters on Yoga-I, Page: 159


Intuition ::: Spiritual intuition is always a more luminous guide than the discriminating reason, and spiritual intuition addresses itself to us not only through the reason, but through the rest of our being as well, through the heart and the life also.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 23-24, Page: 578


Intuition: The faculty or ability to be aware of facts, knowledge of which would or could not be conveyed by normal reasoning processes. The direct and immediate apprehension by a knowing subject of itself, of its conscious states, of other minds, of an external world, of universals, of values or of rational truths.

Intuition The working of the inner vision, instant and direct cognition of truth. This spiritual faculty, though not yet in any sense fully developed in the human race, yet occasionally shows itself as hunches. Every human being is born with at least the rudiment of this inner sense. Plotinus taught that the secret gnosis has three degrees — opinion, science or knowledge, and illumination — and that the instrument of the third is intuition. To this, reason is subordinate, for intuition is absolute knowledge, founded on the identification of the mind with the object. Iamblichus wrote of intuition: “There is a faculty of the human mind, which is superior to all which is born or begotten. Through it we are enabled to attain union with the superior intelligences, to be transported beyond the scenes of this world, and to partake of the higher life and peculiar powers of the heavenly ones.” From another point of view, intuition may be described as spiritual wisdom, gathered into the storehouse of the spirit-soul through experiences in past lives; but this form may be described as automatic intuition. The higher intuition is a filling of the functional human mind with a ray from the divinity within, furnishing the mind with illumination, perfect wisdom and, in its most developed form, virtual omniscience for our solar system. This is the full functioning of the buddhic faculty in the human being; and when this faculty is thus aroused and working, it produces the manushya or human buddha.

blaze of intimate truth-perception is lit in its depths. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.” The Life Divine

(b) More recently understood, especially in England, as the view that the right act is the act which will actually or probably produce at least as much intrinsic good, directly or indirectly, as any other action open to the agent in question. On this interpretation, traditional utilitarianism is one species of utilitarianism -- that which regards pleasure as the good. Ideal utilitarianism, on the other hand, holds that other things besides pleasure are good (see G.E. Moore, H. Rashdall, J. Laird) In America utilitarianism is chiefly associated with voluntaristic or "interest" theories of value, e.g. in the pragmatic ethics of James and Dewev, and in R. B. Perry. See intuitionism, deontological ethics, teleological ethics. -- W.K.F.

Bragi is synonymous with spiritual intuition which, united with the mind (Loki), is the means of human liberation. His consort, the goddess Idun, daily gives the gods the apples of immortality.

brahman ::: [Ved.]: the sacred or inspired word, expression of the heart or soul; heart; the Vedic word or mantra in its profoundest aspect as the expression of the intuition arising out of the depths of the soul or being; the Soul that emerges out of the subconscient in Man and rises towards the superconscient and also word of creative Power welling upward out of the soul. [Vedanta]: the Reality; the Eternal; the Absolute; the Spirit; the Supreme Being; the One besides whom there is nothing else existent; in relation to the universe [cf. atman] the Supreme is brahman, the one Reality which is not only the spiritual, material and conscious substance of all the ideas and forces and forms of the universe, but their origin, support and possessor, the cosmic and supracosmic Spirit. ::: brahma [nominative] ::: brahmana [instrumental], by the hymn. ::: brahmani [locative], into the brahman. [cf. Brahma]

Brouwer, Luitzen Egbertus Jan: (1881-) Dutch mathematician. Professor of mathematics at the University of Amsterdam, 1912-. Besides his work in topology, he is known for important contributions to the philosophy and foundations of mathematics. See Mathematics and Intuitionism (mathematical)). -- A.C.

buddhi ::: intelligence; the thinking mind, the highest normal faculty of the antah.karan.a, also called the manasa buddhi or mental reason, whose three forms are the habitual mind, pragmatic reason and truth-seeking reason. The buddhi as "the discerning intelligence and the enlightened will" is "in its nature thought-power and will-power of the Spirit turned into the lower form of a mental activity" and thus "an intermediary between a much higher Truth-mind not now in our active possession, which is the direct instrument of Spirit, and the physical life of the human mind evolved in body"; its powers of perception, imagination, reasoning and judgment correspond respectively to the higher faculties of revelation, inspiration, intuition and discrimination belonging to vijñana, which may act in the mind to create "a higher form of the buddhi that can be called the intuitive mind" or vijñanabuddhi. In compound expressions, the word buddhi sometimes refers to a particular mentality or state of consciousness and may be translated "sense of", as in dasyabuddhi, "sense of surrender".

Buddhi (Sanskrit) Buddhi [from the verbal root budh to awaken, enlighten, know] The spiritual soul, the faculty of discriminating, the channel through which streams divine inspiration from the atman to the ego, and therefore that faculty which enables us to discern between good and evil — spiritual conscience. The qualities of the buddhic principle when awakened are higher judgment, instant understanding, discrimination, intuition, love that has no bounds, and consequent universal forgiveness.

By 1770, the beginning of his "critical" period, Kant had an answer which he confidently expected would revolutionize philosophy. First dimly outlined in the Inaugural Dissertation (1770), and elaborated in great detail in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781 and 1787), the answer consisted in the critical or transcendental method. The typical function of reason, on Kant's view, is relating or synthesizing the data of sense. In effecting any synthesis the mind relies on the validity of certain principles, such as causality, which, as Hume had shown, cannot be inductive generalizations from sense data, yet are indispensable in any account of "experience" viewed as a connected, significant whole. If the necessary, synthetic principles cannot be derived from sense data proper, then, Kant argued, they must be "a priori" -- logically prior to the materials which they relate. He also called these formal elements "transcendental", by which he meant that, while they are indubitably in experience viewed as a connected whole, they transcend or are distinct from the sensuous materials in source and status. In the Critique of Pure Reason -- his "theoretical philosophy" -- Kant undertakes a complete inventory and "deduction" of all synthetic, a priori, transcendental forms employed in the knowledge of Nature. The first part, the "Transcendental Aesthetic", exhibits the two forms or "intuitions" (Anschauungen) of the sensibility: space and time. Knowledge of Nature, however varied its sense content, is necessarily always of something in space and time; and just because these are necessary conditions of any experience of Nature, space and time cannot be objective properties of things-in-themselves, but must be formal demands of reason. Space and time are "empirically real", because they are present in actual experience; but they are "transcendentally ideal", since they are forms which the mind "imposes" on the data of sense.

Cartesianism: The philosophy of the French thinker, Rene Descartes (Cartesius) 1596-1650. After completing his formal education at the Jesuit College at La Fleche, he spent the years 1612-1621 in travel and military service. The reminder of his life was devoted to study and writing. He died in Sweden, where he had gone in 1649 to tutor Queen Christina. His principal works are: Discours de la methode, (preface to his Geometric, Meteores, Dieptrique) Meditationes de prima philosophia, Principia philosophiae, Passions de l'ame, Regulae ad directionem ingenii, Le monde. Descartes is justly regarded as one of the founders of modern epistemology. Dissatisfied with the lack of agreement among philosophers, he decided that philosophy needed a new method, that of mathematics. He began by resolving to doubt everything which could not pass the test of his criterion of truth, viz. the clearness and distinctness of ideas. Anything which could pass this test was to be readmitted as self-evident. From self-evident truths, he deduced other truths which logically follow from them. Three kinds of ideas were distinguished: innate, by which he seems to mean little more than the mental power to think things or thoughts; adventitious, which come to him from without; factitious, produced within his own mind. He found most difficulty with the second type of ideas. The first reality discovered through his method is the thinking self. Though he might doubt nearly all else, Descartes could not reasonably doubt that he, who was thinking, existed as a res cogitans. This is the intuition enunciated in the famous aphorism: I think, therefore I am, Cogito ergo sum. This is not offered by Descartes as a compressed syllogism, but as an immediate intuition of his own thinking mind. Another reality, whose existence was obvious to Descartes, was God, the Supreme Being. Though he offered several proofs of the Divine Existence, he was convinced that he knew this also by an innate idea, and so, clearly and distinctly. But he did not find any clear ideas of an extra-mental, bodily world. He suspected its existence, but logical demonstration was needed to establish this truth. His adventitious ideas carry the vague suggestion that they are caused by bodies in an external world. By arguing that God would be a deceiver, in allowing him to think that bodies exist if they do not, he eventually convinced himself of the reality of bodies, his own and others. There are, then, three kinds of substance according to Descartes: Created spirits, i.e. the finite soul-substance of each man: these are immaterial agencies capable of performing spiritual operations, loosely united with bodies, but not extended since thought is their very essence. Uncreated Spirit, i.e. God, confined neither to space nor time, All-Good and All-Powerful, though his Existence can be known clearly, his Nature cannot be known adequately by men on earth, He is the God of Christianity, Creator, Providence and Final Cause of the universe. Bodies, i.e. created, physical substances existing independently of human thought and having as their chief attribute, extension. Cartesian physics regards bodies as the result of the introduction of "vortices", i.e. whorls of motion, into extension. Divisibility, figurability and mobility, are the notes of extension, which appears to be little more thin what Descartes' Scholastic teachers called geometrical space. God is the First Cause of all motion in the physical universe, which is conceived as a mechanical system operated by its Maker. Even the bodies of animals are automata. Sensation is the critical problem in Cartesian psychology; it is viewed by Descartes as a function of the soul, but he was never able to find a satisfactory explanation of the apparent fact that the soul is moved by the body when sensation occurs. The theory of animal spirits provided Descartes with a sort of bridge between mind and matter, since these spirits are supposed to be very subtle matter, halfway, as it were, between thought and extension in their nature. However, this theory of sensation is the weakest link in the Cartesian explanation of cognition. Intellectual error is accounted for by Descartes in his theory of assent, which makes judgment an act of free will. Where the will over-reaches the intellect, judgment may be false. That the will is absolutely free in man, capable even of choosing what is presented by the intellect as the less desirable of two alternatives, is probably a vestige of Scotism retained from his college course in Scholasticism. Common-sense and moderation are the keynotes of Descartes' famous rules for the regulation of his own conduct during his nine years of methodic doubt, and this ethical attitude continued throughout his life. He believed that man is responsible ultimately to God for the courses of action that he may choose. He admitted that conflicts may occur between human passions and human reason. A virtuous life is made possible by the knowledge of what is right and the consequent control of the lower tendencies of human nature. Six primary passions are described by Descartes wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sorrow. These are passive states of consciousness, partly caused by the body, acting through the animal spirits, and partly caused by the soul. Under rational control, they enable the soul to will what is good for the body. Descartes' terminology suggests that there are psychological faculties, but he insists that these powers are not really distinct from the soul itself, which is man's sole psychic agency. Descartes was a practical Catholic all his life and he tried to develop proofs of the existence of God, an explanation of the Eucharist, of the nature of religious faith, and of the operation of Divine Providence, using his philosophy as the basis for a new theology. This attempted theology has not found favor with Catholic theologians in general.

Category of Unity: Kant: The first of three a priori, quantitative (so-called "mathematical") categories (the others being "plurality" and "totality") from which is derived the synthetic principle, "All intuitions (appearances) are extensive magnitudes." By means of this principle Kant seeks to define the object of experience a priori with reference to its spatial features. See Crit. of pure Reason, B106, B202ff. -- O.F.K Catharsis: (Gr. katharsis) Purification; purgation; specifically the purging of the emotions of pity and fear effected by tragedy (Aristotle). -- G.R.M.

CAUSAL CONSCIOUSNESS Causal consciousness (47:1-3) is possible only for those who have developed so far ahead of the rest of mankind that they can purposefully prepare for their transition to the next higher kingdom. They have acquired the ability to associate with everybody in the causal world, the meeting-place for the individuals belonging to the fourth as well as the fifth natural kingdom.

Causal consciousness is subjectively intuition, the experiencing of causal ideas, and makes it possible to study objectively the physical, emotional, and mental worlds, and makes omniscience in these worlds possible.

To causal consciousness there is, in planetary respect (the worlds of man: 47- 49), neither distance nor past time. K 1.20.8ff


CAUSAL LIFE BETWEEN INCARNATIONS Upon the dissolution of the mental envelope, the individual in his causal envelope sinks into dreamless sleep that will last until the time comes for rebirth and an embryo has been formed for him in a physical maternal body... There can be no conscious causal life unless the intuition of the causal ideas has been acquired in physical existence... The monad&

Chakras, messages, intuitions, openings of the inner powers, etc.

CIP Language language" (CIP-L, Computer-aided Intuition-guided Programming Language) A {wide-spectrum language} for incremental {program transformation}. There are {ALGOL}- and {Pascal}-like variants. ["The Munich Project CIP, v.I: The Wide Spectrum Language CIP-L", LNCS 183, Springer 1984. Version: CIP85]. (2006-09-20)

CIP Language ::: language> (CIP-L, Computer-aided Intuition-guided Programming Language) A wide-spectrum language for incremental program transformation. There are ALGOL- and Pascal-like variants.[The Munich Project CIP, v.I: The Wide Spectrum Language CIP-L, LNCS 183, Springer 1984. Version: CIP85].(2006-09-20)

classical logic "logic" Non-{intuitionistic logic}. (1995-04-13)

classical logic ::: (logic) Non-intuitionistic logic. (1995-04-13)

Clearness: (Ger. Klarheit) In Husserl: Intuitional fullness, whether perceptual, fictively perceptual, memorial, or anticipational. See Clarification, Distinctness, and Intuition. -- D.C.

Cogito Argument, The: (Lat. cogito, I think) An argument of the type employed by Descartes (Meditation II) to establish the existence of the self. Descartes' Cogito, ergo sum ("I think, therefore I exist") is an attempt to establish the existence of the self in any act of thinking, including even the act of doubting. The cogito ergo sum is, as Descartes himself insisted, not so much inference as a direct appeal to intuition, but it has commonly been construed as an argument because of Descartes' formulation. -- L.W.

Conditions for reception of intuition ::: To have the true intui- tion one must get rid of the mind’s self-will and vital’s also, their

Conscience is usually thought of as ethical and admonitory, and intuition, its alter ego, as instantaneous knowledge.

constructive ::: (mathematics) A proof that something exists is constructive if it provides a method for actually constructing it. Cantor's proof that the real irrational numbers exist. (There are easy constructive proofs, too; but there are existence theorems with no known constructive proof).Obviously, all else being equal, constructive proofs are better than non-constructive proofs. A few mathematicians actually reject *all* makes proof by contradiction invalid. See intuitionistic logic for more information on this.Most mathematicians are perfectly happy with non-constructive proofs; however, the constructive approach is popular in theoretical computer science, both and because intuitionistic logic turns out to be the right theory for a theoretical treatment of the foundations of computer science. (1995-04-13)

constructive proof "mathematics" A proof that something exists that provides an example or a method for actually constructing it. For example, for any pair of finite real numbers n " 0 and p " 0, there exists a real number 0 " k " 1 such that f(k) = (1-k)*n + k*p = 0. A constructive proof would proceed by rearranging the above to derive an equation for k: k = 1/(1-n/p) From this and the constraints on n and p, we can show that 0 " k " 1. A few mathematicians actually reject *all* non-constructive arguments as invalid; this means, for instance, that the law of the {excluded middle} (either P or not-P must hold, whatever P is) has to go; this makes {proof by contradiction} invalid. See {intuitionistic logic}. Constructive proofs are popular in theoretical computer science, both because computer scientists are less given to abstraction than mathematicians and because {intuitionistic logic} turns out to be an appropriate theoretical treatment of the foundations of computer science. (2014-08-24)

cosmic mind ::: Sri Aurobindo: "Nevertheless, the fact of this intervention from above, the fact that behind all our original thinking or authentic perception of things there is a veiled, a half-veiled or a swift unveiled intuitive element is enough to establish a connection between mind and what is above it; it opens a passage of communication and of entry into the superior spirit-ranges. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation, to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; universality, non-limitation by the single or limiting point of view, is the character of cosmic perception and knowledge: this tendency is therefore a widening, however rudimentary, of these restricted mind areas towards cosmicity, towards a quality which is the very character of the higher mental planes, — towards that superconscient cosmic Mind which, we have suggested, must in the nature of things be the original mind-action of which ours is only a derivative and inferior process.” *The Life Divine

"If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, . . . we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; . . . At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, — not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality.” The Life Divine

"There is one cosmic Mind, one cosmic Life, one cosmic Body. All the attempt of man to arrive at universal sympathy, universal love and the understanding and knowledge of the inner soul of other existences is an attempt to beat thin, breach and eventually break down by the power of the enlarging mind and heart the walls of the ego and arrive nearer to a cosmic oneness.” *The Synthesis of Yoga

"[The results of the opening to the cosmic Mind:] One is aware of the cosmic Mind and the mental forces that move there and how they work on one"s mind and that of others and one is able to deal with one"s own mind with a greater knowledge and effective power. There are many other results, but this is the fundamental one.” Letters on Yoga

"The cosmic consciousness has many levels — the cosmic physical, the cosmic vital, the cosmic Mind, and above the higher planes of cosmic Mind there is the Intuition and above that the overmind and still above that the supermind where the Transcendental begins. In order to live in the Intuition plane (not merely to receive intuitions), one has to live in the cosmic consciousness because there the cosmic and individual run into each other as it were, and the mental separation between them is already broken down, so nobody can reach there who is still in the separative ego.” Letters on Yoga*


Dangma (Senzar-Tibetan) Purified soul; used north of the Himalayas for one in whom the spiritual eye is active and who therefore is a jivanmukta or high mahatma. “The opened eye of the dangma” is used in the Stanzas of Dzyan for the awakened, active faculty of spiritual vision and intuition, through which direct, certain knowledge is obtainable of whatever thing or subject the initiate directs his attention to. It is called in India the Eye of Siva and by theosophists, the spiritual third eye.

decisive intuition ::: decisive trikaladr.s.t.i by means of intuition.

Deity Intelligence and will superior to the human, forming the intelligent and vital governing essence of the universe, whether this universe be large or small. The principal views as to the nature of deity may be classed as 1) pantheistic, 2) polytheistic, 3) henotheistic, and 4) monotheistic. Pantheism, which views the divine as immanent in all nature and yet transcendent in its higher parts, is characteristic of certain Occidental philosophical systems and of all Oriental systems. Polytheism implies the recognition of an indefinite number of deific powers in the universe, the plural manifestations of the ever immanent, ever perduring, and manifest-unmanifest One. Polytheism is thus a logical development of pantheism. Henotheism is the belief in one god, but not the exclusion of others, such as is found in the Jewish scriptures, where the ancient Hebrews frankly worshiped a tribal deity and fully recognized the existence of other tribal deities. Monotheism is the belief in only one god, as is found in Christianity and Islam. These religions, in inheriting the Jewish tradition, have confounded this merely personal and local conception with the First Cause of the universe, which in theosophy would be called the formative cosmic Third Logos, thus producing an inconsistent idea of a God who is both infinite, delimited, and personal in character, with an intuition, however, of the necessarily impersonal cosmic intelligent root of all.

demon">Demon In its original Latin form daemon means 'spirit', genie, or 'genius' who provided intuition, insight, and inspiration and allowed humans to converse with gods. In relation to the Greek form daimon, Socrates 'daimon' was his higher consciousness or some divinity connected with him. A demon was never considered to be an evil entity.

Dense order: See Continuity. Deontological ethics: Any ethics which does not make the theory of obligation entirely dependent on the theory of value, holding that an action may be known to be right without a consideration of the goodness of anything, or at least that an action may be right and be known to be so even though it does not flow from the agent's best motive (or even from a good one) and does not, by being performed, bring into being as much good as some other action open to the agent. Opposed to axiological ethics. Also called formalism and intuitionism. See Intuitionism. -- W.K.F.

Dimension or dimensional is a word which when strictly used refers to measuring in one or another direction. Now the intuition which has led many modern scientists and philosophers to speak of more than three dimensions of space is a true one, but a more correct way of phrasing these suppositions dimensions would be to speak of the philosophical qualities or attributes of space. Thus, time in the Relativity Theory of Einstein may logically enough be considered a dimension, because it is a quality or mode of measuring space from event to event, so that by such mensuration the mind can picture to itself not only the continuous present, but likewise the past and future. Furthermore, any entity possessing the commonly accepted three dimensions could not exist or be, unless the time element entered into the equation; in other words, unless a being or thing exists in time it obviously cannot exist at all, and thus it is that time logically and correctly can be called a dimension of space. As long as matter or physical space exists, however, there will be for such physical space three dimensions and no more, to which it is likewise philosophically accurate enough to add the fourth dimension modernly called time; but theosophy is not satisfied with restricting itself to these four ways of measuring the attributes or qualities of space, but adds others, one of the most important being consciousness, which is such an attribute of abstract space as time is, or as our length, breadth, and thickness.

discrimination ::: same as viveka, one of the two components of smr.ti, a faculty of jñana; on the plane of vijñana or ideality it "is hardly recognisable as a separate power, but is constantly inherent in the three others [intuition, inspiration and revelation] and is their own determination of the scope and relations of their knowledge".

divine ::: adj. **1. Of or pertaining to God or the Supreme Being. 2. Of, relating to, emanating from, or being the expression of a deity. 3. Being in the service or worship of a deity; sacred. 4. Heavenly, celestial. 5. Supremely good or beautiful; magnificent. diviner, divinest, divinely, half-divine. v. 6. To perceive by intuition or insight. divines, divined, divining.**

dr.s.t.i (drishti) intuition ::: same as revelatory intuition. drsti

Egoism, Ethical: The view that each individual should seek as an end only his own welfare. This principle is sometimes advanced as a separate intuition, sometimes on the ground that an individual's own welfare is the only thing that is ultimately valuable (for him). -- C.A.B Egoism, Psychological: The doctrine that the determining, though perhaps concealed, motive of every voluntary action is a desire for one's own welfare. Often combined with Psychological Hedonism. -- C.A.B.

Empty: (Ger. leer) In Husserl: Without intuitional fullness, materially indeterminate; obscure. Emptiness is compatible with distinctness. In logic: a class that happens to have no members, but is not a null-class. -- D.C.

Ethical formalism: (Kantian) Despite the historical over-shadowing of Kant's ethical position by the influence of The Critique of Pure Reason upon the philosophy of the past century and a half, Kant's own (declared) major interest, almost from the very beginning, was in moral philosophy. Even the Critique of Pure Reason itself was written only in order to clear the ground for dealing adequately with the field of ethics in the Grundlegung zur Metapkysik der Sttten (1785), in the Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft (1788), and in the Metaphysik der Sitten (1797). By the end of the seventeen-sixties Kant was ready to discard every prior ethical theory, from the earlv Greeks to Baumgarten, Rousseau, and the British moralists, finding, all of them, despite the wide divergencies among them, equally dogmatic and unacceptable. Each of the older theories he found covertly to rely upon some dogmatic criterion or other, be it a substantive "principle," an intuition, or an equally substantive "sense." Every such ethical theory fails to deal with ethical issues as genuinely problematic, since it is amenable to some "demonstrative" preconceived criterion.

Ethical theories are also described as metaphysical, naturalistic, and non-naturalistic or intuitionistic. See Intuitionism., Non-naturalistic ethics, Metaphysical ethics, Naturalistic ethics, Autonomy of ethics.

Even the body has its intuitions.

Excluded middle, law of, or tertium non datur, is given by traditional logicians as "A is B or A is not B." This is usually identified with the theorem of the propositional calculus, p ∨ ∼p to which the same name is given. The general validity of the law is denied by the school of mathematical intuitiontsm (q. v.). -- A.C.

experientialism ::: n. --> The doctrine that experience, either that ourselves or of others, is the test or criterion of general knowledge; -- opposed to intuitionists.

Expressionism: In aesthetics, the doctrine that artistic creation is primarily an expressive act, a process of clarifying and manifesting the impressions, emotions, intuitions, and attitudes of the artist. Such theories hold that art has its foundation in the experiences and feelings of its creator; it is a comment on the artist's soul, not on any external object, and its value depends on the freshness and individuality of this creative spirit. The artist is he who feels strongly and clearly; his art is a record of what he has felt. It is maintained that the artist has no responsibility to respect reality nor to please an audience, and the primary synonyms of beauty become sincerity, passion, and originality. -- J.J.

External sense: In Kant, intuition of spatial properties, as contrasted with the internal sense which is that of the a priori form of time. External World: The ideally envisaged totality of objects of actual or possible perception conceived as constituting a unified system. -- L.W.

Eye of Siva The third eye; physically the pineal gland, which when awakened into activity becomes the organ of the inner spiritual vision of a seer. The pineal gland was in former ages an active physical exterior organ before the present-day two eyes were developed, and was then the faculty both of physical vision and of interior illumination. As the ages passed, this third eye or pineal gland receded within the skull, finally being covered by hardened bone and the scalp. This eye may be described as the organ on this plane of spiritual intuition, through which direct and certain knowledge is obtainable at any time at the will of the seer. “The ‘eye of Siva’ did not become entirely atrophied before the close of the Fourth Race. When spirituality and all the divine powers and attributes of the deva-man of the Third had been made the hand-maidens of the newly-awakened physiological and psychic passions of the physical man, instead of the reverse, the eye lost its powers” (SD 2:302).

"For if we examine carefully, we shall find that Intuition is our first teacher. Intuition always stands veiled behind our mental operations. Intuition brings to man those brilliant messages from the Unknown which are the beginning of his higher knowledge.” The Life Divine*

“For if we examine carefully, we shall find that Intuition is our first teacher. Intuition always stands veiled behind our mental operations. Intuition brings to man those brilliant messages from the Unknown which are the beginning of his higher knowledge.” The Life Divine

“For intuition is an edge of light thrust out by the secret Supermind….” The Life Divine

Formal Cause: See Form; Aristotelianism. Formalism: (a) In ethics: the term is sometimes used as equivalent to intuitionism in the traditional sense. See Intuitionism. Also used to designate any ethical theory, such as Kant's, in which the basic principles for determining our duties are purely formal. See Ethics, formal. -- W.K.F.

Form: (in Kant) That a priori element in experience in virtue of which the manifold of sense is synthcsized and unified into meaningful perceptions and judgments. Kant attributed the form of experience to mind and reason, the matter to sensuous intuition. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.

For the account given by Brouwerian intuitionism of the nature of mathematics, and the asserted priority of mathematics to logic and philosophy, see the article Mathematics. This account, with its reliance on the intuition of ordinary thinking and on the immediate evidence of mathematical concepts and inferences, and with its insistence on intuitively understandable construction as the only method for mathematical existence proofs, leads to a rejection of certain methods and assumptions of classical mathematics. In consequence, certain parts of classical mathematics have to be abandoned and others have to be reconstructed in different and often more complicated fashion.

full revelatory ideality ::: the highest scale of revelatory logistis, also called the full dras.t.a luminous reason, whose three forms are described as (1) "revelation with interpretation but the front representative",(2) "the front interpretative with intuition involved in the drishti", and (3) "the whole drishti with the two other powers taken into the drishti"; these three forms are also referred to as the representative, interpretative and imperative elements of representative vijñana in the higher sense (highest representative ideality or logos vijñana). future trik trikaladrsti

Further, the data of scientific induction are sensory percepts; and no amount of such data will enable us to ascertain the truth about the causal worlds which underlie phenomena. If we admit, with Plato, the existence of intuition or direct perception of essential truths, or if we accept his doctrine of the existence of soul memories latent in the mind, we have a resource which will free us from complete reliance on this synthetic method of reaching general truths. See also BACONIAN METHODS

gedanken /g*-dahn'kn/ Ungrounded; impractical; not well-thought-out; untried; untested. "Gedanken" is a German word for "thought". A thought experiment is one you carry out in your head. In physics, the term "gedanken experiment" is used to refer to an experiment that is impractical to carry out, but useful to consider because it can be reasoned about theoretically. (A classic gedanken experiment of relativity theory involves thinking about a man in an elevator accelerating through space.) Gedanken experiments are very useful in physics, but must be used with care. It's too easy to idealise away some important aspect of the real world in constructing the "apparatus". Among hackers, accordingly, the word has a pejorative connotation. It is typically used of a project, especially one in artificial intelligence research, that is written up in grand detail (typically as a Ph.D. thesis) without ever being implemented to any great extent. Such a project is usually perpetrated by people who aren't very good hackers or find programming distasteful or are just in a hurry. A "gedanken thesis" is usually marked by an obvious lack of intuition about what is programmable and what is not, and about what does and does not constitute a clear specification of an algorithm. See also {AI-complete}, {DWIM}.

gnōrisis [Greek] ::: acquaintance, intimate knowledge; "spontaneous gnorisis judgment", a quality of the intuitional ideality.

Gnosis: (Gr. knowledge) Originally a generic term for knowledge, in the first and second centuries A.D. it came to mean an esoteric knowledge of higher religious and philosophic truths to be acquired by an elite group of intellectually developed believers. Philo Judaeus (30 B.C. to 50 A.D.) is a fore-runner of Jewish Gnosticism; the allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament, use of Greek philosophical concepts, particularly the Logos doctrine, in Biblical exegesis, and a semi-mystical number theory characterize his form of gnosis. Christian gnostics (Cerinthus, Menander, Saturninus, Valentine, Basilides, Ptolemaeus, and possibly Marcion) maintained that only those men who cultivated their spiritual powers were truly immortal, and they adopted the complicated teaching of a sphere of psychic intermediaries (aeons) between God and earthly things. There was also a pagan gnosis begun before Christ as a reformation of Greek and Roman religion. Philosophically, the only thing common to all types of gnosis is the effort to transcend rational, logical thought processes by means of intuition.

gnostic intuition ::: (in 1919) same as ideal intuition; (in April 1927) intuition as the first degree of supramental gnosis, probably corresponding to the later intuitive overmind.

Golden light is a light from the Supermind but naturally it is modified in the plane in which h works. It becomes the light of Truth in the OvermInd, light of Truth in the intuition.

Ha-Levi, Judah: (b. ca. 1080, d. ca. 1140) Poet and philosopher. His Kuzari (Arabic Kitab Al-Khazari), written in dialogue form, has a double purpose. First, as its subtitle, A Book of Proofs and Arguments in Defense of the Humiliated Religion, indicates, it aims to prove the dignity and worth of Judaism. Secondly, he endeavors to show the insufficiency of philosophy and the superiority of the truths of revealed religion to those arrived at by logic. The admission of both Christianity and Islam that Judaism is their source proves the first. The exaltation of intuition as a means of certainty in matters of religion, and the claim that the prophet is the highest type of man rather than the philosopher purposes to substantiate the second. He endows the Jewish people with a special religio-ethical sense which is their share only and constitutes a quasi-biological quality. He assigns also a special importance to Palestine as a contributory factor in the spiritual development of his people, for only there can this religio-ethical sense come to full expression. -- M.W.

heart ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The heart in Vedic psychology is not restricted to the seat of the emotions; it includes all that large tract of spontaneous mentality, nearest to the subconscient in us, out of which rise the sensations, emotions, instincts, impulses and all those intuitions and inspirations that travel through these agencies before they arrive at form in the intelligence.” *The Secret of the Veda

Heart ::: The heart in Vedic psychology is not restricted to the seat of the emotions; it includes all that large tract of spontaneous mentality, nearest to the subconscient in us, out of which rise the sensations, emotions, instincts, impulses and all those intuitions and inspirations that travel through these agencies before they arrive at form in the intelligence.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 15, Page: 271-72


heart ::: “The heart in Vedic psychology is not restricted to the seat of the emotions; it includes all that large tract of spontaneous mentality, nearest to the subconscient in us, out of which rise the sensations, emotions, instincts, impulses and all those intuitions and inspirations that travel through these agencies before they arrive at form in the intelligence.” The Secret of the Veda

Higher consciousness ::: abosr the ordinary mind and different from it in Its workings ; it ranges from higher mine! through illumined mind, intuition and overmind upto the border line of the Supramental.

Higher mind/mental ::: Overtopping the ordinary mind, hidden in our own superconscient parts, there are higher ranges of Mind, gradations of spiritualised mind leading to the Supermind. In ascending order they are: Higher Mind, Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, Intuition and Overmind. See spiritualised mind.

Higher Planes ::: From the point of view of the ascent of consciousness from our mind upwards through a rising series of dynamic powers by which it can sublimate itself, the gradation can be resolved into a stairway of four main ascents, each with its high level of fulfilment. These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, IlluminedMind and Intuition into Overmind and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 972


Higher Self The divine-spiritual essence or essential egoity overshadowing the human being, the atma-buddhi with the efflorescence of manas. The higher self is the god within, the source of all right motive, the fountain of intuition, and the voice of divine harmony seeking to control the individual’s life and to transform or transmute all the voices of personal desire.

Historically, one may say that, in general, Greek ethics was teleological, though there are deontological strains in Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. In Christian moralists one finds both kinds of ethics, according as the emphasis is on the will of God as the source of duties (the ordinary view) or on the goodness of God as somehow the end of human life (Augustine and Aquinas), theology and revelation taking a central role in either case. In modern philosophical ethics, again, both kinds of ethics are present, with the opposition between them coming out into the open. Starting in the 17th and 18th centuries in Britain are both "intuitionism" (Cambridge Platonists, Clarke, Butler, Price, Reid, Whewell, McCosh, etc.) and utilitarianism (q.v.), with British ethics largely a matter of controversy between the two, a controversy in which the teleological side has lately been taken by Cambridge and the deontological side by Oxford. Again, in Germany, England, and elsewhere there have been, on the one hand, the formalistic deontologism of Kant and his followers, and, on the other, the axiological or teleological ethics of the Hegelian self-realizationists and the Wertethik of Scheler and N. Hartmann.

Hsin: Heart; mind. The original or intuitive mind of man which is good (Mencius). Human desires (the hsin of man as different from the hsin of the Confucian Moral Law or tao). The Mind which is identical with the Great Ultimate (T'ai Chi). (Shao K'ang-chieh, 1011-1077.) One aspect of the Nature (hsing). "When the Nature is viewed from its goodness, it is the Moral Law (tao); when it is viewed from its essence, it is the Destiny (ming) ; when it is viewed from its natural state or spontaneity, it is Heaven (T'ien); and when it is viewed from its manifestations, it is the Mind (hsin)." (Ch'eng I-ch'uan( 1033-1107.) "The pure and refined portion of the vital force, ch'i." Being such it "has the Great Ultimate as its Reason (li) and Yin and Yang as its passivity and activity." It is the spiritual faculty or consciousness of man. (Chu Hsi, 1130-1200.) The mind conceived as identical with the Universe and Reason (li). (Lu Hsiang-shan, 1139-1193.) The mind conceived as identical with Reason (li) and intuition. (Wang Yang-ming, 14-73-1529.)

HUMANITY, STAGE OF The fourth of man&

Humphreys, Christmas. (1901-1983). Early British popularizer of Buddhism and founder of the Buddhist Society, the oldest lay Buddhist organization in Europe. Born in London in 1901, Humphreys was the son of Sir Travers Humphreys (1867-1956), a barrister perhaps best known as the junior counsel in the prosecution of the Irish writer Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). Following in his father's footsteps, Humphreys studied law at Cambridge University and eventually became a senior prosecutor at the Old Bailey, London, the central criminal court, and later a circuit judge; he was also involved in the Tokyo war crimes trials as a prosecutor, a post he accepted so he could also further in Japan his studies of Buddhism. (Humphreys's later attempts to inject some Buddhist compassion into his courtroom led to him being called the "gentle judge," who gained a reputation for being lenient with felons. After handing down a six-month suspended sentence to an eighteen-year-old who had raped two women at knifepoint, the public outcry that ensued eventually led to his resignation from the bench in 1976.) Humphreys was interested in Buddhism from his youth and declared himself a Buddhist at age seventeen. In 1924, at the age of twenty-three, he founded the Buddhist Society, London, and served as its president until his death; he was also the first publisher of its journal, The Middle Way. Humphreys strongly advocated a nonsectarian approach to Buddhism, which embraced the individual schools of Buddhism as specific manifestations of the religion's central tenets. His interest in an overarching vision of the whole of the Buddhist tradition led him in 1945 to publish his famous Twelve Principles of Buddhism, which has been translated into fourteen languages. These principles focus on the need to recognize the conditioned nature of reality, the truth of impermanence and suffering, and the path that Buddhism provides to save oneself through "the intuition of the individual." A close associate of DAISETZ TEITARO SUZUKI and a contemporary of EDWARD CONZE, Humphreys himself wrote over thirty semischolarly and popular books and tracts on Buddhism, including Buddhism: An Introduction and Guide, published in 1951.

Idea: (Gr. idea) This term has enjoyed historically a considerable diversity of usage. In pre-Platonic Greek: form, semblance, nature, fashion or mode, class or species. Plato (and Socrates): The Idea is a timeless essence or universal, a dynamic and creative archetype of existents. The Ideas comprise a hierarchy and an organic unity in the Good, and are ideals as patterns of existence and as objects of human desire. The Stoics: Ideas are class concepts in the human mind. Neo-Platonism: Ideas are archetypes of things considered as in cosmic Mind (Nous or Logos). Early Christianity and Scholasticism: Ideas are archetypes eternally subsistent in the mind of God. 17th Century: Following earlier usage, Descartes generally identified ideas with subjective, logical concepts of the human mind. Ideas were similarly treated as subjective or mental by Locke, who identified them with all objects of consciousness. Simple ideas, from which, by combination, all complex ideas are derived, have their source either in sense perception or "reflection" (intuition of our own being and mental processes). Berkeley: Ideas are sense objects or perceptions, considered either as modes of the human soul or as a type of mind-dependent being. Concepts derived from objects of intuitive introspection, such as activity, passivity, soul, are "notions." Hume: An Idea is a "faint image" or memory copy of sense "impressions." Kant: Ideas are concepts or representations incapable of adequate subsumption under the categories, which escape the limits of cognition. The ideas of theoretical or Pure Reason are ideals, demands of the human intellect for the absolute, i.e., the unconditioned or the totality of conditions of representation. They include the soul, Nature and God. The ideas of moral or Practical Reason include God, Freedom, and Immortality. The ideas of Reason cannot be sensuously represented (possess no "schema"). Aesthetic ideas are representations of the faculty of imagination to which no concept can be adequate.

ideal intuition ::: intuition in the ideality or vijñana, in contrast to mental intuition.

ideality ::: the supra-intellectual faculty (vijñana) with its powers of smr.ti (consisting of intuition and discrimination), sruti (or inspiration) and dr.s.t.i (or revelation), usually distinguished from (but sometimes including) vijñanabuddhi or intuitive mind. The plane of ideality or vijñana generally referred to in the early period of the Record of Yoga appears to be what in 1918 was designated primary / inferior ideality, above which Sri Aurobindo then distinguished a secondary / superior ideality. In 1919, the lower plane came to be called logistic ideality in a scheme of three planes, of which the higher two were termed hermetic ideality (later srauta vijñana) and seer ideality. Up to 1920, "ideality" by itself continued to refer mainly to the first of these planes.

IDEAS, SCALING DOWN OF When the causal ideas of intuition are mentalized into mental concepts, these ideas become ideals for reason, and when these ideals are emotionalized, they become dogmas for emotional thinking. But when the ideas have thus been twice scaled down, their relative validity has been made absolute and thus they have become inimical to life. K 5.8.19

Identity-philosophy: In general the term has been applied to any theory which failed to distinguish between spirit and matter, subject and object, regarding them as an undifferentiated unity; hence such a philosophy is a species of monism. In the history of philosophy it usually signifies the system which has been called Identitätsphilosophie by Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling who held that spirit and nature are fundamentally the same, namely, the Absolute. Neither the ego nor the non-ego are the ultimate principles of being; they are both relative concepts which are contained in something absolute. This is the supreme principle of Absolute Identity of the ideal and the real. Reasoning does not lead us to the Absolute which can only be attained by immediate intellectual intuition. In it we find the eternal concepts of things and from it we can derive everything else. We are obliged to conceive the Absolute Identity as the indifference of the ideal and the real. Of course, this is God in Whom all opposites are united. He is the unity of thought and being, the subjective and the objective, form and essence, the general and infinite, and the particular and finite. This teaching is similar to that of Spinoza. -- J.J.R.

“If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, . . . we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; . . . At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies,—not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality.” The Life Divine

Illumined Mind ::: [illumined Mind] is simply higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration.
   Ref: CWSA Vol.28, Letters on Yoga-I, Page: 164


imperative ::: (in 1920) being of the nature of a "revealingly imperative power of the spirit"s knowledge by identity", the element in the logos vijñana or highest representative ideality (see full revelatory ideality) that deals with "the imperatives of the infinite", connected with revelation in much the same way as representative with intuition and interpretative with inspiration, and evidently entering into the logistic ideality from a higher plane of imperative vijñana; (in early 1927) a plane related to, but higher than, the imperative vijñana of 1920, apparently occupying a position between the supreme supramental and the supreme supermind, for one of its forms "acts as an intermediary force, lifting the former into the latter". The forms of "the imperative" in 1927 are perhaps the "intuitive forms" which by January of that year had been arranged "in the gnosis", making them part of what at the end of October is called the overmind system. imperative vij ñana

Indra ::: "the Puissant", a Vedic god, lord of svar, the luminous world; the deva as "the master of mental force". As Agni2 "is one pole of Force instinct with knowledge that sends its current upward from earth to heaven, so Indra is the other pole of Light instinct with force which descends from heaven to earth"; he "comes down into our world as the Hero" and "slays darkness and division with his lightnings, pours down the life-giving heavenly waters [svarvatir apah.], finds in the trace of the hound, Intuition [Sarama], the lost or hidden illuminations, makes the Sun of Truth [sūrya1] mount high in the heaven of our mentality".

infinity ::: “We see at once that if such an Existence is, it must be, like the Energy, infinite. Neither reason nor experience nor intuition nor imagination bears witness to us of the possibility of a final terminus. All end and beginning presuppose something beyond the end or beginning. An absolute end, an absolute beginning is not only a contradiction in terms, but a contradiction of the essence of things, a violence, a fiction. Infinity imposes itself upon the appearances of the finite by its ineffugable self-existence.” The Life Divine

In Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Tr. Analytic): The procedure of the imagination by which the categories of the understanding are applied to the manifold of sensuous intuitions. Imagination, working with the pure form of time, connects sense and understanding. This is possible because the imagination contains an element of both sense and understanding, and thus is capable of formulating the rules and procedures by means of which sensuous representations may be subsumed under pure concepts. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.

In past stages of evolution, when inchoate attempts at formation were made, and when planes and states of matter were not as they are now, strange monsters existed, which were at first purely lower astral, then astral-physical, and finally physical, before they died out. Hence the idea that the hydra was derived from traditions or astral visions of some reptile-monster of the Mesozoic Age may be an imperfect intuition of the facts.

inspirational intuitional ::: same as inspirational intuitive.

inspirational intuitive ::: having the nature of inspired intuition.

inspirational intuitive idealised mind ::: the inspirational intuitive form of idealised mentality, same as inspired intuitional intellectuality.

inspired ::: having the nature of inspiration (sruti), as it acts on the level of inspired logistis or another level of ideality or intuitive mind, often in combination with intuition or revelation; (vak) having the qualities of the fourth level of style, which "brings to us not only pure light and beauty and inexhaustible depth, but a greater moved ecstasy of highest or largest thought and sight and speech".

inspired intellectuality ::: (mentioned only in the form of intuitional inspired intellectuality) same as inspirational mentality.

inspired intuitional intellectuality ::: intuitional intellectuality with an element of inspiration, raising it towards inspirational mentality.

inspired intuitional logistis ::: same as inspired intuition.

inspired intuition ::: intuition with an element of inspiration; the middle form of intuitional ideality.

inspired intuitive mentality ::: same as inspired intuitional intellectuality.

inspired logistis ::: the middle level of logistic ideality, where inspiration (sruti) determines the predominant character of the working of the luminous reason; also, the second gradation of this level, between the intuitional inspired and revelatory inspired forms of logistic ideality.

Instinct may be considered as the automatic or quasi-intelligent functioning of the infinitude of rays flowing forth from the kosmic mind — these rays in their turn first passing through the divine intelligences, then through the spiritual intelligences, then through the hosts of beings of less degree, and finally reaching animate and inanimate entities. Instinct, thus, wherever functioning throughout nature is seen to be the action of kosmic mind. In proportion as intuitions are farther evolved along the ladder of life, instinct merges into intelligence, then into self-conscious intelligence, and finally into spiritual intelligence which is the veil of the kosmic divinity.

Instinct The vegetative, passive, or automatic side of intuition, which expresses itself all through natural existences. The atoms move and sing by instinct, and by the instinctual faculty the animal guides its life. In human beings are the divine instincts of love, forgiveness, and pity. “Instinct, as a divine spark, lurks in the unconscious nerve-centre of the ascidian mollusk, and manifests itself at the first stage of action of its nervous system as what the physiologist terms the reflex action. It exists in the lowest classes of the acephalous animals as well as in those that have distinct heads; it grows and develops according to the law of the double evolution, physically and spiritually; and entering upon its conscious stage of development and progress in the cephalous species already endowed with a sensorium and symmetrically-arranged ganglia, this reflex action, whether men of science term it automatic, as in the lowest species, or instinctive, as in the more complex organisms which act under the guidance of the sensorium and the stimulus originating in distinct sensation, is still one and the same thing. It is the divine instinct in its ceaseless progress of development. This instinct of the animals, which act from the moment of their birth each in the confines prescribed to them by nature, and which know how, save in accident proceeding from a higher instinct than their own, to take care of themselves unerringly — this instinct may, for the sake of exact definition, be termed automatic; but it must have either within the animal which possesses it or without, something’s or some one’s intelligence to guide it” (IU 1:425).

intellection ::: n. --> A mental act or process; especially: (a) The act of understanding; simple apprehension of ideas; intuition. Bentley. (b) A creation of the mind itself.

intellectual ideality ::: same as uninspired intuition, the lowest form of intuitional ideality, sometimes regarded not as true ideality, but as a transitional stage between intuitive mind and vijñana.

intellectual intuition ::: same as mental intuition. intellectual sraddh sraddha

In The Secret Doctrine Blavatsky credits the theory’s authors with a great intuitional perception of certain cosmogonical facts, and to a certain extent approves the theory in its broad outline but not in its details. Any theory which attempts to explain the universe on purely mechanical principles can be no more than one of a number of possible systems of graphic representation. The attempt to abstract the physical universe from the universe in general, while useful for special practical purposes, does not conduct us to the truth; and this is preeminently the case with such a subject as the origin of the solar system and the motions of its parts. Yet the nebular hypothesis in certain of its main elements is in accord with theosophic teachings, insofar, for instance, as it glimpses the gradual condensation of matter from a tenuous condition, in its segregation around centers, and in the essentially circular character of motion.

In the subconscient the intuition manifests itself in the action, in effectivity, and the knowledge or conscious identity is either entirely or more or less concealed in the action. In the superconscient, on the contrary, Light being the law and the principle, the intuition manifests itself in its true nature as knowledge emerging out of conscious identity, and effectivity of action is rather the accompaniment or necessary consequent and no longer masks as the primary fact. Between these two states reason and mind act as intermediaries which enable the being to liberate knowledge out of its imprisonment in the act and prepare it to resume its essential primacy. When the selfawareness in the mind applied both to continent and content, to own-self and other-self, exalts itself into the luminous selfmanifest identity, the reason also converts itself into the form of the self-luminous intuitional3 knowledge. This is the highest possible state of our knowledge when mind fulfils itself in the supramental.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 72


In the theory of value the first question concerns the meaning of value-terms and the status of goodness. As to meaning the main point is whether goodness is definable or not, and if so, how. As to status the main point is whether goodness is subjective or objective, relative or absolute. Various positions are possible. Recent emotive meaning theories e.g. that of A. J. Ayer, hold that "good" and other value-terms have only an emotive meaning, Intuitionists and non-naturalists often hold that goodness is an indefinable intrinsic (and therefore objective or absolute) property, e.g., Plato, G. E. Moore, W. D. Ross, J. Laird, Meinong, N. Hartman. Metaphysical and naturalistic moralists usually hold that goodness can be defined in metaphysical or in psychological terms, generally interpreting "x is good" to mean that a certain attitude is taken toward x by some mind or group of minds. For some of them value is objective or absolute in the sense of having the same locus for everyone, e.g., Aristotle in his definition of the good as that at which all things aim, (Ethics, bk. I). For others the locus of value varies from individual to individual or from group to group, i.e. different things will be good for different individuals or groups, e.g., Hobbes, Westermarck, William James, R. B. Perry.

Intuitio: A term generally employed by Spinoza in a more technical sense than that found in the Cartesian philosophy (see Reg. ad Dir. Ing., III). It is primarily used by Spinoza in connection with "scientia intuitiva" or knowledge "of the third kind" (Ethica, II, 40, Schol. 2). Intuition of this sort is absolutely certain and infallible, in contrast to reason (ratio, q.v.), it produces the highest peace and virtue of the mind (Ibid, V, 25 and 27). Also, as over against ratio, it yields an adequate knowledge of the essence of things, and thus enables us to know and love God, through which knowledge (Ibid, V, 39) the greater part of our mind is rendered eternal. -- W.S.W.

INTUITION. ::: Above illumined Mind which is simply higher

INTUITION—A conclusion which was arrived at without the conscious use of reason and not directly traceable to ordinary understandings of sensory experiences; the faculty of (unconscious). mind by which we arrive at intuitions, or know things without being taught; direct, or immediate knowledge of physical or moral values.

intuitional ::: a. --> Pertaining to, or derived from, intuition; characterized by intuition; perceived by intuition; intuitive.

intuitional gnosis ::: same as intuitional ideality.

intuitional ::: having the nature of intuition, as it acts on the level of intuitional ideality or another level of ideality or intuitive mind, often in combination with inspiration or revelation.

intuitional ideality ::: the lowest level of logistic ideality, where intuition (along with discrimination or viveka, the other component of smr.ti) determines the predominant character of the working of the luminous reason, the other faculties of jñana being inactive or subordinate to it.

intuitional ideal mind ::: same as intuitional ideality.

intuitional inspired ::: having the nature of intuitive inspiration.

intuitional inspired intellectuality ::: the lowest form of inspirational mentality, in which intuition is taken up into inspiration.

intuitional inspired logistis ::: the lowest form of inspired logistis, in which intuition is taken up into inspiration.

intuitional intellectuality ::: the lowest level of idealised mentality, the "primary intuitive action" of the intuitive mind, which "dealing with the triple time movement . . . sees principally the stream of successive actualities in time, even as the ordinary mind, but with an immediate directness of truth and spontaneous accuracy of which the ordinary mind is not capable".

intuitionalism ::: n. --> The doctrine that the perception or recognition of primary truth is intuitive, or direct and immediate; -- opposed to sensationalism, and experientialism.

intuitionalist ::: n. --> One who holds the doctrine of intuitionalism.

intuitional mind ::: same as intuitive mind.

intuitional reason ::: same as intuitional intellectuality.

intuitional revelation; intuitional revelatory ideality ::: same as intuitive revelatory logistis76

intuition :::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

intuition ::: direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process. intuition"s, intuitions, half-intuition.

Sri Aurobindo: "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. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.” *The Life Divine

   "Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind-substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of ``stable lightnings"". When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing intuition or be able to call down a massed intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of Intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.” *The Life Divine

  "I use the word ‘intuition" for want of a better. In truth, it is a makeshift and inadequate to the connotation demanded of it. The same has to be said of the word ‘consciousness" and many others which our poverty compels us to extend illegitimately in their significance.” *The Life Divine - Sri Aurobindo"s footnote.

"For intuition is an edge of light thrust out by the secret Supermind. . . .” The Life Divine

". . . intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data.” The Life Divine

"Intuition is above illumined Mind which is simply higher Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and inspiration.” Letters on Yoga

"Intuition sees the truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental intelligence by seeking and reaching out for indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of the Intuition as compared with the supermind is that it sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming into the mind it gets mixed with the mental movement and forms a kind of intuitive mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the higher Truth and the mental seeking. It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and that is practically its function.” Letters on Yoga


“… intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data.” The Life Divine

intuitionism {intuitionistic logic}

intuitionism ::: n. --> Same as Intuitionalism.

intuitionistic logic ::: (logic, mathematics) Brouwer's foundational theory of mathematics which says that you should not count a proof of (There exists x such that P(x)) valid proof of (A or B) is valid only if it actually exhibits either a proof of A or a proof of B.In intuitionism, you cannot in general assert the statement (A or not-A) (the principle of the excluded middle); (A or not-A) is not proven unless you have a proof of A or a proof of not-A. If A happens to be undecidable in your system (some things certainly will be), then there will be no proof of (A or not-A).This is pretty annoying; some kinds of perfectly healthy-looking examples of proof by contradiction just stop working. Of course, excluded middle is a theorem of classical logic (i.e. non-intuitionistic logic). .(2001-03-18)

intuitionistic logic "logic, mathematics" Brouwer's foundational theory of mathematics which says that you should not count a proof of (There exists x such that P(x)) valid unless the proof actually gives a method of constructing such an x. Similarly, a proof of (A or B) is valid only if it actually exhibits either a proof of A or a proof of B. In intuitionism, you cannot in general assert the statement (A or not-A) (the principle of the {excluded middle}); (A or not-A) is not proven unless you have a proof of A or a proof of not-A. If A happens to be {undecidable} in your system (some things certainly will be), then there will be no proof of (A or not-A). This is pretty annoying; some kinds of perfectly healthy-looking examples of {proof by contradiction} just stop working. Of course, excluded middle is a theorem of {classical logic} (i.e. non-intuitionistic logic). {History (http://britanica.com/bcom/eb/article/3/0,5716,118173+14+109826,00.html)}. (2001-03-18)

intuitionistic probability "logic" Florentin Smarandache's representation of the probability of an event occuring, given by T, I, F which are real subsets representing the truth, indeterminacy, and falsity percentages respectively, and n_sup = sup(T) + sup(I) + sup(F) " 100 Related to {intuitionistic logic}. [Florentin Smarandache, "A Unifying Field in Logics. / {Neutrosophy}: Neutrosophic Probability, Set, and Logic", American Research Press, Rehoboth 1999]. (2001-03-18)

intuitionistic probability ::: (logic) Florentin Smarandache's representation of the probability of an event occuring, given by T, I, F which are real subsets representing the truth, indeterminacy, and falsity percentages respectively, and n_sup = sup(T) + sup(I) + sup(F) 100 Related to intuitionistic logic.[Florentin Smarandache, A Unifying Field in Logics. / Neutrosophy: Neutrosophic Probability, Set, and Logic, American Research Press, Rehoboth 1999].(2001-03-18)

intuitionist logic "spelling" Incorrect term for "{intuitionistic logic}". (1999-11-24)

intuitionist logic ::: (spelling) Incorrect term for intuitionistic logic. (1999-11-24)

intuitionist ::: n. --> Same as Intuitionalist.

intuition ::: n. --> A looking after; a regard to.
Direct apprehension or cognition; immediate knowledge, as in perception or consciousness; -- distinguished from "mediate" knowledge, as in reasoning; as, the mind knows by intuition that black is not white, that a circle is not a square, that three are more than two, etc.; quick or ready insight or apprehension.
Any object or truth discerned by direct cognition; especially, a first or primary truth.


INTUITION Refers to at least causal consciousness (47:1-3). Ignorance has idiotized this originally esoteric term so as to denote emotional impulses with a faint content of the lowest mental consciousness (47:7).

It is intuition that opens up the world of ideas for us. It is a special organ of knowledge that gives us correct ideas, correct knowledge of reality. Only a few men have worked their way up through the different &


INTUITION (T.B.) Has reference to two different kinds of consciousness:

intuition ::: the faculty of jñana that "suggests a direct and illumining inner idea of the truth, an idea that is its true image and index, . . . a representation, but a living representation"; one of the two components of smr.ti, it "does the work of reasoning without the necessity of reasoning to arrive at a conclusion"; also, an instance of the working of this faculty; sometimes equivalent to intuitional ideality, the lowest level of logistic ideality; (in 1927) same as gnostic intuition.

intuitive ::: 1. Obtained through intuition rather than from reasoning or observation. 2. Fig. Concerning spiritual vision or perception.

intuitive ::: a. --> Seeing clearly; as, an intuitive view; intuitive vision.
Knowing, or perceiving, by intuition; capable of knowing without deduction or reasoning.
Received. reached, obtained, or perceived, by intuition; as, intuitive judgment or knowledge; -- opposed to deductive.


intuitive consciousness ::: (c. 1931, in the diagram on page 1360) the plane of highest mind below overmind; evidently equivalent to "Intuition" in the sense in which Sri Aurobindo used this word in his later writings, where it is "a power of consciousness nearer and more intimate [than Higher Mind or Illumined Mind] to the original knowledge by identity", differing from Overmind in that it "sees in flashes" and combines them, while Overmind "sees calmly, steadily, in great masses and large extensions of space and time and relation, globally".

intuitive gnosis ::: same as intuitional ideality.

intuitive idealised mind ::: (mentioned only in the form of inspirational intuitive idealised mind) same as intuitional intellectuality.

intuitive ideality ::: same as intuitional ideality.

intuitive inspiration ::: intuition taken up into inspiration (on the plane of idealised mentality or logistic ideality); the same as intuitional inspired intellectuality or intuitional inspired logistis.

intuitive inspired revelatory ::: having the nature of intuition taken up into inspired revelatory logistis or the corresponding form of revelatory mentality.

intuitive intellect; intuitive intellectuality; intuitive intelligence ::: same as intuitive mind or intuitional intellectuality. intuitive m manasa

intuitive mentality ::: same as intuitive mind or intuitional intellectuality.

Intuitive Mind ::: a mind of intuitive reason characterised by its intuitions, its inspirations, its swift revelatory vision, its luminous insight and discrimination; it is a kind of truth-vision, truth-hearing, truth-memory, direct truth-discernment.

intuitive mind ::: same as vijñanabuddhi, a higher form of the buddhi whose "inspirations, revelations, intuitions, self-luminous discernings are messages from a higher knowledge-plane", but which "can perceive the truth only by a brilliant reflection or limited communication and subject to the restrictions and the inferior capacity of the mental vision".

Intuitive Mind ::: What is called intuitive Mind is usually a mixture of true Intuition with ordinary mentality—it can always admit a mingling of truth and error. Sri Aurobindo th
   refore avoids the use of this phrase. He distinguishes between Intuition proper and an intuitive human mentality.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 36, Autobiographical Notes, Page: 115


intuitive revelation ::: intuition taken up into revelation; same as intuitive revelatory logistis.

intuitive revelatory logistis ::: the lowest scale of revelatory logistis, in which intuition is taken up into revelation. intuitive revelatory reason; intuitive revelatory vij ñana

intuitive ::: same as intuitional.

intuitive tapas ::: tapas acting in the intuitional ideality. intuitive telepathic trik trikaladrsti

intuitivity ::: (in 1919-20) a term for intuitive mind (also called intuivity), used especially with reference to three levels ("mechanical","pragmatic" and "truth-reflecting") regarded as higher counterparts of levels of the intellectual reason; (in April 1927) apparently the same as gnostic intuition, the first degree of supramental gnosis.

In view of the electric nature of matter, physical disorder may be regarded as an electrical disharmony or wrong, since disease always changes the polarity of the body, more or less. The vital currents of human electricity connect the conscious person with his body by the living wires of nerves. The rhythmic motion or natural harmony vibrating in each cell and organ at its own rate, is responsive to the universal vibration or Great Breath which in other modes of motion manifests as heat, light, sound, density, etc. But beyond the electrical and vibrational states of the body, and above the mental influence, is the essential self, the source of all harmony or rhythmic procedures in all below it, keyed to harmony and striving to raise the lower nature to act in unison with its finer and greater powers. When the instinct of the animal body, the mental reasoning faculties, and the reimbodying ego’s intuition are functioning together, the person is keyed to health, sanity, and wisdom. Otherwise, the real inner conflict manifests in some form of disorder.

I -The’thousand'petalled lotus, sahasradala, commands the higher thinking mind, houses the still higher illumined mind and at the highest opens to the intuition through which or else by an over- flooding directness the ovennind can have with the rest com- munication or .an liramediate contact,, (Colour ::: .blue with' gold light around.) i. ' j i i . n ,•,,/! i, ,i i i

  “It is admitted that, however inferior to the classical Sanskrit of Panini, the language of the oldest portions of Rig Veda, notwithstanding the antiquity of its grammatical forms, is the same as that of the latest texts. Every one sees — cannot fail to see and to know — that for a language so old and so perfect as the Sanskrit to have survived alone, among all languages, it must have had its cycles of perfection and its cycles of degeneration. And, if one had any intuition, he might have seen that what they call a ‘dead language’ being an anomaly, a useless thing in Nature, it would not have survived, even as a ‘dead’ tongue, had it not its special purpose in the reign of immutable cyclic laws; and that Sanskrit, which came to be nearly lost to the world, is now slowly spreading in Europe, and will one day have the extension it had thousands upon thousands of years back — that of a universal language. The same as to the Greek and the Latin: there will be a time when the Greek of Aeschylus (and more perfect still in its future form) will be spoken by all in Southern Europe, while Sanskrit will be resting in its periodical pralaya; and the Attic will be followed later by the Latin of Virgil. Something ought to have whispered to us that there was also a time — before the original Aryan settlers among the Dravidian and other aborigines, admitted within the fold of Brahmanical initiation, marred the purity of the sacred Sanskrita Bhasha — when Sanskrit was spoken in all its unalloyed subsequent purity, and therefore must have had more than once its rise and fall. The reason for it is simply this: classical Sanskrit was only restored, if in some things perfected, by Panini. Panini, Katyayana, or Patanjali did not create it; it has existed throughout cycles, and will pass through other cycles still” (Five Years of Theosophy 419-20).

It is an error to see Bergson's philosophy as being exclusively an intuitive critique of knowledge. Such a mode of exposition constructs of his thought a mere "ism", a species of intuitionalism. Bergson was the first to try to give the term intuition a scientific basis. He transformed and regrounded the static pattern of the older forms of intuitionism by giving it a biogenetic and psychologically dynamic justification. Intuitive knowledge is not limited to the favored few, is not a private, purely solipsistic affair, but is a general property of all thinking minds. Bergson's conception of intuition represents a fusion of scientific objectivity and artistic directness.

*It is from the Overmind that all these different arrangements of the creative Truth of things originate. Out of the Overmind they come down to the Intuition and are transmitted from it to the Illumined and higher Mind to be arranged there for our intelligence. But they lose more and more of their power and certitude in the transmission as they come down to the lower levels. What energy of directly perceived Truth they have is lost in the human mind; for to the human intellect they present themselves only as speculative ideas, not as realised Truth, not as direct sight, a dynamic vision coupled with a concrete undeniable experience.
   Ref: CWSA Vol.28, Letters on Yoga-I, Page: 155


It is possible that the lost eye of Odin has reference to humanity’s third eye which, according to theosophic tradition, retreated into the skull a long time ago, though a vestigial remnant of it remains imbedded in the brain as the pineal gland. There it awaits future use as the organ of the intuition or sixth sense, which in the far future is due to become active again.

:::   "It needs a quiet mind to know the Divine Will. In the quiet mind turned towards the Divine the intuition (higher mind) comes of the Divine"s Will and the right way to do it.” *Letters on Yoga

“It needs a quiet mind to know the Divine Will. In the quiet mind turned towards the Divine the intuition (higher mind) comes of the Divine’s Will and the right way to do it.” Letters on Yoga

“I use the word ‘intuition’ for want of a better. In truth, it is a makeshift and inadequate to the connotation demanded of it. The same has to be said of the word ‘consciousness’ and many others which our poverty compels us to extend illegitimately in their significance.” The Life Divine—Sri Aurobindo’s footnote.

Jhumur: Here you have the beginnings of the mind opening onto other planes of experience. Because mindhas no experience. This is the kingdom of the greater mind where it opens on to another phase of vision or experience or feeling. The heaven-bird is the feeling of poise that hasn’t taken off. It reminds me that in a certain place, the goal of the mental search is where ultimately the mind abdicates in light and one enters into what Shelley calls ‘thought wildernesses’. Before that concrete abdication there must be some sensation, some feeling of something other that is waiting for us, that has come from elsewhere. The mind has not quite yet abdicated but begins to pursue intuition, perception, feeling.”

Jhumur: “They are the powers of the guardians of the world of light and it is not easy to enter that world. Here they have given way and let Savitri in. It is revelation, intuition. She has gone beyond the world of mind, therefore topaz, and forced the doors of this world open by the force of revelation, direct experience. This however is all conjecture because it is beyond the range of our experience.”

J. L. Coolidge, The Elements of Non-Euclidean Geometry, Oxford. 1909. Non-Naturalistic ethics: Any ethical theory which holds that ethical properties or relations are non-natural. See Non-natural properties, Intuitionism. -- W.K.F.

Jnana Yoga (Sanskrit) Jñāna-yoga The form of yoga practice and training where the attaining of union with the spiritual-divine essence within is by means of cultivating wisdom, spiritual insight, and intuition.

kavi ::: poet; (in the Veda) seer, one who is "possessed of the Truthconsciousness and using its faculties of vision, inspiration, intuition, discrimination".

ketu ::: ray; vision; intellect, judgement, intellectual perception. [Ved.] ::: ketuh [nominative] ::: ketuna [instrumental], by the ray of intuition.

Korn's philosophy represents an attack against naive and dogmatic positivism, but admits and even assimilates an element of Positivism which Korn calls Native Argentinian Positivism. Alejandro Korn may be called The Philosopher of Freedom. In fact, freedom is the keynote of his thought. He speaks of Human liberty as the indissoluble union of economic and ethical liberties. The free soul's knowledge of the world of science operates mainly on the basis of intuition. In fact, intuition is the basis of all knowledge. "Necessity of the objective world order", "Freedom of the spirit in the subjective realm", "Identity", 'Purpose", "Unity of Consciousness", and other similar concepts, are "expressions of immediate evidence and not conclusions of logical dialectics". The experience of freedom, according to Korn, leads to the problem of evaluation, which he defines as "the human response to a fact", whether the fact be an object or an event. Valuation is an experience which grows out of the struggle for liberty. Values, therefore, are relative to the fields of experience in which valuation takes place. The denial of an absolute value or values, does not signify the exclusion of personal faith. On the contrary, personal, faith is the common ground and point of departure of knowledge and action. See Latin-American Philosophy. -- J.A.F.

Kyoto school. An influential school of modern and contemporary Japanese philosophy that is closely associated with philosophers from Kyoto University; it combines East Asian and especially MAHĀYĀNA Buddhist thought, such as ZEN and JoDO SHINSHu, with modern Western and especially German philosophy and Christian thought. NISHIDA KITARo (1870-1945), Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962), and NISHITANI KEIJI (1900-1991) are usually considered to be the school's three leading figures. The name "Kyoto school" was coined in 1932 by Tosaka Jun (1900-1945), a student of Nishida and Tanabe, who used it pejoratively to denounce Nishida and Tanabe's "Japanese bourgeois philosophy." Starting in the late 1970s, Western scholars began to research the philosophical insights of the Kyoto school, and especially the cross-cultural influences with Western philosophy. During the 1990s, the political dimensions of the school have also begun to receive scholarly attention. ¶ Although the school's philosophical perspectives have developed through mutual criticism between its leading figures, the foundational philosophical stance of the Kyoto school is considered to be based on a shared notion of "absolute nothingness." "Absolute nothingness" was coined by Nishida Kitaro and derives from a putatively Zen and PURE LAND emphasis on the doctrine of emptiness (suNYATĀ), which Kyoto school philosophers advocated was indicative of a distinctive Eastern approach to philosophical inquiry. This Eastern emphasis on nothingness stood in contrast to the fundamental focus in Western philosophy on the ontological notion of "being." Nishida Kitaro posits absolute nothingness topologically as the "site" or "locale" (basho) of nonduality, which overcomes the polarities of subject and object, or noetic and noematic. Another major concept in Nishida's philosophy is "self-awareness" (jikaku), a state of mind that transcends the subject-object bifurcation, which was initially adopted from William James' (1842-1910) notion of "pure experience" (J. junsui keiken); this intuition reveals a limitless, absolute reality that has been described in the West as God or in the East as emptiness. Tanabe Hajime subsequently criticized Nishida's "site of absolute nothingness" for two reasons: first, it was a suprarational religious intuition that transgresses against philosophical reasoning; and second, despite its claims to the contrary, it ultimately fell into a metaphysics of being. Despite his criticism of what he considered to be Nishida's pseudoreligious speculations, however, Tanabe's Shin Buddhist inclinations later led him to focus not on Nishida's Zen Buddhist-oriented "intuition," but instead on the religious aspect of "faith" as the operative force behind other-power (TARIKI). Inspired by both Nishida and such Western thinkers as Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) (with whom he studied), Nishitani Keiji developed the existential and phenomenological aspects of Nishida's philosophy of absolute nothingness. Concerned with how to reach the place of absolute nothingness, given the dilemma of, on the one hand, the incessant reification and objectification by a subjective ego and, on the other hand, the nullification of reality, he argued for the necessity of overcoming "nihilism." The Kyoto school thinkers also played a central role in the development of a Japanese political ideology around the time of the Pacific War, which elevated the Japanese race mentally and spiritually above other races and justified Japanese colonial expansion. Their writings helped lay the foundation for what came to be called Nihonjinron, a nationalist discourse that advocated the uniqueness and superiority of the Japanese race; at the same time, however, Nishida also resisted tendencies toward fascism and totalitarianism in Japanese politics. Since the 1990s, Kyoto school writings have come under critical scrutiny in light of their ties to Japanese exceptionalism and pre-war Japanese nationalism. These political dimensions of Kyoto school thought are now considered as important for scholarly examination as are its contributions to cross-cultural, comparative philosophy.

L. E. J. Brouwer, Intuitionism and formalism. English translation by A. Dresden. Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 20 (1913), pp 81-96.

L. E. J. Brouwer, Intuitionisme en Formalisme, Groningen, 1912 ; reprinted in Wiskunde, Waarheid, Werkelijkheid, Groningen, 1919; English translation by A. Dresden, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, vol 20 (1913) pp. 81-96.

Lipps, Theodor: (1851-1914) Eminent German philosopher and psychologist. The study of optical illusions led him to his theory of empathy. Starts with the presupposition that every aesthetic object represents a living being, and calls the psychic state which we experience when we project ourselves into the life of such an object, an empathy (Einfühlung) or "fellow-feeling". He applied this principle consistently to all the arts. The empathic act is not simply kinaesthetic inference but has exclusively objective reference. Being a peculiar source of knowledge about other egos, it is a blend of inference and intuition. Main works: Psychol. Studien, 1885; Grundzüge d. Logik, 1893; Die ethische Grundfragen, 1899; Aesthetik, 2 vols., 1903-06; Philos. u. Wirklichkeit, 1908; Psychol. Untersuch., 2 vols., 1907-12. -- H.H.

logic 1. "philosophy, logic" A branch of philosophy and mathematics that deals with the formal principles, methods and criteria of validity of {inference}, reasoning and {knowledge}. Logic is concerned with what is true and how we can know whether something is true. This involves the formalisation of logical arguments and {proofs} in terms of symbols representing {propositions} and {logical connectives}. The meanings of these logical connectives are expressed by a set of rules which are assumed to be self-evident. {Boolean algebra} deals with the basic operations of truth values: AND, OR, NOT and combinations thereof. {Predicate logic} extends this with existential and universal {quantifiers} and symbols standing for {predicates} which may depend on variables. The rules of {natural deduction} describe how we may proceed from valid premises to valid conclusions, where the premises and conclusions are expressions in {predicate logic}. Symbolic logic uses a {meta-language} concerned with truth, which may or may not have a corresponding expression in the world of objects called existance. In symbolic logic, arguments and {proofs} are made in terms of symbols representing {propositions} and {logical connectives}. The meanings of these begin with a set of rules or {primitives} which are assumed to be self-evident. Fortunately, even from vague primitives, functions can be defined with precise meaning. {Boolean logic} deals with the basic operations of {truth values}: AND, OR, NOT and combinations thereof. {Predicate logic} extends this with {existential quantifiers} and {universal quantifiers} which introduce {bound variables} ranging over {finite} sets; the {predicate} itself takes on only the values true and false. Deduction describes how we may proceed from valid {premises} to valid conclusions, where these are expressions in {predicate logic}. Carnap used the phrase "rational reconstruction" to describe the logical analysis of thought. Thus logic is less concerned with how thought does proceed, which is considered the realm of psychology, and more with how it should proceed to discover truth. It is the touchstone of the results of thinking, but neither its regulator nor a motive for its practice. See also fuzzy logic, logic programming, arithmetic and logic unit, first-order logic, See also {Boolean logic}, {fuzzy logic}, {logic programming}, {first-order logic}, {logic bomb}, {combinatory logic}, {higher-order logic}, {intuitionistic logic}, {equational logic}, {modal logic}, {linear logic}, {paradox}. 2. "electronics" {Boolean} logic circuits. See also {arithmetic and logic unit}, {asynchronous logic}, {TTL}. (1995-03-17)

logic ::: 1. (philosophy, mathematics) A branch of philosophy and mathematics that deals with the formal principles, methods and criteria of validity of inference, reasoning and knowledge.Logic is concerned with what is true and how we can know whether something is true. This involves the formalisation of logical arguments and proofs in terms these logical connectives are expressed by a set of rules which are assumed to be self-evident.Boolean algebra deals with the basic operations of truth values: AND, OR, NOT and combinations thereof. Predicate logic extends this with existential and premises to valid conclusions, where the premises and conclusions are expressions in predicate logic.Symbolic logic uses a meta-language concerned with truth, which may or may not have a corresponding expression in the world of objects called existance. In rules or primitives which are assumed to be self-evident. Fortunately, even from vague primitives, functions can be defined with precise meaning.Boolean logic deals with the basic operations of truth values: AND, OR, NOT and combinations thereof. Predicate logic extends this with existential quantifiers describes how we may proceed from valid premises to valid conclusions, where these are expressions in predicate logic.Carnap used the phrase rational reconstruction to describe the logical analysis of thought. Thus logic is less concerned with how thought does proceed, to discover truth. It is the touchstone of the results of thinking, but neither its regulator nor a motive for its practice.See also fuzzy logic, logic programming, arithmetic and logic unit, first-order logic,See also Boolean logic, fuzzy logic, logic programming, first-order logic, logic bomb, combinatory logic, higher-order logic, intuitionistic logic, equational logic, modal logic, linear logic, paradox.2. (electronics) Boolean logic circuits.See also arithmetic and logic unit, asynchronous logic, TTL. (1995-03-17)

logistic ideality ::: the plane of luminous reason, the lowest of the three planes of ideality; its essence is smr.ti (intuition and discrimination, the latter often regarded as inherent in the former) and it has three levels ... with three or more forms of each, based on various combinations of intuition with inspiration and revelation, the higher faculties of jñana. On each successive level, "the lower first calls down into itself and is then taken up into the higher, so that on each level all the three elevations are reproduced, but always there predominates in the thought essence the character that belongs to that level"s proper form of consciousness". The logistic ideality of 1919-20 may be correlated with the "intuitive" level of higher mind in the diagram on page 1(c. 1931).

Lolli "language" (Named after the "lollipop" operator "-o") An {interpreter} for {logic programming} based on {linear logic}, written by Josh Hodas "hodas@saul.cis.upenn.edu". Lolli can be viewed as a refinement of the {Hereditary Harrop formulas} of {Lambda-Prolog}. All the operators (though not the {higher order unification}) of Lambda-Prolog are supported, but with the addition of linear variations. Thus a Lolli program distinguishes between clauses which can be used as many, or as few, times as desired, and those that must be used exactly once. Lolli is implemented in {SML/NJ}. {(ftp://ftp.cis.upenn.edu/pub/Lolli/Lolli-0.7.tar.Z)}. [Josh Hodas et al, "Logic Programming in a Fragment of Intuitionistic Linear Logic", Information and Computation, to appear]. (1992-11-18)

Lolli ::: (language) (Named after the lollipop operator -o) An interpreter for logic programming based on linear logic, written by Josh Hodas .Lolli can be viewed as a refinement of the Hereditary Harrop formulas of Lambda-Prolog. All the operators (though not the higher order unification) of few, times as desired, and those that must be used exactly once. Lolli is implemented in SML/NJ. .[Josh Hodas et al, Logic Programming in a Fragment of Intuitionistic Linear Logic, Information and Computation, to appear]. (1992-11-18)

lower revelatory ::: (in 1920) a term used for a form or forms of logistic ideality other than the highest kinds of revelatory logistis, but containing an element of revelation, such as revelatory intuition, revelatory inspired logistis or the lower forms of intuitive revelatory logistis.

Madhav: “Aswapathy participates in the luminous manifestation of Inspiration, Revelation and Intuition on his way to the heights of the Overmind.” The Book of the Divine Mother

Madhav: “In the Vedas, the power of intuition is named the hound of heaven. . . The ‘questing hound’ is a Vedic imagery always denoting the power of intuition which at one bound finds out where is the light, where is the truth that has been stolen and covered by the adversaries.” Sat-Sang Vol. IX

Madhav: “There is discernment of the heart, discernment of the mind, discernment of reason and a discernment of intuition. This is called dakshina in the Veda. You do not try to separate the right from the wrong, the white from the dark; there is an automatic intuitive separation of the one from the other. It acts like a sky-flare showing up the region around.” …”These are the different actions of the intuitive discernment—separating the true from the false, exposing falsehood pretending to be truth, examining how far the appearances in life correspond to realities.” Sat-Sang Vol. IX

Main works: The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, 1885; The Spirit of Modem Philosophy, 1892; The World and the Indidvidual, 1900; Lectures on Modem Idealism, 1919. Rule, ethical or moral: Any general ethical proposition enjoining a certain kind of action in a certain kind of situation, e.g., one who has made a promise should keep it. Rules figure especially in "dogmatic" types of deontological or intuitionstic ethics, and teleological ethics is often described as emphasizing ends rather than rules. Even a teleologist may, however, recommend certain rules, such as the above, as describing kinds of action which are generally conducive to good ends. -- W.K.F.

Man ::: Man is in his essence a spark of the central kosmic spiritual fire. Man being an inseparable part of theuniverse of which he is the child -- the organism of graded consciousness and substance which thehuman constitution contains or rather is -- is a copy of the graded organism of consciousnesses andsubstances of the universe in its various planes of being, inner and outer, especially inner as being by farthe more important and larger, because causal.Human beings are one class of "young gods" incarnated in bodies of flesh at the present stage of theirown particular evolutionary journey. The human stage of evolution is about halfway between theundeveloped life-atom and the fully developed kosmic spirit or god.From another point of view, man is a sheaf or bundle of forces or energies. Force and matter, or spiritand substance being fundamentally one, hence, man is de facto a sheaf or bundle of matters of variousand differing grades of ethereality, or of substantiality; and so are all other entities and thingseverywhere.Man's nature, and the nature of the universe likewise, of which man is a reflection or microcosm or "littleworld," is composite of seven stages or grades or degrees of ethereality or of substantiality; or,kosmically speaking, of three generally inclusive degrees: gods, monads, and atoms. And so far as man isconcerned, we may take the New Testament division of the Christians, which gives the same triformconception of man, that he is composed of spirit, soul, body -- remembering, however, that all these threewords are generalizing terms.Man stands at the midway point of the evolutionary ladder of life: below him are the hosts of beings lessthan he is; above him are other hosts greater than he is only because older in experience, riper in wisdom,stronger in spiritual and in intellectual fiber and power. And these beings are such as they are because ofthe evolutionary unfoldment of the inherent faculties and powers immanent in the individuality of theinner god -- the ever-living, inner, individualized spirit.Man, then, like everything else -- entity or what is called "thing" -- is, to use the modern terminology ofphilosophical scientists, an "event," that is to say, the expression of a central consciousness-center ormonad passing through one or another particular phase of its long, long pilgrimage over and throughinfinity, and through eternity. This, therefore, is the reason why the theosophist often speaks of themonadic consciousness-center as the pilgrim of eternity.Man can be considered as a being composed of three essential upadhis or bases: first, the monadic ordivine-spiritual; second, that which is supplied by the Lords of Light, the so-called manasa-dhyanis,meaning the intellectual and intuitive side of man, the element-principle that makes man Man; and thethird upadhi we may call the vital-astral-physical.These three bases spring from three different lines of evolution, from three different and separatehierarchies of being. This is the reason why man is composite. He is not one sole and unmixed entity; heis a composite entity, a "thing" built up of various elements, and hence his principles are to a certainextent separable. Any one of these three bases can be temporarily separated from the two others withoutbringing about the death of the man physically. But the elements that go to form any one of these basescannot be separated without bringing about physical dissolution or inner dissolution.These three lines of evolution, these three aspects or qualities of man, come from three differenthierarchies or states, often spoken of as three different planes of being. The lowest comes from thevital-astral-physical earth, ultimately from the moon, our cosmogonic mother. The middle, the manasicor intellectualintuitional, from the sun. The monadic from the monad of monads, the supreme flower oracme, or rather the supreme seed of the universal hierarchy which forms our kosmical universe oruniversal kosmos.

Man may be considered as having three main bases or upadhis: 1) the monadic or divine-spiritual, emanating from the supreme or cosmic monad of our universe; 2) the mental-intuitional, supplied by the manasa-dhyanis and manifesting from the sun in their evolutionary passage; and 3) the vital-astral-physical, as well as the emotional-psychic, from the moon-chain.

mantra ::: Sri Aurobindo: "The mantra as I have tried to describe it in The Future Poetry is a word of power and light that comes from the Overmind inspiration or from some very high plane of Intuition. Its characteristics are a language that conveys infinitely more than the mere surface sense of the words seems to indicate, a rhythm that means even more than the language and is born out of the Infinite and disappears into it, and the power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or indications or values of the thing uttered, but its significance and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness which is behind all these and greater.” *The Future Poetry

mantra ::: Sri Aurobindo: “The mantra as I have tried to describe it in The Future Poetry is a word of power and light that comes from the Overmind inspiration or from some very high plane of Intuition. Its characteristics are a language that conveys infinitely more than the mere surface sense of the words seems to indicate, a rhythm that means even more than the language and is born out of the Infinite and disappears into it, and the power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or indications or values of the thing uttered, but its significance and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness which is behind all these and greater.” The Future Poetry

mantra ::: : “The mantra as I have tried to describe it in The Future Poetry is a word of power and light that comes from the Overmind inspiration or from some very high plane of Intuition. Its characteristics are a language that conveys infinitely more than the mere surface sense of the words seems to indicate, a rhythm that means even more than the language and is born out of the Infinite and disappears into it, and the power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or indications or values of the thing uttered, but its significance and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness which is behind all these and greater.” The Future Poetry

mechanical intuivity ::: the lowest form of intuivity, corresponding on the level of the intuitive mind to the habitual mind on the intellectual plane; it is related to intuitional intellectuality and stresses the perception "of the powers and tendencies of the present and what they mean and presage".

mental intuition ::: intuition acting in the buddhi, in contrast to ideal intuition.

Mental transformation ::: All the works of the mind and intellect must first be heightened and widened, then illumined, lifted into the domains of a higher Intelligence, afterwards translated into workings of a greater non-mental Intuition, then again trans- formed into the dynamic outpourings of the Overmind radiance, and these transfigured into the full light and sovereignty of the supramental Gnosis.

Mind-centres ::: For the mind there are many centres. One in the throat (the outward-going or externalising mind) ; one between the eyes or rather in the middle of the forehead (the centre for inner thought, will and vision) ; one above, com- municating with the brain, which is called the sahasradala, thousand-petalled lotus and where are centralised the highest thought and intelligence, communicating with the greater mind planes (illumined mind, intuition, overmind) above.

Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of intuition and Inspiration.

Monotheists recognize but one God, conceived as a supreme personality and usually endowed with attributes pertaining to human personality, this mental image of God therefore being but a reflection of the human mind, with its inherent limitations and biases; yet even monotheists tacitly recognize other gods under the name of natural forces. Polytheism recognizes hierarchies of divine beings, and pantheism discerns divine power as everywhere and eternally present. The human being also in essence is a divinity. The attribution of personality to God is justly regarded as an inadmissible limitation; but there is a lack of clearness as to the meaning of such words as personality, self, and individuality, which unfortunately leads some monotheistic minds to the fear that the denial of personality will reduce the conception of divinity to merely an empty abstraction. Yet our inability to conceive the inconceivable has nothing to do with our intuition and duty, nor with the vision of the inner god as the supreme guide in a human life. See also PERSONAL GOD

Moreover, it is a serious wide-spread error of interpretation to consider Bergson as an anti-intellectualist. His alleged anti-intellectualism should be considered as a protest against taking the static materialism and spatialization of Newton's conception of nature is being anything but a high abstraction, as a rejection of the extreme claims of mechanistic and materialistic science, as an effort of reason to transcend itself in harmony with the greatest idealistic thinkers, as an effort of thinkers to stress the dynamic nature of reality, and as a persistent criticism of reason, a continuation of the Kantian tradition. His much misread conception of intuition may be viewed as akin to Spinoza's intuitio, to wit: a completion rather than a rejection of reason. -- H.H.

Mysticism ::: A word originally derived from the Greek and having a wide range of meaning in modern Occidentalreligious and philosophical literature. A mystic may be said to be one who has intuitions or intimations ofthe existence of inner and superior worlds, and who attempts to ally himself or to come intoself-conscious communion with them and the beings inhabiting these inner and invisible worlds.The word mysticism, of course, has various shades of significance, and a large number of definitionscould easily be written following the views of different mystical writers on this theme. From thetheosophical or occult point of view, however, a mystic is one who has inner convictions often based oninner vision and knowledge of the existence of spiritual and ethereal universes of which our outerphysical universe is but the shell; and who has some inner knowledge that these universes or worlds orplanes or spheres, with their hosts of inhabitants, are intimately connected with the origin, destiny, andeven present nature of the world which surrounds us.Genuine mysticism is an ennobling study. The average mystic, however, is one who lacks the directguidance derived from personal teaching received from a master or spiritual superior.

mysticism ::: Mysticism The belief that one can rise above reason to achieve direct union with God or the Divine through meditation and intuition. In mystical practices, one attempts to merge with God or the Divine through a disciplined quest to achieve enlightenment. Some forms of mysticism include the Kabbalah, Sufism (Islam), Yoga, and Buddhism.

Mysticism The doctrine that the nature of reality can be known by direct apprehension, by faculties above the senses, by intuition. “Mysticism demands a faculty above reason, by which the subject shall be placed in immediate and complete union with the object of his desire — a union in which the consciousness of self has disappeared, and in which therefore subject and object are one” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th ed. “Mysticism”). It overlaps in meaning such terms as the Neoplatonic ecstasis, and the theosophy of Iamblichus.

ñana ::: same as revelatory intuition.

Naturalistic interpretations of duty tend to discredit such an intuitionistic basis and seek instead to account for duty and conscience as outgrowths of training, tradition and social custom. -- O.F.K.

Neo-intuitionism: See Intuitionism. Neo-Kantianism: A group of Kantian followers who regard the thing-in-itself or noumenal world as a limiting concept rather than, as did Kant, an existent, though unknowable realm. Reality is for the Neo-Kantians a construct of mind, not another realm. Even Kant's noumenal world is a construct of mind. The phenomenal world is the real and it is the realm of ideas. Hence Neo-Kantianism is a form of idealism. Hermann Cohen, a Neo-Kantian, spoke of the world as the creative act of thought. This idealism is sometimes termed "positivistic." -- V.F.

neutrosophic logic "logic" (Or "Smarandache logic") A generalisation of {fuzzy logic} based on {Neutrosophy}. A {proposition} is t true, i indeterminate, and f false, where t, i, and f are real values from the ranges T, I, F, with no restriction on T, I, F, or the sum n=t+i+f. Neutrosophic logic thus generalises: - {intuitionistic logic}, which supports incomplete theories (for 0"n"100 and i=0, 0"=t,i,f"=100); - {fuzzy logic} (for n=100 and i=0, and 0"=t,i,f"=100); - {Boolean logic} (for n=100 and i=0, with t,f either 0 or 100); - {multi-valued logic} (for 0"=t,i,f"=100); - {paraconsistent logic} (for n"100 and i=0, with both t,f"100); - {dialetheism}, which says that some contradictions are true (for t=f=100 and i=0; some {paradoxes} can be denoted this way). Compared with all other logics, neutrosophic logic introduces a percentage of "indeterminacy" - due to unexpected parameters hidden in some propositions. It also allows each component t,i,f to "boil over" 100 or "freeze" under 0. For example, in some {tautologies} t"100, called "overtrue". {(http://gallup.unm.edu/~smarandache/NeutLog.txt)}. ["Neutrosophy / Neutrosophic probability, set, and logic", F. Smarandache, American Research Press, 1998]. (1999-10-04)

neutrosophic logic ::: (logic) (Or Smarandache logic) A generalisation of fuzzy logic based on Neutrosophy. A proposition is t true, i indeterminate, and f false, where t, i, and f are real values from the ranges T, I, F, with no restriction on T, I, F, or the sum n=t+i+f. Neutrosophic logic thus generalises:- intuitionistic logic, which supports incomplete theories (for 0n100 and i=0, 0=t,i,f=100);- fuzzy logic (for n=100 and i=0, and 0=t,i,f=100);- Boolean logic (for n=100 and i=0, with t,f either 0 or 100);- multi-valued logic (for 0=t,i,f=100);- paraconsistent logic (for n>100 and i=0, with both t,f100);- dialetheism, which says that some contradictions are true (for t=f=100 and i=0; some paradoxes can be denoted this way).Compared with all other logics, neutrosophic logic introduces a percentage of indeterminacy - due to unexpected parameters hidden in some propositions. It also allows each component t,i,f to boil over 100 or freeze under 0. For example, in some tautologies t>100, called overtrue. .[Neutrosophy / Neutrosophic probability, set, and logic, F. Smarandache, American Research Press, 1998]. (1999-10-04)

neutrosophic set ::: (logic) A generalisation of the intuitionistic set, classical set, fuzzy set, paraconsistent set, dialetheist set, paradoxist set, tautological set based and f are real numbers taken from the sets T, I, and F with no restriction on T, I, F, nor on their sum n=t+i+f.The neutrosophic set generalises:- the intuitionistic set, which supports incomplete set theories (for 0n100 and i=0, 0=t,i,f=100);- the fuzzy set (for n=100 and i=0, and 0=t,i,f=100);- the classical set (for n=100 and i=0, with t,f either 0 or 100);- the paraconsistent set (for n>100 and i=0, with both t,f100);- the dialetheist set, which says that the intersection of some disjoint sets is not empty (for t=f=100 and i=0; some paradoxist sets can be denoted this way). .[Neutrosophy / Neutrosophic Probability, Set, and Logic, Florentin Smarandache, American Research Press, 1998]. (1999-12-14)

neutrosophic set "logic" A generalisation of the {intuitionistic set}, classical set, {fuzzy set}, {paraconsistent set}, {dialetheist set}, {paradoxist set}, {tautological set} based on {Neutrosophy}. An element x(T, I, F) belongs to the set in the following way: it is t true in the set, i indeterminate in the set, and f false, where t, i, and f are real numbers taken from the sets T, I, and F with no restriction on T, I, F, nor on their sum n=t+i+f. The neutrosophic set generalises: - the {intuitionistic set}, which supports incomplete set theories (for 0"n"100 and i=0, 0"=t,i,f"=100); - the {fuzzy set} (for n=100 and i=0, and 0"=t,i,f"=100); - the classical set (for n=100 and i=0, with t,f either 0 or 100); - the {paraconsistent set} (for n"100 and i=0, with both t,f"100); - the {dialetheist set}, which says that the intersection of some disjoint sets is not empty (for t=f=100 and i=0; some paradoxist sets can be denoted this way). {(http://gallup.unm.edu/~smarandache/NeutSet.txt)}. ["Neutrosophy / Neutrosophic Probability, Set, and Logic", Florentin Smarandache, American Research Press, 1998]. (1999-12-14)

Nishida Kitaro. (西田幾太郎) (1870-1945). Influential Japanese philosopher of the modern era and founder of what came to be known as the KYOTO SCHOOL, a contemporary school of Japanese philosophy that sought to synthesize ZEN Buddhist thought with modern Western, and especially Germanic, philosophy. Nishida was instrumental in establishing in Japan the discipline of philosophy as practiced in Europe and North America, as well as in exploring possible intersections between European philosophy and such Buddhist ontological notions as the idea of nonduality (ADVAYA). Nishida was born in 1870, just north of Ishikawa prefecture's capital city of Kanazawa. In 1894, he graduated from Tokyo Imperial University with a degree in philosophy and eventually took an appointment at Kyoto University, where he taught from 1910 until his retirement in 1927. At Kyoto University, Nishida attracted a group of students who would later become known collectively as the "Kyoto School." These philosophers addressed an array of philosophical concerns, including metaphysics, ontology, phenomenology, and epistemology, using Western critical methods but in conjunction with Eastern religious concepts. Nishida's influential 1911 publication Zen no kenkyu ("A Study of Goodness") synthesized Zen Buddhist and German phenomenology to explore the unity between the ordinary and the transcendent. He argued that, through "pure experience" (J. junsui keiken), an individual human being is able to come in contact with a limitless, absolute reality that can be described either as God or emptiness (suNYATĀ). In Nishida's treatment, philosophy is subsumed under the broader soteriological quest for individual awakening, and its significance derives from its effectiveness in bringing about this goal of awakening. Other important works by Nishida include Jikaku ni okeru chokkan to hansei ("Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness," 1917), Geijutsu to dotoku ("Art and Morality," 1923), Tetsugaku no konpon mondai ("Fundamental Problems of Philosophy," 1933), and Bashoteki ronri to shukyoteki sekaikan ("The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview," 1945). Nishida's Zen no kenkyu also helped lay the foundation for what later became regarded as Nihonjinron, a nationalist discourse that advocated the uniqueness and superiority of the Japanese race. Prominent in Nishida's philosophy is the idea that the Japanese-as exemplified in their exceptional cultivation of Zen, which here can stand for both Zen Buddhism and the homophonous word for "goodness"-are uniquely in tune with this concept of "pure experience." This familiarity, in part influenced by his longtime friend DAISETZ TEITARO SUZUKI, elevates the Japanese race mentally and spiritually above all other races in the world. This view grew in popularity during the era of Japanese colonial expansion and remained strong in some quarters even after the end of World War II. Since at least the 1970s, Nishida's work has been translated and widely read among English-speaking audiences. Beginning in the 1990s, however, his writings have come under critical scrutiny in light of their ties with Nihonjinron and Japanese nationalism.

Non-Natural Properties: A notion which plays an important part in recent intuitionistic ethics. A non-natural property is one which is neither natural, as yellow and pleasantness are, nor metaphysical, as absoluteness and being commanded by God are. It is, then, a property which is apprehended, not by sensation or by introspection, but in some other way, and which is somehow non-descriptive, non-expository, or non-existential. It is also said sometimes, e.g. by G. E. Moore and W. D. Ross, to be a consequential property, i.e. a property which a thing has in virtue of its having another property, as when an experience is good in virtue of being pleasant. See Intuitionism. -- W.K.F.

Noology: (Gr. nous, Mind; logos, Science) A term variously used, but without common acceptance, for the science of mind or of its noetic function. According to several 17th century German writers (Colovius, Mejerus, Wagnerus, Zeidlerus) it is the science of the first principles of knowledge. Crusius identified it with psychology. According to Kant it is the rationalistic theory of innate ideas. For Bentham "noological" is a synonym of logical. Noology is the field of mental science in which the will does not function in the production of mental events, that branch of psychology concerned with the field of purely mental change. For Hamilton it is the science of the noetic, i.e. the function and content of intellectual intuition or pure reason. Eucken distinguished noological method from the psychological and cosmological. Its object is the Spiritual Life, i.e. the source of Reality, and the self-contained goal in which man participates. For H. Gomperz it is the science that mediates between logic and psychology. -- W.L.

Nothing: Literally, not a thing. According to Kant, emptiness of concept, object or intuition. According to Hegel, the immediate, indeterminate notion of being. According to Peirce, that which possesses contrary attributes. -- J.K.F.

Noumenon: (Gr. noumenon) In Kant: An object or power transcending experience whose existence is theoretically problematic but must be postulated by practical reason. In theoretical terms Kant defined the noumenon positively as "the object of a non-sensuous intuition," negatively as "not an object of the sensuous intuition;" but since he denied the existence of any but sensuous intuitions, the noumenon remained an unknowable "x". In his practical philosophy, however, the postulation of a noumenal realm is necessary in order to explain the possibility of freedom. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.

Objective_probability ::: is the probability that an event will occur based an analysis in which each measure is based on a recorded observation or a long history of collected data. The concept of subjective probability can be contrasted with the idea subjective estimate. Objective probabilities are a more accurate way to determine the probability of a given outcome than subjective measurements. An objective probability will examine past data and use mathematical equations involving the data to determine the likelihood of an independent event occurring. An independent event is an event whose outcome is not influenced by prior events. Subjective probability, by contrast, may utilize some method of data analysis, but is largely based on a person's estimate or intuition about a situation and the likely outcome.

On the other hand the passage through the higher zones — higher Mind, illumined Mind, Intuition, overmind is obligatory — they are the true Intermediaries between the present consciousness and the supermind.” Letters on Yoga

On the other hand the passage through the higher zones—higher Mind, illumined Mind, Intuition, overmind is obligatory—they are the true Intermediaries between the present consciousness and the supermind.” Letters on Yoga

On the question as to what acts are right or to be done ethical theories fall into two groups (1) Axiological theories seek to determine what is right entirely by reference to the goodness or value of something, thus miking the theory of obligation dependent on the theorv of value. For a philosopher like Martineau it is the comparative goodness of its motive that determines which act is right. For a teleologist it is the comparative amount of good which it brings or probably will bring into being that determines which act is right -- the egoistic teleologist holding that the right act is the act which is most conducive to the good of the agent (some Sophists, Epicurus, Hobbes), and the universalistic teleologist holding that the right act is the act which is most conducive to the good of the world as a whole (see Utilitarianism). (2) On deontological theories see Deontological ethics and Intuitionism.

Orpheus may be regarded both as an ideal or as a man and teacher. In either case, whether cosmic or terrestrial, Orpheus corresponds to the unceasing attempts of the higher or spiritual ego to raise the lower ego out of the toils of matter, much as in the Gnostic story the Christos attempts to raises the Sophia, his own lower self or vehicle, out of the mire and toils of the inferior worlds. If the call of impersonal compassion be so strong that it become personal, in other words if Orpheus looks back to see and becomes attracted to the lower planes, he loses his Eurydice. Eurydice means “wide judgment,” the function of reason in the human constitution. Orpheus here would represent intuition, and Eurydice the reason: manas sunk in the earthly nature is raised to wisdom through buddhi.

Our subliminal self is not, like our surface physical being, an outcome of the energy of the Inconscient; it is a meeting-place of the consciousness that emerges from below by evolution and the consciousness that has descended from above for involution. There is in it an inner mind, an inner vital being of ourselves, an inner or subtle-physical being larger than our outer being and nature. This inner existence is the concealed origin of almost all in our surface self that is not a construction of the first inconscient World-Energy or a natural developed functioning of our surface consciousness or a reaction of it to impacts from the outside universal Nature,—and even in this construction, these functionings, these reactions the subliminal takes part and exercises on them a considerable influence. There is here a consciousness which has a power of direct contact with the universal unlike the mostly indirect contacts which our surface being maintains with the universe through the sense-mind and the senses. There are here inner senses, a subliminal sight, touch, hearing; but these subtle senses are rather channels of the inner being’s direct consciousness of things than its informants: the subliminal is not dependent on its senses for its knowledge, they only give a form to its direct experience of objects; they do not, so much as in waking mind, convey forms of objects for the mind’s documentation or as the starting-point or basis for an indirect constructive experience. The subliminal has the right of entry into the mental and vital and subtle-physical planes of the universal consciousness, it is not confined to the material plane and the physical world; it possesses means of communication with the worlds of being which the descent towards involution created in its passage and with all corresponding planes or worlds that may have arisen or been constructed to serve the purpose of the re-ascent from Inconscience to Superconscience. It is into this large realm of interior existence that our mind and vital being retire when they withdraw from the surface activities whether by sleep or inward-drawn concentration or by the inner plunge of trance. Our waking state is unaware of its connection with the subliminal being, although it receives from it—but without any knowledge of the place of origin—the inspirations, intuitions, ideas, will-suggestions, sense-suggestions, urges to action that rise from below or from behind our limited surface existence. Sleep like trance opens the gate of the subliminal to us; for in sleep, as in trance, we retire behind the veil of the limited waking personality and it is behind this veil that the subliminal has its existence. But we receive the records of our sleep experience through dream and in dream figures and not in that condition which might be called an inner waking and which is the most accessible form of the trance state, nor through the supernormal clarities of vision and other more luminous and concrete ways of communication developed by the inner subliminal cognition when it gets into habitual or occasional conscious connection with our waking self. The subliminal, with the subconscious as an annexe of itself,—for the subconscious is also part of the behind-the-veil entity,—is the seer of inner things and of supraphysical experiences; the surface subconscious is only a transcriber. It is for this reason that the Upanishad describes the subliminal being as the Dream Self because it is normally in dreams, visions, absorbed states of inner experience that we enter into and are part of its experiences...
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 236


Overmind ::: Overmind is the highest source of the cosmic consciousness available to the embodied being in the Ignorance. It is part of the cosmic consciousness—but the human individual when he opens into the cosmic usually remains in the cosmic Mind-Life- Matter receiving only inspirations and influences from the higher planes of Intuition and Overmind. He receives through the spiritualised higher and illumined mind the fundamental experiences on which spiritual knowledge is based; he can become even full of intuitive mind movements, illuminations, various kinds of powers and illumined light, liberation, Ananda. But to rise fully into the Intuition is rare, to reach the Overmind still rarer— although influences and experiences can come down from there.
   Ref: CWSA Vol.28, Letters on Yoga-I, Page: 152


overmind system ::: a term used on 29 October 1927 (when the word "overmind" first occurs) for what earlier in that year had consisted of a series of planes, divisible into four groups, rising from supramentality to gnostic supermind. In 1933, Sri Aurobindo wrote that the overmind "can for convenience be divided into four planes", which he called mental overmind, intuitive overmind or overmind intuition, true overmind, and supramental overmind or overmind gnosis, "but there are many layers in each and each of these can be regarded as a plane in itself". In the diagram of overmind gradations on page 1360 (c. 1931), mental overmind seems to be missing, but overmind logos is listed between intuitive overmind and formative maya, the latter evidently designating the principal plane of true overmind. Overmind logos may represent mental overmind; its position in the diagram could be explained if its highest level is assumed to be a form of mental overmind taken up into true overmind and constituting a plane of overmind proper, like the supramentalised mind in overmind of 1927-28.P

perceive ::: v. t. --> To obtain knowledge of through the senses; to receive impressions from by means of the bodily organs; to take cognizance of the existence, character, or identity of, by means of the senses; to see, hear, or feel; as, to perceive a distant ship; to perceive a discord.
To take intellectual cognizance of; to apprehend by the mind; to be convinced of by direct intuition; to note; to remark; to discern; to see; to understand.


perception ::: immediate or intuitive recognition; insight, intuition, discernment. perception"s.

Philosophy of Religion: An inquiry into the general subject of religion from the philosophical point of view, i.e., an inquiry employing the accepted tools of critical analysis and evaluation without a predisposition to defend or reject the claims of any particular religion. Among the specific questions considered are the nature, function and value of religion; the validity of the claims of religious knowledge; the relation of religion and ethics; the character of ideal religion; the nature of evil; the problem of theodicy; revealed versus natural religion; the problem of the human spirit (soul) and its destiny; the relation of the human to the divine as to the freedom and responsibility of the individual and the character (if any) of a divine purpose; evaluation of the claims of prophecy, mystic intuitions, special revelations, inspired utterances; the value of prayers of petition; the human hope of immortality; evaluation of institutional forms of expressions, rituals, creeds, ceremonies, rites, missionary propaganda; the meaning of human existence, the character of value, its status in the world of reality, the existence and character of deity; the nature of belief and faith, etc.

Planes, Higher ::: …from the point of view of the ascent of consciousness from our mind upwards through a rising series of dynamic powers by which it can sublimate itself, the gradation can be resolved into a stairway of four main ascents, each with its high level of fulfilment. These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, IlluminedMind and Intuition into Overmind and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 972


pra cetayati ketuna ::: makes conscious by the ray of intuition. [RV 1.3.12]

pratibha. ::: special mental power; imaginative insight; intelligence; splendour of knowledge; intuition; ever-creative activity or consciousness

preferences, fancies, phantasies, strong insistences and to elimi- nate the mental and vital ego’s pressure which sets the conscious- ness to work in the service of its o^vn claims and desires. Other- wise these things will come io with force and claim to be intui- tions, inspirations and the rest of it or if any intuitions come, they can be twisted and spoiled by the mixture of these forces of the Ignorance.

Prima facie duties: A phrase used by W. D. Ross to indicate the nature of the general material rules of duty which he regarded as self-evident. Promise-keeping is a prima facie duty, one among others. I.e., if I have made a promise, I have a prima facie duty to keep it, which means that I will have an actual duty to keep it, if no higher prima facie duty is incumbent upon me. What Ross calls "prima facie duties" H. A. Prichard calls "claims" and E. F. Carntt "responsibilities." The notion is central to the recent neo-intuitionism of Oxford, constituting its reply to the usual objection to intuited general material propositions about duty on the score that these may conflict and must admit of exceptions. -- W.K.F.

primary logistic gnosis ::: same as intuitional ideality. primary utth utthapana

prophecy ::: “If this higher buddhi {{understanding in the profoundest sense] could act pure of the interference of these lower members, it would give pure forms of the truth; observation would be dominated or replaced by a vision which could see without subservient dependence on the testimony of the sense-mind and senses; imagination would give place to the self-assured inspiration of the truth, reasoning to the spontaneous discernment of relations and conclusion from reasoning to an intuition containing in itself those relations and not building laboriously upon them, judgment to a thought-vision in whose light the truth would stand revealed without the mask which it now wears and which our intellectual judgment has to penetrate; while memory too would take upon itself that larger sense given to it in Greek thought and be no longer a paltry selection from the store gained by the individual in his present life, but rather the all-recording knowledge which secretly holds and constantly gives from itself everything that we now seem painfully to acquire but really in this sense remember, a knowledge which includes the future(1) no less than the past.

∼p, the negation of p, "not p." Instead of ∼, a dash − may be used, written either before the propositional symbol or above it. Heyting adds a short downward stroke at the right end of the dash (a notation which has come to be associated particularly with the intuitionistic propositional calculus and the intuitionistic concept of negation). Also employed is an accent after the propositional symbol (but this more usual as a notation for the complement of a class). In the Lukasiewicz notation, the negation of p is Np.

quest ::: “The quest of man for God, which becomes in the end the most ardent and enthralling of all his quests, begins with his first vague questionings of Nature and a sense of something unseen both in himself and her. Even if, as modern Science insists, religion started from animism, spirit-worship, demon-worship, and the deification of natural forces, these first forms only embody in primitive figures a veiled intuition in the subconscient, an obscure and ignorant feeling of hidden influences and incalculable forces, or a vague sense of being, will, intelligence in what seems to us inconscient, of the invisible behind the visible, of the secretly conscious spirit in things distributing itself in every working of energy. The obscurity and primitive inadequacy of the first perceptions do not detract from the value or the truth of this great quest of the human heart and mind, since all our seekings,—including Science itself,—must start from an obscure and ignorant perception of hidden realities and proceed to the more and more luminous vision of the Truth which at first comes to us masked, draped, veiled by the mists of the Ignorance. Anthropomorphism is an imaged recognition of the truth that man is what he is because God is what He is and that there is one soul and body of things, humanity even in its incompleteness the most complete manifestation yet achieved here and divinity the perfection of what in man is imperfect.” The Life Divine

Radha’s colour. Usually the deeper blue is Higher Mind, a paler blue is Illumined Mind (or something of the Intuition), whitish blue is Sri Krishna’s light. Whitish blue like moonlight :::

REASON. ::: The reason has its place especially with regard to certain physical things and general worldly questions — though even there it is a very fallible judge — or in the forma- tion of metaphysical conclusions and generalisations ; but its claim to be the decisive aulhori^ in matters of yoga or in spiritual things is untenable. The activities of the outward intellect there lead only to the formation of personal opinions, not to the discovery of Truth. It has always been understood in India that the reason and its logic or its judgment cannot give you the realisation of spiiitua] truths but can only assist in an intellectual presentation of ideas; realisation comes by intuition and inner experience. Reason and intellectuality cannot make you see the Divine, it is the soul that sees. Mind and the other instruments can only share in the vision when it is imparted to them by the soul and welcome and rejoice in it. But also the mind may prevent it or at least stand long in the way of the realisation of the vision. For its prepossessions. prKonceived

Rejected in particular by intuitionism are the use of impredicative definition (q. v.); the assumption that all things satisfying a given condition can be united into a set and this set then treated as an individual thing --or even the weakened form of this assumption which is found in Zermelo's Aussonderungsaxiom or axiom of subset formation (see logic, formal, § 9); the law of excluded middle as applied to propositions whose expression lequires a quantifier for which the variable involved has an infinite range. As an example of the rejection of the law of excluded middle, consider the proposition, "Either every even number greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers or else not every even number greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers." This proposition is intuitionistically unacceptable, because there are infinitely many even numbers greater than 2 and it is impossible to try them all one by one and decide of each whether or not it is the sum of two prime numbers. An intuitionist would accept the disjunction only after a proof had been given of one or other of the two disjoined propositions -- and in the present state of mathematical knowledge it is not certain that this can be done (it is not certain that the mathematical problem involved is solvable). If, however, we replace "greater than 2" by "greater than 2 and less than 1,000,000,000," the resulting disjunction becomes intuitionistically acceptable, since the number of numbers involved is then finite. The intuitionistic rejection of the law of excluded middle is not to be understood as an assertion of the negation of the law of excluded middle; on the contrary, Brouwer asserts the negation of the negation of the law of excluded middle, i.e., ∼∼[p ∨ ∼p]. Still less is the intuitionistic rejection of the law of excluded middle to be understood as the assertion of the existence of a third truth-value intermediate between truth and falsehood.

Religion ::: An operation of the human spiritual mind in its endeavor to understand not only the how and the why ofthings, but comprising in addition a yearning and striving towards self-conscious union with the divineAll and an endlessly growing self-conscious identification with the cosmic divine-spiritual realities. Onephase of a triform method of understanding the nature of nature, of universal nature, and its multiformand multifold workings; and this phase cannot be separated from the other two phases (science andphilosophy) if we wish to gain a true picture of things as they are in themselves.Human religion is the expression of that aspect of man's consciousness which is intuitional, aspirational,and mystical, and which is often deformed and distorted in its lower forms by the emotional in man.It is usual among modern Europeans to derive the word religion from the Latin verb meaning "to bindback" -- religare. But there is another derivation, which is the one that Cicero chooses, and of course hewas a Roman himself and had great skill and deep knowledge in the use of his own native tongue. Thisother derivation comes from a Latin root meaning "to select," "to choose," from which, likewise, we havethe word lex, "law," i.e., the course of conduct or rule of action which is chosen as the best, and istherefore followed; in other words, that which is the best of its kind, as ascertained by selection, by trial,and by proof.Thus then, the meaning of the word religion from the Latin religio, means a careful selection offundamental beliefs and motives by the higher or spiritual intellect, a faculty of intuitional judgment andunderstanding, and a consequent abiding by that selection, resulting in a course of life and conduct in allrespects following the convictions that have been arrived at. This is the religious spirit.To this the theosophist would add the following very important idea: behind all the various religions andphilosophies of ancient times there is a secret or esoteric wisdom given out by the greatest men who haveever lived, the founders and builders of the various world religions and world philosophies; and thissublime system in fundamentals has been the same everywhere over the face of the globe.This system has passed under various names, e.g., the esoteric philosophy, the ancient wisdom, the secretdoctrine, the traditional teaching, theosophy, etc. (See also Science, Philosophy)

Religious A Priori: A separate, innate category of the human consciousness, religious in that it issues certain insights and indisputable certainties concerning God or a Superhuman Presence. Man's religious nature rests upon the peculiar character of his mind. He possesses a native apprehension of the Divine. God's existence is guaranteed as an axiomatic truth. For Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923) this a priori quality of the mind is both a rational intuition and an immediate experience. God is present as a real fact both rationally and empirically. For Rudolf Otto this a priori quality of the mind is a non-rational awareness of the holy, mysterious and awe-inspiring divine Reality. Man posesses a kind of eerie sense of a Presence which is the basis of the genuinely religious feeling. See Numinous. -- V.F.

representative ::: (in 1920) being of the nature of a luminous thoughtrepresentation of truth which is "a partial manifestation of a greater knowledge existing in the self but not at the time present to the immediately active consciousness", related to smr.ti and its faculty of intuition in its power of "recalling as it were to the spirit"s knowledge the truth that is called out more directly by the higher powers" of interpretative and purely revelatory vision; specifically, pertaining to the highest form of intuitive revelatory logistis, called representative revelatory vijñana, or to the lowest element in the highest representative ideality; (in 1927) short for representative imperative. representative highest vijñana

revelative intuition viveka ::: smr.ti (intuition and viveka) combined with dr.s.t.i (revelation).

revelatory ::: having the nature of revelation (dr.s.t.i), as it acts on the level of revelatory logistis or another level of ideality or intuitive mind, often in combination with intuition or inspiration; (in 1920) sometimes equivalent to full revelatory, sometimes to lower revelatory.

revelatory intuitional ::: having the nature of revelatory intuition.

revelatory intuitional ideality ::: same as revelatory intuition.

revelatory intuition ::: intuition with an element of revelation; the highest form of intuitional ideality.

revelatory intuitive ::: same as revelatory intuitional. revelatory intuitive vijñana

Ritschlianism: A celebrated school of 19th century Christian thought inaugurated by Albrecht Ritschl (1822-89). This school argued for God upon the basis of what is called the religious value-judgment. Two kinds of judgments are said to characterize man's reaction to his world of experience: (1) dependent or concomitant, those dependent upon perceived facts, such as the natural sciences; (2) independent or religious those which affirm man's superior worth independent of the limitations of the finite world and man's dependence upon a superhuman order of reality, God. God is not reached by speculation, nor by the "evidences" in nature, nor by intuitions or mystic experience, nor by a rational a priori or intimate feeling. God is implied in the religious value judgment: "though he slay me will I trust him." That man needs God as a deliverer from his bonds is the assertion of the independent religious value-judgment; the consequences following this judgment of need and worth sustain him with courage and victory over every obstacl.e Ritschlianism is notable in the emphasis it placed upon the category of value, an emphasis which has grown stronger in contemporary theistic belief. -- V.F.

RULES. ::: In the things of the subtle kind having to do with the working of consciousness in the sadhana. one has to Icam to feel and observe and sec with the inner consciousness and to decide by the intuition with a plastic look on things which docs not make set definitions and rules as one has to do in ouUvard life.

sahajadr.s.t.i (sahajadrishti) ::: innate perception; intuition. sahajadrsti

Sarama ::: a Vedic goddess whose action is "a forerunner of the dawn Sarama of Truth in the human mind", depicted in "the figure of the divine hound which was . . . a possibly later development of the Vedic imagery"; she represents the discovering intuition, a faculty "which goes straight to the Truth by the straight path of the Truth and not through the crooked paths of doubt and error".

Sarama ::: the Hound of Heaven, represents the faculty of intuition. [Ved.]

satyasatya ::: truth and falsehood, a duality (dvandva) of the mind satyasatya "created by our limited nature of consciousness and the partiality of our intellect and its little stock of reasonings and intuitions".

Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von (1775-1854) Founder of the philosophy of identity which holds that subject and object coincide in the Absolute, a state to be realized in intellectual intuition. Deeply involved in romanticism, Schelling's philosophy of nature culminates in a transcendental idealism where nature and spirit are linked in a series of developments by unfolding powers or potencies, together forming one great organism in which nature is dynamic visible spirit and spirit invisible nature. Freedom and necessity are different refractions of the same reality. Supplementing science -- which deals with matter as extinguished spirit and endeavors to rise from nature to intelligence -- philosophy investigates the development of spirit, theoretically practically, and artistically, converts the subjective into the objective, and shows how the world soul or living principle animates the whole. Schelling's monism recognizes nature and spirit as real and ideal poles respectively, the latter being the positive one. It is pantheistic and aesthetic in that it allows the world process to create with free necessity unconsciously at first in the manner of an artist. Art is perfect union of freedom and necessity, beauty reflects the infinite in the finite. History is the progressive revelation of the Absolute. The ultimate thinking of Schelling headed toward mysticism in which man, his personality expanded into the infinite, becomes absorbed into the absolute self, free from necessity, contingency, consciousness, and personality. Sämmtliche Werke, 14 vols. (1856, re-edited 1927). Cf. Kuno Fischer, Schellings Leben, Werke und Lehre; E. Brehier, Schelling, 1912; V. Jankelevitch, L'Odysee de la conscience dans la derniere philosophie de Schelling, 1933. -- K.F.L.

seer ideality ::: the highest of the three planes of ideality, evidently the plane whose essence is dr.s.t.i or revelation, as the essence of the logistic ideality is smr.ti and the essence of the hermetic ideality is sruti; the seer logistis, in which the action of the seer ideality is "modified to suit the lower key of the logistis", is sometimes referred to by the same name. If the plane of highest mind or intuitive consciousness in the diagram on page 1360 (c. 1931) is correlated with the seer ideality of 1919, this plane would seem to correspond to what Sri Aurobindo in his later writings called "Intuition", about which he explained: "what is thought-knowledge in the Higher Mind becomes illumination in the Illumined Mind and direct intimate vision in the Intuition".

Seer In its highest sense, one who discerns truths clearly by the use of the real inner vision, the Eye of Siva; who can see throughout the ranges of space and time belonging to a universe — not barring intuitions of the spaces and times of other surrounding universes. But it is also used for a number of varying degrees of ability to see clairvoyantly in the astral light. Swedenborg is sometimes called a seer, which he was in small degree, but because he was untrained, what he saw was mainly peculiar to himself, as is the case with seers of the same class. Instructions for aspirants to wisdom are replete with warnings as to the manifold dangers and deceptions of the astral light, and the obstacles thrown up by the unpurified and undisciplined nature of the disciple. The ability to become a true spiritual seer using the inner eye, means the fruits of many lives of aspiration and training, involving the successful passing of many trials and initiations. The science called gupta-vidya is due to the collaboration and teaching of real seers, whose trained faculties enable them to have direct vision of actualities.

Self-Evidence: That property of a proposition by which its truth is open to direct inspection and requires no appeal to other evidence. See Intuition. -- A.C.B.

Selflessness The attribute of the atman, the essential self or selfhood; on the upward arc of evolution we strive to wean our lower or personal self from attachments to objects of personal desire and to achieve the universality of feeling which pertains to this divine essence (atman). Without the altruistic intuition, no society, whether of animals or humans, could hold together. Instead of regarding selflessness as a lofty and difficult goal to be attained by climbing, we can regard it as an original “home” from which we have wandered.

Self Theosophical literature distinguishes between self and ego: self is a purely spiritual unit, divine in essence, the same in every being, expressed as “I am”; egos are many, different in different beings, and expressed as “I am I.” Egos are indirect or reflected consciousnesses, seeing themselves as apart from other egos, each having its own individualized characteristics. But the self or atman is the purest and strongest intuition of being as a universal principle and as the summit of the hierarchy called man. It is pure consciousness, the essential principle which gives to every person knowledge of selfhood. As it has no egoic consciousness, it seems to our reason to be unconsciousness. To become self-conscious, a vehicle is needed, so that the self may see itself reflected as in a mirror.

sensationalism ::: n. --> The doctrine held by Condillac, and by some ascribed to Locke, that our ideas originate solely in sensation, and consist of sensations transformed; sensualism; -- opposed to intuitionalism, and rationalism.
The practice or methods of sensational writing or speaking; as, the sensationalism of a novel.


Sensation: (Ger. Empfindung) In Kant: The content of sensuous intuition, or the way in which a conscious subject is modified by the presence of an object. Kant usually employs the term to designate the content sensed instead of the process of sensing. The process he calls 'intuition' (q.v.); the faculty he names 'sensibility' (q.v.). See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.

Sense Manifold: See Manifold of Sense. Sensibility: (Kant. Ger. Sinnlichkeit) The faculty by means of which the mind receives sensuous intuitions (q.v.). The sensibility is receptive (passive), while understanding and reason are spontaneous (active). See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.

SHEATHS. ::: A term (or bodies because each is superimposed on the other and acts as a covering and can be cast off. You can only distinguish the different sheaths cither by intuition or by experience and then you have established direct knowledge of the different sheaths.

sixthsense ::: Sixth Sense A popular term for ESP, also known as intuition or inspiration, it is an ability to perceive things in ways which transcend the use of our traditional five senses.

smr.ti (smriti) ::: memory; the faculty of jñana "by which true knowlsmrti edge hidden in the mind reveals itself to the judgment and is recognised at once as the truth". It consists of intuition and viveka and is the essence of logistic ideality.

Sometimes upadhi is interchangeable with vahana (vehicle); thus manas is spoken of as the upadhi or vahana of buddhi. But the more frequent use of upadhi is as a foundation or base. For instance, Blavatsky speaks of hydrogen as the upadhi of both air and water; and of akasa as the upadhi of divine thought. “Cosmic Ideation focussed in a principle or upadhi (basis) results as the consciousness of the individual Ego. Its manifestation varies with the degree of upadhi, e.g., through that known as Manas it wells up as Mind-Consciousness; through the more finely differentiated fabric (sixth state of matter) of the Buddhi resting on the experience of Manas as its basis — as a stream of spiritual intuition” (SD 1:329n).

Sortes Sanctorum (Latin) [from sors lot + sanctum holy] Divination of the holy ones; the oracular responses, sayings, or prophecies of the oracles. In a more popular sense, the mere casting of lots, or the attempt to ascertain the future by methods which have been popular throughout the ages. Divination was sometimes resorted to in the early Christian Church, and sanctioned even by Augustine, with the proviso that it must be used only for pure and lofty purposes. One manner probably consisted in picking a passage in holy writ, after praying for divine guidance. In the ancient sanctuaries, however, a genuine divination was practiced by actual seers who based their operations upon mathematics and on the fact that nature foreshadows what is to come to pass, because all her processes are regulated by law, and are consistent sequences of phenomena connected in a causal chain from spiritual originants. Thus the ancient seer or forecaster, taking almost any natural occurrence, or a series of them, could from his trained faculties, forecast what the present series of events in nature were inevitably leading towards. To do this successfully one would have to be a genuine seer, which means employing the awakened intuition and spiritual clairvoyance which lie latent in most human beings.

Space, homogeneous: A form of sensibility, an intuition peculiar to man which enables him to externalize his concepts in relation to one another, reveals the objectivity of things; foreshadows and prepares the way for social life. (Bergson). -- H.H.

Space: In Aristotle, the container of all objects. In the Cambridge Platonists, the sensorium of God. In Kant: the a priori form of intuition of external phenomena. In modern math., name for certain abstract invariant gioups or set's. See Space-Time. -- P.P.W.

Space-perception: (Lat. spatium) The apprehension of the spatial properties and relations of the concrete objects of ordinary sense perception in contrast to the conceptual knowledge of the abstract spaces of physics and mathematics. Theories of space-perception are: a) nativistic, when they endow the mind with a primitive intuition of space which becomes qualitatively differentiated through sense experience; b) empirical, when they assume that perceptual space emerges fiom the correlation of the spatial features of the different senses. -- L.W.

Spirits of Place ::: Spirits attached to a particular location and which tend to make their presence known through intuition and aesthetics.

Spiritual initdiion is always a more luminous guide than the discriminating reason and spiritual intuition addresses itself to us not only through the reason, but through the rest of (he being as well, through the heart and life also.

..[Spiritual planes above the normal range of Mind, the Higher Mind and the Illumined Mind] of the ascent enjoy their authority and can get their own united completeness only by a
   reference to a third level; for it is from the higher summits where dwells the intuitional being that they derive the knowledge which they turn into thought or sight and bring down to us for the mind’s transmutation. 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 vibrateswith 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. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 981-982


Spiritual Powers Generally used in contradistinction to psychic powers; for while psychic powers pertain to the intermediate, psychomental part of human nature, the spiritual powers pertain to the higher part. Hence the psychic powers, precisely because intermediaries, may become the instrument either of our higher or of our lower nature, being vehicular products in themselves and subject to influx from above or below. The spiritual powers cannot be used for selfish and personal ends because their svabhava is universality and impersonality, attributes which link man with the surrounding universe. They emanate from the spiritual monad, atma-buddhi. We are able to use spiritual powers when our manas acts in conjunction with the spiritual monad. Such powers cannot be evoked by personal ambition or any form of acquisitiveness, because they do not rise above the intermediate or psychic nature and make no appeal to the spirit above; in fact, spiritual powers are the fruit of renunciation, of the replacing of the personal with the universal, the resigning of the limited for the virtually limitless, the giving up of the small for the great. Spiritual powers consist in a clear intuition of the truth, leading to right conduct, an ability to help and teach others — the powers which we attribute to a Buddha or Christ.

Sri Aurobindo: "Finally, we have the goddess Dakshina who may well be a female form of Daksha, himself a god and afterwards in the Purana one of the Prajapatis, the original progenitors, — we have Dakshina associated with the manifestation of knowledge and sometimes almost identified with Usha, the divine Dawn, who is the bringer of illumination. I shall suggest that Dakshina like the more famous Ila, Saraswati and Sarama, is one of four goddesses representing the four faculties of the Ritam or Truth-consciousness, — Ila representing truth-vision or revelation, Saraswati truth-audition, inspiration, the divine word, Sarama intuition, Dakshina the separative intuitional discrimination.” *The Secret of the Veda

Sri Aurobindo: "If this higher buddhi {{understanding in the profoundest sense] could act pure of the interference of these lower members, it would give pure forms of the truth; observation would be dominated or replaced by a vision which could see without subservient dependence on the testimony of the sense-mind and senses; imagination would give place to the self-assured inspiration of the truth, reasoning to the spontaneous discernment of relations and conclusion from reasoning to an intuition containing in itself those relations and not building laboriously upon them, judgment to a thought-vision in whose light the truth would stand revealed without the mask which it now wears and which our intellectual judgment has to penetrate; while memory too would take upon itself that larger sense given to it in Greek thought and be no longer a paltry selection from the store gained by the individual in his present life, but rather the all-recording knowledge which secretly holds and constantly gives from itself everything that we now seem painfully to acquire but really in this sense remember, a knowledge which includes the future(1) no less than the past. ::: Footnote: In this sense the power of prophecy has been aptly called a memory of the future.]” *The Synthesis of Yoga

Sri Aurobindo: "The quest of man for God, which becomes in the end the most ardent and enthralling of all his quests, begins with his first vague questionings of Nature and a sense of something unseen both in himself and her. Even if, as modern Science insists, religion started from animism, spirit-worship, demon-worship, and the deification of natural forces, these first forms only embody in primitive figures a veiled intuition in the subconscient, an obscure and ignorant feeling of hidden influences and incalculable forces, or a vague sense of being, will, intelligence in what seems to us inconscient, of the invisible behind the visible, of the secretly conscious spirit in things distributing itself in every working of energy. The obscurity and primitive inadequacy of the first perceptions do not detract from the value or the truth of this great quest of the human heart and mind, since all our seekings, — including Science itself, — must start from an obscure and ignorant perception of hidden realities and proceed to the more and more luminous vision of the Truth which at first comes to us masked, draped, veiled by the mists of the Ignorance. Anthropomorphism is an imaged recognition of the truth that man is what he is because God is what He is and that there is one soul and body of things, humanity even in its incompleteness the most complete manifestation yet achieved here and divinity the perfection of what in man is imperfect.” The Life Divine

Sri Aurobindo: "We see at once that if such an Existence is, it must be, like the Energy, infinite. Neither reason nor experience nor intuition nor imagination bears witness to us of the possibility of a final terminus. All end and beginning presuppose something beyond the end or beginning. An absolute end, an absolute beginning is not only a contradiction in terms, but a contradiction of the essence of things, a violence, a fiction. Infinity imposes itself upon the appearances of the finite by its ineffugable self-existence.” *The Life Divine

sruti-smr.ti (sruti-smriti) ::: a combination of sruti (inspiration) and sruti-smrti smr.ti (intuition and discrimination).

sruti ::: sruti (inspiration) acting on a basis of smr.ti (intuition and discrimination).

Stanzas of Dzyan Archaic verses of philosophical and cosmogonical content drawn from the Book of Dzyan, which form the basis of The Secret Doctrine. They present the esoteric teachings in regard to cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis, and are the ancient heritage of humanity as preserved by the brotherhood of mahatmas. Every race and nation has drawn from this source through the medium of its initiated or inspired teachers and saviors. Only portions of the original verses are given in The Secret Doctrine, and Blavatsky’s presentation there represents the first time that they have been set down in a modern European language; her endeavor always was to represent the meaning rather than to give a merely literal rendering of the words: “it must be left to the intuition and the higher faculties of the reader to grasp, as far as he can, the meaning of the allegorical phrases used. Indeed it must be remembered that all these Stanzas appeal to the inner faculties rather than to the ordinary comprehension of the physical brain” (SD 1:21).

Still there is an increasing self-limitation which begins even with Overmind: Overmind is separated by only a luminous border from the full light and power of the supramental Truth and it still commands direct access to all that Supermind can give it. There is a further limitation or change of characteristic action at each step downwards from Overmind to Intuition, from Intuition to Illumined Mind, from Illumined Mind to what I have called the Higher Mind: the Mind of Light is a transitional passage by which we can pass from supermind and superhumanity to an illumined humanity.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 13, Page: 589-90


Supermind ::: The Supermind [Supramental consciousness] is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciousness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable. This is because its very nature is knowledge: it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in its own right; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper perception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter and boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights, it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error: it starts from truth and light and moves always in truth and light. As its knowledge is always true, so too its will is always true; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the Supermind feeling and emotion do not depart from their truth, make no slips or mistakes, do not swerve from the right and the real, cannot misuse beauty and delight or twist away from a divine rectitude. In the Supermind sense cannot mislead or deviate into the grossnesses which are here its natural imperfections and the cause of reproach, distrust and misuse by our ignorance. Even an incomplete statement made by the Supermind is a truth leading to a further truth, its incomplete action a step towards completeness. All the life and action and leading of the Supermind is guarded in its very nature from the falsehoods and uncertainties that are our lot; it moves in safety towards its perfection. Once the truth-consciousness was established here on its own sure foundation, the evolution of divine life would be a progress in felicity, a march through light to Ananda. Supermind is an eternal reality of the divine Being and the divine Nature. In its own plane it already and always exists and possesses its own essential law of being; it has not to be created or to emerge or evolve into existence out of involution in Matter or out of non-existence, as it might seem to the view of mind which itself seems to its own view to have so emerged from life and Matter or to have evolved out of an involution in life and Matter. The nature of Supermind is always the same, a being of knowledge, proceeding from truth to truth, creating or rather manifesting what has to be manifested by the power of a pre-existent knowledge, not by hazard but by a self-existent destiny in the being itself, a necessity of the thing in itself and th
   refore inevitable. Its -manifestation of the divine life will also be inevitable; its own life on its own plane is divine and, if Supermind descends upon the earth, it will bring necessarily the divine life with it and establish it here. Supermind is the grade of existence beyond mind, life and Matter and, as mind, life and Matter have manifested on the earth, so too must Supermind in the inevitable course of things manifest in this world of Matter. In fact, a supermind is already here but it is involved, concealed behind this manifest mind, life and Matter and not yet acting overtly or in its own power: if it acts, it is through these inferior powers and modified by their characters and so not yet recognisable. It is only by the approach and arrival of the descending Supermind that it can be liberated upon earth and reveal itself in the action of our material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity of our whole being: it is that that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life. It is indeed so that life and mind involved in Matter have realised themselves here; for only what is involved can evolve, otherwise there could be no emergence. The manifestation of a supramental truth-consciousness is th
   refore the capital reality that will make the divine life possible. It is when all the movements of thought, impulse and action are governed and directed by a self-existent and luminously automatic truth-consciousness and our whole nature comes to be constituted by it and made of its stuff that the life divine will be complete and absolute. Even as it is, in reality though not in the appearance of things, it is a secret self-existent knowledge and truth that is working to manifest itself in the creation here. The Divine is already there immanent within us, ourselves are that in our inmost reality and it is this reality that we have to manifest; it is that which constitutes the urge towards the divine living and makes necessary the creation of the life divine even in this material existence. A manifestation of the Supermind and its truth-consciousness is then inevitable; it must happen in this world sooner or later. But it has two aspects, a descent from above, an ascent from below, a self-revelation of the Spirit, an evolution in Nature. The ascent is necessarily an effort, a working of Nature, an urge or nisus on her side to raise her lower parts by an evolutionary or revolutionary change, conversion or transformation into the divine reality and it may happen by a process and progress or by a rapid miracle. The descent or self-revelation of the Spirit is an act of the supreme Reality from above which makes the realisation possible and it can appear either as the divine aid which brings about the fulfilment of the progress and process or as the sanction of the miracle. Evolution, as we see it in this world, is a slow and difficult process and, indeed, needs usually ages to reach abiding results; but this is because it is in its nature an emergence from inconscient beginnings, a start from nescience and a working in the ignorance of natural beings by what seems to be an unconscious force. There can be, on the contrary, an evolution in the light and no longer in the darkness, in which the evolving being is a conscious participant and cooperator, and this is precisely what must take place here. Even in the effort and progress from the Ignorance to Knowledge this must be in part if not wholly the endeavour to be made on the heights of the nature, and it must be wholly that in the final movement towards the spiritual change, realisation, transformation. It must be still more so when there is a transition across the dividing line between the Ignorance and the Knowledge and the evolution is from knowledge to greater knowledge, from consciousness to greater consciousness, from being to greater being. There is then no longer any necessity for the slow pace of the ordinary evolution; there can be rapid conversion, quick transformation after transformation, what would seem to our normal present mind a succession of miracles. An evolution on the supramental levels could well be of that nature; it could be equally, if the being so chose, a more leisurely passage of one supramental state or condition of things to something beyond but still supramental, from level to divine level, a building up of divine gradations, a free growth to the supreme Supermind or beyond it to yet undreamed levels of being, consciousness and Ananda.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 13, Page: 558-62


supramental gnosis ::: (in April 1927) a term comprising the planes called (gnostic) intuition, supermind and gnostic supermind as defined before the introduction of the term overmind and the redefinition of these planes as parts of the overmind system.

supramental reason ::: a term used in April 1927 for some parts of what later in the year came to be called the overmind system; it seems to include grades up to supreme supermind other than gnostic intuition and is possibly related to overmind logos in the diagram on page 1(c. 1931). supreme d dasya

Synthesis: In logic, the general method of deduction or deductive reasoning, which proceeds from the simple to the complex, from the general to the particular, from the necessary to the contingent, from a principle to its application, from a general law to individual cases from cause to effect, from an antecedent to its consequent, from a condition to the conditioned, from the logical whole to the logical part. The logical composition or combination of separate elements of thought, and also the result of this process. A judgment is considered as a synthesis when its predicate is accidental or contingent with respect to the subject: as the ground of such a synthesis is experience, synthetic judgments are a posteriori. The Kantian doctrine of synthetic judgments a priori involves a synthesis between two terms, prior to experience and through the agency of the forms of our intuition or of our understanding. The logical process of adding some elements to the comprehension of a concept in oider to obtain its 'logical division' in contradistinction to the 'real division' which breaks up a composition by analysis. The third phase in the dialectical process, combining the thesis and the antithesis for the emergence of a new level of being. In natural philosophy, the process of combining various material elements into a new substance. The ait of making or building up a compound by simpler compounds or by its elements. Also, the complex substance so formed.

Taixu. (太) (1889-1947). In Chinese, "Grand Voidness"; a leading figure in the Chinese Buddhist revival during the first half of the twentieth century. Taixu was ordained at the age of fourteen, purportedly because he wanted to acquire the supernatural powers of the buddhas. He studied under the famous Chinese monk, "Eight Fingers" (Bazhi Toutou), so called because he had burned off one finger of each hand in reverence to the Buddha, and achieved an awakening when reading a PRAJNĀPĀRAMITĀ SuTRA. In 1908, he joined a group of radicals, including other Buddhist monks, intent on revolution. In 1911, he organized the first of many groups (many of them short-lived) to revitalize Buddhism during this time of national crisis following the fall of the Qing dynasty. In 1912, he was involved in a failed attempt to turn the famous monastery of Chinshansi into a modern school for monks. After this disgrace, beginning in 1914, he went into retreat for three years, during which time he studied Buddhist scriptures and formulated plans to revitalize Buddhism, outlined in such works as his 1915 Zhengli sengqie zhidu lun ("The Reorganization of the SAMGHA System"). He drafted a number of such plans over the remainder of his career, although none was ever implemented. In general, these plans called for improved and modernized education for monks and their participation in community and governmental affairs. He believed that Buddhism had become ossified in China and needed to be reformed into a force that would both inspire and improve society. In his view, for an effective reform of the monastic system to take place, Chinese Buddhists had to be educated according to the same standards as those in other Buddhist countries, beginning with Japan. For Taixu, the revival of Chinese Buddhism entailed starting a dialogue with the Buddhist traditions of other Asian countries; hence, a modern Buddhism had to reach out to these traditions and incorporate their intuitions and original insights. It was from these initial ideas that, during the 1920s, Taixu developed a strong interest in Japanese MIKKYo and Tibetan VAJRAYĀNA, as well as in the THERAVĀDA tradition of Sri Lanka. Taixu's participation in the "Revival of Tantra" (mijiao chongxing) debates with Wang Hongyuan (1876-1937), a Chinese convert to Japanese SHINGON, demonstrated his eclectic ideas about the reformation of Chinese Buddhism. The first of Taixu's activities after his return to public life was the founding of the Bodhi Society (Jueshe) in Shanghai in 1918. He was involved in the publication of a wide variety of Buddhist periodicals, such as "Masses Enlightenment Weekly," "Sound of Enlightenment," "Buddhist Critic," "New Buddhist Youth," "Modern SaMgha," "Mind's Light," and the most enduring, "Sound of the Tides" (Haichaoyin). In 1922, he founded the Wuchang Buddhist Institute, where he hoped to produce a new generation of Buddhist leaders in China. In 1923, he founded the first of several "world Buddhist organizations," as a result of which he began to travel and lecture widely, becoming well known in Europe and America. He encouraged several of his students to learn the languages and traditions of Buddhist Asia. Among his students who went abroad in Tibet and Sri Lanka, FAZUN was the most accomplished in making several commentaries of late Indian Buddhism available to the Chinese public, thus fostering a comparison between the historical and doctrinal developments of Buddhism in China and in Tibet. In 1928 in Paris, Taixu donated funds for the establishment of the World Buddhist Institute, devoted to the unification of Buddhism and science; it would eventually be renamed Les Amis du Bouddhisme. He lectured in Sri Lanka and arranged an exchange program under which Chinese monks would study there. In 1929, he organized the Chinese Buddhist Society, which would eventually attract millions of members. During the Japanese occupation of China in the 1930s and 1940s, Taixu followed the Nationalist government into retreat in Sichuan. In this period, as a result of his efforts to internationalize Chinese Buddhism, Taixu founded two branches of the Wuchang Institute of Buddhist Studies specializing in Pāli and Tibetan Buddhism: the Pāli Language Institute in Xi'an, and the Sino-Tibetan Institute in Chongqing. In 1937, at the Sino-Tibetan Institute, in his famous essay "Wo de fojiao geming shibai shi" ("History of My Failed Buddhist Revolutions"), Taixu began an earnest self-reflection on his lifelong efforts to reform Chinese Buddhism, deeming them a failure in three domains: conceiving a Buddhist revolution, globalizing Buddhist education, and reorganizing the Chinese Buddhist Association. When the first global Buddhist organization, the WORLD FELLOWSHIP OF BUDDHISTS, was founded in 1950, Taixu, who had died three years earlier, was credited as its inspiration. His insights would eventually be developed and implemented by later generations of Buddhists in China and Taiwan. His collected works were published in sixty-four volumes. Several of the leading figures of modern and contemporary Chinese and Taiwanese Buddhism were close disciples of Taixu, including Fazun (1902-1980), Yinshun (1905-2005), Shengyan (1930-2009), and Xingyun (1927-).

Tauler, Johannes: (1300-1361) was an outstanding German mystic and preacher. Born in Strassburg, he entered the Dominican Order and did his philosophical and theological studies at Cologne, where he was probably influenced by Eckhart. He was most interested in the ethical and religious aspects of mysticism, and, like Eckhart, he concentrated on an analytical intuition of his own consciousness in his endeavor to grasp the immanent reality of God. Die Predigten Taulers, ed. F. Vetter, (Berlin, 1910) is the most recent edition of his sermons. -- V.J.B.

The art of divining is and always has been universally diffused. Today this art, in common with many other items of ancient lore, has fallen into disrepute on account of the great abuse to which it has been subjected, as in the case of the abuses of black magic and sorcery. The same remarks would apply as are made in the case of psychism, seances, etc. — that a large proportion of humanity is neither wise enough nor well-balanced enough to meddle with such methods; and there is too much tendency to use the methods for the gratification of mere personal desires or curiosity. We do far better to attend to the cultivation of our spiritual faculties, incomparably more powerful and effective, such as intuition.

The Intuition is the first plane in which there is a real open* ing to the full possibility of realisation ; It U through it that one goes farther — first to the overmind and then to the supermlnd.

"The colours of the lotuses and the numbers of petals are respectively, from bottom to top: — (1) the Muladhara or physical consciousness centre, four petals, red; (2) the abdominal centre, six petals, deep purple red; (3) the navel centre, ten petals, violet; (4) the heart centre, twelve petals, golden pink; (5) the throat centre, sixteen petals, grey; (6) the forehead centre between the eye-brows, two petals, white; (7) the thousand-petalled lotus above the head, blue with gold light around. The functions are, according to our yoga, — (1) commanding the physical consciousness and the subconscient; (2) commanding the small vital movements, the little greeds, lusts, desires, the small sense-movements; (3) commanding the larger life-forces and the passions and larger desire-movements; (4) commanding the higher emotional being with the psychic deep behind it; (5) commanding expression and all externalisation of the mind movements and mental forces; (6) commanding thought, will, vision; (7) commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upwards to the intuition and overmind. The seventh is sometimes or by some identified with the brain, but that is an error — the brain is only a channel of communication situated between the thousand-petalled and the forehead centre. The former is sometimes called the void centre, sunya , either because it is not in the body, but in the apparent void above or because rising above the head one enters first into the silence of the self or spiritual being.” Letters on Yoga*

“The colours of the lotuses and the numbers of petals are respectively, from bottom to top:—(1) the Muladhara or physical consciousness centre, four petals, red; (2) the abdominal centre, six petals, deep purple red; (3) the navel centre, ten petals, violet; (4) the heart centre, twelve petals, golden pink; (5) the throat centre, sixteen petals, grey; (6) the forehead centre between the eye-brows, two petals, white; (7) the thousand-petalled lotus above the head, blue with gold light around. The functions are, according to our yoga,—(1) commanding the physical consciousness and the subconscient; (2) commanding the small vital movements, the little greeds, lusts, desires, the small sense-movements; (3) commanding the larger life-forces and the passions and larger desire-movements; (4) commanding the higher emotional being with the psychic deep behind it; (5) commanding expression and all externalisation of the mind movements and mental forces; (6) commanding thought, will, vision; (7) commanding the higher thinking mind and the illumined mind and opening upwards to the intuition and overmind. The seventh is sometimes or by some identified with the brain, but that is an error—the brain is only a channel of communication situated between the thousand-petalled and the forehead centre. The former is sometimes called the void centre, sunya , either because it is not in the body, but in the apparent void above or because rising above the head one enters first into the silence of the self or spiritual being.” Letters on Yoga

“The cosmic consciousness has many levels—the cosmic physical, the cosmic vital, the cosmic Mind, and above the higher planes of cosmic Mind there is the Intuition and above that the overmind and still above that the supermind where the Transcendental begins. In order to live in the Intuition plane (not merely to receive intuitions), one has to live in the cosmic consciousness because there the cosmic and individual run into each other as it were, and the mental separation between them is already broken down, so nobody can reach there who is still in the separative ego.” Letters on Yoga

The Divine in the beginning docs not impose himself — he asks for recognition, for acceptance. That is one reason why the mind must fall silent, not put tests, not make claims ; there must be room for the true intuition which recognises at once the true touch and accepts it.

The human soul is considered by Plato to be an immaterial agent, superior in nature to the body and somewhat hindered by the body in the performance of the higher, psychic functions of human life. The tripartite division of the soul becomes an essential teaching of Platonic psychology from the Republic onward. The rational part is highest and is pictured as the ruler of the psychological organism in the well-regulated man. Next in importance is the "spirited" element of the soul, which is the source of action and the seat of the virtue of courage. The lowest part is the concupiscent or acquisitive element, which may be brought under control by the virtue of temperancc The latter two are often combined and called irrational in contrast to the highest part. Sensation is an active function of the soul, by which the soul "feels" the objects of sense through the instrumentality of the body. Particularly in the young, sensation is a necessary prelude to the knowledge of Ideas, but the mature and developed soul must learn to rise above sense perception and must strive for a more direct intuition of intelligible essences. That the soul exists before the body (related to the Pythagorean and, possibly, Orphic doctrine of transmigration) and knows the world of Ideas immediately in this anterior condition, is the foundation of the Platonic theory of reminiscence (Meno, Phaedo, Republic, Phaedrus). Thus the soul is born with true knowledge in it, but the soul, due to the encrustation of bodily cares and interests, cannot easily recall the truths innately, and we might say now, subconsciously present in it. Sometimes sense perceptions aid the soul in the process of reminiscence, and again, as in the famous demonstration of the Pythagorean theorem by the slave boy of the Meno, the questions and suggestions of a teacher provide the necessary stimuli for recollection. The personal immortality of the soul is very clearly taught by Plato in the tale of Er (Repub. X) and, with various attempts at logical demonstration, in the Phaedo. Empirical and physiological psychology is not stressed in Platonism, but there is an approach to it in the descriptions of sense organs and their media in the Timaeus 42 ff.

The idea conveyed is the unity of all who accept the doctrine of the Lord, i.e., Buddhists. More mystically applied by Buddhist initiates to signify likewise the unity or universal brotherhood of all human beings at any time or place, who through knowledge or natural intuition follow the law of the Buddhas, the law of right and compassion.

The Inconscience is an inverse reproduction of the supreme superconscience: it has the same absoluteness of being and automatic action, but in a vast involved trance; it is being lost in itself, plunged in its own abyss of infinity. Instead of a luminous absorption in self-existence there is a tenebrous involution in it, the darkness veiled within darkness of the Rig Veda, tamaasit tamasa gudham, which makes it look like Non-Existence; instead of a luminous inherent self-awareness there is a consciousness plunged into an abyss of self-oblivion, inherent in being but not awake in being. Yet is this involved consciousness still a concealed knowledge by identity; it carries in it the awareness of all the truths of existence hidden in its dark infinite and, when it acts and creates,—but it acts first as Energy and not as Consciousness,—everything is arranged with the precision and perfection of an intrinsic knowledge. In all material things reside a mute and involved Real-Idea, a substantial and self-effective intuition, an eyeless exact perception, an automatic intelligence working out its unexpressed and unthought conceptions, a blindly seeing sureness of sight, a dumb infallible sureness of suppressed feeling coated in insensibility, which effectuate all that has to be effected. All this state and action of the Inconscient corresponds very evidently with the same state and action of the pure Superconscience, but translated into terms of self-darkness in place of the original self-light. Intrinsic in the material form, these powers are not possessed by the form, but yet work in its mute subconscience.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 21-22, Page: 570


The mantra as I have tried to describe it in The Future Poetry is a word of power and light that comes from the Overmind inspiration or from some very high plane of Intuition. Its characteristics are a language that conveys infinitely more than the mere surface sense of the words seems to indicate, a rhythm that means even more than the language and is born out of the Infinite and disappears into it, and the power to convey not merely the mental, vital or physical contents or indications or values of the thing uttered, but its significance and figure in some fundamental and original consciousness which is behind all these and greater.
   Ref: CWSA Vol. 27, Page: 26-27


The most strange development was Ch'an (Meditation, Zen, c. 500). It is basically a method of "direct intuition into the heart to find Buddha-nature," a method based, on the one hand, on the eightfold negation of production and extinction, annihilation and permanence, unity and diversity, and coming and departing, and, on the other hand, on the affirmation of the reality of the Buddha-nature in all things. Its sole reliance on meditation was most un-Chinese, but it imposed on the Chinese mind a severe mental and spiritual discipline which was invigorating as well as fascinating. For this reason, it exerted tremendous influence not only on Taoism which had much in common with it and imitated it in every way, but also on Neo-Confucianism, which stood in diametrical opposition to it.

Theoretical Reason: (Kant. Ger. theoretische Vernunft) Reflective thought dealing with cognition, knowledge and science. Contrasted with practical reason (q.v.) which is concerned with moral and religious intuitions. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.

Theosebeia (Greek) Reverence for divinity; used by Plato and others as the adjective theosebes (plural theosebeis), “those who know.” It imbodies the principle of occult training that reverence for spiritual things is based on intuition, and hence those who are intuitive or reverent in their attitude towards truth are those who know. Skepticism itself closes the door to the gaining of larger increments of knowledge: there are none so blind as those who refuse to know.

The phrase does not mean that each person should follow the bent of his own personal inclinations, but that he should follow the path of duty, which is the path of evolution, as revealed to him by intuition and purity of aspiration. He should become the master of his destiny, spiritually willing his future through self-devised training and efforts upwards.

  "The physical is not the only world; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul"s home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are repeated in the consciousness of general Nature. It is when we enter or contact these other planes that we come into connection with the worlds above the physical. In sleep we leave the physical body, only a subconscient residue remaining, and enter all planes and all sorts of worlds.” Letters on Yoga

“The physical is not the only world; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul’s home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are repeated in the consciousness of general Nature. It is when we enter or contact these other planes that we come into connection with the worlds above the physical. In sleep we leave the physical body, only a subconscient residue remaining, and enter all planes and all sorts of worlds.” Letters on Yoga

There is a close connection in thought with the theosophic and Hindu teaching of the atman or paramatman — Brahman, the egg out of which the universe is born, filling the universe with divine and spiritual inspirations and dwelling in and working through the innumerable hierarchies of minor beings which compose and build that hierarchy, and which indeed are the universe. Another parallel is the Pythagorean teaching of Monas monadum (monad of monads). In the Qabbalah itself the correspondence is to Kether the Crown, out of which all the other, lower hierarchical grades flow emanationally. This Kether, the highest of the Sephiroth, is the Macroprosopus (the great or immense cosmic face) — an intuition of which may be gained by looking into the violet dome of night begemmed with worlds and instinct with life; the Chaldean ’Arikh ’Anpin (the vast countenance of nature), hiding the indwelling spirit. Kether, Macroprosopus, ’Arikh ’Anpin, and ’Adam Qadmon are but different manners of expressing the same hierarchical acme or originant which thus is the manifested vehicle of the Qabbalistic ’eyn soph, the parabrahman of the Vedantists, or the Boundless. Speaking of this phrase, Blavatsky remarks that it “denotes the Elohim as androgynous at best, the feminine element almost predominating, as it would read, ‘One is She the Spirit of the Elohim of Life’ ” (SD 1:130n). See also ARBA-IL

There is an automatic phase of free will in the purposeful instinct which marks the various activities of even minute and lowly forms of life. The unself-conscious beasts are protected, and therefore guided, by the wills of celestial beings who make the so-called laws of nature, yet even the beasts instinctively choose to run true to their own inner types or svabhava. They unconsciously will to be themselves and to copy no other. They have free will exactly in proportion to their consciousness, just as any person has it in the higher degrees of his intelligence and more active intuition. Thus human beings have the power to work out their evolution, for the kingdom of heaven is taken by strength. The gods have gone ahead on the pathway towards omniscience — so far as our universe is concerned — by their own individual efforts consciously to act with an ever-enlarging measure of harmony with the one divine will. Thus the volume or power of free will is in strict proportion with the degree in which the entity has brought forth the central spark of divine willing fire which animates all that is. Nevertheless no single being or entity has completely unfettered and perfectly irresponsible free will, because of its relative imperfection and because of its inescapable subordination to greater wills, each such entity ever evolving from its stage of imperfection as it ascends along the scales of being: those on the higher rungs of the hierarchical ladder consciously willing in ever-enlarging degree to follow the greater divine will which holds all in its keeping.

The renewal of philosophy signalized by Descartes introduced a long line of personilistic thinkers in France who under various classifications offered the main opposition to naturalism, materialism and positivism. Among these were Geulincx (1625-1669), Occasionalism; Malebranche (1638-1715), Activism; de Lignac (1710-1769), Theistic Personalism; de Biran (1766-1824), Philosophy of Effort; Cournot (1801-1877), Probabilism, Vitalism; Ravaisson (1813-1900), Spiritual Realism; Renouvier (1815-1903), Neo criticism, Personalism; Lachelier (1832-1918), Spiritua] Realism; Boutroux (1845-1921), Philosophy of Discontinuity; Bergson (1859-1941), Philosophy of Chinge, Intuitionism.

The_Sharpe_ratio ::: is the average return earned in excess of the risk-free rate per unit of volatility or total risk. Subtracting the risk-free rate from the mean return, the performance associated with risk-taking activities can be isolated. One intuition of this calculation is that a portfolio engaging in "zero risk" investment, such as the purchase of U.S. Treasury bills (for which the expected return is the risk-free rate), has a Sharpe ratio of exactly zero. Generally, the greater the value of the Sharpe ratio, the more attractive the risk-adjusted return. The Sharpe Ratio was developed by Nobel laureate William F. Sharpe.

"The Supermind is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciousness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable. This is because its very nature is knowledge: it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in its own right; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper perception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter and boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error: it starts from truth and light and moves always in truth and light. As its knowledge is always true, so too its will is always true; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the Supermind feeling and emotion do not depart from their truth, make no slips or mistakes, do not swerve from the right and the real, cannot misuse beauty and delight or twist away from a divine rectitude. In the Supermind sense cannot mislead or deviate into the grossnesses which are here its natural imperfections and the cause of reproach, distrust and misuse by our ignorance. Even an incomplete statement made by the Supermind is a truth leading to a further truth, its incomplete action a step towards completeness.” The Supramental Manifestation

“The Supermind is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciousness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable. This is because its very nature is knowledge: it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in its own right; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper perception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter and boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error: it starts from truth and light and moves always in truth and light. As its knowledge is always true, so too its will is always true; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the Supermind feeling and emotion do not depart from their truth, make no slips or mistakes, do not swerve from the right and the real, cannot misuse beauty and delight or twist away from a divine rectitude. In the Supermind sense cannot mislead or deviate into the grossnesses which are here its natural imperfections and the cause of reproach, distrust and misuse by our ignorance. Even an incomplete statement made by the Supermind is a truth leading to a further truth, its incomplete action a step towards completeness.” The Supramental Manifestation

The term "empiricism" has been used with extreme looseness and confused with numerous related propositions, practices, and attitudes. Many definitions here listed are themselves ambiguous, but to remove their ambiguity would require misrepresentation of usage of the term. See also Scepticism, Sensationalism, Pluralism, Phenomenalism, Pragmatism, Positivism, Intuitionalism, Nativism, Rationalism, A Priorism, Intellectualism, Idealism, Transcendentalism, Scientific Empiricism. -- M.T.K.

The term teachers is applied specially in theosophy to the mahatmas or masters of wisdom, from whom comes the light that guides and aids, but does not govern or control, working through many channels to keep alive mankind’s spiritual intuitions. These masters of wisdom send into the world messengers who have earned the right to labor for mankind, including the sublime duty of teaching. On the other hand, false teachers have always abounded in the world, and the pupil needs to discriminate between the false and the true. If his own motives and aspirations are lofty and pure, he will be satisfied with nothing less than what appeals to these aspirations and motives.

The various forms of yoga from the standpoint of theosophy when properly understood are not distinct, separable means of attaining union with the god within; and it is a divergence of the attention into one or several of these forms to the exclusion of others that has brought about so much mental confusion and lack of success even in those who are more or less skilled. Every one of these forms of yoga, with the probable exception of the lower forms of hatha yoga, should be practiced concurrently by the one who has set his heart and mind upon spiritual success. Thus one should carefully watch and control his acts, acting and working unselfishly; he should live so that his daily customs distract attention as little as possible away from the spiritual purpose; his heart coincidentally should be filled with devotion and love for all things; and he should cultivate, all at the same time, his will, his capacity for self-sacrifice and self-devotion to a noble cause, and his ability to stand firm and undaunted in the face of difficulties whatever they may be; and, finally, in addition and perhaps most importantly, he should do everything in his power to cultivate his intuition and intellectual faculties, exercising not merely his ratiocinative mind, but the higher intuitive and nobly intellectual parts. Combining all these he is following the chela path and is using all the forms of yoga in the proper way. Yet the chela will never obtain his objective if his practice of yoga is followed for his own individual advancement. He will never reach higher than the superior planes of the astral world even in consciousness; but when his whole being follows this yoga as thus outlined with a desire to lay his life and all he is on the altar of service to the world, he is then indeed on the path.

The vital center of his doctrine is duration rather than intuition. Duration is the original thing in itself, the "substance" of philosophic tradition, except that to Bergson it is a specific experience, revealed to the individual in immediate experience. All things, consciousness, matter, time, evolution, motion and the absolute are so many specialized tensional forms of duration. The phrase elan vital sums up his vitalistic doctrine that there is an original life force, that it has passed from one generation of living beings to another by way of developed individual organisms, these being the connecting links between the generations. Bergson regards as pseudo-evolutionary the effort to arrange all living beings into a grand uni-linear series. True or creative evolution is pluri-dimensional, i.e., the life force is conserved in every line of evolution of living beings, causing all of the numerous varieties of living forms, creating all new species, and dividing itself more and more as it advances. As the vital impetus is not moving towards any fixed, predetermined and final end, an immanent teleology is within the life force itself.

This is because its very nature is knowledge ::: it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in itS own right ; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper per- ception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter end boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error ::: it starts from truth and light and moves always in troth and light. As its know- ledge is always true, so too its will is always true ; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the

Thumoeides (Greek) [from thymos passional soul + eidos form] The name given by Plato to a division of the psychomental nature, the animal or passional soul, kama-manas, in contrast with a still lower division of kama-manas which he called epithumetikon (appetitive, or that which has appetite for). Above both these, which together comprise what other Greek philosophers called the psyche, is the nous, the seat of inspiration, intuition, the highest intellection, and similar noble attributes or faculties, corresponding to the buddhi-manas or atma-buddhi-manas.

"To have the true intuition one must get rid of the mind"s self-will, and the vital"s also, their preferences, fancies, fantasies, strong insistences and eliminate the mental and vital ego"s pressure which sets the consciousness to work in the service of its own claims and desires.” Letters on Yoga*

“To have the true intuition one must get rid of the mind’s self-will, and the vital’s also, their preferences, fancies, fantasies, strong insistences and eliminate the mental and vital ego’s pressure which sets the consciousness to work in the service of its own claims and desires.” Letters on Yoga

To some minds the ethical quest results in a failure to find and in a denial of the existence of any single moral criterion -- this is the position of such intuitionists as G. E. Moore and W. D. Ross and of some relativists. -- W.K.F.

Transcendentalists Those who assert that true knowledge is obtained by faculties of the mind which transcend sensory experience; those who exalt intuition above empirical knowledge, or that derived from the sense organs, and even that derived from ordinary mentation. Used in modern times of some post-Kantian German philosophers, and of the school of Emerson. The term, however, has been used in different senses by different people.

Transcendental method: (In Kant) The analysis of the conditions (a priori forms of intuition, categories of the understanding, ideals of reason) that make possible human experience and knowledge. See Kantianism. Transcendental Object: (Kant, Ger. transzendentale Objekt) The pure rational 'x' which Kant defines as the general form of object or the object as such. It is not a particular concrete object, but the ideal objective correlate of pure consciousness as such. It is the object which the mind seeks to know in each empirical cognition. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.

Two things render that culmination more facile than it would otherwise be. Overmind in the descent towards material creation has originated modifications of itself,—Intuition especially with its penetrative lightning flashes of truth lighting up local points and stretches of country in our consciousness,—which can bring the concealed truth of things nearer to our comprehension, and, by opening ourselves more widely first in the inner being and then as a result in the outer surface self also to the messages of these higher ranges of consciousness, by growing into them, we can become ourselves also intuitive and overmental beings, not limited by the intellect and sense, but capable of a more universal comprehension and a direct touch of truth in its very self and body. In fact flashes of enlightenment from these higher ranges already come to us, but this intervention is mostly fragmentary, casual or partial; we have still to begin to enlarge ourselves into their likeness and organise in us the greater Truth activities of which we are potentially capable. But, secondly, Overmind, Intuition, even Supermind not only must be, as we have seen, principles inherent and involved in the Inconscience from which we arise in the evolution and inevitably destined to evolve, but are secretly present, occult actively with flashes of intuitive emergence in the cosmic activity of Mind, Life and Matter. It is true that their action is concealed and, even when they emerge, it is modified by the medium, material, vital, mental in which they work and not easily recognisable. Supermind cannot manifest itself as the Creator Power in the universe from the beginning, for if it did, the Ignorance and Inconscience would be impossible or else the slow evolution necessary would change into a rapid transformation scene. Yet at every step of the material energy we can see the stamp of inevitability given by a supramental creator, in all the development of life and mind the play of the lines of possibility and their combination which is the stamp of Overmind intervention. As Life and Mind have been released in Matter, so too must in their time these greater powers of the concealed Godhead emerge from the involution and their supreme Light descend into us from above. …

udana. ::: the fifth of the five vital airs, whose seat is in the neck, which is responsible for controlling the ability to ascend, rise up and grow; the general force of assimilation that rules the region of the body above the larynx and governs the use of the special inner sense of intuition; associated with the upward movement of the kundalini in the subtle body; its prevalent element is ether

Understanding: (Kant. Ger. Verstand) The faculty of thinking the object of sensuous intuition; or the faculty of concepts, judgments and principles. The understanding is the source of concepts, categories and principles by means of which the manifold of sense is brought into the unity of apperception. Kant suggests that understanding has a common root with sensibility. See Kantianism. -- O.F.K.

uninspired intuition ::: intuition not uplifted by inspiration (or revelation), the lowest form of intuitional ideality. untelepathic trik trikaladrsti

Usanas-Sukra (Sanskrit) Uśanas-śukra [from uśanas Venus + śukra bright, resplendent] Venus-Lucifer, Venus as the light-bringer, referring not so much to physical light as to the light of intellect and inner vision. The guardian spirit, with reference to the solar system, of earth and of mankind; for what the buddhi-manas is in the human constitution when compared with the kama-manas, that same role, mutatis mutandis on the cosmic scale, the regent of Venus plays in the solar system, wherein by comparison the earth is the vehicle for kama-manas. Also commonly called in Hindu mythology Kavi or Kavya, signifying poet and the feeling that the true poet is intellectually intuitional with reference to “feeling” or “seeing” some, at least, of the mysteries of nature.

Ushnisha (Sanskrit) Uṣṇīṣa [from the verbal root uṣ to be warm, flaming; mystically warmth through inner light, intuition, vision] A turban, diadem, or crown; also a kind of “excrescence” on the head of a buddha. Like the long ears so often seen in figures of the buddhas, the meaning of the ushnisha is entirely occult, and was in no sense whatsoever intended to signify a tuft of hair, nor any fleshly excrescence on the skull, but was a way of suggesting the radiating power of the eye of Siva or organ of vision and of intuition, working at relatively full power within the skull of a great adept. The eye of Siva is the pineal gland; originally an external and active eye in the head of primitive mankind during this fourth round on earth, it gradually retreated within the skull, which grew to cover its place with bones, skin, and hair. As this presently so-called third eye retreated within the skull, its place was progressively taken by the two present organs of vision. At this period of our racial development it is buddhas, avataras, and other initiates of relatively high status who alone use the organ of spiritual vision, for in them the pineal gland has become active and is to some extent physiologically enlarged; although in everyone else it is more or less nonfunctional, yet to some degree functional.

Utilitarianism: (a) Traditionally understood as the view that the right act is the act which, of all those open to the agent, will actually or probably produce the greatest amount of pleasure or happiness in the world at large (this is the so called Principle of Utility). This view has been opposed to intuitionism in the traditional sense in a long and well-known controversy. It received its classical form in Bentham and the two Mills. Earlier it took a theological form in Gay and Paley, later an evolutionistic form in Spencer, and an intuitionistic form (in the wider sense) in Sidgwick.

Vajradhara (Sanskrit) Vajradhara Diamond-holder; the First Logos, supreme buddha, or adi-buddha, equivalent to the Tibetan dorjechang. “As the Lord of all Mysteries he cannot manifest, but sends into the world of manifestation his heart — the ‘diamond heart,’ Vajrasattva (Dorjesempa)” (SD 1:571). Vajra here expresses the indestructibility and spiritually adamantine quality of this “One unknown, without beginning or end” — unknown to the average worldly person, but recognized by full initiates as the source of their divine inspiration and intuitions.

Vibration(s) Motion is a fundamental principle in universal nature, coeval with boundless space, ceasing not even during pralaya; and we can form only a relative idea of its real nature, yet can have intuitions of it through its manifestations, the most fundamental of which is vibration. The essential characteristic of vibration is periodicity or cyclic motion. It appears in the alternation of manvantara and pralaya in the cosmic Great Breath and in the most rapid oscillations of minutest particles. The relative periodicity of various vibrations is found to constitute a mathematical scale, according to which phenomena may be classified.

VII. Probability as a Physical Magnitude determined by Axioms.. This theory, which is favoured mainly by the Intuitionist school of mathematics, considers probability as a physical constant of which frequencies are measures. Thus, any frequency is an approximate measure of one physical constant attached to an event and to a set of trials: this constant is the probability of that event over the set of trials. As the observed frequencies differ little for large numbers of trials from their corresponding probabilities, some obvious properties of frequencies may be extended to probabilities. This is done without proceeding to the limit, but through general approximation as in the case of physical magnitudes. These properties are not constructed (as in the axiomatization of Mises), but simply described as such, they form a set of axioms defining probability. The classical postulates involved in the treatises of Laplace, Bertrand or Poincare have been modified in this case, under the joint influence of the discovery of measure by Borei, and of the use of abstract sets. Their new form has been fully stated by Kolmogoroff and interpreted by Frechet who proposes to call this latest theory the 'modernized axiomatic definition' of probability. Its interpretation requires that it should be preceded by an inductive synthesis, and followed by numerical verifications.

Vijnana: Sanskrit for consciousness; the faculty of apprehension or individualization of experience, and as such perhaps equivalent to ahamkara (q.v.); intellectual, not intuitional, knowledge.

vipassanā. In Pāli, "insight" (see also S. VIPAsYANĀ). Insight is defined as the direct intuition of the three marks (P. tilakkhana; S. TRILAKsAnA) of existence that characterize all phenomena: P. aniccā (S. ANITYATĀ) or impermanence, dukkha (S. DUḤKHA) or suffering, and anatta (S. ANĀTMAN) or nonself. Insight associated with the attainment of any of the eight noble paths and fruits (P. ariyamaggaphala; S. ĀRYAMĀRGAPHALA) or associated with the attainment of cessation (NIRODHASAMĀPATTI) is classified as supramundane (P. lokuttara; S. LOKOTTARA); that which is not associated with the noble paths and fruits is classified as mundane (P. lokiya; S. LAUKIKA). The classical commentarial paradigm pairs vipassanā with samatha (S. sAMATHA), or tranquillity, these two together being described as the two wings of Buddhist meditative cultivation (BHĀVANĀ). Vipassanā, when fully developed, leads to enlightenment (BODHI) and nibbāna (S. NIRVĀnA); samatha when fully developed leads to the attainment of JHĀNA (S. DHYĀNA), or meditative absorption, and the attainment of certain supranormal powers (P. abhiNNā; S. ABHIJNĀ). While the formal training in vipassanā meditation does not require the prior attainment of either jhāna or abhiNNā, the mind must nevertheless have achieved a modicum of pacification through "threshold concentration" (UPACĀRASAMĀDHI) as a prerequisite for successful vipassanā practice. The VISUDDHIMAGGA lists eighteen main types of vipassanāNāna (S. vipasyanājNāna), or insight knowledge, of (1) impermanence (aniccānupassanā), (2) suffering (dukkhānupassanā), (3) nonself (anattānupnupassanā), (4) aversion (nibbidānupassanā), (5) dispassion (virāgānupassanā), (6) extinction (nirodhānupassanā), (7) abandoning (patinissaggānupassanāā), (8) waning (khayānupassanā), (9) disappearing (vayānupassanā), (10) change (viparināmānupassanā), (11) signlessness (animittānupassanā), (12) wishlessness (apanihitānupassanā), (13) emptiness (suNNatānupassanā), (14) higher wisdom regarding phenomena (adhipaNNādhammavipassanā), (15) knowledge and vision that accords with reality (YATHĀBHuTAJNĀNADARsANA), (16) contemplation of danger (ādīnavānupassanā), (17) contemplation involving reflection (patisankhānupassanā), and (18) turning away (vivattanānupassanā). While the terms samatha and vipassanā do appear in sutta discussions of meditative training-although far more often in the later KHUDDAKANIKĀYA sections of the canon-they figure most prominently in the ABHIDHAMMA and the later commentarial literature. The systems of vipassanā training taught today are modern constructs that do not antedate late-nineteenth century Burma (see LEDI SAYADAW; MAHASI SAYADAW); they are, however, derived from, or at least inspired by, commentarial or scriptural precedents. Two of the most successful vipassanā organizations outside Asia are the Insight Meditation Society and the loosely knit group of centers teaching S. N. Goenka's vipassana meditation; the former originates with AJAHN CHAH BODHINĀnA (1917-1992) of the Thai forest tradition and the latter with the Burmese teacher U BA KHIN (1899-1971). See also YATHĀBHuTAJNĀNADARsANA.

viveka (viveka; vivek) ::: intuitive discrimination, one of the two components of smr.ti, a faculty of jñana; its function is "to seize on our thoughts & intuitions, arrange them, separate their intellectual from their vijnanamaya elements, correct their false extensions, false limitations, misapplications & assign them their right application, right extension, right limitation".

—we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; for though we have applied that word for want of a better to any supra-intellectual direct way of knowing, yet what we actually know as intuition is only one special movement of self-existent knowledge. This new range is its origin; it imparts to our intuitions something of its own distinct character and is very clearly an intermediary of a greater Truth-Light with which our mind cannot directly communicate. At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies,—not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality. This then is the occult link we were looking for; this is the Power that at once connects and divides the supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance….

Wesensschau: (Ger. intuition of essence) In Scheler: The immediate grasp of essences. -- P.A.S.

Will. In the quiet mind turned towards the Divine the intuition

Work and silence ::: A sort of stepping backward into some- thing silent and observant within which is not involved in the action, yet sees and can shed Its light upon it. There are then two parts of the being, one inner looking at and witnessing and knowing, the other executive and Instrumeotai and doing. This gives not only freedom but power — and in this inner being one can get into touch with the Divine not through mental activity but through tbe substance of tbe being, by a certah inward touch, perception, reception, receiving abo the right inspiration or intuition of the work.

WORLDS. ::: The physical is not the only world ; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, Intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds ; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds ; psychic worlds which are the soul’s home ; others above with which we have littfe contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as w’cll as the gross physical and material plane. The same planes are repeated in the cons- ciousness of general Nature. It is when we enter or contact these other planes that we come into conoeciion with the worlds above the physical. In sleep we leave the physical body, only a sub- conscient residue remaining, and enter all planes and all sorts of worlds. In each we see scenes, meet beings, share in happen- ings, come across formations, influences, suggestions which belong to these planes. Even when we are awake, part of us moves in these planes, but their activity goes on behind the veil ; our waking minds are not aware of it. Dreams are often only incoherent constructions of our subcooscient, but others are records (often much mixed and distorted) or transcripts of experiences in these supraphystcal planes. When we do sadbana, this kind of dream becomes very common ; then subconscious dreams cease to predominate.

yogipratyaksa. (T. rnal 'byor mngon sum; C. dingguan zhi; J. jokanchi; K. chonggwan chi 定觀知). In Sanskrit, "yogic direct perception"; a specific variety of direct perception (PRATYAKsA) that is typically presumed to derive from meditative practice (BHĀVANĀ; YOGA). A direct intuition of the real obtained through meditative practice, this type of understanding was accepted as a valid means of knowledge by most of the traditional Indian religious schools. In Buddhism, the psychological analysis of the notion of yogipratyaksa and the related yogijNāna (yogic knowledge or cognition) was undertaken by DHARMAKĪRTI (c. 600-670) in his PRAMĀnAVĀRTTIKA and NYĀYABINDU, as well as by his commentators. Dharmakīrti's predecessor DIGNĀGA (c. 480-540) had posited that there were only two reliable sources of knowledge (PRAMĀnA): direct perception (PRATYAKsA) and logical inference (ANUMĀNA). Dharmakīrti, however, subdivided direct perception (pratyaksa) into four subtypes, viz., sensory cognition (indriyajNāna), mental discrimination (MANOVIJNĀNA), self-awareness (SVASAMVEDANA), and yogic cognition (yogijNāna). In Dharmakīrti's analysis, yogic cognition (yogijNāna) is a form of yogic perception (yogipratyaksa), because it fulfills the two conditions of perception (pratyaksa): (1) it is devoid of conceptual construction (KALPANĀ); and (2) it is a cognition that is "nonerroneous" (abhrānta), viz., real. The treatment of yogipratyaksa in the literature thus focuses on how yogipratyaksa fulfills these two conditions of perception. Yogic knowledge is devoid of conceptual construction (kalpanā), Dharmakīrti maintains, because it is nonconceptual (akalpa; NIRVIKALPA) and thus "vivid" or "distinct" (spasta). This type of perception is therefore able to perceive reality directly, without the intercession of mental images or concepts. Since yogic cognition is said to be devoid of conceptual construction, this raises the issue of its second condition, its lack of error. Why is meditatively induced perception true and reliable? How does a meditator's yogic perception differ from the hallucinations of the deranged, since both of them presume they have a vivid cognition of an object? The reason, Dharmakīrti maintains, is that the objects of yogic knowledge are "true" or "real" (bhuta; sadbhuta), whereas hallucinations are "false" or "unreal" objects (abhuta; asadbhuta). The only true objects of yogic knowledge offered by Dharmakīrti are the FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS: that is, the perception of these truths is true and reliable because they enable one to reach the goal of enlightenment, not because they involve a perception of an ultimate substance. In this sense, Dharmakīrti's understanding of yogijNāna is more focused on the direct realization of the soteriological import of the four noble truths than on extraordinary sensory ability. Therefore, yogic direct perception is qualitatively different from the various forms of clairvoyance that are the byproducts of deep states of concentration that may be achieved by both Buddhist and non-Buddhist practitioners. Yogipratyaksa is a form of insight (VIPAsYANĀ) posssessed only by noble persons (ĀRYAPUDGALA); and among the five paths it occurs only on the path of vision (DARsANAMĀRGA) and above. See also DARsANA.

"You can only distinguish the different sheaths either by intuition or by experience and then you have established direct knowledge of the different sheaths.” Letters on Yoga*

“You can only distinguish the different sheaths either by intuition or by experience and then you have established direct knowledge of the different sheaths.” Letters on Yoga



QUOTES [69 / 69 - 1500 / 1670]


KEYS (10k)

   43 Sri Aurobindo
   2 Ken Wilber
   1 William Wordsworth
   1 Viktor E Frankl
   1 Unknown
   1 Sunyata
   1 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   1 Sri Aurobindo
   1 Simone Weil
   1 Ramana
   1 Paramahansa Yogananda
   1 Nyogen Senzaki
   1 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   1 Jiddu Krishnamurti
   1 Jean Gebser
   1 id. "Kitab-el-ikon"
   1 Howard Gardner
   1 Hermann Hesse
   1 Henri Poincare
   1 Charles F Haanel
   1 Bernhard Guenther
   1 A. Schmemann
   1 Albert Einstein
   1 The Mother
   1 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   1 Paracelsus

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   57 Daniel Kahneman
   32 Anonymous
   27 Sri Aurobindo
   25 Paulo Coelho
   21 Shakti Gawain
   19 Albert Einstein
   17 Walter Isaacson
   17 Carl Jung
   12 Jonathan Haidt
   12 David Lynch
   11 Immanuel Kant
   11 Gavin de Becker
   10 Steve Jobs
   10 Osho
   10 Gary Zukav
   10 Anne Lamott
   9 Ralph Waldo Emerson
   9 Deepak Chopra
   9 Clarissa Pinkola Est s
   9 Carlo Rovelli

1:Faith is a passionate intuition.
   ~ William Wordsworth,
2:Intuition is the whisper of the soul. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,
3:It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.
   ~ Henri Poincare,
4:Intuition is the father of new knowledge, while empiricism is nothing but an accumulation of old knowledge.
   ~ Albert Einstein,
5:Never apologize for trusting your intuition. Your brain can play trick, your heart can be blind, but your gut is usually right." ~ Unknown,
6:A pure intuition is a rare occurrence in our mental activity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya,
7:Transform reason into ordered intuition; let all thyself be light. This is thy goal.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, [T5],
8:Spiritual intuition is always a more luminous guide than the discriminating reason. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Personality,
9:To live in the wideness of the Intuition is not possible with the limitation of the ego. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, The Higher Planes of Mind,
10:Intuition is an edge of light thrust out by the secret supermind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil,
11:There is an intuition which serves the intellect and an intuition which serves the heart and the life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Personality,
12:In spiritual matters mental logic easily blunders; intuition, faith, a plastic spiritual reason are here the only guides. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Guru,
13:Armed with the intuition of a bliss
To which some moved tranquillity was the key, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The House of the Spirit and the New Creation,
14:The State is not an organism; it is a machinery, and it works like a machine, without tact, taste, delicacy or intuition. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Inadequacy of the State Idea,
15:In the quiet mind turned towards the Divine the intuition (higher mind) comes of the Divine's Will and the right way to do it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Becoming Conscious in Work,
16:Do not try. Just Be. One man cannot be like another, because all are beautifully different. You can only 'try' to do spontaneously what you deem to be good, using intuition to decide." ~ Sunyata, a Danish mystic. http://bit.ly/2MabD8D,
17:Intuition and inspiration are not only spiritual in their essence, they are the characteristic means of all spiritual vision and utterance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Course of English Poetry - V,
18:All finites are in their spiritual essence the Infinite and, if we look deep enough into them, manifest to intuition the Identical and Infinite. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Reality and the Cosmic Illusion,
19:Why is intuition superior to reason?
   - Because it does not depend upon experience or memory and frequently brings about the solution to our problems by methods concerning which we are in entire ignorance.
   ~ Charles F Haanel, The Master Key System,
20:Go on with your meditations. Keep turning your attention within. One day the wheel of thought will slow down and an intuition will mysteriously arise. Follow that intuition, let your thinking stop, and it will eventually lead you to the goal. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
21:The use of your writing is to keep you in touch with the inner source of inspiration and intuition, so as to wear thin the crude external crust in the consciousness and encourage the growth of the inner being.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,
22:Epiphany": the primordial intuition that everything in this world & the world itself not only have elsewhere the cause & principle of their existence, but are themselves the manifestation & presence of that elsewhere, & that this is indeed the life of their life. ~ A. Schmemann,
23:[The human being] only escapes from the laws of this world in lightning flashes. Instants when everything stands still, instants of contemplation, of pure intuition.... It is through such instants that he [or she] is capable of the supernatural. ~ Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace,
24:Pursue the enquiry 'Who am I?' relentlessly. Analyse your entire personality. Try to find out where the I-thought begins. Go on with your meditations. Keep turning your attention within. One day the wheel of thought will slow down and an intuition will mysteriously arise. ~ Ramana,
25:All psychotherapy is ultimately something of an art. There is always an irrational element in psychotherapy. The doctor's artistic intuition and sensitivity is of considerable importance. The patient, too, brings an irrational element into the relationship: his individuality. ~ Viktor E Frankl,
26:Mind's quick-paced thoughts floated from their high necks,
A glowing splendour as of an irised mane,
A parure of pure intuition's light;
Its flame-foot gallop they could imitate: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,
27:Strive to understand with that supreme intuition which will cause you to attain to divine knowledge and which is in harmony with the soul of eternal things, so that the mysteries of spiritual wisdom may be clearly revealed to you. ~ id. "Kitab-el-ikon", the Eternal Wisdom
28:Intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
29:A soul shall wake in the Inconscient's house;
The mind shall be God-vision's tabernacle,
The body intuition's instrument,
And life a channel for God's visible power. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul's Choice and the Supreme Consummation,
30:When one devotes oneself to meditation, mental burdens, unnecessary worries, and wandering thoughts drop off one by one; life seems to run smoothly and pleasantly. A student may now depend on intuition to make decisions. As one acts on intuition, second thought, with its dualism, doubt and hesitation, does not arise. ~ Nyogen Senzaki,
31:Till Nature is ready, the supramental Force has to act indirectly; it puts the intermediary powers of overmind or intuition in front, or it works through a modification of itself to which the already half-transformed being can be wholly or partially respo ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Ascent towards Supermind,
32:In a wide opening of its native sky
Intuition's lightnings range in a bright pack
Hunting all hidden truths out of their lairs,
Its fiery edge of seeing absolute
Cleaves into locked unknown retreats of self,
Rummages the sky-recesses of the brai ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,
33:A thousand questions can be asked about anything whatsoever, but to answer would require a volume, and even then the mind would understand nothing. It is only by a growth in the consciousness itself that you can get some direct perception of these things. But for that the mind must be quiet and a direct feeling and intuition take its place.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,
34:Our natural being is a part of cosmic Nature and our spiritual being exists only by the supreme Transcendence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine: The Ascent towards Supermind
Inter-Relation
The brooding philosopher or the discovering scientist cannot indeed do without the aid of a greater power, intuition. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Sun of Poetic Truth,
35:The High-Subtle Self ::: "...cognitive style- actual intuition and literal inspiration, archetypal Form, audible illumination, revelations of light and sound affective elements- rapture, bliss, ecstatic release into superconsciousness motivational/conative factors-karuna, compassion, overwhelming love and gratefulness temporal mode- transtemporal, moving into eternity mode of self- archetypal-divine, overself, overmind." ~ Ken Wilber, The Atman Project pg.80,
36:There is an earthly sun, which is the cause of all heat, and all who are able to see may see the sun; and those who are blind and cannot see him may feel his heat. There is an Eternal Sun, which is the source of all wisdom, and those whose spiritual senses have awakened to life will see that sun and be conscious of His existence; but those who have not attained spiritual consciousness may yet feel His power by an inner faculty which is called Intuition. ~ Paracelsus,
37:An integral intuition into the nature of conscious being shows us that it is indeed one in essence, but also that it is capable of an infinite potential complexity and multiplicity in self-experience. The working of this potential complexity and multiplicity in the One is what we call from our point of view manifestation or creation or world or becoming - (bhuvana, bhava). Without it no world-existence is possible. The agent of this becoming is always the self-conscience of the Being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad,
38:Since ancient times, the left side has stood for the side of the unconscious or the unknown; the right side, by contrast, has represented the side of consciousness or wakefulness. Through the late twentieth century, the movement of the Left limited themselves to a materialist understanding of reality- exemplified by Marxism- demanding social justice and economic equality but not the restoration of intuition and the recognition of the hidden, qualitative dimensions of being suppressed by the mental-rational consciousness, narrowly focused on the quantifiable. ~ Jean Gebser,
39:    The faculty of knowledge of the Rishis was based on this subtle realisation. And this subtle realisation has its different levels, classifications and variations which the Vedic seers have termed Ila, Saraswati, Sarama and Dakshina. These four names have been plausibly interpreted as sruti (Revelation), smrti (Inspiration), bodhi (Intuition) and viveka (Discrimination). We are not going to probe further into the mystery. We just want to point out the difference between the outlook of the ancients and that of the moderns. ~ Nolini Kanta Gupta, 08, 36.07 - An Introduction To The Vedas,
40:Einstein's breakthrough was classic in that it sought to unify the elements of a physical analysis, and it placed the older examples and principles within a broader framework. But it was revolutionary in that, ever afterward, we have thought differently about space and time, matter and energy. Space and time-no more absolute-have become forms of intuition that cannot be divorced from perspective or consciousness, anymore than can the colors of the world or the length of a shadow. As the philosopher Ernst Cassirer commented, in relativity, the conception of constancy and absoluteness of the elements is abandoned to give permanence and necessity to the laws instead. ~ Howard Gardner,
41:It is from the Overmind that all these different arrangements of the creative Truth of things originate. Out of the Overmind they come down to the Intuition and are transmitted from it to the Illumined and higher Mind to be arranged there for our intelligence. But they lose more and more of their power and certitude in the transmission as they come down to the lower levels. What energy of directly perceived Truth they have is lost in the human mind; for to the human intellect they present themselves only as speculative ideas, not as realised Truth, not as direct sight, a dynamic vision coupled with a concrete undeniable experience.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, 155,
42:The true intuition on the contrary carries in itself its own guarantee of truth; it is sure and infallible within its limits. And so long as it is pure intuition and does not admit into itself any mixture of sense-error or intellectual ideation, it is never contradicted by experience: the intuition may be verified by the reason or the sense-perception afterwards, but its truth does not depend on that verification, it is assured by an automatic self-evidence. ... For the true intuition proceeds from the self-existent truth of things and is secured by that self-existent truth and not by any indirect, derivatory or dependent method of arriving at knowledge.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
43:... All the works of mind and intllect must be first heightened and widened, then illumined, lifted into the domain of a higher Intelligence, afterwards translated into workings of a greater non-mental Intuition, these again transformed into the dynamic outpourings of the Overmind radiance, and those transfigured into the full light and sovereignty of the supramental Gnosis. It is this that the evolution of consciousness in the world carries prefigured but latent in its seed and in the straining tense intention of its process; nor can that process, that evolution cease till it has evolved the instruments of a perfect in place of its now imperfect manifestation of the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 149,
44:Overmind is the highest source of the cosmic consciousness available to the embodied being in the Ignorance. It is part of the cosmic consciousness-but the human individual when he opens into the cosmic usually remains in the cosmic Mind-Life-Matter receiving only inspirations and influences from the higher planes of Intuition and Overmind. He receives through the spiritualised higher and illumined mind the fundamental experiences on which spiritual knowledge is based; he can become even full of intuitive mind movements, illuminations, various kinds of powers and illumined light, liberation, Ananda. But to rise fully into the Intuition is rare, to reach the Overmind still rarer- although influences and experiences can come down from there.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, 152,
45:It marshals a vast amount of scientific evidence, from physics to biology, and offers extensive arguments, all geared to objectively proving the holistic nature of the universe. It fails to see that if we take a bunch of egos with atomistic concepts and teach them that the universe is holistic, all we will actually get is a bunch of egos with holistic concepts. Precisely because this monological approach, with its unskillful interpretation of an otherwise genuine intuition, ignores or neglects the "I" and the "we" dimensions, it doesn't understand very well the exact nature of the inner transformations that are necessary in the first place in order to be able to find an identity that embraces the manifest All. Talk about the All as much as we want, nothing fundamentally changes. ~ Ken Wilber, Sex Ecology Spirituality,
46:   There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and Female and the gods also are either activising souls or passively executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truthconsciousness, - Mahi or Bharati, the vast Word that brings us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distri bute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, 1.02 - The Doctrine of the Mystics,
47:the importance and power of surrender :::
   Surrender is the decision taken to hand over the responsibility of your life to the Divine. Without this decision nothing is at all possible; if you do not surrender, the Yoga is entirely out of the question. Everything else comes naturally after it, for the whole process starts with surrender. You can surrender either through knowledge or through devotion. You may have a strong intuition that the Divine alone is the truth and a luminous conviction that without the Divine you cannot manage. Or you may have a spontaneous feeling that this line is the only way of being happy, a strong psychic desire to belong exclusively to the Divine: I do not belong to my self, you say, and give up the responsibility of your being to the Truth. Then comes self-offering: Here I am, a creature of various qualities, good and bad, dark and enlightened. I offer myself as I am to you, take me up with all my ups and downs, conflicting impulses and tendencies - do whatever you like with me.
   ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1929-1931,
48:The path of seeking truth within and without is not an easy one. It goes literally against everything we've been told and taught by society and governments. The indoctrination of lies, the conditioning and programming is deep and far reaching. It has been going on for millennia. It takes tremendous effort to wake up from the hypnotic slumber, where most people dream to be awake. At this time of transition, as more and more knowledge is coming to the surface, there is the potential to create a new earth. However, this is also the age of deception for there are forces at work that do not want this to happen. They do their best to vector us away from truth and the most effective way to swallow a lie is to sandwich it between some truth with some emotional hooks. As mentioned many times before, lies are mixed with truth, hence discernment is essential. We need to engage our higher emotional center connecting us to divine intuition and also activate our higher intellect, engaging in sincere, open minded critical thinking, fusing the heart and the mind, mysticism and science. ~ Bernhard Guenther,
49:The pure existent is then a fact and no mere concept; it is the fundamental reality. But, let us hasten to add, the movement, the energy, the becoming are also a fact, also a reality. The supreme intuition and its corresponding experience may correct the other, may go beyond, may suspend, but do not abolish it. We have therefore two fundamental facts of pure existence and of worldexistence, a fact of Being, a fact of Becoming. To deny one or the other is easy; to recognise the facts of consciousness and find out their relation is the true and fruitful wisdom.

Stability and movement, we must remember, are only our psychological representations of the Absolute, even as are oneness and multitude. The Absolute is beyond stability and movement as it is beyond unity and multiplicity. But it takes its eternal poise in the one and the stable and whirls round itself infinitely, inconceivably, securely in the moving and multitudinous. World-existence is the ecstatic dance of Shiva which multiplies the body of the God numberlessly to the view: it leaves that white existence precisely where and what it was, ever is and ever will be; its sole absolute object is the joy of the dancing. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Pure Existent, 85,
50:There is, indeed, a higher form of the buddhi that can be called the intuitive mind or intuitive reason, and this by its intuitions, its inspirations, its swift revelatory vision, its luminous insight and discrimination can do the work of the reason with a higher power, a swifter action, a greater and spontaneous certitude. It acts in a self-light of the truth which does not depend upon the torch-flares of the sense-mind and its limited uncertain percepts; it proceeds not by intelligent but by visional concepts: It is a kind of truth-vision, truth-hearing, truth-memory, direct truth-discernment. This true and authentic intuition must be distinguished from a power of the ordinary mental reason which is too easily confused with it, that power of Involved reasoning that reaches its conclusion by a bound and does not need the ordinary steps of the logical mind. The logical reason proceeds pace after pace and tries the sureness of each step like a marl who is walking over unsafe ground and has to test by the hesitating touch of his foot each span of soil that he perceives with his eye. But this other supralogical process of the reason is a motion of rapid insight or swift discernment; it proceeds by a stride or leap, like a man who springs from one sure spot to another point of sure footing, -- or at least held by him to be sure. He sees this space he covers in one compact and flashing view, but he does not distinguish or measure either by eye or touch its successions, features and circumstances. This movement has something of the sense of power of the intuition, something of its velocity, some appearance of its light and certainty, arid we always are apt to take it for the intuition. But our assumption is an error and, if we trust to it, it may lead us into grievous blunders.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
51:If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, - an image which in this experience becomes a reality, - we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truth-action, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; for though we have applied that word for want of a better to any supra-intellectual direct way of knowing, yet what we actually know as intuition is only one special movement of self-existent knowledge. This new range is its origin; it imparts to our intuitions something of its own distinct character and is very clearly an intermediary of a greater Truth-Light with which our mind cannot directly communicate. At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the Supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, - not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality. This then is the occult link we were looking for; this is the Power that at once connects and divides the supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Supermind Mind and the Overmind Maya, 293,
52:There is the one door in us that sometimes swings open upon the splendour of a truth beyond and, before it shuts again, allows a ray to touch us, - a luminous intimation which, if we have the strength and firmness, we may hold to in our faith and make a starting-point for another play of consciousness than that of the sense-mind, for the play of Intuition. For if we examine carefully, we shall find that Intuition is our first teacher. Intuition always stands veiled behind our mental operations. Intuition brings to man those brilliant messages from the Unknown which are the beginning of his higher knowledge. Reason only comes in afterwards to see what profit it can have of the shining harvest. Intuition gives us that idea of something behind and beyond all that we know and seem to be which pursues man always in contradiction of his lower reason and all his normal experience and impels him to formulate that formless perception in the more positive ideas of God, Immortality, Heaven and the rest by which we strive to express it to the mind. For Intuition is as strong as Nature herself from whose very soul it has sprung and cares nothing for the contradictions of reason or the denials of experience. It knows what is because it is, because itself it is of that and has come from that, and will not yield it to the judgment of what merely becomes and appears. What the Intuition tells us of, is not so much Existence as the Existent, for it proceeds from that one point of light in us which gives it its advantage, that sometimes opened door in our own self-awareness. Ancient Vedanta seized this message of the Intuition and formulated it in the three great declarations of the Upanishads, I am He, Thou art That, O Swetaketu, All this is the Brahman; this Self is the Brahman.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge,
53:Shastra is the knowledge and teaching laid down by intuition, experience and wisdom, the science and art and ethic of life, the best standards available to the race. The half-awakened man who leaves the observance of its rule to follow the guidance of his instincts and desires, can get pleasure but not happiness; for the inner happiness can only come by right living. He cannot move to perfection, cannot acquire the highest spiritual status. The law of instinct and desire seems to come first in the animal world, but the manhood of man grows by the pursuit of truth and religion and knowledge and a right life. The Shastra, the recognised Right that he has set up to govern his lower members by his reason and intelligent will, must therefore first be observed and made the authority for conduct and works and for what should or should not be done, till the instinctive desire nature is schooled and abated and put down by the habit of self-control and man is ready first for a freer intelligent self-guidance and then for the highest supreme law and supreme liberty of the spiritual nature.
   For the Shastra in its ordinary aspect is not that spiritual law, although at its loftiest point, when it becomes a science and art of spiritual living, Adhyatma-shastra, - the Gita itself describes its own teaching as the highest and most secret Shastra, - it formulates a rule of the self-transcendence of the sattwic nature and develops the discipline which leads to spiritual transmutation. Yet all Shastra is built on a number of preparatory conditions, dharmas; it is a means, not an end. The supreme end is the freedom of the spirit when abandoning all dharmas the soul turns to God for its sole law of action, acts straight from the divine will and lives in the freedom of the divine nature, not in the Law, but in the Spirit. This is the development of the teaching which is prepared by the next question of Arjuna. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays On The Gita,
54:It is not very easy for the customary mind of man, always attached to its past and present associations, to conceive of an existence still human, yet radically changed in what are now our fixed circumstances.We are in respect to our possible higher evolution much in the position of the original Ape of the Darwinian theory. It would have been impossible for that Ape leading his instinctive arboreal life in primeval forests to conceive that there would be one day an animal on the earth who would use a new faculty called reason upon the materials of his inner and outer existence, who would dominate by that power his instincts and habits, change the circumstances of his physical life, build for himself houses of stone, manipulate Nature's forces, sail the seas, ride the air, develop codes of conduct, evolve conscious methods for his mental and spiritual development. And if such a conception had been possible for the Ape-mind, it would still have been difficult for him to imagine that by any progress of Nature or long effort of Will and tendency he himself could develop into that animal. Man, because he has acquired reason and still more because he has indulged his power of imagination and intuition, is able to conceive an existence higher than his own and even to envisage his personal elevation beyond his present state into that existence. His idea of the supreme state is an absolute of all that is positive to his own concepts and desirable to his own instinctive aspiration,-Knowledge without its negative shadow of error, Bliss without its negation in experience of suffering, Power without its constant denial by incapacity, purity and plenitude of being without the opposing sense of defect and limitation. It is so that he conceives his gods; it is so that he constructs his heavens. But it is not so that his reason conceives of a possible earth and a possible humanity. His dream of God and Heaven is really a dream of his own perfection; but he finds the same difficulty in accepting its practical realisation here for his ultimate aim as would the ancestral Ape if called upon to believe in himself as the future Man. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Ego and the Dualities,
55:the three stages of the ascent :::
   There are three stages of the ascent, -at the bottom the bodily life enslaved to the pressure of necessity and desire, in the middle the mental, the higher emotional and psychic rule that feels after greater interests, aspirations, experiences, ideas, and at the summits first a deeper psychic and spiritual state and then a supramental eternal consciousness in which all our aspirations and seekings discover their own intimate significance.In the bodily life first desire and need and then the practical good of the individual and the society are the governing consideration, the dominant force. In the mental life ideas and ideals rule, ideas that are half-lights wearing the garb of Truth, ideals formed by the mind as a result of a growing but still imperfect intuition and experience. Whenever the mental life prevails and the bodily diminishes its brute insistence, man the mental being feels pushed by the urge of mental Nature to mould in the sense of the idea or the ideal the life of the individual, and in the end even the vaguer more complex life of the society is forced to undergo this subtle process.In the spiritual life, or when a higher power than Mind has manifested and taken possession of the nature, these limited motive-forces recede, dwindle, tend to disappear. The spiritual or supramental Self, the Divine Being, the supreme and immanent Reality, must be alone the Lord within us and shape freely our final development according to the highest, widest, most integral expression possible of the law of our nature. In the end that nature acts in the perfect Truth and its spontaneous freedom; for it obeys only the luminous power of the Eternal. The individual has nothing further to gain, no desire to fulfil; he has become a portion of the impersonality or the universal personality of the Eternal. No other object than the manifestation and play of the Divine Spirit in life and the maintenance and conduct of the world in its march towards the divine goal can move him to action. Mental ideas, opinions, constructions are his no more; for his mind has fallen into silence, it is only a channel for the Light and Truth of the divine knowledge. Ideals are too narrow for the vastness of his spirit; it is the ocean of the Infinite that flows through him and moves him for ever.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will,
56:But even before that highest approach to identity is achieved, something of the supreme Will can manifest in us as an imperative impulsion, a God-driven action; we then act by a spontaneous self-determining Force but a fuller knowledge of meaning and aim arises only afterwards. Or the impulse to action may come as an inspiration or intuition, but rather in the heart and body than in the mind; here an effective sight enters in but the complete and exact knowledge is still deferred and comes, if at all, lateR But the divine Will may descend too as a luminous single command or a total perception or a continuous current of perception of what is to be done into the will or into the thought or as a direction from above spontaneously fulfilled by the lower members. When the Yoga is imperfect, only some actions can be done in this way, or else a general action may so proceed but only during periods of exaltation and illumination. When the Yoga is perfect, all action becomes of this character. We may indeed distinguish three stages of a growing progress by which, first, the personal will is occasionally or frequently enlightened or moved by a supreme Will or conscious Force beyond it, then constantly replaced and, last, identified and merged in that divine Power-action. The first is the stage when we are still governed by the intellect, heart and senses; these have to seek or wait for the divine inspiration and guidance and do not always find or receive it. The second is the stage when human intelligence is more and more replaced by a high illumined or intuitive spiritualised mind, the external human heart by the inner psychic heart, the senses by a purified and selfless vital force. The third is the stage when we rise even above spiritualised mind to the supramental levels. In all three stages the fundamental character of the liberated action is the same, a spontaneous working of Prakriti no longer through or for the ego but at the will and for the enjoyment of the supreme Purusha. At a higher level this becomes the Truth of the absolute and universal Supreme expressed through the individual soul and worked out consciously through the nature, - no longer through a half-perception and a diminished or distorted effectuation by the stumbling, ignorant and all-deforming energy of lower nature in us but by the all-wise transcendent and universal Mother. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Supreme Will, 218,
57:Satya Sattva - "Sri Yukteswar's intuition was penetrating; heedless of remarks, he often replied to one's unexpressed thoughts. The words a person uses, and the actual thoughts behind them, may be poles apart. 'By calmness,' my guru said, 'try to feel the thoughts behind the confusion of men's verbiage.' [...]

Many teachers talked of miracles but could manifest nothing. Sri Yukteswar seldom mentioned the subtle laws but secretly operated them at will. 'A man of realization doesn't perform any miracle until he receives an inward sanction', master explained. 'God does not wish the secrets of His creation revealed promiscuously. Also, every individual in the world has an inalienable right to his free will. A saint will not encroach on that independence.'

The silence habitual to Sri Yukteswar was caused by his deep perceptions of the Infinite. [...] Because of my guru's unspectacular guise, only a few of his contemporaries recognized him as a superman. The adage: 'He is a fool that cannot conceal his wisdom,' could never be applied to my profound and quiet master. Though born a mortal like all others, Sri Yukteswar achieved identity with the Ruler of time and space. Master found no insuperable obstacles to the mergence of human and Divine. No such barrier exists, I came to understand. [...]

Though my guru's undissembling speech prevented a large following during his years on Earth, nevertheless, through an ever-growing number of sincere students of his teachings, his spirit lives on in the world today. [...]

The disclosures of the Divine insight are often painful to worldly ears. Master was not popular with superficial students. The wise, always few in number, deeply revered him. I daresay Sri Yukteswar would have been the most sought-after guru in India had his speech not been so candid and so censorious. [...]

He added, 'You will go to foreign lands, where blunt assaults on the ego are not appreciated. A teacher could not spread India's message in the West without an ample fund of accommodative patience and forbearance.' [...]

I am immeasurably grateful for the humbling blows he dealt my vanity. I sometimes felt that, metaphorically, he was discovering and uprooting every diseased tooth in my jaw. The hard core of egotism is difficult to dislodge except rudely. With its departure, the Divine finds at last un unobstructed channel. In vain It seeks to percolate through flinty hearts of selfishness. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi,
58:Thus the eternal paradox and eternal truth of a divine life in an animal body, an immortal aspiration or reality inhabiting a mortal tenement, a single and universal consciousness representing itself in limited minds and divided egos, a transcendent, indefinable, timeless and spaceless Being who alone renders time and space and cosmos possible, and in all these the higher truth realisable by the lower term, justify themselves to the deliberate reason as well as to the persistent instinct or intuition of mankind. Attempts are sometimes made to have done finally with questionings which have so often been declared insoluble by logical thought and to persuade men to limit their mental activities to the practical and immediate problems of their material existence in the universe; but such evasions are never permanent in their effect. Mankind returns from them with a more vehement impulse of inquiry or a more violent hunger for an immediate solution. By that hunger mysticism profits and new religions arise to replace the old that have been destroyed or stripped of significance by a scepticism which itself could not satisfy because, although its business was inquiry, it was unwilling sufficiently to inquire. The attempt to deny or stifle a truth because it is yet obscure in its outward workings and too often represented by obscurantist superstition or a crude faith, is itself a kind of obscurantism. The will to escape from a cosmic necessity because it is arduous, difficult to justify by immediate tangible results, slow in regulating its operations, must turn out eventually to have been no acceptance of the truth of Nature but a revolt against the secret, mightier will of the great Mother. It is better and more rational to accept what she will not allow us as a race to reject and lift it from the sphere of blind instinct, obscure intuition and random aspiration into the light of reason and an instructed and consciously self-guiding will. And if there is any higher light of illumined intuition or self-revealing truth which is now in man either obstructed and inoperative or works with intermittent glancings as if from behind a veil or with occasional displays as of the northern lights in our material skies, then there also we need not fear to aspire. For it is likely that such is the next higher state of consciousness of which Mind is only a form and veil, and through the splendours of that light may lie the path of our progressive self-enlargement into whatever highest state is humanity's ultimate resting-place. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Human Aspiration,
59:Vijnana, true ideation, called ritam, truth or vedas, knowledge in the Vedas, acts in human mind by four separate functions; revelation, termed drishti, sight; inspiration termed sruti,hearing; and the two faculties of discernment, smriti, memory,which are intuition, termed ketu, and discrimination, termed daksha, division, or viveka, separation. By drishti we see ourselves the truth face to face, in its own form, nature or self-existence; by sruti we hear the name, sound or word by which the truth is expressed & immediately suggested to the knowledge; by ketu we distinguish a truth presented to us behind a veil whether of result or process, as Newton discovered the law of gravitation hidden behind the fall of the apple; by viveka we distinguish between various truths and are able to put them in their right place, order and relation to each other, or, if presented with mingled truth & error, separate the truth from the falsehood. Agni Jatavedas is termed in the Veda vivichi, he who has the viveka, who separates truth from falsehood; but this is only a special action of the fourth ideal faculty & in its wider scope, it is daksha, that which divides & rightly distributes truth in its multiform aspects. The ensemble of the four faculties is Vedas or divine knowledge. When man is rising out of the limited & error-besieged mental principle, the faculty most useful to him, most indispensable is daksha or viveka. Drishti of Vijnana transmuted into terms of mind has become observation, sruti appears as imagination, intuition as intelligent perception, viveka as reasoning & intellectual judgment and all of these are liable to the constant touch of error. Human buddhi, intellect, is a distorted shadow of the true ideative faculties. As we return from these shadows to their ideal substance viveka or daksha must be our constant companion; for viveka alone can get rid of the habit of mental error, prevent observation being replaced by false illumination, imagination by false inspiration, intelligence by false intuition, judgment & reason by false discernment. The first sign of human advance out of the anritam of mind to the ritam of the ideal faculty is the growing action of a luminous right discernment which fixes instantly on the truth, feels instantly the presence of error. The fullness, the manhana of this viveka is the foundation & safeguard of Ritam or Vedas. The first great movement of Agni Jatavedas is to transform by the divine will in mental activity his lower smoke-covered activity into the bright clearness & fullness of the ideal discernment. Agne adbhuta kratw a dakshasya manhana.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns To The Mystic Fire, 717,
60:Workshops, churches, and palaces were full of these fatal works of art; he had even helped with a few himself. They were deeply disappointing be­ cause they aroused the desire for the highest and did not fulfill it. They lacked the most essential thing-mystery. That was what dreams and truly great works of art had in common : mystery. Goldmund continued his thought: It is mystery I love and pursue. Several times I have seen it beginning to take shape; as an artist, I would like to capture and express it. Some day, perhaps, I'll be able to. The figure of the universal mother, the great birthgiver, for example. Unlike other fi gures, her mystery does not consist of this or that detail, of a particular voluptuousness or sparseness, coarseness or delicacy, power or gracefulness. It consists of a fusion of the greatest contrasts of the world, those that cannot otherwise be combined, that have made peace only in this figure. They live in it together: birth and death, tenderness and cruelty, life and destruction. If I only imagined this fi gure, and were she merely the play of my thoughts, it would not matter about her, I could dismiss her as a mistake and forget about her. But the universal mother is not an idea of mine; I did not think her up, I saw her! She lives inside me. I've met her again and again. She appeared to me one winter night in a village when I was asked to hold a light over the bed of a peasant woman giving birth: that's when the image came to life within me. I often lose it; for long periods it re­ mains remote; but suddenly it Hashes clear again, as it did today. The image of my own mother, whom I loved most of all, has transformed itself into this new image, and lies encased within the new one like the pit in the cherry.

   As his present situation became clear to him, Goldmund was afraid to make a decision. It was as difficult as when he had said farewell to Narcissus and to the cloister. Once more he was on an impor­ tant road : the road to his mother. Would this mother-image one day take shape, a work of his hands, and become visible to all? Perhaps that was his goal, the hidden meaning of his life. Perhaps; he didn't know. But one thing he did know : it was good to travel toward his mother, to be drawn and called by her. He felt alive. Perhaps he'd never be able to shape her image, perhaps she'd always remain a dream, an intuition, a golden shimmer, a sacred mystery. At any rate, he had to follow her and submit his fate to her. She was his star.

   And now the decision was at his fingertips; everything had become clear. Art was a beautiful thing, but it was no goddess, no goal-not for him. He was not to follow art, but only the call of his mother.

   ~ Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund,
61:Talk 26

...

D.: Taking the first part first, how is the mind to be eliminated or relative consciousness transcended?

M.: The mind is by nature restless. Begin liberating it from its restlessness; give it peace; make it free from distractions; train it to look inward; make this a habit. This is done by ignoring the external world and removing the obstacles to peace of mind.

D.: How is restlessness removed from the mind?

M.: External contacts - contacts with objects other than itself - make the mind restless. Loss of interest in non-Self, (vairagya) is the first step. Then the habits of introspection and concentration follow. They are characterised by control of external senses, internal faculties, etc. (sama, dama, etc.) ending in samadhi (undistracted mind).

Talk 27.

D.: How are they practised?

M.: An examination of the ephemeral nature of external phenomena leads to vairagya. Hence enquiry (vichara) is the first and foremost step to be taken. When vichara continues automatically, it results in a contempt for wealth, fame, ease, pleasure, etc. The 'I' thought becomes clearer for inspection. The source of 'I' is the Heart - the final goal. If, however, the aspirant is not temperamentally suited to Vichara Marga (to the introspective analytical method), he must develop bhakti (devotion) to an ideal - may be God, Guru, humanity in general, ethical laws, or even the idea of beauty. When one of these takes possession of the individual, other attachments grow weaker, i.e., dispassion (vairagya) develops. Attachment for the ideal simultaneously grows and finally holds the field. Thus ekagrata (concentration) grows simultaneously and imperceptibly - with or without visions and direct aids.

In the absence of enquiry and devotion, the natural sedative pranayama (breath regulation) may be tried. This is known as Yoga Marga. If life is imperilled the whole interest centres round the one point, the saving of life. If the breath is held the mind cannot afford to (and does not) jump at its pets - external objects. Thus there is rest for the mind so long as the breath is held. All attention being turned on breath or its regulation, other interests are lost. Again, passions are attended with irregular breathing, whereas calm and happiness are attended with slow and regular breathing. Paroxysm of joy is in fact as painful as one of pain, and both are accompanied by ruffled breaths. Real peace is happiness. Pleasures do not form happiness. The mind improves by practice and becomes finer just as the razor's edge is sharpened by stropping. The mind is then better able to tackle internal or external problems. If an aspirant be unsuited temperamentally for the first two methods and circumstantially (on account of age) for the third method, he must try the Karma Marga (doing good deeds, for example, social service). His nobler instincts become more evident and he derives impersonal pleasure. His smaller self is less assertive and has a chance of expanding its good side. The man becomes duly equipped for one of the three aforesaid paths. His intuition may also develop directly by this single method. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Sri Ramanasramam,
62:The supreme Truth aspect which thus manifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence, self-awareness, self-delight of being; this bounds all things and secretly supports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals itself again in three terms of its essential nature,-self, conscious being or spirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more satisfactory,-Brahman the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms grew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness, are capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and the rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept. The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. [...] Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could breathe or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; He is Space and all that is in Space; He is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the Transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 02: The Knowledge and the Ignorance - The Spiritual Evolution, Part I, The Infinite Consciousness and the Ignorance Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti [336-337],
63:This greater Force is that of the Illumined Mind, a Mind no longer of higher Thought, but of spiritual light. Here the clarity of the spiritual intelligence, its tranquil daylight, gives place or subordinates itself to an intense lustre, a splendour and illumination of the spirit: a play of lightnings of spiritual truth and power breaks from above into the consciousness and adds to the calm and wide enlightenment and the vast descent of peace which characterise or accompany the action of the larger conceptual-spiritual principle, a fiery ardour of realisation and a rapturous ecstasy of knowledge. A downpour of inwardly visible Light very usually envelops this action; for it must be noted that, contrary to our ordinary conceptions, light is not primarily a material creation and the sense or vision of light accompanying the inner illumination is not merely a subjective visual image or a symbolic phenomenon: light is primarily a spiritual manifestation of the Divine Reality illuminative and creative; material light is a subsequent representation or conversion of it into Matter for the purposes of the material Energy. There is also in this descent the arrival of a greater dynamic, a golden drive, a luminous enthousiasmos of inner force and power which replaces the comparatively slow and deliberate process of the Higher Mind by a swift, sometimes a vehement, almost a violent impetus of rapid transformation.
   But these two stages of the ascent enjoy their authority and can get their own united completeness only by a reference to a third level; for it is from the higher summits where dwells the intuitional being that they derive the knowledge which they turn into thought or sight and bring down to us for the mind's transmutation. 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. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude. ... Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of stable lightnings.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine,
64:Although a devout student of the Bible, Paracelsus instinctively adopted the broad patterns of essential learning, as these had been clarified by Pythagoras of Samos and Plato of Athens. Being by nature a mystic as well as a scientist, he also revealed a deep regard for the Neoplatonic philosophy as expounded by Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus. Neo­platonism is therefore an invaluable aid to the interpretation of the Paracelsian doctrine.
   Paracelsus held that true knowledge is attained in two ways, or rather that the pursuit of knowledge is advanced by a two-fold method, the elements of which are completely interdependent. In our present terminology, we can say that these two parts of method are intuition and experience. To Paracelsus, these could never be divided from each other.
   The purpose of intuition is to reveal certain basic ideas which must then be tested and proven by experience. Experience, in turn, not only justifies intuition, but contributes certain additional knowledge by which the impulse to further growth is strengthened and developed. Paracelsus regarded the separation of intuition and experience to be a disaster, leading inevitably to greater error and further disaster. Intuition without experience allows the mind to fall into an abyss of speculation without adequate censorship by practical means. Experience without intuition could never be fruitful because fruitfulness comes not merely from the doing of things, but from the overtones which stimulate creative thought. Further, experience is meaningless unless there is within man the power capable of evaluating happenings and occurrences. The absence of this evaluating factor allows the individual to pass through many kinds of experiences, either misinterpreting them or not inter­ preting them at all. So Paracelsus attempted to explain intuition and how man is able to apprehend that which is not obvious or apparent. Is it possible to prove beyond doubt that the human being is capable of an inward realization of truths or facts without the assistance of the so-called rational faculty?
   According to Paracelsus, intuition was possible because of the existence in nature of a mysterious substance or essence-a universal life force. He gave this many names, but for our purposes, the simplest term will be appropriate. He compared it to light, further reasoning that there are two kinds of light: a visible radiance, which he called brightness, and an invisible radiance, which he called darkness. There is no essential difference between light and darkness. There is a dark light, which appears luminous to the soul but cannot be sensed by the body. There is a visible radiance which seems bright to the senses, but may appear dark to the soul. We must recognize that Paracelsus considered light as pertaining to the nature of being, the total existence from which all separate existences arise. Light not only contains the energy needed to support visible creatures, and the whole broad expanse of creation, but the invisible part of light supports the secret powers and functions of man, particularly intuition. Intuition, therefore, relates to the capacity of the individual to become attuned to the hidden side of life. By light, then, Paracelsus implies much more than the radiance that comes from the sun, a lantern, or a candle. To him, light is the perfect symbol, emblem, or figure of total well-being. Light is the cause of health. Invisible light, no less real if unseen, is the cause of wisdom. As the light of the body gives strength and energy, sustaining growth and development, so the light of the soul bestows understanding, the light of the mind makes wisdom possible, and the light of the spirit confers truth. Therefore, truth, wisdom, understanding, and health are all manifesta­ tions or revelations ot one virtue or power. What health is to the body, morality is to the emotions, virtue to the soul, wisdom to the mind, and reality to the spirit. This total content of living values is contained in every ray of visible light. This ray is only a manifestation upon one level or plane of the total mystery of life. Therefore, when we look at a thing, we either see its objective, physical form, or we apprehend its inner light Everything that lives, lives in light; everything that has an existence, radiates light. All things derive their life from light, and this light, in its root, is life itself. This, indeed, is the light that lighteth every man who cometh into the world. ~ Manly P Hall, Paracelsus,
65:It is natural from the point of view of the Yoga to divide into two categories the activities of the human mind in its pursuit of knowledge. There is the supreme supra-intellectual knowledge which concentrates itself on the discovery of the One and Infinite in its transcendence or tries to penetrate by intuition, contemplation, direct inner contact into the ultimate truths behind the appearances of Nature; there is the lower science which diffuses itself in an outward knowledge of phenomena, the disguises of the One and Infinite as it appears to us in or through the more exterior forms of the world-manifestation around us. These two, an upper and a lower hemisphere, in the form of them constructed or conceived by men within the mind's ignorant limits, have even there separated themselves, as they developed, with some sharpness.... Philosophy, sometimes spiritual or at least intuitive, sometimes abstract and intellectual, sometimes intellectualising spiritual experience or supporting with a logical apparatus the discoveries of the spirit, has claimed always to take the fixation of ultimate Truth as its province. But even when it did not separate itself on rarefied metaphysical heights from the knowledge that belongs to the practical world and the pursuit of ephemeral objects, intellectual Philosophy by its habit of abstraction has seldom been a power for life. It has been sometimes powerful for high speculation, pursuing mental Truth for its own sake without any ulterior utility or object, sometimes for a subtle gymnastic of the mind in a mistily bright cloud-land of words and ideas, but it has walked or acrobatised far from the more tangible realities of existence. Ancient Philosophy in Europe was more dynamic, but only for the few; in India in its more spiritualised forms, it strongly influenced but without transforming the life of the race.... Religion did not attempt, like Philosophy, to live alone on the heights; its aim was rather to take hold of man's parts of life even more than his parts of mind and draw them Godwards; it professed to build a bridge between spiritual Truth and the vital and material human existence; it strove to subordinate and reconcile the lower to the higher, make life serviceable to God, Earth obedient to Heaven. It has to be admitted that too often this necessary effort had the opposite result of making Heaven a sanction for Earth's desires; for, continually, the religious idea has been turned into an excuse for the worship and service of the human ego. Religion, leaving constantly its little shining core of spiritual experience, has lost itself in the obscure mass of its ever extending ambiguous compromises with life: in attempting to satisfy the thinking mind, it more often succeeded in oppressing or fettering it with a mass of theological dogmas; while seeking to net the human heart, it fell itself into pits of pietistic emotionalism and sensationalism; in the act of annexing the vital nature of man to dominate it, it grew itself vitiated and fell a prey to all the fanaticism, homicidal fury, savage or harsh turn for oppression, pullulating falsehood, obstinate attachment to ignorance to which that vital nature is prone; its desire to draw the physical in man towards God betrayed it into chaining itself to ecclesiastic mechanism, hollow ceremony and lifeless ritual. The corruption of the best produced the worst by that strange chemistry of the power of life which generates evil out of good even as it can also generate good out of evil. At the same time in a vain effort at self-defence against this downward gravitation, Religion was driven to cut existence into two by a division of knowledge, works, art, life itself into two opposite categories, the spiritual and the worldly, religious and mundane, sacred and profane; but this defensive distinction itself became conventional and artificial and aggravated rather than healed the disease.... On their side Science and Art and the knowledge of Life, although at first they served or lived in the shadow of Religion, ended by emancipating themselves, became estranged or hostile, or have even recoiled with indifference, contempt or scepticism from what seem to them the cold, barren and distant or unsubstantial and illusory heights of unreality to which metaphysical Philosophy and Religion aspire. For a time the divorce has been as complete as the one-sided intolerance of the human mind could make it and threatened even to end in a complete extinction of all attempt at a higher or a more spiritual knowledge. Yet even in the earthward life a higher knowledge is indeed the one thing that is throughout needful, and without it the lower sciences and pursuits, however fruitful, however rich, free, miraculous in the abundance of their results, become easily a sacrifice offered without due order and to false gods; corrupting, hardening in the end the heart of man, limiting his mind's horizons, they confine in a stony material imprisonment or lead to a final baffling incertitude and disillusionment. A sterile agnosticism awaits us above the brilliant phosphorescence of a half-knowledge that is still the Ignorance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1,
66:To what gods shall the sacrifice be offered? Who shall be invoked to manifest and protect in the human being this increasing godhead?

Agni first, for without him the sacrificial flame cannot burn on the altar of the soul. That flame of Agni is the seven-tongued power of the Will, a Force of God instinct with Knowledge. This conscious and forceful will is the immortal guest in our mortality, a pure priest and a divine worker, the mediator between earth and heaven. It carries what we offer to the higher Powers and brings back in return their force and light and joy into our humanity.

Indra, the Puissant next, who is the power of pure Existence self-manifested as the Divine Mind. As Agni is one pole of Force instinct with knowledge that sends its current upward from earth to heaven, so Indra is the other pole of Light instinct with force which descends from heaven to earth. He comes down into our world as the Hero with the shining horses and slays darkness and division with his lightnings, pours down the life-giving heavenly waters, finds in the trace of the hound, Intuition, the lost or hidden illuminations, makes the Sun of Truth mount high in the heaven of our mentality.

Surya, the Sun, is the master of that supreme Truth, - truth of being, truth of knowledge, truth of process and act and movement and functioning. He is therefore the creator or rather the manifester of all things - for creation is out-bringing, expression by the Truth and Will - and the father, fosterer, enlightener of our souls. The illuminations we seek are the herds of this Sun who comes to us in the track of the divine Dawn and releases and reveals in us night-hidden world after world up to the highest Beatitude.

Of that beatitude Soma is the representative deity. The wine of his ecstasy is concealed in the growths of earth, in the waters of existence; even here in our physical being are his immortalising juices and they have to be pressed out and offered to all the gods; for in that strength these shall increase and conquer.

Each of these primary deities has others associated with him who fulfil functions that arise from his own. For if the truth of Surya is to be established firmly in our mortal nature, there are previous conditions that are indispensable; a vast purity and clear wideness destructive of all sin and crooked falsehood, - and this is Varuna; a luminous power of love and comprehension leading and forming into harmony all our thoughts, acts and impulses, - this is Mitra; an immortal puissance of clear-discerning aspiration and endeavour, - this is Aryaman; a happy spontaneity of the right enjoyment of all things dispelling the evil dream of sin and error and suffering, - this is Bhaga. These four are powers of the Truth of Surya. For the whole bliss of Soma to be established perfectly in our nature a happy and enlightened and unmaimed condition of mind, vitality and body are necessary. This condition is given to us by the twin Ashwins; wedded to the daughter of Light, drinkers of honey, bringers of perfect satisfactions, healers of maim and malady they occupy our parts of knowledge and parts of action and prepare our mental, vital and physical being for an easy and victorious ascension.

Indra, the Divine Mind, as the shaper of mental forms has for his assistants, his artisans, the Ribhus, human powers who by the work of sacrifice and their brilliant ascension to the high dwelling-place of the Sun have attained to immortality and help mankind to repeat their achievement. They shape by the mind Indra's horses, the chariot of the Ashwins, the weapons of the Gods, all the means of the journey and the battle. But as giver of the Light of Truth and as Vritra-slayer Indra is aided by the Maruts, who are powers of will and nervous or vital Force that have attained to the light of thought and the voice of self-expression. They are behind all thought and speech as its impellers and they battle towards the Light, Truth and Bliss of the supreme Consciousness.

There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and Female and the gods also are either activising souls or passively executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truthconsciousness, - Mahi or Bharati, the vast Word that brings us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distribute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy.

All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities, - Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides.

The development of all these godheads is necessary to our perfection. And that perfection must be attained on all our levels, - in the wideness of earth, our physical being and consciousness; in the full force of vital speed and action and enjoyment and nervous vibration, typified as the Horse which must be brought forward to upbear our endeavour; in the perfect gladness of the heart of emotion and a brilliant heat and clarity of the mind throughout our intellectual and psychical being; in the coming of the supramental Light, the Dawn and the Sun and the shining Mother of the herds, to transform all our existence; for so comes to us the possession of the Truth, by the Truth the admirable surge of the Bliss, in the Bliss infinite Consciousness of absolute being. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Hymns to the Mystic Fire, The Doctrine of the Mystics,
67:The Supermind [Supramental consciousness] is in its very essence a truth-consciousness, a consciousness always free from the Ignorance which is the foundation of our present natural or evolutionary existence and from which nature in us is trying to arrive at self-knowledge and world-knowledge and a right consciousness and the right use of our existence in the universe. The Supermind, because it is a truth-consciousness, has this knowledge inherent in it and this power of true existence; its course is straight and can go direct to its aim, its field is wide and can even be made illimitable. This is because its very nature is knowledge: it has not to acquire knowledge but possesses it in its own right; its steps are not from nescience or ignorance into some imperfect light, but from truth to greater truth, from right perception to deeper perception, from intuition to intuition, from illumination to utter and boundless luminousness, from growing widenesses to the utter vasts and to very infinitude. On its summits it possesses the divine omniscience and omnipotence, but even in an evolutionary movement of its own graded self-manifestation by which it would eventually reveal its own highest heights, it must be in its very nature essentially free from ignorance and error: it starts from truth and light and moves always in truth and light. As its knowledge is always true, so too its will is always true; it does not fumble in its handling of things or stumble in its paces. In the Supermind feeling and emotion do not depart from their truth, make no slips or mistakes, do not swerve from the right and the real, cannot misuse beauty and delight or twist away from a divine rectitude. In the Supermind sense cannot mislead or deviate into the grossnesses which are here its natural imperfections and the cause of reproach, distrust and misuse by our ignorance. Even an incomplete statement made by the Supermind is a truth leading to a further truth, its incomplete action a step towards completeness. All the life and action and leading of the Supermind is guarded in its very nature from the falsehoods and uncertainties that are our lot; it moves in safety towards its perfection. Once the truth-consciousness was established here on its own sure foundation, the evolution of divine life would be a progress in felicity, a march through light to Ananda. Supermind is an eternal reality of the divine Being and the divine Nature. In its own plane it already and always exists and possesses its own essential law of being; it has not to be created or to emerge or evolve into existence out of involution in Matter or out of non-existence, as it might seem to the view of mind which itself seems to its own view to have so emerged from life and Matter or to have evolved out of an involution in life and Matter. The nature of Supermind is always the same, a being of knowledge, proceeding from truth to truth, creating or rather manifesting what has to be manifested by the power of a pre-existent knowledge, not by hazard but by a self-existent destiny in the being itself, a necessity of the thing in itself and therefore inevitable. Its -manifestation of the divine life will also be inevitable; its own life on its own plane is divine and, if Supermind descends upon the earth, it will bring necessarily the divine life with it and establish it here. Supermind is the grade of existence beyond mind, life and Matter and, as mind, life and Matter have manifested on the earth, so too must Supermind in the inevitable course of things manifest in this world of Matter. In fact, a supermind is already here but it is involved, concealed behind this manifest mind, life and Matter and not yet acting overtly or in its own power: if it acts, it is through these inferior powers and modified by their characters and so not yet recognisable. It is only by the approach and arrival of the descending Supermind that it can be liberated upon earth and reveal itself in the action of our material, vital and mental parts so that these lower powers can become portions of a total divinised activity of our whole being: it is that that will bring to us a completely realised divinity or the divine life. It is indeed so that life and mind involved in Matter have realised themselves here; for only what is involved can evolve, otherwise there could be no emergence. The manifestation of a supramental truth-consciousness is therefore the capital reality that will make the divine life possible. It is when all the movements of thought, impulse and action are governed and directed by a self-existent and luminously automatic truth-consciousness and our whole nature comes to be constituted by it and made of its stuff that the life divine will be complete and absolute. Even as it is, in reality though not in the appearance of things, it is a secret self-existent knowledge and truth that is working to manifest itself in the creation here. The Divine is already there immanent within us, ourselves are that in our inmost reality and it is this reality that we have to manifest; it is that which constitutes the urge towards the divine living and makes necessary the creation of the life divine even in this material existence. A manifestation of the Supermind and its truth-consciousness is then inevitable; it must happen in this world sooner or lateR But it has two aspects, a descent from above, an ascent from below, a self-revelation of the Spirit, an evolution in Nature. The ascent is necessarily an effort, a working of Nature, an urge or nisus on her side to raise her lower parts by an evolutionary or revolutionary change, conversion or transformation into the divine reality and it may happen by a process and progress or by a rapid miracle. The descent or self-revelation of the Spirit is an act of the supreme Reality from above which makes the realisation possible and it can appear either as the divine aid which brings about the fulfilment of the progress and process or as the sanction of the miracle. Evolution, as we see it in this world, is a slow and difficult process and, indeed, needs usually ages to reach abiding results; but this is because it is in its nature an emergence from inconscient beginnings, a start from nescience and a working in the ignorance of natural beings by what seems to be an unconscious force. There can be, on the contrary, an evolution in the light and no longer in the darkness, in which the evolving being is a conscious participant and cooperator, and this is precisely what must take place here. Even in the effort and progress from the Ignorance to Knowledge this must be in part if not wholly the endeavour to be made on the heights of the nature, and it must be wholly that in the final movement towards the spiritual change, realisation, transformation. It must be still more so when there is a transition across the dividing line between the Ignorance and the Knowledge and the evolution is from knowledge to greater knowledge, from consciousness to greater consciousness, from being to greater being. There is then no longer any necessity for the slow pace of the ordinary evolution; there can be rapid conversion, quick transformation after transformation, what would seem to our normal present mind a succession of miracles. An evolution on the supramental levels could well be of that nature; it could be equally, if the being so chose, a more leisurely passage of one supramental state or condition of things to something beyond but still supramental, from level to divine level, a building up of divine gradations, a free growth to the supreme Supermind or beyond it to yet undreamed levels of being, consciousness and Ananda.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, 558,
68:Intuition And The Value Of Concentration :::
   Mother, how can the faculty of intuition be developed?

   ... There are different kinds of intuition, and we carry these capacities within us. They are always active to some extent but we don't notice them because we don't pay enough attention to what is going on in us. Behind the emotions, deep within the being, in a consciousness seated somewhere near the level of the solar plexus, there is a sort of prescience, a kind of capacity for foresight, but not in the form of ideas: rather in the form of feelings, almost a perception of sensations. For instance, when one is going to decide to do something, there is sometimes a kind of uneasiness or inner refusal, and usually, if one listens to this deeper indication, one realises that it was justified. In other cases there is something that urges, indicates, insists - I am not speaking of impulses, you understand, of all the movements which come from the vital and much lower still - indications which are behind the feelings, which come from the affective part of the being; there too one can receive a fairly sure indication of the thing to be done. These are forms of intuition or of a higher instinct which can be cultivated by observation and also by studying the results. Naturally, it must be done very sincerely, objectively, without prejudice. If one wants to see things in a particular way and at the same time practise this observation, it is all useless. One must do it as if one were looking at what is happening from outside oneself, in someone else. It is one form of intuition and perhaps the first one that usually manifests. There is also another form but that one is much more difficult to observe because for those who are accustomed to think, to act by reason - not by impulse but by reason - to reflect before doing anything, there is an extremely swift process from cause to effect in the half-conscious thought which prevents you from seeing the line, the whole line of reasoning and so you don't think that it is a chain of reasoning, and that is quite deceptive. You have the impression of an intuition but it is not an intuition, it is an extremely rapid subconscious reasoning, which takes up a problem and goes straight to the conclusions. This must not be mistaken for intuition. In the ordinary functioning of the brain, intuition is something which suddenly falls like a drop of light. If one has the faculty, the beginning of a faculty of mental vision, it gives the impression of something coming from outside or above, like a little impact of a drop of light in the brain, absolutely independent of all reasoning. This is perceived more easily when one is able to silence one's mind, hold it still and attentive, arresting its usual functioning, as if the mind were changed into a kind of mirror turned towards a higher faculty in a sustained and silent attention. That too one can learn to do. One must learn to do it, it is a necessary discipline.
   When you have a question to solve, whatever it may be, usually you concentrate your attention here (pointing between the eyebrows), at the centre just above the eyes, the centre of the conscious will. But then if you do that, you cannot be in contact with intuition. You can be in contact with the source of the will, of effort, even of a certain kind of knowledge, but in the outer, almost material field; whereas, if you want to contact the intuition, you must keep this (Mother indicates the forehead) completely immobile. Active thought must be stopped as far as possible and the entire mental faculty must form - at the top of the head and a little further above if possible - a kind of mirror, very quiet, very still, turned upwards, in silent, very concentrated attention. If you succeed, you can - perhaps not immediately - but you can have the perception of the drops of light falling upon the mirror from a still unknown region and expressing themselves as a conscious thought which has no connection with all the rest of your thought since you have been able to keep it silent. That is the real beginning of the intellectual intuition.
   It is a discipline to be followed. For a long time one may try and not succeed, but as soon as one succeeds in making a mirror, still and attentive, one always obtains a result, not necessarily with a precise form of thought but always with the sensations of a light coming from above. And then, if one can receive this light coming from above without entering immediately into a whirl of activity, receive it in calm and silence and let it penetrate deep into the being, then after a while it expresses itself either as a luminous thought or as a very precise indication here (Mother indicates the heart), in this other centre.
   Naturally, first these two faculties must be developed; then, as soon as there is any result, one must observe the result, as I said, and see the connection with what is happening, the consequences: see, observe very attentively what has come in, what may have caused a distortion, what one has added by way of more or less conscious reasoning or the intervention of a lower will, also more or less conscious; and it is by a very deep study - indeed, almost of every moment, in any case daily and very frequent - that one succeeds in developing one's intuition. It takes a long time. It takes a long time and there are ambushes: one can deceive oneself, take for intuitions subconscious wills which try to manifest, indications given by impulses one has refused to receive openly, indeed all sorts of difficulties. One must be prepared for that. But if one persists, one is sure to succeed.
   And there comes a time when one feels a kind of inner guidance, something which is leading one very perceptibly in all that one does. But then, for the guidance to have its maximum power, one must naturally add to it a conscious surrender: one must be sincerely determined to follow the indication given by the higher force. If one does that, then... one saves years of study, one can seize the result extremely rapidly. If one also does that, the result comes very rapidly. But for that, it must be done with sincerity and... a kind of inner spontaneity. If one wants to try without this surrender, one may succeed - as one can also succeed in developing one's personal will and making it into a very considerable power - but that takes a very long time and one meets many obstacles and the result is very precarious; one must be very persistent, obstinate, persevering, and one is sure to succeed, but only after a great labour.
   Make your surrender with a sincere, complete self-giving, and you will go ahead at full speed, you will go much faster - but you must not do this calculatingly, for that spoils everything! (Silence) Moreover, whatever you may want to do in life, one thing is absolutely indispensable and at the basis of everything, the capacity of concentrating the attention. If you are able to gather together the rays of attention and consciousness on one point and can maintain this concentration with a persistent will, nothing can resist it - whatever it may be, from the most material physical development to the highest spiritual one. But this discipline must be followed in a constant and, it may be said, imperturbable way; not that you should always be concentrated on the same thing - that's not what I mean, I mean learning to concentrate.
   And materially, for studies, sports, all physical or mental development, it is absolutely indispensable. And the value of an individual is proportionate to the value of his attention.
   And from the spiritual point of view it is still more important.
   There is no spiritual obstacle which can resist a penetrating power of concentration. For instance, the discovery of the psychic being, union with the inner Divine, opening to the higher spheres, all can be obtained by an intense and obstinate power of concentration - but one must learn how to do it. There is nothing in the human or even in the superhuman field, to which the power of concentration is not the key. You can be the best athlete, you can be the best student, you can be an artistic, literary or scientific genius, you can be the greatest saint with that faculty. And everyone has in himself a tiny little beginning of it - it is given to everybody, but people do not cultivate it.
   ~ The Mother, Questions And Answers 1957-1958,
69:The Supreme Discovery
   IF WE want to progress integrally, we must build within our conscious being a strong and pure mental synthesis which can serve us as a protection against temptations from outside, as a landmark to prevent us from going astray, as a beacon to light our way across the moving ocean of life.
   Each individual should build up this mental synthesis according to his own tendencies and affinities and aspirations. But if we want it to be truly living and luminous, it must be centred on the idea that is the intellectual representation symbolising That which is at the centre of our being, That which is our life and our light.
   This idea, expressed in sublime words, has been taught in various forms by all the great Instructors in all lands and all ages.
   The Self of each one and the great universal Self are one. Since all that is exists from all eternity in its essence and principle, why make a distinction between the being and its origin, between ourselves and what we place at the beginning?
   The ancient traditions rightly said:
   "Our origin and ourselves, our God and ourselves are one."
   And this oneness should not be understood merely as a more or less close and intimate relationship of union, but as a true identity.
   Thus, when a man who seeks the Divine attempts to reascend by degrees towards the inaccessible, he forgets that all his knowledge and all his intuition cannot take him one step forward in this infinite; neither does he know that what he wants to attain, what he believes to be so far from him, is within him.
   For how could he know anything of the origin until he becomes conscious of this origin in himself?
   It is by understanding himself, by learning to know himself, that he can make the supreme discovery and cry out in wonder like the patriarch in the Bible, "The house of God is here and I knew it not."
   That is why we must express that sublime thought, creatrix of the material worlds, and make known to all the word that fills the heavens and the earth, "I am in all things and all beings."When all shall know this, the promised day of great transfigurations will be at hand. When in each atom of Matter men shall recognise the indwelling thought of God, when in each living creature they shall perceive some hint of a gesture of God, when each man can see God in his brother, then dawn will break, dispelling the darkness, the falsehood, the ignorance, the error and suffering that weigh upon all Nature. For, "all Nature suffers and laments as she awaits the revelation of the Sons of God."
   This indeed is the central thought epitomising all others, the thought which should be ever present to our remembrance as the sun that illumines all life.
   That is why I remind you of it today. For if we follow our path bearing this thought in our hearts like the rarest jewel, the most precious treasure, if we allow it to do its work of illumination and transfiguration within us, we shall know that it lives in the centre of all beings and all things, and in it we shall feel the marvellous oneness of the universe.
   Then we shall understand the vanity and childishness of our meagre satisfactions, our foolish quarrels, our petty passions, our blind indignations. We shall see the dissolution of our little faults, the crumbling of the last entrenchments of our limited personality and our obtuse egoism. We shall feel ourselves being swept along by this sublime current of true spirituality which will deliver us from our narrow limits and bounds.
   The individual Self and the universal Self are one; in every world, in every being, in every thing, in every atom is the Divine Presence, and man's mission is to manifest it.
   In order to do that, he must become conscious of this Divine Presence within him. Some individuals must undergo a real apprenticeship in order to achieve this: their egoistic being is too all-absorbing, too rigid, too conservative, and their struggles against it are long and painful. Others, on the contrary, who are more impersonal, more plastic, more spiritualised, come easily into contact with the inexhaustible divine source of their being.But let us not forget that they too should devote themselves daily, constantly, to a methodical effort of adaptation and transformation, so that nothing within them may ever again obscure the radiance of that pure light.
   But how greatly the standpoint changes once we attain this deeper consciousness! How understanding widens, how compassion grows!
   On this a sage has said:
   "I would like each one of us to come to the point where he perceives the inner God who dwells even in the vilest of human beings; instead of condemning him we would say, 'Arise, O resplendent Being, thou who art ever pure, who knowest neither birth nor death; arise, Almighty One, and manifest thy nature.'"
   Let us live by this beautiful utterance and we shall see everything around us transformed as if by miracle.
   This is the attitude of true, conscious and discerning love, the love which knows how to see behind appearances, understand in spite of words, and which, amid all obstacles, is in constant communion with the depths.
   What value have our impulses and our desires, our anguish and our violence, our sufferings and our struggles, all these inner vicissitudes unduly dramatised by our unruly imagination - what value do they have before this great, this sublime and divine love bending over us from the innermost depths of our being, bearing with our weaknesses, rectifying our errors, healing our wounds, bathing our whole being with its regenerating streams?
   For the inner Godhead never imposes herself, she neither demands nor threatens; she offers and gives herself, conceals and forgets herself in the heart of all beings and things; she never accuses, she neither judges nor curses nor condemns, but works unceasingly to perfect without constraint, to mend without reproach, to encourage without impatience, to enrich each one with all the wealth he can receive; she is the mother whose love bears fruit and nourishes, guards and protects, counsels and consoles; because she understands everything, she can endure everything, excuse and pardon everything, hope and prepare for everything; bearing everything within herself, she owns nothing that does not belong to all, and because she reigns over all, she is the servant of all; that is why all, great and small, who want to be kings with her and gods in her, become, like her, not despots but servitors among their brethren.
   How beautiful is this humble role of servant, the role of all who have been revealers and heralds of the God who is within all, of the Divine Love that animates all things....
   And until we can follow their example and become true servants even as they, let us allow ourselves to be penetrated and transformed by this Divine Love; let us offer Him, without reserve, this marvellous instrument, our physical organism. He shall make it yield its utmost on every plane of activity.
   To achieve this total self-consecration, all means are good, all methods have their value. The one thing needful is to persevere in our will to attain this goal. For then everything we study, every action we perform, every human being we meet, all come to bring us an indication, a help, a light to guide us on the path.
   Before I close, I shall add a few pages for those who have already made apparently fruitless efforts, for those who have encountered the pitfalls on the way and seen the measure of their weakness, for those who are in danger of losing their self-confidence and courage. These pages, intended to rekindle hope in the hearts of those who suffer, were written by a spiritual worker at a time when ordeals of every kind were sweeping down on him like purifying flames.
   You who are weary, downcast and bruised, you who fall, who think perhaps that you are defeated, hear the voice of a friend. He knows your sorrows, he has shared them, he has suffered like you from the ills of the earth; like you he has crossed many deserts under the burden of the day, he has known thirst and hunger, solitude and abandonment, and the cruellest of all wants, the destitution of the heart. Alas! he has known too the hours of doubt, the errors, the faults, the failings, every weakness.
   But he tells you: Courage! Hearken to the lesson that the rising sun brings to the earth with its first rays each morning. It is a lesson of hope, a message of solace.
   You who weep, who suffer and tremble, who dare not expect an end to your ills, an issue to your pangs, behold: there is no night without dawn and the day is about to break when darkness is thickest; there is no mist that the sun does not dispel, no cloud that it does not gild, no tear that it will not dry one day, no storm that is not followed by its shining triumphant bow; there is no snow that it does not melt, nor winter that it does not change into radiant spring.
   And for you too, there is no affliction which does not bring its measure of glory, no distress which cannot be transformed into joy, nor defeat into victory, nor downfall into higher ascension, nor solitude into radiating centre of life, nor discord into harmony - sometimes it is a misunderstanding between two minds that compels two hearts to open to mutual communion; lastly, there is no infinite weakness that cannot be changed into strength. And it is even in supreme weakness that almightiness chooses to reveal itself!
   Listen, my little child, you who today feel so broken, so fallen perhaps, who have nothing left, nothing to cover your misery and foster your pride: never before have you been so great! How close to the summits is he who awakens in the depths, for the deeper the abyss, the more the heights reveal themselves!
   Do you not know this, that the most sublime forces of the vasts seek to array themselves in the most opaque veils of Matter? Oh, the sublime nuptials of sovereign love with the obscurest plasticities, of the shadow's yearning with the most royal light!
   If ordeal or fault has cast you down, if you have sunk into the nether depths of suffering, do not grieve - for there indeed the divine love and the supreme blessing can reach you! Because you have passed through the crucible of purifying sorrows, the glorious ascents are yours.
   You are in the wilderness: then listen to the voices of the silence. The clamour of flattering words and outer applause has gladdened your ears, but the voices of the silence will gladden your soul and awaken within you the echo of the depths, the chant of divine harmonies!
   You are walking in the depths of night: then gather the priceless treasures of the night. In bright sunshine, the ways of intelligence are lit, but in the white luminosities of the night lie the hidden paths of perfection, the secret of spiritual riches.
   You are being stripped of everything: that is the way towards plenitude. When you have nothing left, everything will be given to you. Because for those who are sincere and true, from the worst always comes the best.
   Every grain that is sown in the earth produces a thousand. Every wing-beat of sorrow can be a soaring towards glory.
   And when the adversary pursues man relentlessly, everything he does to destroy him only makes him greater.
   Hear the story of the worlds, look: the great enemy seems to triumph. He casts the beings of light into the night, and the night is filled with stars. He rages against the cosmic working, he assails the integrity of the empire of the sphere, shatters its harmony, divides and subdivides it, scatters its dust to the four winds of infinity, and lo! the dust is changed into a golden seed, fertilising the infinite and peopling it with worlds which now gravitate around their eternal centre in the larger orbit of space - so that even division creates a richer and deeper unity, and by multiplying the surfaces of the material universe, enlarges the empire that it set out to destroy.
   Beautiful indeed was the song of the primordial sphere cradled in the bosom of immensity, but how much more beautiful and triumphant is the symphony of the constellations, the music of the spheres, the immense choir that fills the heavens with an eternal hymn of victory!
   Hear again: no state was ever more precarious than that of man when he was separated on earth from his divine origin. Above him stretched the hostile borders of the usurper, and at his horizon's gates watched jailers armed with flaming swords. Then, since he could climb no more to the source of life, the source arose within him; since he could no more receive the light from above, the light shone forth at the very centre of his being; since he could commune no more with the transcendent love, that love offered itself in a holocaust and chose each terrestrial being, each human self as its dwelling-place and sanctuary.
   That is how, in this despised and desolate but fruitful and blessed Matter, each atom contains a divine thought, each being carries within him the Divine Inhabitant. And if no being in all the universe is as frail as man, neither is any as divine as he!
   In truth, in truth, in humiliation lies the cradle of glory! 28 April 1912 ~ The Mother, Words Of Long Ago, The Supreme Discovery,

*** WISDOM TROVE ***

1:Abandon yourself to Intuition ~ paulo-coelho, @wisdomtrove
2:Intuition is seeing with the soul. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove
3:We know nothing until intuition agrees. ~ richard-bach, @wisdomtrove
4:I believe in intuition and inspiration. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove
5:Intuition is the whisper of the soul. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove
6:Intuition is the source of scientific knowledge. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove
7:The only real valuable thing is intuition. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove
8:Trust your instincts. Intuition doesn’t lie. ~ oprah-winfrey, @wisdomtrove
9:Intuition is the only true guide in life. ~ jiddu-krishnamurti, @wisdomtrove
10:Intuition transcends reason, but does not contradict it ~ sivananda, @wisdomtrove
11:When intuition and logic agree, you are always right. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove
12:By learning to trust your intuition, miracles seem to happen. ~ susan-jeffers, @wisdomtrove
13:Intuition is a walkie-talkie between the personality an the soul. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove
14:It was easy to cover up ignorance by the mystical word "intuition. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove
15:A woman knows by intuition, or instinct, what is best for herself. ~ marilyn-monroe, @wisdomtrove
16:My intuition is always on my side. I trust it to be there at all times. ~ louise-hay, @wisdomtrove
17:Notion without intuition is empty, intuition without notion is blind. ~ immanuel-kant, @wisdomtrove
18:A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition. ~ g-k-chesterton, @wisdomtrove
19:Sex is the root of which intuition is the foliage and beauty is the flower. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove
20:Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. ~ henri-cartier-bresson, @wisdomtrove
21:When in doubt, follow your intuition. It will guide you to where you need to be. ~ celestine-chua, @wisdomtrove
22:Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time. ~ alain-de-botton, @wisdomtrove
23:Tomes of aesthetic criticism hang on a few moments of real delight and intuition. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove
24:Transform reason into ordered intuition; let all thyself be light. This is thy goal. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove
25:Intuition is the conscious experience - in pure spirit - of a purely spiritual content. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove
26:Photography is only intuition, a perpetual interrogation - everything except a stage set. ~ henri-cartier-bresson, @wisdomtrove
27:Intuition does not denote something contrary to reason, but something outside of the province of reason. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove
28:Your intuition will most likely push you gently towards some appropriate risks and trying new things. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
29:Intuition is soul guidance, appearing naturally in man during those instants when his mind is calm. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove
30:Learning to trust your intuition is an art form, and like all other art forms, it takes practice to perfect. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
31:When you live guided by intuition rather than thought, your life dances like writing on water,  fresh and untraceable. ~ mooji, @wisdomtrove
32:By learning to trust your intuition, miracles seem to happen. Intuitive thoughts are gifts from the higher self. ~ susan-jeffers, @wisdomtrove
33:Intuition is for thinking what observation is for perception. Intuition & observation are sources of knowledge. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove
34:Counseling has to do with intuition, with work on oneself, with the quietness of one's mind and the openness of one's heart. ~ ram-das, @wisdomtrove
35:We are born intuitive, which is why for most people, their intuition is actually the source of their greatest suffering. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove
36:Wise people have an inward sense of what is beautiful, and the highest wisdom is to trust this intuition and be guided by it. ~ aristotle, @wisdomtrove
37:Demonstration, similitude & harmony are objects of reasoning. Invention, identity & melody are objects of intuition. ~ william-blake, @wisdomtrove
38:Intuition is perception via the unconscious that brings forth ideas, images, new possibilities and ways out of blocked situations. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove
39:We are born intuitive, which is why for most people, their intuition is actually the source of their greatest suffering. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove
40:I believe in the possibility of happiness, if one cultivates intuition and outlives the grosser passions, including optimism. ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove
41:Intuition is natural by-product of flowering of a mature self-esteem and a sense of empowerment – not power over, but power to be ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove
42:We live in a culture that doesn’t acknowledge or validate human intuition and doesn’t encourage us to rely on our intuitive wisdom. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
43:For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove
44:The expression "from above" is for us only a way of speaking. Many receive from above the command for action - we call it intuition. ~ sri-aurobindo, @wisdomtrove
45:A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way, but intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove
46:Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. ~ steve-jobs, @wisdomtrove
47:Intuition is natural by-product of flowering of a mature self-esteem and a sense of empowerment – not power over, but power to be ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove
48:I assure you that intuition and self-love go hand in hand, and your soul's purpose will come out loud and clear as you love yourself more. ~ anita-moorjani, @wisdomtrove
49:The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge. ~ rene-descartes, @wisdomtrove
50:Much of the Western world emphasizes rationality and reason, but overlooks or ignores the enormous value of intuition and instinctive wisdom. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
51:The only justice is to follow the sincere intuition of the soul, angry or gentle. Anger is just, and pity is just, but judgement is never just. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove
52:Trust your Heart. Value its intuition.  Choose to let go of fear, and to open to the true and you will awaken to the freedom, clarity and joy of Being ~ mooji, @wisdomtrove
53:Intuition attracts those who wish to be spiritual without any bother, because it promises a heaven where the intuitions of others can be ignored. ~ e-m-forster, @wisdomtrove
54:When you trust your intuition, you are in sync with the heartbeat of the Universe. Your intuition is an inner GPS which guides and navigates you. ~ aimee-davies, @wisdomtrove
55:Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. ~ henri-cartier-bresson, @wisdomtrove
56:In other words, the highest form of the love of God is an immediate spiritual intuition, by which &
57:Intuition is the undoubting conception of a pure and attentive mind, which arises from the light of reason alone, and is more certain than deduction. ~ rene-descartes, @wisdomtrove
58:Intuition is the art, peculiar to the human mind, of working out the correct answer from data that is, in itself, incomplete or even, perhaps, misleading. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove
59:What I am actually saying is that we need to be willing to let our intuition guide us, and then be willing to follow that guidance directly and fearlessly. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
60:I'm one of the few people who understands how producing technology requires intuition and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline. ~ steve-jobs, @wisdomtrove
61:General propositions do not decide concrete cases. The decision will depend on a judgment or intuition more subtle than any articulate major premise. ~ oliver-wendell-holmes-jr, @wisdomtrove
62:Sex and beauty are inseparable, like life and consciousness. And the intelligence which goes with sex and beauty, and arises out of sex and beauty, is intuition. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove
63:Intuition is the discriminative faculty that enables you to decide which of two lines of reasoning is right. Perfect intuition makes you a master of all. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove
64:In such doubtful matters, where you have to work as a pioneer, you must be able to put some trust in your intuition and follow your feeling even at the risk of going wrong. ~ carl-jung, @wisdomtrove
65:No Pilar," Agustin said. "You are not smart. You are brave. You are loyal. You have decision. You have intuition. Much decision and much heart. But you are not smart. ~ ernest-hemingway, @wisdomtrove
66:There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove
67:Even good excuses, really good ones, don't help very much. Explanations, on the other hand, are both scarce and useful.  And accurate forecasts and insightful intuition are priceless. ~ seth-godin, @wisdomtrove
68:The true basis of religion is not belief, but intuitive experience. Intuition is the soul’s power of knowing God. To know what religion is really all about, one must know God. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove
69:The human mind works at low efficiency. Twenty percent is the figure usually given. When, momentarily, there is a flash of greater power, it is termed a hunch, or insight, or intuition. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove
70:Most of us are in touch with our intuition whether we know it or not, but we’re usually in the habit of doubting or contradicting it so automatically that we don’t even know it has spoken. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
71:The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you, and you don't know how or why. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove
72:There are times you will be given intuition, you just know something, and you can't explain it. Don't override it. Don't talk yourself out of it. That's the Creator giving you inside information. ~ joel-osteen, @wisdomtrove
73:I know few significant questions of public policy which can safely be confided to computers. In the end, the hard decisions inescapably involve imponderables of intuition, prudence, and judgment. ~ john-f-kennedy, @wisdomtrove
74:To argue that the gaps in knowledge which confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
75:The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance. ~ ralph-waldo-emerson, @wisdomtrove
76:Words saturated with sincerity, conviction, faith, and intuition are like highly explosive vibration bombs, which, when set off, shatter the rocks of difficulties and create the change desired. ~ paramahansa-yogananda, @wisdomtrove
77:Intuition is neither the ability to engage prophecy nor a means of avoiding financial loss or painful relationships. It is actually the ability to use energy datato make decisions in the immediate moment. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove
78:Living a life of integrity starts with making and keeping promises, until the whole human personality, the senses, the thinking, the feeling, and the intuition, are ultimately integrated and harmonised.   ~ stephen-r-covey, @wisdomtrove
79:The psychic perception is a feeling as opposed to a thinking. Not a feeling that is engendered through emotion necessarily. It comes from the psychic plane of intuition, which is another stage of our mind. ~ frederick-lenz, @wisdomtrove
80:The most successful people are often very intuitive. Consciously or unconsciously, they follow their gut feelings. Following intuition puts us in the flow - a very alive, productive, and desirable state.      ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
81:Intuition is neither the ability to engage prophecy nor a means of avoiding financial loss or painful relationships. It is actually the ability to use energy datato make decisions in the immediate moment. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove
82:To rise in consciousness from one dimension to another, you need help. The help may not always be in the shape of a human person, it may be a subtle presence, or a spark of intuition, but help must come. ~ sri-nisargadatta-maharaj, @wisdomtrove
83:Your intuition will tell you where you need to go; it will connect you with people you should meet; it will guide you toward work that is meaningful for you - work that brings you joy, work that feels right for you. ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
84:Most writers - poets in especial - prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes. ~ edgar-allan-poe, @wisdomtrove
85:everyone - you included - is on her best behavior in the beginning of a relationship. Sometimes little quirks turn out to be big ones, and the big advantage that women have - sometimes the only advantage - is their intuition. ~ nicholas-sparks, @wisdomtrove
86:We are having experiences all the time which may on occasion render some sense of this, a little intuition of where your bliss is. Grab it. No one can tell you what it is going to be. You have to learn to recognize your own depth. ~ joseph-campbell, @wisdomtrove
87:If you are clean inside, having no wounds of inferiority, then who cares what people expect of you? You have never fulfilled anybody’s expectations. You have been simply living your life according to your own insight, intuition, intelligence. ~ rajneesh, @wisdomtrove
88:The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we able to know everything, because it's all written there. ~ paulo-coelho, @wisdomtrove
89:Feminine intuition? Is that what you wanted the robot for? You men. Faced with a woman reaching a correct conclusion and unable to accept the fact that she is your equal or superior in intelligence, you invent something called feminine intuition. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove
90:To love a person is to know and love the person. But we can pick up an enormous amount about another human being just by exchanging a couple of sentences. It's not yet knowledge; it's an intuition that motivates you to want to find out more. ~ nathaniel-branden, @wisdomtrove
91:I began to realize that an intuitive understanding and consciousness was more significant than abstract thinking and intellectual logical analysis. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That's had a big impact on my work. ~ steve-jobs, @wisdomtrove
92:Intuition is like a radio station.. No, intuition is more like a radio receiver and it can receive different stations. This radio receiver serves different functions, it serves your spirituality which is the development of your soul. It serves your physical survival. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove
93:I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research. ~ albert-einstein, @wisdomtrove
94:Knowledge has three degrees - opinion, science, illumination. THe means or instrument of the first s sense; of the second dialectic; of the third intuition. To the last I subordinate reason. It is absolute knowledge found on the identity of the mind knowing with the object know ~ plotinus, @wisdomtrove
95:Our own intuition of what we're called to is reality speaking to us individually and perfectly. We have to listen to how the Infinite talks to us and leads us. Reality, Life the Infinite, God, has a way of leading us in just the perfect way, if we will only just listen to it. ~ adyashanti, @wisdomtrove
96:Here's a simple way you can engage your intuition. When you are about to say something and you're not sure if you want to say it, ask yourself, "What is my motivation?" When you check your motivation you engage non-physical guidance and you will not be alone in you assessment. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove
97:When you love yourself, there's a lightness to your being. That self-love, that lightness, that sense of humor, that is what being spiritual is about, and that is the state of consciousness that really opens you up to your intuition and to your guidance from the other side. ~ anita-moorjani, @wisdomtrove
98:The theoretician believes in logic and believes that he despises dreams, intuition, and poetry. He does not recognize that these three fairies have only disguised themselves in order to dazzle him... . He does not know that he owes his greatest discoveries to them. ~ antoine-de-saint-exupery, @wisdomtrove
99:Therefore, those to whom God has imparted religion by intuition are very fortunate and justly convinced. But to those who do not have it, we can give it only by reasoning, waiting for God to give them spiritual insight, without which faith is only human and useless for salvation. ~ blaise-pascal, @wisdomtrove
100:This may be the primary purpose of dogs: to restore our sense of wonder and to help us maintain it, to make us consider that we should trust our intuition as they trust theirs and to help us realize that a thing known intuitively can be as real as anything known by material experience. ~ dean-koontz, @wisdomtrove
101:Authentic power is a new potential of this expanded perceptual system that we are all being given as a gift. As you begin to create authentic power with tools such as emotional awareness, responsible choice and intuition, you begin to draw to yourself others who are doing the same thing. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove
102:When all has been considered, it seems to me to be the irresistible intuition that infinite punishment for finite sin would be unjust, and therefore wrong. We feel that even weak and erring Man would shrink from such an act. And we cannot conceive of God as acting on a lower standard of right and wrong. ~ lewis-carroll, @wisdomtrove
103:If physics leads us today to a world view which is essentially mystical, it returns, in a way, to its beginning, 2,500 years ago. ... This time, however, it is not only based on intuition, but also on experiments of great precision and sophistication, and on a rigorous and consistent mathematical formalism. ~ fritjof-capra, @wisdomtrove
104:There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever. ~ henri-cartier-bresson, @wisdomtrove
105:There is a universal, intelligent, life force that exists within everyone and everything. It resides within each one of use as a deep wisdom, an inner knowing. We can access this wonderful source of knowledge and wisdom through our intuition, an inner sense that tells us what feels right and true for us at any given moment.  ~ shakti-gawain, @wisdomtrove
106:Truths are known to us in two ways: some are known directly, and of themselves; some through the medium of other truths. The former are the subject of Intuition, or Consciousness; the latter, of Inference; the latter of Inference. The truths known by Intuition are the original premisses, from which all others are inferred. ~ john-stuart-mill, @wisdomtrove
107:A lot of the so-called systems composers have this thing that the system is always right. You don't fiddle with it at all. Well, I don't think that. I think the system is as right as you judge it to be. If for some reason you don't like a bit of it you must trust your intuition on that. I don't take a doctrinaire approach to systems. ~ brian-eno, @wisdomtrove
108:In spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. The essential substance of every thought and feeling remains incommunicable, locked up in the impenetrable strong-room of the individual soul and body. Our life is a sentence of perpetual solitary confinement. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove
109:I'm not responsible for my photographs. Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. It's drowning yourself, dissolving yourself, and then sniff, sniff, sniff - being sensitive to coincidence. You can't go looking for it; you can't want it, or you won't get it. First you must lose your self. Then it happens. ~ henri-cartier-bresson, @wisdomtrove
110:Our technological society has no longer any place in it for wisdom that seeks truth for its own sake, that seeks the fullness of being, that seeks to rest in an intuition of the very ground of all being. Without wisdom, the apparent opposition of action and contemplation, of work and rest, of involvement and detachment, can never be resolved. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove
111:If you have to be reasoned into Christianity, some wise fellow can reason you out of it! If you come to Christ by a flash of the Holy Spirit so that by intuition you know that you are God's child, you know it by the text but you also know it by the inner light, the inner illumination of the Spirit, and no one can ever reason you out of it. ~ aiden-wilson-tozer, @wisdomtrove
112:By saying that a woven design is merely coloured threads you miss the most important - the beauty of it. Or by describing a book as paper with ink stains on it, you miss the meaning. Identity is valuable because it is the basis of individuality; that which makes us unique and irreplaceable. &
113:Think about the number of times someone will say to herself, I want to get out of this circumstance, but I'm too afraid. I'll lie about how happy I am in this marriage, and I'll put up a front. But she's betraying everything that's in her heart. She's making choices that are harming her, and that's why she's hurting. Her intuition is trying to tell her that. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove
114:Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young. ~ isaac-asimov, @wisdomtrove
115:Think about the number of times someone will say to herself, I want to get out of this circumstance, but I'm too afraid. I'll lie about how happy I am in this marriage, and I'll put up a front. But she's betraying everything that's in her heart. She's making choices that are harming her, and that's why she's hurting. Her intuition is trying to tell her that. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove
116:Today, we have knowledge of many, many things and the relations among human beings have multiplied ad infinitum. But we live in cities that are like deafening factories in awful Babels, with nothing to remind us of our inner world. Our communion with this inner world is not through contemplation but through books. We have passed from intuition into intellectualism. ~ rudolf-steiner, @wisdomtrove
117:When you can celebrate your empathy, when you can celebrate nurturing and taking care of yourself, and when you can take the time to listen to your intuition and do things that help you to become happier and stronger, and healthier, just by the nature of your being, you will live up to your full potential. You will transform the lives of others just by being yourself. ~ anita-moorjani, @wisdomtrove
118:Experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss-house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing, and hearing the significant thing, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and coordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. ~ aldous-huxley, @wisdomtrove
119:To develop intuition, one of the things you can do is pay attention to what you eat. Eat as clean a diet as you can. Eat fresh fruits and vegetables without preservatives, without alcohol, caffeine, dyes, and organically grown if possible. But do what is comfortable for your. Don't try to shift into a lifestyle that doesn't fit, but be aware that the lighter you eat the lighter you will feel. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove
120:Leaders trust their guts. "Intuition" is one of those good words that has gotten a bad rap. For some reason, intuition has become a "soft" notion. Garbage! Intuition is the new physics. It's an Einsteinian, seven-sense, practical way to make tough decisions. Bottom line, circa 2001 to 2010: The crazier the times are, the more important it is for leaders to develop and to trust their intuition. ~ tom-peters, @wisdomtrove
121:Spiritual Partnership ... The new female and the new male are partners on a journey of spiritual growth. They want to make the journey. Their love and trust keep them together. Their intuition guides them. They consult with each other. They are friends. They laugh a lot. They are equals. That is what a spiritual partnership is: a partnership between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth. ~ gary-zukav, @wisdomtrove
122:Sex and beauty are inseparable, like life and consciousness. And the intelligence which goes with sex and beauty, and arises out of sex and beauty, is intuition." "And they rock, and they rock, through the sensual ageless ages on the depths of the seven seas, and through the salt they reel with drunken delight and in the tropics tremble they with love and roll with massive, strong desire, like gods. ~ d-h-lawrence, @wisdomtrove
123:A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it, feminine intuition. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
124:The ability to know that your perceptions are accurate has to happen without others' validation. Intuition is not the result of diet, rituals, or wind chimes. It's the natural consequence of having self-esteem, the greatest power you can have. With self-esteem, your life can broaden into an adventure because you can know in your gut that you can handle the unknown. And you can handle helping others without fear, which is true liberation. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove
125:The scientific value of truth is not, however, ultimate or absolute. It rests partly on practical, partly on aesthetic interests. As our ideas are gradually brought into conformity with the facts by the painful process of selection,-for intuition runs equally into truth and into error, and can settle nothing if not controlled by experience,-we gain vastly in our command over our environment. This is the fundamental value of natural science ~ george-santayana, @wisdomtrove
126:The ability to know that your perceptions are accurate has to happen without others' validation. Intuition is not the result of diet, rituals, or wind chimes. It's the natural consequence of having self-esteem, the greatest power you can have. With self-esteem, your life can broaden into an adventure because you can know in your gut that you can handle the unknown. And you can handle helping others without fear, which is true liberation. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove
127:The hope with Tipping Point was it would help the reader understand that real change was possible. With Blink, I wanted to get people to take the enormous power of their intuition seriously. My wish with Outliers is that it makes us understand how much of a group project success is. When outliers become outliers it is not just because of their own efforts. It's because of the contributions of lots of different people and lots of different circumstances. ~ malcolm-gladwell, @wisdomtrove
128:Most of us lead far more meaningful lives than we know. Often finding meaning is not about doing things differently; it is about seeing familiar things in new ways. When we find new eyes, the unsuspected blessing in work we have done for many years may take us completely by surprise. We can see life in many ways: with the eye, with the mind, with the intuition. But perhaps it is only those who speak the language of meaning, who have remembered how to see with the heart, that life is ever deeply known or served. ~ rachel-naomi-remen, @wisdomtrove
129:Tao is obscured when men understand only one pair of opposites, or concentrate only on a partial aspect of being. Then clear expression also becomes muddled by mere wordplay, affirming this one aspect and denying all the rest. The pivot of Tao passes through the center where all affirmations and denials converge. He who grasps the pivot is at the still-point from which all movements and oppositions can be seen in their right relationship... Abandoning all thought of imposing a limit or taking sides, he rests in direct intuition. ~ zhuangzi, @wisdomtrove
130:To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman? ~ mahatma-gandhi, @wisdomtrove
131:Avataric periods are like the spring-tide of creation. They bring a new release of power, a new awakening of consciousness, a new experience of life - not merely for a few, but for all. Qualities of energy and awareness, which had been used and enjoyed by only a few advanced souls, are made available for all humanity. Life, as a whole is stepped up to a higher level of consciousness, is geared to a new rate of energy. The transition from sensation to reason was one such step; the transition from reason to intuition will be another. ~ meher-baba, @wisdomtrove
132:The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes - that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects - this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once - and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity. ~ h-l-mencken, @wisdomtrove
133:I would call the attention of the reader to the difference between "reason" and "reasoning." Reason is a light, reasoning a process. Reason is a faculty, reasoning an exercise of that faculty. Reasoning proceeds from one truth to another by means of argumentation. This generally involves the whole mind in labor and complexity. But reason does not exist merely in order to engage in reasoning. The process is a means to an end. The true fulfillment of reason as a faculty is found when it can embrace the truth simply and without labor in the light of single intuition. ~ thomas-merton, @wisdomtrove
134:We often hesitate to follow our intuition out of fear. Most usually, we are afraid of the changes in our own life that our actions will bring. Intuitive guidance, however, is all about change. It is energetic data ripe with the potential to influence the rest of the world. To fear change but to crave intuitive clarity is like fearing the cold, dark night while pouring water on the fire that lights your cave. An insight the size of a mustard seed is powerful enough to bring down a mountain-sized illusion that may be holding our lives together. Truth strikes without mercy. We fear our intuitions because we fear the transformational power within our revelations. ~ caroline-myss, @wisdomtrove
135:We often hesitate to follow our intuition out of fear. Most usually, we are afraid of the changes in our own life that our actions will bring. Intuitive guidance, however, is all about change. It is energetic data ripe with the potential to influence the rest of the world. To fear change but to crave intuitive clarity is like fearing the cold, dark night while pouring water on the fire that lights your cave. An insight the size of a mustard seed is powerful enough to bring down a mountain-sized illusion that may be holding our lives together. Truth strikes without mercy. We fear our intuitions because we fear the transformational power within our revelations. ~ norman-vincent-peale, @wisdomtrove
136:TEN GUIDEPOSTS FOR WHOLEHEARTED LIVING 1. Cultivating authenticity: letting go of what people think 2. Cultivating self-compassion: letting go of perfectionism 3. Cultivating a resilient spirit: letting go of numbing and powerlessness 4. Cultivating gratitude and joy: letting go of scarcity and fear of the dark 5. Cultivating intuition and trusting faith: letting go of the need for certainty 6. Cultivating creativity: letting go of comparison 7. Cultivating play and rest: letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth 8. Cultivating calm and stillness: letting go of anxiety as a lifestyle 9. Cultivating meaningful work: letting go of self-doubt and supposed to 10. Cultivating laughter, song, and dance: letting go of being cool and always in control ~ brene-brown, @wisdomtrove
137:Whenever the Eastern mystics express their knowledge in words - be it with the help of myths, symbols, poetic images or paradoxical statements-they are well aware of the limitations imposed by language and &

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1:Intellect confuses intuition. ~ Piet Mondrian,
2:Genius is intuition on fire. ~ Holbrook Jackson,
3:Use your own intuition. You are tomorrow. ~ Nas,
4:Intuition gives outlook and insight. ~ Carl Jung,
5:Intuition is seeing with the soul. ~ Dean Koontz,
6:Reason is intuition's servant. ~ Albert Einstein,
7:Often you have to rely on intuition. ~ Bill Gates,
8:There is no substitute for intuition. ~ Paul Klee,
9:Intuition is reason in a hurry. ~ Holbrook Jackson,
10:You cannot love without intuition. ~ Graham Greene,
11:Was wirklich zählt, ist Intuition ~ Albert Einstein,
12:Faith is a passionate intuition. ~ William Wordsworth,
13:I do think men fear female intuition. ~ Peter Buffett,
14:We ignore intuition at our peril, ~ Patricia Cornwell,
15:The primary wisdom is intuition. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
16:We know nothing until intuition agrees. ~ Richard Bach,
17:Intuition is the ear of the soul. ~ Neale Donald Walsch,
18:Faith is a passionate intuition.
   ~ William Wordsworth,
19:When your intuition is strong, follow it. ~ Lolly Daskal,
20:He also knows the importance of intuition. ~ Paulo Coelho,
21:Intuition (is) perception via the unconscious ~ Carl Jung,
22:Our intuition is always operating for us. ~ Susan Jeffers,
23:Intuition is a strong feminine quality. ~ Carolina Herrera,
24:Intuition is the whisper of the soul. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,
25:Its intuition that works. Just intuition. ~ Tim Waterstone,
26:Intuition is a heart message minus the static. ~ Sue Thoele,
27:Intuition is the whisper of the soul. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,
28:Intuition is what you know before you think. ~ John Assaraf,
29:Often you just have to rely on your intuition. ~ Bill Gates,
30:Intuition is the source of scientific knowledge. ~ Aristotle,
31:The only real valuable thing is intuition. ~ Albert Einstein,
32:Trust your instincts. Intuition doesn't lie. ~ Oprah Winfrey,
33:When in doubt, combine intuition and logic, ~ David Pandolfe,
34:Intuition is the only true guide in life. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti,
35:Often you have to rely on your intuition. ~ William H Gates Sr,
36:We must be born with an intuition of mortality. ~ Tom Stoppard,
37:Intuition is often mistaken, but not altogether. ~ Mason Cooley,
38:I trust my intuition because it is smarter than me. ~ I T Lucas,
39:The intuition of free will gives us the truth. ~ Corliss Lamont,
40:When you live guided by intuition rather than thought, ~ Mooji,
41:Trust your intuition and be guided by love. ~ Charles Eisenstein,
42:Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. ~ Steve Jobs,
43:A woman isn't very powerful without her intuition. ~ Judith Orloff,
44:The effects of color are controlled by intuition. ~ Johannes Itten,
45:Intuition is a powerful business tool. Use it. ~ Maggie Wilderotter,
46:Intuition transcends reason, but does not contradict it ~ Sivananda,
47:Its the difference between instinct and intuition. ~ Liev Schreiber,
48:Trust the messages coming from your heart and intuition. ~ Ram Dass,
49:A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants. ~ Laozi,
50:Ideas" in politics are often intuition fancy dress. ~ Rick Perlstein,
51:Intuition always has our best interest at heart. ~ Christina Baldwin,
52:Intuition guides us and the wise person listens. ~ Mary Alice Monroe,
53:Intuition is neither the ability to engage prophecy ~ Caroline Myss,
54:I know her by intuition as if she were inside my head. ~ Iris Murdoch,
55:Intuition is more important to discovery than logic. ~ Henri Poincare,
56:When intuition and logic agree, you are always right. ~ Blaise Pascal,
57:Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next. ~ Jonas Salk,
58:Reason is sight. Instinct is touch. Intuition is smell. ~ Mason Cooley,
59:Using intuition is a hard thing for grownups to do, and ~ Stephen King,
60:Finite knowledge is intuition which takes things in stride. ~ Anonymous,
61:intuition may be teachable virtually and on a massive scale ~ Anonymous,
62:There are no right or wrong answers, There is only intuition ~ Tom Ford,
63:All mothers have intuition. The great ones have radar. ~ Cathy Guisewite,
64:Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition. ~ Anonymous,
65:Marriage is not an institution, it is an intuition. ~ Dorothy Richardson,
66:Methodology is intuition reconstructed in tranquility. ~ Paul Lazarsfeld,
67:You have inner senses: intellect, intuition, and feelings. ~ Mike Dooley,
68:You must trust your instinct, intuition and judgment. ~ Rouben Mamoulian,
69:It is by logic we prove. It is by intuition we discover. ~ Henri Poincare,
70:Logic merely sanctions the conquests of the intuition. ~ Jacques Hadamard,
71:Relationships are nine parts intuition, one part madness. ~ Chloe Thurlow,
72:Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way. ~ Ray Bradbury,
73:In the absence of a competing intuition, logic prevails. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
74:Intuition feels the imperceptible things that unknown to mind. ~ Toba Beta,
75:Never do today what intuition says to do tomorrow. ~ Florence Scovel Shinn,
76:Reason is afraid of defeat, But intuition enjoys challenges ~ Paulo Coelho,
77:When in doubt, combine intuition and logic,” Lauren says. ~ David Pandolfe,
78:All suffering comes from the violation of intuition ~ Florence Scovel Shinn,
79:The Divine Plan unfolds through following intuition. ~ Florence Scovel Shinn,
80:If you don't doubt it, be 'bout it. Intuition is soul's watchman. ~ T F Hodge,
81:Nothing should resonate more loudly than your own intuition. ~ Jocelyn K Glei,
82:We use intuition as a way to connect with our Divine Self. ~ James Van Praagh,
83:Forget that blind ambition, and learn to trust your intuition. ~ Jimmy Buffett,
84:Intellect doesn't translate across cultures; intuition does. ~ Lucille Clifton,
85:Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect. ~ Steve Jobs,
86:Intuition is a walkie-talkie between the personality an the soul. ~ Gary Zukav,
87:Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
88:Intuition,, not intellect, is the 'open sesame' of yourself. ~ Albert Einstein,
89:It turns out that our intuition is a greater genius than we are. ~ Jim Shepard,
90:To find your angels... Start trusting your inner voice and intuition ~ Melanie,
91:I always say that intuition is the number one tool for an artist. ~ David Lynch,
92:Intuition is educated by experience and employed by curiosity. ~ Jim Blasingame,
93:Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater,
94:Trust your intuition. It is the best friend you will ever have. ~ Judith Orloff,
95:I usually have pretty good intuition on projects that I work on. ~ Joel Kinnaman,
96:Listen to your intuition and the quiet promptings of your heart. ~ Bryant McGill,
97:It was easy to cover up ignorance by the mystical word "intuition. ~ Isaac Asimov,
98:A woman knows by intuition, or instinct, what is best for herself. ~ Marilyn Monroe,
99:Being in an empty mind increases my intuition, my sense of energy. ~ Rickson Gracie,
100:If prayer is you talking to God, then intuition is God talking to you. ~ Wayne Dyer,
101:There are moments in life when we need to trust blindly in intuition ~ Paulo Coelho,
102:There are some conditions where you have to trust your intuition. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
103:My intuition is always on my side. I trust it to be there at all times. ~ Louise Hay,
104:Every discovery contains an irrational element or a creative intuition. ~ Karl Popper,
105:Feminine intuition, a quality perhaps even rarer in women than in men. ~ Ada Leverson,
106:Notion without intuition is empty, intuition without notion is blind. ~ Immanuel Kant,
107:What good is intuition if your heart gets in the way of hearing it? ~ Shannon L Alder,
108:Women's intuition is the result of millions of years of not thinking. ~ Rupert Hughes,
109:#Intuition (is) perception via the unconcious ~ Carl Jung #quote #jungian #inspiration,
110:Be sensitive to subtle differences between 'intuition' and 'into wishing'. ~ Ed Seykota,
111:But if a girl don't have her intuition, she don't got anything. ~ Cassandra Rose Clarke,
112:We construct and keep on constructing, yet intuition is still a good thing. ~ Paul Klee,
113:A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition. ~ G K Chesterton,
114:Often intuition will direct you. If it feels right, it's probably right. ~ Oprah Winfrey,
115:Feeling stuck or indecisive? Listen to your intuition and make a decision ~ Doreen Virtue,
116:Feminine intuition is no more than an acceptable excuse for female brains. ~ Alan Bradley,
117:Infants have great intuition, because intuition's about all they've got. ~ Lionel Shriver,
118:Intuition does not say what things 'mean' but sniffs out their possibilities. ~ Carl Jung,
119:It is with logic that one proves; it is with intuition that one invents. ~ Henri Poincare,
120:My sense of designing is a mix of intuition and intellectual control. ~ Olivier Theyskens,
121:Improvised music involves a lot of intuition and I like developing intuition. ~ Fred Frith,
122:intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience. ~ Walter Isaacson,
123:Sex is the root of which intuition is the foliage and beauty is the flower. ~ D H Lawrence,
124:when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
125:Your intuition already knows what it wants to write, so get out of the way. ~ Ray Bradbury,
126:Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. ~ Henri Cartier Bresson,
127:Intuition is perception beyond the physical senses that is meant to assist you. ~ Gary Zukav,
128:Intuition is seeing the solution.....its emotion and intellect going together. ~ David Lynch,
129:It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover. ~ Henri Poincare,
130:Memory and intention and intuition are fused. The iron is always hot. ~ Stephen Nachmanovitch,
131:You have intuition, too. The Society says it doesn't really exist, but it does. ~ Ally Condie,
132:A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition. ~ Gilbert K Chesterton,
133:but intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience. ~ Walter Isaacson,
134:My intuition never fails me, it is I who fail when I do not listen to it. ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan,
135:Always trust your gut and your intuition will steer you right, every time. ~ Charisma Carpenter,
136:As human beings, we haven’t lost our intuition; we just stopped paying attention ~ Heidi DuPree,
137:If we ever feel the need to follow something, let it be our own Divine intuition. ~ Victor Hugo,
138:My business skills have come from being guided by my inner self - my intuition. ~ Oprah Winfrey,
139:Our purity lies in our originality. Our intuition lies in our innocence. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi,
140:Trust your intuition, rather than technology, to protect you from violence. ~ Tom Butler Bowdon,
141:Intuition is given only to him who has undergone long preparation to receive it. ~ Louis Pasteur,
142:Intuition tells me how to live my day, intuition tells me when to walk away. ~ Natalie Imbruglia,
143:It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover.
   ~ Henri Poincare,
144:Nicole’s intuition told her not to follow the fireflies, but she said nothing. ~ Arthur C Clarke,
145:When you are under time pressure for a decision, you need to follow intuition. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
146:Intuition is a sense of knowing how to act decisively without needing to know why. ~ Lolly Daskal,
147:Intuition is the key to everything, in painting, filmmaking, business - everything. ~ David Lynch,
148:Intuition, not intellect, is the “open sesame” of yourself. —ALBERT EINSTEIN ~ Arianna Huffington,
149:It is better to be a naïve believer than an intellectual bereft of intuition. ~ Abdal Hakim Murad,
150:It's all complete instinct and intuition, and that's extremely difficult to teach. ~ Van Morrison,
151:Where we know nothing, we must admit that we know nothing, and trust to intuition. ~ Felix Gilman,
152:Intuition is a gift we all have, whereas retention of knowledge is a skill. Rare ~ Gavin de Becker,
153:Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. ~ Walter Isaacson,
154:Man’s knowledge of freedom, Kissinger argued, must come from an inner intuition. ~ Walter Isaacson,
155:People are good at intuition, living our lives. What are computers good at? Memory. ~ Eric Schmidt,
156:The revelation or intuition arises in its own time and one must wait for it. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
157:Toute intuition sans concept n'aboutit pas
Tout concept sans intuition est vide ~ Immanuel Kant,
158:You have to choose the move that feels right sometimes; that's what intuition is. ~ Magnus Carlsen,
159:a substantially more complex system of knowledge, procedural strategies, and intuition. ~ Anonymous,
160:Intuition is unconscious accumulated experience informing judgement in real time. ~ Alain de Botton,
161:Miss Steele can a man make a greater blunder than to ignore the intuition of a woman? ~ Lyndsay Faye,
162:My biggest regret is that I didn't listen to my intuition as it was yelling at me. ~ Aras Baskauskas,
163:Tomes of aesthetic criticism hang on a few moments of real delight and intuition. ~ George Santayana,
164:Transform reason into ordered intuition; let all thyself be light. This is thy goal. ~ Sri Aurobindo,
165:When we’re courageous enough to be with what scares us, we can awaken our intuition and ~ Kris Carr,
166:Writing is part intuition and part trial and error, but mostly it's very hard work. ~ Cheryl Strayed,
167:Intuition is a strange instinct that tells a woman she is right, whether she is or not. ~ Oscar Wilde,
168:Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life. ~ Paulo Coelho,
169:intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, ~ Paulo Coelho,
170:The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition. ~ Arthur Koestler,
171:As intuition grows, the need to make problems and see complications starts to dwindle. ~ Deepak Chopra,
172:intuition cannot be trusted in the absence of stable regularities in the environment. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
173:Intuition doesn't tell you what you want to hear; it tells you what you need to hear. ~ Sonia Choquette,
174:For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity. ~ Henri Cartier Bresson,
175:I may have been lucky with some sort of intuition, but I believe in training a great deal. ~ David Selby,
176:Intuition is the conscious experience - in pure spirit - of a purely spiritual content. ~ Rudolf Steiner,
177:Purple is not only the ‘royal colour’, but is linked to spirituality, and intuition. ~ Storm Constantine,
178:Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition. ~ Rumi,
179:You will never trust your intuition until you identify with it. Self-esteem enters here. ~ Deepak Chopra,
180:Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way. ~ Florence Scovel Shinn,
181:intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where ~ Bren Brown,
182:I used my intuition like a weapon; whatever insecurity and weakness I sensed in him, I exploited. ~ Jewel,
183:An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. ~ Henri Bergson,
184:A woman's intuition has often proved truer than a man's arrogant assumption of knowledge. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
185:People will provide judgment, intuition, empathy, a moral compass, and human creativity. ~ Walter Isaacson,
186:Someone responding to intuition, to chance and fortune, often can't explain himself well. ~ Alec Wilkinson,
187:We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
188:An intuition is neither caprice nor a sixth sense but a form of unconscious intelligence. ~ Gerd Gigerenzer,
189:follow your gut instincts. Don’t question your intuition, and don’t shy away from your nature. ~ K F Breene,
190:I’ve learned that your intuition about things you don’t know that much about isn’t very good ~ Ashlee Vance,
191:Don't try to comprehend with your mind. Your minds are very limited. Use your intuition. ~ Madeleine L Engle,
192:I call intuition cosmic fishing. You feel a nibble, then you've got to hook the fish. ~ R Buckminster Fuller,
193:Intuition is only a mirror. It does not create anything, it only reflects. It reflects that which is. ~ Osho,
194:Intuition means, intuition, or to be taught from within. It is man's unerring guide, ~ Florence Scovel Shinn,
195:Making great things requires both intuition and logic, not a dominance of one over the other. ~ Scott Berkun,
196:Ray Bradbury said it best: “Your intuition knows what it wants to write, so get out of the way. ~ Chris Baty,
197:In ourselves we harbor the intuition of another evolution, of other possibilities of life. ~ Abdellatif Laabi,
198:May my children follow their own intuition to discover true empowerment - in the answers they seek. ~ Eleesha,
199:I use my intuition. I tell my students: use your brains, but also use another part of yourself. ~ Jim Goldberg,
200:The really valuable method of thought to arrive at a logically coherent system is intuition. ~ Albert Einstein,
201:Data and intuition are like horse and rider, and you don’t try to outrun a horse; you ride it. ~ Pedro Domingos,
202:If a situation is very, very turbulent, it has low validity, and there's no basis for intuition. ~ Gary A Klein,
203:If you let it, the noise of the world will drown out the voice of God, which is your intuition. ~ Oprah Winfrey,
204:Intuition is one of the four basic psychological functions along with thinking, feeling,and sensing. ~ Carl Jung,
205:Intuition is the gift of knowing, hearing, feeling, or seeing through our spiritual senses. ~ Catherine Carrigan,
206:The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition. ~ Baruch Spinoza,
207:The more I trust my intuition and act on its wisdom, the more extraordinary my life becomes. ~ Cheryl Richardson,
208:Develop your Intuition so that the changes in the years to come may be convenient for you. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi,
209:One who scorns the power of intuition will never rise above the ranks of journeyman calculator. ~ Albert Einstein,
210:Photography is only intuition, a perpetual interrogation - everything except a stage set. ~ Henri Cartier Bresson,
211:Great investors need to have the right combination of intuition, business sense and investment talent. ~ Andrew Lo,
212:Chaos is the soul of creation. It plows the ground of intuition. Without chaos, nothing will grow. ~ Michele Cassou,
213:Einstein once said, “but intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience. ~ Walter Isaacson,
214:There are certain signs of a guilty conscience that do not take a great surplus of intuition to spot. ~ L H Thomson,
215:Your heart is intimately connected to your intuition, whereas your head is connected to your fear. ~ Shannon Kaiser,
216:By disregarding intuition in favor of science, or science in favor of instincts, we limit ourselves. ~ Bernie Siegel,
217:I'm supposed to be a scientific person but I use intuition more than logic in making basic decisions. ~ Seymour Cray,
218:Intuition comes very close to clairvoyance; it appears to be the extrasensory perception of reality. ~ Alexis Carrel,
219:Intuition does not denote something contrary to reason, but something outside of the province of reason. ~ Carl Jung,
220:Intuition is a
spiritual faculty
and does not explain,
but simply points the way. ~ Florence Scovel Shinn,
221:Most processes leave out the stuff no one wants to talk about: magic, intuition and leaps of faith. ~ Michael Bierut,
222:Prefer what intuition whispers in your ear to what you have done and redone ten times in your head. ~ Robert Bresson,
223:The only real valuable thing is intuition. The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery ~ Albert Einstein,
224:All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention. ~ Rudolf Arnheim,
225:Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks show us how to discover the secrets to healing, love, intuition and insight. ~ Deepak Chopra,
226:"Intuition does not denote something contrary to reason, but something outside of the province of reason." ~ Carl Jung,
227:Listen to your inner voice. Trust your intuition. It's important to have the courage to trust yourself. ~ Dawn Ostroff,
228:Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. ~ Steve Jobs,
229:You cannot live by feelings and emotions; you have to live by your intuition and consciousness. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi,
230:Doreen had intuition. Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones. ~ Sylvia Plath,
231:Intuition is neither a feeling, an inspiration nor a disorderly sympathy but a fully developed method. ~ Gilles Deleuze,
232:Intuition is the use of patterns they’ve already learned, whereas insight is the discovery of new patterns. ~ Gary Klein,
233:there have been only two who were Yogis, possessing the Yogic vision and intuition—Swami Vivekananda and ~ Sri Aurobindo,
234:You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind. ~ Anne Lamott,
235:Your intuition and your intellect should be working together… making love. That’s how it works best. ~ Madeleine L Engle,
236:All great men are gifted with intuition. They know without reasoning or analysis, what they need to know. ~ Alexis Carrel,
237:But what is often called an intuition is really an impression based on logical deduction or experience. ~ Agatha Christie,
238:[...] intuition can sometimes get things wrong. And intuition is what people use in life to make decisions. ~ Mark Haddon,
239:Life is filled with abstractions, and the only way to make heads or tails of it is going through intuition. ~ David Lynch,
240:Nothing substitutes a large apprenticeship, a heap of experiences which converts into the base of intuition. ~ Doug Scott,
241:On the topic of goals, the academic research agrees with your intuition: Having goals improves performance. ~ Laszlo Bock,
242:Improvisation is intuition in action, a way to discover the muse and learn to respond to her call. ~ Stephen Nachmanovitch,
243:Intuition is a dangerous gift, tempting us over and over again into groundless speculation. ~ Carl Jung, Letters Volume II,
244:Mathematicians use intuition, conjecture and guesswork all the time except when they are in the classroom. ~ Joseph Warren,
245:this is the downside of intuition: when it feels so exactly right, other people’s skepticism is infuriating. ~ Sue Grafton,
246:When I tested decisions made up by intellect and the ones when followed intuition, the latter always won. ~ Sahara Sanders,
247:I believe in intuition and inspiration...at times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. ~ Albert Einstein,
248:Intuition is soul guidance, appearing naturally in man during those instants when his mind is calm. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda,
249:Learning to trust our intuition is an art form, and like all other art forms, it takes practice to perfect. ~ Shakti Gawain,
250:Philosophers don't all believe that ethics is just based on intuition. That's just stupid! It's ignoramus! ~ Marjorie Grene,
251:Remember this rule: intuition cannot be trusted in the absence of stable regularities in the environment. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
252:The truth about life and lie about life is not measured by others but by your intuition, which never lies. ~ Santosh Kalwar,
253:Your intuition will most likely push you gently toward taking some appropriate risks and trying new things. ~ Shakti Gawain,
254:Grow with discipline. Balance intuition with rigor. Innovate around the core. Don't embrace the status quo. ~ Howard Schultz,
255:He who does not arrive at the Intuition of these Truths by means of Ecstasy knows only the name of Inspiration. ~ Al-Ghazali,
256:It is by logic that we prove. It is by intuition that we discover," said the mathematician Henri Poincare.l ~ Ellen J Langer,
257:I have the great privilege of being both witness and storyteller. Intimacy, trust and intuition guide my work. ~ Jim Goldberg,
258:Intuition is nothing more than a person’s sense about a situation influenced by experience and knowledge. ~ Patrick Van Horne,
259:Intuition is the art of listening, with an inner ear, to the rhythms and melodies of your own “body music.” T ~ Michael J Gelb,
260:Merely reminding people of a time when they had power increases their apparent trust in their own intuition. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
261:Painting today is pure intuition and luck and taking advantage of what happens when you splash the stuff down. ~ Francis Bacon,
262:Prior to the seventeenth century the laws of probability were defined by the intuition and experience of gamblers, ~ Anonymous,
263:Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. ~ Brent Schlender,
264:Intuition does not in itself amount to knowledge, yet cannot be disregarded by philosophers and psychologists. ~ Corliss Lamont,
265:Intuition is knowledge based on experience, stored deeply within the brain, and available quickly and on demand. ~ Lolly Daskal,
266:Meditate. A few minutes of deep meditation will connect you with the ocean of intuition deep within you. ~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar,
267:There are things so deep and complex that only intuition can reach it in our stage of development as human beings. ~ John Astin,
268:By learning to trust your intuition, miracles seem to happen. Intuitive thoughts are gifts from the higher self. ~ Susan Jeffers,
269:I have always moved by intuition alone. I have no system, literary or political. I have no guiding political idea. ~ V S Naipaul,
270:I learnt another valuable lesson that night: listen to the quiet voice inside. Intuition is the noise of the mind. ~ Bear Grylls,
271:Intuition is the father of new knowledge, while empiricism is nothing but an accumulation of old knowledge.
   ~ Albert Einstein,
272:Let your intuition guide you, but also use your head and take responsibility for the free will choices you make ~ Theresa Caputo,
273:There are two ways to change things: Either you are forced to change or you have the intuition to change. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi,
274:Albert Einstein said that when you follow intuition, “The solutions come to you, and you don’t know how or why. ~ Gavin de Becker,
275:The ability to portray people in still life and in motion requires the highest measure of intuition and talent. ~ Albert Einstein,
276:There's an intuition learned through our work. Teaching others doesn't mean they can just go out and replicate it. ~ Austin Kleon,
277:the warrior knows that intuition is God's language and he continued listening to the wind and talking to the stars ~ Paulo Coelho,
278:What we like about women is sensuality, wildness, hormones. Women who make a song and dance about their intuition. ~ Yasmina Reza,
279:When we decide to take back our own power, we discover that the true solver of problems is intuition, not reason. ~ Deepak Chopra,
280:Art is a form of intelligence, it can be developed, it's linked to intuition and it's something that all humans have ~ Alonzo King,
281:Feelings and intuition, love and compassion, those are the things make a soul, not blood and bones or machine parts. ~ Peter Bunzl,
282:Good design begins with honesty, asks tough questions, comes from collaboration and from trusting your intuition. ~ Freeman Thomas,
283:If you babble enneagram, I am a five. If you boast myers-briggs, I am an introvert-intuition-thinking-perceiving. ~ Santosh Kalwar,
284:I was punched breathless by the strongest emotions I have ever felt and they are now stored in my intuition as a writer. ~ Amy Tan,
285:Success depends on intuition, on seeing what afterwards proves true but cannot be established at the moment. ~ Joseph A Schumpeter,
286:the mystery of knowing without knowing is not a distinctive feature of intuition; it is the norm of mental life. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
287:Decision-making based on emotional intuition, without the aid of reason to keep it in line, pretty much always sucks. ~ Mark Manson,
288:I don't like the actors to work together beforehand. I trust my intuition, and I like when the actors are the same. ~ Olivier Dahan,
289:Indeed, it is not intellect, but intuition which advances humanity. Intuition tells man his purpose in this life. ~ Albert Einstein,
290:Intuition, luck, mistakes, serendipity—there you have four vital business concepts that every manager should know. ~ Ricardo Semler,
291:Maybe my intuition has been warning me about something I don’t quite understand but shouldn’t be underestimated.… ~ Nicholas Sparks,
292:Demonstration, similitude & harmony are objects of reasoning. Invention, identity & melody are objects of intuition. ~ William Blake,
293:Intuition,’ he answered with a shrug. ‘It is the only tool left to the mathematician in the absence of proof. ~ Apostolos K Doxiadis,
294:I think your main draws are instinct, intuition and empathy... those things that you can't really practice. ~ Scarlett Alice Johnson,
295:We don’t like to admit our initial intuition to be false and would much rather dismiss the evidence that contradicts it. ~ Anonymous,
296:Crime is a career, whether you are a practitioner or an investigator, and it requires intuition and patience. ~ Jean Christophe Grang,
297:A pure intuition is a rare occurrence in our mental activity. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya,
298:But be careful: if your intuition says that your story sucks, make sure it really is your intuition and not your mother. ~ Anne Lamott,
299:I never took sheet music seriously. I could do better myself just by listening to other people and using my own intuition. ~ Brian May,
300:Intuition is critical in virtually everything you do. But, without relentless preparation and execution, it is meaningless. ~ Tim Cook,
301:Trusting your intuition is like learning to ride a bike. Everything takes practice before it becomes second nature. ~ James Van Praagh,
302:Counseling has to do with intuition, with work on oneself, with the quietness of one's mind and the openness of one's heart. ~ Ram Dass,
303:We are born intuitive, which is why for most people, their intuition is actually the source of their greatest suffering. ~ Caroline Myss,
304:When we assert intuition, we are therefore like the starry night: we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Est s,
305:And intuition is what people is what people use in life to make decisions.But logic can help you work out the right answer. ~ Mark Haddon,
306:I strongly believe in the existence of God, based on intuition, observations, logic, and also scientific knowledge. ~ Charles Hard Townes,
307:What came quickly to my mind was an intuition from System 1. I’ll have to start over and search my memory deliberately. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
308:Wise people have an inward sense of what is beautiful, and the highest wisdom is to trust this intuition and be guided by it. ~ Aristotle,
309:For the most important decisions in your life, trust your intuition, and then work with everything you have, to prove it right. ~ Tim Cook,
310:Intuition is for thinking what observation is for perception. Intuition and observation are the sources of our knowledge. ~ Rudolf Steiner,
311:I would be wary of experts' intuition, except when they deal with something that they have dealt with a lot in the past. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
312:Mind and intuition are at opposite ends of the same continuum and our goal is to strike a healthy balance between the two. ~ Shakti Gawain,
313:producing technology requires intuition and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline. Jobs ~ Walter Isaacson,
314:God gave women intuition and femininity. Used properly, the combination easily jumbles the brain of any man I've ever met. ~ Farrah Fawcett,
315:Harry had underrated intuition before, both other people’s and his own, and it had been to his cost every time without exception. ~ Jo Nesb,
316:If we believe something does not exist unless we measure it, then we put aside: love, feeling, intuition, art and philosophy. ~ Peter Block,
317:Intuition intelligently informs patience. It’ll convey when to have it and if something is worth working on or waiting for. ~ Judith Orloff,
318:One of our greatest gifts is out intuition. It is a sixth sense we all have - we just need to learn to tap into and trust it. ~ Donna Karan,
319:The experience of intuition cannot be explained in terms of the five senses, because it is the voice of the nonphysical world. ~ Gary Zukav,
320:All decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis. ~ Marcel Duchamp,
321:Careful inference can be more reliable than 'actual observation', however strongly our intuition protests at admitting it. ~ Richard Dawkins,
322:Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart, and intuition.” —Steve Jobs, 2005 #JoinTheRide ~ Darren Hardy,
323:Mood evidently affects the operation of System 1: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
324:(...) the easiest to conquer were also more worthy of it, because women have better intuition than men for the love affinity. ~ Frank Harris,
325:To whatever degree you listen and follow your intuition, you become a creative channel for the higher power of the universe. ~ Shakti Gawain,
326:Transform reason into ordered intuition; let all thyself be light. This is thy goal.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, [T5],
327:You cannot breathe deeply and worry at the same time. Breathe. Let the worry go. Breathe. Allow the love and intuition in. ~ Sonia Choquette,
328:I learned to live in my own head. I learned to follow intuition and more than anything, I learned what was important to me. ~ Vanessa Veselka,
329:It is trust in our vast 'don't know' that allows room for the truth, that allows the next intuition to float to the surface. ~ Stephen Levine,
330:The binding of reason and intuition is the fundamental crisis of the era we call humanity. Transcedence of duality is the key. ~ Phil Collins,
331:You can defeat fear through humor, through pain, through honesty, bravery, intuition, and through love in the truest sense. ~ John Cassavetes,
332:Your words should be so strong that they affect every your intuition so that you can recognize what is real and heart. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi,
333:Companies pay amazing amounts of money to get answers from consultants with overdeveloped confidence in their own intuition,’ he ~ Tim Harford,
334:I live and work alone and travel light, relying largely on my memory and making a point of letting #‎ intuition guide my way. ~ Lyall Watson,
335:Intuition is a spiritual faculty high above the reasoning mind, but on that path is all that you desire or require. In ~ Florence Scovel Shinn,
336:Intuition is perception via the unconscious that brings forth ideas, images, new possibilities and ways out of blocked situations. ~ Carl Jung,
337:Whether you consider me a master filmmaker or not, I do it with my intuition and my vision, my experience as a storyteller. ~ Abbas Kiarostami,
338:A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. A good artist lets their intuition take them wherever it wants to. ~ Lao Tzu,
339:Einstein once said, “I believe in intuition and inspiration…. At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. ~ Janet Lansbury,
340:... in moments of crisis our thoughts do not run consecutively but rather sweep over us in waves or intuition and experience ... ~ John le Carr,
341:Not all knowledge comes from the mind. Your body, your heart, your intuition. Sometimes memories even have minds of their own. ~ Kelly Barnhill,
342:The only paradise we know through our senses and intuition is that of the beloved, and the only hell, disappointment in love. ~ Mahmoud Darwish,
343:Use your training, Maisie, your heart, your intuition, and your love for your father to forge a new, even stronger, bond. ~ Jacqueline Winspear,
344:You must train your intuition - you must trust the small voice inside you which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide. ~ Ingrid Bergman,
345:I believe in the possibility of happiness, if one cultivates intuition and outlives the grosser passions, including optimism. ~ George Santayana,
346:Only those will apprehend religion who can probe its depth, who can combine intuition and love with the rigor of method ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel,
347:There are some things that a woman knows that she cannot tell even her family. It is part intuition and part self-preservation. ~ Alyson Richman,
348:There needs to be a certain structure to a situation, a certain predictability that allows you to have a basis for the intuition. ~ Gary A Klein,
349:The union of the mind and intuition which brings about illumination, and the development which the Sufis seek, is based upon love. ~ Idries Shah,
350:‪We all need to follow our intuition, even if it takes us down the wrong path. Otherwise, you’ll always be second-guessing yourself. ~ Lang Leav,
351:A writer decides to follow some ideas and not others for reasons that aren't always clear to him. It's often a matter of intuition. ~ Don DeLillo,
352:Intuition is natural by-product of flowering of a mature self-esteem and a sense of empowerment – not power over, but power to be ~ Caroline Myss,
353:I think it's really important to follow your intuition and gut, and try not to do things just for the sake of pleasing other people. ~ Erin Davie,
354:“The capacity for directed thinking I call intellect; the capacity for passive or undirected thinking I call intellectual intuition.” ~ Carl Jung,
355:Criticism is above all a gift, an intuition, a matter of tact and flair; it cannot be taught or demonstrated--it is an art. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel,
356:it connects the individual person’s intuition with a frame of mind that •anyone must be in when making judgments about such intuitions ~ Anonymous,
357:Mood evidently affects the operation of System 1: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition. These ~ Daniel Kahneman,
358:wisdom means more than being intelligent, because it encompasses understanding, empathy, experience, inner peace, and intuition, ~ Nicholas Sparks,
359:Sometimes the magic of life is beyond thought. It's the sparkle of intuition, of bringing your own personal energy into your music. ~ Jennifer Ryan,
360:Sometimes the magic of life is beyond thought. It’s the sparkle of intuition, of bringing your own personal energy into your music. ~ Jennifer Ryan,
361:Spiritual intuition is always a more luminous guide than the discriminating reason. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Personality,
362:The more that you act on your intuition fearlessly, the more your intuition will serve you. Intuition is the ear of the soul. ~ Neale Donald Walsch,
363:The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition. ~ Honore de Balzac,
364:We live in a culture that doesn't acknowledge or validate human intuition and doesn't encourage us to rely on our intuitive wisdom. ~ Shakti Gawain,
365:What was it Harry used to say? Intuition is only the sum of many small but specific things the brain hasn't managed to put a name to yet. ~ Jo Nesb,
366:When the body functions spontaneously,
that is called instinct.
When the soul functions spontaneously,
that is called intuition. ~ Osho,
367:Discernment can be described as the ability to find the root of the matter, and it relies on intuition as well as rational thought. ~ John C Maxwell,
368:For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. ~ Aldous Huxley,
369:It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover. To know how to criticize is good, to know how to create is better. ~ Henri Poincare,
370:The expression "from above" is for us only a way of speaking. Many receive from above the command for action - we call it intuition. ~ Sri Aurobindo,
371:I find the joy of the 'doing' increases. Creativity increases. Intuition increases. The pleasure of life grows. And negativity recedes. ~ David Lynch,
372:Thus, in a sense, mathematics has been most advanced by those who distinguished themselves by intuition rather than by rigorous proofs. ~ Felix Klein,
373:We need to make the world safe for creativity and intuition, for it's creativity and intuition that will make the world safe for us. ~ Edgar Mitchell,
374:All of us were tuned in during our early development but we lose our connection to intuition over time as other things come into play. ~ Peter Buffett,
375:A woman's intuition is better than a man's. Nobody knows anything, really, you know, and a woman can guess a good deal nearer than a man. ~ Mark Twain,
376:Expert intuition strikes us as magical, but it is not. Indeed, each of us performs feats of intuitive expertise many times each day. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
377:Good design doesn’t stem from intuition, talent, or luck (although I’ll take a smidgen of each). It comes from research and understanding. ~ Anonymous,
378:I see myself as a journalist reporting neglected stories about our past and trying to bring rigor, reason and intuition to the quest. ~ Graham Hancock,
379:It is rare that the human mind can determine the truths of nature, or even of ourselves, by intuition or casual observation. That ~ Richard J Davidson,
380:The virtue of the imagination is its reaching, by intuition and intensity, a more essential truth than is seen at the surface of things. ~ John Ruskin,
381:A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way, but intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience. ~ Albert Einstein,
382:Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create. ~ David Byrne,
383:I am incredibly bad at predicting the future; I am only smart enough to observe the present and listen to my intuition about tendencies. ~ Rem Koolhaas,
384:I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect. ~ Ingmar Bergman,
385:I’ve had to make the difficult decision to follow my intuition, and allow myself the space and time to explore my true purpose in life. ~ Larry Sanders,
386:THE MESSENGERS OF INTUITION Nagging feelings Persistent thoughts Humor Wonder Anxiety Curiosity Hunches Gut feelings Doubt Hesitation ~ Gavin de Becker,
387:The primary wisdom is intuition. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their origin. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
388:This added element can only be the concept that represents the intuition as a suitable subject for one form of judgment rather than another ~ Anonymous,
389:Based on our natural heritage as the Divine Light of God, every one of us possesses intuition... defined as the language of the soul. ~ James Van Praagh,
390:Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. ~ Steve Jobs,
391:All I have is intuition and a little hope.” “Don’t be such a pessimist. You’ve also got two tires, two garbage bags, and a hollow spindle. ~ Stephen King,
392:To live in the wideness of the Intuition is not possible with the limitation of the ego. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I, The Higher Planes of Mind,
393:When I'm directing, I can look at something that I wrote and say, "This doesn't make sense." There's a lot more intuition and gut involved. ~ Craig Zobel,
394:A father's suspicion...' she began.
Is as powerful as a mother's intuition.'

~ Alice Seboldpg 87, Ruana Singh and Jack Salmon ~ Alice Sebold,
395:But wisdom means more than being intelligent, because it encompasses understanding, empathy, experience, inner peace, and intuition, and ~ Nicholas Sparks,
396:Even the tiniest manifestation of mindfulness in any moment might give rise to an intuition or insight that could be hugely transforming. ~ Jon Kabat Zinn,
397:I go by intuition. Work-wise, that means asking myself if a role will push me outside my comfort zone, challenge me to learn something new. ~ Isabel Lucas,
398:Instinct is an animal faculty, independent of instruction and reasoning, but far inferior to intuition, which is a grace unique to humanity. ~ Dean Koontz,
399:intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and ~ Paulo Coelho,
400:The object of mathematical rigor is to sanction and legitimize the conquests of intuition, and there was never any other object for it. ~ Jacques Hadamard,
401:I don't have any premonitions. I don't have any supernatural powers. I just have a typical woman's intuition, and I go with that. ~ Mary Elizabeth Winstead,
402:Intuition is a method of feeling one's way intellectually into the inner heart of a thing to locate what is unique and inexpressible in it. ~ Henri Bergson,
403:It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception. ~ Albert Einstein,
404:Our true nature expresses itself as intelligence, clean energy, mindfulness, presence, and intuition. It also has an element of knowledge. ~ Sakyong Mipham,
405:People try to force things. It's disastrous. Just leave your mind alone. Your intuition knows what it wants to write, so get out of the way. ~ Ray Bradbury,
406:This time I would choose to err on the side of illogic. I had to trust intuition, and plunge as I had never plunged before, with blind faith. ~ Dean Koontz,
407:Armed with the intuition of a bliss
To which some moved tranquillity was the key, ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The House of the Spirit and the New Creation,
408:Entrepreneurship, then, is behavior rather than personality trait. And its foundation lies in concept and theory rather than in intuition. ~ Peter F Drucker,
409:The more we learn to operate in the world based on trust in our intuition, the stronger our channel will be and the more money we will have. ~ Shakti Gawain,
410:The two operations of our understanding, intuition and deduction, on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge. ~ Rene Descartes,
411:Intelligence is just one dimension of ability. Don't limit yourself to it. Open up to instinct, intuition, creativity and thus possibility ~ Rasheed Ogunlaru,
412:Intuition is the best word to describe the dozens or hundreds of rapid, effortless moral judgments and decisions that we all make every day. ~ Jonathan Haidt,
413:Much of the Western world emphasizes rationality and reason, but overlooks or ignores the enormous value of intuition and instinctive wisdom. ~ Shakti Gawain,
414:our intuition often fails us because we prefer things to be much more controllable, predictable, and causally determined than they are in reality ~ Anonymous,
415:The introduction of the word ‘intuition’ by a moral philosopher is always a signal that something has gone badly wrong with an argument. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre,
416:Intuition is an edge of light thrust out by the secret supermind. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil,
417:I think the worst that can happen in filmmaking is if you're working with a storyboard. That kills all intuition, all fantasy, all creativity. ~ Werner Herzog,
418:The most intractable of our experiences is the experience of Time-the intuition of duration, combined with the thought of perpetual perishing. ~ Aldous Huxley,
419:The only justice is to follow the sincere intuition of the soul, angry or gentle. Anger is just, and pity is just, but judgement is never just. ~ D H Lawrence,
420:Conversion for me was not a Damascus Road experience. I slowly moved into an intellectual acceptance of what my intuition had always known. ~ Madeleine L Engle,
421:Intuition attracts those who wish to be spiritual without any bother, because it promises a heaven where the intuitions of others can be ignored. ~ E M Forster,
422:There is a higher more powerful part of you. Your higher self will come through your intuition, coincidences and synchronicity of all kinds. ~ James Van Praagh,
423:Trust your Heart. Value its intuition. Choose to let go of fear, and to open to the true and you will awaken to the freedom, clarity and joy of Being ~ Mooji,
424:I consider a merchant someone who has a certain intuition and instinct, and - very important - knows how to run a business, knows the numbers. ~ Millard Drexler,
425:Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. ~ Henri Cartier Bresson,
426:Follow your heart and listen to your intuition...your higher self knows what you really want...listen...follow and get to the place you want to be. ~ John Edward,
427:All thinking of the religious man is etymological, a reduction of all concepts to the original intuition, to the characteristic. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel,
428:intuition is always right in at least two important ways;
It is always in response to something.
it always has your best interest at heart ~ Gavin de Becker,
429:It turns out that there are many powers of the heart--among them intuition, intention, gratitude, forgiveness, resilience, and, of course, love. ~ Baptist de Pape,
430:Sometimes you woke up, and you knew for sure, from history and experience and weary intuition, that the brand new day would bring nothing good at all. ~ Lee Child,
431:Every man has a feminine side, and every woman has a masculine side. One must be intuitive when using discipline and objective when using intuition. ~ Paulo Coelho,
432:Everything that I do is limitation and complete intuition. I'm a human being. I'm not a musician. I'm not an entertainer. I don't know anything! ~ Willis Earl Beal,
433:intuition is just like that: sudden and complete, as if there were machinery working behind her eyes that even she has no access to. Clank, thunk. ~ Naomi Alderman,
434:I think when you know so deep in your heart that you just to listen to your intuition and follow your heart, theres no right or wrong thing to do. ~ Kim Kardashian,
435:Many ideas happen to us. We have intuition, we have feeling, we have emotion, all of that happens, we don't decide to do it. We don't control it. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
436:The discovery of truth, by slow progressive meditation, is wisdom. - Intuition of truth, not preceded by perceptible meditation, is genius. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater,
437:These findings add to the growing evidence that good mood, intuition, creativity, gullibility, and increased reliance on System 1 form a cluster. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
438:The disclosure of a new fact, the leap forward, the conquest over yesterday's ignorance, is an act not of reason but of imagination, of intuition. ~ Charles Nicolle,
439:Cease trying to work everything out with your minds. It will get you nowhere. Live by intuition and inspiration and let your whole life be Revelation. ~ Eileen Caddy,
440:If you want to do something and you feel in your bones that it’s the right thing to do, do it. Intuition is often as important as the facts. 663 ~ H Jackson Brown Jr,
441:intuition can sometimes get things wrong. And intuition is what people use in life to make decisions. But logic can help you work out the right answer. ~ Mark Haddon,
442:There are times in all of our lives when a reliance on gut or intuition just seems more appropriate - when a particular course of action just feels right. ~ Tim Cook,
443:Trust your intuition and be resilient. If you have real breakout ideas, even your friends will laugh at you secretly until you can prove their viability. ~ Van Jones,
444:Try to be still inside. Learn to quiet and stop thought, and you will be able to develop your mind. Your psychic intuition will start to come about. ~ Frederick Lenz,
445:We are all born with extraordinary powers of imagination, intelligence, feeling, intuition, spirituality, and of physical and sensory awareness. (p.9) ~ Ken Robinson,
446:All societies, ancient or modern, primitive or sophisticated, have guided themselves by values and goals rooted in the experience of 'deep intuition'. ~ Willis Harman,
447:Consider the possibility,’” I said, quoting Silette, “‘that what we perceive as the future has already happened, and intuition is only a very good memory. ~ Sara Gran,
448:He supposed it was good none of them knew how lost he was just now, how absent the intuition that had carried him through so many difficult situations. ~ Stephen King,
449:I believe in intuition and approaching things as instant gratification. Just do the things you want to do, make the kind of pictures you want to make. ~ Edward Ruscha,
450:Intuition is the undoubting conception of a pure and attentive mind, which arises from the light of reason alone, and is more certain than deduction. ~ Rene Descartes,
451:Intuitives tend to define intelligence as “quickness of understanding” and so prejudge the case in their own favor, for intuition is very quick. ~ Isabel Briggs Myers,
452:Once we tune in to what we feel in our heart and Spirit, our intuition kicks into gear and starts to communicate with us in so many delightful ways. ~ Sonia Choquette,
453:Or did I know by intuition that wonderful and terrible things were really imminent at last, trembling into being just behind the curtain of the future? ~ Iris Murdoch,
454:There is an intuition which serves the intellect and an intuition which serves the heart and the life. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Divine Personality,
455:While the other world religions emphasized mystery and intuition, Christianity alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guide to religious truth. ~ Rodney Stark,
456:Far more important throughout the rest of science is the ability to form concepts, during which the researcher conjures images and processes by intuition. ~ E O Wilson,
457:Men gifted with intuition and imagination find water in the desert, and they create cities where formerly other men only saw a desert and a wilderness. ~ Joseph Murphy,
458:Most decisions are seat-of-the-pants judgments. You can create a rationale for anything. In the end, most decisions are based on intuition and faith. ~ Nathan Myhrvold,
459:The comfort zone is the great enemy to creativity; moving beyond it necessitates intuition, which in turn configures new perspectives and conquers fears. ~ Dan Stevens,
460:Every man has a feminine side, and every woman a masculine side. It is important to use discipline with intuition, and to use intuition with objectivity. ~ Paulo Coelho,
461:He had a presentiment that their fates would be intertwined, but immediately rejected it; he always tried to avoid falling into the traps of intuition. ~ Isabel Allende,
462:In fact, one big lesson from Buddhism is to be suspicious of the intuition that your ordinary way of perceiving the world brings you the truth about it. ~ Robert Wright,
463:Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity. ~ Alan Turing,
464:My intuition told me that it was the grass that was important.Now it glows parrot-green, cool as mint, soft as moss, lying there like a cashmere blanket. ~ W P Kinsella,
465:Reason has survival value, but when overused at the expense of our intuition, feeling, and spirit, reason cuts us off from discovering our full potential. ~ Dan Millman,
466:We can call this power intuition, but intuition is nothing more than a sudden and immediate seizing of what is real, without the need for words or formulas. ~ Anonymous,
467:Intuition is the art, peculiar to the human mind, of working out the correct answer from data that is, in itself, incomplete or even, perhaps, misleading. ~ Isaac Asimov,
468:Knowledge has three degrees--opinion, science, illumination. The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second, dialectic; of the third, intuition. ~ Plotinus,
469:Philosophers need not much use the word 'intuition' or the concept of intuition, except when they happen to be working on the epistemology of the a priori. ~ Ernest Sosa,
470:Steve Jobs: Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. ~ Vishen Lakhiani,
471:You have an inner prosperity guide: your intuition. When you begin to pay attention to it, it will lead you to this truth - Abundance is your birthright. ~ Lynn Robinson,
472:associational logic,” a muscle rarely worked by prose: its “occlusion, or difficulty,” she wrote, “healing me, forcing me to privilege my heart, my intuition. ~ Anonymous,
473:I have an intuition, and usually my intuition is right. I have a feeling for whether a role will be good or bad for me, and I almost never make a mistake. ~ Anna Netrebko,
474:In spiritual matters mental logic easily blunders; intuition, faith, a plastic spiritual reason are here the only guides. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, The Guru,
475:[The essences of things] are suspended on the invisible dimension whose vibrance has been denied the human eye at all times save in the intuition of ecstasy. ~ Hart Crane,
476:How lacking in intuition men could be in persuading themselves that mending some stranger's socks, and attending to his comfort, could content a woman. ~ Daphne du Maurier,
477:Reason offers us many possibilities at once. Intuition infallibly chooses the best. Remember this and you cannot err; you will always make the right choice. ~ Arthur Japin,
478:Walt had a marvelous intuition. And because he understood people very well, liked them and had great respect for people, there was nothing cynical about Walt. ~ John Hench,
479:What I am actually saying is that we need to be willing to let our intuition guide us, and then be willing to follow that guidance directly and fearlessly. ~ Shakti Gawain,
480:When we assert intuition, we are therefore like the starry night: we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes. ~ Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves,
481:I feel there are two people inside me - me and my intuition. If I go against her, she'll screw me every time, and if I follow her, we get along quite nicely. ~ Kim Basinger,
482:The intuition of a deafened and isolated soldier often turns out to be nearer the truth than judgements delivered by staff officers as they study the map. ~ Vasily Grossman,
483:What I lack in technique, I think I make up more for in intuition. I think intuition is underrated and so important in the work that one does in one's life. ~ Stacy Peralta,
484:A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way,” Einstein once said, “but intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience. ~ Walter Isaacson,
485:Get thee to the novel! - the novel, that word-woven submarine, piloted by intimation and intuition, that will dive you to the deeps of the heart's maelstrom. ~ Cynthia Ozick,
486:how lacking in intuition men could be in persuading themselves that mending some stranger's socks, and attending to his comfort, could content a woman... ~ Daphne du Maurier,
487:When I pray, I'm just talking to what some people might call our higher selves: God, myself, my intuition, my heart. Whatever that is, that's where I go. ~ Alanis Morissette,
488:When philosophic reason is clear and certain by intuition or necessary induction, no subsequent revelation supported by prophecies or miracles can supersede it. ~ John Adams,
489:If you let reason alone control your choices, you lose the power of intuition. If you let emotion control your choices, you will be a slave to every minor tragedy. ~ Roy Huff,
490:I'm one of the few people who understands how producing technology requires intuition and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline. ~ Steve Jobs,
491:I think, you have to forget about intellect, to a degree. Intuition is very important when you're working with a lens, I believe, for what the lens is doing, too. ~ John Hurt,
492:I want the following word: splendor, splendor is fruit in all its succulence, fruit without sadness. I want vast distances. My savage intuition of myself. ~ Clarice Lispector,
493:Organizational effectiveness does not lie in that narrow minded concept called rationality. It lies in the blend of clearheaded logic and powerful intuition ~ Henry Mintzberg,
494:this was the fundamental hypothesis of the senior staff, shared by Walsh and everyone else: Trump must know what he was doing, his intuition must be profound. ~ Michael Wolff,
495:For the spiritual being, intuition is far more than a hunch. It is viewed as guidance or as God talking, and this inner insight is never taken lightly or ignored. ~ Wayne Dyer,
496:General propositions do not decide concrete cases. The decision will depend on a judgment or intuition more subtle than any articulate major premise. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr,
497:Nothing comes unannounced, but many can miss the announcement. So it's very important to actually listen to your own intuition rather than driving through it. ~ Terence McKenna,
498:Roosevelt's humor was broad, his manner friendly. Of wit there was little; of philosophy, none. What did he possess? Intuition, inspiration, love of adventure. ~ Emanuel Celler,
499:Sex and beauty are inseparable, like life and consciousness. And the intelligence which goes with sex and beauty, and arises out of sex and beauty, is intuition. ~ D H Lawrence,
500:There was an ill-fated aspect to all of his love’s labours, however, for they required of their object a delicacy of intuition that he himself did not possess. ~ Eleanor Catton,
501:When we are at ease, our bodies work efficiently, our minds settle, and space opens up for us to connect to our intuition, creativity, and sense of connectedness. ~ Tara Stiles,
502:A muse comes down from Mount Olympus and changes my attitude, cheering me up - it's an inner intuition, suddenly giving a breakthrough to be able to move ahead. ~ Robert Bateman,
503:Awe is an intuition of the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. ~ Robert W Fuller,
504:Intuition is the discriminative faculty that enables you to decide which of two lines of reasoning is right. Perfect intuition makes you a master of all. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda,
505:By learning to contact, listen to, and act on our intuition, we can directly connect to the higher power of the universe and allow it to become our guiding force. ~ Shakti Gawain,
506:Going with intuition a lot of times is very lonely. You're going on hunches - a little voice in here says, "Go this way." And your mind is saying, "You're crazy." ~ Stacy Peralta,
507:Intuition is linear; our imaginations are weak. Even the brightest of us only extrapolate from what we know now; for the most part, we're afraid to really stretch. ~ Ray Kurzweil,
508:I worry about leaders in complex situations who don't have enough experience, who are just going with their intuition and not monitoring it, not thinking about it. ~ Gary A Klein,
509:The thing a drama school can't give you is instinct. It can sharpen instinct but that can't be taught, and you have to have intuition. It's an essential ingredient. ~ Gary Oldman,
510:Because of their age long training in human relations for that is what feminine intuition really is women have a special contribution to make any group enterprise. ~ Margaret Mead,
511:Evolution endowed us with intuition only for those aspects of physics that had survival value for our distant ancestors, such as the parabolic orbits of flying rocks ~ Max Tegmark,
512:John was not a logician, but a seer; not a reasoner, but a mystic; he does not argue, but assert; he arrives at conclusions with one bound, as by direct intuition. ~ Philip Schaff,
513:Play my own game. You can read all the books, but you have to listen to your intuition and not do everything exactly as they say. You have to do what feels right. ~ Jennifer Tilly,
514:Darwin’s theory thus makes the testable prediction that whenever we use technology to glimpse reality beyond the human scale, our evolved intuition should break down. ~ Max Tegmark,
515:Your intuition is not the same thing as your mind. In fact, intuition is really the opposite of your mind - and you need to use BOTH in living your day-to-day life. ~ Shakti Gawain,
516:First of all I trust my own instinct, experience that I gained over years and feeling when the moment is right for buying shares. That is what one calls intuition. ~ Alisher Usmanov,
517:However, in order to make progress in anything, we must make the first move - from then on, our personal rhythm and intuition will show us how to conserve his energy. ~ Paulo Coelho,
518:Learn to let your intuition-gut instinct-tell you when the food, the relationship, the job isn't good for you (and conversely, when what you're doing is just right). ~ Oprah Winfrey,
519:It's important to talk about fringe-of-the-fringe experiences, not just to show the humanity of intuitives, but to show humanity the commonness of intuition. ~ S Kelley Harrell M Div,
520:It’s important to talk about fringe-of-the-fringe experiences, not just to show the humanity of intuitives, but to show humanity the commonness of intuition. ~ S Kelley Harrell M Div,
521:It's not man versus machine; it's man with machine versus man without. Data and intuition are like horse and rider, and you don't try to outrun a horse; you ride it. ~ Pedro Domingos,
522:Science…means unresting endeavor and continually progressing development toward an aim which the poetic intuition may apprehend, but the intellect can never fully grasp. ~ Max Planck,
523:This sort of intuition can only occur when you disengage the logic circuits from the problem and give the deep mind the opportunity to cook up the solution. The ~ Henepola Gunaratana,
524:To feel is to communicate with your Spirit-with God. Feeling is God's mirror; intuition is God's telephone. To seek your truth is to deepen your connection to Spirit. ~ Kenny Loggins,
525:To me, a witch is a woman that is capable of letting her intuition take hold of her actions, that communes with her environment, that isn't afraid of facing challenges. ~ Paulo Coelho,
526:What was tortuously secured by complex argument becomes widely shared intuition, so obvious that we forget its provenance. We don’t see it, because we see with it. ~ Rebecca Goldstein,
527:When you have the intuition that there is something which is there, but out of the reach of your physical world, art and religion are the only means to get to it. ~ Guillermo del Toro,
528:In such doubtful matters, where you have to work as a pioneer, you must be able to put some trust in your intuition and follow your feeling even at the risk of going wrong. ~ Carl Jung,
529:I work with intuition. With interpreters. I have my own method. I know exactly what I want from actors. Sometimes, I even recite the role to the actor if it's not clear. ~ Sergio Leone,
530:And this shows that intuition can sometimes get things wrong. And intuition is what people use in life to make decisions. But logic can help you work out the right answer. ~ Mark Haddon,
531:As with a child, to commune with Athena demands a level of openness and intuition greater than that used in the usual discourse between adult humans of a common culture. ~ Sy Montgomery,
532:No Pilar," Agustin said. "You are not smart. You are brave. You are loyal. You have decision. You have intuition. Much decision and much heart. But you are not smart. ~ Ernest Hemingway,
533:Science is not an intelligence test. Intuition is important, knowing what kind of questions to ask. The other thing is a passion for getting to the core of the problem. ~ Torsten Wiesel,
534:Visualizing is a mental process governed by the reasoning or conscious mind; visioning is a spiritual process, governed by intuition, or the superconscious mind. ~ Florence Scovel Shinn,
535:Creative people take their intuition seriously, looking for patterns where others see confusion, and are able to make connections between discrete areas of knowledge. ~ Tom Butler Bowdon,
536:Intuition enters the mind in a way Western science has yet to explain. Moses was a dowser, probably Jesus too. Though they did not have the benefit of dune buggies. ~ Claire Vaye Watkins,
537:It follows that neither the theorems of mathematics, nor the process of mathematical proof, nor the experience of mathematical intuition, confers any certainty. Nothing does. ~ Anonymous,
538:Lack of rationality is a vice where thinking and feeling are called for—rationality is a vice where sensation and intuition should be trusted. ~ Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul,
539:matters of the heart usually resolve themselves when the time is right. It just requires patience and the ability to follow your gut and listen to your intuition. That ~ Julianne MacLean,
540:Once I make up my mind about something, I do not procrastinate, I do not examine and question my decision, I move forward. I trust my intuition because it is smarter than me. ~ I T Lucas,
541:If you really don't know where to start or if you're stuck, start generating random connections and allow your intuition to tell you if one might lead somewhere interesting. ~ John Cleese,
542:Intuition is knowingness, and this field of unbounded knowing, of knowingness, is within every human being. You start tapping into that and it becomes an ocean of solutions. ~ David Lynch,
543:more or less in keeping with the intuition, common to the greater part of men, that death is a falling into a dark and immense silence, into an indefinite unconsciousness. ~ Maurice Druon,
544:He has a second-rate mind but a first-rate intuition about people,” Kissinger once said of Rockefeller. “I have a first-rate mind but a third-rate intuition about people. ~ Walter Isaacson,
545:its focus needs to be on improving customer retention. This goes against the standard intuition in that if a company lacks growth, it should invest more in sales and marketing. ~ Eric Ries,
546:No doubt, intuitions deserve respect. ...[but] I think that it is always up for grabs what an intuition is an intuition of. At a minimum, it is surely sometimes up for grabs. ~ Jerry Fodor,
547:I'm very curious to meet a guy who makes you completely forsake the scientific method in favor of unfounded supposition and speculation."
"It's called intuition! ~ Rosemary Clement Moore,
548:The realm of superstitions, fortune-telling, presentiments, intuition, dreams, all this is the inner life of a human being, and all this is the hardest thing to film. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski,
549:The State is not an organism; it is a machinery, and it works like a machine, without tact, taste, delicacy or intuition. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Human Cycle, The Inadequacy of the State Idea,
550:doubts of all things earthly, and intuition of of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards both with equal eye ~ Herman Melville,
551:Have a series of questions handy to shoot out when they grind to a halt. Then focus like mad on what your instinct and your intuition is telling you – as well as your ears. As ~ Felix Dennis,
552:There are boxers possessed of such remarkable intuition, such uncanny prescience, one would think they were somehow recalling their fights, not fighting them as we watch. ~ Joyce Carol Oates,
553:You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side. ... Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance. ~ Anne Lamott,
554:Ingmar Bergman said, “Imagine I throw a spear into the dark. That is my intuition. Then I have to send an expedition into the jungle to find the spear. That is my intellect. ~ Gavin de Becker,
555:There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance. ~ Albert Einstein,
556:It is always with excitement that I wake up in the morning wondering what my intuition will toss up to me, like gifts from the sea. I work with it and rely on it. It's my partner. ~ Jonas Salk,
557:One of the many sad results of the Industrial Revolution was that we came to depend more than ever on the intellect, and to ignore the intuition with its symbolic thinking. ~ Madeleine L Engle,
558:The path to artistic insight in one direction often involves deep study of another—the intuition makes uncanny connections that lead to a crystallization of fragmented notions. ~ Josh Waitzkin,
559:All inspiration comes from a higher power. The body is a shell. The creative spot is from God - You hear voices, everybody does. When you get older, you refer to it as intuition. ~ Eddie Murphy,
560:Art has a unique capacity to take one or other facet of the message and translate it into colors, shapes and sounds which nourish the intuition of those who look and listen. ~ Pope John Paul II,
561:In the quiet mind turned towards the Divine the intuition (higher mind) comes of the Divine’s Will and the right way to do it. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - II, Becoming Conscious in Work,
562:When we're in touch with our body, we're attuned to our intuition, needs, and desires and will be in the best position to make evolutionary choices for our health and wellbeing. ~ Deepak Chopra,
563:Hair is intuition. Hair is the abundance of perceptions, insights, thoughts, resentments, images, fantasies waiting and ready to come out whenever we are thinking of something else. ~ Robert Bly,
564:The apprehension of... values is intuitive; but it is not a built-in intuition, not something with which one is born. Intuition in art is actually the result of... prolonged tuition. ~ Ben Shahn,
565:A man who can understand Buddha and has an intuition of the heaven and hell of humanity ought not to live in a world ruled by “common sense” and democracy and bourgeois standards. ~ Hermann Hesse,
566:Hitler had a great gift for adjusting - consciously or intuitively - to his surroundings. ... With enormous histrionic intuition he could shape his behavior to changing situations. ~ Albert Speer,
567:I'm a recovering addict who visits brothels and has a penthouse at a casino. You've seen me fucking a porn star—not too easy, either. You're riding an awful fucking lot on intuition. ~ Ella James,
568:[S]ymbols and images can activate our latent powers of intuition, of the right-brain mode of consciousness, and it is precisely a change in consciousness that esotericism is after. ~ Gary Lachman,
569:A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way,” Einstein once said. “But,” he hastened to add, “intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience. ~ Walter Isaacson,
570:Intuition, like the rays of the sun, acts only in an inflexibly straight line; it can guess right only on condition of never diverting its gaze; the freaks of chance disturb it. ~ Honore de Balzac,
571:It's intuition, isn't it? Depression is intuition that I don't express, and if I just express those feelings, no matter how nuts they seem, there's no need for depression. ~ S Kelley Harrell M Div,
572:It's very powerful if you can home in on, and really trust, intuition and its strength. Most men have shunned that in so many ways that they end up squaring off the circle of life. ~ Peter Buffett,
573:Listen to your hunches, pay attention to your intuition, do not dismiss your random thoughts, inspirations or ideas.... They could be giving you the best advice you ever had. ~ Neale Donald Walsch,
574:With judgment comes the ability to disregard your own intuition unless you can explain it logically, the eagerness to judge and convict your own feelings, rather than honor them. ~ Gavin de Becker,
575:An executive might have a very strong intuition that a given product has promise, without considering the probability that a rival is already ahead in developing the same product. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
576:There can be no question, however, that prolonged commitment to mathematical exercises in economics can be damaging. It leads to the atrophy of judgement and intuition. . . ~ John Kenneth Galbraith,
577:There's something real in women's intuition. It's an accurate signpost for decision making, but it usually bumps up against man's logic. So we have to put ego aside and listen to them. ~ Jon Voight,
578:The underlying, primary psychic reality is so inconceivably complex that it can be grasped only at the farthest reach of intuition, and then but very dimly. That is why it needs symbols ~ Carl Jung,
579:Everyone knows about the diminishments of growing older, but no one talks about the expanding strengths. Paired with intellect, your intuition grows increasingly stronger and more on point. ~ RuPaul,
580:Intuition makes much of it; I mean by this the faculty of seeing a connection between things that in appearance are completely different; it does not fail to lead us astray quite often. ~ Andre Weil,
581:The underlying, primary psychic reality is so inconceivably complex that it can be grasped only at the farthest reach of intuition, and then but very dimly. That is why it needs symbols. ~ Carl Jung,
582:A Romantic builds everyday fulfillment through tenacious observation of daily life and an abundance of reliance on intuition. The result: An extraordinary life lived in ordinary days. ~ Shannon Ables,
583:I have a good reason for choosing off-season clothing for their first foray into this tidying gala. It’s the easiest category for tuning in to one’s intuition concerning what feels good. ~ Marie Kond,
584:I look at things and think about them,' Folly replied. 'And use my intuition, of course, and deduction and induction, as well as any historical or theoretical models that seem to apply. ~ Jim Butcher,
585:Navarro publicly said. “My function really as an economist is to try to provide the underlying analytics that confirm his intuition. And his intuition is always right in these matters. ~ Bob Woodward,
586:The true basis of religion is not belief, but intuitive experience. Intuition is the soul’s power of knowing God. To know what religion is really all about, one must know God. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda,
587:When I began in 1960, individuality wasn't an accepted thing to look for; it was about species-specific behaviour. But animal behaviour is not hard science. There's room for intuition. ~ Jane Goodall,
588:The human mind works at low efficiency. Twenty percent is the figure usually given. When, momentarily, there is a flash of greater power, it is termed a hunch, or insight, or intuition. ~ Isaac Asimov,
589:To react, is to be A slave to someone else's actions. Sometimes, A warrior is faced with the decision to strike pre-emptively, trusting his intuition, wisdom and years of training ~ Soke Behzad Ahmadi,
590:did he have it? That mystic quality that science couldn't define or categorize. Women called it intuition. Men called it gut instinct. Naming it was irrelevant. Having it was crucial. ~ Victoria Danann,
591:When you give yourself permission to have made mistakes in the past—when you begin to trust yourself about making new choices—that’s when your intuition becomes reliable and trustworthy. ~ Lisa Nichols,
592:A lady is smarter than a gentleman, maybe, she can sew a fine seam, she can have a baby, she can use her intuition instead of her brain, but she can't fold a paper in a crowded train. ~ Phyllis McGinley,
593:If you do not listen to your intuition, it will stop talking to you. Your intuition is like a sensitive friend. If you question it, censor it, judge it, it gets hurt and becomes silent. ~ Michele Cassou,
594:In most situations, a direct comparison makes people more careful and more logical. But not always. Sometimes intuition beats logic even when the correct answer stares you in the face. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
595:RISK: If risks are known, good decisions require logic and statistical thinking. UNCERTAINTY: If some risks are unknown, good decisions also require intuition and smart rules of thumb. ~ Gerd Gigerenzer,
596:When the question is difficult and a skilled solution is not available, intuition still has a shot: an answer may come to mind quickly—but it is not an answer to the original question. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
597:For me, intuitive thinking means associative thinking; intuition causes us to introduce narrative or figurative elements into a poem before we're able to explain why those elements belong. ~ James Arthur,
598:Most of us are in touch with our intuition whether we know it or not, but we're usually in the habit of doubting or contradicting it so automatically that we don't even know it has spoken ~ Shakti Gawain,
599:The job of the photographer, in my view, is not to catalogue indisputable fact but to try to be coherent about intuition and hope. This is not to say that he is unconcerned with the truth. ~ Robert Adams,
600:No matter how deep a study you make. What you really have to rely on is your own intuition and when it comes down to it, you really don't know what's going to happen until you do it. ~ Konosuke Matsushita,
601:People with high levels of personal mastery...cannot afford to choose between reason and intuition, or head and heart, any more than they would choose to walk on one leg or see with one eye. ~ Peter Senge,
602:The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it Intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why. ~ Albert Einstein,
603:wisdom means more than being intelligent, because it encompasses understanding, empathy, experience, inner peace, and intuition, and in retrospect, I obviously lack many of those traits. ~ Nicholas Sparks,
604:Women observe subconsciously a thousand little details, without knowing they are doing so. Their subconscious mind adds these little things together - and they call the result intuition. ~ Agatha Christie,
605:Some people say there's nothing new under the sun. I still think that there's room to create, you know. And intuition doesn't necessarily come from under this sun. It comes from within. ~ Pharrell Williams,
606:Use your intuition. Picture how things happen, why they happen. Don’t stick rigidly to first impressions, and once you’ve read the rule book, throw it away. Better still, burn the bastard. ~ Andrew Barrett,
607:People with high levels of personal mastery...cannot afford to choose between reason and intuition, or head and heart, any more than they would choose to walk on one leg or see with one eye. ~ Peter M Senge,
608:...the artist treats intuition and nuance with respect and reminds us that a little madness resides in all of us. Artists give voice to feelings, to conflict, to the prism of human experience. ~ Peter Block,
609:Women observe subconsciously a thousand little details, without knowing that they are doing so. Their subconscious mind adds these little things together—and they call the result intuition ~ Agatha Christie,
610:Women observe subconsciously a thousand little details, without knowing that they are doing so. Their subconscious mind adds these little things together—and they call the result intuition. ~ Agatha Christie,
611:But wisdom means more than being intelligent, because it encompasses understanding, empathy, experience, inner peace, and intuition, and in retrospect, I obviously lack many of those traits. ~ Nicholas Sparks,
612:Intuition and inspiration are not only spiritual in their essence, they are the characteristic means of all spiritual vision and utterance. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Course of English Poetry - V,
613:One of the reasons I've never done intensive psychotherapy or any of that stuff is that if there's anything in me that needs fixing, I want to know that I can rely on my own intuition to fix it. ~ Kate Winslet,
614:Listening carefully to this voice is how we distinguish ourselves from the rest of the crowd who so often barge through life, too busy or too proud even to acknowledge their intuition’s existence. ~ Bear Grylls,
615:The more the poet grows, the deeper the level of creative intuition descends into the density of his soul. Where formerly he could be moved to song, he can do nothing now, he must dig deeper. ~ Jacques Maritain,
616:For a moment I had a strange intuition that just this, and in a real, profound sense, is life; and perhaps happiness even - love with a mixture of sadness, reverence, and silent knowledge. ~ Erich Maria Remarque,
617:Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t let the opinions of others drown out your own inner voice. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” —Steve Jobs ~ Marie Force,
618:I know few significant questions of public policy which can safely be confided to computers. In the end, the hard decisions inescapably involve imponderables of intuition, prudence, and judgment. ~ John F Kennedy,
619:Our secret creative will divines its counterpart in others, experiencing its own universality, and this intuition builds a road towards knowledge of the power which is itself a spark within us. ~ Dag Hammarskj ld,
620:Reason is an effort to know the unknown and intuition is the happening of the unknowable. To penetrate the unknowable is possible, but to explain it is not. The feeling is possible, the explanation is not. ~ Osho,
621:Your ego is the biggest block you have in being able to listen to and trust your intuition in doing readings or even knowing and familiarizing yourself on a conscious level with your spiritual team. ~ Lisa Andres,
622:A symbol is mysterious and can only be discerned by intuition or poetic understanding. It is symbolic knowledge that Jung is concerned with, and he is attracted to what is deep, profound and obscure. ~ David Tacey,
623:I have trusted to my intuition to find the subjects, and I have written intuitively. I have an idea when I start, I have a shape; but I will fully understand what I have written only after some years. ~ V S Naipaul,
624:Logic is the procession or proportionate unfolding of the intuition; but its virtue is as silent method; the moment it would appear as propositions, and have a separate value, it is worthless. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson,
625:The world is continuously discontinuous. It is continuous for intuition and thinking; discontinuous for reason and observation. The human senses break it down but the unconvinced mind unites it. ~ Thiruman Archunan,
626:To argue that the gaps in knowledge which confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity. ~ H L Mencken,
627:Ill-informed intuition is fantastic - it's what great art is. So really old painters or writers or actors are brilliant, because they've finally reached the point when they can let go of al technique. ~ Helen Mirren,
628:The golden rule is work fast. As for framing, composition, focus-this is no time to start asking yourself questions: you just have to trust your intuition and the sharpness of your reflexes. ~ Jacques Henri Lartigue,
629:We reason, that is, our mind wanders, each time our courage fails to force us to pursue an intuition through all the successive stages which end in its fixation, in the expression of its own reality. ~ Marcel Proust,
630:if you follow your intuition, you will more often than not err by misclassifying a random event as systematic. We are far too willing to reject the belief that much of what we see in life is random. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
631:Intuition is like reading a word without having to spell it out. A child can't do that because it has had so little experience. A grown-up person knows the word because they've seen it often before. ~ Agatha Christie,
632:Rice assumed her duty was to translate Bush's instincts and intuition into policy. Instincts and intuition are a poor substitute for reasoned analysis. [...] "He was feeling his way," said Cheney. ~ Jean Edward Smith,
633:The next generation of scientists and engineers needed to get better at the things computers weren’t good at: creativity, intuition, resourcefulness, and perhaps most importantly, curiosity. Half ~ Christian Cantrell,
634:Against her own instincts, her own intuition, because she WANTS to believe him, because she has known him his whole life and cannot fathom a change so drastic he would be made unfamiliar to her. ~ Fatima Farheen Mirza,
635:It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition. ~ Bertrand Russell,
636:There will come a point in everyone's life , however, where only intuition can make the leap ahead, without ever knowing precisely how. One can never know why but one must accept intuition as a fact. ~ Albert Einstein,
637:Words saturated with sincerity, conviction, faith, and intuition are like highly explosive vibration bombs, which, when set off, shatter the rocks of difficulties and create the change desired. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda,
638:intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it's all written there. ~ Paulo Coelho,
639:intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there. ~ Paulo Coelho,
640:She is suspicious of words. She lives by her senses, by her intuition. We don’t have a language for the senses. Feelings are images, sensations are like musical sounds. How are you going to tell about them? ~ Ana s Nin,
641:A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants. A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is. ~ Laozi,
642:Bless Piper’s intuition, appealing to Meg’s stubborn streak. And bless Meg’s willful, weed-covered little heart. She interposed herself between me and Medea. “Apollo’s my dumb servant. You can’t have him. ~ Rick Riordan,
643:The most successful people are often very intuitive. Consciously or unconsciously, they follow their gut feelings. Following intuition puts us in the flow - a very alive, productive, and desirable state. ~ Shakti Gawain,
644:I think we need the feminine qualities of leadership, which include attention to aesthetics and the environment, nurturing, affection, intuition and the qualities that make people feel safe and cared for. ~ Deepak Chopra,
645:Life just turns deliciously quirky when you stop resisting yourself and, instead, honor the intuition that tugs at you like a puppy on a leash in the park. Follow the magic and magic starts to follow you. ~ Tama J Kieves,
646:When you trust and act on your intuition, you increase your self-esteem, build trust in yourself and experience a profound sense of security that no relationship or amount of money will ever give you. ~ Cheryl Richardson,
647:Everything I do with BLK DNM is more personal than anything I have done before. I've worked hard to go deeper in my true intuition, and therefore I am definitely more pure in my personal taste than ever. ~ Johan Lindeberg,
648:If you rightly see the division, it is simple to understand: unless instinct is available, you will be dead. And unless intuition is available, your life has no meaning—you just drag on. It is a kind of vegetation. ~ Osho,
649:Intuition and concepts constitute... the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge. ~ Immanuel Kant,
650:intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all
people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it's all written there. ~ Paulo Coelho,
651:One must speak for a struggle for a new culture, that is, for a new moral life that cannot but be intimately connected to a new intuition of life, until it becomes a new way of feeling and seeing reality ~ Antonio Gramsci,
652:The happy life does not mean loving what we possess, but possessing what we love." Possession of the beloved, St. Thomas holds, takes place in an act of cognition, in seeing, in intuition, in contemplation. ~ Josef Pieper,
653:The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition. ~ Herbert Simon,
654:What many refer to as intuition, then, is not the untaught or unteachable but instead is a learned understanding and respect of process, molded by experience and refined over a great deal of time and practice. ~ Jon Kolko,
655:But 'the physical level of rigor' is higher on certainty than the logical one, since reproducible experiments are more reliable than anybody's, be it Hilbert's, Einstein's or Gödel's intuition. ~ Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov,
656:... intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it's all written there. ~ Paulo Coelho,
657:Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are all able to know everything, because it's all written there. ~ Paulo Coelho,
658:Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of live, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are all able to know everything, because it's all written there. ~ Paulo Coelho,
659:It is ... possible to read Plato as if he were only discussing reason and not mystical intuition in his writings but ... in that case he seems naively over-impressed by rather ordinary thought processes. ~ Thomas McEvilley,
660:Science is not 'organized common sense'; at its most exciting, it reformulates our view of the world by imposing powerful theories against the ancient, anthropocentric prejudices that we call intuition. ~ Stephen Jay Gould,
661:The psychic perception is a feeling as opposed to a thinking. Not a feeling that is engendered through emotion necessarily. It comes from the psychic plane of intuition, which is another stage of our mind. ~ Frederick Lenz,
662:We were created with more than five senses. Apart from the basic five, we also have the gut and the third eye. The gut being the seat of all feeling, and the third eye being the seat of intuition (foresight). ~ Suzy Kassem,
663:An aphorism is an extreme synthesis of thesis and antithesis, theory and practice, it's a mixture of intuition and observation, hypothesis and illusions of certainty and probability, history and stupidity. ~ William C Brown,
664:Listening to the data is important... but so is experience and intuition. After all, what is intuition at its best but large amounts of data of all kinds filtered through a human brain rather than a math model? ~ Steve Lohr,
665:The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
666:The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition. ~ Herbert A Simon,
667:A lot of mythology arose after [Mahatma Gandhi] death. But the fact remains that he was an exceptional man, terribly intelligent, with tremendous intuition for people, and a great instinct for what was right. ~ Indira Gandhi,
668:A sentence is born into this world neither good nor bad, and that to establish its character is a question of the subtlest possible adjustments, a process of intuition to which exaggeration and force are fatal. ~ Rachel Cusk,
669:For I now realize that what overcame me that evening was a sudden awareness of the power of intuition, the supra-logic that cuts out all routine processes of thought and leaps straight from problem to answer. ~ Robert Graves,
670:My own way of writing is very meditated and, despite my reputation, rather slow-moving. So I do spend a good deal of time contemplating endings. The final ending is usually arrived at simply by intuition. ~ Joyce Carol Oates,
671:When I look in the mirror, I see a woman with secrets. When we don’t listen to our intuition, we abandon our souls. And we abandon our souls because we are afraid if we don’t, others will abandon us. ~ Terry Tempest Williams,
672:argued that depression is a terrible word for the affliction. Should be called something like mindstorm. Still, Lucas’s intuition told him that mindstorms didn’t just show up: they needed something to chew on. ~ John Sandford,
673:Grandmasters play chess by combining experience with intuition, backed up with calculation and study. Computers play chess by brute calculation; their “study” consists of a gigantic database of opening moves. ~ Garry Kasparov,
674:I studied psychology for a couple of years as a personal hobby, so you start learning about people and listening to your intuition, like when you you're feeling that people are not being entirely straight with you. ~ Afrojack,
675:It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition. ~ Carl von Clausewitz,
676:Nevertheless I have more than enough information to know his mood. This is apparent not from his facial expressions but his physical posture, and you do not read it with your mind but with your intuition. ~ Karl Ove Knausg rd,
677:People tried to do a lot of stuff with me early in my career where they tried to shape me into one thing or another. They couldn't just take the chance and go with my vision - which was just my intuition, really. ~ Katy Perry,
678:There's a disconnect between my mind and my heart, but I feel the truth. They say when people lose their vision, their hearing comes sharper. I've lost part of my memory but maybe my intuition is stronger. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick,
679:For me, intuition comes from experience. After years of experience, a person will have, if they have been paying attention and revising their thinking and behavior, intuitions about their area of experience. ~ Charles Faulkner,
680:In tantra we don't believe in commandments. We believe in the moment and the truth that is applicable for that moment, as best we can sort it out with our heart, our intuition, our knowledge, our common sense. ~ Frederick Lenz,
681:I understood that I was inventing myself, and that I was doing this more in the way of a painter than in the way of a scientist. I could not count on precision or calculation; I could only count on intuition. ~ Jamaica Kincaid,
682:The moment always comes when, having collected one's ideas, certain images, an intuition of a certain kind of development- whether psychological or material- one must pass on to the actual realization. ~ Michelangelo Antonioni,
683:Truths are known to us in two ways: some are known directly, and of themselves; some through the medium of other truths. The former are the subject of Intuition, or Consciousness; 4 the latter, of Inference. ~ John Stuart Mill,
684:Why is intuition superior to reason?
- Because it does not depend upon experience or memory and frequently brings about the solution to our problems by methods concerning which we are in entire ignorance. ~ Charles F Haanel,
685:Much of the discussion in this book is about biases of intuition. However, the focus on error does not denigrate human intelligence, any more than the attention to diseases in medical texts denies good health. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
686:An architect, to be a true exponent of his time, must possess first, last and always the sympathy, the intuition of a poet... this is the one real, vital principle that survives through all places and all times. ~ Louis Sullivan,
687:Engineering problems are under-defined, there are many solutions, good, bad and indifferent. The art is to arrive at a good solution. This is a creative activity, involving imagination, intuition and deliberate choice. ~ Ove Arup,
688:Getting up for sadhana in the morning is a totally selfish act - for personal strength, for personal intuition, for personal sharpness, for personal discipline, and overall for absolute personal prosperity. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi,
689:The fact is that everybody around a college basketball game - the coaches, the announcers, even the referees at a lower level - calculates when the game is really over. They calculate it with intuition and guesswork. ~ Bill James,
690:Trusting your intuition means tuning in as deeply as you can to the energy you feel, following that energy moment to moment, trusting that it will lead you where you want to go and bring you everything you desire. ~ Shakti Gawain,
691:The intuition that had kept Kylar from Vi even from the first time she'd tried to seduce him at the Drake estate suddenly crystallized: You don't share your life with a woman's body, you share your life with a woman. ~ Brent Weeks,
692:We have no reason to expect the quality of intuition to improve with the importance of the problem. Perhaps the contrary: high-stake problems are likely to involve powerful emotions and strong impulses to action. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
693:Intuition was often a way of cutting corners, a nifty technique of replacing hard evidence and facts with something far more elusive and capricious. The worst investigators Carlson knew relied on so-called intuition. ~ Harlan Coben,
694:It has to do with an intuition about the past. By linking research and imagination, sometimes I can think myself into the heads of the people who made the book. I can figure out who they were, or how they worked. ~ Geraldine Brooks,
695:This is the essential element that cannot be measured by any analysis or device, and I believe it's at the heart of success in all things: the power of intuition and the ability to harness and use it like a master. ~ Garry Kasparov,
696:Your intuition will tell you where you need to go; it will connect you with people you should meet; it will guide you toward work that is meaningful for you - work that brings you joy, work that feels right for you. ~ Shakti Gawain,
697:The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next. ~ V S Naipaul,
698:This realization was the beginning of personal integrity, when, instead of dismissing my feelings or my intuition, I found myself following them, even if they led me to a place that Scientology said was wrong. ~ Jenna Miscavige Hill,
699:At forty-two I decided to become a photographer because it offered a means of creative thought and action. I didn’t rationalize this, I just felt it intuitively and followed my intuition, which I have never regretted. ~ Wynn Bullock,
700:Intuition is not a single way of knowing—it’s our ability to hold space for uncertainty and our willingness to trust the many ways we’ve developed knowledge and insight, including instinct, experience, faith, and reason. ~ Bren Brown,
701:You have more brain cells than there are grains of sand on your favorite beach, and you have cleverness, dexterity, and creativity—all of which powerfully combine when you are at risk—if you listen to your intuition ~ Gavin de Becker,
702:Most writers - poets in especial - prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes. ~ Edgar Allan Poe,
703:Of course, analysis can sometimes give more accurate results than intuition but usually it’s just a lot of work. I normally do what my intuition tells me to do. Most of the time spent thinking is just to double-check. ~ Magnus Carlsen,
704:Sometimes, rather than just think about it, we need to feel about it. The intellect is limited or finite, while intuition connects to a sea of unlimited consciousness that expands far beyond time and space (as we know it). ~ T F Hodge,
705:There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche,
706:For some reason I have a visual intuition that allows me to design things in an interesting way, and I don't know where that came from. Because I don't have this formal training, I seem to drift in a different direction. ~ David Carson,
707:I'm generalizing, but women, being so connected to life, tend to have stronger intuition is stronger because they are trained to be on the look-out and protect. Men do that too, but there's a different quality to women. ~ Peter Buffett,
708:Intuition is not a different dimension of perception, as people usually try to make out. Intuition is just a quicker way of arriving at the same answer. Intuition is just a way of making use of the data and jumping the steps. ~ Sadhguru,
709:Raising children uses every bit of your being - your heart, your time, your patience, your foresight, your intuition to protect them, and you have to use all of this while trying to figure out how to discipline them. ~ Nicole Ari Parker,
710:Enormous self-belief, intuition, the ability to take a risk at a critical moment and go in for a very dangerous play with counter-chances for the opponent - it is precisely these qualities that distinguish great players. ~ Garry Kasparov,
711:His primary aim is to criticize Cartesianism and the thesis that we have direct intuitive knowledge – the type of intuition not determined by prior cognitions and one that can serve as an epistemological foundation. ~ Richard J Bernstein,
712:I make all my decisions on intuition. But then, I must know why I made that decision. I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect. ~ Ingmar Bergman,
713:Intuition is not a single way of knowing - it's our ability to hold space for uncertainty and our willingness to trust the many ways we've developed knowledge and insight, including instinct, experience, faith
and reason. ~ Bren Brown,
714:My experience has nothing to do with creation, I don't think, even though maturity is helpful. In a creation process, there's an intuition that takes you and if it's nourished with awareness and experience, it's great. ~ Juliette Binoche,
715:The safe places could only be visited; they could only grant a momentary intuition of sanctuary. The moment always came when we had to return to our real life to face the wounds and grief indigenous to our homr by the river. ~ Pat Conroy,
716:All great discoveries in experimental physics have been due to the intuition of men who made free use of models, which were for them not products of the imagination but representatives of real things.
Max Born (1953) ~ Victor J Stenger,
717:A scientist works largely by intuition. Given enough experience, a scientist examining a problem can leap to an intuition as to what the solution 'should look like.' ... Science is ultimately based on insight, not logic. ~ Guy Consolmagno,
718:Find the god in your own heart and you will understand by direct intuition what all the great teachers, real mystics, true philosophers and inspired people have been trying to tell you by the tortuous method of using words. ~ Paul Brunton,
719:I thought of my difficulties with writing, my struggles to articulate feelings not easily expressed. Of my struggles to find a language for intuition, feelings, instincts which are, in themselves, elusive, subtle, and wordless. ~ Ana s Nin,
720:The way in which mathematicians and physicists and historians talk is quite different, and what a physicist means by physical intuition and what a mathematician means by beauty or elegance are things worth thinking about. ~ Clifford Geertz,
721:We are all born with extraordinary powers of imagination, intelligence, feeling, intuition, spirituality, and of physical and sensory awareness. For the most part, we use only a fraction of these powers, and some not at all. ~ Ken Robinson,
722:Montalbano felt moved. This was real friendship, Sicilian friendship, the kind based on intuition, on what was left unsaid. With a true friend, one never needs to ask, because the other understands on his own accordingly. ~ Andrea Camilleri,
723:Symphony is about applying our whole mind—logic, analysis, synthesis, intuition—to make sense of our world (that is, our topic), find the big picture, and determine what is important and what is not before the day of a talk. ~ Garr Reynolds,
724:between sharing and stealing,’ I said. ‘You have something that belongs to me.’ He started to speak. I shoved my hand right in his mouth. Sound gross? Wait, it gets worse. Something guided me – maybe Nekhbet’s intuition, maybe ~ Rick Riordan,
725:Everything I do is just really my intuition, and every time I go against my intuition, it's a mistake. Even though I may sit down and analyze and intellectualize something on paper, if I go against my gut feeling, it's wrong. ~ Tamara Mellon,
726:In the dead silence, all the details suddenly fell into place for me with a burst of intuition. Something Edward didn't want me to know. Something that Jacob wouldn't have kept from me.... It was never going to end, was it? ~ Stephenie Meyer,
727:Until writing was invented, man lived in acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror.
Speech is a social chart of this bog. ~ Marshall McLuhan,
728:A preference for extraversion (seeing life in terms of the external world) or introversion (greater interest in the inner world of ideas) is independent of your preferences for sensing, thinking, intuition, and feeling. You ~ Tom Butler Bowdon,
729:everyone - you included - is on her best behavior in the beginning of a relationship. Sometimes little quirks turn out to be big ones, and the big advantage that women have - sometimes the only advantage - is their intuition. ~ Nicholas Sparks,
730:Those who deny the change in consciousness that the divine process of creation now brings about-or actually imposes on us-and fail to develop their intuition accordingly will sooner or later find themselves at a dead end. ~ Carl Johan Calleman,
731:And now for a matter of five years he had been making the discovery that Adi was a man who kept no promises and had no conception of loyalty to anything but his own “intuition.” Now this Catholic steelmaster was in the position ~ Upton Sinclair,
732:The first 10 years, I was just building just to understand what I was doing and I didn't trust my intuition to just produce. Then, in the last five years, I have really been reflecting on what I am producing and what it is doing. ~ David Adjaye,
733:There's a little thing on your shoulder called intuition and it whispers in your ear. Everyone has that, there is a voice telling you to do something. Most people ignore it - but you must listen to it. I do it every day, all day. ~ Ridley Scott,
734:To work magic is to dare. Finding our Divine Work in the world is a chance to risk what feels known. We must learn to trust intuition, and listen to the longing in our souls. To find your soul's work, follow your heart's desire. ~ T Thorn Coyle,
735:The only part of us that is conscious is our ego, the part that we call by our name and that is exposed both to the outer world through our persona and to our inner world which we encounter both by intuition and our dream life. ~ Alice O. Howell,
736:There's so much noise that's happening in our world, but the little voice that you've always got to listen to is your gut and your intuition, and you can do things and go beyond boundaries, if you to trust that gut and instinct. ~ Dwayne Johnson,
737:The true spiritual secret is this: what you seek, you already are. True success is discovering your inner divinity~ it's the ability to love and have compassion, trust your intuition, and awaken to your unlimited creative nature. ~ Deepak Chopra,
738:Practice listening to your intuition, your inner voice; ask questions; be curious; see what you see; hear what you hear; and then act upon what you know to be true. These intuitive powers were given to your soul at birth. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Est s,
739:There is no one who has ever created music with the combination of intelligence, intuition, depth, creativity, and humor that Jerry Garcia has. His work and life will continue to be a limitless source of inspiration for all of us. ~ Bruce Hornsby,
740:Trust that what causes alarm probably should, because when it comes to danger, intuition is always right in at least two important ways:
1. It is always in response to something. 2. It always has your best interest at heart. ~ Gavin de Becker,
741:HOW CAN YOU KNOW THIS?” the Voice demanded.
“I look at things and think about them,” Folly replied. “And use my intuition, of course, and deduction and induction, as well as any historical or theoretical models that seem to apply. ~ Jim Butcher,
742:I believe that it's terribly important to have a movement that is spiritual, not in the supernatural sense, but in the sense of German Geist, spirit, which combines the idea of mind together with feeling, together with intuition. ~ Murray Bookchin,
743:This was not a considered decision. Nor was it a gesture of charity, draped in a warm mantle of maternal kindness. No, this was an act of intuition, sprung from a deep and unspoken feminine knowledge of how the world functions. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert,
744:While scholars are comparing and contrasting theories, debating intellectual questions, and dividing humankind into categories, the world is changed by persons with faith, spirit, emotion, compassion, intuition, and irrational thinking. ~ Grey Owl,
745:I’m not unintelligent, mind you. But wisdom means more than being intelligent, because it encompasses understanding, empathy, experience, inner peace, and intuition, and in retrospect, I obviously lack many of those traits. Here’s ~ Nicholas Sparks,
746:Our intuition about the future is linear. But the reality of information technology is exponential, and that makes a profound difference. If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion. ~ Ray Kurzweil,
747:Trump’s economic adviser Peter Navarro updates this refrain when he says: “My function, really, as an economist is to try to provide the underlying analytics that confirm his intuition. And his intuition is always right in these matters. ~ Max Boot,
748:We are having experiences all the time which may on occasion render some sense of this, a little intuition of where your bliss is. Grab it. No one can tell you what it is going to be. You have to learn to recognize your own depth. ~ Joseph Campbell,
749:When you put aside your preconceived ideas, your self-centered scale of values, and let intuition have its way with you, you open up by this act new levels of the world. Such an opening-up is the most practical of all activities. ~ Evelyn Underhill,
750:Mind’s quick-paced thoughts floated from their high necks,
A glowing splendour as of an irised mane,
A parure of pure intuition’s light;
Its flame-foot gallop they could imitate: ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Entry into the Inner Countries,
751:Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist: “… intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there. ~ Bren Brown,
752:the translator says that a sentence is born into this world neither good nor bad, and that to establish its character is a question of the subtlest possible adjustments, a process of intuition to which exaggeration and force are fatal. ~ Rachel Cusk,
753:We are having experiences all the time which may on occasion render some sense of this, a little intuition of where your bliss is. Grab it. No one can tell you what it is going to be. You have to learn to recongnize your own depth. ~ Joseph Campbell,
754:It is true, she speaks but few words; but the few words she docs speak are genuine hieroglyphs of the inner world of Love and of the higher cognition of the intellectual life revealed in the intuition of the Eternal beyond the grave. ~ E T A Hoffmann,
755:Life is filled with abstractions, and the only way we make heads or tails of it is through intuition. Intuition is seeing the solution—seeing it, knowing it. It’s emotion and intellect going together. That’s essential for the filmmaker. ~ David Lynch,
756:Our own private intuition is the catalyst for self-improvement and self-realization, because when it comes to making deep and lasting changes in one’s personal life, it is only subjective experience, not facts, that registers as real. ~ Penney Peirce,
757:Strategies in the book involve ways to use the mind to go beyond the mind, ways to understand states of consciousness that are beyond thought, and ways to identify ourselves other than through our mind, through our intuition, and so forth. ~ Ram Dass,
758:The use of your writing is to keep you in touch with the inner source of inspiration and intuition, so as to wear thin the crude external crust in the consciousness and encourage the growth of the inner being.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - II,
759:The main reason intuition is so important is this: It is a clear sign that you are connecting with your inner spiritual guidance system. Intuition is a direct signal from your deepest self that you are navigating from your true center. ~ Gay Hendricks,
760:Why is intuition superior to reason?
   - Because it does not depend upon experience or memory and frequently brings about the solution to our problems by methods concerning which we are in entire ignorance.
   ~ Charles F Haanel, The Master Key System,
761:But, alas, that was crap. She’d been had by a con man—simple as that. His modesty had been a way to cover up his true self. Call it instinct or women’s intuition or going with your gut—whenever Wendy had done that, she had been wrong. “I ~ Harlan Coben,
762:Strive to understand with that supreme intuition which will cause you to attain to divine knowledge and which is in harmony with the soul of eternal things, so that the mysteries of spiritual wisdom may be clearly revealed to you. ~ id. “Kitab-el-ikon”,
763:If you are really true to yourself and really follow your intuition in the most rigorous way, there is a moment that becomes universal, that reaches everybody. That’s the real magic of Björk-she teaches us the courage to be ourselves. ~ Marina Abramovic,
764:They are ever eager to assure us that man’s most sublime thoughts of the Transcendent are but a little better than his worst: that loving intuition is the only certain guide. “By love may He be gotten and holden, but by thought never. ~ Evelyn Underhill,
765:...each of the painful "problems" in our lives contains valuable healing lessons. They teach us awareness and hopefully convince us to let go of our blind spots, prejudices, and tendencies to ignore our intuition and other growth lessons. ~ Doreen Virtue,
766:in the case of the given numbers 1, 2, 3, everybody can see that the fourth proportional is 6, and all the more clearly because we infer in one single intuition the fourth number from the ratio we see the first number bears to the second. ~ Baruch Spinoza,
767:Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable. In terms of idea the artist is free to even surprise himself. Ideas are discovered by intuition. ~ Sol LeWitt,
768:Science does not mean an idle resting upon a body of certain knowledge; it means unresting endeavor and continually progressing development toward an end which the poetic intuition may apprehend, but which the intellect can never fully grasp. ~ Max Planck,
769:intuition is a one-way communication from God, who never seems inclined to satisfy our curiosity, perhaps because, given the chance, every one of us would be like a child on a family road trip, endlessly asking Are we there yet? or the equivalent. ~ Anonymous,
770:The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it's all written there. ~ Paulo Coelho,
771:The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there. ~ Paulo Coelho,
772:things directly through our five senses. The other is the process of intuition, which is indirect perception by way of the unconscious, incorporating ideas or associations that the unconscious tacks on to perceptions coming from outside. ~ Isabel Briggs Myers,
773:He did not arrive at this conclusion by the decent process of quiet, logical deduction, nor yet by the blinding flash of glorious intuition, but by the shoddy, untidy process halfway between the two by which one usually gets to know things. ~ Margery Allingham,
774:He knew a lot of facts. But ultimately, as always, he must sketch and paint from intuition and trust that it was more true than all the facts he had amassed. Facts missed a great deal. Facts missed what lay beneath the facts. Facts missed spirit. ~ Mary Balogh,
775:Intuition is not clairvoyance. It’s not guesswork either. Intuition is executive summary, that 90 percent of the higher brain that functions subconsciously—but no less rigorously—than the self-aware subroutine that thinks of itself as the person. ~ Peter Watts,
776:When you feel depressed and you wanta go here, wanta go there, remember Mind Essence; the world, like dreams, will never come true. Operate on Intuition, Rest and Be Happy. It's all in your head what happens so you might as well think happiness. ~ Jack Kerouac,
777:Feminine intuition? Is that what you wanted the robot for? You men. Faced with a woman reaching a correct conclusion and unable to accept the fact that she is your equal or superior in intelligence, you invent something called feminine intuition. ~ Isaac Asimov,
778:Beneath my incredulity
All at once is flowing
Joy, the flash of the unbaited hook --
Yes, yes, it fits, it's right, it had to be!
Intuition weightless and ongoing
Like stanzas in a book
Or golden scales in the melodic brook -- ~ James Merrill,
779:One of the principles that we operate on in this country is that leaders are held accountable. The simple truth is that we went into Iraq on the basis of some intuition, some fear, and some exaggerated rhetoric and some very, very scanty evidence. ~ Wesley Clark,
780:The eye of youth is very observant. Youth has its moments of keen intuition, even normal youth -- but the intuition of those who stand mi-way between the sexes is so ruthless, so poignant, so deadly, as to be in the nature of an added scourge... ~ Radclyffe Hall,
781:When people spoke to him, he heard less and less of what they were saying, and more and more of what they were not. He learned to decipher the meaning of certain silences, which is like solving a tough case without any clues, with only intuition. ~ Nicole Krauss,
782:Conventional wisdom, fooled by our misleading "physical intuition", is that the real world is "continuous", and that discrete models are necessary evils for approximating the "real" world, due to the innate discreteness of the digital computer. ~ Doron Zeilberger,
783:For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression. ~ Henri Cartier Bresson,
784:A soul shall wake in the Inconscient’s house;
The mind shall be God-vision’s tabernacle,
The body intuition’s instrument,
And life a channel for God’s visible power. ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Eternal Day, The Soul’s Choice and the Supreme Consummation,
785:Merz art strives for immediate expression by shortening the path from intuition to visual manifestation of the artwork... they will receive my new work als they always have when something new presents itself: with indignation and screams of scorn. ~ Kurt Schwitters,
786:The essential discovery of maturity has little if anything to do with information about the names, the locations, and the sequence of facts; it is the acquiring of a different sense of life, a different kind of intuition about the nature of things. ~ Walter Lippmann,
787:The girl's eyes were soft and tender and the heart within her stretched a little and grew; grew in sweetness and intuition and depth of feeling. It had looked into another heart, felt it beat, and heard it sigh; and that is how all hearts grow. ~ Kate Douglas Wiggin,
788:Intuition eludes the grasp of linear thinking, with its exclusive emphasis on cause and effect that are close in time and space. The result is that most of our intuitions don’t make sense—that is, they can’t be explained in terms of linear logic. Very ~ Peter M Senge,
789:The secret, or innermost, level of wisdom is pure intuition, clarity, lucidity, innate wakefulness, presence, and recognition of reality. This transcendental wisdom is within all of us—it just needs to be discovered and developed, unfolded and actualized. ~ Surya Das,
790:Truth can be intuited even when it cannot be articulated in language. Such intuition is rooted in our broader obfuscated mind, which can apprehend—in symbolic ways—aspects of reality beyond the grasp of our self-reflective thoughts and perceptions. ~ Bernardo Kastrup,
791:But a quick-acting poison, that’s different. It strikes with blind swiftness. You can be bit by temptation anytime. It is a thought, a direction, a noise in your brain, a hunch, an intuition that leads you to darker places than you’ve ever imagined. I ~ Louise Erdrich,
792:My intention here is to make it clear that not a single cell of my composition, here in regard to The Raven, is found by chance or intuition, that the composition moved towards perfection with the precision and inevitability of a mathematical equation. ~ Maurice Ravel,
793:Some people believe intuition is the sixth sense, a gift from the soul. And while I think that’s true, my theory goes a step further. Having your heart splintered heightens that sense. Because on instinct alone, you’re constantly looking for the pieces. ~ Kate Stewart,
794:The girl's eyes were soft and tender, and the heart within her stretched a little and grew - grew in sweetness and intuition and depth of feeling. It had looked into another heart, felt it beat, and heard it sigh; and that is how all hearts grow. ~ Kate Douglas Wiggin,
795:If the intuition-mongering were abandoned, would that be the end of philosophy? It would be the end of a certain style of philosophy - a style that has cut philosophy off, not only from the humanities but from every other branch of inquiry and culture. ~ Philip Kitcher,
796:Intuition is the key to everything, in painting, filmmaking, business - everything. I think you could have an intellectual ability, but if you can sharpen your intuition, which they say is emotion and intellect joining together, then a knowingness occurs. ~ David Lynch,
797:« Aucun ouvrage de référence au monde, avec ses citations, ne peut remplacer le lien organique qu'une affirmation trouvée par nous-même établit avec notre intuition et notre attention, si bien qu'il se forme une véritable richesse pour notre esprit. » ~ Jacob Burckhardt,
798:But everyone who can face up to decision making can learn to be an entrepreneur and to behave entrepreneurially. Entrepreneurship, then, is behaviour rather than personality trait. And its foundation lies in concept and theory rather than in intuition. ~ Peter F Drucker,
799:. . . we again meet the Trickster theme . . . he no longer appears as a lawless would-be hero. He has become the shaman . . . the medicine man . . . whose magical practices and flights of intuition stamp him as a primitive master of initiation. P. 147 ~ Carl Gustav Jung,
800:Philosophical progress is invisible because it is incorporated into our points of view. What was tortuously secured by complex argument becomes widely shared intuition, so obvious that we forget its provenance. We don’t see it, because we see with it. ~ Rebecca Goldstein,
801:The answer you seek lies in learning to combine the power of reason with the passion of emotion. If you let reason alone control your choices, you lose the power of intuition. If you let emotion control your choices, you will be a slave to every minor tragedy. ~ Roy Huff,
802:Whenever we need to make a very important decision it is best to trust our instincts, because reason usually tries to remove us from our dream, saying that the time is not yet right. Reason is afraid of defeat, but intuition enjoys life and its challenges. ~ Paulo Coelho,
803:I'm saying that we should trust our intuition. I believe that the principles of universal evolution are revealed to us through intuition. And I think that if we combine our intuition and our reason, we can respond in an evolutionary sound way to our problems. ~ Jonas Salk,
804:The secret, or innermost, level of wisdom is pure intuition, clarity, lucidity, innate wakefulness, presence, and recognition of reality. This transcendental wisdom is within all of us—it just needs to be discovered and developed, unfolded and actualized. ~ Lama Surya Das,
805:But, you know, when I choose a film I need to believe in it and believe I can do something special with it, and after a while that means not trying to judge or analyze why I should do it. You have to follow this intuition thing, which is a mystery to me. ~ Juliette Binoche,
806:Drop the mind that thinks in prose; revive another kind of mind that thinks in poetry Put aside all your expertise in syllogism; let songs be your way of life. Move from intellect to intuition, from the head to the heart, because the heart is closer to the mysteries. ~ Osho,
807:My business savvy it’s instinct. Everything I do is just really my intuition, and every time I go against my intuition, it’s a mistake. Even though I may sit down and analyze and intellectualize something on paper, if I go against my gut feeling, it’s wrong. ~ Tamara Mellon,
808:Staying loyal to your journey means you never abandon yourself by compromising your integrity or discounting your intuition or the signals that come from your body—the knot in the gut, emotional detachment, or loss of energy that signals something is amiss. ~ Charlotte Kasl,
809:What is commonly called 'women's intuition' is mostly a woman's acute ability to notice small details and changes in the appearance or behaviour of others. It's something that, throughout history, has bewildered men who play around - and are invariably caught. ~ Allan Pease,
810:Science needs the intuition and metaphorical power of the arts, and the arts need the fresh blood of science ... Interpretation is the logical channel of consilient explanation between science and the arts. The arts ... also nourish our craving for the mystical. ~ E O Wilson,
811:The human mind is not limited to the intellect. Where the intellect stops intuition picks up. We can sense truth even if we cannot articulate it in words or derive it from logical schemes. Unreliable as this sense may be, it is our only link to a broader reality. ~ B Kastrup,
812:"The persona is always identical with a typical attitude, in which ONE psychological function dominates, e.g. feeling, or thought, or intuition. This one-sidedness always causes the relative repression of the other functions." - ~ Carl Jung, The Conception of the Unconscious,
813:What distinguishes - in both senses of that word - contemplation is rather this: it is a knowing which is inspired by love. "Without love there would be no contemplation." Contemplation is a loving attainment of awareness. It is intuition of the beloved object. ~ Josef Pieper,
814:Being in a multicultural environment in childhood is going to give you intuition, reflexes and instincts. You may acquire basic responsiveness later on, but it's never going to be as spontaneous as when you have been bathing in this environment during childhood. ~ Carlos Ghosn,
815:Celibacy is like poetry keeping the idea ever in mind like a dream; but marriage uses chisel and brush, concentrating more on marble and canvas. Celibacy jumps to a conclusion like an intuition; marriage, like reason, labors through ebb and flow, step by step. ~ Fulton J Sheen,
816:I began to realize that an intuitive understanding and consciousness was more significant than abstract thinking and intellectual logical analysis. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That's had a big impact on my work. ~ Steve Jobs,
817:Intuition is when we use our experience, and the patterns we have learned, to rapidly size up situations and know how to respond without going through deliberate analysis. Intuitions depend on the patterns we have acquired. Insight is about gaining new patterns. ~ Gary A Klein,
818:Like my freedom. If I feel like I'm being controlled, I get crazy. Because I know I made it this far by following my intuition. I think people like who I am, and I like who I am, and I want to be a better version of myself every single day. So stop controlling me! ~ Katy Perry,
819:Over and over, since I was very young, I see things that are about to happen. You can call it heightened intuition; you can call it visions... I see it as a gift. It's my role to give people a heightened awareness, to show that basically we can change the world. ~ Shari Arison,
820:It frightens me that when I’m writing I seem to have some awful second sight, or something like it, an intuition of some kind; a kind of intelligence is at work that is much too painful to use in ordinary life; one couldn’t live at all if one used it for living. ~ Doris Lessing,
821:Pondering was the highest vocation... Pondering was a special kind of thinking. It was not done in the mind, that chilly place, but in the heart, where the real mystery of intelligence - intuition - rather than thought lay catlike and feminine, ready to pounce. ~ Patricia Hampl,
822:The intellect resides in what depth-psychology calls the ‘ego,’ that part of our thoughts, feelings & perceptions that we are self-reflectively aware of. But underneath there is an unfathomably broader mental space the ‘unconscious,’ the wellspring of intuition. ~ B Kastrup,
823:When it comes down to intuition, when it comes down to gut feelings about whether a song is right, you can get distracted with words, rationalization. There's nothing wrong with music school, but part of music school has to be the ability to forget all of it, too. ~ Greg Saunier,
824:He didn’t like the connotations interstellar technology was sparking off in his intuition. Though he had to admit Julia had the right idea. If they couldn’t be beaten with hardware, use innate human treachery against them. And what does that say about us as a species? ~ Anonymous,
825:He is my father in every meaningful definition of the word. Any other label is purely biological and I’ve never been keen on science. Give me uncertainty any time. Give me speculation, intuition, gut instinct, wild leaps of the imagination. Give me human error. Maybe ~ Jess Ryder,
826:If you act on that intuition, you will be amazed at how things will begin to connect in your life and at the dramatic changes that follow. It is as if your life has been touched by magic. Putting your house in order is the magic that creates a vibrant and happy life. ~ Marie Kond,
827:Intuition is like a radio station.. No, intuition is more like a radio receiver and it can receive different stations. This radio receiver serves different functions, it serves your spirituality which is the development of your soul. It serves your physical survival. ~ Gary Zukav,
828:The more he worked around the PPPI, the more he got the feeling that he was onto something. People were lying to him, misdirecting him. He couldn’t exactly put a finger on why he thought that, but he’d learned the hard way not to ignore even unsupported intuition. ~ John Sandford,
829:The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them. ~ Albert Einstein,
830:To turn perception into experience, therefore, we need (2) a different kind of judging. An intuition (or perception) must be brought under a pure a priori concept of the understanding; this concept settles what kind or form of judgment can be made about this intuition ~ Anonymous,
831:As Bergson argued, the mind has another means of “knowing,” aside from the rational intellect. This, he argued, was intuition. Just as we have an immediate, irreducible awareness of our own inner states, through intuition we have access to the “inside” of the world. ~ Gary Lachman,
832:Intuition, if you are fashion designer is really the key to everything. I just really have a feeling it's the right moment in time to create a new business model. Obviously I have facts and figures that could back that up. It isn't a gamble; it's a calculated risk. ~ Monita Rajpal,
833:Man only escape from the laws of this world in lightning flashes. Instants when everything stands still, instants of contemplation, of pure intuition, of mental void, of acceptance of the moral void. It is through such instants that he is capable of the supernatural. ~ Simone Weil,
834:The Spirit bears witness. Ecstasy and enlightenment, inspiration and intuition are not necessary. Happy is the man who is worthy of these; but woe unto us if we wait for such experiences; woe unto us if we do not perceive that these things are of secondary importance. ~ Karl Barth,
835:Man only escapes from the laws of this world in lightning flashes. Instants when everything stands still, instants of contemplation, of pure intuition, of mental void, of acceptance of the moral void. It is through such instants that he is capable of the supernatural. ~ Simone Weil,
836:One-sidedness, though it lends momentum, is a mark of barbarism. The reaction that is beginning in the West against the intellect in favour of feeling or intuition, seems a sign of cultural advance, a widening of consciousness beyond narrow confines of a tyrannical intellect ~ Jung,
837:Even back in the command-and-control days of the production line, Henry Ford’s decision to manufacture automobiles was driven by intuition rather than market research. “If we had asked the public what they wanted,” he explained, “they would have said ‘faster horses. ~ Marty Neumeier,
838:Ginger is not distracted by the way things could be, used to be, or should be. She perceives only what is. Our reliance on the intuition of a dog is often a way to find permission to have an opinion we might otherwise be forced to call (God forbid) unsubstantiated. ~ Gavin de Becker,
839:Graphic design, which evokes the symmetria of Vituvius, the dynamic symmetry of Hambidge, the asymmetry of Mondrian; which is a good gestalt, generated by intuition or by computer, by invention or by a system of coordinates, is not good design if it does not communicate. ~ Paul Rand,
840:Intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti,
841:The material world is simply an expression of the mind; that's what so many fail to see. We're so dependent on what is before us that we discount our intuition. Yet if one dismisses instinct, how can one understand or believe in a world that exists beyond one's sight? ~ Megan Chance,
842:And the beauty of the anthropic principle is that it tells us, against all intuition, that a chemical model need only predict that life will arise on one planet in a billion billion to give us a good and entirely satisfying explanation for the presence of life here. ~ Richard Dawkins,
843:Knowledge is awareness, and to it are many paths, not all of them paved with logic. But sometimes one is guided through the maze by intuition. One is led by something felt on the wind, something seen in the stars, something that calls from the wasteland to the spirit. ~ Louis L Amour,
844:Kundalini is the yoga of awareness, which focuses on enhancing one’s intuition and strengthening the energy field. Kundalini aims to draw forth the creative potential of an individual to have strong values, be truthful, and focus on compassion and consciousness. ~ Gabrielle Bernstein,
845:As I'm writing, I start to see connections, and themes I didn't see, and that sparks other things. So then I go back and rewrite things or alter them. It's a combination of intuition and a lot of finessing. It becomes a combination of the rational and the irrational. ~ Charlie Kaufman,
846:As you see, I do not treat the creation of fiction, that to say the invention and development of fantasies,as a form of abstract thought. I dont wish to deny the uses of the intellect,but sometimes one has the intuition that the intellect by itself will lead one nowhere. ~ J M Coetzee,
847:Knowing yourself and coming to trust your feelings and your intuition will open up your life to greater possibilities and keep you moving toward your goals. One thing I have learned is that I should trust my 'gut' instincts. Ultimately, only we know what is best for us. ~ Miranda Kerr,
848:They had a confidence in their own intuition, a sort of knowing deeper than schooling can render and higher than the dogma of a church. If they could bear the pain of experiencing their world long enough, without numbing themselves, they had what you might call “powers. ~ Sarah Smarsh,
849:To encounter the depths and rich complexity of the cosmos, we require ways of knowing that fully integrate the imagination, the aesthetic sensibility, moral & spiritual intuition, revelatory experience, symbolic perception, somatic & sensuous modes of understanding. ~ R Tarnas,
850:We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it. Before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction. And time is its only measure. ~ Tom Stoppard,
851:Coming back to America was, for me, much more of a cultural shock than going to India. The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. ~ Walter Isaacson,
852:The systems-thinking lens allows us to reclaim our intuition about whole systems and • hone our abilities to understand parts, • see interconnections, • ask “what-if ” questions about possible future behaviors, and • be creative and courageous about system redesign. ~ Donella H Meadows,
853:Decision-making based on emotional intuition, without the aid of reason to keep it in line, pretty much always sucks. You know who bases their entire lives on their emotions? Three-year-old kids. And dogs. You know what else three-year-olds and dogs do? Shit on the carpet. ~ Mark Manson,
854:I think of the novelist Haruki Murakami, who compares writing a novel to digging a hole through deep rock to reach a source of water. To access mystery and intuition requires hard work and is a gamble, for there is no guarantee that we will find that source of water. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen,
855:Relying on data—indeed, expecting every conversation to be rooted in data—upends the traditional role of managers. It transforms them from being providers of intuition to facilitators in a search for truth, with the most useful facts being brought to bear on each decision. ~ Laszlo Bock,
856:That's what sets apart one actor from another, and that you can't teach. You can't give someone that. When you're working, putting a character together, or in a scene, that's where things will happen that you have to have the intuition to notice them, and to register them. ~ Gary Oldman,
857:Intuition is possible because the unknowable is there. Science denies the existence of the divine because it says, “There is only one division: the known and the unknown. If there is any God, we will discover him through laboratory methods. If he exists, science will discover him. ~ Osho,
858:Wisdom is not book learning but, rather, a quality or state of knowing what is true or right coupled with the judgment to discern constructive action. Wisdom is the insight and intuition contained in the proverbial still, small voice that only a quiet mind can hear and know. ~ Sue Thoele,
859:At the most marginal of opportunities, Jake was fond of telling anyone within earshot the three great secrets of how to proceed when you don't have the vaguest idea what you're doing. The secrets, in the order he invariably listed them, were intuition, reason, and desperation. ~ Jim Dodge,
860:I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research. ~ Albert Einstein,
861:Intuition is a funny thing. Sometimes it’s a gut feeling, and you look around and just know something bad is about to happen. Other times, it’s elusive, and later you find yourself looking back on certain events and wondering how in the world you missed all the signals. ~ Julianne MacLean,
862:Knowledge has three degrees - opinion, science, illumination. THe means or instrument of the first s sense; of the second dialectic; of the third intuition. To the last I subordinate reason. It is absolute knowledge found on the identity of the mind knowing with the object know ~ Plotinus,
863:Our own intuition of what we're called to is reality speaking to us individually and perfectly. We have to listen to how the Infinite talks to us and leads us. Reality, Life the Infinite, God, has a way of leading us in just the perfect way, if we will only just listen to it. ~ Adyashanti,
864:Tempered intuition is more than beneficial. It's usually critical to resolving gray area problems. In other words, in the end, these problems are resolved by someone in a position of authority saying this is what I think we should do and will do to address this problem. ~ Joseph Badaracco,
865:Here's a simple way you can engage your intuition. When you are about to say something and you're not sure if you want to say it, ask yourself, "What is my motivation?" When you check your motivation you engage non-physical guidance and you will not be alone in you assessment. ~ Gary Zukav,
866:The diagnosis of these errors follows a common pattern. Each attempt by pure reason to establish the metaphysical doctrines towards which it is impelled transgresses the limits of experience, applying concepts in a manner that is ‘unconditioned’ by the faculty of intuition. ~ Roger Scruton,
867:You have to follow your intuition. That is what expertise is: all the experience, the cases won and lost, the painful mistakes, all the technical details you learn by rote repetition, over time these things leave you with an instinctive sense of your craft. A "gut" for it. ~ William Landay,
868:If the intuition must conform to the nature of the objects, I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori. If, on the other hand, the object conforms to the nature of our faculty of intuition, I can then easily conceive the possibility of such an a priori knowledge. ~ Immanuel Kant,
869:A good diet,” Mayer wrote, “high in fruits and vegetables and with a reasonable amount of undermilled cereals—will give all you need of useful fiber.” The assumption that it would lead to long life and good health, however, was based more on faith and intuition than on science. ~ Gary Taubes,
870:The theoretician believes in logic and believes that he despises dreams, intuition, and poetry. He does not recognize that these three fairies have only disguised themselves in order to dazzle him.... He does not know that he owes his greatest discoveries to them. ~ Antoine de Saint Exupery,
871:Thus, in view of what I have said, we could not officially hack [Hillary's Clinton mail]. It would require certain intuition and knowledge of the U.S. domestic policy peculiarities. I am not sure that even our experts from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have such intuition. ~ Vladimir Putin,
872:All psychotherapy is ultimately something of an art. There is always an irrational element in psychotherapy. The doctor's artistic intuition and sensitivity is of considerable importance. The patient, too, brings an irrational element into the relationship: his individuality. ~ Viktor E Frankl,
873:Hinduism is not just a faith. It is the union of reason and intuition that can not be defined but is only to be experienced. Evil and error are not ultimate. There is no Hell, for that means there is a place where God is not, and there are sins which exceed his love. ~ Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan,
874:Nobody taught Picasso how to paint - he learned for himself. And nobody can teach you to be a producer. You can learn the mechanics, but you can't learn what's right about a script or a director or an actor. That comes from instinct and intuition. It comes from inside you. ~ Dino De Laurentiis,
875:All psychotherapy is ultimately something of an art. There is always an irrational element in psychotherapy. The doctor's artistic intuition and sensitivity is of considerable importance. The patient, too, brings an irrational element into the relationship: his individuality. ~ Viktor E Frankl,
876:There's something in the act of setting out that renews me, that fills me with a feeling of possibility. On the road, I'm forced to rely on instinct and intuition, on the kindness of strangers, in ways that illuminate who I am, ways that shed light on my motivations, my fears. ~ Andrew McCarthy,
877:Trust yourself, your intuition, your desires and your pursuits. Don't question yourself too much. Place one foot ahead of the other and go forward steadily. No one will understand as you do the work, the art, you are making - so no need to look for audience approval or ratings. ~ Barbara Hammer,
878:The psychology of accurate intuition involves no magic. Perhaps the best short statement of it is by the great Herbert Simon, who studied chess masters and showed that after thousands of hours of practice they come to see the pieces on the board differently from the rest of us. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
879:Therefore, those to whom God has imparted religion by intuition are very fortunate and justly convinced. But to those who do not have it, we can give it only by reasoning, waiting for God to give them spiritual insight, without which faith is only human and useless for salvation. ~ Blaise Pascal,
880:As scientists the two men were contrasting types—Einstein all calculation, Rutherford all experiment ... There was no doubt that as an experimenter Rutherford was a genius, one of the greatest. He worked by intuition and everything he touched turned to gold. He had a sixth sense. ~ Chaim Weizmann,
881:Many scientists think that philosophy has no place, so for me it's a sad time because the role of reflection, contemplation, meditation, self-inquiry, insight, intuition, imagination, creativity, free will, is in a way not given any importance, which is the domain of philosophers. ~ Deepak Chopra,
882:felicitous intuition so prevalent in the bourgeoisies of non-Western countries, and most particularly Muslim countries, saw psychoanalysis as a “scientific sharing of confidences” invented for Westerners unaccustomed to the curative traditions of family solidarity and shared secrets. ~ Orhan Pamuk,
883:One of the things that I love about writing novels is that it really doesn't matter what next step you take as long as you're pursuing some intuition or instinct. Of course, then, intuitions or instincts don't make for great novels, but they often make for good first drafts. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer,
884:These factors point to one of the fundamentals of leadership: the greater the scope of a decision and the more variables and uncertainties there are, the more important it is for the leader to be aware of unconscious drives and biases that could affect emotions, reason, and intuition. ~ Ram Charan,
885:He wasn't the least bit disturbed that his intuition was wrong: intuition often missed, sometimes spectacularly, but when it connected it saved so much time that the spirit leaped forward ... and, of course, there was no use denying the basic human delight in being right the first time. ~ Jim Dodge,
886:How does Wild Woman affect women? With her as ally, as leader, model, teacher, we see, not through two eyes, but through the eyes of intuition which is many-eyed. When we assert intuition, we are therefore like the starry night: we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Est s,
887:Hunches,” his mother used to call them. The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it's all written there. ~ Paulo Coelho,
888:The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there. “Maktub,” the boy said, remembering the ~ Paulo Coelho,
889:About the only time our gut can truly outperform our reason is if we truly have developed a kind of informed intuition. So that means the chess master or someone who has really thought about it and given themselves feedback on a particular activity for at least 10,000 hours or more. ~ Sheena Iyengar,
890:Are you really going to go all the way to Helsinki to see her without getting in touch first? All the way across the Arctic Circle?” “Is that too weird?” She laughed. “ ‘Bold’ is the word I’d use for it.” “I feel like things will work out better that way. Just intuition, of course. ~ Haruki Murakami,
891:I love racers from that early vintage antique era of the 1950s. There's just something about them. It's the last romantic epoch of car-making. They were not efficient, necessarily. They were put together with intuition and enthusiasm, not with a formula. That's as technical as I'll get. ~ Jon J Muth,
892:Sometimes we work so fast that we don't really understand what's going on in front of the camera. We just kind of sense that, 'Oh my God, it's significant!' and photograph impulsively while trying to get the exposure right. Exposure occupies my mind while intuition frames the images. ~ Minor White,
893:This may be the primary purpose of dogs: to restore our sense of wonder and to help us maintain it, to make us consider that we should trust our intuition as they trust theirs and to help us realize that a thing known intuitively can be as real as anything known by material experience. ~ Dean Koontz,
894:Authentic power is a new potential of this expanded perceptual system that we are all being given as a gift. As you begin to create authentic power with tools such as emotional awareness, responsible choice and intuition, you begin to draw to yourself others who are doing the same thing. ~ Gary Zukav,
895:Enlightened leadership is spiritual if we understand spirituality not as some kind of religious dogma or ideology but as the domain of awareness where we experience values like truth, goodness, beauty, love and compassion, and also intuition, creativity, insight and focused attention. ~ Deepak Chopra,
896:This may be the primary purpose of dogs: to restore our sense of wonder and to help us maintain it, to make us consider that we should trust our intuition as they trust theirs, and to help us realize that a thing known intuitively can be as real as anything known by material experience. ~ Dean Koontz,
897:When we practice paying attention, moving with ease of body and mind, and being efficient, our body becomes very capable and strong, and the mind is able to be calm and travel further inward, where we have direct access to your unique creativity, intuition, and feelings of connectivity. ~ Tara Stiles,
898:A lover cannot be chosen a la smorgasbord. A lover has to be chosen from soul-craving. To choose just because something mouthwatering stands before ou will never satisfy the hunger of the soul-self. And that is what the intuition is for; it is the direct messenger of the soul. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes,
899:His em-tracking machinery is driven by words more than images, but that’s only his make and model. Empathy is related to intuition, and intuition is individually customized, tuned to dominant talents. Chefs need tastes, painters images. His experience is biblical: It starts with logos. ~ Steven Kotler,
900:Intuition is the highest form of knowledge. What we learn from others can be mistaught by those not a fraction as knowledgeable as they pretend or by those who are propagandists with agendas. We are born with intuition, however, which includes the natural law, a sense of right and wrong. ~ Dean Koontz,
901:The intellectual tension that seems to work its way through this society almost like fat through meat is the tension between scientific reductionism and the deeply felt intuition of most people that there is a spiritual dimension, or a hidden dimension, or a transcendental dimension. ~ Terence McKenna,
902:In a high tech world the cure for the tragic shortcomings and perilous fallacies of human intuition is education, but education in economics, evolutionary biology, probability and statistics - unfortunately most High School and College curricula have barely changed since Medieval times! ~ Steven Pinker,
903:If all our objectively valid synthetic judgments are analysed, it turns out that they never consist in mere intuitions that are brought together in a judgment through mere comparison.Always, a pure concept of the understanding has been added to the concepts that are abstracted from intuition ~ Anonymous,
904:In the absence of valid cues, intuitive “hits” are due either to luck or to lies. If you find this conclusion surprising, you still have a lingering belief that intuition is magic. Remember this rule: intuition cannot be trusted in the absence of stable regularities in the environment. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
905:People such as inventors searching for new material, make their discoveries in a state of self-forgetfulness. It is in a condition of deep intellectual concentration that this forgetfulness of the ego arises and the invention is revealed. This is also a way of developing intuition. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi,
906:Philosophers do need to have intuitions of various specific sorts: ethical, metaphysical, etc., depending on their targeted subject matter. And they must make intuition reports, as they record the contents of their intuitions. But they need not go into whether an intuition has been enjoyed. ~ Ernest Sosa,
907:Writing voice isn’t as much a function of thinking as it is something that eludes definition and therefore assimilation.  The more artful flavors of prose are more often a function of intuition and imitation fused with heart and wit and delivered with a strong does of lyric sensibility. It ~ Larry Brooks,
908:Time is male
and in his cups drinks to the fair.
Bemused be gallantry we hear
our mediocrities over-prized,
indolence read as abnegation,
slattern thought styled intuition
every lapse forgiven, our crime
only to cast too bold a shadow
or smash the mold straight off. ~ Adrienne Rich,
909:With the wild nature as ally and teacher we see not through two eyes but through the many eyes of intuition. With intuition we are like the starry night, we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes. The wild woman is fluent in the language of dreams, images, passion, and poetry. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes,
910:Aspiration is as much a bodily longing as an intellectual desire; appreciation as much a passion as a preference; conviction as much an intuition as a rational conclusion. Irrespective of the purpose to which we are committed, when such feelings are aroused, life is infused with meaning. ~ Stephen Batchelor,
911:Intuition is the wisdom formed by feeling and instinct - a gift of knowing without reasoning... Belief is ignited by hope and supported by facts and evidence - it builds alignment and creates confidence. Belief is what sets energy in motion and creates the success that breeds more success. ~ Angela Ahrendts,
912:Steve Jobs gave a heartfelt talk to a graduating class at Stanford University. His advice: “Don’t let the voice of others’ opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”3 ~ Daniel Goleman,
913:Common sense is merely unaided intuition, and unaided intuition is reasoning performed in the absense of instruments and the tested knowledge of science. Common sense tells us that massive satellites cannot hang suspended 36,000 kilometers above the one point on the earth's surface, but they do. ~ E O Wilson,
914:Our inner guidance comes to us through our feelings and body wisdom first - not through intellectual understanding. The intellect works best in service to our intuition, our inner guidance, soul, God or higher power - whichever term we choose for the spiritual energy that animates life. ~ Christiane Northrup,
915:With supernatural intuition Blessed Josemaria untiringly preached the universal call to holiness and apostolate. Christ calls everyone to become holy in the realities of everyday life. Hence work too is a means of personal holiness and apostolate when it is done in union with Jesus Christ ~ Pope John Paul II,
916:He turned to music—Mozart in particular—when he was grappling with complex problems and needed inspiration.8 He is quoted as saying, “All great achievements of science must start from intuitive knowledge. I believe in intuition and inspiration. . . . Imagination is more important than knowledge. ~ Emma Sepp l,
917:Never give up. I do believe it is harder for female directors. I have been lucky to receive support from the Sundance Institute for my first film. I'm eternally grateful for their support. I think you need to be surrounded artistically and follow your intuition - always follow your intuition. ~ Sophie Barthes,
918:Protestantism has the method of Jesus with His secret too much left out of mind; Catholicism has His secret with His method too much left out of mind; neither has His unerring balance, His intuition, His sweet reasonableness. But both have hold of a great truth, and get from it a great power. ~ Matthew Arnold,
919:Scientific research was much like prospecting: you went out and you hunted, armed with your maps and instruments, but in the ened your preparations did not matter, or even your intuition. You needed your luck, and whatever benefits accrued to the diligent, through sheer, grinding hard work. ~ Michael Crichton,
920:we thought were castles turn out to be prisons, and we desperately want out, but even though we built them, we can’t find the door. Yet maybe if you ask God for help in knowing which direction to face, you’ll have a moment of intuition. Maybe you’ll see at least one next right step you can take. ~ Anne Lamott,
921:Internalizing problem-solving techniques enhances the neural activity that allows you to more easily hear the whispers of your growing intuition. When you know—really know—how to solve a problem just by looking at it, you’ve created a commanding chunk that sweeps like a song through your mind. ~ Barbara Oakley,
922:Oftentimes I felt ridiculous giving my seal of approval to what was in reality such a natural thing to do, sort of like reinventing the wheel and extolling its virtues. Had parents' intuition sunk so low that some strange man had to tell modern women that it was okay to sleep with their babies? ~ William Sears,
923:Prejudice is not bigotry or superstition, although prejudice sometimes may degenerate into these. Prejudice is pre-judgment, the answer with which intuition and ancestral consensus of opinion supply a man when he lacks either time or knowledge to arrive at a decision predicated upon pure reason. ~ Russell Kirk,
924:You don't dive for specific solutions; you dive to enliven that ocean of consciousness. Then your intuition grows and you have a way of solving those problems-knowing when it's not quite right and knowing a way to make it feel correct for you. That capacity grows and things go much more smoothly. ~ David Lynch,
925:The split in America, rather than simply economic, is between those who embrace reason, who function in the real world of cause and effect, and those who, numbed by isolation and despair, now seek meaning in a mythical world of intuition, a world that is no longer reality-based, a world of magic. ~ Chris Hedges,
926:if a theorem is geometrically obvious why prove it? This was exactly the attitude taken in the eighteenth century. The result, in the nineteenth century, was chaos and confusion: for intuition, unsupported by logic, habitually assumes that everything is much nicer behaved than it really is.     Good ~ Ian Stewart,
927:Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. ~ Steve Jobs,
928:Creative thought in science is exactly this - not a mechanical collection on of facts and intuition, bias, and insight from other fields. Science, at its best, interposes human judgement and ingenuity upon all proceedings. It is, after all (although we sometimes forget it), practiced by humans. ~ Stephen Jay Gould,
929:Only the more uncompromising of the mystics still seek for knowledge in a silent land of absolute intuition, where the intellect finally lays down its conceptual tools, and rests from its pragmatic labors, while its works do not follow it, but are simply forgotten, and are as if they never had been. ~ Josiah Royce,
930:You can feel Simon’s impatience with the mythologizing of expert intuition when he writes: “The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
931:Managing our emotions increases intuition and clarity. It helps us self-regulate our brain chemicals and internal hormones. It gives us natural highs, the real fountain of youth we've been searching for. It enables us to drink from elixirs locked within our cells, just waiting for us to discover them. ~ Doc Childre,
932:Practice following your intuition in everyday things, trusting your gut feelings moment by moment and acting on them as best you can. As you learn to trust yourself in smaller matters, you will build power and confidence to take bigger risks and deal with the larger issues in your life successfully. ~ Shakti Gawain,
933:The mystic cannot wholly do without symbol and image, inadequate to his vision though they must always be: for his experience must be expressed if it is to be communicated, and its actuality is inexpressible except in some hint or parallel which will stimulate the dormant intuition of the reader. ~ Evelyn Underhill,
934:Science has taught us, against all intuition, that apparently solid things like crystals and rocks are really almost entirely composed of empty space. And the familiar illustration is the nucleus of an atom is a fly in the middle of a sports stadium, and the next atom is in the next sports stadium. ~ Richard Dawkins,
935:I believe in the invisible. I do not believe in the definitive reality of things around us. For me, reality is the intuition and the imagination and the quiet voice inside my head that says: isn't that extraordinary? The things in our lives are the shadows of reality, just as we ourselves are shadows. ~ Duane Michals,
936:Staying true to my vision, to the word as it comes to me, to my own aesthetic judgments, even when they disagree with the majority culture, is very important to me, and I think important for every artist. It's what we have: our voice, our intuition, the truth as we understand and know it. ~ Micheline Aharonian Marcom,
937:Creativity is about play and a kind of willingness to go with your intuition. It's crucial to an artist. If you know where you are going and what you are going to do, why do it? I think I learned that from the artists, from my grandmother, from all the creative people I've spent time with over the years. ~ Frank Gehry,
938:The President of the United States again, whether you guys like the guy, you dislike the guy, he's the smartest person that I've ever worked for. So let Vanity Fair write about that, I honestly don't care. He has intuition, he has judgement and he has a temperament in a way that I have never seen. ~ Anthony Scaramucci,
939:Till Nature is ready, the supramental Force has to act indirectly; it puts the intermediary powers of overmind or intuition in front, or it works through a modification of itself to which the already half-transformed being can be wholly or partially respo ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, The Ascent towards Supermind,
940:Use your conscious mind to acquire all the information you need for making a decision. But don't try to analyze the information with your conscious mind. Instead, go on holiday while your unconscious mind digests it. Whatever your intuition then tells you is almost certainly going to be the best choice. ~ Jonah Lehrer,
941:My dad's a beautiful man, but like a lot of Mexican men, or men in general, a lot of men have a problem with the balance of masculinity and femininity - intuition and compassion and tenderness - and get overboard with the macho thing. It took him a while to become more, I would say, conscious, evolved. ~ Carlos Santana,
942:The pianist Glenn Gould once proposed a mathematical formula for this cycle, telling a journalist: “I’ve always had a sort of intuition that for every hour you spend with other human beings you need X number of hours alone. Now what that X represents I don’t really know . . . but it’s a substantial ratio. ~ Cal Newport,
943:When all has been considered, it seems to me to be the irresistible intuition that infinite punishment for finite sin would be unjust, and therefore wrong. We feel that even weak and erring Man would shrink from such an act. And we cannot conceive of God as acting on a lower standard of right and wrong. ~ Lewis Carroll,
944:It is almost impossible for a parent to hold a secret from a child. Children, without the skills of language, spend years developing instead an intuition. By the time they are fifteen, as I was, they are masters of a kind of clairvoyance that tells them, He is depressed, He is frightened, He is pleased. ~ Cynthia Rylant,
945:Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart, and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. ~ Darren Hardy,
946:If physics leads us today to a world view which is essentially mystical, it returns, in a way, to its beginning, 2,500 years ago... This time, however, it is not only based on intuition, but also on experiments of great precision and sophistication, and on a rigorous and consistent mathematical formalism. ~ Fritjof Capra,
947:Intuition is the key to everything, in painting, filmmaking, business - everything. I think you could have an intellectual ability, but if you can sharpen your intuition, which they say is emotion and intellect joining together, then a knowingness occurs. Feeling correct is a feeling I think everyone knows. ~ David Lynch,
948:Strategy making needs to function beyond the boxes to encourage the informal learning that produces new perspectives and new combinations... Once managers understand this, they can avoid other costly misadventures caused by applying formal techniques, without judgement and intuition, to problem solving. ~ Henry Mintzberg,
949:Something that at first glance may seem like simple intuition is actually far more—a knowledge that is actually based on countless hours of practice, of training yourself to be open, to integrate experiences in your mind until you become familiar with the patterns and directions those experiences tend to take. ~ Anonymous,
950:Ultimately, no yoga teacher can tell you what you need--not in a pose, not in a diet, not in a lifestyle. They can give you the principles, but it is up to you to use your intuition to find what is right for you. You have to practice your own naturalness, and that is what Baptiste Power Yoga is all about. ~ Baron Baptiste,
951:If physics leads us today to a world view which is essentially mystical, it returns, in a way, to its beginning, 2,500 years ago. ... This time, however, it is not only based on intuition, but also on experiments of great precision and sophistication, and on a rigorous and consistent mathematical formalism. ~ Fritjof Capra,
952:Intuition was not just visual but also auditory and kinesthetic. Those who watched Feynman in moments of intense concentration came away with a strong, even disturbing sense of the physicality of the process, as though his brain did not stop with the grey matter but extended through every muscle in his body. ~ James Gleick,
953:Our schools display an enormous bias in educating the mind rather than the whole person. We place major emphasis on reasoning, logic and math, with almost no concern for emotions, intuition and creativity. Our students become memorizing mimics and dull conformists, rather than exciting and feeling creators. ~ John Bradshaw,
954:It is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true. ~ Piet Mondrian,
955:The people who teach us something retain a particularly vivid place in our memories. I'd been a parent for about ten minutes when I met the man, but he taught me, with a small gesture, one of the most important things about the job: kindness, intuition, touch, and that sometimes you don't even need words. ~ Maggie O Farrell,
956:In a wide opening of its native sky
Intuition’s lightnings range in a bright pack
Hunting all hidden truths out of their lairs,
Its fiery edge of seeing absolute
Cleaves into locked unknown retreats of self,
Rummages the sky-recesses of the brai ~ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, The Dream Twilight of the Earthly Real,
957:That what guided me was the Force.” “You’re lying. The Force is only for the Jedi.” “No!” Jumon says, not angry so much as he is incredulous. “They wield it, but the Force is in all living things. It is what gives us our intuition, our drive, it’s what connects us to one another. We are all one with the Force. ~ Chuck Wendig,
958:It is therefore necessary to prepare the imminent and inevitable identification of man with the motor, facilitating and perfecting an incessant exchange of intuition, rhythm, instinct and metallic discipline, quite utterly unknown to the majority of humanity and only divined by the most lucid mind. ~ Filippo Tommaso Marinetti,
959:Another way to strengthen connection to intuition is to refuse to allow anyone to repress your vivid energies... that means your opinions, your thoughts, your ideas, your values, your morals, your ideals. There is very little right/wrong or good/bad in this world. There is, however, use and not useful. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Est s,
960:But Einstein refused to be mathematics’ pawn. He bucked the equations in favor of his intuition about how the cosmos should be, his deep-seated belief that the universe was eternal and, on the largest of scales, fixed and unchanging. The universe, Einstein admonished Lemaître, is not now expanding and never was. ~ Brian Greene,
961:Intuition comes from the whole person, from a place that includes the conscious and the unconscious. The total result of all feelings and perceptions manifests spontaneously through intuition. Intuition gives expression to the feelings; that expression is unique and perfectly fitted to the needs of the moment. ~ Michele Cassou,
962:This duality has been reflected in classical as well as modern literature as reason versus passion, or mind versus intuition. The split between the conscious mind and the unconscious. There are moments in each of our lives when our verbal-intellect suggests one course, and our hearts, or intuition, another. ~ Robert E Ornstein,
963:As I see it, we are all connected and share a stake in our collective future. We are all part of a greater picture. I greatly encourage businesswomen everywhere in the world to take personal responsibility, stay connected to their own intuition and unique potential, work hard, deal with reality, but don't give up. ~ Shari Arison,
964:I wanted to believe, of course, but I wanted to believe with my intellectual integrity and intuition intact, with both my head and heart fully engaged. The more I was asked to choose, the more fragmented and frayed my faith became, the more it stretched the gossamer of belief that held my world view together. ~ Rachel Held Evans,
965:Being so eager to please, we’re not easy to liberate. We’re too aware of what others need. Yet our intuition also picks up on the inner question that must be answered. These two strong, conflicting currents may buffet us for years. Don’t worry if your progress toward liberation is slow, for it’s almost inevitable. ~ Elaine N Aron,
966:Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking,” Jobs told the graduates. “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. ~ Carmine Gallo,
967:I find it strangely beautiful that the camera with its inherent clarity of object and detail can produce images that in spite of themselves offer possibilities to be more than they are a photograph of nothing very important at all, nothing but an intuition, a response, a twitch from the photographer’s experience. ~ Joel Meyerowitz,
968:psychologists believe that intuition is a rapid-fire, unconscious associating process—like a mental puzzle.2 The brain makes an observation, scans its files, and matches the observation with existing memories, knowledge, and experiences. Once it puts together a series of matches, we get a “gut” on what we’ve observed. ~ Bren Brown,
969:A simple intuition, a single observation, can open vistas of unimagined potential. Once caught in the web of an idea, the researcher is happily doomed, for the outcome is always uncertain, and the resolution of the mystery may take years to unfold. Such was the case in my encounter with the magic toads of the Americas. ~ Wade Davis,
970:The process of discovery begins when we observe, often vaguely, a gap between what is and what could be. Our intuition tells us something better is just beyond the range of our mind’s eye. To build a culture of discovery, we must encourage, not discourage, the passionate pursuit of hunches (no matter their origin). ~ Charles G Koch,
971:There are two modes of acquiring knowledge, namely by reasoning and experience. Reasoning draws a conclusion and makes us grant the conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, nor does it remove doubt so that the mind may rest on the intuition of truth, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience. ~ Roger Bacon,
972:Studying the universe engages us in something bigger than ourselves. Science tries to describe, in terms we can only grasp intuitively, things that are beyond our intuition. . . . all we can hope for is that our physical descriptions, like a song or a good painting, are a faithful evocation of some ineffable truth. ~ Guy Consolmagno,
973:What is missing from your life? Know that whatever you are missing, you are - most likely - not giving. Bring to your life what you want from it. If you don't think The Uni-verse is helping you, try trusting yourself and taking a risk. Listen to your intuition. Do what scares you... and the see the miracle that awaits. ~ Mastin Kipp,
974:The mind is the enemy of intuition, according to many New Age adherents, but I don't buy that. I look at everything in terms of polarities - two ends of the same continuum. Young/old, male/female, individuality/conformity, work/play, freedom/constraint, right/left, day/night, life/death, rational/emotional, and so on. ~ Shakti Gawain,
975:Too many people trap themselves in the chains of realistic goals because they refuse to see beyond the HOW. Don’t worry about the HOW. Start with the WHAT and the WHY. When you know what you want to bring forth in the world and WHY you want it, choose it. Then take whatever action intuition guides you toward taking. ~ Vishen Lakhiani,
976:At a certain point, I felt the need to submit to a higher level of religiosity to move away from my intuition and to accept an ultimate truth. I felt that in order to become a good person, I needed rules - lots of them - or else I would somehow fall apart. I am reclaiming myself. Trusting my goodness and my divine mission. ~ Matisyahu,
977:There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever. ~ Henri Cartier Bresson,
978:When one devotes oneself to meditation, mental burdens, unnecessary worries, and wandering thoughts drop off one by one; life seems to run smoothly and pleasantly. A student may now depend on intuition to make decisions. As one acts on intuition, second thought, with its dualism, doubt and hesitation, does not arise. ~ Nyogen Senzaki,
979:A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way,” Einstein once said, “but intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.” When people take insights from multiple sources and put them together, it’s natural for them to think that the resulting ideas are their own—as in truth they are. ~ Walter Isaacson,
980:The success of everything depends on intuition, the capacity of seeing things in a way which afterwards proves to be true, even though it cannot be established at the moment, and of grasping the essential fact, discarding the unessential, even though one can give no account of the principles by which this is done. ~ Joseph A Schumpeter,
981:When one devotes oneself to meditation, mental burdens, unnecessary worries, and wandering thoughts drop off one by one; life seems to run smoothly and pleasantly. A student may now depend on intuition to make decisions. As one acts on intuition, second thought, with its dualism, doubt and hesitation, does not arise. ~ Nyogen Senzaki,
982:When the logician has resolved each demonstration into a host of elementary operations, all of them correct, he will not yet be in possession of the whole reality, that indefinable something that constitutes the unity ... Now pure logic cannot give us this view of the whole; it is to intuition that we must look for it. ~ Henri Poincare,
983:But I write badly. The part of my brain in charge of writing ability refuses to work. My memory has weakened, my thoughts lack consistency, and each time I set them down on paper it seems to me that I’ve lost the intuition of their organic connection, the constructions are monotonous, the phrasing impoverished and timid. ~ Anton Chekhov,
984:By the time we emerge from childhood, we have acquired a reflex-level intuition for where most of our everyday world’s loci of unpredictability lie, and the more unpredictable end of this spectrum simultaneously beckons to us and frightens us. We’re pulled by but fearful of risk-taking. That is the nature of life. ~ Douglas R Hofstadter,
985:Most people's intuitions are drowned out by folk sayings. We have a moment of real feeling or insight, and then we come up with a folk saying that captures the insight in a kind of wash. The intuition may be real and ripe, fresh with possibilities, but the folk saying is guaranteed to be a cliche, stale and self-contained. ~ Anne Lamott,
986:In situations where the possible consequences are large, I try to be as reasonable and rational as possible when choosing. I take out my list of errors, and check them off one by one, just like a pilot does. In situations where the consequences are small, I forget about rational optimization and let my intuition take over. ~ Rolf Dobelli,
987:Spirituality can release blocks, lead you to ideas, and make your life artful. Sometimes when we pray for guidance, we're guided in unexpected directions. We may want a lofty answer and we get the intuition to clean our bedroom. It can seem so humble and picky and that you don't necessarily think of it spiritual guidance. ~ Julia Cameron,
988:A designer…has the true responsibility to give his audiences not what they think they want, for this is almost invariably the usual, the accustomed, the obvious, and hence, the unspontaneous. Rather, he should provide that quality of thought and intuition which rejects the ineffectual commonplace for effectual originality. ~ Lester Beall,
989:If there is such a thing as philosophical progress, then why - unlike scientific progress - is it so invisible? Philosophical progress is invisible because it is incorporated into our points of view. What was torturously secured by complex argument comes widely shared intuition, so obvious that we forget its provenance. ~ Rebecca Goldstein,
990:If there is such a thing as philosophical progress, then why – unlike scientific progress – is it so invisible? Philosophical progress is invisible because it is incorporated into our points of view. What was torturously secured by complex argument comes widely shared intuition, so obvious that we forget its provenance. ~ Rebecca Goldstein,
991:The Absolute is not only the Absolute, but also the dialectical movement of finite and infinite. The Absolute is such that it only ever appears to an other. Just as our intuition is an ek-stasis, by which we try to situate ourselves in the Absolute, so too must the Absolute leave itself and make itself in the world. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty,
992:There is a universal, intelligent, life force that exists within everyone and everything. It resides within each one of use as a deep wisdom, an inner knowing. We can access this wonderful source of knowledge and wisdom through our intuition, an inner sense that tells us what feels right and true for us at any given moment. ~ Shakti Gawain,
993:Intuition, like a flash of lightning, lasts only for a second. It generally comes when one is tormented by a difficult decipherment and when one reviews in his mind the fruitless experiments already tried. Suddenly the light breaks through and one finds after a few minutes what previous days of labor were unable to reveal. ~ Neal Stephenson,
994:While exile is not a thing to desire for the fun of it, there is an unexpected gain from it;the gifts of exile are many. It takes out weakness by the pounding. It removes whininess, enables acute insight , heightens intuition, grants the power of keen observation and perspective that the 'insider' can never achieve. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Est s,
995:Art is a creative effort of which the wellsprings lie in the spirit, and which brings us at once the most intimate self of the artist and the secret concurrences which he has perceived in things by means of a vision or intuition all his own, and not to be expressed in ideas and in words-expressible only in the work of art. ~ Jacques Maritain,
996:Just like it is so important to understand the difference in thinking and feeling to increase our Emotional Intelligence, it is important to take the time to understand the difference in emotional feelings and gut feelings to further increase our intelligence and facility of intuition that we call Intuitional Intelligence. ~ Martha Char Love,
997:Truths are known to us in two ways: some are known directly, and of themselves; some through the medium of other truths. The former are the subject of Intuition, or Consciousness; the latter, of Inference; the latter of Inference. The truths known by Intuition are the original premisses, from which all others are inferred. ~ John Stuart Mill,
998:You can see the rider serving the elephant when people are morally dumbfounded. They have strong gut feelings about what is right and wrong, and they struggle to construct post hoc justifications for those feelings. Even when the servant (reasoning) comes back empty-handed, the master (intuition) doesn't change his judgment. ~ Jonathan Haidt,
999:Alla intuitionb is intellectual. For without the understanding it would never come to intuition, to perceptionc, apprehensiond of objects; rather, it would remain as mere sensation,e which at most could have significance with regard to the will as pain or comfort, but would otherwise be a change of meaningless states and ~ Arthur Schopenhauer,
1000:Doubt is thus the space between reality and the application of an idea. It ought to be given over to the weighing of experience, intuition, creativity, ethics, common sense, reason and, of course, knowledge, in balanced consideration of what is to be done. The longer this stage lasts the more we take advantage of our intelligence. ~ John Saul,
1001:I quoted Herbert Simon’s definition of intuition in the introduction, but it will make more sense when I repeat it now: “The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
1002:I was raised in a religion that hardly ever acknowledges angels, and I never even heard of Michael until I was older. Angels were relegated to Christmas and Valentines, so I didn't really have any kind framework to understand this, even though my parents were open to things like intuition and psychic abilities and manifesting. ~ Doreen Virtue,
1003:Les femmes,” generalized Poirot. “They are marvellous! They invent haphazard—and by miracle they are right. Not that it is that, really. Women observe subconsciously a thousand little details, without knowing that they are doing so. Their subconscious mind adds these little things together—and they call the result intuition. ~ Agatha Christie,
1004:There does seem to be a sense in which physics has gone beyond what human intuition can understand. We shouldn't be too surprised about that because we're evolved to understand things that move at a medium pace at a medium scale. We can't cope with the very tiny scale of quantum physics or the very large scale of relativity. ~ Richard Dawkins,
1005:Developing a character with genuine depth requires a focus on not just desire but how the character deals with frustration of her desires, as well as her vulnerabilities, her secrets, and especially her contradictions. This development needs to be forged in scenes, the better to employ your intuition rather than your intellect. ~ David Corbett,
1006:Like...instinct?"
At that Laurel flopped down on her back, a frustrated breath whooshing out of her. "Oh man, instinct, that's like the F-word in Avalon.Yeardley kept telling me, 'You are trying to rely on instinct,you need to trust your intuition instead.' But I looked up those two words and they mean the exact same thing. ~ Aprilynne Pike,
1007:Phenomenon,” in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed., signifies “an object or aspect known through the senses rather than by thought or intuition.” It is commonly contrasted with the term “noumenon” (from the Greek nooumenon: “that which is apprehended by thought”—itself derived from the Greek term nous, for “mind”). ~ David Abram,
1008:Well, the album 'Intuition' is out and just went platinum officially. So I think to have the music doing what it's doing right now, man, it's the ultimate. Nobody is really selling records out there but we are at a million records and we dropped it at Christmas, so we are just trying to get that thing to like two million, you know. ~ Jamie Foxx,
1009:Wisdom does not depend on mind and memory but on the maturity, purity and perfection of the individual personality. ... Therefore, insights are not passed on through the mind, but - and this particularly - through intuition or inspiration. The degree of wisdom is therefore determined by the state of development of the individual. ~ Franz Bardon,
1010:A lot of the so-called systems composers have this thing that the system is always right. You don't fiddle with it at all. Well, I don't think that. I think the system is as right as you judge it to be. If for some reason you don't like a bit of it you must trust your intuition on that. I don't take a doctrinaire approach to systems. ~ Brian Eno,
1011:Its intuition that works. Just intuition.""Waterstones was aimed at me. I knew that I wanted, and badly needed in my life, bookshops just like the ones I was creating. I simply assumed that plenty of other people, no doubt of wildly differing demographics, would find once they saw them that they wanted them too. Well - they did. ~ Tim Waterstone,
1012:The question I try and ask myself when I consider whether or not to train more is what is my body craving and what is my body ready to absorb? Sometimes pushing harder is not the answer. It takes self control, confidence, and intuition to know when to train and when to rest, but when in question error on the side of being over rested. ~ Ryan Hall,
1013:According to classical utilitarianism, the only intrinsic good is happiness; the only intrinsic bad is pain. That implies no intrinsic value in preserving nature, that preserving an endangered plant is valuable only if it benefits humans or other animals. Intuitively, that seems wrong but perhaps I shouldn't trust my intuition here. ~ Peter Singer,
1014:Our entire current technology is founded on the use of a physical thing-electromagnetic waves-that was not discovered empirically: it was predicted by Maxwell, simply by searching for the mathematical description accounting for the intuition Faraday got from bobbins and needles. This is the outstanding power of theoretical physics. ~ Carlo Rovelli,
1015:At that moment I had a thrilling sharp intuition. I knew it as if I held it in my hands: In the gloom of death that surrounded the two of us, we were just at the point of approaching and negotiating a gentle curve. If we bypassed it, we would split off into different directions. In that case, we would forever remain just friends. ~ Banana Yoshimoto,
1016:Often they [writers on the study of management] have a point of view based upon intuition and experience. They then offer a cadence of two-paragraph examples carefully selected to "prove" their theory, and then they write "one size fits all" books. The message is, "If you'd do what these companies did, you'd be successful too." ~ Clayton Christensen,
1017:It's only when we are authentic to who we are that we are going to be truly happy. It's so important that we follow what our own heart is telling us, what our own intuition is telling us, what our passion is, where our heart wants to go. When we can truly explore who we are, that's when the world just explodes with possibilities. ~ Caroline A Shearer,
1018:I wanted to write and then I saw Pierrot and I understand that I could express myself in a more... Also probably, I had an intuition that if I was going to only write, I will stay in one room all the time and never go out. I felt that if I was going to make movies, I would have to communicate with people and it would be good for me. ~ Chantal Akerman,
1019:Vibrations never lie. A person could be saying one thing and yet, thinking another. Get to the point where you pay closer attention to the vibrations you are receiving rather than the words you are hearing. Intuition is one of the most valuable mental tools you possess. Begin to consciously use it. Your rewards will be worth the effort. ~ Bob Proctor,
1020:Meditation sharpens your concentration and your thinking power. Then, piece by piece, your own subconscious motives and mechanics become clear to you. Your intuition sharpens. The precision of your thought increases, and gradually you come to a direct knowledge of things as they really are, without prejudice and without illusion. ~ Henepola Gunaratana,
1021:We learn from pain that some of the things we thought were castles turn out to be prisons, and we desperately want out, but even though we built them, we can't find the door. Yet maybe if you ask God for help in knowing which direction to face, you'll have a moment of intuition. Maybe you'll see at least one next right step you can take. ~ Anne Lamott,
1022:What motivated Newton to suspect that something like the Zeroth law had to be true was not painstaking experiments but, rather, powerful intuition, derived from his religion, about how the world is built. Newton had no doubt about God's existence, and he saw his task in science as revealing God's method of governing the physical world. ~ Frank Wilczek,
1023:In spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. The essential substance of every thought and feeling remains incommunicable, locked up in the impenetrable strong-room of the individual soul and body. Our life is a sentence of perpetual solitary confinement. ~ Aldous Huxley,
1024:I'm not responsible for my photographs. Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. It's drowning yourself, dissolving yourself, and then sniff, sniff, sniff - being sensitive to coincidence. You can't go looking for it; you can't want it, or you won't get it. First you must lose your self. Then it happens. ~ Henri Cartier Bresson,
1025:The recurring choice-between faith and science, Christianity and feminism, the Bible and historical criticism, doctrine and compassion-kept tripping me up like roots on a forest trail. I wanted to believe, of course, but I wanted to believe with my intellectual integrity and intuition intact, with both my head and heart fully engaged. ~ Rachel Held Evans,
1026:Happiness itself is sufficient excuse. Beautiful things are right and true; so beautiful actions are those pleasing to the gods. Wise men have an inward sense of what is beautiful, and the highest wisdom is to trust this intuition and be guided by it. The answer to the last appeal of what is right lies within a man's own breast. Trust thyself. ~ Aristotle,
1027:Before my encounter with Thomist philosophy through Maritain, I had almost reached the same conclusions through the logical development of my work, intuition and thought, but what a great sense of joy I felt upon discovering, in Maritain, the confirmation of certain thought patterns, certain ways of clarifying these to myself and to others. ~ Gino Severini,
1028:Information supports intuition, and that’s why we make our facts and figures available to everyone, from assembly line workers to senior executives. Businesses usually want such information to project numbers into the future, but precise facts and numbers are only helpful if they’re used to enhance decision-making, not as the basis for it. ~ Ricardo Semler,
1029:[A] writer’s most powerful weapon, his true strength, was his intuition, and regardless of whether he had any talent, if the critics combined to discredit an author’s nose for things, he would be reduced to a fearful creature who took a mistakenly guarded, absurdly cautious approach to his work, which would end up stifling his latent genius. ~ F lix J Palma,
1030:When I was a young person I went to the university and I learned a rational language, to think with the left side of the brain. But in the right side of the brain you have intuition and imagination. Words are not the truth; they indicate the way to go, but you need to go alone, in silence. Symbols have a language that kills the words. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky,
1031:But, despite their remoteness from sense experience, we do have something like a perception of the objects of set theory, as is seen from the fact that the axioms force themselves upon us as being true. I don't see any reason why we should have less confidence in this kind of perception, i.e., in mathematical intuition, than in sense perception. ~ Kurt G del,
1032:I would say, on the basis of having observe a thousand people in the experiment and having my own intuition shaped and informed by these experiments, that if a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town. ~ Stanley Milgram,
1033:Our technological society has no longer any place in it for wisdom that seeks truth for its own sake, that seeks the fullness of being, that seeks to rest in an intuition of the very ground of all being. Without wisdom, the apparent opposition of action and contemplation, of work and rest, of involvement and detachment, can never be resolved. ~ Thomas Merton,
1034:When you notice someone does something toxic the first time, don't wait for the second time before you address it or cut them off.

Many survivors are used to the "wait and see" tactic which only leaves them vulnerable to a second attack. As your boundaries get stronger, the wait time gets shorter. You never have justify your intuition. ~ Shahida Arabi,
1035:a recent event hosted by the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists got together with film makers to discuss what both groups have learned---the scientists through painstaking experiments and analysis, and the film makers by intuition and experience---about the mechanisms of attention and perception. ~ Anonymous,
1036:There's something that just happens to you when you have a baby, and you look at their little eyes for the first time when you're holding them. They've been safe inside your belly for almost 10 months, and now they're in your arms. Intuition kicks in, where you will do anything for them and you have all the tools inside of you to take care of them. ~ Hilary Duff,
1037:You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind. The rational mind doesn't nourish you. You assume that it gives you the truth, because the rational mind is the golden calf that this culture worships, but this is not true. Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating. ~ Anne Lamott,
1038:You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind. The rational mind doesn’t nourish you. You assume that it gives you the truth, because the rational mind is the golden calf that this culture worships, but this is not true. Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating. ~ Anne Lamott,
1039:Most people traffic in abstractions and generalizations because they are grossly incompetent at culturing their intuition or powers of evidency, refining it to grasp the Thisness (Haecceitas) of what is before them. Thinking is like a Stradivarius that has more potential variations in how it is played than any human can finitely perform or capture. ~ Kenny Smith,
1040:Repose, leisure, peace, belong among the elements of happiness. If we have not escaped from harried rush, from mad pursuit, from unrest, from the necessity of care, we are not happy. And what of contemplation? Its very premise is freedom from the fetters of workaday busyness. Moreover, it itself actualizes this freedom by virtue of being intuition. ~ Josef Pieper,
1041:When Tatiana began to take things into the kitchen, I sensed our time was up. I would later notice a pattern with my interviews. Everything was friendly until it was suddenly over. Before we said good-bye, Tatiana left me with a final thought: “My mother’s intuition was right. In 1994, before she died, all she remembered was that it was her fault. ~ Donnie Eichar,
1042:This doesn't show that there is anything wrong with our theoretical understanding, any more than the intuition that the Earth is at rest shows that there must be something theoretically wrong with Copernicanism, or the intuition that time is moving shows that there is something theoretically wrong with the block universe 'B series' view of change. ~ David Papineau,
1043:This, therefore, is a law not found in books, but written on the fleshly tablets of the heart, which we have not learned from man, received or read, but which we have caught up from Nature herself, sucked in and imbibed; the knowledge of which we were not taught, but for which we were made; we received it not by education, but by intuition. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero,
1044:We all have within us a deep wisdom, but sometimes we don't know we have it. We live in a culture that doesn't acknowledge or validate human intuition and doesn't encourage us to rely on our intuitive wisdom. Much of the Western world emphasizes rationality and reason, but overlooks or ignores the enormous value of intuition and instinctive wisdom. ~ Shakti Gawain,
1045:When you accept the survival signal as a welcome message and quickly evaluate the environment or situation, fear stops in an instant. Thus, trusting intuition is the exact opposite of living in fear. In fact, the role of fear in your life lessens as your mind and body come to know that you will listen to the quiet wind-chime, and have no need for ~ Gavin de Becker,
1046:It may come very fast, this certainty that another human being is a soulmate. We needn’t have spoken with them; we may not even know their name. Objective knowledge doesn’t come into it. What matters instead is intuition: a spontaneous feeling that seems all the more accurate and worthy of respect because it bypasses the normal processes of reason. ~ Alain de Botton,
1047:System 1 will detect that a person described as “a meek and tidy soul, with a need for order and structure, and a passion for detail” resembles a caricature librarian, but combining this intuition with knowledge about the small number of librarians is a task that only System 2 can perform—if System 2 knows how to do so, which is true of few people. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
1048:It may come very fast, this certainty that another human being is a soul mate. We needn’t have spoken with them; we may not even know their name. Objective knowledge doesn’t come into it. What matters instead is intuition, a spontaneous feeling that seems all the more accurate and worthy of respect because it bypasses the normal processes of reason. ~ Alain de Botton,
1049:So why do some people emerge as leaders while others can’t influence no matter how hard they try? I believe that several factors come into play: 1. Character—who they are 2. Relationships—who they know 3. Knowledge—what they know 4. Intuition—what they feel 5. Experience—where they’ve been 6. Past Success—what they’ve done 7. Ability—what they can do ~ John C Maxwell,
1050:I've spent my whole life doing some things because they were logical and not doing others because they were not. I've seen what happens when people act on intuition, or for illogical reasons. Sometimes the results are ludicrous and embarrassing; more often they are simply horrible. But here I am, just the same, behaving like a crackbrained crystal gazer. ~ Stephen King,
1051:As a next generation leader you already possess the talent and intuition necessary to lead. But chances are it is your courage that will establish you as a leader in the minds of others. To put it in perspective, try to identify a leader worth following who didn’t pop up on the public radar screen as a result of a decision or action that required courage. ~ Andy Stanley,
1052:But intellect can also reject what has happened. That is what is meant by having faith or not having faith. If you feel that what cannot be explained by the intellect does not exist, then you are a “nonbeliever.” Then you will continue in this lower existence of the intellect, tethered to it. Then you disallow mystery, then you disallow intuition to speak to you. ~ Osho,
1053:It has been just so in all my inventions. The first step is an intuition-and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise. This thing that gives out and then that-"Bugs"as such little faults and difficulties are called show themselves and months of anxious watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success-or failure-is certainly reached. ~ Thomas A Edison,
1054:Our natural being is a part of cosmic Nature and our spiritual being exists only by the supreme Transcendence. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine: The Ascent towards Supermind
Inter-Relation
The brooding philosopher or the discovering scientist cannot indeed do without the aid of a greater power, intuition. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, The Sun of Poetic Truth,
1055:This is the test and triumph of originality, not to show us what has never been, and what we may therefore very easily never have dreamt of, but to point out to us what is before our eyes and under our feet, though we have had no suspicion of its existence, for want of sufficient strength of intuition, of determined grasp of mind to seize and retain it. ~ William Hazlitt,
1056:Before I start carving the idea must be almost complete. I say 'almost' because the really important thing seems to be the sculptor's ability to let his intuition guide him over the gap between conception and realization without compromising the integrity of the original idea; the point being that the material has vitality - it resists and makes demands. ~ Barbara Hepworth,
1057:It is hard, that? He has no fervour, no intuition, and yet he smells something wrong, something too perfect, something that makes one ask, “If this man is all he seems, why have all the prizes of the world not fallen at his feet?" [...] Is it because there is something a fraction inhuman about these perfectly controlled responses, this unearthly radiance? ~ Dorothy Dunnett,
1058:In order fully to transcend the artificial opposition that tends to be established between structures and representations, one also has to break away from the mode of thought that Cassirer calls substantialist and which leads people to recognize no realities except those that are available to direct intuition in ordinary experience, individuals and groups. ~ Pierre Bourdieu,
1059:We all have within us a deep sense of what we need, and what is right and true for us. To access this we need to pay attention to our feelings and our intuition. We need to learn to listen deeply to ourselves and to trust what we hear. And we need to risk acting on what we feel to be true. Even if we make mistakes, we must do this in order to learn and grow. ~ Shakti Gawain,
1060:You know what’s really, powerfully sexy? A sense of humor. A taste for adventure. A healthy glow. Hips to grab on to. Openness. Confidence. Humility. Appetite. Intuition. … Smart-ass comebacks. Presence. A quick wit. Dirty jokes told by an innocent-looking lady. … A storyteller. A genius. A doctor. A new mother. A woman who realizes how beautiful she is. ~ Courtney E Martin,
1061:Bella, I couldn’t live with myself if I ever hurt you. You don’t know how it’s tortured me. The thought of you, still, white, cold… to never see you blush scarlet again, to never see that flash of intuition in your eyes when you see through my pretenses… it would be unendurable. You are the most important thing to me now. The most important thing to me ever. ~ Stephenie Meyer,
1062:Old men tend to forget what thought was like in their youth; they forget the quickness of the mental jump, the daring of the youthful intuition, the agility of the fresh insight. They become accustomed to the more plodding varieties of reason, and because this is more than made up by the accumulation of experience, old men think themselves wiser than the young. ~ Isaac Asimov,
1063:Ping-pong is a game for obsessives. Obsessiveness, in fact, is a prerequisite for success. The best players in the world spend hours standing at a table, repeating the same strokes and the same footwork, developing the reflexes and the intuition necessary to defy physics by returning shots struck in their direction at impossible speeds and with unpredictable spin. ~ Anonymous,
1064:Soul-making is a journey that takes time, effort, skill, knowledge, intuition, and courage. It is helpful to know that all work with soul is process—alchemy, pilgrimage, and adventure—so that we don’t expert instant success or even any kind of finality. All goals and all endings are heuristic, important in their being imagined, but never literally fulfilled. In ~ Thomas Moore,
1065:Think about the number of times someone will say to herself, "I want to get out of this circumstance, but I'm too afraid. I'll lie about how happy I am in this marriage, and I'll put up a front." But she's betraying everything that's in her heart. She's making choices that are harming her, and that's why she's hurting. Her intuition is trying to tell her that. ~ Caroline Myss,
1066:Pursue the enquiry ‘Who am I?’ relentlessly. Analyse your entire personality. Try to find out where the I-thought begins. Go on with your meditations. Keep turning your attention within. One day the wheel of thought will slow down and an intuition will mysteriously arise. Follow that intuition, let your thinking stop, and it will eventually lead you to the goal. ~ Paul Brunton,
1067:To enter into the realm of contemplation, one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we can know or treasure as life, as thought, as experience as joy, as being. [Every form of intuition and experience] die to be born again on a higher level of life. ~ Thomas Merton,
1068:Traveling provides occasions for shaking oneself up but not, as people believe, freedom. Indeed it involves a kind of reduction: deprived of one’s usual setting, the customary routine stripped away like so much wrapping paper, the traveller finds himself reduced to more modest proportions - but also more open to curiosity, to intuition, to love at first sight. ~ Nicolas Bouvier,
1069:An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique andconsequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known. ~ Henri Bergson,
1070:A machine helps us to annihilate our weaknesses. We don't have a steady hand. We can lose all vigilance. We can be distracted by something that is not that relevant. But we have intuition. We can feel certain things. And with a machine you can check whether it's right or wrong. That's why by bringing the two together, you create a very, very powerful combination. ~ Garry Kasparov,
1071:A thousand questions can be asked about anything whatsoever, but to answer would require a volume, and even then the mind would understand nothing. It is only by a growth in the consciousness itself that you can get some direct perception of these things. But for that the mind must be quiet and a direct feeling and intuition take its place.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - IV,
1072:I've never really understood how Elsewhere works. In my early visits I tried to figure our the rules and every time I ended up making things worse. Intuition seems to work better than reason here: the more times I've come the more I've learned to trust my instincts. Right now my instincts told me that if I stayed here long enough, the person I needed would find me. ~ Benedict Jacka,
1073:Mysticism, according to its historical and psychological definitions, is the direct intuition or experience of God; and a mystic is a person who has, to a greater or less degree, such a direct experience -- one whose religion and life are centered, not merely on an accepted belief or practice, but on that which the person regards as first hand personal knowledge. ~ Evelyn Underhill,
1074:Today, we have knowledge of many, many things and the relations among human beings have multiplied ad infinitum. But we live in cities that are like deafening factories in awful Babels, with nothing to remind us of our inner world. Our communion with this inner world is not through contemplation but through books. We have passed from intuition into intellectualism. ~ Rudolf Steiner,
1075:Intuition and instinct form the bedrock of our decision-making, especially the rapid-fire decisions that make up our daily lives. We don’t have to analyze why we turn left here and right there on the way to work, we just do it. A chess player can spot a simple checkmate in three moves without hesitation even if he’s never seen that exact position before in his life. ~ Garry Kasparov,
1076:When we honestly confront the things we own, they evoke many emotions within us. Those feelings are real. It is these emotions that give us the energy for living. Believe what your heart tells you when you ask, "Does this spark joy?" If you act on that intuition, you will be amazed at how things will begin to connect in your life and at the dramatic changes that follow. ~ Marie Kond,
1077:Edward Crosby Johnson II, who in the 1950s established Fidelity as a dominant investment firm and made the same point in his own way: “The market is like a beautiful woman—endlessly fascinating, endlessly complex, always changing, always mystifying. I have been absorbed and immersed since 1924 and I know this is no science. It is an art…. It is personal intuition. ~ Sebastian Mallaby,
1078:To ask oneself in general what exists or what is real means only to ask how would you like to use a verb and an adjective; it's a grammatical question, not a question about nature. Nature, for its part, is what it is, and we discover it very gradually. If our grammar and our intuition do not readily adapt to what we discover, well, too bad. We must seek to adapt them. ~ Carlo Rovelli,
1079:just know” how things got to be the way they are or how they are going to turn out. This is that “sixth sense” people talk about. It can be wrong, of course, just as your eyes and ears can be wrong, but your intuition is right often enough that HSPs tend to be visionaries, highly intuitive artists, or inventors, as well as more conscientious, cautious, and wise people. ~ Elaine N Aron,
1080:When you are not in a position of power over your own destiny, when the quality and shape of your days are dependent on the favor of others, you become sensitive; you become savvy. You learn to soothe and coddle, influence and meddle, all under the radar. Call it female intuition, call it outright manipulation, call it womanly wiles if you like. I call it survival. ~ Tara Austen Weaver,
1081:This is the first law of relativism: When right or wrong are a matter of personal choice, we surrender the privilege of making moral judgments on others' actions. But if our moral intuition rebels against these consequences of relativism--if we're sure that some things must be wrong and that some judgments against another's conduct are justified--then relativism is false. ~ Gregory Koukl,
1082:Thinking or feeling judgment is vitally necessary, and introverted intuitives must develop it for themselves, because their utter conviction of their intuition’s validity makes them impervious to the influence of outside judgment. The importance to introverted intuitives of cultivating a judging process to balance and support their intuition cannot be overemphasized. ~ Isabel Briggs Myers,
1083:It is clear that all verbal structures with meaning are verbal imitations of that elusive psychological and physiological process known as thought, a process stumbling through emotional entanglements, sudden irrational convictions, involuntary gleams of insight, rationalized prejudices, and blocks of panic and inertia, finally to reach a completely incommunicable intuition. ~ Northrop Frye,
1084:Gödel freely admitted that the intuition of a concept was not proof; he argued that it was the opposite. “We do not analyze intuition to see a proof, but by intuition we see something without a proof.” Recently, however, he’d gone beyond that conclusion, too, and asserted that there must then logically be a realm unknowable to our simple senses, where ultimate truth resided. ~ Robert Masello,
1085:Leadership is more than management. Leadership is: • People more than projects • Movement more than maintenance • Art more than science • Intuition more than formula • Vision more than procedure • Risk more than caution • Action more than reaction • Relationships more than rules • Who you are more than what you do If you want to influence others, then you must learn to lead. ~ John C Maxwell,
1086:This is what I think so many of us who work in the arts and the humanities hope to receive from our universities, from our government, from sometimes skeptical students and their parents: patience and faith in us as we test the limits of our ignorance, as we pursue what may very well be useless, as we go in search of that mystery and intuition that exist within all of us. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen,
1087:Experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss-house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing, and hearing the significant thing, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and coordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. ~ Aldous Huxley,
1088:Gytha Ogg, you wouldn’t be a witch if you couldn’t jump to conclusions, right?” Nanny nodded. “Oh, yes.” There was no shame in it. Sometimes there wasn’t time to do anything else but take a flying leap. Sometimes you had to trust to experience and intuition and general awareness and take a running jump. Nanny herself could clear quite a tall conclusion from a standing start. ~ Terry Pratchett,
1089:Coming back to America was, for me, much more of a culture shock than going to India. The people in the Indian countryside don't use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect in my opinion. That's had a big impact on my work. ~ Steve Jobs,
1090:I knew without a doubt that I was a good person, and, no matter what anyone else thought or said about me, no matter who they were or how important, I didn’t care. When I realized this, down to the moment, the clouds opened up. This realization was the beginning of personal integrity, when, instead of dismissing my feelings or my intuition, I found myself following them, ~ Jenna Miscavige Hill,
1091:intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there. “Maktub,” the boy said, remembering the crystal merchant. The desert was all sand in some stretches, and rocky in others. When the caravan was blocked by a boulder, it had to go ~ Paulo Coelho,
1092:I think that so much of the creative process is a fragmentary one, and then it's about just allowing your intuition to put it together for you. It's funny how you create something and you think you're going in a million different directions, and then the thing you end up with is the thing that you wanted to create your whole life, but you're just as surprised by it as anybody else. ~ Jeff Mangum,
1093:This man is different. He can fix anything, do anything. He doesn’t work with knowledge, with science—the classified accumulation of facts. He knows nothing. It’s not in his head, a form of learning. He works by intuition—his power is in his hands, not his head. Jack-of-all-trades. His hands! Like a painter, an artist. In his hands—and he cuts across our lives like a knife-blade. ~ Philip K Dick,
1094:Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. ~ Anonymous,
1095:Qui expérimente ? Le corps. Qui invente ? Lui. Et qui flotte, court et vole, en ivresse archangélique lorsque l’intuition bienheureuse le baigne et le fait léviter ? Le corps, oui, le corps encore. Nu. Confite en logique et en mémoire, toutes deux machinales – laissez-les donc aux machines –, l’intelligence reste bête et lourde sans lui, ailé.
Ascension : il vient d’appareiller ~ Michel Serres,
1096:The concept of intuition is more often used in philosophical theorizing than is the concept of observation in scientific theorizing (proportionately). One reason is that there is (proportionately) more ostensible conflict of philosophical intuitions than there is ostensible conflict of scientific observations. So much for the use of a concept of intuition in philosophical theorizing. ~ Ernest Sosa,
1097:To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction--every kind of evidence in the logician's list--have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite alone. ~ Thomas Hardy,
1098:You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future... The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it... Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. ~ Steve Jobs,
1099:Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. ~ Anonymous,
1100:Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. ~ Steve Jobs,
1101:Les femmes,” generalized Poirot. “They are marvellous! They invent haphazard—and by miracle they are right. Not that it is that, really. Women observe subconsciously a thousand little details, without knowing that they are doing so. Their subconscious mind adds these little things together—and they call the result intuition. Me, I am very skilled in psychology. I know these things. ~ Agatha Christie,
1102:Coming back to America was, for me, much more of a cultural shock than going to India. The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That’s had a big impact on my work. ~ Walter Isaacson,
1103:Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and your intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. ~ T D Jakes,
1104:For far too long we have been seduced into walking a path that did not lead us to ourselves. For far too long we have said yes when we wanted to say no. And for far too long we have said no when we desperately wanted to say yes. . . . When we don't listen to our intuition, we abandon our souls. And we abandon our souls because we are afraid if we don't, others will abandon us. ~ Terry Tempest Williams,
1105:Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. ~ Vishen Lakhiani,
1106:I am at peace with everyone around me. No person, place, or thing has any power over me. I am the power and authority in my world. I choose the thoughts that recognize my own true worth. I recognize my own intuitive ability. I trust my intuition, for I am always in contact with Universal Wisdom and Truth. I always go in the right direction for me. I love and appreciate my beautiful nose! ~ Louise L Hay,
1107:The hypothesis of God, for instance, gives an incomparably absolute opportunity to understand everything and know absolutely nothing. Give man an extremely simplified system of the world and explain every phenomenon away on the basis of that system. An approach like that doesn't require any knowledge. Just a few memorized formulas plus so-called intuition and so-called common sense. ~ Arkady Strugatsky,
1108:When love has carried us above all things ... we receive in peace the Incomprehensible Light, enfolding us and penetrating us. What is this Light, if it be not a contemplation of the Infinite, and an intuition of Eternity? We behold that which we are, and we are that which we behold; because our being, without losing anything of its own personality, is united with the Divine Truth. ~ John of Ruysbroeck,
1109:Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. IT ~ Vishen Lakhiani,
1110:Mathematics is often erroneously referred to as the science of common sense. Actually, it may transcend common sense and go beyond either imagination or intuition. It has become a very strange and perhaps frightening subject from the ordinary point of view, but anyone who penetrates into it will find a veritable fairyland, a fairyland which is strange, but makes sense, if not common sense. ~ Edward Kasner,
1111:Spiritual Partnership ... The new female and the new male are partners on a journey of spiritual growth. They want to make the journey. Their love and trust keep them together. Their intuition guides them. They consult with each other. They are friends. They laugh a lot. They are equals. That is what a spiritual partnership is: a partnership between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth. ~ Gary Zukav,
1112:To develop intuition, one of the things you can do is pay attention to what you eat. Eat as clean a diet as you can. Eat fresh fruits and vegetables without preservatives, without alcohol, caffeine, dyes, and organically grown if possible. But do what is comfortable for your. Don't try to shift into a lifestyle that doesn't fit, but be aware that the lighter you eat the lighter you will feel. ~ Gary Zukav,
1113:Leaders trust their guts. "Intuition" is one of those good words that has gotten a bad rap. For some reason, intuition has become a "soft" notion. Garbage! Intuition is the new physics. It's an Einsteinian, seven-sense, practical way to make tough decisions. Bottom line, circa 2001 to 2010: The crazier the times are, the more important it is for leaders to develop and to trust their intuition. ~ Tom Peters,
1114:At times, intuition can lead to mistakes, although maybe less often than numbers-based decision-making. We’ve made our share of intuitive mistakes at Semco. Life is full of mistakes. But you won’t catch me subscribing to the new age management mantra—to err is human, but erring twice is not so hot. I don’t buy the notion that we must carefully study our mistakes in order not to repeat them. ~ Ricardo Semler,
1115:Exploration and seemingly blind experimentation were key to Picasso’s creative process. Rather than creating a painting to reflect his own preexisting worldview, he seemed to actively build and reshape that worldview through the creative process. While he may have had a rough intuition, it’s likely that Picasso did not quite know where he was going, creatively, until he arrived there.4 ~ Scott Barry Kaufman,
1116:Intuition he did not reject. He knew that it is part of our equipment, and the sensitiveness he valued in himself and in others is connected with it. But he also knew that it can make dancing dervishes of us all, and that the man who believes a thing is true because he feels it in his bones, is not really very far removed from the man who believes it on the authority of a policeman’s truncheon. ~ Stephen Fry,
1117:You must believe in your own instincts and your own instincts at any particular time and believe that they were the right ones for any given situation. So, there's no point ever of kind of regretting something because you can't properly remember the exact circumstances in which you were playing out this particular scene. You have to believe in your intuition and your instinct at that moment. ~ Dominic Cooper,
1118:Be honest: did you actually read [the above geometric proof]? Of course not. Who would want to?

The effect of such a production being made over something so simple is to make people doubt their own intuition. Calling into question the obvious by insisting that it be 'rigorously proved' ... is to say to a student 'Your feelings and ideas are suspect. You need to think and speak our way. ~ Paul Lockhart,
1119:For far too long we have been seduced into walking a path that did not lead us to ourselves. For far too long we have said yes when we wanted to say no. And for far too long we have said no when we desperately wanted to say yes. . . .

When we don't listen to our intuition, we abandon our souls. And we abandon our souls because we are afraid if we don't, others will abandon us. ~ Terry Tempest Williams,
1120:For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to "give a meaning" to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of the mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry. ~ Henri Cartier Bresson,
1121:To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction—every kind of evidence in the logician's list—have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation. Farmer ~ Thomas Hardy,
1122:The ultimate perfection of the contemplative life is not a heaven of separate individuals, each one viewing his own private intuition of God; it is a sea of Love which flows through the One Body of all the elect, all the angels and saints, and their contemplation would be incomplete if it were not shared, or if it were shared with fewer souls, or with spirits capable of less vision and less joy. ~ Thomas Merton,
1123:As she let her soul sing to her, she let go of lifetimes’ worth of silenced truth missiles cemented in the deepest caverns of her soul. A voice snuffed out for centuries, for saying too much, for standing up too much, for being too much. Her intuition and bigness restrained for centuries, but not any more. She could not be locked away, muted, or extinguished any longer. Not now. Not ever again. ~ Rebecca Campbell,
1124:To make music means to express human intelligence by sonic means. This is intelligence in its broadest sense, which includes not only the peregrinations of pure logic but also the "logic" of emotions and intuition. My musical techniques, although often rigorous in their internal structure, leave many openings through which the most complex and mysterious factors of the intelligence may penetrate. ~ Iannis Xenakis,
1125:Backlock, a poet blind from his birth, could describe visual objects with accuracy; Professor Sanderson, who was also blind, gave excellent lectures on color, and taught others the theory of ideas which they had and he had not. In the social sphere these gifted ones are mostly women; they can watch a world which they never saw, and estimate forces of which they have only heard. We call it intuition. ~ Thomas Hardy,
1126:Intellect is your mind. Instinct is your body. And just as instinct functions perfectly on behalf of the body, intuition functions perfectly as far as your consciousness is concerned. Intellect is just between these two—a passage to be passed, a bridge to be crossed. But there are many people, many millions of people, who never cross the bridge. They simply sit on the bridge thinking they have arrived home. ~ Osho,
1127:Sex and beauty are inseparable, like life and consciousness. And the intelligence which goes with sex and beauty, and arises out of sex and beauty, is intuition." "And they rock, and they rock, through the sensual ageless ages on the depths of the seven seas, and through the salt they reel with drunken delight and in the tropics tremble they with love and roll with massive, strong desire, like gods. ~ D H Lawrence,
1128:The marvellous instinct with which women are usually credited seems too often to desert them on the only occasions when it would be of any real use. One would say it was there for trivialities only, since in a crisis they are usually dense, fatally doing the wrong thing. It is hardly too much to say that most domestic tragedies are caused by the feminine intuition of men and the want of it in women. ~ Ada Leverson,
1129:the translator says that a sentence is born into this world neither good nor bad, and that to establish its character is a question of the subtlest possible adjustments, a process of intuition to which exaggeration and force are fatal. Those lines concerned the art of writing, but looking around himself in early middle age my neighbour began to see that they applied just as much to the art of living. ~ Rachel Cusk,
1130:You cannot overestimate the role of intuition in fiction writing. Or the role of accident or randomness. These things are very central. This is never really admitted. You have to cover the pages. You have to have those people do things. And the things they do have to be relevant to the entire concern. The specific things they do don't much matter, you just have to have them do something that counts. ~ Peter Straub,
1131:For centuries, no man, in verse has ever done, or ever seemed to think of doing, an original thing. The fact is that originality (unless in minds of very unusual force) is by no means a matter, as some suppose, of impulse or intuition. In general, to be found, it must be elaborately sought and, although a positive merit of the highest class, demands in its attainment less of invention than negation. ~ Edgar Allan Poe,
1132:As for geoengineering, there have been serious general critiques that I think cannot be ignored, like Clive Hamilton's, along with many positive assessments. It is not a matter for subjective judgment based on guesswork and intuition. Rather, these are matters that have to be considered seriously, relying on the best scientific understanding available, without abandoning sensible precautionary principles. ~ Noam Chomsky,
1133:Come from the heart, the true heart, not the head. When in doubt, choose the heart. This does not mean to deny your own experiences and that which you have empirically learned through the years. It means to trust your self to integrate intuition and experience. There is a balance, a harmony to be nurtured, between the head and the heart. When the intuition rings clear and true, loving impulses are favored. ~ Brian Weiss,
1134:The success factor is a combination of intuition and honestly, it's mostly only intuition. A design business is inherently dependent upon the intuition of its chief designer. Luckily I have a track record that if you show me five pairs of shoes I will almost always pick the one pair that will sell the best. It's just a gift I have for mass taste - a link with what people want in a certain moment in time. ~ Monita Rajpal,
1135:To overcome negative emotions, consulting intuition is always useful. How can it guide you. During nervous periods, it offers a more centered alternative to agitation. Intuition is a neutral from of information that allows you to soberly gauge the validity of your worries. If you tune in and find out they're unfounded, you'll be relieved. If they are founded, you can develop a strategy to deal with them. ~ Judith Orloff,
1136:And what is it you think I'm so good at?" I asked.
He shrugged. "Playing a role. Filling in for lost years with that intuition of yours. Replacing experience with genius".
"You think I have to be old to think with an old head?" I asked.
"I think you need to have lived more to truly know a man's heart. You need to have made more transactions in life to know the worth of the coin you spend so freely ~ Mark Lawrence,
1137:Come from the heart, the true heart, not the head. When in doubt, choose the heart. This does not mean to deny your own experiences and that which you have empirically learned through the years. It means to trust your self to integrate intuition and experience. There is a balance, a harmony to be nurtured, between the head and the heart. When the intuition rings clear and true, loving impulses are favored. ~ Brian L Weiss,
1138:I'm not a big note-taker, so I think that the way I decide is that whatever I remember I always consider something that's important. If I remember a joke then I know it's a good joke, if I remember a story then I know it's a good story, and so that's how I curate what stories I'm going to write for the book. And I go over them again, make sure there's a theme and all that stuff, but mostly, it is intuition. ~ Kelly Oxford,
1139:The difference between tragedy and comedy is the difference between experience and intuition. In the experience we strive against every condition of our animal life: against death, against the frustration of ambition, against the instability of human love. In the intuition we trust the arduous eccentricities we're born to, and see the oddness of a creature who has never got acclimatized to being created. ~ Christopher Fry,
1140:Every work of art reaches man in his inner powers. It reaches him more profoundly and insidiously than any rational proposition, either cogent demonstration or sophistry. For it strikes him with two terrible weapons, Intuition and Beauty, and at the single root in him of all his energies... Art and Poetry awaken the dreams of man, and his longings, and reveal to him some of the abysses he has in himself. ~ Jacques Maritain,
1141:I'm not comfortable with words. I love images ,and I love sounds, and I love feelings. I like the idea of intuition. I think a lot of things in life are understood that way. But you internalize these things; they don't really pop out. Certain things are built inside - little areas of understanding. I feel that I live in darkness and confusion, and I'm trying, like we all are, to make some sort of sense of it. ~ David Lynch,
1142:Casting is really a black art. It's a huge part of directing and it's the most invisible. It's one that people don't really think about or talk about. But you can really destroy your movie by casting it badly before you've shot a foot of film. And yet there are no guidebooks for it, there's no rule book to tell you how to do it. It's all your own experience and your own sensibility and your own intuition. ~ David Cronenberg,
1143:Intuition is the innate ability in everyone to perceive truth directly - not by reason, logic, or analysis, but by a simple knowing from within. That is the very meaning of the word "intuition": to know, or understand from within - from one's own self, and from the heart of whatever one is trying to understand. Intuition is the inner ability to see behind the outer forms of things to their inner essence. ~ Goswami Kriyananda,
1144:It was about finding the sacred within myself, my center, my peaceful core. We each have a sacred space within us, a part of us. This sacred space is a temple, a temple to our inner power, our intuition, and our connection with the divine. Discovery of psychic powers, spells, and meditation are all things that lead us to the temple. They help us find the road within and walk our path to the inner temple. ~ Christopher Penczak,
1145:Songwriting is ... all about intuition - this thing pops into your head for a reason and it's up to you to follow it. It's like there's a spirit, or intuitive network, that comes through all of us, but most people don't take the time to think about it or remember it. These little things pop into our heads - it's just a process of intuition. The initial thought comes in a baby state, and you work on that some more. ~ Jim James,
1146:Though there was no sound, there was a change. The atmosphere, which had gone tense at my accusation, relaxed. I wondered how I knew this. I had a strange sensation that I was somehow receiving more than my five senses were giving me - almost a feeling that there was another sense, on the fringes, not quite harnessed. Intuition? That was almost the right word. As if any creature needed more than five senses. ~ Stephenie Meyer,
1147:Some dreams matter, illuminate a crucial choice or reveal some intuition that's trying to push its way to the surface. Other, though, are detritus, the residue of the day reassembling itself in some disjointed and chaotic way ... Frantic dreams, they left me tired, and I woke grouchy to another rainy day, the sky so densely gray and the rain so thick that I couldn't that I couldn't see the opposite shore [p, 166] ~ Kim Edwards,
1148:Early in his career, “intuition” had meant a shuttered confidence in the inventions of his own brain. There was a stubborn refusal to consider the thoughts of others. By 2005, intuition had come to mean a sense of what to do that grew out of entertaining a world of possibilities. He was confident enough now to listen to his team as well as his own thoughts, and to acknowledge the nature of the world around him ~ Brent Schlender,
1149:The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition. Such intuitions give the appearance of miraculous flushes, or short-circuits of reasoning. In fact they may be likened to an immersed chain, of which only the beginning and the end are visible above the surface of consciousness. The diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up at the other end, guided by invisible links. ~ Arthur Koestler,
1150:Hesitancy is the surest destroyer of talent. One cannot be timorous and reticent, one must be original and loud. New metaphors, new rhythms, new expressions of emotion can only spring from unhindered gall. Nothing should interfere with that intuition--not the fear of appearing stupid, nor of offending somebody, nor jeopardizing publication, nor being trivial. The intuition must be as unhindered as a karate chop. ~ Stephen Dobyns,
1151:Our Human thinking brain operates by way of prediction, comparing new experiences to and constructing its perception from what is already believed to be true due to past experience. Without a mature intuition – thinking and feeling balanced and united—even groups trying to work together will only be capable of experiencing what has been going on in this sensory brain since about the 8th Century to the present. ~ Martha Char Love,
1152:We should trust what we hear... (speaking about our intuition)

Encourage your inner voice with quiet contemplation.
When we ask for guidance, it's best not to demand immediate change, but instead request help with only the next step in your life.

When you do this, BE PREPARED for unexpected possibilities.
Have the faith and humility to open yourself up to a variety of paths towards solutions. ~ Michael Newton,
1153:John had a photographic memory...this wasn't smart, exactly, but it could pass for smart.

Smart was about intuition, and John had that too. Smart was: you didn't exert effort but you knew the answer anyways. You thought about it, yes, but the answer came via a different route. Smart was: you always had access to that different route. The answer came in the back door while you were cooking or even while you slept. ~ Lisa Moore,
1154:You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side. You need to trust yourself, especially on a first draft, where amid the anxiety and self-doubt, there should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance. ~ Anne Lamott,
1155:You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side. You need to trust yourself, especially on a first draft, where amid the anxiety and self-doubt, there should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance. ~ Anne Lamott,
1156:Je me souviens qu'à un moment, m'étend appuyée à la machine, j'avais regardé le disque se lever, lentement, pour aller se poser de biais contre le saphir, presque tendrement, comme une joue. Et, je ne sais pourquoi, j'avais été envahie d'un violent sentiment de bonheur; de l'intuition physique, débordante, que j'allais mourir un jour, qu'il n'y aurait plus ma main sur ce rebord de chrome, ni ce soleil dans mes yeux. ~ Fran oise Sagan,
1157:Each of us has two minds: a waking mind and a sleeping mind. Our waking mind is what thinks and talks and reasons. But the sleeping mind is more powerful. It sees deeply to the heart of things. It is the part of us that dreams. It remembers everything. It gives us intuition. Your waking mind does not understand the nature of names. Your sleeping mind does. It already knows many things that your waking mind does not. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,
1158:It wasn’t as simple as attraction, not even close. Attraction boiled down to looking and liking, and I knew all about that. Looking and liking had been my preferred mode of operation for years, and it had never once grabbed me by the gut and said Don’t let that woman go. Lust wasn’t the culprit either. It was something else, something that resided past the bounds of language and fully in the land of intuition. ~ Kate Canterbary,
1159:A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it, feminine intuition. ~ H L Mencken,
1160:I had to sit with my senses. This clear, beautiful intuition took over. I knew exactly how I felt, and I wasn't confused or clouded or compromised. I realized that none of my feelings had diminished, but I might have to lose someone I truly loved. I didn't want to run away from Claire, but I knew drug addiction was strong enough that I had to be willing, if need be, to let go of the person I'd just fallen in love with. ~ Anthony Kiedis,
1161:That our intuition could lead us astray is troubling in direct proportion to the degree of trust we place in it. The solution would seem to be: Don’t be overly trusting. Mix in a healthy dose of skepticism. But suppose we don’t have a say in the matter? Suppose we’re hardwired to trust—to believe in—our instincts, regardless of whether they’re right? Suddenly the problem of not knowing becomes a lot more complicated. ~ Leah Hager Cohen,
1162:The progress of mathematics has been most erratic, and... intuition has played a predominant rôle in it. ...It was the function of intuition to create new forms; it was the acknowledged right of logic to accept or reject these new forms, in whose birth it had no part. ...the children had to live, so while waiting for logic to sanctify their existence, they throve and multiplied. ~ Tobias Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science (1930).,
1163:Was he smart? No, not exceptionally. Instead, he was a genius. His imaginative leaps were instinctive, unexpected, and at times magical. He was, indeed, an example of what the mathematician Mark Kac called a magician genius, someone whose insights come out of the blue and require intuition more than mere mental processing power. Like a pathfinder, he could absorb information, sniff the winds, and sense what lay ahead. ~ Walter Isaacson,
1164:Her professors were astonished by her leaps of thought, by the finesse and elegance of her insights. She arrived at hypotheses by sheer intuition and with what eventually one of her mentors described as an almost alarming speed; she was like a dancer, he said, out in the cosmos springing weightlessly from star to star. Drones, merely brilliant, crawled along behind with laborious proofs that supported her assertions. ~ Deborah Eisenberg,
1165:I have treated many artists. There are among them many neurotics, so many that one finally comes to believe that one cannot be an artist without being neurotic. Again I found in them that inner conflict which is characteristic of modern man: the conflict between a right intuition (namely, that their vocation has fundamental importance for the destiny of humanity) and a false idea (namely, that art is superfluous luxury). ~ Paul Tournier,
1166:Only through blind Instinct, in which the only possible guidance of the Imperative is awanting, does the Power in Intuition remain undetermined; where it is schematised as absolute it becomes infinite; and where it is presented in a determinate form, as a principle, it becomes at least manifold. By the above-mentioned act of Intelligising, the Power liberates itself from Instinct, to direct itself towards Unity. ~ Johann Gottlieb Fichte,
1167:The answer is that each of us has two minds: a waking mind and a sleeping mind. Our waking mind is what talks and reasons. But the sleeping mind is more powerful. It sees deeply to the heart of things, It is the part of us that dreams. It remembers everything. it gives us intuition. Your waking mind does not understand the nature of names. Your sleeping kind does. It already knows many things your waking mind does not. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,
1168:The Islamic intellectual tradition has usually not seen a dichotomy between intellect and intuition but has created a hierarchy of knowledge and methods of attaining knowledge according to which degrees of both intellection and intuition become harmonized in an order encompassing all the means available to man to know, from sensual knowledge an reason to intellection and inner version or the "knowledge of the heart. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
1169:The life-efficiency and adaptability of the computer must be questioned. Its judicious use depends upon the availability of its human employers quite literally to keep their own heads, not merely to scrutinize the programming but to reserve for themselves the right of ultimate decision. No automatic system can be intelligently run byautomatonsor by people who dare not assert human intuition, human autonomy, human purpose. ~ Lewis Mumford,
1170:You have to experience it to understand. One thing I can say, though, is that once you see that true sight with your own eyes, the world you've lived in up till now will look flat and insipid. There's no logic or illogic in that scene. No good or evil. Everything is merged into one. And you are part of that merging. You leave the boundary of your physical body behind to become a metaphysical being. You become intuition. ~ Haruki Murakami,
1171:Be willing to take some risks in the areas of work and money. If we do only what we think we should do in order to make money and be secure, we won't listen to the intuitive voice that tells us to try something new, to be more creative, or to move on to the next step on our path. When we listen to our intuition and take some risks, we are not alone. The universe will support us and reward us for taking risks on its behalf! ~ Shakti Gawain,
1172:Was he smart? No, not exceptionally. Instead, he was a genius. His imaginative leaps were instinctive,
unexpected, and at times magical. He was, indeed, an example of what the mathematician Mark Kac called a magician genius, someone whose insights come out of the blue and require intuition more than mere mental processing power. Like a pathfinder, he could absorb information, sniff the winds, and sense what lay ahead. ~ Walter Isaacson,
1173:A disciple asked, "How can intuition be developed?"
Yogananda: "The best way is, every time you meditate, to sit calmly for a long time after doing the techniques. It is during this period that you will be able to deepen your awareness of God's presence within you. Go ever deeper in your enjoyment of that presence.
"The longer and more deeply you enjoy the peace within, the more quickly will your intuition develop. ~ Swami Kriyananda,
1174:Good designers must always be avant-gardists, always one step ahead of the times. They should – and must – question everything generally thought to be obvious. They must have an intuition for people’s changing attitudes. For the reality in which they live, for their dreams, their desires, their worries, their needs, their living habits. They must also be able to assess realistically the opportunities and bounds of technology. ~ Dieter Rams,
1175:I'm convinced that we can write and live our own scripts more than most people will acknowledge. I also know the price that must be paid. It's a real struggle to do it. It requires visualization and affirmation. It involves living a life of integrity, starting with making and keeping promises, until the whole human personality the senses, the thinking, the feeling, and the intuition are ultimately integrated and harmonized. ~ Stephen Covey,
1176:This is a wonderful feminine quality but it is also important to remember that our own soothing, helping, and giving to ourselves is critical. So we may skip a day of doing the ten ideas if the world goes upside down. But we can take it again the next morning because our ideas are important. And because our contribution, the way we see the world, our thoughts, translated through a fine-tuned intuition of ideas is important. ~ James Altucher,
1177:What is valuable about my worlds of the arts and humanities is that they create spaces for this type of slow thinking. And by this I mean that we value the arts and humanities not simply for the material possibilities and rewards they may bring, like a Pulitzer Prize. Rather, we should value the arts and humanities for their privileging of the mystery and intuition that makes moments of revelation and innovation possible. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen,
1178:Spiritual Partnership
... The new female and the new male
are partners on a journey of spiritual growth.
They want to make the journey.
Their love and trust keep them together.
Their intuition guides them. They consult with each other.
They are friends. They laugh a lot. They are equals.

That is what a spiritual partnership is:
a partnership between equals
for the purpose of spiritual growth. ~ Gary Zukav,
1179:Columbus Cheney
This weeping willow!
Why do you not plant a few
For the millions of children not yet born,
As well as for us?
Are they not non-existent, or cells asleep
Without mind?
Or do they come to earth, their birth
Rupturing the memory of previous being?
Answer! The field of unexplored intuition is yours.
But in any case why not plant willows for them,
As well as for us?
~ Edgar Lee Masters,
1180:What prompts so many commentators to speak of the 'end of
history', of post-modernity, 'second modernity' and 'surmodernity',
or otherwise to articulate the intuition of a radical change in the
arrangement of human cohabitation and in social conditions under
which life-politics is nowadays conducted, is the fact that the long
effort to accelerate the speed of movement has presently reached its
'natural limit' . ~ Zygmunt Bauman,
1181:I do my best to simplify and refine, to be logical and harmonious. But I also try to keep an open mind, to listen to my intuition and allow for the unexpected, the coincidental, even the quirky to enter into my work. Ultimately, my aim is to entertain, and sometimes to enlighten, the child who still lives inside of me. This is always where I begin.

And just as in my boyhood, making pictures is how I express my truest feelings. ~ Eric Carle,
1182:Conventional measures of mental ability, such as intelligence tests and scholarship, show some of the very highest records belong to INFP and INFJ types, who relegate thinking to last place or next to last. The preference for thinking appears to have far less intellectual effect than the preference for intuition, even in some technical fields, such as scientific research, where its influence was expected to be most important. ~ Isabel Briggs Myers,
1183:Even the wisest of mankind cannot live by reason alone; pure arrogant reason, denying the claims of prejudice (which commonly are also the claims of conscience), leads to a wasteland of withered hopes and crying loneliness, empty of God and man: the wilderness in which Satan tempted Christ was not more dreadful than the arid expanse of intellectual vanity deprived of tradition and intuition, where modern man is tempted by his own pride. ~ Russell Kirk,
1184:One of the things meditation gives you is creativity because creativity really comes from the subconscious brain - intuition, imagination - so it's not like you can go there and say, I'm going to go be creative now. Maybe you can, but the real way you get creativity is, you know, you're taking a hot shower and great ideas come to you from the subconscious. Essentially, meditation opens a pipeline between the conscious and the subconscious. ~ Ray Dalio,
1185:When you're an actress you are in a very specific position, cerebrally, I would think you know. You are a thinking person but you are in a certain perception of the world between really being conceptual and completely stupid. So you are in between, with a lot of intuition and instinct. And that's not completely being intellectual because I think intuition is more blurred. It comes from intuition. Instinct. More than really reasoning. ~ Isabelle Huppert,
1186:Both intuition and a growing body of research underscore the reality that sharing a workspace with a large number of coworkers is incredibly distracting—creating an environment that thwarts attempts to think seriously. In a 2013 article summarizing recent research on this topic, Bloomberg Businessweek went so far as to call for an end to the “tyranny of the open-plan office.” And yet, these open office designs are not embraced haphazardly. ~ Cal Newport,
1187:The ability to know that your perceptions are accurate has to happen without others' validation. Intuition is not the result of diet, rituals, or wind chimes. It's the natural consequence of having self-esteem, the greatest power you can have. With self-esteem, your life can broaden into an adventure because you can know in your gut that you can handle the unknown. And you can handle helping others without fear, which is true liberation. ~ Caroline Myss,
1188:The answer is that each of us has two minds: a waking mind and a sleeping mind. Our waking mind is what thinks and talks and reasons. But the sleeping mind is more powerful. It sees deeply to the heart of things. It is the part of us that dreams. It remembers everything. It gives us intuition. Your waking mind does not understand the nature of names. Your sleeping mind does. It already knows many things that your waking mind does not. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,
1189:In the new alchemy, we have a similar kind of way of thinking. Our internal space includes our intuitions, our thoughts, our senses and our feelings, and from these we construct or build a picture of the outside world. From intuition and thought, we construct time. We also construct space from thought and our sensations. From our senses and our feelings, we experience energy, and from our intuitions and our feelings, we experience motion. ~ Fred Alan Wolf,
1190:I knew without a doubt that I was a good person, and, no matter what anyone else thought or said about me, no matter who they were or how important, I didn’t care. When I realized this, down to the moment, the clouds opened up. This realization was the beginning of personal integrity, when, instead of dismissing my feelings or my intuition, I found myself following them, even if they led me to a place that Scientology said was wrong. ~ Jenna Miscavige Hill,
1191:The policy goal is to persuade China to stop cheating. But here's what's interesting - Donald Trump intuitively understands what things should be. I did a study in 2008 where I estimated the impact of China's unfair trade practices on their competitive advantage - the so-called China Price. You know what it came out to be? Forty-three percent. Forty-three percent - very close to what his intuition said we needed in order to equalize things. ~ Peter Navarro,
1192:How do we take our anger and transform it into sacred rage? How do we create a language that opens the heart instead of closing it? To bear witness is not a passive act. It's an act of consequence that leads to consciousness. It matters. I am curious. I want to know why. I was raised with a scripture that says, "The glory of God is intelligence." And to me our greatest intelligence is following our instincts, trusting our intuition. ~ Terry Tempest Williams,
1193:The scientific value of truth is not, however, ultimate or absolute. It rests partly on practical, partly on aesthetic interests. As our ideas are gradually brought into conformity with the facts by the painful process of selection,-for intuition runs equally into truth and into error, and can settle nothing if not controlled by experience,-we gain vastly in our command over our environment. This is the fundamental value of natural science ~ George Santayana,
1194:We look for medicine to be an orderly field of knowledge and procedure. But it is not. It is an imperfect science, an enterprise of constantly changing knowledge, uncertain information, fallible individuals, and at the same time lives on the line. There is science in what we do, yes, but also habit, intuition, and sometimes plain old guessing. The gap between what we know and what we aim for persists. And this gap complicates everything we do. ~ Atul Gawande,
1195:Chess is a unique battlefield for human minds and computers - human intuition, our creativity, fantasy, our logic, versus the brute force of calculation and a very small portion of accumulated knowledge infused by other human beings. So in chess we can compare these two incompatible things and probably make projections into our future. Is there danger that the human mind will be overshadowed by the power of computers, or we can still survive? ~ Garry Kasparov,
1196:The High-Subtle Self ::: "...cognitive style- actual intuition and literal inspiration, archetypal Form, audible illumination, revelations of light and sound affective elements- rapture, bliss, ecstatic release into superconsciousness motivational/conative factors-karuna, compassion, overwhelming love and gratefulness temporal mode- transtemporal, moving into eternity mode of self- archetypal-divine, overself, overmind." ~ Ken Wilber, The Atman Project pg.80,
1197:For with my intuition I knew that this man was repeating a pattern over and over again: courting a woman with his intelligence and sympathy, claiming her emotionally; then, when she began to claim in return, running away. And the better a woman was, the sooner he would begin to run. I knew this with my intuition, and yet I sat there in my dark room, looking at the hazed wet brilliance of the purple London night sky, longing with my whole being. ~ Doris Lessing,
1198:Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity. The activity of the intuition consists in making spontaneous judgements which are not the result of conscious trains of reasoning. The exercise of ingenuity in mathematics consists in aiding the intuition through suitable arrangements of propositions, and perhaps geometrical figures or drawings. ~ Alan Turing,
1199:The wild nature has a vast integrity to it. It means to establish one's territory, to find one's pack, to be in one's body with certainty and pride regardless of the body's gifts and limitations, to speak and act in one's own behalf, to be aware, alert, to draw on the innate feminine powers of intuition and sensing, to come into one's cycles, to find what one belongs to, to rise with dignity, to retain as much consciousness as possible. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Est s,
1200:Mathematics is the music of reason. To do mathematics is to engage in an act of discovery and conjecture, intuition and inspiration; to be in a state of confusion—not because it makes no sense to you, but because you gave it sense and you still don't understand what your creation is up to; to have a break-through idea; to be frustrated as an artist; to be awed and overwhelmed by an almost painful beauty; to be alive, damn it. ~ Paul Lockhart,
1201:The planet has a kind of intelligence, it can actually open a channel of communication with an individual human being. The message that nature sends is, transform your language through a synergy between electronic culture and the psychedelic imagination, a synergy between dance and idea, a synergy between understanding and intuition, and dissolve the boundaries that your culture has sanctioned between you, to become part of this Gaian supermind ~ Terence McKenna,
1202:Tithing is a way to right the ship quickly. Instead of spending every dime, deny yourself a little and save ten percent of your income one month. Then just wait for an intuition of whom to give it to. You'll get one. Someone who needs an angel will cross your path, and you'll get the thrill of having the means to be of service. And again, it will just accelerate the flow of help coming back to you. You'll get more opportunities to be successful. ~ James Redfield,
1203:His thinking was a dusk of doubt and selfmistrust lit up at moments by the lightnings of intuition, but lightnings of so clear a splendour that in those moments the world perished about his feet as if it had been fireconsumed: and thereafter his tongue grew heavy and he met the eyes of others with unanswering eyes for he felt that the spirit of beauty had folded him round like a mantle and that in revery at leas he had been acquainted with nobility. ~ James Joyce,
1204:It would probably be best if they were separated, anyway," Margo continued. "They're feeling very close now, but it's an abnormal situation. They might be developing a dependency which would interfere with their resocialization later."

She sounded like a textbook on child psychology that Maddy had once read. Reasonable, and yet somehow wrong. Maddy's own intuition was that if you found someone you liked and trusted, you held on for dear life. ~ Brock Cole,
1205:You make films to give people something, to transport them somewhere else, and it doesn't matter if you transport them to a world of intuition or a world of intellect...The realm of superstitions, fortune-telling, presentiments, intuition, dreams, all this is the inner life of a human being, and all this is the hardest thing to film... I've been trying to get there from the beginning. I'm somebody who doesn't know, somebody who's searching. ~ Krzysztof Kieslowski,
1206:I asked an indifferent copywriter what books he had read about advertising. He told me that he had not read any; he preferred to rely on his own intuition. ‘Suppose,’ I asked, ‘your gall-bladder has to be removed this evening. Will you choose a surgeon who has read some books on anatomy and knows where to find your gall-bladder, or a surgeon who relies on his intuition? Why should our clients be expected to bet millions of dollars on your intuition? ~ David Ogilvy,
1207:Sometimes a word, a sound, triggers an image or recollection of something forgotten. A search for the truth sounds romantic, a thoughtful quest. As often as not, it is as mind numbing as reading a list of names or looking through scores of obtuse documents in the hope of finding a clear pattern, divined by not much more than intuition and observation. A shrugged-off remark can lead to more truth than studied responses to severe cross-examination. ~ Jackson Burnett,
1208:In the West we nearly all have strong moral intuitions about the wrongness of slavery, child labor, or animal cruelty. But that sure didn’t used to be the case. Their wrongness has become an implicit moral intuition, a gut instinct concerning moral truth, only because of the fierce moral reasoning (and activism) of those who came before us, when the average person’s moral intuitions were unrecognizably different. Our guts learn their intuitions. ~ Robert M Sapolsky,
1209:There's no alternative."
A wordless interval followed, so full of portent that Helen felt her arms prickling beneath her sleeves, all the downy hairs lifting.
"There is."
His face had changed, his eyes predatory. Calculating. This, she understood in a flash of intuition, was the version of Mr. Winterborne that people regarded with fear and awe, a pirate disguised as a captain of industry.
"The alternative," he said, "is to let me bed you. ~ Lisa Kleypas,
1210:What does this wildish intuition do for women? Like the wolf, intuition has claws that pry things open and pin things down, it has eyes that can through the shields of persona, it has ears that hear beyond the range of mundane human hearing. With these formidable psychic tools a woman takes on a shrewd and even precognitive animal consciousness, one that deepens her femininity and sharpens her ability to move confidently in the outer world. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Est s,
1211:A writer's work has to take account of many rhythms: Vulcan's and Mercury's, a message of urgency obtained by dint of patient and meticulous adjustments and an intuition so instantaneous that, when formulated, it acquires the finality of something that could never have been otherwise. But it is also the rhythm of time that passes with no other aim than to let feelings and thoughts settle down, mature, and shed all impatience or ephemeral contingency. ~ Italo Calvino,
1212:Take the years when you’re young – say, between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five, before you have a mortgage or kids or anything else that needs to be fed – and go balls out on intuition and follow your dreams. Dreams won’t always take you on a straight path to destiny, but they’re usually related to what your soul wants for you. They’ll force you to ask yourself the hard questions, they’ll kick your ass, and most importantly, they’ll turn you on. ~ Kelly Cutrone,
1213:There is an earthly sun, which is the cause of all heat, and all who are able to see may see the sun; and those who are blind and cannot see him may feel his heat. There is an Eternal Sun, which is the source of all wisdom, and those whose spiritual senses have awakened to life will see that sun and be conscious of His existence; but those who have not attained spiritual consciousness may yet feel His power by an inner faculty which is called Intuition. ~ Paracelsus,
1214:I will even go out on a limb and say that we mistakenly may have been putting all our educational eggs into one basket only, while shortchanging other truly valuable capabilities of the human brain, namely perception, intuition, imagination, and creativity. Perhaps Albert Einstein put it best: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. ~ Betty Edwards,
1215:Stupid people like to delude themselves that while they may not be clever, they were at least able to compensate with feelings and insights denied to the intellectual....It was precisely this kind of false belief that made stupid people so stupid. The truth was the clever people had infinitely more resources from which to make the leaps of connection that the world called intuition. What was 'intelligence' after all, but the ability to read into things? ~ Stephen Fry,
1216:There is an earthly sun, which is the cause of all heat, and all who are able to see may see the sun; and those who are blind and cannot see him may feel his heat. There is an Eternal Sun, which is the source of all wisdom, and those whose spiritual senses have awakened to life will see that sun and be conscious of His existence; but those who have not attained spiritual consciousness may yet feel His power by an inner faculty which is called Intuition. ~ Paracelsus,
1217:Mathematics is a presuppositionless science. To found it I do not need God, as does Kronecker, or the assumption of a special faculty of our understanding attuned to the principle of mathematical induction, as does Poincaré, or the primal intuition of Brouwer, or, finally, as do Russell and Whitehead, axioms of infinity, reducibility, or completeness, which in fact are actual, contentual assumptions that cannot be compensated for by consistency proofs. ~ David Hilbert,
1218:The way to a beautiful, strong, healthy body is to start by trusting yourself right now. Let go of the struggle and surrender to your body's needs. Your intuition will tell you what to eat. It may direct you to exercise vigorously, in which case you'll enjoy it, or it may tell you to slow down and rest. It may tell you to stay in bed all day, or it may tell you to get up early. There are no rigid rules. Your body knows perfectly well what's good for it. ~ Shakti Gawain,
1219:The magic of Paul’s intelligence is that he has more patience than anyone I’ve ever met, and with it he simply wears problems down. To count a hundred million stars, he told me once, at the rate of one per second, sounds like a job that no one could possibly complete in a lifetime. In reality, it would only take three years. The key is focus, a willingness not to be distracted. And that is Paul’s gift: an intuition of just how much a person can do slowly. ~ Ian Caldwell,
1220:The very word intuition has to be understood. You know the word tuition—tuition comes from outside, somebody teaches you, the tutor. Intuition means something that arises within your being; it is your potential, that’s why it is called intuition. Wisdom is never borrowed, and that which is borrowed is never wisdom. Unless you have your own wisdom, your own vision, your own clarity, your own eyes to see, you will not be able to understand the mystery of existence. ~ Osho,
1221:The hope with Tipping Point was it would help the reader understand that real change was possible. With Blink, I wanted to get people to take the enormous power of their intuition seriously. My wish with Outliers is that it makes us understand how much of a group project success is. When outliers become outliers it is not just because of their own efforts. It's because of the contributions of lots of different people and lots of different circumstances. ~ Malcolm Gladwell,
1222:Intuition is just the sum of all your experience. The way I see it, everything you’ve experienced, everything you know, you think you know and didn’t know you knew is there in your subconscious lying dormant, as it were. As a rule you don’t notice the sleeping creature, it’s just there, snoring and absorbing new things, right. But now and then it blinks, stretches and tells you, hey, I’ve seen this picture before. And tells you where in the picture things belong. ~ Jo Nesb,
1223:When you explore yourself on the inner plane, you are working with intuition. It’s a common misconception that intuition is at odds with science, but Einstein himself said that what separated him from atheists was that “they cannot hear the music of the spheres.” In truth, science and spirituality both depend upon intuition, for the greatest scientific discoveries are made through creative leaps, rather than by following a linear trail of established facts. ~ Deepak Chopra,
1224:Steve Jobs when he was asked to address the graduating class at Stanford: Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. ~ Vishen Lakhiani,
1225:The opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new. ~ Bertrand Russell,
1226:I realized that, to a large degree, I had kept my rational mind at bay my whole life. I just acted on intuition in terms of how I related to life. At some point, my rational mind started creeping in, and it would not shut up. I finally had to address it and confront it. I think most intelligent people, at a younger age than I have, begin to question some of the fundamental assumptions our society promotes. But me, I just rejected it without even considering it. ~ Jeff Mangum,
1227:Each time I make a photograph I celebrate the life I love and the beauty I know and the happiness I have experienced. All my photographs are made like that responding to my intuition... After all these years, I am still motivated by the radiance that light creates when it transforms an object into something magical. What the eye sees is an illusion of what is real. The black-and-white image is yet another transformation. What exactly exists, we may never know. ~ Ruth Bernhard,
1228:These bizarre examples attempt to prove one conceptual point or another by deliberately reducing all but one underappreciated feature of some phenomenon to zero, so that what really counts can shine through. The twin earth example sets internal similarity to a maximum (you are whisked off to Twin Earth without being given a chance to register this huge shift) so that external context can be demonstrated to be responsible for whatever our intuition tells us. ~ Daniel C Dennett,
1229:I have often had a retrospective vision where everything in my past life seems to fall with significance into logical sequence. Intuition, suspicion, or confidence in new ventures; there is a strange strain within me when advantage is not taken of some situation, the immediacy of recognition of the rightness or wrongness of a mood, a response, a decision - they are so often valid that I am increasingly convinced that we have yet to grasp the reality of existence. ~ Ansel Adams,
1230:While I do not think it was so intended I have always been of the opinion that this turned out to be much the best for me. I had no national experience. What I have ever been able to do has been the result of first learning how to do it. I am not gifted with intuition. I need not only hard work but experience to be ready to solve problems. The Presidents who have gone to Washington without first having held some national office have been at great disadvantage. ~ Calvin Coolidge,
1231:Cultivating intuition and trusting faith: letting go of the need for certainty 6. Cultivating creativity: letting go of comparison 7. Cultivating play and rest: letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth 8. Cultivating calm and stillness: letting go of anxiety as a lifestyle 9. Cultivating meaningful work: letting go of self-doubt and “supposed to” 10. Cultivating laughter, song, and dance: letting go of being cool and “always in control ~ Bren Brown,
1232:It is said that a student of sexing must work through at least 250,000 chicks before attaining any degree of proficiency. Even if the sexer calls it “intuition,” it’s been shaped by years of experience. It is the vast memory bank of chick bottoms that allows him or her to recognize patterns in the vents glanced at so quickly. In most cases, the skill is not the result of conscious reasoning, but pattern recognition. It is a feat of perception and memory, not analysis. ~ Joshua Foer,
1233:Raphael watched, and gradually he began to understand them. At first it was not even a theory, but rather a kind of intuition. He found that he could look at any one of them and almost smell the impending crisis. That was the key word—crisis. At first it seemed too dramatic a term to apply to situations resulting from their bumbling mismanagement of their lives or deliberate wrongheaded stupidity, but they themselves reacted as if these situations were in fact crises. ~ David Eddings,
1234:Instinct doesn’t always tell us to choose the easier path, but it will guide you towards the right one.

Your subconscious intuition wants you to survive and to thrive. It isn’t clouded by ego or others’ opinions - those fickle things live in the conscious mind. Your instinct has a clearer purpose: to help you.

Listen to it. Learn to recognize it. Acknowledge it when it speaks and have faith in it.

Instinct is the nose of the mind. So trust it. ~ Bear Grylls,
1235:Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection. Its basic elements are logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality. Though different traditions may emphasize different aspects, it is only the interplay of these antithetic forces and the struggle for their synthesis that constitute the life, usefulness, and supreme value of mathematical science. ~ Richard Courant,
1236:Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before. Some day, I doubt not, we shall arrive at an understanding of the evolution of the aesthetic faculty; but all the understanding in the world will neither increase nor diminish the force of the intuition that this is beautiful and that is ugly. ~ Thomas Huxley,
1237:Criticism is above all a gift, an intuition, a matter of tact and flair; it cannot be taught or demonstrated--it is an art. Critical genius means an aptitude for discerning truth under appearances or in disguises which conceal it; for discovering it in spite of the errors of testimony, the frauds of tradition, the dust of time, the loss or alteration of texts. It is the sagacity of the hunter whom nothing deceives for long, and whom no ruse can throw off the trail. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel,
1238:The gospel is unintelligible to most people today, especially in the West, because their own particular stories are remote from the story of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation that is narrated in the Bible. Our focus is introspective and narrow, confided to our own immediate knowledge, experience, and intuition. Trying desperately to get others, including God, to make us happy, we cannot seem to catch a glimpse of the real story that gives us a meaningful role. ~ Michael Horton,
1239:There are three principles to remember if you are to teach a human being anything, and they are consistency, consistency, consistency.They are such fragile creatures to begin with, with poor eyes, poorer hearing, and no sense of smell left to speak of, it's no wonder they are made of fear. Some centuries ago they moved inside and with that move went nine-tenths of their intuition. It is almost unmerciful to make them live so long when they spend their lives in so much pain. ~ Pam Houston,
1240:Never turn down a good idea, but never take a bad idea. And meditate. It’s very important to experience that Self, that pure consciousness. It’s really helped me. I think it would help any filmmaker. So start diving within, enlivening that bliss consciousness. Grow in happiness and intuition. Experience the joy of doing. And you’ll glow in this peaceful way. Your friends will be very, very happy with you. Everyone will want to sit next to you. And people will give you money! ~ David Lynch,
1241:There’s a need to understand, but that doesn’t require knowledge. The God hypothesis, for example, allows you to have an unparalleled understanding of absolutely everything while knowing absolutely nothing … Give a man a highly simplified model of the world and interpret every event on the basis of this simple model. This approach requires no knowledge. A few rote formulas, plus some so-called intuition, some so-called practical acumen, and some so-called common sense. ~ Arkady Strugatsky,
1242:SPEAKING OF ATTENTION AND EFFORT “I won’t try to solve this while driving. This is a pupil-dilating task. It requires mental effort!” “The law of least effort is operating here. He will think as little as possible.” “She did not forget about the meeting. She was completely focused on something else when the meeting was set and she just didn’t hear you.” “What came quickly to my mind was an intuition from System 1. I’ll have to start over and search my memory deliberately. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
1243:We must evaluate the political sympathies of other states and the effect war may have on them. To assess these things in all their ramifications and diversity is plainly a colossal task. Rapid and correct appraisal of them clearly calls for the intuition of a genius; to master all this complex mass by sheer methodical examination is obviously impossible. Bonaparte was quite right when he said that Newton himself would quail before the algebraic problems it could pose. ~ Carl von Clausewitz,
1244:The common factor in all these manifestations of intuition is a sort of ski jump—a soaring take-off from the known and established, ending in a swooping arrival at an advanced point, with the intervening steps apparently left out. Those steps are not really left out, of course; they are performed in and by the unconscious, often with extraordinary speed, and the result of the unconscious processes pops into the conscious mind with an effect of inspiration and certainty. ~ Isabel Briggs Myers,
1245:To all appearances the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing. If we give the attributes of a medium to the artist, we must then deny him the state of consciousness on the aesthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it. All this decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or written, or even thought out. ~ Marcel Duchamp,
1246:Evaluation of enemy strength is not an absolute, but a matter of piecing together scraps of reconnaissance and intelligence to form a picture, if possible a picture to fit preconceived theories or to suit the demands of a particular strategy. What a staff makes out of the available evidence depends upon the degree of optimism or pessimism prevailing among them, on what they want to believe or fear to believe, and sometimes upon the sensitivity or intuition of an individual. ~ Barbara W Tuchman,
1247:The Warrior of Light knows the importance of intuition. In the midst of battle he has no time to think about the enemy’s blows – so he uses his instinct and obeys his angel. In times of peace he deciphers the signs that God sends him. People say: ‘He’s crazy.’ Or else: ‘He lives in a fantasy world.’ Or even: ‘How can he put his trust in such illogical things?’ But the warrior knows that intuition is God’s alphabet, and so he continues to listen to the wind and talk to the stars. ~ Paulo Coelho,
1248:If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things—that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practice it. ~ Chade Meng Tan,
1249:If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things—that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practice it. ~ Walter Isaacson,
1250:No one expects the rug to be yanked out from underneath them; life-changing events usually don’t announce themselves. While instinct and intuition can help provide some warning signs, they can do little to prepare you for the feeling of rootlessness that follows when fate flips your world upside down. Anger, confusion, sadness, and frustration are shaken up together inside you like a snow globe. It takes years for the emotional dust to settle as you do your best to see through the storm. ~ Slash,
1251:Jeder von uns hat zweierlei Geist. Einen wachen Geist und einen schlafenden Geist. Unser wacher Geist ist der, der denkt und spricht. Unser schlafender Geist aber ist viel mächtiger. Er schaut tief in das Herz der Dinge hinein. Das ist der Teil von uns, der träumt. Er erinnert sich an alles. Er verleiht uns die Intuition. Dein wacher Geist versteht das Wesen der Namen nicht. Dein schlafender Geister versteht es durchaus. Er weiß bereits vieles, was dein wacher Geist nicht weiß. ~ Patrick Rothfuss,
1252:If character is destiny, I was fated to be carried off into the desert. From the deck of the ship I had imagined my own ghost and seen my unvanishing footsteps. When you don't belong anywhere it doesn't matter where you are or where you go, if you stay or move on. You arrive at a place where the view forwards and backwards is the same, where the sun rises in the east one day and the west the next, where you stop planning and live like the birds and beasts by intuition and instinct. ~ Chloe Thurlow,
1253:If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there's room to hear more subtle things - that's when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It's a discipline; you have to practice it. ~ Walter Isaacson,
1254:The warrior of light knows the importance of intuition. In the midst of battle, he does not have time to think of the enemy's blows, and so he uses his instinct and obeys his angel. in times of peace, he deciphers the signs that God sends him. People say, "He's mad." Or, "He lives in a fantasy world." Or even, "How can he possibly believe in such illogical things?" But the warrior knows that intuition is God's alphabet and he continues listening to the wind and talking to the stars. ~ Paulo Coelho,
1255:What an artist does, is fail. Any reading of the literature, (I mean the literature of artistic creation), however summary, will persuade you instantly that the paradigmatic artistic experience is that of failure. The actualization fails to meet, equal, the intuition. There is something "out there" which cannot be brought "here". This is standard. I don't mean bad artists, I mean good artists. There is no such thing as a "successful artist" (except, of course, in worldly terms). ~ Donald Barthelme,
1256:I was a hidden treasure, and I loved to be known, and so I created the worlds both visible and invisible.”4 Both the saying itself and the understanding that illumines it derive from a profound mystical intuition that our created universe is a vast mirror, or ornament (and the Greek word “cosmos” literally means “an ornament”), through which divine potentiality—beautiful, fathomless, endlessly creative—projects itself into form in order to realize fully the depths of divine love. ~ Cynthia Bourgeault,
1257:We call our intuition our sixth sense, but in reality it would be called our first sense, because it's rooted in quantum nature of reality. It was around long before our solar system and our planetary system were even formulated or even organized. It is at the basis of how our normal sensing works. So instead of being our sixth sense or even â€" using the parapsychological term â€" "extrasensory perception," it's not. It's at the basis of our perception, and that's the quantum world. ~ Edgar Mitchell,
1258:But every point of view is a point of blindness: it incapacitates us for every other point of view. From a certain point of view, the room in which I write has no door. I turn around. Now I see the door, but the room has no window. I look up. From this point of view, the room has no floor. I look down; it has no ceiling. By avoiding particular points of view we are able to have an intuition of the whole. The ideal for a Christian is to become holy, a word which derives from “whole. ~ Richard Wurmbrand,
1259:I am dominated by one thing, an irresistible, burning attraction towards the abstract. The expression of human feelings and the passions of man certainly interest me deeply, but I am less concerned with expressing the motions of the soul and mind than to render visible, so to speak, the inner flashes of intuition which have something divine in their apparent insignificance and reveal magic, even divine horizons, when they are transposed into the marvellous effects of pure plastic art. ~ Gustave Moreau,
1260:Whatever you think The Uni-verse is withholding from you, YOU are withholding from The Uni-verse. If you think that The Uni-verse isn't answering your prayers, chances are you aren't listening to your intuition and following it. You are so scared that you ask for new intuition, but that's not how life works. The Uni-verse is constantly whispering to you, nudging you to trust It and take a leap. But if you don't take the leap of faith, then The Uni-verse can't open any more doors for you. ~ Mastin Kipp,
1261:If we can combine our knowledge of science with the wisdom of wildness, if we can nurture civilization through roots in the primitive, man's potentialities appear to be unbounded, Through this evolving awareness, and his awareness of that awareness, he can emerge with the miraculous-to which we can attach what better name than 'God'? And in this merging, as long sensed by intuition but still only vaguely perceived by rationality, experience may travel without need for accompanying life. ~ Charles Lindbergh,
1262:We sat there in silence for a while, just taking in the moment of reflection between us. It’s funny how a woman feels different to a man. They feel nice and soft, but because there isn’t that spark of attraction there it’s more of a sisterly or maternal warmth that you feel from them. It’s wonderful. And it brings out this strange protective streak that seems borne from intuition if you have man parts, regardless of whether your man parts like other men’s parts. And I wanted to protect Fran. ~ Sean Kennedy,
1263:There exists a law, not written down anywhere but inborn in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading but by derivation and absorption and adoption from nature itself; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero,
1264:When we honestly confront the things we own, they evoke many emotions within us. Those feelings are real. It is these emotions that give us the energy for living. Believe what your heart tells you when you ask, “Does this spark joy?” If you act on that intuition, you will be amazed at how things will begin to connect in your life and at the dramatic changes that follow. It is as if your life has been touched by magic. Putting your house in order is the magic that creates a vibrant and happy life. ~ Marie Kond,
1265:You carry that through and adapt it to a camera lens, but you're quite right, you cannot be sure of what an audience is going to do. You don't know what's going to happen to the piece you're doing anyway. You don't know how it's going to be edited. There are a lot more unknowns in cinema. But that you have to readily accept. That's when, I think, you have to forget about intellect, to a degree. Intuition is very important when you're working with a lens, I believe, for what the lens is doing, too. ~ John Hurt,
1266:We think conscious thought is somehow better, when in fact, intuition is soaring flight compared to the plodding of logic. Nature’s greatest accomplishment, the human brain, is never more efficient or invested than when its host is at risk. Then, intuition is catapulted to another level entirely, a height at which it can accurately be called graceful, even miraculous. Intuition is the journey from A to Z without stopping at any other letter along the way. It is knowing without knowing why. At ~ Gavin de Becker,
1267:The Theatre of the Absurd has renounced arguing about the absurdity of the human condition; it merely presents it in being - that is, in terms of concrete stage images. This is the difference between the approach of the philosopher and that of the poet; the difference, to take an example from another sphere, between the idea of God in the works of Thomas Aquinas or Spinoza and the intuition of God in those of St. John of the Cross or Meister Eckhart - the difference between theory and experience. ~ Martin Esslin,
1268:The vain arrogance of the literati and the Bohemian artists dismisses the activities of the businessmen as unintellectual money-making. The truth is that the entrepreneurs and promoters display more intellectual faculties and intuition than the average writer and painter. The inferiority of many self-styled intellectuals manifests itself precisely in the fact that they fail to recognize what capacity and reasoning power are required to develop and to operate successfully a business enterprise. ~ Ludwig von Mises,
1269:High SQ demands the most intense personal integrity. It demands that we stand open to experience, that we recapture our ability to see life and others afresh, as though through the eyes of a child, to learn how to tap into our intuition and visualization, as a powerful means of using our inner knowing to “make a difference.” It demands that we cease to seek refuge in what we know and constantly explore and learn from what we do not know. It demands that we live the questions rather than the answers. ~ Danah Zohar,
1270:Decision-making is difficult because, by its nature, it involves uncertainty. If there was no uncertainty, decisions would be easy! The uncertainty exists because we don't know the future, we don't know if the decision we make will lead to the best possible outcome. Cognitive science has taught us that relying on our gut or intuition often leads to bad decisions, particularly in cases where statistical information is available. Our guts and our brains didn't evolve to deal with probabilistic thinking. ~ Daniel Levitin,
1271:Even though the decision you make may not be the best one, the mere deciding gives you strength and raises your morale. It’s the fear of doing the wrong thing that attracts the wrong thing. Decide and act, and the chances are that your troubles will fade into thin air --whether you make a mistake or not. All great men are men of quick decision which flows from their intuition, their accumulated knowledge, and previous experience. So learn to be quick in making decisions and audacious in your actions. ~ Claude M Bristol,
1272:Intellect is not going to be your home. It is a small instrument, to be used only for passing from instinct to intuition. So only the person who uses his intellect to go beyond it can be called intelligent. Intuition is existential. Instinct is natural. Intellect is just groping in the dark. The faster you move beyond intellect, the better; intellect can be a barrier to those who think nothing is beyond it. Intellect can be a beautiful passage for those who understand that there is certainly something beyond it. ~ Osho,
1273:The new painters do not propose, any more than did their predecessors, to be geometers. But it may be said that geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of the writer. Today, scholars no longer limit themselves to the three dimensions of Euclid. The painters have been lead quite naturally, one might say by intuition, to preoccupy themselves with the new possibilities of spatial measurement which, in the language of the modern studios, are designated by the term fourth dimension. ~ Guillaume Apollinaire,
1274:Experience informs intuition. But it does more than that: Experience sets the frame within which we analyze and interpret what we perceive. You would no doubt expect, for instance, that the "wild child" raised by a pack of wolves would interpret the world from a perspective that differs substantially from your own. Even less extreme comparisons, such as those between people raised in very different cultural traditions, serve to underscore the degree to which our experiences determine our interpretive mindset. ~ Brian Greene,
1275:In other words, thinking aims at and ends in contemplation, and contemplation is not an activity but a passivity; it is the point where mental activity comes to rest. According to traditions of Christian time, when philosophy had become the handmaiden of theology, thinking became meditation, and meditation again ended in contemplation, a kind of blessed state of the soul where the mind was no longer stretching out to know the truth but, in anticipation of a future state, received it temporarily in intuition. ~ Hannah Arendt,
1276:Jazz had an intuition about such things, the guy could read your eyes like few else could. He was famous for his sarcasm, wit, and dramatics, as well as for holding tightly to a world record for coitus interruptus. He’d been found on floors and rooftops, in taco stands, ladies’ shoes and underwear departments, the DMV—he’d been found by UPS drivers, cops in the park, beach patrol, meter readers, meter maids, meter maids’ boyfriends while on rooftops with the meter maids, National Guardsmen out on maneuvers. ~ Chet Williamson,
1277:What’s the difference between higher and lower vibration?   When we operate at a higher vibration, we have positive thoughts, and we attract positive people and activities. We also attract synchronicities, which allow us to go with the flow of the universe and guide us on our highest and greatest path. We are able to enjoy clearer intuition, peace, and happiness. Higher vibration lives still challenge us to grow, but our growth comes more smoothly and with greater ease.   Higher vibration = more positive ~ Caroline A Shearer,
1278:Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine. ... to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple: to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel,
1279:Hinton spent most of his adult years trying to visualize higher spatial dimensions. He had no interest in finding a physical interpretation for the fourth dimension. Einstein saw, however, that the fourth dimension can be taken as a temporal one. He was guided by a conviction and physical intuition that higher dimensions have a purpose: to unify the principles of nature. By adding higher dimensions, he could unite physical concepts that, in a three-dimensional world, have no connection, such as matter and energy. ~ Michio Kaku,
1280:Perhaps it had something to do with the case becoming too neat, all the evidence suddenly lining up and cooperating with their theory. Or maybe his doubts were based on something as unreliable as “intuition,” though Carlson had never been a big fan of that particular aspect of investigative work. Intuition was often a way of cutting corners, a nifty technique of replacing hard evidence and facts with something far more elusive and capricious. The worst investigators Carlson knew relied on so-called intuition. He ~ Harlan Coben,
1281:The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character. ~ Joseph Heller,
1282:An axiomatic system comprises axioms and theorems and requires a certain amount of hand-eye coordination before it works. A formal system comprises an explicit list of symbols, an explicit set of rules governing their cohabitation, an explicit list of axioms, and, above all, an explicit list of rules explicitly governing the steps that the mathematician may take in going from assumptions to conclusions. No appeal to meaning nor to intuition. Symbols lose their referential powers; inferences become mechanical. ~ David Berlinski,
1283:Nearly all economists disagreed with Trump, but he found an academic economist who hated free trade as much as he did. He brought him to the White House as both director of trade and industrial policy and director of the National Trade Council. Peter Navarro was a 67-year-old Harvard PhD in economics. “This is the president’s vision,” Navarro publicly said. “My function really as an economist is to try to provide the underlying analytics that confirm his intuition. And his intuition is always right in these matters. ~ Bob Woodward,
1284:Most of us lead far more meaningful lives than we know. Often finding meaning is not about doing things differently; it is about seeing familiar things in new ways. When we find new eyes, the unsuspected blessing in work we have done for many years may take us completely by surprise. We can see life in many ways: with the eye, with the mind, with the intuition. But perhaps it is only those who speak the language of meaning, who have remembered how to see with the heart, that life is ever deeply known or served. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen,
1285:It is true that the path of human destiny cannot but appal him who surveys a section of it. But he will do well to keep his small personal commentarie to himself, as one does at the sight of the sea or of majestic mountains, unless he knows himself to be called and gifted to give them expression in artistic or prophetic form. In most other cases, the voluminous talk about intuition does nothing but conceal a lack of perspective toward the object, which merits the same judgement as a similar lack of perspective toward men. ~ Max Weber,
1286:Those who thought they could distinguish philosophy from mathematics by saying that the former was concerned with quality only, the latter with quantity only, mistook effect for cause. It is owing to the form of mathematical knowledge that it can refer to quanta only, because it is only the concept of quantities that admits of construction, that is, of a priori representation in intuition, while qualities cannot be represented in any but empirical intuition. ~ Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781) Tr. Max Müller (1881) p. 612.,
1287:Because of … this concentration of all that is universal and real in one personal being, God is a deeply moving object, enrapturing to the imagination; whereas the idea of humanity has little power over the feelings, because humanity is only an abstraction; … God is … a subject; … the perfect universal being as one being, the infinite extension of the species as an all-comprehending unity. But God is only man's intuition of his own nature; thus the Christians … deify the human individual, make him the absolute being. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach,
1288:His intuition was luminous from the instant you met him. So was his intelligence. A lot of actors act intelligent, but Philip was the real thing: a shining, artistic polymath with an intelligence that came at you like a pair of headlights and enveloped you from the moment he grabbed your hand, put a huge arm round your neck and shoved a cheek against yours; or if the mood took him, hugged you to him like a big, pudgy schoolboy, then stood and beamed at you while he took stock of the effect. (About Philip Seymour Hoffman) ~ John le Carr,
1289:In human life and in the history of faith, I think, love has a quality of a bedrock reality we discover— adventurers, travelers, each of us, only fitfully apprehending its potential. I take some solace in the fact that I’m not alone in this intuition that the reality of evil, of injustice, of suffering notwithstanding, “at the center of this existence is a heart beating with love.” That’s how Desmond Tutu put it to me, with greater authority than mine from a life that has known extremes of human cruelty one to another. ~ Krista Tippett,
1290:while tyrants had many strengths, their weakness was generally the same. They were gullible. For the tyrant, there were no reigning facts, no universal systems of inquiry, no demonstrable truths. Because they preferred their own rationalization to reason, their dogma to discourse, the main means a tyrant had for testing another man’s integrity and loyalty were oaths and intuition. But since the tyrants had no choice but to teach everyone exactly what they wished to hear, they were simple to pander to and easy to fool. ~ Josiah Bancroft,
1291:1277
You'Ll Know It—as You Know 'Tis Noon
420
You'll know it—as you know 'tis Noon—
By Glory—
As you do the Sun—
By Glory—
As you will in Heaven—
Know God the Father—and the Son.
By intuition, Mightiest Things
Assert themselves—and not by terms—
"I'm Midnight"—need the Midnight say—
"I'm Sunrise"—Need the Majesty?
Omnipotence—had not a Tongue—
His listp—is Lightning—and the Sun—
His Conversation—with the Sea—
"How shall you know"?
Consult your Eye!
~ Emily Dickinson,
1292:The chaplain had sinned, and it was good. Common sense told him that telling lies and defecting from duty were sins. On the other hand, everyone knew that sin was evil and that no good could come from evil. But he did feel good; he felt positively marvelous. Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting from duty could not be sins. The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. ~ Joseph Heller,
1293:Americans are cultured from their earliest years to be either one-sided douloi or one-sided banausoi, i.e. either they cannot think abstractively/conceptually/orchestrally or else they can only think abstractively. Thinking in a truly rational dialectic between intuition and intellect is just beyond the reach of our nation of emotionalist helots. What prevails among us truly has to be called not thinking but "thinking," a pathetic surrogate for actual thinking for the benefit of existentially or modally crippled mentalities. ~ Kenny Smith,
1294:Elizabeth Taylor is, in my opinion, the greatest actress in film history. She instinctively understands the camera and its nonverbal intimacies. Opening her violet eyes, she takes us into the liquid realm of emotion, which she inhabits by Pisces intuition. Richard Burton said that Taylor showed him how to act for the camera. Economy and understatement are essential. At her best, Elizabeth Taylor simply is. An electric, erotic charge vibrates the space between her face and the lens. It is an extra-sensory, pagan phenomenon. ~ Camille Paglia,
1295:Many times, she wanted to ask her papa if he might teach her to play, but somehow, something always stopped her. Perhaps an unknown intuition told her that she would never be able to play it like Hans Hubermann. Surely, not even the world's greatest accordionists could compare. They could never be equal to the casual concentration on Papa's face. Or there wouldn't be a paintwork-traded cigarette slouched on the player's lips. And they could never make a small mistake with a three-note laugh of hindsight. Not the way he could. ~ Markus Zusak,
1296:the hospital after the diagnosis she formed a sudden and strong intuition: “This disease wanted to monopolize my attention, but as much as possible, I would focus on my life instead.” The cancer treatment that followed was exhausting and terrible, but Gallagher couldn’t help noticing, in that corner of her brain honed by a career in nonfiction writing, that her commitment to focus on what was good in her life—“movies, walks, and a 6:30 martini”—worked surprisingly well. Her life during this period should have been mired in fear ~ Cal Newport,
1297:To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman? ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
1298:By virtue of this filling of the causal gap, the most important demand of intuition – namely that one's conscious efforts have the capacity to affect one's own bodily actions – is beautifully met by the quantum ontology. And in this age of computers, and information, and flashing pixels there is nothing counterintuitive about the ontological idea that nature is built – not out of ponderous classically conceived matter but – out of events, and out of informational waves and signals that create tendencies for these events to occur. ~ Paul Davies,
1299:Avataric periods are like the spring-tide of creation. They bring a new release of power, a new awakening of consciousness, a new experience of life - not merely for a few, but for all. Qualities of energy and awareness, which had been used and enjoyed by only a few advanced souls, are made available for all humanity. Life, as a whole is stepped up to a higher level of consciousness, is geared to a new rate of energy. The transition from sensation to reason was one such step; the transition from reason to intuition will be another. ~ Meher Baba,
1300:Synchronicities are not flukes or random events—they’re intentional reflections of our intuition working with the perfect order of all things in the unseen world. It’s why fish swim upstream, birds fly south, and bears hibernate. Everything in nature intuitively gravitates toward what best serves its growth, and that includes the human race. The only difference is that we have the choice to follow our intuition or not. So if you want your sixth sense to work, stop resisting your vibes, and change the rules you live by instead. ~ Sonia Choquette,
1301:"Cynicism," like "heresy" and "heterodoxy" and "atheism" and "agnosticism" and "paganism" and "heathenism," is above all else a way for organized orthodoxy's caste of official censors to encyst and segregate and thus neutralize all contrarian forms of seeing and thinking, all (necessarily implicitly) prohibited and repressed ways of exercising disruptive and iconoclastic intuition and intellection (for to analyze and explain these things too openly is to give them publicity and potential cogency when the point is to asphyxiate them). ~ Kenny Smith,
1302:In fact, the rector presently said that he mustn't detain Mullins too long and that he had detained him too long already and that Mullins must be weary from his train journey and that in cases of extreme weariness nothing but a sound sleep was of any avail; he himself, unfortunately, would not be able to avail himself of the priceless boon of slumber until he had first retired to his study to write some letters; so that Mullins, who had a certain kind of social quickness of intuition, saw that it was time to leave, and went away. ~ Stephen Leacock,
1303:Be compassionate with people you know and those you don’t. We are all sacred. We are all achingly beautiful. Intuition allows us to recognize one another’s light. Let’s take our cue from poet Mary Oliver when she writes about “seeing through the heavenly visibles to the heavenly invisibles.” Compassion grants us the sightedness to behold both the surface of things and their deeper emotional dimensions. It enables us to be more giving, thereby consecrating our relationships. It lets us make the earth a better place than when we came. ~ Judith Orloff,
1304:The mental disease of the present generation is impatience of study, contempt of the great masters of ancient wisdom, and a disposition to rely wholly upon unassisted genius and natural sagacity. The wits of these happy days have discovered a way to fame, which the dull caution of our laborious ancestors durst never attempt; they cut the knots of sophistry, which it was formerly the business of years to untie, solve difficulties by sudden irradiations of intelligence, and comprehend long processes of argument by immediate intuition. ~ Samuel Johnson,
1305:Multi-sensory perception is also the ability to see meaning in everyday experiences...You have non-physical guides and teachers. You access them through your intuition. You hear them 'so to speak' through your insights, inspirations, and clarity. Non-physical teachers cannot control you. You must always decide for yourself how you will use your energy, what you will create. They will assist you to see your choices and the consequences of each. They will guide you to the full scope and depth of your power. How you use your power is up to you. ~ Gary Zukav,
1306:We, all of us in the First World, have participated in something of a binge, a half century of unbelievable prosperity and ease. We may have had some intuition that it was a binge and the earth couldn't support it, but aside from the easy things (biodegradable detergent, slightly smaller cars) we didn't do much. We didn't turn our lives around to prevent it. Our sadness is almost an aesthetic response - appropriate because we have marred a great, mad, profligate work of art, taken a hammer to the most perfectly proportioned of sculptures. ~ Bill McKibben,
1307:The ancient intuition that all matter, all "reality," is energy, that all phenomena, including time and space, are mere crystallizations of mind, is an idea with which few physicists have quarreled since the theory of relativity first called into question the separate identities of energy and matter. Today most scientists would agree with the ancient Hindus that nothing exists or is destroyed, things merely change shape or form; that matter is insubstantial in origin, a temporary aggregate of he pervasive energy that animates the electron. ~ Peter Matthiessen,
1308:The intuition of those residing in ghetto communities that they had suddenly become disposable was rooted in real changes in the economy—changes that have been devastating to poor black communities as factories have closed, low-skill jobs have disappeared, and all those who had the means to flee the ghetto did. The sense among those left behind that society no longer has use for them, and that the government now aims simply to get rid of them, reflects a reality that many of us who claim to care prefer to avoid simply by changing channels. ~ Michelle Alexander,
1309:The Arousal of Intuition
(The Water Exercise)

Make a puddle of water on a smooth, non-absorbant surface. Look into the puddle for a while. Then, begin to play with it, without any particular commitment or objective. Make designs that mean absolutely nothing.

Do this exercise for a week, allowing at least ten minutes each time. Don’t look for practical results from this
exercise; it is simply calling up your intuition, little by little. When this intuition begins to manifest itself at other times of the day, always trust in it. ~ Paulo Coelho,
1310:Certainly there are things worth believing. I believe in the brotherhood of man and the uniqueness of the individual. But if you ask me to prove what I believe, I can't. You know them to be true but you could spend a whole lifetime without being able to prove them. The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a leap—call it intuition or what you will—and comes out upon a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap. ~ Albert Einstein,
1311:Damasio has shown that, without emotion and intuition, reason easily becomes detached from practical intelligence, and produces intellectually clever people who behave stupidly. From a functional point of view, emotions are general states of readiness to deal with broad kinds of threats and dilemmas. Fear is readiness to flee; anger is readiness to intimidate; sadness is readiness to withdraw and mourn; and ‘interest’ and ‘intrigue’ are the feelings that signal readiness to learn. Without some kind of emotional engagement, learning is slow and weak. ~ Guy Claxton,
1312:I have an idea of a set of colors and see what I have. A lot of things, the best, more magical things in the paintings just sort of happen. They aren't things I thought of in advance. They are more things I am given. What paint does, in watercolor more than oil but it happens in oil too, are things one never expects if you work freely. I suppose I learned a lot coming to this after years of playing improvisational music. I have to trust my intuition and I work in the moment, when that moment seems to be happening. And to leave it alone when it is not. ~ John Lurie,
1313:Certainly there are things worth believing. I believe in the brotherhood of man and the uniqueness of the individual. But if you ask me to prove what I believe, I can’t. You know them to be true but you could spend a whole lifetime without being able to prove them. The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a leap — call it intuition or what you will — and comes out upon a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap. ~ Albert Einstein,
1314:For instance, it has been argued since the 1970s that limiting speed on the highway (and enforcing it) leads to an extremely effective increase in safety. This can be plausible because risks of accidents increase disproportionally (that is, nonlinearly) with speed, and humans are not ancestrally equipped with such intuition. Someone recklessly driving a huge vehicle on the highway is endangering your safety and needs to be stopped before he hits your convertible Mini—or put in a situation in which he is the one exiting the gene pool, not you. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
1315:That is, through his imagination, Goethe could, when practising ‘active seeing’, enter into the inner being of whatever he was observing, in the way that the philosopher Bergson argued ‘intuition’ could. Here ‘imagination’ is not understood in the reductive sense of ‘unreal’ but in the sense given it by Hermetic thinkers such as Ficino and Suhrawardi, as a means of entering the Hūrqalyā, the Imaginal World or anima mundi that mediates between the world of pure abstraction (Plato’s Ideas) and physical reality (in Goethe’s case, a plant or a cathedral). ~ Gary Lachman,
1316:A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants. A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is. Thus the Master is available to all people and doesn't reject anyone. He is ready to use all situations and doesn't waste anything. This is called embodying the light. What is a good man but a bad man's teacher? What is a bad man but a good man's job? If you don't understand this, you will get lost, however intelligent you are. It is the great secret. ~ Laozi,
1317:If you can bring yourself to apply your imagination to finding the possible favorable outcomes of undesired developments, even if only as an exercise, you'll see that it fosters creativity. This suggestion is much more than a way to find the silver lining our grandmothers encouraged us to look for. I include it in this book because creativity is linked to intuition, and intuition is the way out of the most serious challenges you might face. Albert Einstein said that when you follow intuition, The solutions come to you, and you don’t know how or why. ~ Gavin de Becker,
1318:I’ve learned that your intuition about things you don’t know that much about isn’t very good,” Page said. “The way Elon talks about this is that you always need to start with the first principles of a problem. What are the physics of it? How much time will it take? How much will it cost? How much cheaper can I make it? There’s this level of engineering and physics that you need to make judgments about what’s possible and interesting. Elon is unusual in that he knows that, and he also knows business and organization and leadership and governmental issues. ~ Ashlee Vance,
1319:The Qur’an sought to reform, not to destroy and start from scratch, to
salvage what was useful and then to modify and build on it. The task was
to get the Arabs to think about religion in a novel way, to inculcate in them a new conceptual frame of reference, to transfer them from one worldview to another, and higher, one. This process of transformation took them from traditionalism to individualism, from impulsiveness to discipline, from supernaturalism to science, from intuition to conscious reasoning and, in the end, ideally, harmonized the whole. ~ Jeffrey Lang,
1320:But then there are those people who overidentify with their emotions. Everything is justified for no other reason than they felt it. “Oh, I broke your windshield, but I was really mad; I couldn’t help it.” Or “I dropped out of school and moved to Alaska just because it felt right.”
Decision-making based on emotional intuition, without the aid of reason to keep it in line, pretty much always sucks.
You know who bases their entire lives on their emotions? Three-year-old kids. And dogs. You know what else three-year-olds and dogs do? Shit on the carpet. ~ Mark Manson,
1321:When the question is difficult and a skilled solution is not available, intuition still has a shot: an answer may come to mind quickly—but it is not an answer to the original question. The question that the executive faced (should I invest in Ford stock?) was difficult, but the answer to an easier and related question (do I like Ford cars?) came readily to his mind and determined his choice. This is the essence of intuitive heuristics: when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
1322:Your life will blossom or shrivel based upon the courage you have to act. Take smart risks that will require you to confront some fear in your life such as accepting more responsibility or applying for a new position. Go beyond your job description occasionally to tackle a persistent issue or opportunity. When your God-given creativity and intuition lead you to recognize problems and solutions that no one else has seen yet, don’t play it safe and hide these ideas in a dark closet. Take a risk—get those ideas out, give them some air, and see what develops. ~ Paul Coughlin,
1323:Since ancient times, the left side has stood for the side of the unconscious or the unknown; the right side, by contrast, has represented the side of consciousness or wakefulness. Through the late twentieth century, the movement of the Left limited themselves to a materialist understanding of reality- exemplified by Marxism- demanding social justice and economic equality but not the restoration of intuition and the recognition of the hidden, qualitative dimensions of being suppressed by the mental-rational consciousness, narrowly focused on the quantifiable. ~ Jean Gebser,
1324:We can all be clockmakers, or astronomers. But if we all wanted to be Pushkin. . .if the question is, how do you make a poem by Pushkin?- or, what exactly makes one poem or painting or piece of music greater than another?- or, what is beauty?, or liberty?, or virtue?- if the question is, how should we live?. . . then, reason gives no answer or different answers. So something went wrong. The divine spark in man is not reason after all, but something else, some kind of intuition or vision, perhaps like the moment of inspiration experienced by the artist . . . ~ Tom Stoppard,
1325:For me, this wondrous universe cannot be an incoherent and accidental cosmos, nor can it be grounded in evil, although I admit that this intellectual leap and bias toward beauty is still an act of faith and trust on my part. Yet this act of faith has also been the common sense and intuition of 99 percent of the people who have ever lived. I further believe that a free and loving God would create things that continue to recreate themselves, exactly as all parents desire for their children. God seems to want us to be in on the deal! The Great Work is ours too. ~ Richard Rohr,
1326:Since ancient times, the left side has stood for the side of the unconscious or the unknown; the right side, by contrast, has represented the side of consciousness or wakefulness. Through the late twentieth century, the movement of the Left limited themselves to a materialist understanding of reality- exemplified by Marxism- demanding social justice and economic equality but not the restoration of intuition and the recognition of the hidden, qualitative dimensions of being suppressed by the mental-rational consciousness, narrowly focused on the quantifiable. ~ Jean Gebser,
1327:In the first chakra (red), you look at your foundation and the source of your life energy. In the second chakra (orange), you explore your emotions. In the third chakra (yellow), you work on your intellect. The fourth chakra (green) is about opening your heart to your true desire. In the fifth chakra (blue), you learn about authentic self-expression. In the sixth chakra (purple), you work with your intuition. And finally, in the seventh chakra (neutral), you open yourself to finding your highest calling and reaching an elevated level of spiritual development. ~ Tori Hartman,
1328:We didn’t know much about each other twenty years ago. We were guided by our intuition; you swept me off my feet. It was snowing when we got married at the Ahwahnee. Years passed, kids came, good times, hard times, but never bad times. Our love and respect has endured and grown. We’ve been through so much together and here we are right back where we started 20 years ago—older, wiser—with wrinkles on our faces and hearts. We now know many of life’s joys, sufferings, secrets and wonders and we’re still here together. My feet have never returned to the ground. ~ Walter Isaacson,
1329:Whatever became of the moment
when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood, when it first occurred to you that you don't go on forever. It must have been shattering, stamped into one's memory. And yet I can't remember it. It never occurred to me at all. We must be born with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the word for it, before we know that there are words,out we come, bloodied and squalling...with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass, there's only one direction
and time is its only measure. ~ Tom Stoppard,
1330:What distinguishes a human being from a computer? The ability to add up numbers? The ability to understand language? The ability to be logical? It is, of course, none of the above. It is the ability to play. Computers cannot have fun. They cannot fantasize. They cannot dream, they cannot experience emotion or summon intuition. These rare, precious qualities come naturally to every child on this earth yet they tend to be seen, by well meaning adults, as faults, foibles and failings. In pushing tiny toddlers to 'perform', we rob them of the ability to imagine. ~ Jonathan Cainer,
1331:In a later chapter he describes a massive failure of intuition: Americans elected President Harding, whose only qualification for the position was that he perfectly looked the part. Square jawed and tall, he was the perfect image of a strong and decisive leader. People voted for someone who looked strong and decisive without any other reason to believe that he was. An intuitive prediction of how Harding would perform as president arose from substituting one question for another. A reader of this book should expect such an intuition to be held with confidence. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
1332:Motherhood involves a special communion with the mystery of life, as it develops in the mother's womb. The mother is filled with wonder at this mystery of life, and 'understands' with unique intuition what is happening inside her. In the light of the 'beginning', the mother accepts and loves as a person the child she is carrying in her womb. This unique contact with the new human being developing within her gives rise to an attitude towards human beings - not only towards her own child, but every human being - which profoundly marks the woman's personality. ~ Pope John Paul II,
1333:The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes - that it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere effects - this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could, science would explain the origin of life on earth at once - and there is every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow. To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity. ~ H L Mencken,
1334:: We didn’t know much about each other twenty years ago. We were guided by our intuition; you swept me off my feet. It was snowing when we got married at the Ahwahnee. Years passed, kids came, good times, hard times, but never bad times. Our love and respect has endured and grown. We’ve been through so much together and here we are right back where we started 20 years ago—older, wiser—with wrinkles on our faces and hearts. We now know many of life’s joys, sufferings, secrets and wonders and we’re still here together. My feet have never returned to the ground. ~ Walter Isaacson,
1335:In the words of the Mongolian creation myth: ‘There came a wild dog who was blue and gray and whose destiny was imposed on him by the heavens. His mate was a roe deer.Thus begins another love story. The wild dog with his courage and strength, the doe
with her gentleness, intuition, and elegance. Hunter and hunted meet and love each other.
According to the laws of nature, one should destroy the other, but in love there is neither
good nor evil, there is neither construction nor destruction, there is merely movement.
And love changes the laws of nature. ~ Paulo Coelho,
1336:The illusion of pattern affects our lives in many ways off the basketball court. How many good years should you wait before concluding that an investment adviser is unusually skilled? How many successful acquisitions should be needed for a board of directors to believe that the CEO has extraordinary flair for such deals? The simple answer to these questions is that if you follow your intuition, you will more often than not err by misclassifying a random event as systematic. We are far too willing to reject the belief that much of what we see in life is random. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
1337:Mood evidently affects the operation of System 1: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition. These findings add to the growing evidence that good mood, intuition, creativity, gullibility, and increased reliance on System 1 form a cluster. At the other pole, sadness, vigilance, suspicion, an analytic approach, and increased effort also go together. A happy mood loosens the control of System 2 over performance: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
1338:In my research, I have discovered practical, effective ways to do so. I’ll explain more in chapter 11, but for now let it suffice to say that you can modify your Emotional Style to improve your resilience, social intuition, sensitivity to your own internal emotional and physiological states, coping mechanisms, attention, and sense of well-being. The amazing fact is that through mental activity alone we can intentionally change our own brains. Mental activity, ranging from meditation to cognitive-behavior therapy, can alter brain function in specific circuits, ~ Richard J Davidson,
1339:I would call the attention of the reader to the difference between "reason" and "reasoning." Reason is a light, reasoning a process. Reason is a faculty, reasoning an exercise of that faculty. Reasoning proceeds from one truth to another by means of argumentation. This generally involves the whole mind in labor and complexity. But reason does not exist merely in order to engage in reasoning. The process is a means to an end. The true fulfillment of reason as a faculty is found when it can embrace the truth simply and without labor in the light of single intuition. ~ Thomas Merton,
1340:The various causes of ease or strain have interchangeable effects. When you are in a state of cognitive ease, you are probably in a good mood, like what you see, believe what you hear, trust your intuition, and feel that the current situation is comfortably familiar. You are also likely to be relatively casual and superficial in your thinking. When you feel strained, you are more likely to be vigilant and suspicious, invest more effort in what you are doing, feel less comfortable, and make fewer errors, but you also are less intuitive and less creative as usual. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
1341:I saw the craziness of the Western world as well as its capacity for rational thought. If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things—that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practice it. ~ Walter Isaacson,
1342:Mood evidently affects the operation of System 1: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition.
These findings add to the growing evidence that good mood, intuition, creativity, gullibility, and increased reliance on System 1 form a cluster. At the other pole, sadness, vigilance, suspicion, an analytic approach, and increased effort also go together. A happy mood loosens the control of System 2 over performance: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
1343:Mood evidently affects the operation of System 1: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition.
These findings add to the growing evidence that good mood, intuition, creativity, gullibility, and increased reliance on System 1 form a cluster. At the other pole, sadness, vigilance, suspicion, an analytic approach, and increased effort also go together. A happy mood loosens the control of System 2 over performance: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
1344:We didn’t know much about each other twenty years ago. We were guided by our intuition; you swept me off my feet. It was snowing when we got married at the Ahwahnee. Years passed, kids came, good times, hard times, but never bad times. Our love and respect has endured and grown. We’ve been through so much together and here we are right back where we started twenty years ago - older, wiser - with wrinkles on our faces and hearts. We now know many of life’s joys, sufferings, secrets and wonders and we’re still here together. My feet have never returned to the ground. ~ Walter Isaacson,
1345:A. Douglas Stone, a physicist who has spent his life using quantum mechanics to explore striking new phenomena, has turned his considerable writing skills to thinking about Einstein and the quantum. What he finds and makes broadly understandable are the riches of Einstein's thinking not about relativity, not about his arguments with Bohr, but about Einstein's deep insights into the quantum world, insights that Stone shows speak to us now with all the vividness and depth they had a century ago. This is a fascinating book, lively, engaging, and strong in physical intuition. ~ Peter Galison,
1346:The psychology of accurate intuition involves no magic. Perhaps the best short statement of it is by the great Herbert Simon, who studied chess masters and showed that after thousands of hours of practice they come to see the pieces on the board differently from the rest of us. You can feel Simon’s impatience with the mythologizing of expert intuition when he writes: “The situation has provided a cue; this cue has given the expert access to information stored in memory, and the information provides the answer. Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
1347:As adults, HSPs tend to have just the right personalities for inner work and healing. Generally speaking, your keen intuition helps you uncover the most important hidden factors. You have greater access to your own unconscious and so a greater sense of others' and how you were affected. You can develop a good sense of the process itself - when to push, when to back off. You have curiosity about inner life. Above all, you have integrity. You remain committed to the process of individuation no matter how difficult it is to face certain moments, certain wounds, certain facts. ~ Elaine N Aron,
1348:Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kgale Hill. These were its assets: a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, and an old typewriter. Then there was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe – the only lady private detective in Botswana – brewed redbush tea. And three mugs – one for herself, one for her secretary, and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really need? Detective agencies rely on human intuition and intelligence, both of which Mma Ramotswe had in abundance. No inventory would ever include those, of course. ~ Alexander McCall Smith,
1349:Through the whole trajectory from birth to childhood to adolescence and then into adulthood, we change so much, not only physically but also emotionally and intellectually, yet something remains unchanged. That sense of something unchanged is the eternal spark within. At the beginning it may be felt as a very subtle, almost incomprehensible intuition, but when we bring our full attention to that felt intuition of what’s the same throughout our whole lives, then that little seed of divine radiance can begin to reveal itself, can begin to shine brighter and brighter in our lives. ~ Adyashanti,
1350:I like the process of giving control away [at the recording]. When you give it up to people, it's another intelligent organism that digests your information completely differently from how a machine digests information. It's like you're on a sailboat, and every time you can find out how to better adjust [the sail] to make it more precise. And it's interesting to see that the musicians have their own ideas. To use their intuitive power with their knowledge that they incorporate into the music. This is the moment you give away control, you give it to someone else's intuition. ~ Pantha du Prince,
1351:Blake would say that there are some places in the Universe where the Fall has not occurred, the world has not turned upside down and Eden still exists. Here Mankind is not governed by the rules of reason, stupid and strict, but by the heart and intuition. The people do not indulge in idle chatter, parading what they know, but create remarkable things by applying their imagination. The state ceases to impose the shackles of daily oppression, but helps people to realize their hopes and dreams. And Man is not just a cog in the system, not just playing a role, but a free Creature. ~ Olga Tokarczuk,
1352:Einstein’s discovery of special relativity involved an intuition based on a decade of intellectual as well as personal experiences.9 The most important and obvious, I think, was his deep understanding and knowledge of theoretical physics. He was also helped by his ability to visualize thought experiments, which had been encouraged by his education in Aarau. Also, there was his grounding in philosophy: from Hume and Mach he had developed a skepticism about things that could not be observed. And this skepticism was enhanced by his innate rebellious tendency to question authority. ~ Walter Isaacson,
1353:Throughout his life, Albert Einstein would retain the intuition and the awe of a child. He never lost his sense of wonder at the magic of nature's phenomena-magnetic fields, gravity, inertia, acceleration, light beams-which grown-ups find so commonplace. He retained the ability to hold two thoughts in his mind simultaneously, to be puzzled when they conflicted, and to marvel when he could smell an underlying unity. "People like you and me never grow old," he wrote a friend later in life. "We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born. ~ Walter Isaacson,
1354:Today you are encouraged to work towards your dream! Each of us has a fire in our hearts burning for something. It’s our responsibility in life to find it and keep it lit. This is your life and it’s a short one. Don’t let others extinguish your flame. You must follow your heart. Try what you want to try. Go where you want to go. Follow your own intuition. Dream with your eyes open until you know exactly what it looks like. Then do at least one thing every day to make it a reality. Don’t waste your life fulfilling someone else’s dreams and desires. Believe in yourself and your abilities! ~ John Geiger,
1355:Deep Blue didn't win by being smarter than a human; it won by being millions of times faster than a human. Deep Blue had no intuition. An expert human player looks at a board position and immediately sees what areas of play are most likely to be fruitful or dangerous, whereas a computer has no innate sense of what is important and must explore many more options. Deep Blue also had no sense of the history of the game, and didn't know anything about its opponent. It played chess yet didn't understand chess, in the same way a calculator performs arithmetic bud doesn't understand mathematics. ~ Jeff Hawkins,
1356:I don't know if the young Einstein had encountered the Paradiso during his intellectual wanderings in Italy, and whether or not the vivid imagination of the Italian poet may have had a direct influence on his intuition that the universe might be both finite and without boundary. Whether or not such influence occurred, I believe that this example demonstrates how great science and great poetry are both visionary, and may even arrive at the same intuitions. Our culture is foolish to keep science and poetry separated: they are two tools to open our eyes to the complexity and beauty of the world. ~ Carlo Rovelli,
1357:Ordinary psyches often react to bad news with a momentary thrill, seeing the world, for once, in jagged clarity, as if lightning has just struck. But then darkness and dysfunction rush in. A mind such as Beethoven's remains illumined, or sees in the darkness shapes it never saw before, which inspire rather than terrify. This altered shape (raptus, he would say) makes art of the shapes, while holding in counterpoise such dualities as intellect and intuition, the conscious and the unconscious, mental health and mental disorder, the conventional and the unconventional, complexity and simplicity. ~ Edmund Morris,
1358:Klein studied nurses, intensive care units, firefighters, and other people who make decision under pressure, and one of his conclusions is that when experts make decisions, they don't logically and systematically compare all available options. That is the way people are taught to make decisions, but in real life it is much too slow. Klein's nurses and firefighters would size up a situation almost immediately and act, drawing on experience and intuition and a kind of rough mental simulation. To Van Riper, that seemed to describe much more accurately how people make decisions on the battlefield. ~ Malcolm Gladwell,
1359:Isabella." He pronounced my full name carefully, then playfully ruffled my hair with his free hand. A shock ran through my body at his casual touch. "Bella, I couldn't live with myself if I ever hurt you. You don't know how it's tortured me." He looked down, ashamed again. "The thought of you, still, white, cold . . . to never see you blush scarlet again, to never see that flash of intuition in your eyes when you see through my pretenses . . . it would be unendurable." he lifted his glorious, agonized eyes to mine. "You are the most important thing to me now. The most important thing to me ever. ~ Stephenie Meyer,
1360:Yet from the moment Homo sapiens, at least, makes his appearance, we find evidences in his attitude toward death, toward ancestral spirits, toward future existence, toward sun and sky, that betray a consciousness that forces and beings, distant in space and time, unapproachable if not invisible, may nevertheless play a controlling part in man's life. This was a true intuition, although it may have taken hundreds of thousands of years before its full import and rational proof could be grasped by the human mind, which now ranges between invisible particles and equally mysterious retreating galaxies. ~ Lewis Mumford,
1361:One piece of moral equipment natural selection implanted in our brains is a sense of justice—the intuition that good deeds should be rewarded and bad deeds should be punished. So seeing evildoers suffer can give us the gratifying sense that justice has been done. And, conveniently, it’s our enemies and rivals who typically are guilty of doing bad things; when our friends and allies do them, they are likely just victims of circumstance and so not deserving of harsh punishment. Unless, perhaps, they do bad things to us, which may be cause to start moving them out of the “friends and allies” category. ~ Robert Wright,
1362:To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?"

[To the Women of India (Young India, Oct. 4, 1930)] ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
1363:Unfortunately, most of the prevailing descriptions of quantum theory tend to emphasize puzzles and paradoxes in a way that makes philosophers, theologians, and even non-physicist scientists leery of actually using in any deep way the profound changes in our understanding of human beings in nature wrought by the quantum revolution. Yet, properly presented, quantum mechanics is thoroughly in line with our deep human intuitions. It is the 300 years of indoctrination with basically false ideas about how nature works that now makes puzzling a process that is completely in line with normal human intuition. ~ Paul Davies,
1364:Our culture teaches us from early infancy to split and polarize dark and light, which I call here “mother” and “father.” So some people admire the right-thinking, well-lit side of the personality, and that group one can associate with the father, if one wants to; and some admire the left-thinking, poorly-lit side, and that group one can associate with the mother, if one wants to, and mythologically with the Great Mother. Most artists, poets, and musicians belong to the second group and love intuition, music, the feminine, owls, and the ocean. The right-thinking group loves action, commerce, and Empire. ~ Robert Bly,
1365:There is nothing more remarkable than the timidity of ignorance, unless it be its temerity. When ignorance becomes daring, she has sometimes a sort of compass within herself—the intuition of the truth, clearer oftentimes in a simple mind than in a learned brain. Ignorance invites to an attempt. It is a state of wonderment, which, with its concomitant curiosity, forms a power. Knowledge often enough disconcerts and makes over–cautious. Gama, had he known what lay before him, would have recoiled before the Cape of Storms. If Columbus had been a great geographer, he might have failed to discover America. ~ Victor Hugo,
1366:There’s a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there’s no Evil Book about evil and how to be bad. The Devil has no prophets to write his Ten Commandments and no team of authors to write his biography. His case has gone completely by default. We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parables about evil people, proverbs about evil people, folk-lore about evil people. All we have is the living example of the people who are least good, or our own intuition. ~ Ian Fleming,
1367:Frank Jackson himself has subsequently repudiated the original conclusion of the knowledge argument. Like most philosophers, he now accepts that consciousness arises from purely physical processes: “Although I once dissented from the majority, I have capitulated,” he writes. Jackson believes that Mary the Color Scientist helps pinpoint our intuition about why conscious experience can’t be purely physical, but that this isn’t enough to qualify as a compelling argument for such a conclusion. The interesting task is to show how our intuition has led us astray—as, science keeps reminding us, it so often does. ~ Sean Carroll,
1368:In summary, listen to your “gut feeling,” especially in potentially dangerous situations. If you are a woman and have been asked out on a date or approached by a man who causes a sense something is wrong -don’t do it! If you are with your family and are driving or walking through a neighborhood and you sense something is wrong, don’t go there. If you are in a business deal and you sense your contact is deceiving you, listen to your intuition. Practice listening to this lightning fast retrieval of data, learn how to analyze it for accuracy and how to appropriately act on it. It could save your life. ~ Kevin Michael Shipp,
1369:A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition
lead him wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts
and keeps his mind open to what is.

Thus the Master is available to all people
and doesn't reject anyone.
He is ready to use all situations
and doesn't waste anything.
This is called embodying the light.

What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man's job?
If you don't understand this, you will get lost,
however intelligent you are.
It is the great secret. ~ Lao Tzu,
1370:You will never trust your intuition until you identify with it. Self-esteem enters here. At the earlier stages of inner growth, a person is esteemed who belongs to the group and upholds its values. If the knower within tries to object, he is stifled. Intuition actually becomes an enemy, because it has a nasty habit of saying things you aren’t supposed to hear. A soldier sacrificing his life on the front lines can’t afford to think about the barbarity of war and the rightness of pacifism. If his inner voice says, “What’s the point? The enemy is just me in another man’s skin,” self-esteem gets torn to shreds. ~ Deepak Chopra,
1371:There's a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there's no Evil Book about how to be evil and how to be bad. The Devil had no prophets to write his Ten Commandments, and no team of authors to write his biography. His case has gone completely by default. We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parables about evil people, proverbs about evil people, folklore about evil people. All we have is the living example of people who are least good, or our own intuition. ~ Ian Fleming,
1372:When we come under the spell of the deeper domain of technology, its economic character and even its power aspect fascinate us less than its playful side. Then we realize we that we are involved in a play, a dance of the spirit, which cannot be grasped by calculation. What is ultimately left for science is intuition alone - a call of destiny.

This playful feature manifests itself more clearly in small things than in the gigantic works of our world. The crude observer can only be impressed by large quantities - chiefly when they are in motion - and yet there are as many organs in a fly as in a leviathan. ~ Ernst J nger,
1373:YOU ARE YOUR BABY’S BEST EXPERT Whenever we are asked advice on any topic, a favorite question of ours is “What do you think?” For example, if parents ask us if they should co-sleep with their baby, instead of simply saying yes (because that’s what felt best for ourselves and our babies), we like to first hear what the parents’ intuition is telling them to do. We may then share our personal thoughts on the matter, which may or may not be in line with how the parents feel. We would rather help parents build on their own intuition than try to shape their ideas to fit ours. And the same goes for you, our readers. ~ William Sears,
1374:For example, ISTJ people (introverted sensing types preferring thinking to feeling as auxiliary) normally run their outer life with their second-best process, thinking, so it is conducted with impersonal system and order. They do not leave it to their third-best process, feeling, as they would have to do if both their sensing and their thinking were introverted. Similarly, INFP people (introverted feeling types preferring intuition to sensing as auxiliary) normally run their outer life with their second-best process, their intuition, so their outer life is characterized by spurts and projects and enthusiasm. ~ Isabel Briggs Myers,
1375:Our earth of factory chimneys and offices, seething with work and business, our earth with a hundred new radiations—this great organism lives, in final analysis, only because of, and for the sake of, a new soul. Beneath a change of age lies a change of thought. Where are we to look for it, where are we to situate this renovating and subtle alteration which, without appreciably changing our bodies, has made new creatures of us? In one place and one only—in a new intuition involving a total change in the physiognomy of the universe in which we move—in other words, in an awakening. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man,
1376:Coming back after seven months in Indian villages, I saw the craziness of the Western world as well as its capacity for rational thought. If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things—that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practice it. ~ Walter Isaacson,
1377:Our future-focused, technology-obsessed world seems to be hurtling down a bad path. People are turning to ancestral practices for a sense of enduring longevity, and comfort. To help stay sane and grounded in the midst of so much cultural insanity. To source a different kind of power in hopes of making changes both personal and political. From learning meditation to fighting off a cold with some homemade fire cider; from indigo-dyeing your curtains to strengthening your intuition with the aid of the Tarot, such old-world practices are capturing our imaginations and providing us with meaningful ways to impact our world. ~ Michelle Tea,
1378:Somethings worth having defy logic. They come with obstacles, challenges, battles and long periods of wandering in the dark. Your path won't make sense to your family or friends. People will weigh in with their life rules and fears, but in the end it is your life. That pull you feel is real and often your intuition. It nags at you everyday. Follow it for as far as it takes you because life is too short to dwell on indecision, while you forget to live. Take a chance because if you have a good heart God isn't going to abandon you. He will travel wherever you need to go, in order to find the missing pieces of your soul. ~ Shannon L Alder,
1379:Another feature distinguishing Emily from the multitude was a kind of special sensitivity that couldn’t be explained from a stereotypical point of view. It was natural for her to make decisions based on so-called sixth feeling instead of logic. Sometimes, she simply felt and knew that it was right to act in a certain way, or that something particular was going to happen in the closest future.
It’s interesting that, when she tested decisions made up by intellect and the ones when followed intuition, the latter always won. But how could she explain it to an average person, like those surrounding her in everyday life? ~ Sahara Sanders,
1380:Watt settled in, finding his rhythm, his fingers flying across the touch screen as he manipulated pieces of invisible information, like pulling on the strings of a massive, intricate net. He and Nadia worked well together. Even as he made his way slowly and methodically through the hack, Watt could feel her there, a ghostly presence, like the light of a candle flickering just at the edge of his vision. He lost all sense of time and place, his entire being reduced to the string of numerics on the screen before him, waiting for the flash of intuition that would enable him to see a pattern, a blind spot, anything at all. ~ Katharine McGee,
1381:Seen from the air, the male mind must look rather like the canals of Europe, with ideas being towed along well-worn towpaths by heavy-footed dray horses. There is never any doubt that they will, despite wind and weather, reach their destinations by following a simple series of connected lines.
But the female mind, even in my limited experience, seems more of a vast and teeming swamp, but a swamp that knows in an instant whenever a stranger--even miles away--has so much as dipped a single toe into her waters. People who talk about this phenomenon, most of whom know nothing whatsoever about it, call it "woman's intuition. ~ Alan Bradley,
1382:The evil we see today was not part of God's original design. It was not God's intent for human life. That means that ultimately, even a peaceful death at the age of 90 yrs old is not the way things were meant to be...The rage at the dying of the light is our intuition that we were not meant for mortality, for the loss of love, or for the triumph of darkness. In order to help people face death and grief we often tell people that death is a perfectly natural part of life. But that asks them to repress a very right and profound human intuition - that we were not meant to simply go to dust, and that love was meant to last. ~ Timothy J Keller,
1383:That morning, I felt like the deer. Not that I was sniffing the air, or standing in fear–but like the deer, I was in the grip of very old and emotional ways of moving through a landscape, experiencing forms of attention and deportment beyond conscious control. Something inside me ordered me how and where to step without me knowing much about it. It might be a million years of evolution, it might be intuition, but on my goshawk hunt I feel tense when I’m walking or standing in sunlight, find myself unconsciously edging towards broken light, or slipping into the narrow, cold shadows along the wide breaks between pine stands. ~ Helen Macdonald,
1384:The best antidote to worry is action. If there is an action that will lessen the likelihood of a dreaded outcome occurring, and if that action doesn't cost too much in terms of effort or freedom, then take it. The worry about whether we remembered to close the baby gate at the top of the stairs can be stopped in an instant by checking. Then it isn't a worry anymore; it's just a brief impulse. Almost all of the worry parents feel about keeping their children safe evolves from the conflict between intuition and inaction.

Your choices when worrying are clear: take action, have faith, pray, seek comfort, or keep worrying. ~ Gavin de Becker,
1385:Audrey kept moving with practiced quickness, stepping over roots protruding over the trail and pushing ferns and branches out of her way. She kept a brisk pace, but Kaldar didn't mind. From his vantage point, he had an excellent view of her shapely butt. It was a butt that deserved some scrutiny.

"If you're waiting for my behind to do a trick, you're out of luck," Audrey called over her shoulder.

"How the hell did you even know?" Did she have eyes on the back of her head?

"Woman's intuition," she told him.

"Aha, so it wouldn't be the fact that I stumbled twice in the last minute?"

"Not at all. ~ Ilona Andrews,
1386:method developed by John Nash and Jürgen Moser is one of the pillars of the Kolmogorov–Arnold–Moser (KAM) theory that Étienne had mentioned. I also knew that Nash–Moser relies on Newton’s extraordinary iteration scheme for finding successively better approximations to the roots of real-valued equations—a method that converges unimaginably fast, exponentially exponentially fast!—and that Kolmogorov was able to exploit it with remarkable ingenuity. Frankly, I couldn’t see any connection whatever between these things and Landau damping. But who knows, I muttered to myself, perhaps Étienne’s intuition will turn out to be correct.… ~ C dric Villani,
1387:Piaget is also concerned with attempts of Maine de Biran, Bergson, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty to construct a philosophical psychology as opposed to a scientific empirical psychology. He believes that the difference between philosophical psychology and scientific psychology lies neither in the fact that the former concerns itself with “essences” (Husserl), with “irrationality” (Sartre), nor in its use of introspection. He sees the difference as being one rather of method: philosophical psychology neglects objective verification and grounds itself in subjectivity, although claiming to arrive at objective knowledge through intuition. ~ Jean Piaget,
1388:In 2006, Avinash Kaushik and Ronny Kohavi, two data analysis professionals who were then working at Intuit and Microsoft, respectively, came up with the acronym HiPPO to summarize the dominant decision-making style at most companies. It stands for “highest-paid person’s opinion.” We love this shorthand and use it a lot, because it vividly illustrates the standard partnership. Even when the decisions are not made by the highest-paid people, they’re often—too often—based on opinions, judgments, intuition, gut, and System 1. The evidence is clear that this approach frequently doesn’t work well, and that HiPPOs too often destroy value. ~ Andrew McAfee,
1389:The zoo had fitted Karen with a protective plastic shell meant to discourage her charges from clutching on to her and wildly humping her frame, but it wasn’t 100 percent effective. On the upside, her many animal behavior classes had provided her with the intuition necessary to condition these monkeys to the concept of a glory hole; the downside was that seeing them lined up and “standing at attention” through a chain-link fence first thing in the morning was enough to make her rethink a career in veterinary medicine altogether. She returned to our lab after the internship having decided that maybe botany wasn’t so boring after all. Even ~ Hope Jahren,
1390:Grow with discipline. Balance intuition with rigor. Innovate around the core. Don't embrace the status quo. Find new ways to see. Never expect a silver bullet. Get your hands dirty. Listen with empathy and overcommunicate with transparency. Tell your story, refusing to let others define you. Use authentic experiences to inspire. Stick to your values, they are your foundation. Hold people accountable, but give them the tools to succeed. Make the tough choices; it's how you execute that counts. Be decisive in times of crisis. Be nimble. Find truth in trials and lessons in mistakes. Be responsible for what you see, hear, and do. Believe. ~ Howard Schultz,
1391:Free-thinking, powerful, passionate women are dangerous to a conservative male-dominated culture. They tend to do what they want and believe is right...not what you tell them. And so patriarchal cultures have a deep-seated fear of women in their power, their ability to give life...and take life, their uncontrollable emotions, their intuition, their constant changing. Rather than seek partnership with this power, the patriarchal system has chosen to dominate and subdue the women who show signs of it through shaming, branding, naming, ostracising, traumatising, raping, medicating...and burning. In patriarchy powerful women are a threat. Their ~ Lucy H Pearce,
1392:People’s bodies sometimes know things before people themselves do. In a controlled experiment, scientists asked people to draw cards from four decks, two of which were heavily skewed with penalties. Skin measurements showed that people contemplating the bad decks began sweating more profusely before they themselves could verbalize an intuition about which decks to avoid. Such research shows that emotions are a mix of brain states and body experiences, which include increased heart rate, hormonal activity, and input from the gut brain. It also shows that the body plays a role in the reasoning process. Having a gut feeling is not just a metaphor. ~ Jeremy Narby,
1393:How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers. ~ Isaac Asimov,
1394:I usually say, “Let’s start with off-season clothes.” I have a good reason for choosing off-season clothing for their first foray into this tidying gala. It’s the easiest category for tuning in to one’s intuition concerning what feels good. If they start with clothes they are currently using, clients are more likely to think, “It doesn’t spark joy, but I just wore it yesterday,” or “If I don’t have any clothes left to wear, what am I going to do?” This makes it harder for them to make an objective decision. Because off-season clothes are not imminently necessary, it is much easier to apply the simple criterion of whether or not they bring you joy. ~ Marie Kond,
1395:It is difficult to imagine, with what obstinacy truths which one mind perceives almost by intuition, will be rejected by another; and how many artifices must be practised, to procure admission for the most evident propositions into understandings frighted by their novelty, or hardened against them by accidental prejudice; it can scarcely be conceived, how frequently, in these extemporaneous controversies, the dull will be subtle, and the acute absurd; how often stupidity will elude the force of argument, by involving itself in its own gloom; and mistaken ingenuity will weave artful fallacies, which reason can scarcely find means to disentangle. In ~ Samuel Johnson,
1396:Cultivating Self-Compassion: Letting Go of Perfectionism Cultivating a Resilient Spirit: Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness Cultivating Gratitude and Joy: Letting Go of Scarcity and Fear of the Dark Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith: Letting Go of the Need for Certainty Cultivating Creativity: Letting Go of Comparison Cultivating Play and Rest: Letting Go of Exhaustion as a Status Symbol and Productivity as Self-Worth Cultivating Calm and Stillness: Letting Go of Anxiety as a Lifestyle Cultivating Meaningful Work: Letting Go of Self-Doubt and “Supposed To” Cultivating Laughter, Song, and Dance: Letting Go of Being Cool and “Always in Control ~ Bren Brown,
1397:… everyone knew that sin was evil, and that no good could come from evil. But he did feel good; he felt positively marvellous. Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting from duty could not be sins. The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalisation, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honour, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. ~ Joseph Heller,
1398:The people we invite on the train are those with whom we are prepared to be vulnerable and real, with whom there is no room for masks and games. They strengthen us when we falter and remind us of the journey’s purpose when we become distracted by the scenery. And we do the same for them. Never let life’s Iagos—flatterers, dissemblers—onto your train. We always get warnings from our heart and our intuition when they appear, but we are often too busy to notice. When you realize they’ve made it on board, make sure you usher them off the train; and as soon as you can, forgive them and forget them. There is nothing more draining than holding grudges. ~ Arianna Huffington,
1399:…[E]veryone knew that sin was evil, and that no good could come from evil. But he did feel good; he felt positively marvellous. Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting from duty could not be sins. The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalisation, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honour, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. ~ Joseph Heller,
1400:Space is only the form of external intuition, and not a real object that could be perceived externally, nor is it a correlate of phenomena, but the form of phenomena themselves. Space, therefore, cannot exist absolutely (by itself) as something determining the existence of things, because it is no object, but only the form of possible objects. Things, therefore, as phenomenal, may indeed determine space, that is, impart reality to one or other of its predicates (quality and relation); but space, on the other side, as something existing by itself, cannot determine the reality of things in regard to quantity or form, because it is nothing real in itself. ~ Immanuel Kant,
1401:A long time from now someone unknown to me will stand on the white plain where I now stand. He will speak a different language and the mountains in the distance may have been ground down but there are certain constants that will reliably inform his life -- kings like great trees whose roots are watered in ignorance, men who come to war reluctantly only to discover they have the souls of jackals, and fortresses like mountains, as immovable and inevitable. I anticipate that a flash of intuition will make him look at the tumulus or crater or clamorous sprawling city where Troy once stood and intuit how many men once bent their minds toward its destruction. ~ Zachary Mason,
1402:Cultivating Authenticity: Letting Go of What People Think Cultivating Self-Compassion: Letting Go of Perfectionism Cultivating a Resilient Spirit: Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness Cultivating Gratitude and Joy: Letting Go of Scarcity and Fear of the Dark Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith: Letting Go of the Need for Certainty Cultivating Creativity: Letting Go of Comparison Cultivating Play and Rest: Letting Go of Exhaustion as a Status Symbol and Productivity as Self-Worth Cultivating Calm and Stillness: Letting Go of Anxiety as a Lifestyle Cultivating Meaningful Work: Letting Go of Self-Doubt and “Supposed To” Cultivating Laughter, Song, and ~ Bren Brown,
1403:Nothing is forgotten, all is permitted. In a stinking cave, muttering babies scream and scratch, furs undulate in copulation. In one corner, bright-eyed first marks are daubed on a wall. They are marks to function, marks of place, of time. They are marks to draw results and persist beyond one human lifetime. Instinct has arisen, snake-like, coiling itself into intuition and suggesting the very power of suggestion. No one noted down from a book this process, it grew from watching the elements, closeness to life-sources, death-forces that modern persons are divorced from. On this damp stone there is a curve, it is land, horizon, ejaculation, movement. ~ Genesis P Orridge,
1404:AFFIRMATIONS FOR SELF-CONFIDENCE ♦ I am safe and secure. ♦ I trust my intuition to guide me. ♦ I have enough time, money, and intelligence to accomplish my goals. ♦ I know that I am guided toward good today. ♦ I deserve all that is good. ♦ When I win, others win as well. ♦ I always find time to fulfill my dreams. ♦ I am blessed in many ways. ♦ Other people like and respect me. ♦ My efforts are always supported and encouraged. ♦ God always takes care of my every human need. ♦ I am devoted to teaching the world about love. ♦ I take advantage of spare moments in the day, and my small efforts add up to large accomplishments. ♦ My body obeys my every command. ~ Doreen Virtue,
1405:If you know bikes at all, you can tell a lot about a man by how he rides. Abdullah rode from reflex rather than concentration. His control of the bike in motion was as natural as his control of his legs in walking. He read the traffic with a mix of skill and intuition. Several times, he slowed before there was an obvious need, and avoided the hard braking that other, less instinctive riders were forced to make. Sometimes he accelerated into an invisible gap that opened magically for us, just when a collision seemed imminent. Although unnerving at first, the technique did soon inspire a kind of grudging confidence in me, and I relaxed in the ride. ~ Gregory David Roberts,
1406:Today we aren’t quite to the place that H. G. Wells predicted years ago, but society is getting closer out of necessity. Global businesses and organizations are being forced to use statistical analysis and data mining applications in a format that combines art and science–intuition and expertise in collecting and understanding data in order to make accurate models that realistically predict the future that lead to informed strategic decisions thus allowing correct actions ensuring success, before it is too late . . . today, numeracy is as essential as literacy. As John Elder likes to say: ‘Go data mining!’ It really does save enormous time and money. For those ~ Anonymous,
1407:An answer may be found in the Akashic Record, more exactly in the Akashic field, augmented continuously by quantum holographic information. To routinely access this deeper level of intuitive information requires a natural openness to such information, enhanced by practice, and by learning to trust the validity of such experience. As suggested above, intuition should be considered a basic source of information (our “first sense”) available in nature long before humans evolved to use language and so-called left brain processes. Intuitive information affects us at the cellular level and is more associated with feeling than with thinking, intellect, and language. ~ Ervin Laszlo,
1408:Hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, economic instability, unemployment, chronic disease, drug addiction, and war, for example, persist in spite of the analytical ability and technical brilliance that have been directed toward eradicating them. No one deliberately creates those problems, no one wants them to persist, but they persist nonetheless. That is because they are intrinsically systems problems—undesirable behaviors characteristic of the system structures that produce them. They will yield only as we reclaim our intuition, stop casting blame, see the system as the source of its own problems, and find the courage and wisdom to restructure it. ~ Donella H Meadows,
1409:Often, I cannot explain a certain move, only know that it feels right, and it seems that my intuition is right more often than not,” observed the Norwegian prodigy Magnus Carlsen, the world chess champion and the highest-ranked player in history. “If I study a position for an hour then I am usually going in loops and I’m probably not going to come up with something useful. I usually know what I am going to do after 10 seconds; the rest is double-checking.”23 Carlsen respects his intuition, as well he should, but he also does a lot of “double-checking” because he knows that sometimes intuition can let him down and conscious thought can improve his judgment. ~ Philip E Tetlock,
1410:The way to maintain one's connection to the wild is to ask yourself what it is that you want. This is the sorting of the seed from the dirt. One of the most important discriminations we can make in this matter is the difference between things that beckon to us and things that call from our souls.
Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the choice of mates and lovers. A lover cannot be chosen a la smorgasbord. A lover has to be chosen from soul-craving. To choose just because something mouthwatering stands before you will never satisfy the hunger of the soul-self. And that is what the intuition is for; it is the direct messenger of the soul. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Est s,
1411:We often hesitate to follow our intuition out of fear. Most usually, we are afraid of the changes in our own life that our actions will bring. Intuitive guidance, however, is all about change. It is energetic data ripe with the potential to influence the rest of the world. To fear change but to crave intuitive clarity is like fearing the cold, dark night while pouring water on the fire that lights your cave. An insight the size of a mustard seed is powerful enough to bring down a mountain-sized illusion that may be holding our lives together. Truth strikes without mercy. We fear our intuitions because we fear the transformational power within our revelations. ~ Caroline Myss,
1412:Il faudrait pouvoir restituer au mot « philosophie » sa signification originelle : la philosophie — l'« amour de la sagesse » — est la science de tous les principes fondamentaux ; cette science opère avec l'intuition, qui « perçoit », et non avec la seule raison, qui « conclut ». Subjectivement parlant, l'essence de la philosophie est la certitude ; pour les modernes au contraire, l'essence de la philosophie est le doute : le philosophe est censé raisonner sans aucune prémisse (voraussetzungsloses Denken), comme si cette condition n'était pas elle-même une idée préconçue ; c'est la contradiction classique de tout relativisme. On doute de tout, sauf du doute. ~ Frithjof Schuon,
1413:It is from the Overmind that all these different arrangements of the creative Truth of things originate. Out of the Overmind they come down to the Intuition and are transmitted from it to the Illumined and higher Mind to be arranged there for our intelligence. But they lose more and more of their power and certitude in the transmission as they come down to the lower levels. What energy of directly perceived Truth they have is lost in the human mind; for to the human intellect they present themselves only as speculative ideas, not as realised Truth, not as direct sight, a dynamic vision coupled with a concrete undeniable experience.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, 155,
1414:greatest scientists are artists as well,” said Albert Einstein. Einstein’s own creativity arrived as sudden insight following daydreaming, intuition, and inspiration. “When I examine myself and my methods of thought,” he said, “I come close to the conclusion that the gift of imagination has meant more to me than any talent for absorbing absolute knowledge. . . . All great achievements of science must start from intuitive knowledge. I believe in intuition and inspiration. . . . At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason.” The importance of creativity to Einstein was encapsulated in his motto, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. ~ Daniel J Levitin,
1415:Jerry Hirshberg, in his book The Creative Priority: Putting Innovation to Work in Your Business, writes, No one in a corporation deliberately sets out to stifle creative thought. Yet, a traditional bureaucratic structure, with its need for predictability, linear logic, conformance to accepted norms, and the dictates of the most recent “long-range” vision statement, is a nearly perfect idea-killing machine. People in groups regress toward the security of the familiar and the well-regulated. Even creative people do it. It’s easier. It avoids the ambiguity, the fear of unpredictability, the threat of the unfamiliar, and the messiness of intuition and human emotion. ~ John C Maxwell,
1416:...this is love. I have my self-consciousness not in myself but in the other. I am satisfied and have peace with myself only in this other and I AM only because I have peace with myself; if I did not have it then I would be a contradiction that falls to pieces. This other, because it likewise exists outside itself, has its self-consciousness only in me; and both the other and I are only this consciousness of being-outside-ourselves and of our identity; we are only this intuition, feeling, and knowledge of our unity. This is love, and without knowing that love is both a distinguishing and the sublation of this distinction, one speaks emptily of it. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
1417:Einstein's breakthrough was classic in that it sought to unify the elements of a physical analysis, and it placed the older examples and principles within a broader framework. But it was revolutionary in that, ever afterward, we have thought differently about space and time, matter and energy. Space and time-no more absolute-have become forms of intuition that cannot be divorced from perspective or consciousness, anymore than can the colors of the world or the length of a shadow. As the philosopher Ernst Cassirer commented, in relativity, the conception of constancy and absoluteness of the elements is abandoned to give permanence and necessity to the laws instead. ~ Howard Gardner,
1418:Einstein's breakthrough was classic in that it sought to unify the elements of a physical analysis, and it placed the older examples and principles within a broader framework. But it was revolutionary in that, ever afterward, we have thought differently about space and time, matter and energy. Space and time-no more absolute-have become forms of intuition that cannot be divorced from perspective or consciousness, anymore than can the colors of the world or the length of a shadow. As the philosopher Ernst Cassirer commented, in relativity, the conception of constancy and absoluteness of the elements is abandoned to give permanence and necessity to the laws instead. ~ Howard Gardner,
1419:The best allies are those who do not think like everyone else. That is why when you seek companions with whom you can share your enthusiasm for archery, trust your intuition and pay no attention to what anyone else may say. People always judge others by taking as a model their own limitations, and other people’s opinions are often full of prejudice and fear. Join with all those who experiment, take risks, fall, get hurt and then take more risks. Stay away from those who affirm truths, who criticise those who do not think like them, people who have never once taken a step unless they were sure they would be respected for doing so, and who prefer certainties to doubts. ~ Paulo Coelho,
1420:But though every normal man thus cherishes the soothing unction that he is the intellectual superior of all women, and particularly of his wife, he constantly gives the lie to his pretension by consulting and deferring to what he calls her intuition. That is to say, he knows by experience that her judgment in many matters of capital concern is more subtle and searching than his own, and, being disinclined to accredit this greater sagacity to a more competent intelligence, he takes refuge behind the doctrine that it is due to some impenetrable and intangible talent for guessing correctly, some half mystical super sense, some vague (and, in essence, infra-human) instinct. ~ H L Mencken,
1421:We are afraid of the instincts. We are afraid of the intuition within us. We suppress the instincts, and we cut off our intuitional awareness from one another and from the world. The reason being some great shock to the procreative self. Now we know one another only as ideal or social or political entities, fleshless, bloodless and cold like Bernard Shaw's creatures. Intuitively we are dead to one another, we have all gone cold. But by intuition alone can man really be aware of man, or of the living, substantial world. By intuition alone can man love and know either woman or world, and by intuition alone can he bring forth images of the magic awareness which we call art. ~ D H Lawrence,
1422:Une philosophie qui veut être une méthode et rien d’autre, qui ne propose que des moyens subjectifs et non des axiomes objectifs, se contredit a priori, car seuls des axiomes peuvent légitimer des moyens; la foi en tels moyens « de recherche » n’est logiquement pas plus légitime que la foi en tel dogme; dans les deux cas, tout dépend de l’intuition; les facteurs qui la déclenchent ne se discutent pas. Les arguments de toute religion intrinsèquement orthodoxe sont absolument convaincants quand on se place dans l’ambiance voulue; en dehors de cette ambiance spirituelle, tout peut se discuter, car aucun argument n’est inattaquable du dehors; il n’y a pas de forme absolue. ~ Frithjof Schuon,
1423:Lewis famously advocated a metaphysical methodology based on subjecting rival hypotheses to a cost-benefit analysis. Usually there are two kinds of cost associated with accepting a metaphysical thesis. The first is accepting some kind of entity into one's ontology, for example, abstracta, possibilia, or a relation of primitive resemblance. The second is relinquishing some intuitions, for example, the intuition that causes antedate their effects, that dispositions reduce to categorical bases, or that facts about identity over time supervene on facts about instants of time. It is taken for granted that abandoning intuitions should be regarded as a cost rather than a benefit. ~ James Ladyman,
1424:I miss him,” she said. “Gideon.” His eyes softened. “I imagine Henry has forgotten about finding a mate for him. I’ll see what I can do. Edward would be quite taken with a puppy, and perhaps Gideon could pass along his intuition.” “I hope so, because you’ll be going back to the city soon, won’t you?” “I will. I’d hoped to take you with me.” She dropped her gaze. “I’m not sure my father will allow it.” “What do you want, Addie?” At least John used the name her soul responded to. She raised her gaze from the carpet. “I want to be with you,” she said. “Such a bold thing for me to say.” He reached out and wrapped a curl around his finger. “We must see what we can do about that. ~ Colleen Coble,
1425:To exist as fully as the world expects one to, yet to remain absent inwardly: not equipped with words to articulate the secret I nevertheless understood it at a formative age.

When I left the auditorium, I wondered when and where and how I had gone astray from that intuition. Why are we told to seek out people? In forming attachments, does one become more than oneself, or does one lose an essential means of preserving oneself? The danger of forming an attachment -- to a person, to a place, to a profession, to a cause, even to one's own life -- is that one can trick oneself into believing that an attachment has a reason, and worse, that the reason can be mistaken as a right. ~ Yiyun Li,
1426:The true intuition on the contrary carries in itself its own guarantee of truth; it is sure and infallible within its limits. And so long as it is pure intuition and does not admit into itself any mixture of sense-error or intellectual ideation, it is never contradicted by experience: the intuition may be verified by the reason or the sense-perception afterwards, but its truth does not depend on that verification, it is assured by an automatic self-evidence. ... For the true intuition proceeds from the self-existent truth of things and is secured by that self-existent truth and not by any indirect, derivatory or dependent method of arriving at knowledge.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga,
1427:Sadhaka : Should not we have the desire to practise the yoga? Sri Aurobindo : N o . Sadhaka : Then h o w c a n we practise t h e yoga? Sri Aurobindo : You must have the wi l l fo r i t : will and desire are two distinct thing s . You have t o distinguish between true and false movements in the nature and give your consent t o the true ones. Sadhaka : We must use our Buddhi-intellect- for distinguishing the true from the false. Sri Aurobindo : It i s not b y Buddhi or understanding that you per­ ceive these things,- it is b y an inner perception or vision . It is not the intellect but something higher that sees. I t is the Higher Mind in which that inner perception, intuition etc. take ~ Anonymous,
1428:Conscious Am I In My Chamber
679
Conscious am I in my Chamber,
Of a shapeless friend—
He doth not attest by Posture—
Nor Confirm—by Word—
Neither Place—need I present Him—
Fitter Courtesy
Hospitable intuition
Of His Company—
Presence—is His furthest license—
Neither He to Me
Nor Myself to Him—by Accent—
Forfeit Probity—
Weariness of Him, were quainter
Than Monotony
Knew a Particle—of Space's
Vast Society
Neither if He visit Other—
Do He dwell—or Nay—know I—
But Instinct esteem Him
Immortality—
~ Emily Dickinson,
1429:For an example, here is a simple puzzle. Do not try to solve it but listen to your intuition: A bat and ball cost $1.10. The bat costs one dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? A number came to your mind. The number, of course, is 10: 10¢. The distinctive mark of this easy puzzle is that it evokes an answer that is intuitive, appealing, and wrong. Do the math, and you will see. If the ball costs 10¢, then the total cost will be $1.20 (10¢ for the ball and $1.10 for the bat), not $1.10. The correct answer is 5¢. It is safe to assume that the intuitive answer also came to the mind of those who ended up with the correct number—they somehow managed to resist the intuition. ~ Daniel Kahneman,
1430:The swing of his nature took him from extreme languor to devouring energy; and as I knew well, he was never so truly formidable as when, for days on end, he had been lounging in his armchair amid his improvisations and his black-letter editions. Then it was that the lust of the chase would suddenly come upon him, and that his brilliant reasoning power would rise to the level of intuition, until those who were unacquainted with his methods would look askance at him as on a man whose knowledge was not that of other mortals. When I saw him that afternoon so enwrapped in the music of St. James's Hall I felt that an evil time might be coming upon those whom he had set himself to hunt down. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle,
1431:The Village Atheist
Ye young debaters over the doctrine
Of the soul's immortality
I who lie here was the village atheist,
Talkative, contentious, versed in the arguments
Of the infidels.
But through a long sickness
Coughing myself to death
I read the Upanishads and the poetry of Jesus.
And they lighted a torch of hope and intuition
And desire which the Shadow,
Leading me swiftly through the caverns of darkness,
Could not extinguish.
Listen to me, ye who live in the senses
And think through the senses only:
Immortality is not a gift,
Immortality is an achievement;
And only those who strive mightily
Shall possess it.
~ Edgar Lee Masters,
1432:Science is born from this act of humility: not trusting blindly in our past knowledge and our intuition. Not believing what everyone says. Not having absolute faith in the accumulated knowledge of our fathers and grandfathers. We learn nothing if we think we already know the essentials, if we assume that they were written in a book or known by the elders of the tribe. The centuries in which people had faith in what they believed were the centuries in which little new was learned. Had they trusted the knowledge of their fathers, Einstein, Newton, and Copernicus would never have called things into question and would never have been able to move our knowledge forward (259, trsl. Carnell & Segre) ~ Carlo Rovelli,
1433:Dozing, she thought in retrospect how her life had been building up towards this moment, year in, year out, almost from alley days. That early training, as a cockney child, sharpened her wit and made her seize her chances: the schooling at Ham put on a pseudo-polish: marriage with Joseph got the worst over young—so much so, that nothing a man could do, now or in the future, would break her heart. As to the rest… all lovers made some mark. She knew how to absorb the benefit and pass it on, be grateful for the teaching. What she had learned from men, not only lovers, was to the purpose in a man-made world. Therefore, become their equal. Play their game, and add to the game the sense of intuition. ~ Daphne du Maurier,
1434:At first Leonardo’s procrastination led to amusing tales, such as the time the church prior became frustrated and complained to Ludovico. “He wanted him never to lay down his brush, as if he were a laborer hoeing the Prior’s garden,” Vasari wrote. When Leonardo was summoned by the duke, they ended up having a discussion of how creativity occurs. Sometimes it requires going slowly, pausing, even procrastinating. That allows ideas to marinate, Leonardo explained. Intuition needs nurturing. “Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least,” he told the duke, “for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form. ~ Walter Isaacson,
1435:Knowledge is awareness, and to it there are many paths, not all of them paved with logic. But sometimes one is guided through the maze by intuition. One is led by something felt in the wind, something seen in the stars, something that calls from the wasteland to the spirit.
To receive the message, the mental pores must be open. And we white men in striving for our success, in seeking to build a new world from what lies around us, sometimes forget that there are other ways, sometimes forget the Lonesome Gods of the far places, the gods who live on the empty sea, who dance with the dust devils and who wait quietly in the shadows under the cliffs where ancient men once marked their passing with hands. ~ Louis L Amour,
1436:But I write badly. The part of my brain in charge of writing ability refuses to work. My memory has weakened, my thoughts lack consistency, and each time I set them down on paper it seems to me that I’ve lost the intuition of their organic connection, the constructions are monotonous, the phrasing impoverished and timid. I often write something other than what I mean; when I get to the end, I no longer remember the beginning. I often forget ordinary words, and always have to waste much energy avoiding superfluous phrases and unnecessary parenthetical clauses in my writing–both clearly witnessing to a decline of mental activity. And, remarkably, the simpler the writing, the more excruciating is the strain. ~ Anton Chekhov,
1437:The deepest human intuition is not the immediate grasping of the classical-physics-type character of the external world. It is rather that one's own conscious subjective efforts can influence the experiences that follow. Any conception of nature that makes this deep intuition an illusion is counterintuitive. Any conception of reality that cannot explain how our conscious efforts influence our bodily actions is problematic. What is actually deeply intuitive is the continually reconfirmed fact that our conscious efforts can influence certain kinds of experiential feedback. A putatively rational scientific theory needs at the very least to explain this connection in a rational way to be in line with intuition. ~ Paul Davies,
1438:Cultivating Authenticity: Letting Go of What People Think Cultivating Self-Compassion: Letting Go of Perfectionism Cultivating a Resilient Spirit: Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness Cultivating Gratitude and Joy: Letting Go of Scarcity and Fear of the Dark Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith: Letting Go of the Need for Certainty Cultivating Creativity: Letting Go of Comparison Cultivating Play and Rest: Letting Go of Exhaustion as a Status Symbol and Productivity as Self-Worth Cultivating Calm and Stillness: Letting Go of Anxiety as a Lifestyle Cultivating Meaningful Work: Letting Go of Self-Doubt and “Supposed To” Cultivating Laughter, Song, and Dance: Letting Go of Being Cool and “Always in Control ~ Anonymous,
1439:Saw a film on cancer yesterday, shown by the English delegation. No doubt about it. I'm right. "Migratory cancer cells" are amoebic formations. They are produced from disintegrating tissue and thus demonstrate the law of tension and charge in its purest form - as does the orgastic convulsion.
Now money is a must - cancer the main issue - in every respect, even political.
It was a staggering experience. My intuition is good. I depend on it. Was absolutely driven to buy a microscope. The sight of the cancer cells was exactly as I had previously imagined it, had almost physically felt it would be. Cancer is an autoinfection of the body, of an organ. And researchers have no idea of what, hor, or where!! ~ Wilhelm Reich,
1440:A state of mindfulness is a state of mental readiness. The mind is not burdened with preoccupations or bound in worries. Whatever comes up can be dealt with instantly. When you are truly mindful, your nervous system has a freshness and resiliency that fosters insight. A problem arises, and you simply deal with it, quickly, efficiently, and with a minimum of fuss. You don’t stand there in a dither, and you don’t run off to a quiet corner so you can sit down and meditate about it. You simply deal with it. And in those rare circumstances when no solution seems possible, you don’t worry about that. You just go on to the next thing that needs your attention. Your intuition becomes a very practical faculty. ~ Henepola Gunaratana,
1441:Cultivating Authenticity: Letting Go of What People Think Cultivating Self-Compassion: Letting Go of Perfectionism Cultivating a Resilient Spirit: Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness Cultivating Gratitude and Joy: Letting Go of Scarcity and Fear of the Dark Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith: Letting Go of the Need for Certainty Cultivating Creativity: Letting Go of Comparison Cultivating Play and Rest: Letting Go of Exhaustion as a Status Symbol and Productivity as Self-Worth Cultivating Calm and Stillness: Letting Go of Anxiety as a Lifestyle Cultivating Meaningful Work: Letting Go of Self-Doubt and “Supposed To” Cultivating Laughter, Song, and Dance: Letting Go of Being Cool and “Always in Control ~ Bren Brown,
1442:Brihaspati stands for hindsight and Shukra stands for foresight. Brihaspati is associated with the planet Jupiter, known in astrology for enhancing rationality, while Shukra is associated with the planet Venus, known for enhancing intuition. Brihaspati has two eyes and so, is very balanced. Shukra is one-eyed and so, rather imbalanced. Brihaspati is logical, cautious and backward looking while Shukra is spontaneous, bold and forward-thinking. Brihaspati relies on tradition and past history, or case studies. Shukra believes in futuristic creative visualization and scenario planning; his father Bhrigu is associated with the science of forecasting. Brihaspati relies on memory while Shukra prefers imagination. Both ~ Devdutt Pattanaik,
1443:When facing Me-versus-Us moral dilemmas of resisting selfishness, our rapid intuitions are good, honed by evolutionary selection for cooperation in a sea of green-beard markers.35 And in such settings, regulating and formalizing the prosociality (i.e., moving it from the realm of intuition to that of cogitation) can even be counterproductive, a point emphasized by Samuel Bowles.* In contrast, when doing moral decision making during Us-versus-Them scenarios, keep intuitions as far away as possible. Instead, think, reason, and question; be deeply pragmatic and strategically utilitarian; take their perspective, try to think what they think, try to feel what they feel. Take a deep breath, and then do it all again.* ~ Robert M Sapolsky,
1444:Until writing was invented, man lived in an acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror. Speech is a social chart of this bog.

The goose quill put an end to talk. It abolished mystery; it gave architecture and towns; it brought roads and armies, bureaucracy. It was the basic metaphor with which the cycle of civilization began, the step from the dark into the light of the mind. The hand that filled the parchment page built a city.

Whence did the wond'rous mystic art arise,
Of painting SPEECH, and speaking to the eyes?
That we by tracing magic lines are taught,
How to embody, and to colour THOUGHT? ~ Marshall McLuhan,
1445:What to me also seems most striking in this respect is how the great poetic geniuses (an Ossian, a Homer) are presented as blind. Naturally it doesn't matter to me whether they really were blind; the point is people have imagined them so, as if to indicate that what they saw when they sang of the beauty of nature appeared not to the external eye but to an inner intuition. How remarkable that one of the writers on bees - yes, the best of them - was blind from early youth; it's as if to show that here, where you would have thought external observation so important, he had found that point and from it was then able by purely mental activity to infer back to all particulars and reconstruct them in analogy with nature. ~ S ren Kierkegaard,
1446:In his person, life, death and resurrection, Jesus Christ is the ‘form of God’. As presented in the New Testament writings, the words, actions and sufferings of Jesus form an aesthetic unity, held together by the ‘style’ of unconditional love. Love is always beautiful, because it expresses the self-diffusiveness of being, and so is touched by being’s radiance, the pulchrum. But the unconditional, gracious, sacrificial love of Jesus Christ expresses not just the mystery of being—finite being—but the mystery of the Source of being, the transcendent communion of love which we call the Trinity.25 Thus through the Gestalt Christi, the love which God is shines through to the world. This is Balthasar’s basic intuition. ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar,
1447:Then for the first time we became aware that our language lacks words to express this offence, the demolition of a man. In a moment, with almost prophetic intuition, the reality was revealed to us: we had reached the bottom. It is not possible to sink lower than this; no human condition is more miserable than this, nor could it conceivably be so. Nothing belongs to us any more; they have taken away our clothes, our shoes, even our hair; if we speak, they will not listen to us, and if they listen, they will not understand. They will even take away our name: and if we want to keep it, we ill have to find ourselves the strength to do so, to manage somehow so that behind the name something of us, of us as we were, still remains. ~ Primo Levi,
1448:But to read a great Russian novel is to have an altogether different experience. The baseness, the beast in us, the misery of life, are there as plain to see as in the French book, but what we are left with is not despair and not loathing, but a sense of pity and wonder before mankind that can so suffer. The Russian sees life in that way because the Russian genius is primarily poetical; the French genius is not. Anna Karénina is a tragedy; Madame Bovary is not. Realism and Romanticism, or comparative degrees of Realism, have nothing to do with the matter. It is a case of the small soul against the great soul and the power of a writer whose special endowment is “voir clair dans ce qui est” against the intuition of a poet. If ~ Edith Hamilton,
1449:To do so, hang heavy items on the left side of the closet and light items on the right. Heavy items include those with length, those made from heavier material, and those that are dark in color. As you move toward the right side of the closet, the length of the clothing grows shorter, the material thinner, and the color lighter. By category, coats would be on the far left, followed by dresses, jackets, pants, skirts, and blouses. This is the basic order, but depending on the trends in your wardrobe, what classifies as “heavy” in each category will differ. Use your intuition to create a balance that makes it appear as if the clothes are sloping up to the right. In addition, organize the clothes within each category from heavy to light. ~ Marie Kond,
1450:... All the works of mind and intllect must be first heightened and widened, then illumined, lifted into the domain of a higher Intelligence, afterwards translated into workings of a greater non-mental Intuition, these again transformed into the dynamic outpourings of the Overmind radiance, and those transfigured into the full light and sovereignty of the supramental Gnosis. It is this that the evolution of consciousness in the world carries prefigured but latent in its seed and in the straining tense intention of its process; nor can that process, that evolution cease till it has evolved the instruments of a perfect in place of its now imperfect manifestation of the Spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis Of Yoga, The Ascent of the Sacrifice - 1, 149,
1451:Well, the fact is," said Celia, in a burst of girlish frankness, "I
rather think I've killed George."

Killed him, eh?"

It was a solution that had not occurred to me, but now that it was
presented for my inspection I could see its merits. In these days of
national effort, when we are all working together to try to make our
beloved land fit for heroes to live in, it was astonishing that nobody
before had thought of a simple, obvious thing like killing George
Mackintosh. George Mackintosh was undoubtedly better dead, but it had
taken a woman's intuition to see it.

I killed him with my niblick," said Celia.

I nodded. If the thing was to be done at all, it was unquestionably a
niblick shot. ~ P G Wodehouse,
1452:[A woman's] education should be as varied and perfect as possible. If for no other reason to enable her properly to educate and rear her own children. Whatever grand truths are planted in the mother's mind may take root in the next generation, and there grow, blossom, and shed their perfume on the world. The child receives the mother's very thought by intuition. If the mother's mind is weak and narrow in its range, the child is affected by this fact long before it finds meaning in the mother's words. But if the mother's mind is cultured and refined by study until her thoughts are grand and far-reaching, the child's soul will grow and expand under the mesmeric influence of these thoughts, as the plant grows under the influence of the sun. ~ Karen Andreola,
1453:The human mind is itself a miraculous machine. I am writing right now, but I have no idea how this is happening. I know that my brain is composed of a cerebrum, a cerebellum, and a medulla oblongata, but these are just words. I know that electrical impulses are involved somehow, but that is about the extent of my understanding of the mechanics. And while I at least have an intuition as to how an airplane works, I really have none with respect to my brain. Frankly, lots of what appears on my computer screen is as much a surprise to me as it is to you. I certainly never expected over my oatmeal and English muffin this morning to be writing about Bernoulli's principle today. For that matter, I have no idea why I like English muffins. But I do. ~ Evan Mandery,
1454:By this freedom the will of a rational being, as belonging to the sensuous world, recognizes itself to be, like all other efficient causes, necessarily subject to the laws of causality, while in practical matters, in its other aspect as a being in itself, it is conscious of its existence as determinable in an intelligible order of things. It is conscious of this not by virtue of a particular intuition of itself but because of certain dynamic laws which determine its causality in the world of sense, for it has been sufficiently proved in another place that if freedom is attributed to us, it transfers us into an intelligible order of things."

―from Critique of Practical Reason . Translated, with an Introduction by Lewis White Beck, p. 43. ~ Immanuel Kant,
1455:Humans pursuing deep, complete connections respond to quite different incentives from those that influence self-interested utility maximizers. Rewards, monitoring, and punishments are less likely to be effective than engagement, communication, norms, socialization, identity, and common purpose. They share not out of a calculation of reciprocity but from a psychological pleasure in sharing. Those seeking connections make decisions from their hearts as well as their heads, influenced by emotion, fairness, empathy, and intuition. Their behavior, thoughts, feelings, and even personal attributes are highly socially contingent.
The range of humanity includes individuals who display every possible combination of selfishness and sociability. ~ Anne Marie Slaughter,
1456:And here, for me, is another profound truth: understanding, as well as truth, comes not only from the intellect but also from the body. When we begin to listen to our bodies, we begin to listen to reality through our own experiences; we begin to trust our intuition, our hearts. The truth is also in the “earth” of our own bodies. So it is a question of moving from theories we have learned to listening to the reality that is in and around us. Truth flows from the earth. This is not to deny the truth that flows from teachers, from books, from tradition, from our ancestors, and from religious faith. But the two must come together. Truth from the sky must be confirmed and strengthened by truth from the earth. We must learn to listen and then to communicate. ~ Jean Vanier,
1457:In a well-balanced, reasoning mind there is no such thing as an intuition - an inspired guess! You can guess, of course - and a guess is either right or wrong. If it is right you can call it an intuition. If it is wrong you usually do not speak of it again.
But what is often called an intuition is really impression based on logical deduction or experience. When an expert feels that there is something wrong about a picture or a piece of furniture or the signature on a cheque he is really basing that feeling on a host of a small signs and details. He has no need to go into them minutely - his experience obviates that - the net result is the definite impression that something is wrong. But it is not a guess, it is an impression based on experience. ~ Agatha Christie,
1458:An intuition involves a coming together of loosely linked facts, concepts, experiences, thoughts, and feelings, and we can encourage intuition by tearing down the psychological barriers that are keeping them apart. If intuition involves stepping back from our person, so does wisdom, insight, imagination, and even reason. What usually gets in the way of both reason and non-rational forms of cognition is not stupidity as such, or feeble-mindedness, but fear and the thing that fear protects, that is, our self-esteem, our sense of self, our ego. If we are to unleash our full cognitive and human potential, we need to love life more than we fear it, we need to suppress or destroy our ego, to commit metaphorical suicide—which will be the work of a life well spent. ~ Neel Burton,
1459:With training or experience, people can encode patterns deep in their memories in vast number and intricate detail—such as the estimated fifty thousand to one hundred thousand chess positions that top players have in their repertoire.20 If something doesn’t fit a pattern—like a kitchen fire giving off more heat than a kitchen fire should—a competent expert senses it immediately. But as we see every time someone spots the Virgin Mary in burnt toast or in mold on a church wall, our pattern-recognition ability comes at the cost of susceptibility to false positives. This, plus the many other ways in which the tip-of-your-nose perspective can generate perceptions that are clear, compelling, and wrong, means intuition can fail as spectacularly as it can work. ~ Philip E Tetlock,
1460:A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it, feminine intuition. The marks of that so-called intuition are simply a sharp and accurate perception of reality, a habitual immunity to emotional enchantment, a relentless capacity for distinguishing clearly between the appearance and the substance. The appearance, in the normal family circle, is a hero, a magnifico, a demigod. The substance is a poor mountebank. ~ H L Mencken,
1461:Metaphysics... is nothing but the inventory of all we possess through pure reason, ordered systematically. Nothing here can escape us, because what reason brings forth entirely out of itself cannot be hidden, but is brought to light by reason itself as soon as reason's common principle has been discovered. The perfect unity of this kind of cognition, and the fact that it arises solely out of pure concepts without any influence that would extend or increase it from experience or even particular intuition, which would lead to a determinate experience, make this unconditioned completeness not only feasible but also necessary. Tecum habita, et noris quam sit tibi curta supellex. Dwell in your own house, and you will know how simple your possessions are. - Persius ~ Immanuel Kant,
1462:/Farsi The sun can only be seen by the light of the sun. The more a man or woman knows, the greater the bewilderment, the closer to the sun the more dazzled, until a point is reached where one no longer is. A mystic knows without knowledge, without intuition or information, without contemplation or description or revelation. Mystics are not themselves. They do not exist in selves. They move as they are moved, talk as words come, see with sight that enters their eyes. I met a woman once and asked her where love had led her. "Fool, there's no destination to arrive at. Loved one and lover and love are infinite." [1841.jpg] -- from The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia, with Lectures by Inayat Khan, Translated by Coleman Barks

~ Farid ud-Din Attar, Mysticism
,
1463:Libertarian communism is a communism that rejects determinism and fatalism, which gives space to individual will, intuition, imagination, the rapidity of reflexes, the profound instinct of the large masses, who are wiser at moments of crisis than the reasonings of the "elite," who believe in the element of surprise and provocation, in the value of audacity, who do not allow themselves to be encumbered and paralyzed by a weighty, supposedly "scientific" ideological apparatus, who do not prevaricate or bluff, who avoid both adventurism and fear of the unknown.
Libertarian communists have learned from experience how to set about things: they hold in contempt the impotent shambles of disorganization as much as the bureaucratic ball and chain of over-organization. ~ Daniel Gu rin,
1464:Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of... intuition and ingenuity. The activity of the intuition consists in making spontaneous judgements which are not the result of conscious trains of reasoning... The exercise of ingenuity in mathematics consists in aiding the intuition through suitable arrangements of propositions, and perhaps geometrical figures or drawings. ...We are leaving out of account that most important faculty which distinguishes topics of interest from others; in fact, we are regarding the function of the mathematician as simply to determine the truth or falsity of propositions. ~ Alan Turing, "Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals" (1938) in Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society (1939) Series 2, Vol. 45.,
1465:It was my good fortune to be linked with Mme. Curie through twenty years of sublime and unclouded friendship. I came to admire her human grandeur to an ever growing degree. Her strength, her purity of will, her austerity toward herself, her objectivity, her incorruptible judgement— all these were of a kind seldom found joined in a single individual... The greatest scientific deed of her life—proving the existence of radioactive elements and isolating them—owes its accomplishment not merely to bold intuition but to a devotion and tenacity in execution under the most extreme hardships imaginable, such as the history of experimental science has not often witnessed. ~ Albert Einstein,
1466:One morning, waking out of deep sleep, she had, like James Anderson a few hours ago, humbly recognized her knowledge, and known herself mistaken until now, and a follower of the path of least resistance. For unbelief was easier than belief, much less demanding and subtly flattering because the agnostic felt himself to be intellectually superior to the believer. And then unbelief haunted by faith, as she knew by experience, produced a rather pleasant nostalgia, while belief haunted by doubt involved real suffering; that she knew now by intuition, soon probably she would know it by experience also. One had to be haunted by one or the other, she imagined, and to make the choice if only subconsciously. She was ashamed that subconsciously she had chosen not to suffer. ~ Elizabeth Goudge,
1467:Overmind is the highest source of the cosmic consciousness available to the embodied being in the Ignorance. It is part of the cosmic consciousness-but the human individual when he opens into the cosmic usually remains in the cosmic Mind-Life-Matter receiving only inspirations and influences from the higher planes of Intuition and Overmind. He receives through the spiritualised higher and illumined mind the fundamental experiences on which spiritual knowledge is based; he can become even full of intuitive mind movements, illuminations, various kinds of powers and illumined light, liberation, Ananda. But to rise fully into the Intuition is rare, to reach the Overmind still rarer- although influences and experiences can come down from there.
   ~ Sri Aurobindo, Letters On Yoga - I, 152,
1468:This internal exploration is well worth while. For there is something within the mind of man and beast, something that is neither intellect nor feeling, but deeper than both, to which the name of intuition, may fitly be given. When science can truly explain why a horse will take its drunken rider or driver for miles through the dark and find its own way home; why field-mice seal up their holes before the cold weather comes; why sheep move away to the lee side of a mountain before severe storms; when it can tell us what warns the tortoise to retire to rest and refuge before every shower of rain; and when it can really explain who guides a vulture many miles distant to the dead body of an animal, we may then learn that intuition is sometimes a better guide than intellect. ~ Paul Brunton,
1469:We have only faith to guide us, say the theologians. Which faith? It is my acceptance that what we call evidence, and whatever we think we mean by intuition and faith are the phenomena of eras, and that the best of minds, or minds best in rapport with the dominant motif of an era, have intuition and faith and belief that depend upon what is called evidence, relatively to pagan gods, then to the god of the christians, and then to godlessness—and then to whatever is coming next. . . . . If now, affairs upon this earth be fluttering upon the edge of a new era, and I give expression to coming thoughts of that era, thousands of other minds are changing, and all of us will take on new thoughts concordantly, and see, as important evidence, piffle of the past. CHARLES FORT, LO! ~ Whitley Strieber,
1470:It marshals a vast amount of scientific evidence, from physics to biology, and offers extensive arguments, all geared to objectively proving the holistic nature of the universe. It fails to see that if we take a bunch of egos with atomistic concepts and teach them that the universe is holistic, all we will actually get is a bunch of egos with holistic concepts. Precisely because this monological approach, with its unskillful interpretation of an otherwise genuine intuition, ignores or neglects the “I” and the “we” dimensions, it doesn’t understand very well the exact nature of the inner transformations that are necessary in the first place in order to be able to find an identity that embraces the manifest All. Talk about the All as much as we want, nothing fundamentally changes. ~ Ken Wilber,
1471:TEN GUIDEPOSTS FOR WHOLEHEARTED LIVING 1. Cultivating authenticity: letting go of what people think 2. Cultivating self-compassion: letting go of perfectionism 3. Cultivating a resilient spirit: letting go of numbing and powerlessness 4. Cultivating gratitude and joy: letting go of scarcity and fear of the dark 5. Cultivating intuition and trusting faith: letting go of the need for certainty 6. Cultivating creativity: letting go of comparison 7. Cultivating play and rest: letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth 8. Cultivating calm and stillness: letting go of anxiety as a lifestyle 9. Cultivating meaningful work: letting go of self-doubt and “supposed to” 10. Cultivating laughter, song, and dance: letting go of being cool and “always in control ~ Bren Brown,
1472:Unclear goals create unclear results. You need to know where you’re going, and have faith that you will get there. Your intuition has been nagging at you to get moving on your goals. It’s time to listen and obey your intuition, because that’s how you’ll get the joy, freedom, and security you want and deserve. Everyone has goals, because everyone has a divine assignment. You’ll clearly understand your divine assignment by listening to and obeying your intuition. You are very, very qualified to fulfill your divine assignment. These assignments are never given by mistake or accident. Every time you finish one step of your intuitive instructions, you will be given another set of them. Don’t fret about not knowing what to do in the future; you will be guided every day of your life. ~ Doreen Virtue,
1473:As children and into our tumultuous teen years, we feel our way through the world. We may be told our intuition is wrong by peers and family. We act on our intuition and are quieted, shushed, or made fun of. In abusive situations, children raise their voice in objection and are silenced by adults who supposedly know better. Our childhood intuition is stuffed down, ignored or suppressed. When you lie to a child, you send the message that their intuition is worthless and unreliable. This same child grows into adulthood questioning and doubting themselves. One of the most empowering things you can do is start to heal, trust and cultivate your intuition. You have the ability to reignite that candle inside yourself. You can reclaim your intuitive facilities. To do so is your birthright. ~ Sasha Graham,
1474:Every little thing makes a difference, whether you decide it yourself or whether it’s pure accident. So many people have had the whole course of their lives changed by something perfectly simple like, let’s say, crossing the street at one point instead of another.”
“Yes, yes, yes, I know,” Stenham said with exaggerated weariness. “As far as I’m concerned that’s just as boring, and a lot more false, by the way. The point I’m trying to make is that he loves his world of Koranic law because it’s his, and at the same time he hates it because his intuition tells him it’s at the end of its rope. He can’t expect anything more from it. And our world, he hates that too, just on general principles, and yet it’s his only hope, the only way out—if there is one for him personally, which I doubt. ~ Paul Bowles,
1475:Jobs’s engagement with Eastern spirituality, and especially Zen Buddhism, was not just some passing fancy or youthful dabbling. He embraced it with his typical intensity, and it became deeply ingrained in his personality. “Steve is very much Zen,” said Kottke. “It was a deep influence. You see it in his whole approach of stark, minimalist aesthetics, intense focus.” Jobs also became deeply influenced by the emphasis that Buddhism places on intuition. “I began to realize that an intuitive understanding and consciousness was more significant than abstract thinking and intellectual logical analysis,” he later said. His intensity, however, made it difficult for him to achieve inner peace; his Zen awareness was not accompanied by an excess of calm, peace of mind, or interpersonal mellowness. ~ Walter Isaacson,
1476:Conservatives believe that people are inherently imperfect and are prone to act badly when all constraints and accountability are removed (yes, I thought; see Glaucon, Tetlock, and Ariely in chapter 4). Our reasoning is flawed and prone to overconfidence, so it’s dangerous to construct theories based on pure reason, unconstrained by intuition and historical experience (yes; see Hume in chapter 2 and Baron-Cohen on systemizing in chapter 6). Institutions emerge gradually as social facts, which we then respect and even sacralize, but if we strip these institutions of authority and treat them as arbitrary contrivances that exist only for our benefit, we render them less effective. We then expose ourselves to increased anomie and social disorder (yes; see Durkheim in chapters 8 and 11). Based ~ Jonathan Haidt,
1477:Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice. The story which results from it is apt to feel artificial and labored. I lean more heavily on intuition, and have been able to do that because my books tend to be based on situation rather than story. Some of the ideas which have produced those books are more complex than others, but the majority start out with the stark simplicity of a department store window display or a waxwork tableau. I want to put a group of characters (perhaps a pair; perhaps even just one) in some sort of predicament and then watch them try to work themselves free. My job isn’t to help them work their way free, or manipulate them to safety—those are jobs which require the noisy jackhammer of plot—but to watch what happens and then write it down. ~ Stephen King,
1478:1067
There's Been A Death In The Opposite House
There's been a death in the opposite house
As lately as to-day.
I know it by the numb look
Such houses have alway.
The neighbors rustle in and out,
The doctor drives away.
A window opens like a pod,
Abrupt, mechanically;
Somebody flings a mattress out,-The children hurry by;
They wonder if It died on that,-I used to when a boy.
The minister goes stiffly in
As if the house were his,
And he owned all the mourners now,
And little boys besides;
And then the milliner, and the man
Of the appalling trade,
To take the measure of the house.
There'll be that dark parade
Of tassels and of coaches soon;
It's easy as a sign,-The intuition of the news
In just a country town.
~ Emily Dickinson,
1479:I'm getting very sorry for the Devil and his disciples such as the good LeChiffre. The Devil has a rotten time and I always like to be on the side of the underdog. We don't give the poor chap a chance. There's a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there's no Evil Book about evil and how to be bad. The Devil has no prophets to write his Ten Commandments and no team of authors to write his biography. His case has gone completely by default. We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parables about evil people, proverbs about evil people, folk-lore about evil people. All we have is the living example of the people who are least good, or our own intuition. ~ Ian Fleming,
1480:HOW BENDING REALITY FEELS Bending reality feels almost magical. Everything seems to “click.” You’re working, but it doesn’t feel like work because you love what you’re doing. When I’m in this state, I almost feel as if work doesn’t exist. Plus, intuition and insights seem to come easily, out of the blue. Maybe this is because your mind is focused so intensely on your vision that you’re alert to everything that will help achieve it and you’re in a happy, joyous state that opens you up to creativity. Sometimes it seems as if the right people, coincidences, and opportunities come to you, nudging and pushing you toward your goals. Is this the mystical law of attraction? Or is it what’s known as the brain’s reticular activating system? To me it doesn’t matter. It’s a model of reality that serves me well. ~ Vishen Lakhiani,
1481:I nurtured my dinomania with documentaries, delighted in the dino-themed B movies I brought home from the video store, and tore up my grandparents' backyard in my search of a perfect Triceratops nest. Never mind that the classic three-horned dinosaur never roamed central New Jersey, or that the few dinosaur fossils found in the state were mostly scraps of skeletons that had been washed out into the Cretaceous Atlantic. My fossil hunter's intuition told me there just had to be a dinosaur underneath the topsoil, and I kept excavating my pit. That is, until I got the hatchet out of my grandfather's toolshed and tried to cut down a sapling that was in my way. My parents bolted out of the house and put a stop to my excavation. Apparently, I hadn't filled out the proper permits before I started my dig. ~ Brian Switek,
1482:It marshals a vast amount of scientific evidence, from physics to biology, and offers extensive arguments, all geared to objectively proving the holistic nature of the universe. It fails to see that if we take a bunch of egos with atomistic concepts and teach them that the universe is holistic, all we will actually get is a bunch of egos with holistic concepts. Precisely because this monological approach, with its unskillful interpretation of an otherwise genuine intuition, ignores or neglects the "I" and the "we" dimensions, it doesn't understand very well the exact nature of the inner transformations that are necessary in the first place in order to be able to find an identity that embraces the manifest All. Talk about the All as much as we want, nothing fundamentally changes. ~ Ken Wilber, Sex Ecology Spirituality,
1483:So what compromises the Wild Woman? From the viewpoint of archetypal psychology as well as in ancient traditions, she is the female soul. Yet she is more; she is the source of the feminine. She is all that is of instinct, of the worlds both seen and hidden—she is the basis. We each receive from her a glowing cell which contains all the instincts and knowings needed for our lives. “...She is the Life/Death/Life force, she is the incubator. She is intuition, she is far-seer, she is deep listener, she is loyal heart. She encourages humans to remain multilingual; fluent in the languages of dreams, passion, and poetry. She whispers from night dreams, she leaves behind on the terrain of a woman’s soul a coarse hair and muddy footprints. These fill women with longing to find her, free her, and love her. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Est s,
1484:It marked a turning point for me. It marked the point where I recognized that I must never - not even when he was 'well' again - expect from Didi what one normally expects from a friend. When he gave anything to other people - as he often did, as he had done earlier to me and was to do again - it was by the happy accident of their chancing to appreciate what he chanced to be 'giving off'. If he happened to be in a mood to charm, to find things amusing, to respond lovingly, to use his intuition (which could be sharp) on people's behaviour, to apply his intelligence, then whoever was around would benefit; but he was so hermetically walled up in himself that he was unablee to discover inother people any constant reason to attend to them, still less to be considerate of them, and he couldn't answer their demands. ~ Diana Athill,
1485:Live in the world without any idea of what is going to happen. Whether you are going to be a winner or a loser, it doesn’t matter. Death takes everything away. Whether you lose or win is immaterial. The only thing that matters, and it has always been so, is how you played the game. Did you enjoy it?—the game itself? Then each moment is a moment of joy. ALSO BY OSHO INSIGHTS FOR A NEW WAY OF LIVING SERIES Awareness: The Key to Living in Balance Courage: The Joy of Living Dangerously Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within Intimacy: Trusting Oneself and the Other Intuition: Knowing Beyond Logic Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself OTHER BOOKS Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic The Book of Secrets India My Love: A Spiritual Journey Love, Freedom, and Aloneness Meditation: The First and Last Freedom ~ Osho,
1486:The motives behind scientism are culturally significant. They have been mixed, as usual: genuine curiosity in search of truth; the rage for certainty and for unity; and the snobbish desire to earn the label scientist when that became a high social and intellectual rank. But these efforts, even though vain, have not been without harm, to the inventors and to the world at large. The "findings" have inspired policies affecting daily life that were enforced with the same absolute assurance as earlier ones based on religion. At the same time, the workers in the realm of intuition, the gifted finessers - artists, moralists, philosophers, historians, political theorists, and theologians - were either diverted from their proper task, while others were looking on them with disdain as dabblers in the suburbs of Truth. ~ Jacques Barzun,
1487:Most visitations require little, if any, interpretation, but there are exceptions to this rule. One last point: if you’re grieving a loss or feeling guilt connected to a death, your negative feelings may lead you to believe that a visitation is heavier than it’s meant to be. Say you dream of a loved one standing still for a split second, and the person doesn’t say anything. You might even call out to him, but the image fades away. This is a typical visitation, but if you’re carrying negative emotions related to the death, you may interpret it to mean that the person’s soul is mad at you or didn’t want to talk to you, and chose not to stick around for long. But that’s never Spirit’s aim at all! As you’ve just learned, visitations are special, well-intentioned, and yet another sign that a soul is at peace. Intuition, ~ Theresa Caputo,
1488:Common sense told him that telling lies and defecting from duty were sins. On the other hand, everyone knew that sin was evil and that no good could come from evil. But he did feel good; he felt positively marvelous. Consequently, it followed logically that telling lies and defecting from duty could not be sins. The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character. ~ Joseph Heller,
1489:She is often the broken-winged one, who does everything all wrong until people realize she's been doing it... pretty right all along. She's the poor girl who never dressed right, who had torn hose, and they were all baggy around her ankles. She's the Raggedy Ann of the sophisticated world, who pulls it out at the last minute, flies by the seat of her pants, cackling all the way home. She is the late bloomer, the late start, the autumn bush, the winter holly. She is Baubo, all the classical Greek goddesses. She is the old girl who still blushes, and laughs, and dances. She's the truth teller, maybe that people hate to hear, but they learn to listen to. She is not dumb and in some ways is not shrewd. She works on passion, and the doll in her pocket, and the intuition that leads her into and through all the world. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Est s,
1490:I felt that it was not a historical work, but that, under the guise of physical warfare, it described the duel that perpetually went on in the hearts of mankind, and that physical warfare was brought in merely to make the description of the internal duel more alluring. This preliminary intuition became more confirmed on a closer study of religion and the Gita. A study of the Mahabharata gave it added confirmation. I do not regard the Mahabharata as a historical work in the accepted sense. The Adiparva contains powerful evidence in support of my opinion. By ascribing to the chief actors superhuman or subhuman origins, the great Vyasa made short work the history of kings and their peoples. The persons therein described may be historical, but the author of the Mahabharata has used them merely to drive home his religious theme. ~ Mahatma Gandhi,
1491:Too bad. And Mozart, not long after writing The Magic Flute, had died--in his thirties--of kidney disease. And had been buried in an unmarked pauper's grave.

Thinking this, he wondered if Mozart had any intuition that the future did not exist, that he had already used up his little time. Maybe I have too, Rick thought as he watched the rehearsal move along. This rehearsal will end, the performance will end, the singers will die, eventually the last score of the music will be destroyed in one way or another; finally the name "Mozart" will vanish, the dust will have won. If not on this planet then another. We can evade it awhile. As the andys can evade me and exist a finite stretch longer. But I will get them or some other bounty hunter gets them. In a way, he realized, I'm part of the form-destroying process of entropy. ~ Philip K Dick,
1492:You can believe the Bible or you can believe evolution," a favorite professor told the student body in chapel one morning, "but you can't believe both. You have to choose."

That recurring choice- between faith and science, Christianity and feminism, the Bible and historical criticism, doctrine and compassion- kept tripping me up like roots on a forest trail. I wanted to believe, of course, but I wanted to believe with my intellectual integrity and intuition intact, with both my head and my heart fully engaged. The more I was asked to choose, the more fragmented and frayed my faith became, the more it stretched the gossamer of belief that held my world view together. And that's when the real doubt crept in, like an invasive species, like kudzu trellising the brain: What if none of this is true? What if it's all one big lie? ~ Rachel Held Evans,
1493:Although my understanding of exactly how much trouble I was in grew more specific over time, as a child I surely understood enough about my condition to know it was something I'd better keep private. By intuition I was certain that the thing I knew to be true was something others would find both impossible and hilarious. My conviction, by the way, had nothing to do with a desire to be feminine, but it had everything to do with being female. Which is an odd believe for a person born male. It certainly had nothing to do with whether I was attracted to girls or boys. This last point was the one that, years later, would most frequently elude people, including the overeducated smarty-pants who constituted much of my inner circle. But being gay or lesbian is about sexual orientation. Being transgedered is about identity. ~ Jennifer Finney Boylan,
1494:Fane and Jacque looked up from the table when they heard Sally's singing all through the cafeteria. She was belting out at the top of her lungs Train's "Meet Virginia". A very pissed off looking Jen was dragging her IV pole as quickly as she could without falling, trying to catch up to her quarry. By the time Sally had reached the table, she had tears “streaming down her face from laughing so hard. She leaned over the table, panting, finishing her serenade. "Her confidence is tragic, but her intuition magic, and the shape of her body, unusual, meet Virginia!" Sally ended dramatically, arms in the air like Vanna White indicating where Jen now stood. Much to Jen's chagrin the entire cafeteria broke into applause.
Jen pasted on her most dazzling smile and waved at everyone adoringly, but to Sally she muttered under her breath, "This is war. ~ Quinn Loftis,
1495:The literary experience extends impression into discourse. It flowers to thought with nouns, verbs, objects. It thinks. Film implodes discourse, it deliterates thought, it shrinks it to the compacted meaning of the preverbal impression or intuition or understanding. You receive what you see, you don't have to think it out. . . . Fiction goes everywhere, inside, outside, it stops, it goes, its action can be mental. Nor is it time-driven. Film is time-driven, it never ruminates, it shows the outside of life, it shows behavior. It tends to the simplest moral reasoning. Films out of Hollywood are linear. The narrative simplification of complex morally consequential reality is always the drift of a film inspired by a book. Novels can do anything in the dark horrors of consciousness. Films do close-ups, car drive-ups, places, chases and explosions. ~ E L Doctorow,
1496:The aristocratic interiority is centered on the higher mind, the mens, the ajna chakra, the seat of intellect and intuition that commands the lower soul and the body. To be blunt, that describes the true 'aristocrat if the soul'.

The second is the idea of destiny and the spiritual impetus behind it. A people, family, and son, have certain spiritual qualities at their origin. The purpose of rites and worship was to keep those qualities present in order to project them into the future. The modern mind cuts off the past in order to create a future with no relationship to it. But human nature will not be denied. Instead of being guided by past heroes and sages, able to distinguish good and evil, the deracinated contemporaries will latch onto any spiritual influences at random. Devoid of true identity, they will create factitious identities. ~ Julius Evola,
1497:The fast brain is where all of our subconscious intuitions, cravings, habits, and emotions reside. The fast brain’s primary purpose is to provide these subconscious “spurs” to drive behavior patterns aimed at bringing us safety, security, food, and social connection. We’re born with a fully operational fast brain, which begins functioning while we’re still in the womb. It is always on and running, constantly scanning to collect information and continually forming conclusions about what it observes. Those conclusions often are based in intuition, emotion, or cravings. Our fast brain also spurs behavior through habits—automatic responses such as putting our foot on the brake when we see a stop sign. Those habits that determine how we relate to others, such as a reflexive response to tell the truth or own up to our mistakes, become our character habits. ~ Fred Kiel,
1498:When I talk about medicine and mental health to large audiences, I often start with the following imagery and facts: think of a woman you know who is radiantly healthy. I bet your intuition tells you she sleeps and eats well, finds purpose in her life, is active and fit, and finds time to relax and enjoy the company of others. I doubt you envision her waking up to prescription bottles, buoying her way through the day with caffeine and sugar, feeling anxious and isolated, and drinking herself to sleep at night. All of us have an intuitive sense of what health is, but many of us have lost the roadmap to optimal health, especially the kind of health that springs forth when we simply clear a path for it. The fact that one in four American women in the prime of their life is dispensed medication for a mental health condition represents a national crisis.1 ~ Kelly Brogan,
1499:I once told someone not to go into business with someone, and a year later, after he didn't listen, he was bankrupt and near divorce. I once told a popular actress, who everyone constantly praised, to not join a certain group. A few years later, that group was accused of heinous acts, and that actress told me she wished she had listened to my advice. Her career tanked. I once told a popular musician to choose relationship over her career for this one person. She didn't, and now 10 years later, she is still single, but her career tank. Her ex had moved on. I believe that I would be an oracle or seer if I lived during the Greek and Roman times. But then again, I believe my insights come from experience, clarity, and the understanding of humankind. And sometimes from a strong sense of knowing. - Strong by Kailin Gow on Following Your Guts, Strong Intuition ~ Kailin Gow,
1500:In life we seek like-minded people despite - or because of - the limit of knowing and understanding. We do so to feel less lonely, though it brings a different kind of loneliness. In seeking others, inevitably we try to control an interaction. We insist on being known only as the version we prefer to attach t ourselves. A narrative catering to others is not far from memories revised for ourselves: both move us away from the quicksand of feelings. And those who do know us beyond our chosen version - by proximity, by intuition, by observation - must provoke similar discomfort in us as melodrama does. Does our wariness of melodrama contribute to our wish to escape their eyes, or is it the other way around, that in avoiding meeting those who have more access to our interior world than we are willing to allow, we can feel momentarily protected form our own memories? ~ Yiyun Li,

IN CHAPTERS [300/511]



  249 Integral Yoga
   41 Christianity
   35 Philosophy
   25 Occultism
   16 Psychology
   12 Poetry
   7 Fiction
   6 Yoga
   6 Science
   6 Integral Theory
   6 Education
   4 Theosophy
   1 Thelema
   1 Mythology


  292 Sri Aurobindo
   52 The Mother
   39 Nolini Kanta Gupta
   31 Satprem
   26 Plotinus
   17 A B Purani
   15 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
   13 Carl Jung
   8 Aleister Crowley
   7 H P Lovecraft
   6 Aldous Huxley
   4 Nirodbaran
   3 Ken Wilber
   3 Franz Bardon
   3 Alice Bailey
   2 William Wordsworth
   2 Walt Whitman
   2 Swami Krishnananda
   2 Sri Ramakrishna
   2 Rudolf Steiner
   2 Robert Browning
   2 Plato
   2 Paul Richard
   2 Jordan Peterson
   2 George Van Vrekhem
   2 Edgar Allan Poe


   79 Record of Yoga
   58 The Synthesis Of Yoga
   28 The Life Divine
   18 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
   17 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
   14 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
   12 Letters On Yoga I
   11 Letters On Yoga IV
   10 The Human Cycle
   10 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
   8 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
   7 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
   7 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
   7 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
   7 Lovecraft - Poems
   7 Letters On Yoga II
   7 Letters On Poetry And Art
   6 The Secret Doctrine
   6 The Phenomenon of Man
   6 The Perennial Philosophy
   6 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
   6 Savitri
   6 On Education
   6 Letters On Yoga III
   6 Hymns to the Mystic Fire
   6 Essays Divine And Human
   5 Vedic and Philological Studies
   5 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
   5 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
   5 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
   5 Mysterium Coniunctionis
   4 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
   4 The Secret Of The Veda
   4 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
   4 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
   4 Liber ABA
   4 Isha Upanishad
   4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
   4 Agenda Vol 01
   3 Words Of Long Ago
   3 The Practice of Psycho therapy
   3 The Integral Yoga
   3 The Future of Man
   3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
   3 Questions And Answers 1956
   3 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
   3 Magick Without Tears
   3 Let Me Explain
   3 Hymn of the Universe
   3 A Treatise on Cosmic Fire
   3 Agenda Vol 08
   3 Agenda Vol 07
   3 Agenda Vol 02
   3 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
   2 Wordsworth - Poems
   2 Whitman - Poems
   2 The Study and Practice of Yoga
   2 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
   2 Talks
   2 Some Answers From The Mother
   2 Preparing for the Miraculous
   2 Poe - Poems
   2 Maps of Meaning
   2 Initiation Into Hermetics
   2 Essays On The Gita
   2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
   2 Browning - Poems
   2 Agenda Vol 12
   2 Agenda Vol 10
   2 Agenda Vol 06
   2 Agenda Vol 04
   2 Agenda Vol 03


00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   My suggestion is that the dog is a symbol of the keen sight of Intuition, the unfailing perception of direct knowledge. With this clue the Upanishadic story becomes quite sensible and clear and not mere abracadabra. To the aspirant for Knowledge came first a purified power of direct understanding, an Intuition of fundamental value, and this brought others of the same species in its train. They were all linked together organically that is the significance of the circle, and formed a rhythmic utterance and expression of the supreme truth (Om). It is also to be noted that they came and met at dawn to chant, the Truth. Dawn is the opening and awakening of the consciousness to truths that come from above and beyond.
   It may be asked why the dog has been chosen as the symbol of Intuition. In the Vedas, the cow and the horse also play a large part; even the donkey and the frog have their own assigned roles. These objects are taken from the environment of ordinary life, and are those that are most familiar to the external consciousness, through which the inner experiences have to express themselves, if they are to be expressed at all. These material objects represent various kinds of forces and movements and subtle and occult and spiritual dynamisms. Strictly speaking, however, symbols are not chosen in a subtle or spiritual experience, that is to say, they are not arbitrarily selected and constructed by the conscious intelligence. They form part of a dramatization (to use a term of the Freudian psychology of dreams), a psychological alchemy, whose method and process and rationale are very obscure, which can be penetrated only by the vision of a third eye.
   I. The Several Lights

0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
   The anguish of the inner soul of India found expression through these passionate words of the young Gadadhar. For what did his unsophisticated eyes see around him in Calcutta, at that time the metropolis of India and the centre of modem culture and learning? Greed and lust held sway in the higher levels of society, and the occasional religious practices were merely outer forms from which the soul had long ago departed. Gadadhar had never seen anything like this at Kamarpukur among the simple and pious villagers. The sadhus and wandering monks whom he had served in his boyhood had revealed to him an altogether different India. He had been impressed by their devotion and purity, their self-control and renunciation. He had learnt from them and from his own Intuition that the ideal of life as taught by the ancient sages of India was the realization of God.
   When Ramkumar reprimanded Gadadhar for neglecting a "bread-winning education", the inner voice of the boy reminded him that the legacy of his ancestors — the legacy of Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Sankara, Ramanuja, Chaitanya — was not worldly security but the Knowledge of God. And these noble sages were the true representatives of Hindu society. Each of them was seated, as it were, on the crest of the wave that followed each successive trough in the tumultuous course of Indian national life. All demonstrated that the life current of India is spirituality. This truth was revealed to Gadadhar through that inner vision which scans past and future in one sweep, unobstructed by the barriers of time and space. But he was unaware of the history of the profound change that had taken place in the land of his birth during the previous one hundred years.

0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
    requires infinite study, sympathy, Intuition and
    initiation. Given these I do not hesitate to claim that

0.00 - The Wellspring of Reality, #Synergetics - Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking, #R Buckminster Fuller, #Science
  Where else might society turn for advice? Unguided by science, society is allowed to go right on filling its childrens' brain banks with large inventories of competence-devastating misinformation. In order to emerge from its massive ignorance, society will probably have to rely exclusively upon its individuals' own minds to survey the pertinent experimental data-as do all great scientist-artists. This, in effect, is what the Intuition of world-around youth is beginning to do. Mind can see that reality is evoluting into weightless metaphysics. The wellspring of reality is the family of weightless generalized principles.
  It is essential to release humanity from the false fixations of yesterday, which seem now to bind it to a rationale of action leading only to extinction.

0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  means of knowing besides reasoning - Intuition, for example
  - which are also effective.

0.02 - The Three Steps of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Do such psychological conceptions correspond to anything real and possible? All Yoga asserts them as its ultimate experience and supreme aim. They form the governing principles of our highest possible state of consciousness, our widest possible range of existence. There is, we say, a harmony of supreme faculties, corresponding roughly to the psychological faculties of revelation, inspiration and Intuition, yet acting not in the intuitive reason or the divine mind, but on a still higher plane, which see Truth directly face to face, or rather live in the truth of things both universal and transcendent and are its formulation and luminous activity. And these faculties are the light of a conscious existence superseding the egoistic and itself both cosmic and transcendent, the nature of which is Bliss. These are obviously divine and, as man is at present apparently constituted, superhuman states of consciousness and activity. A trinity of transcendent existence, self-awareness and self-delight7 is, indeed, the metaphysical description of the supreme Atman, the self-formulation, to our awakened knowledge, of the Unknowable whether conceived as a pure Impersonality or as a cosmic Personality manifesting the universe. But in Yoga they are regarded also in their psychological aspects as states of subjective existence to which our waking consciousness is now alien, but which dwell in us in a superconscious plane and to which, therefore, we may always ascend.
  For, as is indicated by the name, causal body (karan.a), as opposed to the two others which are instruments (karan.a), this crowning manifestation is also the source and effective power of all that in the actual evolution has preceded it. Our mental activities are, indeed, a derivation, selection and, so long as they are divided from the truth that is secretly their source, a deformation of the divine knowledge. Our sensations and emotions have the same relation to the Bliss, our vital forces and actions to the aspect of Will or Force assumed by the divine consciousness, our physical being to the pure essence of that Bliss and

0.08 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  indirect reflection of it. They include Intuition, foreknowledge,
  knowledge by identity and certain powers such as that of healing

01.03 - Rationalism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Creative Soul The Intuition of the Age

01.04 - The Intuition of the Age, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
  object:01.04 - The Intuition of the Age
  author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
  --
   The Intuition of the Age
   All movementswhe ther of thought or of life, whether in the individual or in the massproceed from a fundamental Intuition which lies in the background as the logical presupposition, the psychological motive and the spiritual force. A certain attitude of the soul, a certain angle of vision is what is posited first; all other thingsall thoughts and feelings and activities are but necessary attempts to express, to demonstrate, to realise on the conscious and dynamic levels, in the outer world, the truth which has thus already been seized in some secret core of our being. The Intuition may not, of course, be present to the conscious mind, it may not be ostensibly sought for, one may even deny the existence of such a preconceived notion and proceed to establish truth on a tabula rasa; none the less it is this hidden bias that judges, this secret consciousness that formulates, this unknown power that fashions.
   Now, what is the Intuition that lies behind the movements of the new age? What is the intimate realisation, the underlying view-point which is guiding and modelling all our efforts and achievementsour science and art, our poetry and philosophy, our religion and society? For, there is such a common and fundamental note which is being voiced forth by the human spirit through all the multitude of its present-day activities.
   A new impulse is there, no one can deny, and it has vast possibilities before it, that also one need not hesitate to accept. But in order that we may best fructuate what has been spontaneously sown, we must first recognise it, be luminously conscious of it and develop it along its proper line of growth. For, also certain it is that this new impulse or Intuition, however true and strong in itself, is still groping and erring and miscarrying; it is still wasting much of its energy in tentative things, in mere experiments, in even clear failures. The fact is that the Intuition has not yet become an enlightened one, it is still moving, as we shall presently explain, in the dark vital regions of man. And vitalism is naturally and closely affianced to pragmatism, that is to say, the mere vital impulse seeks immediately to execute itself, it looks for external effects, for changes in the form, in the machinery only. Thus it is that we see in art and literature discussions centred upon the scheme of composition, as whether the new poetry should be lyrical or dramatic, popular or aristocratic, metrical or free of metre, and in practical life we talk of remodelling the state by new methods of representation and governance, of purging society by bills and legislation, of reforming humanity by a business pact.
   All this may be good and necessary, but there is the danger of leaving altogether out of account the one thing needful. We must then pause and turn back, look behind the apparent impulsion that effectuates to the Will that drives, behind the ideas and ideals of the mind to the soul that informs and inspires; we must carry ourselves up the stream and concentrate upon the original source, the creative Intuition that lies hidden somewhere. And then only all the new stirrings that we feel in our heartour urges and ideals and visions will attain an effective clarity, an unshaken purpose and an inevitable achievement.
   That is to say, the change has been in the soul of man himself, the being has veered round and taken a new orientation. It is this which one must envisage, recognise and consciously possess, in order that one may best fulfil the call of the age. But what we are doing instead is to observe the mere external signs and symbols and symptoms, to fix upon the distant quiverings, the echoes on the outermost rim, which are not always faithful representations, but very often distorted images of the truth and life at the centre and source and matrix. We must know that if there has been going on a redistribution and new-marshalling of forces, it is because the fiat has come from the Etat Major.
   Now, in order to understand the new orientation of the spirit of the present age, we may profitably ask what was the inspiration of the past age, the characteristic note which has failed to satisfy us and which we are endeavouring to transform. We know that that age was the Scientific age or the age of Reason. Its great prophets were Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists or if you mount further up in time, we may begin from Bacon and the humanists. Its motto was first, "The proper study of mankind is man" and secondly, Reason is the supreme organon of knowledge, the highest deity in manla Desse Raison. And it is precisely against these two basic principles that the new age has entered its protest. In face of Humanism, Nietzsche has posited the Superman and in face of Reason Bergson has posited Intuition.
   The worship of man as something essentially and exclusively human necessitates as a corollary, the other doctrine, viz the deification of Reason; and vice versa. Humanism and Scientism go together and the whole spirit and mentality of the age that is passing may be summed up in those two words. So Nietzsche says, "All our modern world is captured in the net of the Alexandrine culture and has, for its ideal, the theoretical man, armed with the most powerful instruments of knowledge, toiling in the service of science and whose prototype and original ancestor is Socrates." Indeed, it may be generally asserted that the nation whose prophet and sage claimed to have brought down Philosophia from heaven to dwell upon earth among men was precisely the nation, endowed with a clear and logical intellect, that was the very embodiment of rationality and reasonableness. As a matter of fact, it would not be far, wrong to say that it is the Hellenic culture which has been moulding humanity for ages; at least, it is this which has been the predominating factor, the vital and dynamic element in man's nature. Greece when it died was reborn in Rome; Rome, in its return, found new life in France; and France means Europe. What Europe has been and still is for the world and humanity one knows only too much. And yet, the Hellenic genius has not been the sole motive power and constituent element; there has been another leaven which worked constantly within, if intermittently without. If Europe represented mind and man and this side of existence, Asia always reflected that which transcends the mind the spirit, the Gods and the Beyonds.
  --
   So instead of the rational principle, the new age wants the principle of Nature or Life. Even as regards knowledge Reason is not the only, nor the best instrument. For animals have properly no reason; the nature-principle of knowledge in the animal is Instinct the faculty that acts so faultlessly, so marvellously where Reason can only pause and be perplexed. This is not to say that man is to or can go back to this primitive and animal function; but certainly he can replace it by something akin which is as natural and yet purified and self-consciousillumined instinct, we may say or Intuition, as Bergson terms it. And Nietzsche's definition of the Superman has also a similar orientation and significance; for, according to him, the Superman is man who has outgrown his Reason, who is not bound by the standards and the conventions determined by Reason for a special purpose. The Superman is one who has gone beyond "good and evil," who has shaken off from his nature and character elements that are "human, all too human"who is the embodiment of life-force in its absolute purity and strength and freedom.
   This then is the mantra of the new ageLife with Intuition as its guide and not Reason and mechanical efficiency, not Man but Superman. The right mantra has been found, the principle itself is irreproachable. But the interpretation, the application, does not seem to have been always happy. For, Nietzsche's conception of the Superman is full of obvious lacunae. If we have so long been adoring the intellectual man, Nietzsche asks us, on the other hand, to deify the vital man. According to him the superman is he who has (1) the supreme sense of the ego, (2) the sovereign will to power and (3) who lives dangerously. All this means an Asura, that is to say, one who has, it may be, dominion over his animal and vital impulsions in order, of course, that he may best gratify them but who has not purified them. Purification does not necessarily mean, annihilation but it does mean sublimation and transformation. So if you have to transcend man, you have to transcend egoism also. For a conscious egoism is the very characteristic of man and by increasing your sense of egoism you do not supersede man but simply aggrandise your humanity, fashion it on a larger, a titanic scale. And then the will to power is not the only will that requires fulfilment, there is also the will to knowledge and the will to love. In man these three fundamental constitutive elements coexist, although they do it, more often than not, at the expense of each other and in a state of continual disharmony. The superman, if he is to be the man "who has surmounted himself", must embody a poise of being in which all the three find a fusion and harmonya perfect synthesis. Again, to live dangerously may be heroic, but it is not divine. To live dangerously means to have eternal opponents, that is to say, to live ever on the same level with the forces you want to dominate. To have the sense that one has to fight and control means that one is not as yet the sovereign lord, for one has to strive and strain and attain. The supreme lord is he who is perfectly equanimous with himself and with the world. He has not to batter things into a shape in order to create. He creates means, he manifests. He wills and he achieves"God said 'let there be light' and there was light."
   As a matter of fact, the superman is not, as Nietzsche thinks him to be, the highest embodiment of the biological force of Nature, not even as modified and refined by the aesthetic and aristocratic virtues of which the higher reaches of humanity seem capable. For that is after all humanity only accentuated in certain other fundamentally human modes of existence. It does not carry far enough the process of surmounting. In reality it is not a surmounting but a new channelling. Instead of the ethical and intellectual man, we get the vital and aesthetic man. It may be a change but not a transfiguration.
   And the faculty of Intuition said to be the characteristic of the New Man does not mean all that it should, if we confine ourselves to Bergson's definition of it. Bergson says that Intuition is a sort of sympathy, a community of feeling or sensibility with the urge of the life-reality. The difference between the sympathy of Instinct and the sympathy of Intuition being that while the former is an unconscious or semi-conscious power, the latter is illumined and self-conscious. Now this view emphasises only the feeling-tone of Intuition, the vital sensibility that attends the direct communion with the life movement. But Intuition is not only purified feeling and sensibility, it is also purified vision and knowledge. It unites us not only with the movement of life, but also opens out to our sight the Truths, the fundamental realities behind that movement. Bergson does not, of course, point to any existence behind the continuous flux of life-power the elan vital. He seems to deny any static truth or truths to be seen and seized in any scheme of knowledge. To him the dynamic flow the Heraclitian panta reei is the ultimate reality. It is precisely to this view of things that Bergson owes his conception of Intuition. Since existence is a continuum of Mind-Energy, the only way to know it is to be in harmony or unison with it, to move along its current. The conception of knowledge as a fixing and delimiting of things is necessarily an anomaly in this scheme. But the question is, is matter the only static and separative reality? Is the flux of vital Mind-Energy the ultimate truth?
   Matter forms the lowest level of reality. Above it is the elan vital. Above the elan vital there is yet the domain of the Spirit. And the Spirit is a static substance and at the same a dynamic creative power. It is Being (Sat) that realises or expresses itself through certain typal nuclei or nodi of consciousness (chit) in a continuous becoming, in a flow of creative activity (ananda). The dynamism of the vital energy is only a refraction or precipitation of the dynamism of the spirit; and so also static matter is only the substance of the spirit concretised and solidified. It is in an uplift both of matter and vital force to their prototypesswarupa and swabhavain the Spirit that lies the real transformation and transfiguration of the humanity of man.
   This is the truth that is trying to dawn upon the new age. Not matter but that which forms the substance of matter, not intellect but a vaster consciousness that informs the intellect, not man as he is, an aberration in the cosmic order, but as he may and shall be the embodiment and fulfilment of that orderthis is the secret Intuition which, as yet dimly envisaged, nevertheless secretly inspires all the human activities of today. Only, the truth is being interpreted, as we have said, in terms of vital life. The intellectual and physical man gave us one aspect of the reality, but neither is the vital and psychical man the complete reality. The one acquisition of this shifting of the viewpoint has been that we are now in touch with the natural and deeper movement of humanity and not as before merely with its artificial scaffolding. The Alexandrine civilisation of humanity, in Nietzsche's phrase, was a sort of divagation from nature, it was following a loop away from the direct path of natural evolution. And the new Renaissance of today has precisely corrected this aberration of humanity and brought it again in a line with the natural cosmic order.
   Certainly this does not go far enough into the motive of the change. The cosmic order does not mean mentalised vitalism which is also in its turn a section of the integral reality. It means the order of the spirit, it means the transfiguration of the physical, the vital and the intellectual into the supernal Substance, Power and Light of that Spirit. The real transcendence of humanity is not the transcendence of one or other of its levels but the total transcendence to an altogether different status and the transmutation of humanity in the mould of that statusnot a Nietzschean Titan nor a Bergsonian Dionysus but the tranquil vision and delight and dynamism of the Spirit the incarnation of a god-head.

01.04 - The Secret Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Our Intuitions are its title-deeds;
  Our souls accept what our blind thoughts refuse.

01.05 - The Nietzschean Antichrist, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The Intuition of the Age On Communism

01.07 - The Bases of Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   No doubt this is a most dismal kind of pessimism. But it is the logical conclusion of all optimism that bases itself upon a particular view of human nature. If we question that pessimism, we have to question the very grounds of our optimism also. As a matter of fact, all our idealism has been so long infructuous and will be so in the future, if we do not shift our foundation and start from a different IntuitionWeltanschauung.
   Our ideals have been mental constructions, rather than spiritual realitiesrealities of the deepest and highest being. And the power by which we sought to realise those ideals was mainly the insistence of our emotional urges, rather than Nature's Truth-Power. For this must be understood that the mental, the vital and the physical form a nexus of reality which works in its own inexorable law and so long as we are within them we cannot but obey the laws that guide them. Of these three strata which form the human adhara, it is the vital which holds the key to man's nature. It is the executive power, the force that fashions the realities on the physical plane; it is what creates the character. The power of thought and sentiment is often much too exaggerated, even so the power of the body, that of physical and external rules and regulations. The mental or the physical or both together can mould the vital only to a limited extent, to the extent which is allowed by the inherent law of the vital. If the demands of the mental and the physical are stretched too far and are not suffered by the vital, a crash and catastrophe is bound to come in the end.

01.09 - The Parting of the Way, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   So, in man also, especially of that order which forms the crown of humanityin poets and artists and seers and great men of actioncan be observed a certain characteristic form of consciousness, which is something other than, greater than the consciousness of the mere self. It is difficult as yet to characterise definitely what that thing is. It is the awakening of the self to something which is beyond itselfit is the cosmic self, the oversoul, the universal being; it is God, it is Turiya, it is sachchidanandain so many ways the thing has been sought to be envisaged and expressed. The consciousness of that level has also a great variety of names given to it Intuition, Revelation, cosmic consciousness, God-consciousness. It is to be noted here, however, that the thing we are referring to, is not the Absolute, the Infinite, the One without a second. It is not, that is to say, the supreme Reality the Brahmanin its static being, in its undivided and indivisible unity; it is the dynamic Brahman, that status of the supreme Reality where creation, the diversity of Becoming takes rise, it is the Truth-worldRitam the domain of typal realities. The distinction is necessary, as there does seem to be such a level of consciousness intermediary, again, between man and the Absolute, between self-consciousness and the supreme consciousness. The simplest thing would be to give that intermediate level of consciousness a negative namesince being as yet human we cannot foresee exactly its composition and function the super-consciousness.
   The inflatus of something vast and transcendent, something which escapes all our familiar schemes of cognisance and yet is insistent with a translucent reality of its own, we do feel sometimes within us invading and enveloping our individuality, lifting up our sense of self and transmuting our personality into a reality which can hardly be called merely human. All this life of ego-bound rationality then melts away and opens out the passage for a life of vision and power. Thus it is the poet has felt when he says, "there is this incalculable element in human life influencing us from the mystery which envelops our being, and when reason is satisfied, there is something deeper than Reason which makes us still uncertain of truth. Above the human reason there is a transcendental sphere to which the spirit of men sometimes rises, and the will may be forged there at a lordly smithy and made the unbreakable pivot."(A.E.)

01.12 - Goethe, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The year 1949 has just celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great force of light that was Goethe. We too remember him on the occasion, and will try to present in a few words, as we see it, the fundamental experience, the major Intuition that stirred this human soul, the lesson he brought to mankind. Goe the was a great poet. He showed how a language, perhaps least poetical by nature, can be moulded to embody the great beauty of great poetry. He made the German language sing, even as the sun's ray made the stone of Memnon sing when falling upon it. Goe the was a man of consummate culture. Truly and almost literally it could be said of him that nothing human he considered foreign to his inquiring mind. And Goe the was a man of great wisdom. His observation and judgment on thingsno matter to whatever realm they belonghave an arresting appropriateness, a happy and revealing insight. But above all, he was an aspiring soulaspiring to know and be in touch with the hidden Divinity in man and the world.
   Goe the and the Problem of Evil

0 1956-12-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Ten years ago, I had two Intuitions the first of which, to my great astonishment, was realized. It was that I had something important to do in South America and though I never could have foreseen such a voyage, I went there. The second was that I had something to do in Turkestan.
   Mother, this is the problem around which I have desperately been turning in circles. What is the truth of my destiny? Is it that which is urging me so strongly to leave, or that which is struggling against my freedom? For ultimately, sincerely, what I want is to fulfill my lifes truth. If I have ever had a will, then it is: LET BE WHAT MUST BE. Mother, how can one truly know? Is this drive, this very old and very CLEAR urge in me, false??

0 1958-07-06, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Perhaps it is a kind of it can hardly be called an Intuition, but a kind of divination of this idea that made people speak of selling ones soul to the devil for money, of money being an evil force, which produces this shrinking on the part of all those who want to lead a spiritual life but as for that, they shrink from everything, not only from money!
   Perhaps it would not be necessary to have this power over all men, but in any event, it should be great enough to act upon the mass. It is likely that once a certain movement has been mastered to some degree, what the mass does or doesnt do (this whole human mass that has barely, barely emerged into even the mental consciousness) will become quite irrelevant. You see, the mass is still under the great rule of Nature. I am referring to mental humanity, predominantly mental, which developed the mind but misused it and immediately set out on the wrong pathfirst thing.

0 1958-11-22, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Even at a very young age, I had a kind of Intuition of my destiny. I felt that something in me had to be exhausted, or that I had to exhaust myself. I dont know, as though I had to descend into the depths of the night to find the thing. I thought it was the concentration camps. Perhaps this was still not deep enough Do you see any meaning in all this?
   It can hardly be formulated; these are merely impressions that follow one another. I know that when you thought of leaving with Swami,1 I saw that a door was opening, that it was the truth, that this was IT.

0 1960-10-11, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
   Arent you aware of this thing up above, this white plate at the crown of the head? Its what receives Intuitions. Its just like a photographic plate, and its not even activethings pass right through it without our even realizing it. And then if you concentrate just a little, everything stops, everything stops.
   A few days ago, I recall, I wanted to know something that was going to happen. I thought that with the consciousness of supramental time, I could find out I MUST find out whats going to happen. Whats going to happen?No answer. So I concentrated on it, which is what I usually do, I stopped everything and looked from abovetotal silence. Nothing. No answer. And I felt a slight impatience: But why cant I know?! And what came was the equivalent of (Im translating it in words), Its none of your business!!

0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The second sign is a sense of ABSOLUTENESS in knowledge. As I have already told you, I had this with my experience of January 24. This state CANNOT be obtained through any region of the mind, even the most illumined and exalted. Its not a certainty, its (Mother lowers both hands like an irresistible block descending), a kind of absoluteness, without even any possibility of hesitation (theres no question of doubt), or anything like that. Without (how to say it ?). All mental knowledge, even the highest, is a conclusive knowledge, as it were: it comes as a conclusion of something elsean Intuition, for instance (an Intuition gives you a particular knowledge, and this knowledge is like the conclusion of the Intuition). Even revelations are conclusions. Theyre all conclusions the word conclusion comes to me, but I dont know how to express it. This isnt the case, however, with the supramental experiencea kind of absolute. The feeling it gives is altogether uniquefar beyond certainty, it is (Mother again makes the same irresistible gesture) it is a FACT, things are FACTS. It is very, very difficult to explain. But with that one naturally has a complete power the two things always go together. (In my reply to this man I didnt speak of power because the power is almost a consequence and I didnt want to speak of consequences.) But the fact remains: a kind of absoluteness in knowledge springing from identityone is the thing one knows and experiences: one is it. One knows it because one is it.
   When these two signs are present (both are necessary, one is incomplete without the other), when a person possesses both, then you can be sure he has been in contact with the Supermind. So people who speak about receiving the Light well, (laughing) its a lot of hot air! But when both signs are present, you can be sure of your perception.12

0 1961-03-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Its not that you dont have experiences! You even have access to regions where people very rarely go; you are capable of receiving light, Intuitions, revelations but this is probably so normal for you that you dont notice it! I came to meditate with you especially to see what was preventing you from being conscious. And on your right side, I saw a sort of crystallization somewhat as though you were inside a statue.
   It seemed made of transparent alabasterhard, harder than stone. It was the result of an individualization that was my impressionan individualization that has become very hardened. It has tried to become entirely transparent but has no tangible contact with thingsthings enter only through the higher regions, through intellectual perceptions (not intellectual, a sort of mental vision). And I began to bang on it!

0 1961-11-12, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It would be interesting, if it were possible thats precisely what I mean when I say: no links, no train of logic, no continuity; these are always, always mental. An inspiration, an Intuition, a revelation always comes, poff!, leaving a score of things unsaidgaps to be filled in with spiritual experience.
   If you start to explain, it falls flattheres no help for it.

0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   In Bengal this weakness has gone to the extreme. The Bengali has a quick intelligence, emotional capacity and Intuition. He is foremost in India in all these qualities. All of them are necessary but they do not suffice. If to these there were added depth of thought, calm strength, heroic courage and a capacity for and pleasure in prolonged labor, the Bengali might be a leader not only of India, but of mankind. But he does not want that, he wants to get things done easily, to get knowledge without thinking, the fruits without labor, siddhi by an easy sadhana [discipline]. His stock is the excitement of the emotional mind. But excess of emotion, empty of knowledge, is the very symptom of the malady. In the end it brings about fatigue and inertia. The country has been constantly and gradually going down. The life-power has ebbed away. What has the Bengali come to in his own country? He cannot get enough food to eat or clothes to wear, there is lamentation on all sides, his wealth, his trade and commerce, his lands, his very agriculture have begun to pass into the hands of others. We have abandoned the sadhana of Shakti and Shakti has abandoned us. We do the sadhana of Love, but where Knowledge and Shakti are not, there Love does not remain, there narrowness and littleness come, and in a little and narrow mind there is no place for Love. Where is Love in Bengal? There is more quarreling, jealousy, mutual dislike, misunderstanding and faction there than anywhere else even in India which is so much afflicted by division.
   In the noble heroic age of the Aryan people4 there was not so much shouting and gesticulating, but the endeavor they undertook remained steadfast through many centuries. The Bengalis endeavor lasts only for a day or two.

0 1962-11-20, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Ive been floundering. But you know, for years Ive had the Intuition, the premonition, that 1963 would be a terrible yearpersonally.
   Sixty-three.

0 1963-03-13, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Armed with the Intuition of a bliss
   To which some moved tranquillity was the key,

0 1963-08-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   I told you that the only process Ive known, and which recurred several times in my life, is to renounce an error. Something you believe to be truewhich probably was true for a timeon which you partly base your action, but which, in actuality, was only one opinion. You thought it was a truthful finding with all its logical consequences, and your action (part of your action) was based on it, so that everything proceeded from it automatically. Till suddenly an experience, a circumstance or an Intuition warns you that your finding isnt so true as it appeared to be (!) Then there is a whole period of observation and study (sometimes too it comes as a revelation, a massive proof), and then its not just your idea or false knowledge that needs to be changed, but also all its consequences, perhaps an entire way of acting on a particular point. At that moment, you get a sort of sensation, something that feels like a sensation of renunciation; that is to say, you have to undo a whole collection of things you had built. Sometimes its quite considerable, sometimes a very small thing, but the experience is the same: the movement of a force, a dissolving power, and the resistance of all that must be dissolved, all the past habit. It is the contact of the movement of dissolution with the corresponding resistance that probably translates in the ordinary human consciousness as the sense of renunciation.
   I saw that very recently; its something insignificant, the circumstances are completely unimportant in themselves (its only the study of the whole that makes it interesting). Its the only phenomenon that has recurred several times in my life and which for that reason I know well. And as the being progresses, the power of dissolution increases, becomes more and more immediate, and the resistance lessens. But I remember the time when the resistances were at their highest (more than half a century ago), and it never worked in any other way: it was always something outside menot outside my consciousness but outside my will something that resists the will. I never had the feeling I had to renounce things but I felt as if I had to exert a pressure on them to dissolve them. Whereas now, the farther I go, the more imperceptible the pressure becomes, its immediate: as soon as the Force that comes to dissolve a collection of things manifests, theres no resistance, everything gets dissolved; on the contrary, theres hardly any sense of liberation theres something that is amused every time and says, Ah, again! How many times you limit yourself. How many times you think youre constantly moving on, smoothly, without stopping, and how many times you set a little limit to your action (it isnt a big limit because its a very little thing within an immense whole, but its a limit nonetheless). And then when the Force acts to dissolve the limit, at first you feel liberated, you feel a joy; but now its not even like that any more: there is a smile. Because its not a sense of liberationyou very simply remove a stone that stands in your way.

0 1965-03-24, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   My means of knowing people now is also like that. But for a long time now, when I see a photograph, for instance, it hasnt been going through thought at all; there are neither deductions nor Intuitions: the photograph causes a vibration somewhere. And funny things happen, too; the other day, they gave me the photograph of a person, so I have a very clear perception: from the place that is touched, from the vibration that responds, I know that this man is used to handling ideas and that he has the self-assurance of someone who teaches. I ask (just to see), What does this man do? They tell me, He is a businessman. I said, Well, he isnt made to be a businessman, he doesnt know the first thing about business! And three minutes after, they tell me, Oh, excuse me, I am sorry, I made a mistake, he is a teacher! (Mother laughs) Thats how it is.
   And its constant, constant.

0 1965-09-15a, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It seems, according to astrologers, that the combination of stars for the month of September is very bad for the earth. Naturally, this is always something to be cautious about, because it depends on peoples Intuition, on their capacity to interpret, whether their vision is broad enough and so on, but it seems that all the signs are undeniable and indicate that things are bad (thats vague, of course), catastrophic. I was told this before, they said it in July. Only, I never attach too much importance to their conclusions, because they are always And also, they say some very vague things that contradict each other. Personally, I dont know the first thing about all that, I am not trying to seein fact I NEVER try to see (what came last night came very spontaneously, without my trying to see). The work, of course, is devoid of thought, of verbal expression, and constant; but it has been constant for a long time: the first time was at the beginning of the year, I think, at least six months ago. The second time, I told you I had one night an experience [the pressure of the Supreme] before anything really serious had taken place. Well, the first experience I had, of the consciousness hurling a fantastic power on the earth, which was necessarily going to shake things up, was at least six months before that second experience. And for those six months, it was constant: as soon as I came into contact with the earth consciousness, it was there, and constant, constant. Then came that indication: the pressure of the supreme Lord. And the third step was yesterday evening.
   Well see.

0 1966-06-18, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Why have men created such fixed things as languages? Its so deliberately narrow and limited. And I think thats what abolished in man the possibility of Intuition, because
   He is forced to become so narrow in order to make himself understood. You feel you could be sitting in front of a genius and have no means to communicate, except like this (gesture above the head of a communication on a higher plane).

0 1966-09-30, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Although St. Paul had remarkable mystic experiences and, certainly, much profound spiritual knowledge (profound rather than wide, I think)I would not swear to it that he is referring1 to the supramentalised body (physical body). Perhaps to the supramental body or to some other luminous body in its own space and substance, which he found sometimes as if enveloping him and abolishing this body of death which he felt the material envelope to be. This verse like many others is capable of several interpretations and might refer to a quite supraphysical experience. The idea of a transformation of the body occurs in different traditions, but I have never been quite sure that it meant the change in this very matter. There was a yogi some time ago in this region who taught it, but he hoped when the change was complete, to disappear in light. The Vaishnavas speak of a divine body which will replace this one when there is the complete siddhi. But, again, is this a divine physical or supraphysical body? At the same time there is no obstacle in the way of supposing that all these ideas, Intuitions, experiences point to, if they do not exactly denote, the physical transformation.2
   Sri Aurobindo

0 1966-12-24, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   And one who has completely dedicated himself to the Truth, who wants to live the Truth and serve the Truth, will know EVERY MINUTE what he has to do: it will be a sort of Intuition or revelation (more often than not wordless, but sometimes also expressed in words), which will every minute let him know the truth of that minute. And thats what is so interesting. They want to know the Truth, but as something well defined, well sorted out, well established; and then you are nice and quiet, you no longer need to seek! You adopt it and say, This is the Truth, and then its rigidly set thats what all religions did, they set up their truth as a dogma. But thats not the Truth anymore.
   Truth is a living, changing thing, which expresses itself every second and is ONE way of approaching the Supreme. Everyone has his own way of approaching the Supreme. There may be some who can approach Him from every side at the same time, but there are those who approach through Love, those who approach through Power, those who approach through Consciousness, and those who approach through Truth. And each of these aspects is as absolute, imperative and indefinable as the supreme Lord himself is. The supreme Lord is absolute, imperative and indefinable, ungraspable in his entirety, and his attributes have that same quality.

0 1967-04-05, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Then and then onlyyou will be able to discern, from time to time, from place to place, an Intuition that something else is possible: in the Vedas, for instance (the injunction to descend deep into the cave of the Panis); in the Tantras also a little light burning.
   I may add that you could adopt as motto for your first project this quotation of Sri Aurobindo:

0 1967-06-03, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   But Z has done experiments like that. He told me the story of a girl at the School who had no imagination: when she was asked a question she could only answer what she had learned, and when she was given a problem she could never solve it. She was like that, blocked above. And he taught her to try and make contact precisely with that intuitive zone, by keeping quiet, falling silent and listening. And it seems that after some time, she had extraordinary results in that way, by falling silent and listeninganswers which were really remarkable and certainly came from the region of Intuition. And thats a practical fact, he did it at the School.
   Well, thats what should be done, its much more important.

0 1967-06-21, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   When Pakistan and China attacked India [in 1965], I had a sort of very clear Intuition that the conflict, if there is to be one, that is to decide the fate of civilization, can only be played out in India
   Yes.

0 1968-04-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   If there is no representative of the supreme Consciousness (which can happen, of course), if there isnt any, we could perhaps (this would be worth trying) replace him with the government by a small numberwe would have to choose between four and eight, something like that: four, seven or eighta small number having an INTUITIVE intelligence. Intuitive is more important than intelligence: they should have an Intuition that manifests intellectually. (From a practical standpoint it would have some drawbacks, but it might be nearer the truth than the lowest rung: socialism or communism.) All the intermediaries have proved incompetent: theocracy, aristocracy, democracy, plutocracyall that is a complete failure. The other one too is now giving proof of its failure, the government of what can we call it? Democracy?4 (But democracy always implies the idea of educated, rich people.) That has given proof of its complete incompetence.
   Its the reign of the most equally shared stupidity.

0 1969-02-08, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   5) Should we let the individual initiative manifest freely, personal action be impelled by inspiration and Intuition, and turn down any suggestion which the individual concerned does not feel to be good?
   To be viable, this would demand that all Auroville workers should be yogis, conscious of the Divine Truth.

0 1969-05-03, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Last year, you remember, there was a boy who drowned at Gingee:3 that was with P. [the groups captain]; and this little one, it was with B., Rs sister [also a captain]. So I looked: outwardly, they are vitally very strong and very egocentric, which would be the external, material reason that allows the accident to take place that is, no Intuition of others needs or state: no contact, theyre like this (gesture closed in on oneself), but with an inner solidity on which, the psychic was leaning, for both of them [the two captains].
   The other one too [the boy who drowned in the pond] wanted to go, but in his case it was very interesting: I saw Sri Aurobindo come and fetch him under water, and Sri Aurobindo said, He will be born in the family (he came back in a child), he will come back in the first child to be born in the family. And this girl, I dont know yet what will happen, but her psychic being WANTED to go (for some reason or other).4

0 1970-08-05, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The end vindicate Intuitions sure technique.
   II.I.100

0 1971-03-13, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It should not be left to peoples Intuition: explicit.
   (Mother raises her arms in a heavy gesture, then goes within)

0 1971-04-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Until the year of grace 1969 [the descent of the New Consciousness], all philosophies, all religions, all isms, all spiritual paths were only the refined products of the mental circle [according to Supermanhood]. All experiences were merely on the higher planes of the mind. Those peaks of the Spirit are but self-paroxysms, p. 61; we must cleanse ourselves of the wisdoms of the past, the ascents of the past, the illuminations of the past and the whole racket of the old sanctities of the Spirit, p. 29, etc. In other words, everything that took place before 1969 is a sublimation of the old flesh, p. 28. It is quite clear. Some have touched the Secret: the Rishis, the Egyptians the reader understands that they had the Intuition of it but not the experience. The same applies to Sri Aurobindo, who announced it, but his yoga extended the refinement of the mental bubble; the reader thus understands that he did not know about the key to the yoga of the superman and was merely satisfied in teaching the integral yoga.
   The misconception of this enthusiastic reader is like a demonstration in reverse of precisely what the orthodox reproached Supermanhood for, i.e., of having betrayed Sri Aurobindo. Behind this so-called schism were hidden, on the one hand, those who wanted to separate Mother and Sri Aurobindo and found it more comfortable to philosophize than to do the yoga concretely, and on the other hand, those who wanted conveniently to dispense with all spiritual disciplines and live according to their fancy. Two poles of the same misconception. Here then is the letter Satprem sent in response to this enthusiastic reader:

02.01 - Metaphysical Thought and the Supreme Truth, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In the East, especially in India, the metaphysical thinkers have tried, as in the West, to determine the nature of the highest Truth by the intellect. But, in the first place, they have not given mental thinking the supreme rank as an instrument in the discovery of Truth, but only a secondary status. The first rank has always been given to spiritual Intuition and illumination and spiritual experience; an intellectual conclusion that contradicts this supreme authority is held invalid. Secondly, each philosophy has armed itself with a practical way of reaching to the supreme state of consciousness, so that even when one begins with Thought, the aim is to arrive at a consciousness beyond mental thinking. Each philosophical founder (as also those who continued his work or school) has been a metaphysical thinker doubled with a Yogi. Those who were only philosophic intellectuals were respected for their learning but never took rank as truth discoverers. And the philosophies that lacked a sufficiently powerful means of spiritual experience died out and became things of the past because they were not dynamic for spiritual discovery and realisation.
  In the West it was just the opposite that came to pass.

02.01 - Our Ideal, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   A mind that is not rigidly limited to the ratiocinative process, but has been remoulded in the light and rhythm of inspiration and Intuition and revelation and other higher sources still beyond becomes at once a transfigured vessel, an apt instrument to incarnate and dynamise in the physical and material field truths and realities that normally lie far and above. Something of the kind, though in a small measure, happens, for example, in a poet or an artist. A poet who moves by vision and inspiration is not, at least need not be, devoid of mind: the mind in ills case is not annihilated or even kept in abeyance, but sublimated, undergoing a reorientation and reorganisation, acquiring a new magnitude. Even if there is a suspension of the ratiocinative faculty, it would not mean a suspension of the mental power in itself, but rather an enhancement in a new degree. The same may happen to the other parts and planes of human consciousness and existence.
   Of course, if one chooses, one can sidetrack these intervening ranges of consciousness between the Spirit and Matter, and strike something like a chord line between the two; but also one need not follow this bare straight ascetic line of ascension; one can pursue a wider, a circular or global movement which not only arrives but fulfils. The latter is Nature's method of activity, Nature being all reality. The exclusive line is meant for individuals, and even as such it has a value and sense in the global view, for this too is contri butory to the total urge and its total consummation.

02.01 - The World-Stair, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
    The end vindicate Intuition's sure technique.
  26.24

02.02 - Lines of the Descent of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Between the Overmind and the Mind proper, varying according to the degree of immixture of the two, according to the degree of descent and of emergence of one and the other respectively, there are several levels of consciousness of which three main ones have been named and described by Sri Aurobindo. The first one nearest to the Overmind and the least contaminated by the Mind is pure Intuition; next, the intermediary one is called the Illumined Mind, and last comes the Higher Mind. They are all powers of the Overmind functioning in the Mind. The higher ranges are always more direct, intense, synthetic, dynamic than the lower ones where consciousness is slower, duller, more uncertain, more disintegrated. The lower the consciousness descends the more veiled it becomes, losing more and more the directness, the sureness, the intensity and force and the synthetic unity native to the highest ranges of our consciousness and being.
   A further descent into obscurity occurs when consciousness passes from Mind to Life. Darkness is almost visible here: there is a greater withdrawal on the part of each unit from its surrounding reality, a narrower concentration upon one's own separative existenceshades of the prison-house have gathered close around. The light, already dulled and faint in the mind, has become a lurid glare here. Passion has arisen and desire and hunger and battle and combat.

02.03 - An Aspect of Emergent Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Does this point to the emergence of a new type of superhuman beings forming a class or a species by themselves? The possibility has been envisaged by some of the protagonists of emergent evolution, but has not been sufficiently examinedor considered. Philosophers seem to walk in this region with caution and incertitude, as if on quicksand and quagmire. But in this connection we are faced with a problem which Morgan had the happy Intuition to seize and to bring forward. It is our purpose to draw attention to this matter.
   Professor Alexander spoke of the emergence of deities who would embody emergent properties other than those manifest in the Mind of man. Morgan asks whether there is not also a Deityor the Deityin the making. He establishes the logical necessity of such a consummation in this way: the evolutionary urge (or nisus, as it has been called) in its upward drive creates and throws up on all sides, at each stage, forms of the new property or principle of existence that has come into evidence. These multiple forms may appear anywhere and everywhere; they are strewn about on the entire surface of Nature. These are, however, the branchings of the evolutionary nisus which has a central line of advance running through the entire gradation of emergents; it is, as it were, the central pillar round which is erected a many-storeyed edifice. The interesting point is this, that at the present stage of emergence, what the central line touches and arrives at is the Deity. Or, again, the thing can be viewed in another way. At the bottom the evolutionary movement is broad-based on Matter but as it proceeds upward its extent is gradually narrowed down;

03.01 - The Evolution of Consciousness, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Consciousness into an apparent Inconscience and an emergence of it out of that Inconscience, degree by degree, until it recovers its own highest spiritual and supramental summits and manifests their powers here in Matter. But even in the Inconscience there is a secret Consciousness which works, one may say, by an involved and hidden Intuition proper to itself.
  Consciousness is a fundamental thing, it is the fundamental thing in existence - it is the energy, the action, the movement of consciousness that creates the universe and all that is in it

03.02 - Aspects of Modernism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The contemporary urge is not towards rationalisation, but rather towards irrationalisation. Orthodox science itself is taking greater and greater cognisance today of the irrational movements of nature, even of physical nature. Intuition and instinct are now welcomed as surer and truer instruments of knowledge and action than reason.
   Another special feature of the modern consciousness is its "multiple sightedness". The world, as it is presented to us, is no more than an assemblage of view-points; and each point of observation forms its own world-system. There is no one single ultimate truth; if there is any, there is no possibility of its being known or perceived by the mind or the senses. Things exist in relation to one another and for us they have no intrinsic existence apart from the relations. The instrument itself that perceives is the resultant of a system of relations. A truth is only a view-point; and as the view-point shifts, the truth also varies accordingly. The cult of Relativity is a significant expression of the modern consciousness.

03.02 - The Gradations of Consciousness The Gradation of Planes, #The Integral Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The physical is not the only world; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, Intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul's home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane.
  The same planes are situated in the consciousness of general

03.03 - The House of the Spirit and the New Creation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Armed with the Intuition of a bliss
  To which some moved tranquillity was the key,

03.04 - The Other Aspect of European Culture, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   So it is contended by some dissident voices that Europe and Asia are, as a matter of fact, different and disparate and incommensurable bodies they belong to categories that are as poles asunder; and therefore the twain can and shall never merge nor meet. For Europe, on the one hand, with her materialistic and mechanistic culture, forms one indivisible unity, her entire life in its manifold expression is moulded according to a definite pattern, forming a closed circle; on the other hand, Asia basing herself upon the spiritual and the other world has in quite a different way fashioned an altogether different culture-complex. One cannot take some spiritual element out of Asiatic culture and mix it with some profane element extracted from European culture, serving the product to humanity as its universal Ideal. The details the multitudinous forms and forces that make up an integral whole are irrevocably determined by a basic Intuition which is the soul of that integrality; the entire edifice is a compact unityeach piece of brick, every bit of space is in its own place and has its own function by virtue of a dominant, a compelling Idea. Like an object of art, even like a living organism, a "body cultural" is inviolable in its self-sufficient and jealous completeness.
   In other words, the difference between Europe and Asia is the difference between two species; and there can be no fruitful union between them. So, the meeting and fusion of Europe and Asia is nothing but a barren ideal, a chimera. It is a hope and a desire cherished, no doubt, by sentimental visionaries, but it is bound to come to grief in the end, when brought to face the realities of life and the stern forces that shape the forms of the concrete world.
  --
   Is it meant that "Mediaeval obscurantism" was Europe's supreme ideal and that the cry should be: "Back to the Dark Age, into the gloom of Mystic superstitions and Churchian dogmas?" Now, one cannot deny that there was much of obscurantism and darkness in that period of Europe's evolution. And the revolt launched against it by the heralds of the Modern Age was inevitable and justified to some extent; but to say that unadulterated superstition was what constituted the very substance of Middle Age Culture and that the whole thing was more or less a nightmare, is only to land into another sort of superstition and obscurantism. The best when corrupt does become the worst. The truth of the matter is that in its decline the Middle Age clung to and elaborated only the formal aspect of its culture, leaving aside its inner realisation, its living inspiration. The Renaissance was a movement of reaction and correction against the lifeless formalism, the dry scholasticism of a decadent Middle Age; it sought to infuse a new vitality, by giving a new outlook and Intuition to Europe's moribund soul. But, in fact, it has gone a little too far in its career of correction. In its violent enthusiasm to pull down the worn-out edifice of the past and to build anew for the future, it has almost gone to the length of digging up the solid foundation and erasing the fundamental ground-plan upon which Europe's real life and culture reposed and can still safely repose.
   If then Europe can cut across the snares that Modernism has spread all about her and get behind the surface turmoils and ebullitions and seek that which she herself once knew and esteemed as the one thing needful, then will she really see what the East means, then only will she find the bond of indissoluble unity with Asia. For the Truth that Europe carried in her bosom is much bigger than anything she ever suspected even in her best days. And she carried it not with the full illumination and power of a Master, but rather in the twilight consciousness of a servant or a devotee. The Truth in its purity flowed there for the most part much under the main current of life, and its formulations in life were not its direct expressions and embodiments but echoes and images. It is Asia who grasps the Truth with the hand of the Master, the Truth in its full and absolute truth and it is Asia who can show in fact and life how to embody it integrally.

03.09 - Sectarianism or Loyalty, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Uddhava might have had numberless teachers and instructors, but the Guru of his soul was Sri Krishna alone, none other. We may learn many things from many places, from books, from nature, from persons; Intuitions and inspirations may come from many quarters, inside and outside, but the central guidance flows from one source only and one must be careful to keep it unmixed, undefiled, clear and pure. When one means nothing more than playing with ideas and persons and places, there is no harm in being a globe-trotter; but as soon as one becomes serious, means business, one automatically stops short, finds and sticks to his Ishta, even like the Gopis of Sri Krishna who declared unequivocally that they would not move out of Brindaban even by a single step.
   ***

04.01 - The March of Civilisation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   We may follow a little more closely the march of the centuries in their undulating movement. The creative intelligence of the Renaissance too belonged to a region of the higher mind, a kind of inspirational mind. It had not the altitude or even the depth of the Greek mind nor its subtler resonances: but it regained and re-established and carried to a new degree the spirit of inquiry and curiosity, an appreciation of human motives and preoccupations, a rational understanding of man and the mechanism of the world. The original intuitive fiat, the imaginative brilliance, the spirit of adventure (in the mental as well as the physical world) that inspired the epoch gradually dwindled: it gave place to an age of consolidation, organisation, stabilisation the classical age. The seventeenth century Europe marked another peak of Europe's civilisation. That is the Augustan Age to which we have referred. The following century marked a further decline of the Intuition and higher imagination and we come to the eighteenth century terre terre rationalism. Great figures still adorned that agestalwarts that either stuck to the prevailing norm and gave it a kind of stagnant nobility or already leaned towards the new light that was dawning once more. Pope and Johnson, Montesquieu and Voltaire are its high-lights. The nineteenth century brought in another crest wave with a special gift to mankind; apparently it was a reaction to the rigid classicism and dry rationalism of the preceding age, but it came burdened with a more positive mission. Its magic name was Romanticism. Man opened his heart, his higher feeling and nobler emotional surge, his subtler sensibility and a general sweep of his vital being to the truths and realities of his own nature and of the cosmic nature. Not the clear white and transparent almost glaring light of reason and logic, of the brain mind, but the rosy or rainbow tint of the emotive and aspiring personality that seeks in and through the cosmic panorama and dreams of
   A light that was ne'er on sea or land. . .
  --
   Turning to India we find a fuller and completerif not a globalpicture of the whole movement. India, we may say, is the spiritual world itself: and she epitomised the curve of human progress in a clearer and more significant manner. Indian history, not its political but its cultural and spiritual history, divides itself naturally into great movements with corresponding epochs each dwelling upon and dealing with one domain in the hierarchy of man's consciousness. The stages and epochs are well known: they are(l) Vedic, (2) Upanishadic, (3) Darshanasroughly from Buddha to Shankara, (4) Puranic, (5) Bhagavataor the Age of Bhakti, and finally (6) the Tantric. The last does not mean that it is the latest revelation, the nearest to us in time, but that it represents a kind of complementary movement, it was there all along, for long at least, and in which the others find their fruition and consummation. We shall explain presently. The force of consciousness that came and moved and moulded the first and the earliest epoch was Revelation. It was a power of direct vision and occult will and cosmic perception. Its physical seat is somewhere behind and or just beyond the crown of the head: the peak of man's manifest being that received the first touch of Surya Savitri (the supreme Creative Consciousness) to whom it bowed down uttering the invocation mantra of Gayatri. The Ray then entered the head at the crown and illumined it: the force of consciousness that ruled there is Intuition, the immediate perception of truth and reality, the cosmic consciousness gathered and concentrated at that peak. That is Upanishadic knowledge. If the source and foundation of the Vedic initiation was occult vision, the Upanishad meant a pure and direct Ideation. The next stage in the coming down or propagation of the Light was when it reached further down into the brain and the philosophical outlook grew with rational understanding and discursive argumentation as the channel for expression, the power to be cultivated and the limb to be developed. The Age of the Darshanas or Systems of Philosophy started with the Buddha and continued till it reached its peak in Shankaracharya. The age sought to give a bright and strong mental, even an intellectual body to the spiritual light, the consciousness of the highest truth and reality. In the Puranic Age the vital being was touched by the light of the spirit and principally on the highest, the mental level of that domain. It meant the advent of the element of feeling and emotiveness and imagination into the play of the Light, the beginning of their reclamation. This was rendered more concrete and more vibrant and intense in the next stage of the movement. The whole emotional being was taken up into the travailing crucible of consciousness. We may name it also as the age of the Bhagavatas, god-lovers, Bhaktas. It reached its climax in Chaitanya whose physical passion for God denoted that the lower ranges of the vital being (its physical foundations) were now stirred in man to awake and to receive the Light. Finally remains the physical, the most material to be worked upon and made conscious and illumined. That was the task of the Tantras. Viewed in that light one can easily understand why especial stress was laid in that system upon the esoteric discipline of the five m's (pancha makra),all preoccupied with the handling and harnessing of the grossest physical instincts and the most material instruments. The Tantric discipline bases itself upon Nature Power coiled up in Matter: the release of that all-conquering force through a purification and opening into the consciousness of the Divine Mother, the transcendent creatrix of the universe. The dynamic materialising aspect of consciousness was what inspired the Tantras: the others forming the Vedantic line, on the whole, were based on the primacy of the static being, the Purusha, aloof and withdrawing.
   The Indian consciousness, we say, presented the movement as an intensive and inner, a spiritual process: it dealt with the substance itself, man's very nature and sought to know it from within and shape it consciously. In Europe where the frontal consciousness is more stressed and valued, the more characteristic feature of its history is the unfoldment and metamorphosis of the forms and expressions, the residuary powers, as it were, of man's evolving personality, individual and social.

04.02 - A Chapter of Human Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Human evolution took a decisive turn with the advent of the Hellenic culture and civilisation. All crises in evolution are a sudden revelation, an unexpected outburst, a saltum, a leap into the unknown. Now, what the Greeks brought in was the Mind, the luminous Reason, the logical faculty that is married to the senses, no doubt, but still suffused with an inner glow of consciousness. It is the faculty mediating between a more direct and immediate perception of things, Intuition and Instinct, on the one hand, and on the other, the perception given by the senses and a power of control over material things. Take Egypt or Israel or Chaldea, what one finds prominent there is the instinctive-intuitive man, spontaneousprime-sautierimaginative, mythopoeic, clairvoyant, clairaudient (although not very clear, in the modern and Greek sense), bringing into this world things of the other world and pushing this world as much as possible into the other, maintaining a kind of direct connection and communion between the two. The Greeks are of another mould. They are a rational people; they do not move and act simply or mainly by instinctive reactions, but even these are filtered in them through a light of the Mind of Intelligence, a logical pattern, a rational disposition of things; through Mind they seek to know Matter and to control it. It is the modern methodology, that of observation and experiment, in other words, the scientific procedure. The Greeks have had their gods, their mythology; but these are modelled somewhat differently: the gods are made more human, too human, as has often been observed. Zeus and Juno (Hera) are infinitely more human than Isis and Osiris or Moloch and Baal or even the Jewish Jehovah. These vital gods have a sombre air about them, solemn and serious, grim and powerful, but they have not the sunshine, the radiance and smile of Apollo (Apollo Belvedere) or Hermes. The Greeks might have, they must have taken up their gods from a more ancient Pantheon, but they have, after the manner of their sculptor Phidias, remoulded them, shaped and polished them, made them more luminous and nearer and closer to earth and men. 1 Was it not said of Socrates that he brought down the gods from heaven upon earth?
   The intermediary faculty the Paraclete, which the Greeks brought to play is a corner-stone in the edifice of human progress. It is the formative power of the Mind which gives things their shape and disposition, their consistency and cogency as physical realities. There are deeper and higher sources in man, more direct, immediate and revealing, where things have their birth and origin; but this one is necessary for the embodiment, for the building up and maintenance of the subtler and profounder truths in an earthly structure, establish and fix them in the normal consciousness. The Socratic Dialogues are rightly placed at the start of the modern culture; they set the pattern of modern mentality. That rational turn of mind, that mental intelligence and understanding as elaborated, formulated, codified by the Aristotelian system was the light that shone through the Grco-Latin culture of the Roman days; that was behind the culture and civilisation of the Middle Ages. The changes and revolutions of later days, social or cultural, did not affect it, rather were based upon it and inspired by it. And even today our scientific culture maintains and continues the tradition.

04.02 - Human Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   In other words, it can be said that the older humanity was intuitive and instinctive, while modern humanity is rationalistic. Now it has been questioned whether this change or reorientation is a sign of progress, whether it has not been at the most a mixed blessing. Many idealists and reformers frankly view the metamorphosis with anxiety. Gerald Heard vehemently declares that the rationalism of the modern age is a narrowing down of the consciousness to a superficial movement, a foreshortening, and a top-heavy specialisation which means stagnation, decay and death. He would rather release the tension in the strangulation of consciousness, even if it means a slight coming down to the anterior level of instinct and Intuition, but of more plasticity and less specialisation: it is, he says, only in conditions of suppleness and variability, of life organised yet sufficiently free that the forces of evolution can act fruitfully. It has also been pointed out that homo sapiens is not a direct descendant of homo neanderthalis who was already a far too specialised being, but of a stock anterior to it which was still uncertain, wavering, groping towards a definite emergence.
   Now, these two positionsof Jung and of Heardoffer us a good basis upon which we can try to estimate the nature of man's progress in historical times. Both refer to a crucial change in human consciousness, a far-reaching change having no parallel since it invented the metal tool. The change means the appearance of pure intelligence in man, a change, as we may say, in modern terms, in the system of reference, from biological co-ordinates to those of pure reason. Only Jung thinks that the reorganisation of the human consciousness is to happen precisely round the focus of pure reason, while Gerald Heard is doubtful about the efficacy of this facultyof directive thinking, as Jung puts it-if it is to lead to overspecialisation, which means the swelling of one member and atrophy of the rest; a greater and supreme direction he seeks elsewhere in a transcendence of intelligence and reason which, besides, is bound to happen in the course of evolution.

04.09 - Values Higher and Lower, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   That is why, while we give our support to this new effort of Europe, we agree and even insist that the hoary spiritual tradition of India has still something to teach us moderns, some light to give us in our present predicament. For, although, the ideal is generally admitted in many places, the way to it is not clear. Since Nietzsche spoke of the surpassing of man, many are taken up with the ideal, but the means to effect it remains yet to be discovered: it is still under discussion, at least. As a matter of fact, the goal itself is none too clear and definite: sometimes we think of a saintly transformation of human nature, sometimes the growing power of Intuition, very vaguely and variously defined, replacing or supplementing intellect and thus adding a new asset to man's life and consciousness.
   The crucial problem however lies, in a sense, in the way that the goal is to be reached, in the modus operandi. How is the higher status, whatever it is, to be brought down, made effective, be established here on earth and in life. Ideals there have been always and many; evidently we do not know how to go about the business and actualise what is thought and dreamed. About the new ideal too, suggestions have been made with regard to the path to be followed to reach it and are being tried and tested. Some say a life of inner or ethical discipline, conscious effort on the part of each Individual for his own sake is needed: the higher reality must be reached first by a few individuals, it cannot be attained by 'mass action. Others declare that personal effort will not lead very far; if there is to be a great or fundamental change in human nature, it is the Divine Grace alone that can bring it about. The surpassing of man is a miracle and only the supreme magician as an Avatara can do it. Others, again, are not prone to believe in a physical Incarnationsomewhat difficult usually for a European mind but would accept subtler forces or even superior beings, other than the human category, as aids and agents in the working out of the great future.

05.05 - In Quest of Reality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Indeed the second way of approach to the problem is the positivist's own way. That is to say, let us take our stand on the terra firmaof the physical and probe into it and find out whether there are facts there which open the way or point to the other side of nature, whether there are signs, hints, intimations, factors involved there that lead to conclusions, if not inevitable, at least conformable to supraphysical truths. It is usually asserted, for example, that the scientist the positivist par excellencefollows a rigid process of ratiocination, of observation, analysis and judgment. He collects facts and a sufficient number of them made to yield a general law the probability of a generic factwhich is tested or exemplified by other correlate facts. This is however an ideal, a theoretical programme not borne out by actual practice, it is a rationalisation of a somewhat different actuality. The scientist, even the most hard-headed among them, the mathematician, finds his laws often and perhaps usually not by a long process of observation and induction or deduction, but all on a sudden, in a flash of illumination. The famous story of Newton .and the falling apple, Kepler's happy guess of the elliptical orbit of the planetsand a host of examples can be cited as rather the rule than the exception for the methodology of scientific discovery. Prof. Hadamard, the great French mathematician the French are well-known for their intransigent, logical and rational attitude in Science,has been compelled to admit the supreme role of an intuitive faculty in scientific enquiry. If it is argued that the so-called sudden Intuition is nothing but the final outburst, the cumulative resultant of a long strenuous travail of thinking and reasoning and arguing, Prof. Hadamard says', in reply, that it does not often seem to be so, for the answer or solution that is suddenly found does not lie in the direction of or in conformity with the, conscious rational research but goes against it and its implications.
   This faculty of direct knowledge, however, is not such a rare thing as it may appear to be. Indeed if we step outside the circumscribed limits of pure science instances crowd upon us, even in our normal life, which would compel one to conclude that the rational and sensory process is only a fringe and a very small part of a much greater and wider form of knowing. Poets and artists, we all know, are familiar only with that form: without Intuition and inspiration they are nothing. Apart from that, modern inquiries and observations have established beyond doubt certain facts of extra-sensory, suprarational perceptionof clairvoyance and clairaudience, of prophecy, of vision into the future as well as into the past. Not only these unorthodox faculties of knowledge, but dynamic powers that almost negate or flout the usual laws of science have been demonstrated to exist and can be and are used by man. The Indian yogic discipline speaks of the eight siddhis, super-natural powers attained by the Yogi when he learns to control nature by the force of his consciousness. Once upon a time these facts were challenged as facts in the scientific world, but it is too late now in the day to deny them their right of existence. Only Science, to maintain its scientific prestige, usually tries to explain such phenomena in the material way, but with no great success. In the end she seems to say these freaks do not come within her purview and she is not concerned with them. However, that is not for us also the subject for discussion for the moment.
   The first point then we seek to make out is that even from a rigid positivist stand a form of knowledge that is not strictly positivist has to be accepted. Next, if we come to the content of the knowledge that is being gained, it is found one is being slowly and inevitably led into a world which is also hardly positivistic. We have in our study of the physical world come in close contact with two disconcerting facts or two ends of one fact the infinitely small and the infinitely large. They have disturbed considerably the normal view of things, the view that dominated Science till yesterday. The laws that hold good for the ordinary sensible magnitudes fail totally, in the case of the infinite magnitudes (whether big or small). In the infinite we begin squaring the circle.
  --
   Creation as a movement or expression of consciousness need not be dubbed a metaphysical jargon; it can be assumed as a scientific working hypothesis and seen how it affects our view, meets our problems and difficulties, whether it can give a satisfactory clue to some of the riddles of physical and psychical phenomena. A scientific supposition (or Intuition) is held to be true if it can be applied invariably to facts of life and experience and if it can open up to our vision and perception new facts. The trend of scientific discoveries today is towards the positing of a background reality in Nature of which energy (radiant and electrical) is the first and overt form. We discarded ether, only to replace it by field and disposition. We have arrived at a point where the question is whether we cannot take courage" in both hands and declare, as some have already done, that the substratum in Nature is consciousness-energy and on that hypothesis better explain certain movements of Matter and Life and Mind in a global unity. Orthodox and die-hard views will always protest and cry that it is a misalliance, a misjoinder to couple together Matter and Consciousness or even Life and Consciousness. But since the light has touched the higher mind even among a few of the positivist type, the few may very well be the precursor of the order of the day.
   After all, only one bold step is needed: to affirm unequivocally what is being suggested and implied and pointed to in a thousand indirect ways. And Science will be transformed. The scientist too, like the famous Saltimbanque (clown) of a French poet, may one day in turning a somersault, suddenly leap up and find himself rolling into the bosom of the stars.

05.07 - Man and Superman, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Even so mankind, at the crucial parting of the ways, would very naturally look askance at the diminished value of many of its qualities and attri butes in the new status to come. First of all, as it has been pointed out, the intellect and reasoning power will have to surrender and abdicate. The very power by which man has attained his present high status and maintains it in the world has to be sacrificed for something else called Intuition or revelation whose value and efficacy are unknown and have to be rigorously tested. Anyhow, is not the known devil by far and large preferable to the unknown entity? And then the zest of life, peculiar to man, that works through contradictionsdelight and suffering, victory and defeat, war and peace, doubt and knowledge, all the play of light and shade, the spirit of adventure, of combat and struggle and heroic effort, will have to go and give place to something, peaceful and harmonious perhaps but monotonous, insipid, unprogressive. The very character of human life is its passion to battle through, even if it is not always through. For it is often said that the end or goal does not matter, the goal is always something uncertain; it is the way, the means, the immediate action that is of supreme consequence: for it is that that tests man's manhood, gives him the value he may have. And above all man is asked to give up the very thing which he has laboured to build up through millenniums of his terrestrial life, his individuality, his personality, for the demand is that he must lose his ego in order to attain the superhuman status.
   So, the probability is that a large part of humanity will remain wedded to the normal human life. But this does not lessen in any way the value, the tremendous importance of what happens to the other part, may be, not insignificant or inconsiderable. Along with those that doubt and deny, there will be those who believe and affirm, who will stand for divinisation, whatever dehumanisation it may imply.

05.07 - The Observer and the Observed, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   In the old world, before Science was born, sufficient distinction or discrimination was not made between the observer and the observed. The observer mixed himself up or identified himself with what he observed and the result was not a scientific statement but a poetic description. Personal feelings, ideas, judgments entered into the presentation of facts and the whole mass passed as truth, the process often being given the high-sounding name of Intuition, Vision or Revelation but whose real name is fancy. And if there happened to be truth off act somewhere, it was almost by chance. Once we thought of the eclipse being due to the greed of a demon, and pestilence due to the evil eye of a wicked goddess. The universe was born out of an egg, the cosmos consisted of concentric circles of worlds that were meant to reward the virtuous and punish the sinner in graded degrees. These are some of the very well-known instances of pathetic fallacy, that is to say, introducing the element of personal sentiment in our appreciation of events and objects. Even today Nazi race history and Soviet Genetics carry that unscientific prescientific tradition.
   Science was born the day when the observer cut himself aloof from the observed. Not only so, not only he is to stand aside, outside the field of observation and be a bare recorder, but that he must let the observed record itself, that is, be its own observer. Modern Science means not so much the observer narrating the story of the observed but the observed telling its own story. The first step is well exemplified in the story of Galileo. When hot discussion was going on and people insisted on sayingas Aristotle decided and common sense declared that heavier bodies most naturally fall quicker from a height, it was this prince of experimenters who straightaway took two different weights, went up the tower of Pisa and let them drop and astounded the people by showing that both travel with equal speed and fall to the ground at the same time.

05.11 - The Place of Reason, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   In Sri Aurobindo, Reason and Intuition possess a dual relation of mutual negation and mutual affirmation, of exclusiveness and inclusiveness, as indeed is the relation of Brahman and the World. One negates the other in the sphere of ignorance but in knowledge one affirms the other. That is to say, Reason or mental logic, so long as it is dominated by the senses, by the external impressions from things and by its analytic or exclusively separative method of procedure, is a denial of Intuition and a bar to spiritual experience. But Reason can be purified, relieved of its dross, illumined (sam-buddha)sublimated and uplifted then it comes to its own, becomes what it really is and should bea frame to give body to what is beyond and unembodied, a mirror in conceptual terms to what is supra-conceptual. It loses its hard rigidity and becomes supple, loses its obscurity, density and becomes transparent: it attains a new rhythm and gait and capacity. Many of the Upanishadic mantras, a good part of the Gita, do that. And Sri Aurobindo's own exposition is a miracle in that style. "Reason was a helper, Reason is the bar"and, we can add, Reason will again be an aid. The world, as it is, is anything but Divine; and yet it is nothing but the Divine essentially and fundamentally; it can and will attain the divine figure apparently and externally too. Even so with regard to man's mind and reason and all his other limbs.
   Calcutta Review, January 1949.

05.13 - Darshana and Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   We shall take the case of one such philosopher and try to illustrate our point. We are thinking of Whitehead. The character of European philosophical mind is well exemplified in this remarkable modern philosopher. The anxiety to put the inferences into a strict logical frame makes a naturally abstruse and abstract procedure more abstruse and abstract. The effort to present suprarational truths in terms of reason and syllogism clouds the issues more than it clarifies them. The fundamental perception, the living Intuition that is behind his entire philosophy and world outlook is that of an Immanent God, a dynamic evolving Power working out the growth and redemption of mankind and the world {the apotheosis of the World, as he puts it). It is the theme which comes last in the development of his system, as the culminating conclusion of his philosophy, but it is the basic presupposition, the first principle that inspires his whole outlook, all the rest is woven and extended around this central nucleus. The other perception intimate to this basic -original perception and inseparable from it is a synthetic view in which things that are usually supposed to be contraries find their harmony and union, viz.,God and the World, Permanence and Flux, Unity and Multiplicity, the Universal and the Individual. The equal reality of the two poles of an integral truth is characteristic of many of the modern philosophical systems. In this respect Whitehead echoes a fundamental conclusion of Sri Aurobindo.
   There is another concept in Whitehead which seems to be moulded after a parallel concept in Sri Aurobindo: it is with regard to the working out of the process of creation, the mechanism of its dynamism. It is almost a glimpse into the occult functioning of the world forces. Whitehead speaks of two principles that guide the world process, first, the principle of limitation, and second, the principle of ingress. The first one Sri Aurobindo calls the principle of concentration (and of exclusive concentration) by which the infinite and the eternal limits himself, makes himself finite and temporal and infinitesimal, the universal transforms itself into the individual and the particular. The second is the principle of descent, which is almost the corner-stone in Sri Aurobindo's system. There are layers of reality: the higher forces and formulations enter into the lower, work upon it and bring about a change and transformation, purification and redemption. All progress and evolution is due to this influx of the higher, the deeper into , the lower and superficial plane of existence.

06.09 - How to Wait, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   And then there is a time, a propitious time for everything. A thing cannot be done at any time, it has its own appointed hour; you cannot succeed even if you attempt a hundred times before that hour strikes. But when the time is ripe, how easily a thing seems to get done! In what does this ripeness of time consist, what are the marks of the propitious hour? It is when you are in complete possession of the right instruments and when the disposition of circumstances is such that they concur to help and execute and not mar and obstruct. But how to find out or recognise when such conditions are available? Not by your mind or external reasoning. You must have the Intuition, and instinctive perception of the situation. Always the indication is there in the very poise of your consciousness. That is to say, when it is filled with a great calm, trust and confidence, a luminous concentration.
   ***

06.35 - Second Sight, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   We will now better understand the process of contact in sense perception. The purely material contact, physical vibration touching the physical nerves of the particular organ is an instance of the physical physical perception: the dog smelling or the elephant hearing at extraordinary distances. We have heard of men who, by putting their ear upon the ground, are able to catch sounds coming from a great distance and practically inaudible to others standing by. But there is another class where the material vibration is not at issue, it is the vital vibration in the physical touching the vital physical of the receiver. The elephant finding the water or sensing the hollow road is an instance in point. The mental physical, the last of the three is a kind of Intuition in the physical, that is what is usually called instinct. A cat, for example, put in a sack and banished miles away from its home, will find its way back; a dog will go round the world almost and find and recognise its master even many years after (the first to recognise Ulysses was his dog). In man too the vital physical, more especially the mental physical not unoften finds room for play, although his physical physical i.e. purely material sensibility is extremely limited. This limitation of the physical sensibility in general, to whatever sphere it may belong, is due to the intellectual or rational bias that has developed in him. In the more unsophisticated races or types the sensibility is still maintained. Man can, however, cultivate, consciously develop these faculties: it then becomes what is called a system of Yoga. A familiar example of the mental physical action as cultivated in man is offered by the water diviner or dowser, as he is called. But, as I have said, the normal effect of human rationality is to inhibit the spontaneous action of the senses as it is natural with the animal.
   It is interesting to note that animals in the wild state maintain intact their instinctive capacity, their second sight, but begin to lose it when they live with men, come under the influence of human mind and reason, become domesticated. A cow habituated to free grazing in the fields will never touch the poisonous grass, will always avoid it and take only the harm-less and healthy variety; but kept within the stable, accustomed to a closed life, it loses its natural instinct, gets confused, does not know how to distinguish the right from the wrong food, being always given ready-made things by the master.

07.03 - The Entry into the Inner Countries, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  A parure of pure Intuition's light;
  Its flame-foot gallop they could imitate:

07.04 - The Triple Soul-Forces, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Even if thou rain down Intuition's rays,
  The mind of man will think it earth's own gleam,

1.00a - DIVISION A - THE INTERNAL FIRES OF THE SHEATHS., #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
  The subject of the blending of these two fires, which is complete in a normal and healthy person, should engross the attention of the modern physician. He will then concern himself with the removal of nerve congestion or material congestion, so as to leave a free channel for the inner warmth. This blending, which is now a natural and usual growth in every human being, was one of the signs of attainment or of initiation in an earlier solar system. Just as initiation and liberation are marked in this solar system by the blending of the fires of the body, of the mind and of the Spirit, so in an earlier cycle attainment was marked by the blending of the latent fires of matter with the radiatory or active fires, and then their union with the fires of mind. In the earlier period the effects in manifestation of the divine Flame were so remote and deeply hidden as to be scarcely recognisable, though dimly there. Its correspondence can be seen in the animal kingdom, in which instinct holds the Intuition in latency, [58] and the Spirit dimly overshadows. Yet all is part of a divine whole.
  The subject of the radiatory heat of the macrocosmic and microcosmic systems will be dealt with in detail in a later subdivision. Here we will only deal with the latent interior fire of the

1.00a - Introduction, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  I think that it is altogether wrong to allow yourself to be worried by "psychological, moral, and artistic problems." It is no good your starting anything of any kind unless you can see clearly into the simplicity of truth. All this humming and hawing about things is moral poison. What is the use of being a woman if you have not got an Intuition, an instinct enabling you to distinguish between the genuine and the sham?
  Your state of mind suggests to me that you must have been, in the past, under the influence of people who were always talking about things, and never doing any real work. They kept on arguing all sorts of obscure philosophical points; that is all very well, but when you have succeeded in analyzing your reactions you will understand that all this talk is just an excuse for not doing any serious work.

1.00c - DIVISION C - THE ETHERIC BODY AND PRANA, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
  Buddhic. Intuitional Plane. Air. Fourth cosmic ether.
  DENSE PHYSICAL
  --
  Fifth. The Deva Lords of the four planes of Buddhi, or the plane of spiritual Intuition, Manas, or the mental plane, Desire, and the Physical, who are likewise allied to the human evolution in a closer sense than the higher three.
  A further interesting correspondence is found in the following facts that are even now in process of development:
  --
  g. Therefore, also, the buddhic or Intuitional plane (the correspondence in the system of this fourth cosmic ether) is the meeting ground, or plane of union, for that which is man and for that which will be superman, and links the past with that which is to be.
  h. The following correspondences in time would repay careful meditation. They are based on a realisation of the relationship between this fourth cosmic ether, the buddhic plane, and the fourth physical etheric subplane.
  --
  d. By the transmutation of the violet into the blue. This we cannot enlarge on. We simply make the statement, and leave its working out to those students whose karma permits and whose Intuition suffices.
  e. By the withdrawal of the life, the form should gradually dissipate. The reflex action here is interesting to note, for the greater Builders and Devas who are the [133] active agents during manifestation, and who hold the form in coherent shape, transmuting, applying and circulating the pranic emanations, likewise lose their attraction to the matter of the form, and turn their attention elsewhere. On the path of out-breathing (whether human, planetary or logoic) these building devas (on the same Ray as the unit desiring manifestation, or on a complementary Ray) are attracted by his will and desire, and perform their office of construction. On the path of in-breathing (whether human, planetary or logoic) they are no longer attracted, and the form begins to dissipate. They withdraw their interest and the forces (likewise entities) who are the agents of destruction, carry on their necessary work of breaking up the form; they scatter itas it is occultly expressedto "The four winds of Heaven," or to the regions of the four breaths,a fourfold separation and distribution. A hint is here given for careful consideration.

1.00e - DIVISION E - MOTION ON THE PHYSICAL AND ASTRAL PLANES, #A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
  4. The Intuitional, or the buddhic plane,
  5. The spiritual, atmic, or nirvanic plane,
  --
  These are an ability to expand our mental concept and to build the antaskarana, or that bridge which all who seek to function in the buddhic vehicle must build between higher and lower mind; hence the necessity for the use of the imagination (which is the astral equivalent to mental discrimination), and its ultimate transmutation into Intuition.
  All teachers, who have taken pupils in hand for training, and who seek to use them in world service, follow the method of imparting a fact (oft veiled in words and blinded by symbol) and then of leaving the pupil to follow his own deductions. Discrimination is thereby developed, and discrimination is the main method whereby the Spirit effects its liberation from the trammels of matter, and discerns between illusion and that which is veiled by it.
  --
  Before taking up the subject of kundalini and the centres, it would be well to extend the information given above, from its prime significance for man, as that which concerns himself, to the solar system, the macrocosm, and to the cosmos. What can be predicated of the microcosm is naturally true of the macrocosm and of the cosmos. It will not be possible to give the systemic triangles, for the information would have to be so blinded that, except for those who have occult knowledge and the Intuition developed, it would be practically useless intellectually, but certain things may be pointed out in this connection that may be of interest.
  The Solar System. We might briefly look at this from [180] the standpoint of the centres of the Heavenly Men and of the Grand Man of the Heavens, the Logos.
  --
  4. Intuition
  4th
  --
  4. Intuition.
  5. Perfection.
  --
  d. Tasting. He tastes then finally and discriminates, for taste is the great sense that begins to hold sway during the discriminating process that takes place when the illusory nature of matter is in process of realisation. Discrimination is the educatory process to which the Self subjects itself in the process of developing Intuition that faculty whereby the Self recognises its own essence in and under all forms. Discrimination concerns the duality of nature, the Self and the not-self, and is the means of their differentiation in the process of abstraction; the Intuition concerns unity and is the capacity of the Self to contact other selves, and is not a faculty whereby the not-self is contacted. Hence, its rarity these days owing to the intense individualisation of the Ego, and its identification with the forma necessary identification at this particular time. As the sense of taste on the higher planes is developed, it leads one to ever finer distinctions till one is finally led through the form, right to the heart of one's nature.
  e. Smelling is the faculty of keen perception that eventually brings a man back to the source from whence he came, the archetypal plane, the plane where his true home is to be found. A perception of difference has been cultivated that has caused a divine discontent within the [202] heart of the Pilgrim in the far country; the prodigal son draws comparisons; he has developed the other four senses, and he utilises them. Now comes in the faculty of vibratory recognition of the home vibration, if it might be so expressed. It is the spiritual counterpart of that sense which in the animal, the pigeon and other birds, leads them back unerringly to the familiar spot from whence they originally came. It is the apprehension of the vibration of the Self, and a swift return by means of that instinct to the originating source.

10.15 - The Evolution of Language, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Man began to possess, to acquire Intuitions and inspirations, that is to say, movements of consciousness that lie beyond the frame given by the sense-mind. These new perceptions could naturally be expressed with difficulty through what one may call the earth-nurtured or earth-bound language. The aerial luminous character of the mystic consciousness is always said to be beyond speech, beyond even mental formulation.
   And yet poets, mystic poets have always sought to express themselves, to express something of their experience and illumination through the word, the human tongue. It is extremely interesting to see how a material, constructed or formed to satisfy the requirements of an ordinary physical life is being turned into an instrument for luminous and effective communication and expression of other truths and realities in the hands of these seer-creators (kavi-kratu). They take the materials from ordinary normal life, familiar objects and happenings but use them as images and allegories putting into them a new sense and a new light. Also they give a new, unfamiliar turn to their utterance, a new syntax, sometimes uncommon construction and novel vocabulary to the language itself so that it has even the appearance of something very irregular and twisted and obscure. Indeed obscurity itself in the expression, in the form of the language has often been taken as the very sign of the higher and hidden experience and illumination.

10.17 - Miracles: Their True Significance, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   A miracle is nothing but the intervention of a force from another plane of consciousness. It must be recognised at the very outset that the physical plane of existence is not the only reality, there are many other planes superimposed' one upon another, each having its own special consciousness and power, its own laws of being and action. Obviously we all know apart from the material or physical being there is the vital being, the life-force and there is the mental being, the mind-force. And there are many other levels like these. A miracle happens, that is to say, a material formation behaves in an abnormal way because a force has come down from the vital region and has influenced or taken control of the material object. So the material object instead of obeying the material law is obliged to obey a vital law which is of a much greater potency. Yogis who do miracles possess this vital power, they have acquired it through a regular discipline and training. Spirit-calling, table-turning, even curing diseases and ailments in a moment and many other activities of the kind are manifestations of very elementary energies of life. From the occult point of view these are very crude and rudimentary examples of what a different kind of force can achieve on a different plane. Even the vital plane possesses deeper and higher energies whose action on the material plane is of deeper and higher category. A deeper or higher vital power can change radically your character and long-standing habits, help to mould them into a different, nobler and more beautiful pattern. The mind too is capable of performing miracles, a strong mental energy can dictate its terms to life and even to the body. Only the miracles here are not of a dazzling kind that astound or confound you. They have a subtler composition, yet they belong to the same category. In the mind itself miracles happen also when a higher light, a superior consciousness Intuition, inspiration, revelationdescends into the normal mental working and creates there a thing that is abnormal in beauty and truth and reality. Thus for example, a matter of fact mind is seen turned into a fine poet or a workaday hand is transmuted into a consummate artist.
   A miracle can be said to be doubly a miracle; first of all, because it means an intervention from another plane, a superior level of being, and secondly because the process or the action of the intervention is not deployed or staged out but is occult and telescoped, the result being almost simultaneous with the pressure of the moving force. .

1.01 - Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, #The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  helpful idea or Intuition, or to notice thoughts which had not
  been allowed to voice themselves before. Perhaps you will pay

1.01 - Foreward, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  she makes us conscious by the ray of Intuition - pra cetayati
  ketuna. The seven rivers seem to be the rivers of Northern India
  --
   Intuition, as for instance, it is by the ray of Intuition, ketuna,
  that Saraswati makes us conscious of the great waters; that
  --
  are the Intuitions of knowledge as the rays of the Sun of Truth
  and Light. The word kratu means ordinarily work or sacrifice

1.01 - Our Demand and Need from the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In the Gita the Sankhya and Yoga are evidently only two convergent parts of the same Vedantic truth or rather two concurrent ways of approaching its realisation, the one philosophical, intellectual, analytic, the other Intuitional, devotional, practical, ethical, synthetic, reaching knowledge through experience. The
  Gita recognises no real difference in their teachings. Still less need we discuss the theories which regard the Gita as the fruit of some particular religious system or tradition. Its teaching is universal whatever may have been its origins.

1.01 - THAT ARE THOU, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  It is from the more or less obscure Intuition of the oneness that is the ground and principle of all multiplicity that philosophy takes its source. And not alone philosophy, but natural science as well. All science, in Meyersons phrase, is the reduction of multiplicities to identities. Divining the One within and beyond the many, we find an intrinsic plausibility in any explanation of the diverse in terms of a single principle.
  The philosophy of the Upanishads reappears, developed and enriched, in the Bhagavad-Gita and was finally systematized, in the ninth century of our era, by Shankara. Shankaras teaching (simultaneously theoretical and practical, as is that of all true exponents of the Perennial Philosophy) is summarized in his versified treatise, Viveka-Chudarnani (The Crest-Jewel of Wisdom). All the following passages are taken from this conveniently brief and untechnical work.
  --
  All this sheds some lightdim, it is true, and merely inferentialon the problem of the perennialness of the Perennial Philosophy. In India the scriptures were regarded, not as revelations made at some given moment of history, but as eternal gospels, existent from everlasting to everlasting, inasmuch as coeval with man, or for that matter with any other kind of corporeal or incorporeal being possessed of reason. A similar point of view is expressed by Aristotle, who regards the fundamental truths of religion as everlasting and indestructible. There have been ascents and falls, periods (literally roads around or cycles) of progress and regress; but the great fact of God as the First Mover of a universe which partakes of His divinity has always been recognized. In the light of what we know about prehistoric man (and what we know amounts to nothing more than a few chipped stones, some paintings, drawings and sculptures) and of what we may legitimately infer from other, better documented fields of knowledge, what are we to think of these traditional doctrines? My own view is that they may be true. We know that born contemplatives in the realm both of analytic and of integral thought have turned up in fair numbers and at frequent intervals during recorded history. There is therefore every reason to suppose that they turned up before history was recorded. That many of these people died young or were unable to exercise their talents is certain. But a few of them must have survived. In this context it is highly significant that, among many contemporary primitives, two thought-patterns are foundan exoteric pattern for the unphilosophic many and an esoteric pattern (often monotheistic, with a belief in a God not merely of power, but of goodness and wisdom) for the initiated few. There is no reason to suppose that circumstances were any harder for prehistoric men than they are for many contemporary savages. But if an esoteric monotheism of the kind that seems to come natural to the born thinker is possible in modern savage societies, the majority of whose members accept the sort of polytheistic philosophy that seems to come natural to men of action, a similar esoteric doctrine might have been current in prehistoric societies. True, the modern esoteric doctrines may have been derived from higher cultures. But the significant fact remains that, if so derived, they yet had a meaning for certain members of the primitive society and were considered valuable enough to be carefully preserved. We have seen that many thoughts are unthinkable apart from an appropriate vocabulary and frame of reference. But the fundamental ideas of the Perennial Philosophy can be formulated in a very simple vocabulary, and the experiences to which the ideas refer can and indeed must be had immediately and apart from any vocabulary whatsoever. Strange openings and theophanies are granted to quite small children, who are often profoundly and permanently affected by these experiences. We have no reason to suppose that what happens now to persons with small vocabularies did not happen in remote antiquity. In the modern world (as Vaughan and Traherne and Wordsworth, among others, have told us) the child tends to grow out of his direct awareness of the one Ground of things; for the habit of analytical thought is fatal to the Intuitions of integral thinking, whether on the psychic or the spiritual level. Psychic preoccupations may be and often are a major obstacle in the way of genuine spirituality. In primitive societies now (and, presumably, in the remote past) there is much preoccupation with, and a widespread talent for, psychic thinking. But a few people may have worked their way through psychic into genuinely spiritual experiencejust as, even in modern industrialized societies, a few people work their way out of the prevailing preoccupation with matter and through the prevailing habits of analytical thought into the direct experience of the spiritual Ground of things.
  Such, then, very briefly are the reasons for supposing that the historical traditions of oriental and our own classical antiquity may be true. It is interesting to find that at least one distinguished contemporary ethnologist is in agreement with Aristotle and the Vedantists. Orthodox ethnology, writes Dr. Paul Radin in his Primitive Man as Philosopher, has been nothing but an enthusiastic and quite uncritical attempt to apply the Darwinian theory of evolution to the facts of social experience. And he adds that no progress in ethnology will be achieved until scholars rid themselves once and for all of the curious notion that everything possesses a history; until they realize that certain ideas and certain concepts are as ultimate for man, as a social being, as specific physiological reactions are ultimate for him, as a biological being. Among these ultimate concepts, in Dr. Radins view, is that of monotheism. Such monotheism is often no more than the recognition of a single dark and numinous Power ruling the world. But it may sometimes be genuinely ethical and spiritual.

1.01 - The Human Aspiration, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  5:Thus the eternal paradox and eternal truth of a divine life in an animal body, an immortal aspiration or reality inhabiting a mortal tenement, a single and universal consciousness representing itself in limited minds and divided egos, a transcendent, indefinable, timeless and spaceless Being who alone renders time and space and cosmos possible, and in all these the higher truth realisable by the lower term, justify themselves to the deliberate reason as well as to the persistent instinct or Intuition of mankind. Attempts are sometimes made to have done finally with questionings which have so often been declared insoluble by logical thought and to persuade men to limit their mental activities to the practical and immediate problems of their material existence in the universe; but such evasions are never permanent in their effect. Mankind returns from them with a more vehement impulse of inquiry or a more violent hunger for an immediate solution. By that hunger mysticism profits and new religions arise to replace the old that have been destroyed or stripped of significance by a scepticism which itself could not satisfy because, although its business was inquiry, it was unwilling sufficiently to inquire. The attempt to deny or stifle a truth because it is yet obscure in its outward workings and too often represented by obscurantist superstition or a crude faith, is itself a kind of obscurantism. The will to escape from a cosmic necessity because it is arduous, difficult to justify by immediate tangible results, slow in regulating its operations, must turn out eventually to have been no acceptance of the truth of Nature but a revolt against the secret, mightier will of the great Mother It is better and more rational to accept what she will not allow us as a race to reject and lift it from the sphere of blind instinct, obscure Intuition and random aspiration into the light of reason and an instructed and consciously self-guiding will. And if there is any higher light of illumined Intuition or self-revealing truth which is now in man either obstructed and inoperative or works with intermittent glancings as if from behind a veil or with occasional displays as of the northern lights in our material skies, then there also we need not fear to aspire. For it is likely that such is the next higher state of consciousness of which Mind is only a form and veil, and through the splendours of that light may lie the path of our progressive self-enlargement into whatever highest state is humanity's ultimate resting-place.

1.01 - The Ideal of the Karmayogin, #Essays In Philosophy And Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  NATION is building in India today before the eyes of the world so swiftly, so palpably that all can watch the process and those who have sympathy and Intuition distinguish the forces at work, the materials in use, the lines of the divine architecture. This nation is not a new race raw from the workshop of Nature or created by modern circumstances.
  One of the oldest races and greatest civilisations on this earth, the most indomitable in vitality, the most fecund in greatness, the deepest in life, the most wonderful in potentiality, after taking into itself numerous sources of strength from foreign strains of blood and other types of human civilisation, is now seeking to lift itself for good into an organised national unity.

1.01 - The Unexpected, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  Breaking the profound silence the emergency bell rang from the Mother's room. Purani rushed up and found the Mother at the top of the staircase. She said, "Sri Aurobindo has fallen down. Go and fetch Dr. Manilal." Fortunately, he had come for the Darshan from Gujarat. Soon he arrived and saw that Sri Aurobindo was lying on the floor in his bedroom. On his way to the bathroom he had stumbled over a tiger skin. The doctor made a preliminary examination and suspected a fracture of the right thigh bone; he asked the Mother to send for assistants. It appears that Sri Aurobindo while passing from his sitting-room to the bathroom (probably revolving some lines of Savitri) fell with his right knee striking the head of a tiger. Perhaps there was jubilation among the adverse forces crying, "Our enemy has fallen!" Sri Aurobindo, however, remained unperturbed and tried to get up. Failing to do so he lay down quietly expecting that the Mother would come in soon. As was natural, the Mother in her turn received a strong vibration in her sleep which made her feel that something had gone wrong with Sri Aurobindo. She came in immediately and found him lying on the floor. Her Intuition and good general knowledge of medical science made her suspect a fracture. She rang the emergency bell.
  When we other doctors came up, we saw Dr. Manilal examining Sri Aurobindo's injured leg. The Mother was sitting by Sri Aurobindo's side, fanning him gently. I could not believe what I saw: on the one hand Sri Aurobindo lying helplessly, on the other, a deep divine sorrow on the Mother's face. But I soon regained my composure and helped the doctor in the examination. My medical eye could not help taking in at a glance Sri Aurobindo's entire body and appreciating the robust manly frame. His right knee was flexed, his face bore a perplexed smile as if he did not know what was wrong with him; the chest was bare, well-developed and the finely pressed snow-white dhoti drawn up contrasted with the shining golden thighs, round and marble-smooth, reminiscent of Yeats's line, "World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras". A sudden fugitive vision of the Golden Purusha of the Vedas!

1.02.4.1 - The Worlds - Surya, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  An integral Intuition into the nature of conscious being
  shows us that it is indeed one in essence, but also that it is
  --
  Vijnana is Intuitional or rather gnostic Idea,2 not intellectual
  2 Intuition (revelation, inspiration, intuitive perception, intuitive discrimination) is
  Vijnana working in mind under the conditions and in the forms of mind. Gnosis or true
  --
  conceptions. But pure Intuitional or gnostic Idea sees itself in
  the Being as well as in the Becoming. It is one with the existence
  --
  of the essence and the image. It is this Intuition or gnosis which
  is the Vedic Truth, the self-vision and all-vision of Surya.
  --
  every act and perception there is an Intuition, a truth which, if
  it is continually falsified in the form, yet preserves itself in the
  --
  and percepts are brought out by separate Intuitions of the image
  and the essence of the image and arranged in their true relations

1.02 - In the Beginning, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  Catholicism itself was modified for the better under the influence of the feminine Principle from the day when the Virgin Mother took her place close to the masculine Trinity, and it is the cult of Mary, more than anything else, that has saved the Faith from the fanatical aberrations of the Middle Ages and the Church from the reprisals with which she was threatened. If this feminine symbol had been the object of interpretations less gross, the Church might have found in it the means by which she could have succeeded in wedding together the two contrary tendencies of the human mind, unifying the discoveries of Science with the Intuitions of faith and transforming her ignorant spiritual dogmatism into a spirituality worthy of the name. She would then have understood that the true Mater Dolorosa is no other than this suffering Matter whose progressive evolution is indeed a perpetual Assumption.
  But it is not merely in the realm of the intellect that we see today the rehabilitation of the misunderstood feminine Principle. In the social order also the emancipation of thought has for its sequel the emancipation of the peoples and after the Rights of Man have been affirmed, the Rights of Woman begin to assert themselves. And it is by a perfectly logical consequence that the feminist movement coincides everywhere with the materialistic; for they are, in sum, two corollary aspects of the same original reaction.

1.02 - Isha Analysis, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  Every verse in the Isha Upanishad reposes on a number of ideas implicit in the text but nowhere set forth explicitly; the reasoning also that supports its conclusions is suggested by the words, not expressly conveyed to the intelligence. The reader, or rather the hearer, was supposed to proceed from light to light, confirming his Intuitions and verifying by his experience, not submitting the ideas to the judgment of the logical reason.
  To the modern mind this method is invalid and inapplicable; it is necessary to present the ideas of the Upanishad in their completeness, underline the suggestions, supply the necessary transitions and bring out the suppressed but always implicit reasoning.

1.02 - MAPS OF MEANING - THREE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  phenomena appear to hang together is an Intuition, of the sort that precedes detailed knowledge is the
  capacity to see the forest, though not yet differentiating between the types of trees. Before we truly master
  --
  intrapsychic quality becomes more evident, at least to the most sophisticated of Intuitions, and the
  possibility of personal relationship with the deity emerges as a prospect at the conceptual level of

1.02 - The Age of Individualism and Reason, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  An individualistic age of human society comes as a result of the corruption and failure of the conventional, as a revolt against the reign of the petrified typal figure. Before it can be born it is necessary that the old truths shall have been lost in the soul and practice of the race and that even the conventions which ape and replace them shall have become devoid of real sense and intelligence; stripped of all practical justification, they exist only mechanically by fixed idea, by the force of custom, by attachment to the form. It is then that men in spite of the natural conservatism of the social mind are compelled at last to perceive that the Truth is dead in them and that they are living by a lie. The individualism of the new age is an attempt to get back from conventionalism of belief and practice to some solid bed-rock, no matter what, of real and tangible Truth. And it is necessarily individualistic, because all the old general standards have become bankrupt and can no longer give any inner help; it is therefore the individual who has to become a discoverer, a pioneer, and to search out by his individual reason, Intuition, idealism, desire, claim upon life or whatever other light he finds in himself the true law of the world and of his own being. By that, when he has found or thinks he has found it, he will strive to rebase on a firm foundation and remould in a more vital even if a poorer form religion, society, ethics, political institutions, his relations with his fellows, his strivings for his own perfection and his labour for mankind.
  It is in Europe that the age of individualism has taken birth and exercised its full sway; the East has entered into it only by contact and influence, not from an original impulse. And it is to its passion for the discovery of the actual truth of things and for the governing of human life by whatever law of the truth it has found that the West owes its centuries of strength, vigour, light, progress, irresistible expansion. Equally, it is due not to any original falsehood in the ideals on which its life was founded, but to the loss of the living sense of the Truth it once held and its long contented slumber in the cramping bonds of a mechanical conventionalism that the East has found itself helpless in the hour of its awakening, a giant empty of strength, inert masses of men who had forgotten how to deal freely with facts and forces because they had learned only how to live in a world of stereotyped thought and customary action. Yet the truths which Europe has found by its individualistic age covered only the first more obvious, physical and outward facts of life and only such of their more hidden realities and powers as the habit of analytical reason and the pursuit of practical utility can give to man. If its rationalistic civilisation has swept so triumphantly over the world, it is because it found no deeper and more powerful truth to confront it; for all the rest of mankind was still in the inactivity of the last dark hours of the conventional age.
  --
  On the other hand, there are in operation forces which seem likely to frustrate or modify this development before it can reach its menaced consummation. In the first place, rationalistic and physical Science has overpassed itself and must before long be overtaken by a mounting flood of psychological and psychic knowledge which cannot fail to compel quite a new view of the human being and open a new vista before mankind. At the same time the Age of Reason is visibly drawing to an end; novel ideas are sweeping over the world and are being accepted with a significant rapidity, ideas inevitably subversive of any premature typal order of economic rationalism, dynamic ideas such as Nietzsches Will-to-live, Bergsons exaltation of Intuition above intellect or the latest German philosophical tendency to acknowledge a suprarational faculty and a suprarational order of truths. Already another mental poise is beginning to settle and conceptions are on the way to apply themselves in the field of practice which promise to give the succession of the individualistic age of society not to a new typal order, but to a subjective age which may well be a great and momentous passage to a very different goal. It may be doubted whether we are not already in the morning twilight of a new period of the human cycle.
  Secondly, the West in its triumphant conquest of the world has awakened the slumbering East and has produced in its midst an increasing struggle between an imported Western individual ism and the old conventional principle of society. The latter is here rapidly, there slowly breaking down, but something quite different from Western individualism may very well take its place. Some opine, indeed, that Asia will reproduce Europes Age of Reason with all its materialism and secularist individualism while Europe itself is pushing onward into new forms and ideas; but this is in the last degree improbable. On the contrary, the signs are that the individualistic period in the East will be neither of long duration nor predominantly rationalistic and secularist in its character. If then the East, as the result of its awakening, follows its own bent and evolves a novel social tendency and culture, that is bound to have an enormous effect on the direction of the worlds civilisation; we can measure its probable influence by the profound results of the first reflux of the ideas even of the unawakened East upon Europe. Whatever that effect may be, it will not be in favour of any re-ordering of society on the lines of the still current tendency towards a mechanical economism which has not ceased to dominate mind and life in the Occident. The influence of the East is likely to be rather in the direction of subjectivism and practical spirituality, a greater opening of our physical existence to the realisation of ideals other than the strong but limited aims suggested by the life and the body in their own gross nature.

1.02 - The Child as growing being and the childs experience of encountering the teacher., #The Essentials of Education, #unset, #Zen
  This is what people want because they have lost faith in the reality of our inner activity as human beings; theyve lost faith in the possibility that Intuitions can emerge from human beings themselves when looking at ordinary life, at sensory appearances and the intellect. Humanity has really weakened inwardly, and its no longer conscious of the firm foundation of an inner, creative life. The things I just described have had a deep influence on all areas of practical life, and most of all on education.
  Proofs, such as external sensory appearances, through observa- tion and experiment, might be compared to a man who notices that an unsupported object falls, and that its attracted by the Earths gravity and therefore must be supported until it rests on solid ground. And then this man says, Go ahead, tell me that the Earth and the other heavenly bodies hover freely in space, but I cant understand it. Everything has to be supported or it will fall. Nevertheless, the Earth, Sun, and other heavenly bodies dont fall. We need to change our way of thinking completely when we move from earthly conditions into the cosmos. In cosmic space, heavenly bodies support one another; the laws of Earth dont ap- ply there.

1.02 - The Development of Sri Aurobindos Thought, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  exaltation of Intuition above intellect, or the latest German
  philosophical tendency [German Idealism] to acknowledge

1.02 - The Doctrine of the Mystics, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Indra, the Puissant next, who is the power of pure Existence self-manifested as the Divine Mind. As Agni is one pole of Force instinct with knowledge that sends its current upward from earth to heaven, so Indra is the other pole of Light instinct with force which descends from heaven to earth. He comes down into our world as the Hero with the shining horses and slays darkness and division with his lightnings, pours down the life-giving heavenly waters, finds in the trace of the hound, Intuition, the lost or hidden illuminations, makes the Sun of Truth mount high in the heaven of our mentality.
  Surya, the Sun, is the master of that supreme Truth, - truth of being, truth of knowledge, truth of process and act and movement and functioning. He is therefore the creator or rather the manifester of all things - for creation is out-bringing, expression by the Truth and Will - and the father, fosterer, enlightener of our souls. The illuminations we seek are the herds of this Sun who comes to us in the track of the divine Dawn and releases and reveals in us night-hidden world after world up to the highest Beatitude.
  --
  There are also female energies; for the Deva is both Male and Female and the gods also are either activising souls or passively executive and methodising energies. Aditi, infinite Mother of the Gods, comes first; and there are besides five powers of the Truthconsciousness, - Mahi or Bharati, the vast Word that brings us all things out of the divine source; Ila, the strong primal word of the Truth who gives us its active vision; Saraswati, its streaming current and the word of its inspiration; Sarama, the Intuition, hound of heaven who descends into the cavern of the subconscient and finds there the concealed illuminations; Dakshina, whose function is to discern rightly, dispose the action and the offering and distribute in the sacrifice to each godhead its portion. Each god, too, has his female energy.
  All this action and struggle and ascension is supported by Heaven our Father and Earth our Mother Parents of the Gods, who sustain respectively the purely mental and psychic and the physical consciousness. Their large and free scope is the condition of our achievement. Vayu, master of life, links them together by the mid-air, the region of vital force. And there are other deities, - Parjanya, giver of the rain of heaven; Dadhikravan, the divine war-horse, a power of Agni; the mystic Dragon of the Foundations; Trita Aptya who on the third plane of existence consummates our triple being; and more besides.

1.02 - The Pit, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  Truth. Numerous academic philosophers have likewise arrived at a similar conclusion. Some of the greater of these have despaired of ever devising a suitable method of transcending this limitation, and became sceptics. Others, seeing simply the solution, have seized upon Intuition, or to be more accurate, the intellectual concept of Intuition, leaving us, however, with no methods of checking and verifying that Intuition, which in consequence is so liable to degenerate into mere guesswork, coloured by personal inclination and abetted by gross wish-phantasm.
  The two main methods of the traditional and esoteric
  --
  The process becomes extended; but it is bound to end by the eventual exhaustion of the alphabet, y equals za. In short, one gets no further than a equals a. The relation of the whole series of equations then becomes apparent, and the conclusion to which one is forced is that each and every term is a thing-in-itself, unknown, though to some extent apprehensible by Intuition.
  There are several proofs of this, the simplest of which is perhaps as follows, showing that the most obvious statement cannot bear analysis. . A simple question is : ." .What is vermilion ?" That" vermilion is red " is undeniable, no doubt, but quite meaningless nevertheless; for each of the two terms must be defined by means of at least two others of which the same is true.
  --
  Athena. This necessity was emphasized in the most surprising way by the result of the Michelson-Morley experiments, when Physics itself calmly and frankly offered a contradiction in terms. It was not the metaphysicians this time who were picking holes in a vacuum. It was the mathematicians and the physicists who found the ground completely cut away from under their feet. It was not enough to replace the geometry of Euclid by those of Riemann and Lobatchevsky and the mechanics of Newton by those of Einstein, so long as any of the axioms of the old thought and the definitions of its terms survived. They deliberately abandoned positivism and materialism for an indeterminate mysticism, creating a new mathematical philosophy and a new logic, wherein infinite-or rather transfinite-ideas might be made commensurable with those of ordinary thought in the forlorn hope that all might live happily ever after. In short, to use a Qabalistic nomenclature, they found it incumbent upon themselves to adopt for inclusion of terms of Ruach (intellect) concepts which are proper only to Neschamah (the organ and faculty of direct spiritual apperception and Intuition). This same process took place in Philosophy years earlier. Had the dialectic of Hegel been only. half understood, the major portion of philosophical speculation from the Schoolmen to
  Kant's perception of the Antinomies of Reason would have been thrown overboard.
  C. G. Jung, the eminent European psycho-analyst, writes in Wilhelm's Secret of the Golden Flower: "Therefore, I can only take the reaction which begins in the West against the intellect in favour of Intuition, as a mark of cultural advance, a widening of consciousness beyond the too narrow limits set by a tyrannical intellect" (p. 82).
  Incidentally, one of the greatest difficulties experienced by the philosopher-s-a difficulty almost insurmountable by the student; one which continually tends to increase rather than diminish with the advance in knowledge-is this: it is practically impossible to gain any clear intellectual comprehension of the meaning of philosophical terms employed. Every thinker has his own private conception of, and meaning for, even such common and universally used terms as " soul" and " mind"; and in the vast majority of cases he does not so much as suspect that other writers may employ the same term under a different connotation. Even technical writers, those who sometimes take the trouble of defining their terms before using them, are too often at variance with each other. The diversity is very great, as stated above, in the case of the word

1.02 - THE WITHIN OF THINGS, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  no longer be evaded, because it is the object of a direct Intuition
  and the substance of all knowledge.

1.03 - Meeting the Master - Meeting with others, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: It is not by Buddhi that you perceive these things, it is by an inner perception or vision. It is not the intellect but something higher that sees. It is the Higher Mind in which that inner perception, Intuition etc. take place.
   All true knowledge is by identity, not at all by the intellectual reason. You may put the knowledge into an intellectual form by the Buddhi, but the knowledge is essentially by identity. You know anger by being one with it, though you can detach yourself and see it as something happening in you. All knowledge is like that.

1.03 - The Coming of the Subjective Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This he may attempt to do for a time by the power of the critical and analytic reason which has already carried him so far; but not for very long. For in his study of himself and the world he cannot but come face to face with the soul in himself and the soul in the world and find it to be an entity so profound, so complex, so full of hidden secrets and powers that his intellectual reason betrays itself as an insufficient light and a fumbling seeker: it is successfully analytical only of superficialities and of what lies just behind the superficies. The need of a deeper knowledge must then turn him to the discovery of new powers and means within himself. He finds that he can only know himself entirely by becoming actively self-conscious and not merely self-critical, by more and more living in his soul and acting out of it rather than floundering on surfaces, by putting himself into conscious harmony with that which lies behind his superficial mentality and psychology and by enlightening his reason and making dynamic his action through this deeper light and power to which he thus opens. In this process the rationalistic ideal begins to subject itself to the ideal of Intuitional knowledge and a deeper self awareness; the utilitarian standard gives way to the aspiration towards self-consciousness and self-realisation; the rule of living according to the manifest laws of physical Nature is replaced by the effort towards living according to the veiled Law and Will and Power active in the life of the world and in the inner and outer life of humanity.
  All these tendencies, though in a crude, initial and ill-developed form, are manifest now in the world and are growing from day to day with a significant rapidity. And their emergence and greater dominance means the transition from the ratio-nalistic and utilitarian period of human development which individualism has created to a greater subjective age of society. The change began by a rapid turning of the current of thought into large and profound movements contradictory of the old intellectual standards, a swift breaking of the old tables. The materialism of the nineteenth century gave place first to a novel and profound vitalism which has taken various forms from Nietzsches theory of the Will to be and Will to Power as the root and law of life to the new pluralistic and pragmatic philosophy which is pluralistic because it has its eye fixed on life rather than on the soul and pragmatic because it seeks to interpret being in the terms of force and action rather than of light and knowledge. These tendencies of thought, which had until yesterday a profound influence on the life and thought of Europe prior to the outbreak of the great War, especially in France and Germany, were not a mere superficial recoil from intellectualism to life and action,although in their application by lesser minds they often assumed that aspect; they were an attempt to read profoundly and live by the Life-Soul of the universe and tended to be deeply psychological and subjective in their method. From behind them, arising in the void created by the discrediting of the old rationalistic intellectualism, there had begun to arise a new Intuitionalism, not yet clearly aware of its own drive and nature, which seeks through the forms and powers of Life for that which is behind Life and sometimes even lays as yet uncertain hands on the sealed doors of the Spirit.
  The art, music and literature of the world, always a sure index of the vital tendencies of the age, have also undergone a profound revolution in the direction of an ever-deepening sub jectivism. The great objective art and literature of the past no longer commands the mind of the new age. The first tendency was, as in thought so in literature, an increasing psychological vitalism which sought to represent penetratingly the most subtle psychological impulses and tendencies of man as they started to the surface in his emotional, aesthetic and vitalistic cravings and activities. Composed with great skill and subtlety but without any real insight into the law of mans being, these creations seldom got behind the reverse side of our surface emotions, sensations and actions which they minutely analysed in their details but without any wide or profound light of knowledge; they were perhaps more immediately interesting but ordinarily inferior as art to the old literature which at least seized firmly and with a large and powerful mastery on its province. Often they described the malady of Life rather than its health and power, or the riot and revolt of its cravings, vehement and therefore impotent and unsatisfied, rather than its dynamis of self-expression and self-possession. But to this movement which reached its highest creative power in Russia, there succeeded a turn towards a more truly psychological art, music and literature, mental, Intuitional, psychic rather than vitalistic, departing in fact from a superficial vitalism as much as its predecessors departed from the objective mind of the past. This new movement aimed like the new philo sophic Intuitionalism at a real rending of the veil, the seizure by the human mind of that which does not overtly express itself, the touch and penetration into the hidden soul of things. Much of it was still infirm, unsubstantial in its grasp on what it pursued, rudimentary in its forms, but it initiated a decisive departure of the human mind from its old moorings and pointed the direction in which it is being piloted on a momentous voyage of discovery, the discovery of a new world within which must eventually bring about the creation of a new world without in life and society. Art and literature seem definitely to have taken a turn towards a subjective search into what may be called the hidden inside of things and away from the rational and objective canon or motive.
  Already in the practical dealing with life there are advanced progressive tendencies which take their inspiration from this profounder subjectivism. Nothing indeed has yet been firmly accomplished, all is as yet tentative initiation and the first feeling out towards a material shape for this new spirit. The dominant activities of the world, the great recent events such as the enormous clash of nations in Europe and the stirrings and changes within the nations which preceded and followed it, were rather the result of a confused half struggle half effort at accommodation between the old intellectual and materialistic and the new still superficial subjective and vitalistic impulses in the West. The latter unenlightened by a true inner growth of the soul were necessarily impelled to seize upon the former and utilise them for their unbridled demand upon life; the world was moving towards a monstrously perfect organisation of the Will-to-live and the Will-to-power and it was this that threw itself out in the clash of War and has now found or is finding new forms of life for itself which show better its governing idea and motive. The Asuric or even Rakshasic character of the recent world-collision was due to this formidable combination of a falsely enlightened vitalistic motive-power with a great force of servile intelligence and reasoning contrivance subjected to it as instrument and the genius of an accomplished materialistic Science as its Djinn, its giant worker of huge, gross and soulless miracles. The War was the bursting of the explosive force so created and, even though it strewed the world with ruins, its after results may well have prepared the collapse, as they have certainly produced a disintegrating chaos or at least poignant disorder, of the monstrous combination which produced it, and by that salutary ruin are emptying the field of human life of the principal obstacles to a truer development towards a higher goal.

1.03 - THE GRAND OPTION, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  lying tendencies or Intuitions, the citizen finds his center of gravity
  gradually transferred to, or at least aligned with, that of the na-

1.03 - The House Of The Lord, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  Sri Aurobindo, we were told, used to take his bath about midnight with very hot water, all the year round mixing very little cold water, even for the head. The story is quite believable, for we were asked to pour extremely hot water on the fractured leg to cure the occasional itching he had. "A very drastic, but effective method," he pronounced with a smile, "but not many could bear such heat." Sometimes while returning from the bath, he was seen moving his lips as though murmuring something. It prompted Champaklal to suggest to him that if he wanted to dictate some lines of poetry, I would be willing to take them down. His Intuition was correct. For a few days Sri Aurobindo did dictate verses and then stopped. Perhaps he felt that I must be given rest before I resumed my next round of duty.
  There was another tiny operation he allowed us to do, the cutting of his nails. Satyendra used to clean them daily, but we cut them only every month or two after they had grown sufficiently long and could be preserved intact. It was a very delicate operation, for the knife or scissors would sometimes graze the skin, specially when the operator's eyesight was affected. When this did happen which was fortunately very rare he would give a quick shake to the leg! When a small bit of nail fell on the carpet and got lost, a search would start for the quarry in which Sri Aurobindo himself smilingly participated, asking, "Have you got it?" All these nails, like the hair, were the legitimate property of our custodian Champaklal.

1.04 - Body, Soul and Spirit, #Theosophy, #Alice Bailey, #Occultism
  recognizes the revelations of the corporal world; in what is true and good, the revelations of the spiritual world. In the same sense in which the revelation of the corporal world is called sensation, let the revelation of the spiritual be called Intuition. Even the most simple thought contains Intuition, for one cannot touch it with the hands or see it with the eyes; one must receive its revelation from the spirit through the I. If an undeveloped and a developed man look at a plant, there lives in the I of the one something quite different from that which is in the ego of the other. And yet the sensations of both are called forth by the same object. The difference lies in this, that the one can make far more perfect thoughts about the object than the other can. If objects revealed themselves through sensation alone, there could be no progress in spiritual development. Even the savage is affected by nature, but the laws of nature reveal themselves only to the thoughts, fructified by Intuition, of the more highly developed man. The excitations from the outer world are felt even by the child as incentives to the will; but the commandments of
  p. 48
  --
  Just as there could be no color sensations without physical eyes, there could be no Intuitions without the higher thinking of the spirit-self. And as little as sensation creates the plant on which the color appears, does Intuition create the spiritual realities about which it is merely giving information.
  The I of man, which comes to life in the soul, draws in messages from above, from the spirit world through Intuitions, just as through sensations it draws in messages from the physical world. By doing this it makes the spirit world the individualized life of its own soul, even as it does the physical world by means of the senses. The soul, or the I flaming forth in it, opens its portals on two sides, toward the corporal and toward the spiritual. Now as just the physical world can only give information about itself to the ego, because it builds out of physical materials and forces a body in which the conscious soul can live and possess organs for perceiving the corporal world outside
  p. 49
  itself, so the spiritual world builds, with its spiritual materials and spiritual forces, a spirit-body in which the I can live and through Intuitions perceive the spiritual. (It is evident that the expression spirit-body contains a contradiction, according to the literal meaning of the word. It is only to be used in order to direct attention to what, in the spiritual regions, corresponds to the body of man in the physical.)
  Just as within the physical world each human body is built up as a separate being, so is the spirit-body within the spirit world. In the spirit world there is for man an inner and an outer, just as there is in the physical world. As man takes in the materials of the physical world around him and assimilates them within his physical body, so does he take the spiritual from the spiritual environment and make it into his own. The spiritual is the eternal nourishment of man. And as man is born of the physical world, he is also born of the spirit through the eternal laws of the True and the Good. He is separated from the spirit world outside of him, as he is separated from the whole physical world, as
  --
  to the requirements of the thinking ego. It is penetrated with life-force, and thereby becomes the ether or life-body. As such it opens itself through the sense organs toward the outer world and becomes the soul-body. This the sentient-soul permeates and becomes one with. The sentient-soul does not merely receive the impacts of the outer world as sensations. It has its own inner life which it fructifies through thinking on the one hand, as it does through sensations on the other. In this way it becomes the intellectual-soul. It is able to do this by opening itself up to Intuitions from above, as it does to sensations from below. Thus it becomes the consciousness-soul. This is possible to it because the spirit world builds into it the organ of Intuition, just as the physical body builds in it the sense organs. As the senses transmit sensations by means of the soul-body, the spirit transmits to it Intuitions through the organ of Intuition. The spirit-man is therefore linked into a unity with the consciousness-soul, just as the physical body is with the sentient-soul in the soul-body. Consciousness-soul and spirit-self form a unity. In this unity the spirit-man lives as
  p. 54

1.04 - THE APPEARANCE OF ANOMALY - CHALLENGE TO THE SHARED MAP, #Maps of Meaning, #Jordan Peterson, #Psychology
  what is called research and that no knowledge can be obtained from revelation, Intuition or inspiration.
  He says, furthermore, that there is no appeal beyond reason418 (grounded directly in observation, one

1.04 - The Divine Mother - This Is She, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  Another complicated illness I was confronted with during this period was that of a sadhak. A typical Englishman, stiff but polite, a cultured, sensitive poet; the poor man had never enjoyed good health since his childhood and in later years was also mentally shaken. I had been treating him for chronic liver trouble, indigestion, etc., for some years before he had this illness. Either because of this, or by nature, he was none too optimistic. Besides, he had suffered from rheumatism and infantile paralysis too. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo knew his temperament very well and instructed me to look after him with a large consideration as they themselves had always done. He was turned into a fine poet by Sri Aurobindo's Force. I wonder how with such a poor health he managed to do Yoga. That, however, is none of my business. Failing to diagnose his illness, I called in other doctors, and as is often the case, opinions differed. Neither were there proper facilities for making specific tests in the hospital. He began to suffer from fever, jaundice, abscesses, joint pains, and a host of diverse complaints which made him extremely irritable. He pestered me like Socrates with all sorts of questions, the why and the how of his ailments, their remedy, and the last question, when would he be all right? I reported faithfully all this to the Mother and to Sri Aurobindo who would often side with him, appreciating his inquisitiveness and his refusal to gulp down docilely all that was given to him. When I told Sri Aurobindo that he would not allow his old dusty heaps of the journal, Manchester Guardian to be removed, Sri Aurobindo approved of his feelings. One day the Mother said, "Once when you were fanning Sri Aurobindo, I had a vision of the patient crying to you, 'Why don't you cure me?' "On the other hand, Sri Aurobindo had told me that the patient was disgusted with his ailing body and would like to leave it. We are made of many conflicting parts! My inner comment was: the Mother's occult sight could read all our movements. Only if she could always prescribe remedies! To that question Sri Aurobindo gave, in our correspondence, a rather evasive answer. He said, "Why do you want us to do your work?" Of course, I understood what he meant. There is a humorous episode connected with this patient's ailment, which will be interesting to note here. The Mother had advised me in my medical practice to develop the power of Intuition. One of the methods I followed was to go into meditation and see, hear or feel something relating to a particular case. Now, in the present quandary, I tried the method; after a couple of failures, what I saw in the meditation was a brinjal! When I blurted it out to Sri Aurobindo and to my colleagues, they all roared with laughter. Thenceforth they would taunt me with "Nirod's brinjal Intuition"!
  To end the sad story: the case was not showing any improvement; one after another complications began to develop. Above all, his outer consciousness failed to respond actively to the Force. The Mother saw that the only way that could save the patient was to send him to Bangalore where he could be treated by an efficient German doctor well-known to us, Sri Aurobindo asked me to prepare a clear and complete history of the patient's malady, let the Mother hear it and then send it to the doctor. When it was ready, I read it out to both of them. Sri Aurobindo commented, "Excellent!" I felt gratified. On receiving the report the doctor came down to take the patient. He concurred with our view that it must be a case of septicaemia. When the patient was being sent off, the Mother came and stood on her terrace waiting a long time for him. At last the car came before her and she and the patient looked at each other for quite a while. He had a premonition that he would not come back.
  --
  The Mother now began to identify herself more and more with this new generation. In the evening when Sri Aurobindo was enjoying his solitude, the Mother, after her tennis, busied herself in the Playground meeting the children, watching their games and exercises, taking classes, etc. and through all these means, establishing an intimate contact with them. The exercises were done in cumbersome pyjamas which consequently checked free movement. One evening when I went to visit the Playground, I found the gate closed. The gate-keeper told me that the Mother did not want anyone except the group-members to enter the Playground. When it was thrown open we found, to our surprise, that the girls were doing exercises in shorts! How did this revolutionary change come about? Here, in brief, is the story from one who played an active part in it. One day, one of the girls, doing her exercises in pyjamas in the Playground, fell down and got hurt owing to the impractical dress. When the Mother was told about it, she listened quietly. After a couple of days, she called Bratati, one of the sadhikas of her intimate circle (she had such small intimate groups of young boys, girls and adults) and said, "I have solved the problem of the uniform. The girls will put on white shorts, a white shirt and a kitty-cap on the head for their hair. Prepare them and try them on yourself. Pyjamas are unwieldy. When you are ready, let me know about it." When everything was ready, she informed the Mother and a day was fixed for the rehearsal in strict privacy. The Mother was pleased with the design. Calling the girls together she gave a short impressive talk on the new experiment and the necessity for trying it. They at once fell in with the proposal and adopted the new uniform. But what was the reaction to this drastic step? Some, particularly old people, were shocked to see their daughters scantily dressed and doing exercises jointly with boys; a few conservative guardians were planning to take their wards away from such a modernised Ashram. I, personally, admired, on the one hand, the revolutionary step taken by the Mother far in advance of the time in Eastern countries, in anticipation of the modern movement in dress; on the other hand, my cautious mind, or as Sri Aurobindo would say, my coward-mind, could not but feel the risk involved in this forward venture. At the same time I knew that the Mother's very nature is to face danger, if necessary. And whenever we had tried to argue with her that we were doing things which were not done outside, she replied sharply, "Why should we follow the others? They have no ideas, we have ideas. I have come to break down old conventions and superstitions." Besides, whatever measures she adopts are not done for the sake of novelty or from mental reasons. "Mother is guided by her Intuition," Sri Aurobindo reminded us very often. Also, I believe, she prepares the ground in the occult planes and manipulates the forces to her advantage before she takes any hazardous step. That is why we hear her say, "Wait, wait!" for the opportune moment, I suppose. We can realise now the wisdom of her vision in taking that revolutionary step. Further, I think it was one of the most effective means to eliminate sex-consciousness between the male and the female. We are in this respect much better than before now that shorts have become almost our normal dress.
  To cut short the story, thanks to her long and sustained labour, these two institutions have gained today their well-deserved recognition abroad; particularly the physical culture. On the occasion of the April Darshan in 1949, the members of this organisation called J.S.A.S.A.[^7] were given the privilege of a march past in their group uniforms before the Master and the Mother. Sri Aurobindo seemed to have been much impressed by the smartness of the young boys' group.

1.04 - The Gods of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We do not find that the Rishi Mahachamasya succeeded in getting his fourth vyahriti accepted by the great body of Vedantic thinkers. With a little reflection we can see the reason why. The vijnana or mahat is superior to reasoning. It sees and knows, hears and knows, remembers & knows by the ideal principles of drishti, sruti and smriti; it does not reason and know.Or withdrawing into the Mahan Atma, it is what it exercises itself upon and therefore knowsas it were, by conscious identity; for that is the nature of the Mahan Atma to be everything separately and collectively & know it as an object of his Knowledge and yet as himself. Always vijnana knows things in the whole & therefore in the part, in the mass & therefore in the particular. But when ideal knowledge, vijnana, looks out on the phenomenal world in its separate details, it then acquires an ambiguous nature. So long as it is not assailed by mind, it is still the pure buddhi and free from liability to errors. The pure buddhi may assign its reasons, but it knows first & reasons afterwards,to explain, not to justify. Assailed by mind, the ideal buddhi ceases to be pure, ceases to be ideal, becomes sensational, emotional, is obliged to found itself on data, ends not in knowledge but in opinion and is obliged to hold doubt with one hand even while it tries to grasp certainty by the other. For it is the nature of mind to be shackled & frightened by its data. It looks at things as entirely outside itself, separate from itself and it approaches them one by one, groups them & thus arrives at knowledge by synthesis; or if [it] looks at things in the mass, it has to appreciate them vaguely and then take its parts and qualities one by one, arriving at knowledge by a process of analysis. But it cannot be sure that the knowledge it acquires, is pure truth; it can never be safe against mixture of truth & error, against one-sided knowledge which leads to serious misconception, against its own sensations, passions, prejudices and false associations. Such truth as it gets can only be correct even so far as it goes, if all the essential data have been collected and scrupulously weighed without any false weights or any unconscious or semi-conscious interference with the balance. A difficult undertaking! So we can form reliable conclusions, and then too always with some reserve of doubt,about the past & the present.Of the future the mind can know nothing except in eternally fixed movements, for it has no data. We try to read the future from the past & present and make the most colossal blunders. The practical man of action who follows there his will, his Intuition & his instinct, is far more likely to be correct than the scientific reasoner. Moreover, the mind has to rely for its data on the outer senses or on its own inner sensations & perceptions & it can never be sure that these are informing it correctly or are, even, in their nature anything but lying instruments. Therefore we say we know the objective world on the strength of a perpetual hypothesis. The subjective world we know only as in a dream, sure only of our own inner movements & the little we can learn from them about others, but there too sure only of this objective world & end always in conflict of transitory opinions, a doubt, a perhaps. Yet sure knowledge, indubitable Truth, the Vedic thinkers have held, is not only possible to mankind, but is the goal of our journey. Satyam eva jayate nanritam satyena pantha vitato devayanah yenakramantyrishayo hyaptakama yatra tat satyasya paramam nidhanam. Truth conquers and not falsehood, by truth the path has been extended which the gods follow, by which sages attaining all their desire arrive where is that Supreme Abode of Truth. The very eagerness of man for Truth, his untameable yearning towards an infinite reality, an infinite extension of knowledge, the fact that he has the conception of a fixed & firm truth, nay the very fact that error is possible & persistent, mare indications that pure Truth exists.We follow no chimaera as a supreme good, nor do the Powers of Darkness fight against a mere shadow. The ideal Truth is constantly coming down to us, constantly seeking to deliver us from our slavery to our senses and the magic circle of our limited data. It speaks to our hearts & creates the phenomenon of Faith, but the heart has its lawless & self-regarding emotions & disfigures the message. It speaks to the Imagination, our great intellectual instrument which liberates us from the immediate fact and opens the mind to infinite possibility; but the imagination has her pleasant fictions & her headlong creative impulse and exaggerates the truth & distorts & misplaces circumstances. It speaks to the intellect itself, bids it criticise its instruments by vichara and creates the critical reason, bids it approach the truth directly by a wide passionless & luminous use of the pure judgment, and creates shuddha buddhi or Kants pure reason; bids it divine truth & learn to hold the true divination & reject the counterfeit, and creates the intuitive reason & its guardian, intuitive discrimination or viveka. But the intellect is impatient of error, eager for immediate results and hurries to apply what it receives before it has waited & seen & understood. Therefore error maintains & even extends her reign. At last come the logician & modern rationalist thinker; disgusted with the exaggeration of these movements, seeing their errors, unable to see their indispensable utility, he sets about sweeping them away as intellectual rubbish, gets rid of faith, gets rid of flexibility of mind, gets rid of sympathy, pure reason & Intuition, puts critical reason into an ill lightened dungeon & thinks now, delivered from these false issues, to compass truth by laborious observation & a rigid logic. To live on these dry & insufficient husks is the last fate of impure vijnanam or buddhi confined in the data of the mind & sensesuntil man wronged in his nature, cabined in his possibilities revolts & either prefers a luminous error or resumes his broadening & upward march.
  It was this aspect of impure mahas, vijnanam working not in its own home, swe dame but in the house of a stranger, as a servant of an inferior faculty, reason as we call it, which led the Rishi Mahachamasya to include mahas among the vyahritis. But vijnana itself is an integral part of the supreme movement, it is divine thought in divine being,therefore not a vyahriti. The Veda uses to express this pure Truth &ideal knowledge another word, equivalent in meaning to mahat,the word brihat and couples with it two other significant expressions, satyam & ritam. This trinity of satyam ritam brihatSacchidananda objectivisedis the Mahan Atma. Satyam is Truth, the principle of infinite & divine Being, Sat objectivised to Knowledge as the Truth of things self-manifested; Ritam is Law, the motion of things thought out, the principle of divine self-aware energy, Chit-shakti objectivised to knowledge as the Truth of things selfarranged; Brihat is full content & fullness, satisfaction, Nature, the principle of divine Bliss objectivised to knowledge as the Truth of things contented with its own manifestation in law of being & law of action. For, as the Vedanta tells us, there is no lasting satisfaction in the little, in the unillumined or half-illumined things of mind & sense, satisfaction there is only in the large, the self-true & self-existent. Nalpe sukham asti bhumaiva sukham. Bhuma, brihat, mahat, that is God. It is Ananda therefore that insists on largeness & constitutes the mahat or brihat. Ananda is the soul of Nature, its essentiality, creative power & peace. The harmony of creative power & peace, pravritti & nivritti, jana & shama, is the divine state which we feelas Wordsworth felt itwhen we go back to the brihat, the wide & infinite which, containing & contented with its works, says of it Sukritam, What I have made, is good. Whoever enters this kingdom of Mahat, this Maho Arnas or great sea of ideal knowledge, comes into possession of his true being, true knowledge, true bliss. He attains the ideal powers of drishti, sruti, smritisees truth face to face, hears her unerring voice or knows her by immediate recognising memoryjust as we say of a friend This is he and need no reasoning of observation, comparison, induction or deduction to tell us who he is or to explain our knowledge to ourselvesthough we may, already knowing the truth, use a self-evident reasoning masterfully in order to convince others. The characteristic of ideal knowledge is first that it is direct in its approach, secondly, that it is self-evident in its revelation, swayamprakasha, thirdly, that it is unerring fact of being, sat, satyam in its substance. Moreover, it is always perfectly satisfied & divinely pleasurable; it is atmarati & atmastha, confines itself to itself & does not reach out beyond itself to grasp at error or grope within itself to stumble over ignorance. It is, too, perfectly effective whether for knowledge, speech or action, satyakarma, satyapratijna, satyavadi. The man who rising beyond the state of the manu, manishi or thinker which men are now, becomes the kavi or direct seer, containing what he sees,he who draws the manomaya purusha up into the vijnanamaya,is in all things true. Truth is his characteristic, his law of being, the stamp that God has put upon him. But even for the manishi ideal Truth has its bounties. For from thence come the Intuitions of the poet, the thinker, the artist, scientist, man of action, merchant, craftsman, labourer each in his sphere, the seed of the great thoughts, discoveries, faiths that help the world and save our human works & destinies from decay & dissolution. But in utilising these messages from our higher selves for the world, in giving them a form or a practical tendency, we use our intellects, feelings or imaginations and alter to their moulds or colour with their pigments the Truth. That alloy seems to be needed to make this gold from the mines above run current among men. This then is Maho Arnas.The psychological conceptions of our remote forefa thers concerning it have so long been alien to our thought & experience that they may be a little difficult to follow & more difficult to accept mentally. But we must understand & grasp them in their fullness if we have any desire to know the meaning of the Veda. For they are the very centre & keystone of Vedic psychology. Maho Arnas, the Great Ocean, is the stream of our being which at once divides & connects the human in us from the divine, & to cross over from the human to the divine, from this small & divided finite to that one, great & infinite, from this death to that immortality, leaving Diti for Aditi, alpam for bhuma, martyam for amritam is the great preoccupation & final aim of Veda & Vedanta.
  We can now understand the intention of the Rishi in his last verse and the greatness of the climax to which he has been leading us. Saraswati is able to give impulsion to Truth and awaken to right thinking because she has access to the Maho Arnas, the great ocean. On that level of consciousness, we are usually it must be remembered asleep, sushupta. The chetana or waking consciousness has no access; it lies behind our active consciousness, is, as we might say, superconscious, for us, asleep. Saraswati brings it forward into active consciousness by means of the ketu or perceptive intelligence, that essential movement of mind which accepts & realises whatever is presented to it. To focus this ketu, this essential perception on the higher truth by drawing it away from the haphazard disorder of sensory data is the great aim of Yogic meditation. Saraswati by fixing essential perception on the satyam ritam brihat above makes ideal knowledge active and is able to inform it with all those plentiful movements of mind which she, dhiyavasu, vajebhir vajinivati, has prepared for the service of the Master of the sacrifice. She is able to govern all the movements of understanding without exception in their thousand diverse movements & give them the single impression of truth and right thinkingvisva dhiyo vi rajati. A governed & ordered activity of soul and mind, led by the Truth-illuminated intellect, is the aim of the sacrifice which Madhuchchhanda son of Viswamitra is offering to the Gods.

1.04 - The Sacrifice the Triune Path and the Lord of the Sacrifice, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But still to the seeker standing at the opposite pole of the Duality another line of experience appears which justifies an Intuition deeply-seated behind the heart and in our very life-force, that personality, like consciousness, life, soul, is not a brief-lived stranger in an impersonal Eternity, but contains the very meaning of existence. This fine flower of the cosmic Energy carries in it a forecast of the aim and a hint of the very motive of the universal labour. As an occult vision opens in him, he becomes aware of worlds behind in which consciousness and personality hold an enormous place and assume a premier value; even here in the material world to this occult vision the inconscience of Matter fills with a secret pervading consciousness, its inanimation harbours a vibrant life, its mechanism is the device of an indwelling Intelligence, God and soul are everywhere. Above all stands an infinite conscious Being who is variously self-expressed in all these worlds; impersonality is only a first means of that expression. It is a field of principles and forces, an equal basis of manifestation; but these forces express themselves through beings, have conscious spirits at their head and are the emanation of a One Conscious Being who is their source. A multiple innumerable personality expressing that One is the very sense and central aim of the manifestation and if now personality seems to be narrow, fragmentary, restrictive, it is only because it has not opened to its source or flowered into its own divine truth and fullness packing itself with the universal and the infinite. Thus the world-creation is no more an illusion, a fortuitous mechanism, a play that need not have happened, a flux without consequence; it is an intimate dynamism of the conscious and living Eternal.
  This extreme opposition of view from the two poles of one Existence creates no fundamental difficulty for the seeker of the integral Yoga; for his whole experience has shown him the necessity of these double terms and their currents of Energy, negative and positive in relation to each other, for the manifestation of what is within the one Existence. For himself Personality and Impersonality have been the two wings of his spiritual ascension and he has the prevision that he will reach a height where their helpful interaction will pass into a fusion of their powers and disclose the integral Reality and release into action the original force of the Divine. Not only in the fundamental Aspects but in all the working of his sadhana he has felt their double truth and mutually complementary working. An impersonal Presence has dominated from above or penetrated and occupied his nature; a Light descending has suffused his mind, life-power, the very cells of his body, illumined them with knowledge, revealed him to himself down to his most disguised and unsuspected movements, exposing, purifying, destroying or brilliantly changing all that belonged to the Ignorance. A Force has poured into him in currents or like a sea, worked in his being and all its members, dissolved, new-made, reshaped, transfigured everywhere. A Bliss has invaded him and shown that it can make suffering and sorrow impossible and turn pain itself into divine pleasure. A Love without limits has joined him to all creatures or revealed to him a world of inseparable intimacy and unspeakable sweetness and beauty and begun to impose its law of perfection and its ecstasy even amidst the disharmony of terrestrial life. A spiritual Truth and Right have convicted the good and evil of this world of imperfection or of falsehood and unveiled a supreme good and its clue of subtle harmony and its sublimation of action and feeling and knowledge. But behind all these and in them he has felt a Divinity who is all these things, a Bringer of Light, a Guide and All-Knower, a Master of Force, a Giver of Bliss, Friend, Helper, Father, Mother, Playmate in the world-game, an absolute Master of his being, his souls Beloved and Lover. All relations known to human personality are there in the souls contact with the Divine; but they rise towards superhuman levels and compel him towards a divine nature.

1.04 - The Silent Mind, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  before we do, and which sends its vision and knowledge to the surface in the form of a yearning, a seeking, an inexplicable faith. Faith, says Sri Aurobindo, is an Intuition not only waiting for experience to justify it, but leading towards experience.35
  The Descent of the Force Little by little the void is filled. We then make a series of observations and experiences of considerable importance, which cannot be listed in a logical sequence, because from the moment we leave the old world we find that everything is possible, and, above all, that no two cases are alike hence, the falsehood of all spiritual dogmas. We can only mention a few broad lines of experience.
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  Something behind, or above, does all the work, with a precision and infallibility that grow as we get into the habit of referring to it. There is no necessity to remember, since the exact information comes forth when needed; there is no necessity to plan any action, since a secret spring sets it in motion without our willing it or thinking about it, and makes us do exactly what is needed with a wisdom and foresight of which our mind, forever shortsighted, is quite incapable. We notice also that the more we trust and obey these unexpected intimations or flash-suggestions, the more frequent, clear, compelling, and natural they become, somewhat like an intuitive functioning, but with the important difference that our Intuitions are almost always blurred and distorted by the mind, which delights at imitating them and making us mistake its vagaries for revelations, while here the transmission is clear, silent, and accurate, because the mind is quiet. We have all experienced certain problems which are "mysteriously" solved during sleep, precisely when the thinking machine is hushed. There will no doubt be errors and stumblings before the new functioning is securely established; the seeker must be ready to be often mistaken; in fact, he will notice that mistakes are always the result of a mental intrusion;
  each time the mind intervenes, it blurs, splinters, and delays everything. Eventually, after many trials and errors, we will understand once and for all and see with our own eyes that the mind is not an instrument of knowledge but only an organizer of knowledge,

1.05 - Adam Kadmon, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  Yoga, it is the Karanopadhi or the Causal instrument or vehicle. Its Chakra or astral nerve centre is the Ajna, two- petalled, situate in the skull in or near the pineal gland, which some occultists claim is an atrophied third eye, the physical organ of true spiritual clairvoyance or Intuition.
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  The third aspect of the immortal entity is Neschamah, or Intuition, the faculty for the Understanding of the Will of the Monad. In Theosophy, this is Higher or Buddhi-
  Manas, which, together with Atma-Buddhi, is the god of a high and noble rank, who incarnates in the brute forms of the early races of mankind in order to endow them with mind. The Manasaputras have both Solar and Mercurial connections. The Vedantists call this principle the Vijnana- mayakosa, the Sheath of Knowledge ; and its correspond- ing Chakra in the Yogas is the Yisuddhi, said to be located in the subtle body on the spine at a point opposite to the larynx.
  This trinity of the original spiritual Monad, its Creative vehicle, and Intuition, form a synthetic integral Unity which philosophically may be denominated the Transcen- dental Ego. It is a Unity in a unique manner, and its attri butes are summed up in the three Hindu hypostases, more true, perhaps, of the Sephiros than the parts of man, of Sat, Chit, Ananda ; Absolute Being, Wisdom, and Bliss.
  " Below " the real man exists that part of him which is perishable - the so-called lower self. " Below " and
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  Neschamah, the True Creative Self and the Intuitional Self.
  The assumption that Ruach is the lowest aspect of the
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  Immortal Entity, a Star pursuing its way unhampered through the infinite heavens from eternity to eternity - not merely in a rational way, but as a result of the esh hoRuach, Intuitional and spiritual experience.

1.05 - CHARITY, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  In other words, the highest form of the love of God is an immediate spiritual Intuition, by which knower, known and knowledge are made one. The means to, and earlier stages of, this supreme love-knowledge of Spirit by spirit are described by Shankara in the preceding verses of his philosophical poem, and consist in acts of a will directed towards the denial of selfness in thought, feeling and action, towards desirelessness and non-attachment or (to use the corresponding Christian term) holy indifference, towards a cheerful acceptance of affliction, without self-pity and without thought of returning evil for evil, and finally towards unsleeping and one-pointed mindfulness of the Godhead who is at once transcendent and, because transcendent, immanent in every soul.
  It is plain that no distinct object whatever that pleases the will can be God; and, for that reason, if the will is to be united with Him, it must empty itself, cast away every disorderly affection of the desire, every satisfaction it may distinctly have, high and low, temporal and spiritual, so that, purified and cleansed from all unruly satisfactions, joys and desires, it may be wholly occupied, with all its affections, in loving God. For if the will can in any way comprehend God and be united with Him, it cannot be through any capacity of the desire, but only by love; and as all the delight, sweetness and joy, of which the will is sensible, is not love, it follows that none of these pleasing impressions can be the adequate means of uniting the will to God. These adequate means consist in an act of the will. And because an act of the will is quite distinct from feeling, it is by an act that the will is united with God and rests in Him; that act is love. This union is never wrought by feeling or exertion of the desire; for these remain in the soul as aims and ends. It is only as motives of love that feelings can be of service, if the will is bent on going onwards, and for nothing else.

1.05 - Hymns of Bharadwaja, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
    3. The Men of Heaven with a single joy set thee alight to be the eye of Intuition of the sacrifice when this human being, this seeker of bliss, casts his offering in the pilgrim Rite.
    4. The mortal should grow in riches who achieves the work by the Thought for thee, the great giver; he is in the keeping of the Vast Heaven and crosses beyond the hostile powers and their evil.
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    2. All they together came to him, a navel knot of sacrifice, a house of riches, a mighty point of call in the battle. Charioteer of the Works of the way, eye of Intuition of the sacrifice, the Gods brought to birth the universal Godhead.
    3. O Fire, from thee is born the Seer, the Horse and of thee are the Heroes whose might overcomes the adversary. O King, O universal Power, found in us the desirable treasures.
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    5. O Fire, universal Godhead, none could do violence to the laws of thy mighty workings because even in thy birth in the lap of the Father and the Mother thou hast discovered the light of Intuition of the Days in manifested things.5
    6. The heights of heaven were measured into form by the eye of this universal Force, they were shaped by the Intuition of the Immortal. All the worlds are upon his head; the seven far-flowing rivers climbed from him like branches.
    7. The Universal mighty of will measured into form the kingdoms of middle space; a Seer, he shaped the luminous planes of Heaven. He has spread around us all these worlds; he is the guardian of immortality and its indomitable defender.
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    5. An immortal Light set inward for seeing, a swiftest mind within in men that walk on the way. All the Gods with a single mind, a common Intuition, move aright in their divergent paths towards the one Will.
    6. My ears range wide to hear and wide my eyes to see, wide this Light that is set in the heart; wide walks my mind and I set my thought afar; something there is that I shall speak; something that now I shall think.

1.05 - Prayer, #Hymn of the Universe, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  words in which to analyze life-renewing Intuitions
  such as these; still, I can tell you about some of the

1.05 - Qualifications of the Aspirant and the Teacher, #Bhakti-Yoga, #Swami Vivekananda, #Hinduism
  How are we to know a teacher, then? The sun requires no torch to make him visible, we need not light a candle in order to see him. When the sun rises, we instinctively become aware of the fact, and when a teacher of men comes to help us, the soul will instinctively know that truth has already begun to shine upon it. Truth stands on its own evidence, it does not require any other testimony to prove it true, it is self effulgent. It penetrates into the innermost corners of our nature, and in its presence the whole universe stands up and says, "This is truth." The teachers whose wisdom and truth shine like the light of the sun are the very greatest the world has known, and they are worshipped as God by the major portion of mankind. But we may get help from comparatively lesser ones also; only we ourselves do not possess Intuition enough to judge properly of the man from whom we receive teaching and guidance; so there ought to be certain tests, certain conditions, for the teacher to satisfy, as there are also for the taught.
  The conditions necessary for the taught are purity, a real thirst after knowledge, and perseverance.

1.05 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice - The Psychic Being, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
     For the same reason the ethical solution is insufficient; for an ethical rule merely puts a bit in the mouth of the wild horses of Nature and exercises over them a difficult and partial control, but it has no power to transform Nature so that she may move in a secure freedom fulfilling the Intuitions that proceed from a divine self-knowledge. At best its method is to lay down limits, to coerce the devil, to put the wall of a relative and very doubtful safety around us. This or some similar device of self-protection may be necessary for a time whether in ordinary life or in Yoga; but in Yoga it can only be the mark of a transition. A fundamental transformation and a pure wideness of spiritual life are the aim before us and, if we are to reach it, we must find a deeper solution, a surer supra-ethical dynamic principle. To be spiritual within, ethical in the outside life, this is the ordinary religious solution, but it is a compromise; the spiritualisation of both the inward being and the outward life and not a compromise between life and the spirit is the goal of which we are the seekers. Nor can the human confusion of values which obliterates the distinction between spiritual and moral and even claims that the moral is the only true spiritual element in our nature be of any use to us; for ethics is a mental control and the limited erring mind is not and cannot be the free and everluminous Spirit. It is equally impossible to accept the gospel that makes life the one aim, takes its elements fundamentally as they are and only calls in a half-spiritual or pseudo-spiritual light to flush and embellish it. Inadequate too is the very frequent attempt at a misalliance between the vital and the spiritual, a mystic experience within with an aestheticised intellectual and sensuous Paganism or exalted hedonism outside leaning upon it and satisfying itself in the glow of a spiritual sanction; for this too is a precarious and never successful compromise and it is as far from the divine Truth and its integrality as the puritanic opposite. These are all stumbling solutions of the fallible human mind groping for a transaction between the high spiritual summits and the lower pitch of the ordinary mind-motives and life-motives. Whatever partial truth may be hidden behind them, that truth can only be accepted when it has been raised to the spiritual level, tested in the supreme Truth-Consciousness and extricated from the soil and error of the Ignorance.
     In sum, it may be safely affirmed that no solution offered can be anything but provisional until a supramental Truth-Consciousness is reached by which the appearances of things are put in their place and their essence revealed and that in them which derives straight from the spiritual essence. In the meanwhile our only safety is to find a guiding law of spiritual experience -- or else to liberate a light within that can lead us on the way until that greater direct Truth-Consciousness is reached above us or born within us. For all else in us that is only outward, all that is not a spiritual sense or seeing, the constructions, representations or conclusions of the intellect, the suggestions or instigations of the Life-force, the positive necessities of physical things are sometimes half-lights, sometimes false lights that can at best only serve for a while or serve a little and for the rest either detain or confuse us. The guiding law of spiritual experience can only come by an opening of human consciousness to the Divine Consciousness; there must be the power to receive in us the working and comm and and dynamic presence of the Divine shakti and surrender ourselves to her control; it is that surrender and that control which bring the guidance. But the surrender is not sure, there is no absolute certitude of the guidance so long as we are besieged by mind formations and life impulses and instigations of ego which may easily betray us into the hands of a false experience. This danger can only be countered by the opening of a now nine-tenths concealed inmost soul or psychic being that is already there but not commonly active within us. That is the inner light we must liberate; for the light of this inmost soul is our one sure illumination so long as we walk still amidst the siege of the Ignorance and the Truth-Consciousness has not taken up the entire control of our Godward endeavour. The working of the Divine Force in us under the conditions of the transition and the light of the psychic being turning us always towards a conscious and seeing obedience to that higher impulsion and away from the demands and instigations of the Forces of the Ignorance, these between them create an ever progressive inner law of our action which continues till the spiritual and supramental can be established in our nature. In the transition there may well be a period in which we take up all life and action and offer them to the Divine for purification, change and deliverance of the truth within them, another period in which we draw back and build a spiritual wall around us admitting through its gates only such activities as consent to undergo the law of the spiritual transformation, a third in which a free and all-embracing action, but with new forms fit for the utter truth of the Spirit, can again be made possible. These things, however, will be decided by no mental rule but in the light of the soul within us and by the ordaining force and progressive guidance of the Divine Power that secretly or overtly first impels, then begins clearly to control and order and finally takes up the whole burden of the Yoga.
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     It is natural from the point of view of the Yoga to divide into two categories the activities of the human mind in its pursuit of knowledge. There is the supreme supra-intellectual knowledge which concentrates itself on the discovery of the One and Infinite in its transcendence or tries to penetrate by Intuition, contemplation, direct inner contact into the ultimate truths behind the appearances of Nature; there is the lower science which diffuses itself in an outward knowledge of phenomena, the disguises of the One and Infinite as it appears to us in and through the more exterior forms of the world-manifestation around us. These two, an upper and a lower hemisphere, in the form of them constructed or conceived by men within the mind's ignorant limits, have even there separated themselves, as they developed, with some sharpness.... Philosophy, sometimes spiritual or at least intuitive, sometimes abstract and intellectual, sometimes intellectualising spiritual experience or supporting with a logical apparatus the discoveries of the spirit, has claimed always to take the fixation of ultimate Truth as its province. But even when it did not separate itself on rarefied metaphysical heights from the knowledge that belongs to the practical world and the pursuit of ephemeral objects, intellectual Philosophy by its habit of abstraction has seldom been a power for life. It has been sometimes powerful for high speculation, pursuing mental Truth for its own sake without any ulterior utility or object, sometimes for a subtle gymnastic of the mind in a mistily bright cloud-land of words and ideas, but it has walked or acrobatised far from the more tangible realities of existence. Ancient Philosophy in Europe was more dynamic, but only for the few; in India in its more spiritualised forms, it strongly influenced but without transforming the life of the race.... Religion did not attempt, like Philosophy, to live alone on the heights; its aim was rather to take hold of man's parts of life even more than his parts of mind and draw them Godwards; it professed to build a bridge between spiritual Truth and the vital and material existence; it strove to subordinate and reconcile the lower to the higher, make life serviceable to God, Earth obedient to Heaven. It has to be admitted that too often this necessary effort had the opposite result of making Heaven a sanction for Earth's desires; for continually the religious idea has been turned into an excuse for the worship and service of the human ego. Religion, leaving constantly its little shining core of spiritual experience, has lost itself in the obscure mass of its ever extending ambiguous compromises with life: in attempting to satisfy the thinking mind, it more often succeeded in oppressing or fettering it with a mass of theological dogmas; while seeking to net the human heart, it fell itself into pits of pietistic emotionalism and sensationalism; in the act of annexing the vital nature of man to dominate it, it grew itself vitiated and fell a prey to all the fanaticism, homicidal fury, savage or harsh turn for oppression, pullulating falsehood, obstinate attachment to ignorance to which that vital nature is prone; its desire to draw the physical in man towards God betrayed it into chaining itself to ecclesiastic mechanism, hollow ceremony and lifeless ritual. The corruption of the best produced the worst by that strange chemistry of the power of life which generates evil out of good even as it can also generate good out of evil. At the same time in a vain effort at self-defence against this downward gravitation. Religion was driven to cut existence into two by a division of knowledge, works, art, life itself into two opposite categories, the spiritual and the worldly, religious and mundane, sacred and profane; but this' defensive distinction itself became conventional and artificial and aggravated rather than healed the disease.... On the other side. Science and Art and the knowledge of life, although at first they served or lived in the shadow of Religion, ended by emancipating themselves, became estranged or hostile, or have even recoiled with indifference, contempt or scepticism from what seem to them the cold, barren and distant or unsubstantial and illusory heights of unreality to which metaphysical Philosophy and Religion aspire. For a time the divorce has been as complete as the one-sided intolerance of the human mind could make it and threatened even to end in a complete extinction of all attempt at a higher or a more spiritual knowledge. Yet even in the earthward life a higher knowledge is indeed the one thing that is throughout needful, and without it the lower sciences and pursuits, however fruitful, however rich, free, miraculous in the abundance of their results, become easily a sacrifice offered without due order and to false gods; corrupting, hardening in the end the heart of man, limiting his mind's horizons, they confine in a stony material imprisonment or lead to a final baffling incertitude and disillusionment. A sterile agnosticism awaits us above the brilliant phosphorescence of a half-knowledge that is still the Ignorance.
     A Yoga turned towards an all-embracing realisation of the Supreme will not despise the works or even the dreams, if dreams they are, of the Cosmic Spirit or shrink from the splendid toil and many-sided victory which he has assigned to himself In the human creature. But its first condition for this liberality is that our works in the world too must be part of the sacrifice offered to the Highest and to none else, to the Divine shakti and to no other Power, in the right spirit and with the right knowledge, by the free soul and not by the hypnotised bondslave of material Nature. If a division of works has to be made, it is between those that are nearest to the heart of the sacred flame and those that are least touched or illumined by it because they are more at a distance, or between the fuel that burns strongly or brightly and the logs that if too thickly heaped on the altar may impede the ardour of the fire by their damp, heavy and diffused abundance. But otherwise, apart from this division, all activities of knowledge that seek after or express Truth are in themselves rightful materials for a complete offering; none ought necessarily to be excluded from the wide framework of the divine life. The mental and physical sciences which examine into the laws and forms and processes of things, those which concern the life of men and animals, the social, political, linguistic and historical and those which seek to know and control the labours and activities by which man subdues and utilises his world and environment, and the noble and beautiful Arts which are at once work and knowledge, -- for every well-made and significant poem, picture, statue or building is an act of creative knowledge, a living discovery of the consciousness, a figure of Truth, a dynamic form of mental and vital self-expression or world-expressions-all that seeks, all that finds, all that voices or figures is a realisation of something of the play of the Infinite and to that extent can be made a means of God-realisation or of divine formation. But the Yogin has to see that it is no longer done as part of an ignorant mental life; it can be accepted by him only if by the feeling, the remembrance, the dedication within it, it is turned into a movement of the spiritual consciousness and becomes a part of its vast grasp of comprehensive illuminating knowledge.
  --
     These two changes are the signs of a first effectuation in which the activities of the mental nature are lifted up, spiritualised, widened, universalised, liberated, led to a consciousness of their true purpose as an instrumentation of the Divine creating and developing its manifestation in the temporal universe. But this cannot be the whole scope of the transformation; for it is not in these limits that the integral seeker can cease from his ascension or confine the widening of his nature. For, if it were so, knowledge would still remain a working of the mind, liberated, universalised, spiritualised, but still, as all mind must be, comparatively restricted, relative, imperfect in the very essence of its dynamism; it would reflect luminously great constructions of Truth, but not move in the domain where Truth is au thentic, direct, sovereign and native. There is an ascension still to be made from this height, by which the spiritualised mind will exceed itself and transmute into a supramental power of knowledge. Already in the process of spiritualisation it will have begun to pass out of the brilliant poverty of the human intellect; it will mount successively into the pure broad reaches of a higher mind and next into the gloaming belts of a still greater free intelligence illumined with a Light from above. At this point it will begin to feel more freely, admit with a less mixed response the radiant beginnings of an Intuition, not illumined, but luminous in itself, true in itself, no longer entirely mental and therefore subjected to the abundant intrusion of error. Here too is not an end, for it must rise beyond into the very domain of that untruncated Intuition, the first direct light from the self-awareness of essential Being and, beyond it, attain that from which this light comes. For there is an overmind behind Mind, a Power more original and dynamic which supports Mind, sees it as a diminished radiation from itself, uses it as a transmitting belt of passage downward or an instrument for the creations of the Ignorance. The last step of the ascension would be the surpassing of overmind itself or its return into its own still greater origin, its conversion into the supramental light of the Divine Gnosis. For there in the supramental Light is the seat of the divine Truth-Consciousness that has native in it, as no other consciousness below it can have, the power to organise the works of a Truth which is no longer .tarnished by the shadow of the cosmic Inconscience and Ignorance. There to reach and thence to bring down a supramental dynamism that can transform the Ignorance is the distant but imperative supreme goal of the integral Yoga.
     As the light of each of these higher powers is turned upon the human activities of knowledge, any distinction of sacred and profane, human and divine, begins more and more to fade until it is finally abolished as otiose; for whatever is touched and thoroughly penetrated by the Divine Gnosis is transfigured and becomes a movement of its own Light and Power, free from the turbidity and limitations of the lower intelligence. It is not a separation of some activities, but a transformation of them all by the change of the informing consciousness that is the way of liberation, an ascent of the sacrifice of knowledge to a greater and ever greater light and force. All the works of mind and intellect must be first heightened and widened, then illumined, lifted into the domain of a higher Intelligence, afterwards translated into workings of a greater non-mental Intuition, then again transformed into the dynamic outpourings of the overmind radiance, and these transfigured into the full light and sovereignty of the supramental Gnosis. It is this that the evolution of consciousness in the world carries prefigured but latent in its seed and in the straining tense intention of its process; nor can that process, that evolution cease till it has evolved the instruments of a perfect in place of its now imperfect manifestation of the Spirit.
     If knowledge is the widest power of the consciousness and its function is to free and illumine, yet love is the deepest and most intense and its privilege is to be the key to the most profound and secret recesses of the Divine Mystery. Man, because he is a mental being, is prone to give the highest importance to the thinking mind and its reason and will and to its way of approach and effectuation of Truth and, even, he is inclined to hold that there is no other. The heart with its emotions and incalculable movements is to the eye of his intellect an obscure, uncertain and often a perilous and misleading power which needs to be kept in control by the reason and the mental will and intelligence. And yet there is in the heart or behind it a profounder mystic light which, if not what we call Intuition -- for that, though not of the mind, yet descends through the mind -- has yet a direct touch upon Truth and is nearer to the Divine than the human intellect in its pride of knowledge. According to the ancient teaching the seat of the immanent Divine, the hidden Purusha, is in the mystic heart, -- the secret heart-cave, hrdaye gunayam, as the Upanishads put it, -- and, according to the experience of many Yogins, it is from its depths that there comes the voice or the breath of the inner oracle.
     This ambiguity, these opposing appearances of depth and blindness are created by the double character of the human emotive being. For there is in front in men a heart of vital emotion similar to the animal's, if more variously developed; its emotions are governed by egoistic passion, blind instinctive affections and all the play of the life-impulses with their imperfections, perversions, often sordid degradations, -- heart besieged and given over to the lusts, desires, wraths, intense or fierce demands or little greeds and mean pettinesses of an obscure and fallen life-force and debased by its slavery to any and every impulse. This mixture of the emotive heart and the sensational hungering vital creates in man a false soul of desire; it is this that is the crude and dangerous element which the reason rightly distrusts and feels a need to control, even though the actual control or rather coercion it succeeds in establishing over our raw and insistent vital nature remains always very uncertain and deceptive. But the true soul of man is not there; it is in the true invisible heart hidden in some luminous cave of the nature: there under some infiltration of the divine Light is our soul, a silent inmost being of which few are even aware; for if all have a soul, few are conscious of their true soul or feel its direct impulse. There dwells the little spark of the Divine which supports this obscure mass of our nature and around it grows the psychic being, the formed soul or the real Man within us. It is as this psychic being in him grows and the movements of the heart reflect its divinations and impulsions that man becomes more and more aware of his soul, ceases to be a superior animal, and, awakening to glimpses of the godhead within him, admits more and more its intimations of a deeper life and consciousness and an impulse towards things divine. It is one of the decisive moments of the integral Yoga when this psychic being liberated, brought out from the veil to the front, can pour the full flood of its divinations, seeings and impulsions on the mind, life and body of man and begin to prepare the upbuilding of divinity in the earthly nature.

1.06 - Being Human and the Copernican Principle, #Preparing for the Miraculous, #George Van Vrekhem, #Integral Yoga
  vance or evolution of the Spirit, not only the Intuition, in
  sight, inner sense, the hearts devotion, a deep and direct

1.06 - Man in the Universe, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  3:This Truth of things that has to emerge out of the phenomenal world's contradictions is declared to be an infinite Bliss and self-conscious Existence, the same everywhere, in all things, in all times and beyond Time, and aware of itself behind all these phenomena by whose intensest vibrations of activity or by whose largest totality it can never be entirely expressed or in any way limited; for it is self-existent and does not depend for its being upon its manifestations. They represent it, but do not exhaust it; point to it, but do not reveal it. It is revealed only to itself within their forms. The conscious existence involved in the form comes, as it evolves, to know itself by Intuition, by self-vision, by self-experience. It becomes itself in the world by knowing itself; it knows itself by becoming itself. Thus possessed of itself inwardly, it imparts also to its forms and modes the conscious delight of Sachchidananda. This becoming of the infinite Bliss-Existence-Consciousness in mind and life and body, - for independent of them it exists eternally, - is the transfiguration intended and the utility of individual existence. Through the individual it manifests in relation even as of itself it exists in identity.
  4:The Unknowable knowing itself as Sachchidananda is the one supreme affirmation of Vedanta; it contains all the others or on it they depend. This is the one veritable experience that remains when all appearances have been accounted for negatively by the elimination of their shapes and coverings or positively by the reduction of their names and forms to the constant truth that they contain. For fulfilment of life or for transcendence of life, and whether purity, calm and freedom in the spirit be our aim or puissance, joy and perfection, Sachchidananda is the unknown, omnipresent, indispensable term for which the human consciousness, whether in knowledge and sentiment or in sensation and action, is eternally seeking.

1.06 - On Thought, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Without hoping to reach that point at once, we can strive to acquire an individual thought that is both original and as equitable as possible. Thus we shall have become minds of some consequence, with the right to bring to society the precious contri butions of their highest Intuitions.
  I have several times spoken to you this evening of thought as a living and active being. This calls for an explanation. At our next meeting, I shall give you what I might call the chemical or inner structure of thought, its composition, how it is formed, how it lives, acts and transforms.

1.06 - The Ascent of the Sacrifice 2 The Works of Love - The Works of Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The light it sheds illuminates the other parts of the nature which, for want of any better guidance than their own confused and groping powers, have been wandering in the rounds of the Ignorance; it gives to mind the intrinsic feeling of the thoughts and perceptions, to life the infallible sense of the movements that are misled or misleading and those that are well-inspired; something like a quiet oracle from within discloses the causes of our stumblings, warns in time against their repetition, extracts from experience and Intuition the law, not rigid but plastic, of a just direction for our acts, a right stepping, an accurate impulse. A will is created that becomes more in consonance with evolving Truth rather than with the circling and dilatory mazes of a seeking Error. A determined orientation towards the greater Light to be, a soul-instinct, a psychic tact and insight into the true substance, motion and intention of things, coming always nearer and nearer to a spiritual vision, to a knowledge by inner contact, inner sight and even identity, begin to replace the superficial keenness of mental judgment and the eager graspings of the life-force. The works of Life right themselves, escape from confusion, substitute for the artificial or legal order imposed by the intellect and for the arbitrary rule of desire the guidance of the soul's inner insight, enter into the profound paths of the
  Spirit. Above all, the psychic being imposes on life the law of the sacrifice of all its works as an offering to the Divine and the Eternal. Life becomes a call to that which is beyond Life; its every smallest act enlarges with the sense of the Infinite.

1.06 - The Four Powers of the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  11:And yet it is not easy to meet the demand of this enchanting Power or to keep her presence. Harmony and beauty of the mind and soul, harmony and beauty of the thoughts and feelings, harmony and beauty in every outward act and movement, harmony and beauty of the life and surroundings, this is the demand of Mahalakshmi. Where there is affinity to the rhythms of the secret world-bliss and response to the call of the AllBeautiful and concord and unity and the glad flow of many lives turned towards the Divine, in that atmosphere she consents to abide. But all that is ugly and mean and base, all that is poor and sordid and squalid, all that is brutal and coarse repels her advent. Where love and beauty are not or are reluctant to be born, she does not come; where they are mixed and disfigured with baser things, she turns soon to depart or cares little to pour her riches. If she finds herself in men's hearts surrounded with selfishness and hatred and jealousy and malignance and envy and strife, if treachery and greed and ingratitude are mixed in the sacred chalice, if grossness of passion and unrefined desire degrade devotion, in such hearts the gracious and beautiful Goddess will not linger. A divine disgust seizes upon her and she withdraws, for she is not one who insists or strives; or, veiling her face, she waits for this bitter and poisonous devil's stuff to be rejected and disappear before she will found anew her happy influence. Ascetic bareness and harshness are not pleasing to her nor the suppression of the heart's deeper emotions and the rigid repression of the soul's and the life's parts of beauty. For it is through love and beauty that she lays on men the yoke of the Divine. Life is turned in her supreme creations into a rich work of celestial art and all existence into a poem of sacred delight; the world's riches are brought together and concerted for a supreme order and even the simplest and commonest things are made wonderful by her Intuition of unity and the breath of her spirit. Admitted to the heart she lifts wisdom to pinnacles of wonder and reveals to it the mystic secrets of the ecstasy that surpasses all knowledge, meets devotion with the passionate attraction of the Divine, teaches to strength and force the rhythm that keeps the might of their acts harmonious and in measure and casts on perfection the charm that makes it endure for ever.
  12:MAHASARASWATI is the Mother s Power of Work and her spirit of perfection and order. The youngest of the Four, she is the most skilful in executive faculty and the nearest to physical Nature. Maheshwari lays down the large lines of the worldforces, Mahakali drives their energy and impetus, Mahalakshmi discovers their rhythms and measures, but Mahasaraswati presides over their detail of organisation and execution, relation of parts and effective combination of forces and unfailing exactitude of result and fulfilment. The science and craft and technique of things are Mahasaraswati's province. Always she holds in her nature and can give to those whom she has chosen the intimate and precise knowledge, the subtlety and patience, the accuracy of intuitive mind and conscious hand and discerning eye of the perfect worker. This Power is the strong, the tireless, the careful and efficient builder, organiser, administrator, technician, artisan and classifier of the worlds. When she takes up the transformation and new-building of the nature, her action is laborious and minute and often seems to our impatience slow and interminable, but it is persistent, integral and flawless. For the will in her works is scrupulous, unsleeping, indefatigable; leaning over us she notes and touches every little detail, finds out every minute defect, gap, twist or incompleteness, considers and weighs accurately all that has been done and all that remains still to be done hereafter. Nothing is too small or apparently trivial for her attention; nothing however impalpable or disguised or latent can escape her. Moulding and remoulding she labours each part till it has attained its true form, is put in its exact place in the whole and fulfils its precise purpose. In her constant and diligent arrangement and rearrangement of things her eye is on all needs at once and the way to meet them and her Intuition knows what is to be chosen and what rejected and successfully determines the right instrument, the right time, the right conditions and the right process. Carelessness and negligence and indolence she abhors; all scamped and hasty and shuffling work, all clumsiness and a peu pres and misfire, all false adaptation and misuse of instruments and faculties and leaving of things undone or half done is offensive and foreign to her temper. When her work is finished, nothing has been forgotten, no part has been misplaced or omitted or left in a faulty condition; all is solid, accurate, complete, admirable. Nothing short of a perfect perfection satisfies her and she is ready to face an eternity of toil if that is needed for the fullness of her creation. Therefore of all the Mother s powers she is the most long-suffering with man and his thousand imperfections. Kind, smiling, close and helpful, not easily turned away or discouraged, insistent even after repeated failure, her hand sustains our every step on condition that we are single in our will and straightforward and sincere; for a double mind she will not tolerate and her revealing irony is merciless to drama and histrionics and self-deceit and pretence. A mother to our wants, a friend in our difficulties, a persistent and tranquil counsellor and mentor, chasing away with her radiant smile the clouds of gloom and fretfulness and depression, reminding always of the ever-present help, pointing to the eternal sunshine, she is firm, quiet and persevering in the deep and continuous urge that drives us towards the integrality of the higher nature. All the work of the other Powers leans on her for its completeness; for she assures the material foundation, elaborates the stuff of detail and erects and rivets the armour of the structure.
  13:There are other great Personalities of the Divine Mother but they were more difficult to bring down and have not stood out in front with so much prominence in the evolution of the earth-spirit. There are among them Presences indispensable for the supramental realisation, - most of all one who is her Personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda which flows from a supreme divine Love, the Ananda that alone can heal the gulf between the highest heights of the supramental spirit and the lowest abysses of Matter, the Ananda that holds the key of a wonderful divinest Life and even now supports from its secrecies the work of all the other Powers of the universe. But human nature bounded, egoistic and obscure is inapt to receive these great Presences or to support their mighty action. Only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom of movement in the transformed mind and life and body, can those other rarer Powers manifest in the earth movement and the supramental action become possible. For when her Personalities are all gathered in her and manifested and their separate working has been turned into a harmonious unity and they rise in her to their supramental godheads, then is the Mother revealed as the supramental Mahashakti and brings pouring down her luminous transcendences from their ineffable ether. Then can human nature change into dynamic divine nature because all the elemental lines of the supramental Truth-consciousness and Truth-force are strung together and the harp of life is fitted for the rhythms of the Eternal.

1.06 - The Objective and Subjective Views of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Subjectivism proceeds from within and regards everything from the point of view of a containing and developing self-consciousness. The law here is within ourselves; life is a self-creating process, a growth and development at first subconscious, then half-conscious and at last more and more fully conscious of that which we are potentially and hold within ourselves; the principle of its progress is an increasing self-recognition, self-realisation and a resultant self-shaping. Reason and will are only effective movements of the self, reason a process in self-recognition, will a force for self-affirmation and self-shaping. Moreover, reason and intellectual will are only a part of the means by which we recognise and realise ourselves. Subjectivism tends to take a large and complex view of our nature and being and to recognise many powers of knowledge, many forces of effectuation. Even, we see it in its first movement away from the external and objective method discount and belittle the importance of the work of the reason and assert the supremacy of the life-impulse or the essential Will-to-be in opposition to the claims of the intellect or else affirm some deeper power of knowledge, called nowadays the Intuition, which sees things in the whole, in their truth, in their profundities and harmonies while intellectual reason breaks up, falsifies, affirms superficial appearances and harmonises only by a mechanical adjustment. But substantially we can see that what is meant by this Intuition is the self-consciousness feeling, perceiving, grasping in its substance and aspects rather than analysing in its mechanism its own truth and nature and powers. The whole impulse of subjectivism is to get at the self, to live in the self, to see by the self, to live out the truth of the self internally and externally, but always from an internal initiation and centre.
  But still there is the question of the truth of the self, what it is, where is its real abiding-place; and here subjectivism has to deal with the same factors as the objective view of life and existence. We may concentrate on the individual life and consciousness as the self and regard its power, freedom, increasing light and satisfaction and joy as the object of living and thus arrive at a subjective individualism. We may, on the other hand, lay stress on the group consciousness, the collective self; we may see man only as an expression of this group-self necessarily incomplete in his individual or separate being, complete only by that larger entity, and we may wish to subordinate the life of the individual man to the growing power, efficiency, knowledge, happiness, self-fulfilment of the race or even sacrifice it and consider it as nothing except in so far as it lends itself to the life and growth of the community or the kind. We may claim to exercise a righteous oppression on the individual and teach him intellectually and practically that he has no claim to exist, no right to fulfil himself except in his relations to the collectivity. These alone then are to determine his thought, action and existence and the claim of the individual to have a law of his own being, a law of his own nature which he has a right to fulfil and his demand for freedom of thought involving necessarily the freedom to err and for freedom of action involving necessarily the freedom to stumble and sin may be regarded as an insolence and a chimera. The collective self-consciousness will then have the right to invade at every point the life of the individual, to refuse to it all privacy and apartness, all self-concentration and isolation, all independence and self-guidance and determine everything for it by what it conceives to be the best thought and highest will and rightly dominant feeling, tendency, sense of need, desire for self-satisfaction of the collectivity.

1.070 - The Seven Stages of Perfection, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  We are coming to the conclusion that the highest power is identity of oneself with that thing over which we want to have power. That is Intuition. What is known as Intuition is the insight which one gains into the substance of that thing which is now regarded as the object of perception, and which is then to become the very self of the thing. So, as we approach nearer and nearer to the subjecthood of the object, we gain greater mastery over it, and then it is that we have greater feeling for it, greater sympathy for it. This is what is known as the harmony that one has to establish with the object.
  Hence, the harmony that we are speaking of is nothing but the development of the consciousness of a selfhood in the object, in consonance with the selfhood of ones own self. The object ceases to be an object as the consciousness rises in its awareness of itself, because what is called an object is nothing but an aspect of the self itself, which has got separated by peculiar factors. That is called ignorance. It is this separatist tendency that has become responsible for one aspect of the self recognising another aspect of it as the object, so that there is a fight of oneself with oneself, as it were. So, the world is nothing but a war of oneself with oneself.

1.07 - Hymn of Paruchchhepa, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  eye of Intuition of the sacrifice in its due action; so all men
  follow with pleasure the path of this joyful and joy-giving

1.07 - Medicine and Psycho therapy, #The Practice of Psycho therapy, #Carl Jung, #Psychology
  not only his professional knowledge; he has also to rely on Intuitions and
  sudden ideas, and the more widely he casts his net of questions the more

1.07 - The Ego and the Dualities, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  8:It is not very easy for the customary mind of man, always attached to its past and present associations, to conceive of an existence still human, yet radically changed in what are now our fixed circumstances. We are in respect to our possible higher evolution much in the position of the original Ape of the Darwinian theory. It would have been impossible for that Ape leading his instinctive arboreal life in primeval forests to conceive that there would be one day an animal on the earth who would use a new faculty called reason upon the materials of his inner and outer existence, who would dominate by that power his instincts and habits, change the circumstances of his physical life, build for himself houses of stone, manipulate Nature's forces, sail the seas, ride the air, develop codes of conduct, evolve conscious methods for his mental and spiritual development. And if such a conception had been possible for the Ape-mind, it would still have been difficult for him to imagine that by any progress of Nature or long effort of Will and tendency he himself could develop into that animal. Man, because he has acquired reason and still more because he has indulged his power of imagination and Intuition, is able to conceive an existence higher than his own and even to envisage his personal elevation beyond his present state into that existence. His idea of the supreme state is an absolute of all that is positive to his own concepts and desirable to his own instinctive aspiration, - Knowledge without its negative shadow of error, Bliss without its negation in experience of suffering, Power without its constant denial by incapacity, purity and plenitude of being without the opposing sense of defect and limitation. It is so that he conceives his gods; it is so that he constructs his heavens. But it is not so that his reason conceives of a possible earth and a possible humanity. His dream of God and Heaven is really a dream of his own perfection; but he finds the same difficulty in accepting its practical realisation here for his ultimate aim as would the ancestral Ape if called upon to believe in himself as the future Man. His imagination, his religious aspirations may hold that end before him; but when his reason asserts itself, rejecting imagination and transcendent Intuition, he puts it by as a brilliant superstition contrary to the hard facts of the material universe. It becomes then only his inspiring vision of the impossible. All that is possible is a conditioned, limited and precarious knowledge, happiness, power and good.
  9:Yet in the principle of reason itself there is the assertion of a Transcendence. For reason is in its whole aim and essence the pursuit of Knowledge, the pursuit, that is to say, of Truth by the elimination of error. Its view, its aim is not that of a passage from a greater to a lesser error, but it supposes a positive, pre-existent Truth towards which through the dualities of right knowledge and wrong knowledge we can progressively move. If our reason has not the same instinctive certitude with regard to the other aspirations of humanity, it is because it lacks the same essential illumination inherent in its own positive activity. We can just conceive of a positive or absolute realisation of happiness, because the heart to which that instinct for happiness belongs has its own form of certitude, is capable of faith, and because our minds can envisage the elimination of unsatisfied want which is the apparent cause of suffering. But how shall we conceive of the elimination of pain from nervous sensation or of death from the life of the body? Yet the rejection of pain is a sovereign instinct of the sensations, the rejection of death a dominant claim inherent in the essence of our vitality. But these things present themselves to our reason as instinctive aspirations, not as realisable potentialities.
  --
  11:In fact, we do pursue as an ideal, so far as we may, the elimination of all these negative or adverse phenomena. We seek constantly to minimise the causes of error, pain and suffering. Science, as its knowledge increases, dreams of regulating birth and of indefinitely prolonging life, if not of effecting the entire conquest of death. But because we envisage only external or secondary causes, we can only think of removing them to a distance and not of eliminating the actual roots of that against which we struggle. And we are thus limited because we strive towards secondary perceptions and not towards root-knowledge, because we know processes of things, but not their essence. We thus arrive at a more powerful manipulation of circumstances, but not at essential control. But if we could grasp the essential nature and the essential cause of error, suffering and death, we might hope to arrive at a mastery over them which should be not relative but entire. We might hope even to eliminate them altogether and justify the dominant instinct of our nature by the conquest of that absolute good, bliss, knowledge and immortality which our Intuitions perceive as the true and ultimate condition of the human being.
  12:The ancient Vedanta presents us with such a solution in the conception and experience of Brahman as the one universal and essential fact and of the nature of Brahman as Sachchidananda.

1.07 - The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
  The various injunctions, in other words, lead to or disclose or open up the possibility of an illumination, an apprehension, an Intuition, or a direct experiencing of the domain addressed by the injunction. You "see" the meaning of Hamlet, or whether it is raining, or why 2 + 2 really is 4. This is the second strand, the illumination or apprehension. You see or apprehend, via a direct experience, the disclosed data of the domain.16
  But you could be mistaken, and thus you check your results, your data, with others who have completed the first two strands, with others who have performed the injunctions and obtained the data. In this community of peers, you compare and confirm-or reject-your original data. And this is the third strand, communal confirmation (or refutation).
  --
  In other words, the deep structures of worldspaces (archaic, magic, mythic, rational, and transpersonal) show cross-cultural and largely invariant features at a deep level of abstraction, whereas the surface structures (the actual subjects and objects in the various worldspaces) are naturally and appropriately quite different from culture to culture. Just as the human mind universally grows images and symbols and concepts (even though the actual contents of those structures vary considerably), so the human spirit universally grows Intuitions of the Divine, and those developmental signifieds unfold in an evolutionary and reconstructible fashion, just like any other holon in the Kosmos (and their referents are just as real as any other similarly disclosed data).
  In the past few decades there has been a concerted effort on the part of many researchers (such as Stanislav Grof, Roger Walsh, Frances Vaughan, Daniel Brown, Jack Engler, Daniel Goleman, Charles Tart, Donald Rothberg, Michael Zimmerman, Seymour Boorstein, Mark Epstein, David Lukoff, Michael Washburn, Joel Funk, John Nelson, John Chirban, Robert Forman, Francis Lu, Michael Murphy, Mark Waldman, James Fadiman, myself, and others)21 to rationally reconstruct the higher stages of transpersonal or contemplative development-stages that continue naturally or normally beyond the ego and centaur if arrest or fixation does not occur.

1.07 - The Psychic Center, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  absurdity: Plato and the Hottentot, the fortunate child of saints or Rishis88 and the born and trained criminal plunged from beginning to end in the lowest fetid corruption of a great modern city have equally to create by the action or belief of this one unequal life all their eternal future. This is a paradox which offends both the soul and the reason, and ethical sense and the spiritual Intuition. 89 But even among awakened beings, there are vast differences. Some souls, some consciousness-forces have just been born, while others have already acquired quite distinct individualities; some souls are in the midst of their first radiant self-discoveries, but they do not know much outside their own resplendent joys (they do not even have any precise memory of their past, nor are they aware of the worlds they carry within),
  while other, rare souls seem replete with a consciousness as vast as the earth. Indeed, a man can be a luminous yogi or a saint living in his soul, yet still possess a crude mind, a repressed vital, a body he ignores or crassly mistreats, and a completely virgin superconscient.

1.07 - TRUTH, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  The word intellect is used by Eckhart in the scholastic sense of immediate Intuition. Intellect and reason, says Aquinas, are not two powers, but distinct as the perfect from the imperfect. The intellect means, an intimate penetration of truth; the reason, enquiry and discourse. It is by following, and then abandoning, the rational and emotional path of word and discrimination that one is enabled to enter upon the intellectual or intuitive path of realization. And yet, in spite of the warnings pronounced by those who, through selflessness, have passed from letter to spirit and from theory to immediate knowledge, the organized Christian churches have persisted in the fatal habit of mistaking means for ends. The verbal statements of theologys more or less adequate rationalizations of experience have been taken too seriously and treated with the reverence that is due only to the Fact they are intended to describe. It has been fancied that souls are saved if assent is given to what is locally regarded as the correct formula, lost if it is withheld. The two words, filioque, may not have been the sole cause of the schism between the Eastern and Western churches; but they were unquestionably the pretext and casus belli.
  The overvaluation of words and formulae may be regarded as a special case of that overvaluation of the things of time, which is so fatally characteristic of historic Christianity. To know Truth-as-Fact and to know it unitively, in spirit and in truth-as-immediate-apprehensionthis is deliverance, in this standeth our eternal life. To be familiar with the verbalized truths, which symbolically correspond to Truth-as-Fact insofar as it can be known in, or inferred from, truth-as-immediate-apprehension, or truth-as-historic-revelationthis is not salvation, but merely the study of a special branch of philosophy. Even the most ordinary experience of a thing or event in time can never be fully or adequately described in words. The experience of seeing the sky or having neuralgia is incommunicable; the best we can do is to say blue or pain, in the hope that those who hear us may have had experiences similar to our own and so be able to supply their own version of the meaning. God, however, is not a thing or event in time, and the time-bound words which cannot do justice even to temporal matters are even more inadequate to the intrinsic nature and our own unitive experience of that which belongs to an incommensurably different order. To suppose that people can be saved by studying and giving assent to formulae is like supposing that one can get to Timbuctoo by poring over a map of Africa. Maps are symbols, and even the best of them are inaccurate and imperfect symbols. But to anyone who really wants to reach a given destination, a map is indispensably useful as indicating the direction in which the traveller should set out and the roads which he must take.
  --
  In practice words are used for other purposes than for making statements about facts. Very often they are used rhetorically, in order to arouse the passions and direct the will towards some course of action regarded as desirable. And sometimes, too, they are used poetically that is to say, they are used in such a way that, besides making a statement about real or imaginary things and events, and besides appealing rhetorically to the will and the passions, they cause the reader to be aware that they are beautiful. Beauty in art or nature is a matter of relationships between things not in themselves intrinsically beautiful. There is nothing beautiful, for example, about the vocables, time, or syllable. But when they are used in such a phrase as to the last syllable of recorded time, the relationship between the sound of the component words, between our ideas of the things for which they stand, and between the overtones of association with which each word and the phrase as a whole are charged, is apprehended, by a direct and immediate Intuition, as being beautiful.
  About the rhetorical use of words nothing much need be said. There is rhetoric for good causes and there is rhetoric for bad causesrhetoric which is tolerably true to facts as well as emotionally moving, and rhetoric which is unconsciously or deliberately a lie. To learn to discriminate between the different kinds of rhetoric is an essential part of intellectual morality; and intellectual morality is as necessary a pre-condition of the spiritual life as is the control of the will and the guard of heart and tongue.
  --
  Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is Intuition.
  Jalal-uddin Rumi

1.08a - The Ladder, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
  The methods of the Qabalah particularly - since it alone of all others appears to possess the one basis pre-eminently suitable for synthesis - enlarge our vision of the universe by means of an experience variously called religious, mystical, or supra-rational. And by this is meant an experience, nay, an immediate Intuition, a spontaneous insight into the meaning, the nature, and the value of the Universe, giving a beatific vision of how all things belong together, a clue to the nature of Ultimate Reality. We deal here with an essential fact in mystical knowledge ; the superseding of the ordinary activities of the rational consciousness in a direct Intuition wherein the Neschamah gazes directly upon ideas. And experience, whether secular or mystical, must always be the ultima thule, beyond which one dare not go, nor which one dare negate. In setting up the Mystical
  THE LADDER 137
  --
  The experience produces art and genius in every field of endeavour, because therein all forms seem to speak, and there is gained an immediate Intuition of form. One becomes a close and willing observer of Life itself rather than of the externals used by life, and from the Beatific
  Vision one reads the meaning of existence, and by these pictures one trains oneself for life and its appreciation in expression as genius.

1.08 - RELIGION AND TEMPERAMENT, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  IT SEEMS best at this point to turn back for a moment from ethics to psychology, where a very important problem awaits usa problem to which the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy have given a great deal of attention. What precisely is the relation between individual constitution and temperament on the one hand and the kind and degree of spiritual knowledge on the other? The materials for a comprehensively accurate answer to this question are not availableexcept, perhaps, in the form of that incommunicable science, based upon Intuition and long practice, that exists in the minds of experienced spiritual directors. But the answer that can be given, though incomplete, is highly significant.
  All knowledge, as we have seen, is a function of being. Or, to phrase the same idea in scholastic terms, the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower. In the Introduction reference was made to the effect upon knowledge of changes of being along what may be called its vertical axis, in the direction of sanctity or its opposite. But there is also variation in the horizontal plane. Congenitally by psychophysical constitution, each one of us is born into a certain position on this horizontal plane. It is a vast territory, still imperfectly explored, a continent stretching all the way from imbecility to genius, from shrinking weakness to aggressive strength, from cruelty to Pickwickian kindliness, from self-revealing sociability to taciturn misanthropy and love of solitude, from an almost frantic lasciviousness to an almost untempted continence. From any point on this huge expanse of possible human nature an individual can move almost indefinitely up or down, towards union with the divine Ground of his own and all other beings, or towards the last, the infernal extremes of separateness and selfhood. But where horizontal movement is concerned there is far less freedom. It is impossible for one kind of physical constitution to transform itself into another kind; and the particular temperament associated with a given physical constitution can be modified only within narrow limits. With the best will in the world and the best social environment, all that anyone can hope to do is to make the best of his congenital psycho-physical make-up; to change the fundamental patterns of constitution and temperament is beyond his power.
  --
  Finally, there is the way of knowledge, through the modification of consciousness, until it ceases to be ego-centred and becomes centred in and united with the divine Ground. This is the way to which the extreme cerebrotonic is naturally drawn. His special discipline consists in the mortification of his innate tendency towards introversion for its own sake, towards thought and imagination and self-analysis as ends in themselves rather than as means towards the ultimate transcendence of phantasy and discursive reasoning in the timeless act of pure intellectual Intuition.
  Within the general population, as we have seen, variation is continuous, and in most people the three components are fairly evenly mixed. Those exhibiting extreme predominance of any one component are relatively rare. And yet, in spite of their rarity, it is by the thought-patterns characteristic of these extreme individuals that theology and ethics, at any rate on the theoretical side, have been mainly dominated. The reason for this is simple. Any extreme position is more uncompromisingly clear and therefore more easily recognized and understood than the intermediate positions, which are the natural thought-pattern of the person in whom the constituent components of personality are evenly balanced. These intermediate positions, it should be noted, do not in any sense contain or reconcile the extreme positions; they are merely other thought-patterns added to the list of possible systems. The construction of an all-embracing system of metaphysics, ethics and psychology is a task that can never be accomplished by any single individual, for the sufficient reason that he is an individual with one particular kind of constitution and temperament and therefore capable of knowing only according to the mode of his own being. Hence the advantages inherent in what may be called the anthological approach to truth.

1.08 - The Depths of the Divine, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
  It is, in fact, according to Emerson, an allegiance to the senses and nature, in itself, that blinds us to the interior Intuition of the Over-Soul and the God within and beyond:
  To the senses and the unrenewed understanding, belongs a sort of instinctive belief in the absolute existence of nature. In their view man and nature are indissolubly joined. Things are ultimates, and they never look beyond their sphere [Piaget's egocentric "realism"]. . . . His mind is imbruted, and he is a selfish savage. . . .
  The presence of Intuition14 mars this faith [in nature]. The first effort of thought tends to relax this despotism of the senses which binds us to nature as if we were a part of it, and shows us nature aloof, and, as it were, afloat. Until this higher agency intervened [ Intuition], the animal eye sees, with wonderful accuracy, sharp outlines and colored surfaces. When the eye of Intuition opens, to outline and surface are at once added grace and expression. These proceed from imagination and affection, and abate somewhat of the angular distinctions of objects. If the Intuition be stimulated to more earnest vision, outlines of surfaces become transparent, and are no longer seen; causes and spirits are seen through them. The best moments of life are these delicious awakenings of the higher powers, and the reverential withdrawing of nature before its God.15
  At the same time, as Emerson points out, this does not mean that nature is apart from Spirit or divorced from
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  Teresa is positively brilliant in distinguishing the agonies of the soul in its higher mansions or stages from those emotional problems that characterize the lower faculties. She clearly distinguishes, for example, three types of "inner voices"-those of "the fancy" or "imagination," which can be hallucinatory and "diseased," she says; those that are verbal, and may or may not represent true wisdom (for they may also be deceptive and "diseased"); and those that are transverbal altogether, representing direct interior apprehension. She has an exquisite and precise discriminating awareness between "fancies" and "hallucinations" and direct intuitive apprehensions, and she explains the differences at length. She gives clear and classic phenomenological descriptions of so many of the subtle-level apprehensions: interior illumination, sound, bliss, and understanding beyond ordinary time and place; genuine archetypal Form as creative pattern (not mythic motif); and psychic vision giving way to pure nonverbal, transverbal, subtle Intuition; all summating in the "union of the whole soul with uncreated Spirit."
  As for the use of the term "supernatural" by certain contemplatives (both East and West), care should be taken to differentiate what they mean by that term and what, for example, the mythic or religious literalist means by it.

1.08 - The Gods of the Veda - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  For the rest, Sayana in this particular passage lends some support [to] this suggestion of Saraswatis etymological good luck; for he tells us that Saraswati has two aspects, the embodied goddess of Speech and the figure of a river. He distributes, indeed, these two capacities with a strange inconsistency and in his interpretation, as in so many of these harsh & twisted scholastic renderings, European & Indian, of the old melodious subtleties of thought & language, the sages of the Veda come before us only to be convicted of a baffling incoherence of sense and a pointless inaptness of language. But possibly, after all, it is the knowledge of the scholar that is at fault, not the intellect of the Vedic singers that was confused, stupid and clumsy! Nevertheless we must consider the possibility that Sayanas distribution of the sense may be ill-guided, & yet his suggestion about the double role of the goddess may in itself be well-founded. There are few passages of the ancient Sanhita, into which these ingenuities of the ritualistic & naturalistic interpretations do not pursue us. Our inquiry would protract itself into an intolerable length, if we had at every step to clear away from the path either the heavy ancient lumber or the brilliant modern rubbish. It is necessary to determine, once for all, whether the Vedic scholars, prve ntan uta, are guides worthy of trustwhe ther they are as sure in taste & insight as they are painstaking and diligent in their labour,whether, in a word, these ingenuities are the outcome of an imaginative licence of speculation or a sound & keen Intuition of the true substance of Veda. Here is a crucial passage. Let us settle at least one side of the account the ledger of the great Indian scholiast.
  Madhuchchhanda turns to Saraswati at the close of his hymn after successively calling to the Aswins, Indra & the Visvadevas. To each of these deities he has addressed three riks of praise & invocation; the last three of the twelve reiterate in each verse the name, epithets & functions of Saraswati. The Sukta falls therefore into four equal parts of which the last alone immediately concerns us.

1.08 - The Methods of Vedantic Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  9:But always mental experience and the concepts of the reason have been held by it to be even at their highest a reflection in mental identifications and not the supreme self-existent identity. We have to go beyond the mind and the reason. The reason active in our waking consciousness is only a mediator between the subconscient All that we come from in our evolution upwards and the superconscient All towards which we are impelled by that evolution. The subconscient and the superconscient are two different formulations of the same All. The master-word of the subconscient is Life, the master-word of the superconscient is Light. In the subconscient knowledge or consciousness is involved in action, for action is the essence of Life. In the superconscient action re-enters into Light and no longer contains involved knowledge but is itself contained in a supreme consciousness. Intuitional knowledge is that which is common between them and the foundation of Intuitional knowledge is conscious or effective identity between that which knows and that which is known; it is that state of common self-existence in which the knower and the known are one through knowledge. But in the subconscient the Intuition manifests itself in the action, in effectivity, and the knowledge or conscious identity is either entirely or more or less concealed in the action. In the superconscient, on the contrary, Light being the law and the principle, the Intuition manifests itself in its true nature as knowledge emerging out of conscious identity, and effectivity of action is rather the accompaniment or necessary consequent and no longer masks as the primary fact. Between these two states reason and mind act as intermediaries which enable the being to liberate knowledge out of its imprisonment in the act and prepare it to resume its essential primacy. When the selfawareness in the mind applied both to continent and content, to own-self and other-self, exalts itself into the luminous selfmanifest identity, the reason also converts itself into the form of the self-luminous Intuitional3 knowledge. This is the highest possible state of our knowledge when mind fulfils itself in the supramental.
  10:Such is the scheme of the human understanding upon which the conclusions of the most ancient Vedanta were built. To develop the results arrived at on this foundation by the ancient sages is not my object, but it is necessary to pass briefly in review some of their principal conclusions so far as they affect the problem of the divine Life with which alone we are at present concerned. For it is in those ideas that we shall find the best previous foundation of that which we seek now to rebuild and although, as with all knowledge, old expression has to be replaced to a certain extent by new expression suited to a later mentality and old light has to merge itself into new light as dawn succeeds dawn, yet it is with the old treasure as our initial capital or so much of it as we can recover that we shall most advantageously proceed to accumulate the largest gains in our new commerce with the ever-changeless and ever-changing Infinite.
  11:Sad Brahman, Existence pure, indefinable, infinite, absolute, is the last concept at which Vedantic analysis arrives in its view of the universe, the fundamental Reality which Vedantic experience discovers behind all the movement and formation which constitute the apparent reality. It is obvious that when we posit this conception, we go entirely beyond what our ordinary consciousness, our normal experience contains or warrants. The senses and sense-mind know nothing whatever about any pure or absolute existence. All that our sense-experience tells us of, is form and movement. Forms exist, but with an existence that is not pure, rather always mixed, combined, aggregated, relative. When we go within ourselves, we may get rid of precise form, but we cannot get rid of movement, of change. Motion of Matter in Space, motion of change in Time seem to be the condition of existence. We may say indeed, if we like, that this is existence and that the idea of existence in itself corresponds to no discoverable reality. At the most in the phenomenon of selfawareness or behind it, we get sometimes a glimpse of something immovable and immutable, something that we vaguely perceive or imagine that we are beyond all life and death, beyond all change and formation and action. Here is the one door in us that sometimes swings open upon the splendour of a truth beyond and, before it shuts again, allows a ray to touch us, - a luminous intimation which, if we have the strength and firmness, we may hold to in our faith and make a starting-point for another play of consciousness than that of the sense-mind, for the play of Intuition.
  12:For if we examine carefully, we shall find that Intuition is our first teacher. Intuition always stands veiled behind our mental operations. Intuition brings to man those brilliant messages from the Unknown which are the beginning of his higher knowledge. Reason only comes in afterwards to see what profit it can have of the shining harvest. Intuition gives us that idea of something behind and beyond all that we know and seem to be which pursues man always in contradiction of his lower reason and all his normal experience and impels him to formulate that formless perception in the more positive ideas of God, Immortality, Heaven and the rest by which we strive to express it to the mind. For Intuition is as strong as Nature herself from whose very soul it has sprung and cares nothing for the contradictions of reason or the denials of experience. It knows what is because it is, because itself it is of that and has come from that, and will not yield it to the judgment of what merely becomes and appears. What the Intuition tells us of, is not so much Existence as the Existent, for it proceeds from that one point of light in us which gives it its advantage, that sometimes opened door in our own self-awareness. Ancient Vedanta seized this message of the Intuition and formulated it in the three great declarations of the Upanishads, "I am He", "Thou art That, O Swetaketu", "All this is the Brahman; this Self is the Brahman".
  13:But Intuition by the very nature of its action in man, working as it does from behind the veil, active principally in his more unenlightened, less articulate parts, served in front of the veil, in the narrow light which is our waking conscience, only by instruments that are unable fully to assimilate its messages, - Intuition is unable to give us the truth in that ordered and articulated form which our nature demands. Before it could effect any such completeness of direct knowledge in us, it would have to organise itself in our surface being and take possession there of the leading part. But in our surface being it is not the Intuition, it is the Reason which is organised and helps us to order our perceptions, thoughts and actions. Therefore the age of intuitive knowledge, represented by the early Vedantic thinking of the Upanishads, had to give place to the age of rational knowledge; inspired Scripture made room for metaphysical philosophy, even as afterwards metaphysical philosophy had to give place to experimental Science. Intuitive thought which is a messenger from the superconscient and therefore our highest faculty, was supplanted by the pure reason which is only a sort of deputy and belongs to the middle heights of our being; pure reason in its turn was supplanted for a time by the mixed action of the reason which lives on our plains and lower elevations and does not in its view exceed the horizon of the experience that the physical mind and senses or such aids as we can invent for them can bring to us. And this process which seems to be a descent, is really a circle of progress. For in each case the lower faculty is compelled to take up as much as it can assimilate of what the higher had already given and to attempt to re-establish it by its own methods. By the attempt it is itself enlarged in its scope and arrives eventually at a more supple and a more ample selfaccommodation to the higher faculties. Without this succession and attempt at separate assimilation we should be obliged to remain under the exclusive domination of a part of our nature while the rest remained either depressed and unduly subjected or separate in its field and therefore poor in its development. With this succession and separate attempt the balance is righted; a more complete harmony of our parts of knowledge is prepared.
  14:We see this succession in the Upanishads and the subsequent Indian philosophies. The sages of the Veda and Vedanta relied entirely upon Intuition and spiritual experience. It is by an error that scholars sometimes speak of great debates or discussions in the Upanishad. Wherever there is the appearance of a controversy, it is not by discussion, by dialectics or the use of logical reasoning that it proceeds, but by a comparison of Intuitions and experiences in which the less luminous gives place to the more luminous, the narrower, faultier or less essential to the more comprehensive, more perfect, more essential. The question asked by one sage of another is "What dost thou know?", not "What dost thou think?" nor "To what conclusion has thy reasoning arrived?" Nowhere in the Upanishads do we find any trace of logical reasoning urged in support of the truths of Vedanta. Intuition, the sages seem to have held, must be corrected by a more perfect Intuition; logical reasoning cannot be its judge.
  15:And yet the human reason demands its own method of satisfaction. Therefore when the age of rationalistic speculation began, Indian philosophers, respectful of the heritage of the past, adopted a double attitude towards the Truth they sought. They recognised in the Sruti, the earlier results of Intuition or, as they preferred to call it, of inspired Revelation, an authority superior to Reason. But at the same time they started from Reason and tested the results it gave them, holding only those conclusions to be valid which were supported by the supreme authority. In this way they avoided to a certain extent the besetting sin of metaphysics, the tendency to battle in the clouds because it deals with words as if they were imperative facts instead of symbols which have always to be carefully scrutinised and brought back constantly to the sense of that which they represent. Their speculations tended at first to keep near at the centre to the highest and profoundest experience and proceeded with the united consent of the two great authorities, Reason and Intuition. Nevertheless, the natural trend of Reason to assert its own supremacy triumphed in effect over the theory of its subordination. Hence the rise of conflicting schools each of which founded itself in theory on the Veda and used its texts as a weapon against the others. For the highest intuitive Knowledge sees things in the whole, in the large and details only as sides of the indivisible whole; its tendency is towards immediate synthesis and the unity of knowledge. Reason, on the contrary, proceeds by analysis and division and assembles its facts to form a whole; but in the assemblage so formed there are opposites, anomalies, logical incompatibilities, and the natural tendency of Reason is to affirm some and to negate others which conflict with its chosen conclusions so that it may form a flawlessly logical system. The unity of the first Intuitional knowledge was thus broken up and the ingenuity of the logicians was always able to discover devices, methods of interpretation, standards of varying value by which inconvenient texts of the Scripture could be practically annulled and an entire freedom acquired for their metaphysical speculation.
  16:Nevertheless, the main conceptions of the earlier Vedanta remained in parts in the various philosophical systems and efforts were made from time to time to recombine them into some image of the old catholicity and unity of Intuitional thought. And behind the thought of all, variously presented, survived as the fundamental conception, Purusha, Atman or Sad Brahman, the pure Existent of the Upanishads, often rationalised into an idea or psychological state, but still carrying something of its old burden of inexpressible reality. What may be the relation of the movement of becoming which is what we call the world to this absolute Unity and how the ego, whether generated by the movement or cause of the movement, can return to that true Self, Divinity or Reality declared by the Vedanta, these were the questions speculative and practical which have always occupied the thought of India.

1.08 - The Supreme Discovery, #Words Of Long Ago, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Thus, when a man who seeks the Divine attempts to re-ascend by degrees towards the inaccessible, he forgets that all his knowledge and all his Intuition cannot take him one step forward in this infinite; neither does he know that what he wants to attain, what he believes to be so far from him, is within him.
  For how could he know anything of the origin until he becomes conscious of this origin in himself?

1.08 - The Supreme Will, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  2:There are three stages of the ascent, - at the bottom the bodily life enslaved to the pressure of necessity and desire, in the middle the mental, higher emotional and psychic rule that feels after greater interests, aspirations, experiences, at the summits first a deeper psychic and spiritual state and then a supramental eternal consciousness in which all our aspirations and seekings discover their own intimate significance. In the bodily life first desire and need and then the practical good of the individual and the society are the governing consideration, the dominant force. In the mental life ideas and ideals rule, ideas that are halflights wearing the garb of Truth, ideals formed by the mind as a result of a growing but still imperfect Intuition and experience. Whenever the mental life prevails and the bodily diminishes its brute insistence, man the mental being feels pushed by the urge of mental Nature to mould in the sense of the idea or the ideal the life of the individual, and in the end even the vaguer more complex life of the society is forced to undergo this subtle process. In the spiritual life, or when a higher power than Mind has manifested and taken possession of the nature, these limited motive-forces recede, dwindle, tend to disappear. The spiritual or supramental Self, the Divine Being, the supreme and immanent Reality, must be alone the Lord within us and shape freely our final development according to the highest, widest, most integral expression possible of the law of our nature. In the end that nature acts in the perfect Truth and its spontaneous freedom; for it obeys only the luminous power of the Eternal. The individual has nothing further to gain, no desire to fulfil; he has become a portion of the impersonality or the universal personality of the Eternal. No other object than the manifestation and play of the Divine Spirit in life and the maintenance and conduct of the world in its march towards the divine goal can move him to action. Mental ideas, opinions, constructions are his no more; for his mind has fallen into silence, it is only a channel for the Light and Truth of the divine knowledge. Ideals are too narrow for the vastness of his spirit; it is the ocean of the Infinite that flows through him and moves him for ever.
  3:Whoever sincerely enters the path of works, must leave behind him the stage in which need and desire are the first law of our acts. For whatever desires still trouble his being, he must, if he accepts the high aim of Yoga, put them away from him into the hands of the Lord within us. The supreme Power will deal with them for the good of the sadhaka and for the good of all. In effect, we find that once this surrender is done, - always provided the rejection is sincere, - egoistic indulgence of desire may for some time recur under the continued impulse of past nature but only in order to exhaust its acquired momentum and to teach the embodied being in his most unteachable part, his nervous, vital, emotional nature, by the reactions of desire, by its grief and unrest bitterly contrasted with calm periods of the higher peace or marvellous movements of divine Ananda, that egoistic desire is not a law for the soul that seeks liberation or aspires to its own original god-nature. Afterwards the element of desire in those impulsions will be thrown away or persistently eliminated by a constant denying and transforming pressure. Only the pure force of action in them (pravr.tti) justified by an equal delight in all work and result that is inspired or imposed from above will be preserved in the happy harmony of a final perfection. To act, to enjoy is the normal law and right of the nervous being; but to choose by personal desire its action and enjoyment is only its ignorant will, not its right. Alone the supreme and universal Will must choose; action must change into a dynamic movement of that Will; enjoyment must be replaced by the play of a pure spiritual Ananda. All personal will is either a temporary delegation from on high or a usurpation by the ignorant Asura.
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  16:But even before that highest approach to identity is achieved, something of the supreme Will can manifest in us as an imperative impulsion, a God-driven action; we then act by a spontaneous self-determining Force but a fuller knowledge of meaning and aim arises only afterwards. Or the impulse to action may come as an inspiration or Intuition, but rather in the heart and body than in the mind; here an effective sight enters in but the complete and exact knowledge is still deferred and comes, if at all, later. But the divine Will may descend too as a luminous single comm and or a total perception or a continuous current of perception of what is to be done into the will or into the thought or as a direction from above spontaneously fulfilled by the lower members. When the Yoga is imperfect, only some actions can be done in this way, or else a general action may so proceed but only during periods of exaltation and illumination. When the Yoga is perfect, all action becomes of this character. We may indeed distinguish three stages of a growing progress by which, first, the personal will is occasionally or frequently enlightened or moved by a supreme Will or conscious Force beyond it, then constantly replaced and, last, identified and merged in that divine Power-action. The first is the stage when we are still governed by the intellect, heart and senses; these have to seek or wait for the divine inspiration and guidance and do not always find or receive it. The second is the stage when human intelligence is more and more replaced by a high illumined or intuitive spiritualised mind, the external human heart by the inner psychic heart, the senses by a purified and selfless vital force. The third is the stage when we rise even above spiritualised mind to the supramental levels.
  17:In all three stages the fundamental character of the liberated action is the same, a spontaneous working of Prakriti no longer through or for the ego but at the will and for the enjoyment of the supreme Purusha. At a higher level this becomes the Truth of the absolute and universal Supreme expressed through the individual soul and worked out consciously through the nature, - no longer through a half-perception and a diminished or distorted effectuation by the stumbling, ignorant and all-deforming energy of lower nature in us but by the all-wise transcendent and universal Mother

1.08 - The Synthesis of Movement, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  This is why the physical life, the individuals participation in the universal light of consciousness has always been considered by popular Intuition no less than by the inspiration of poets and thinkers the supreme and sacred boon and all birth is celebrated as a victory, for it is indeed a victory of life and light over the obscurity of the inconscient.
  So long as that underworld of subconscient forces whose sole issue is the narrow door opened by physical life on this infinite is not exhausted, the creatures first duty of solidarity and of charity to the creature is to awaken it to the plenitude of existence and light, to enlarge the field of this life that liberates.

1.09 - A System of Vedic Psychology, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Is there or can there be a system of Vedic psychology? To us who are dominated today by the prestige of European thought and scholarship, the Vedas are a document of primitive barbarism, the ancient Vedanta a mass of sublime but indisciplined speculations. We may admit the existence of many deep psychological Intuitions in the Upanishads; we do not easily allow to an age which we have been taught to regard as great but primitive and undeveloped the possibility of a profound and reasoned system in a subject in which Europe with all her modern knowledge has been unable to develop a real science. I believe that this current view of our Vedic forefa thers is entirely erroneous and arises from our application to them of a false system of psychological and intellectual values. Europe has formed certain views about the Veda & the Vedanta, and succeeded in imposing them on the Indian intellect. The ease with which this subjugation has been effected, is not surprising; for the mere mass of labour of Vedic scholarship has been imposing, its ingenuity of philological speculation is well calculated to dazzle the uncritical mind and the audacity & self-confidence with which it constructs its theories conceals the conjectural uncertainty of their foundations. When a hundred world famous scholars cry out, This is so, it is hard indeed for the average mind and even minds above the average, but inexpert in these special subjects, not to acquiesce. Nor has there been in India itself any corresponding labour of scholarship, diligence & sound enquiry which could confront the brilliant and hazardous generalisations of modern Sanscrit scholarship with the results of a more perfect system and a more penetrating vision. The only attempt in that direction the attempt of Swami Dayanandahas not been of a kind to generate confidence in the dispassionate judgment of posterity which must be the final arbiter of these disputes; for not only was that great Pundit and vigorous disputant unequipped with the wide linguistic & philological scholarship necessary for his work, but his method was rapid, impatient, polemical, subservient to certain fixed religious ideas rather than executed in the calm, disinterested freedom of the careful and impartial thinker and scholar. Judgment has passed on the Veda & Vedanta by default in favour of the scholastic criticism of Europe which has alone been represented in the court of modern opinion.
  Nevertheless a time must come when the Indian mind will shake off the paralysis that has fallen upon it, cease to think or hold opinions at second & third hand & reassert its right to judge and inquire with a perfect freedom into the meaning of its own Scriptures. When that day comes, we shall, I think, discover that the imposing fabric of Vedic theory is based upon nothing more sound or lasting than a foundation of loosely massed conjectures. We shall question many established philological myths,the legend, for instance, of an Aryan invasion of India from the north, the artificial & unreal distinction of Aryan & Dravidian which an erroneous philology has driven like a wedge into the unity of the homogeneous Indo-Afghan race; the strange dogma of a henotheistic Vedic naturalism; the ingenious & brilliant extravagances of the modern sun & star myth weavers, and many another hasty & attractive generalisation which, after a brief period of unquestioning acceptance by the easily-persuaded intellect of mankind, is bound to depart into the limbo of forgotten theories. We attach an undue importance & value to the ephemeral conclusions of European philology, because it is systematic in its errors and claims to be a science.We forget or do not know that the claims of philology to a scientific value & authority are scouted by European scientists; the very word, Philologe, is a byword of scorn to serious scientific writers in Germany, the temple of philology. One of the greatest of modern philologists & modern thinkers, Ernest Renan, was finally obliged after a lifetime of hope & earnest labour to class the chief preoccupation of his life as one of the petty conjectural sciencesin other words no science at all, but a system of probabilities & guesses. Beyond one or two generalisations of the mutations followed by words in their progress through the various Aryan languages and a certain number of grammatical rectifications & rearrangements, resulting in a less arbitrary view of linguistic relations, modern philology has discovered no really binding law or rule for its own guidance. It has fixed one or two sure signposts; the rest is speculation and conjecture.We are not therefore bound to worship at the shrines of Comparative Science & Comparative Mythology & offer up on these dubious altars the Veda & Vedanta. The question of Vedic truth & the meaning of Veda still lies open. If Sayanas interpretation of Vedic texts is largely conjectural and likely often to be mistaken & unsound, the European interpretation can lay claim to no better certainty. The more lively ingenuity and imposing orderliness of the European method of conjecture may be admitted; but ingenuity & orderliness, though good helps to an enquiry, are in themselves no guarantee of truth and a conjecture does not cease to be a conjecture, because its probability or possibility is laboriously justified or brilliantly supported. It is on the basis of a purely conjectural translation of the Vedas that Europe presents us with these brilliant pictures of Vedic religion, Vedic society, Vedic civilisation which we so eagerly accept and unquestioningly reproduce. For we take them as the form of an unquestionable truth; in reality, they are no more than brilliantly coloured hypotheses,works of imagination, not drawings from the life.

1.09 - Kundalini Yoga, #Amrita Gita, #Swami Sivananda Saraswati, #Hinduism
  35. Eventually the Yogi attains Nirvikalpa Samadhi, the state of superconsciousness. He gets Intuition. Real knowledge flashes in him.
  36. These are the signs that indicate that Kundalini has been awakenedviz., dispassion, fearlessness, joy, ecstasy, peace, unruffled state of mind, Siddhis or powers, contentment.

1.09 - The Pure Existent, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  2:For this boundless Movement does not regard us as unimportant to it. Science reveals to us how minute is the care, how cunning the device, how intense the absorption it bestows upon the smallest of its works even as on the largest. This mighty energy is an equal and impartial mother, samam brahma, in the great term of the Gita, and its intensity and force of movement is the same in the formation and upholding of a system of suns and the organisation of the life of an ant-hill. It is the illusion of size, of quantity that induces us to look on the one as great, the other as petty. If we look, on the contrary, not at mass of quantity but force of quality, we shall say that the ant is greater than the solar system it inhabits and man greater than all inanimate Nature put together. But this again is the illusion of quality. When we go behind and examine only the intensity of the movement of which quality and quantity are aspects, we realise that this Brahman dwells equally in all existences. Equally partaken of by all in its being, we are tempted to say, equally distributed to all in its energy. But this too is an illusion of quantity. Brahman dwells in all, indivisible, yet as if divided and distributed. If we look again with an observing perception not dominated by intellectual concepts, but informed by Intuition and culminating in knowledge by identity, we shall see that the consciousness of this infinite Energy is other than our mental consciousness, that it is indivisible and gives, not an equal part of itself, but its whole self at one and the same time to the solar system and to the ant-hill. To Brahman there are no whole and parts, but each thing is all itself and benefits by the whole of Brahman. Quality and quantity differ, the self is equal. The form and manner and result of the force of action vary infinitely, but the eternal, primal, infinite energy is the same in all. The force of strength that goes to make the strong man is no whit greater than the force of weakness that goes to make the weak. The energy spent is as great in repression as in expression, in negation as in affirmation, in silence as in sound.
  3:Therefore the first reckoning we have to mend is that between this infinite Movement, this energy of existence which is the world and ourselves. At present we keep a false account. We are infinitely important to the All, but to us the All is negligible; we alone are important to ourselves. This is the sign of the original ignorance which is the root of the ego, that it can only think with itself as centre as if it were the All, and of that which is not itself accepts only so much as it is mentally disposed to acknowledge or as it is forced to recognise by the shocks of its environment. Even when it begins to philosophise, does it not assert that the world only exists in and by its consciousness? Its own state of consciousness or mental standards are to it the test of reality; all outside its orbit or view tends to become false or non-existent. This mental self-sufficiency of man creates a system of false accountantship which prevents us from drawing the right and full value from life. There is a sense in which these pretensions of the human mind and ego repose on a truth, but this truth only emerges when the mind has learned its ignorance and the ego has submitted to the All and lost in it its separate self-assertion. To recognise that we, or rather the results and appearances we call ourselves, are only a partial movement of this infinite Movement and that it is that infinite which we have to know, to be consciously and to fulfil faithfully, is the commencement of true living. To recognise that in our true selves we are one with the total movement and not minor or subordinate is the other side of the account, and its expression in the manner of our being, thought, emotion and action is necessary to the culmination of a true or divine living.
  --
  5:We see at once that if such an Existence is, it must be, like the Energy, infinite. Neither reason nor experience nor Intuition nor imagination bears witness to us of the possibility of a final terminus. All end and beginning presuppose something beyond the end or beginning. An absolute end, an absolute beginning is not only a contradiction in terms, but a contradiction of the essence of things, a violence, a fiction. Infinity imposes itself upon the appearances of the finite by its ineffugable self-existence.
  6:But this is infinity with regard to Time and Space, an eternal duration, interminable extension. The pure Reason goes farther and looking in its own colourless and austere light at Time and Space points out that these two are categories of our consciousness, conditions under which we arrange our perception of phenomenon. When we look at existence in itself, Time and Space disappear. If there is any extension, it is not a spatial but a psychological extension; if there is any duration, it is not a temporal but a psychological duration; and it is then easy to see that this extension and duration are only symbols which represent to the mind something not translatable into intellectual terms, an eternity which seems to us the same all-containing ever-new moment, an infinity which seems to us the same all-containing all-pervading point without magnitude. And this conflict of terms, so violent, yet accurately expressive of something we do perceive, shows that mind and speech have passed beyond their natural limits and are striving to express a Reality in which their own conventions and necessary oppositions disappear into an ineffable identity.
  --
  11:In reality, this opposition of actual insight into being to the conceptual fictions of the pure Reason is fallacious. If indeed Intuition in this matter were really opposed to intelligence, we could not confidently support a merely conceptual reasoning against fundamental insight. But this appeal to intuitive experience is incomplete. It is valid only so far as it proceeds and it errs by stopping short of the integral experience. So long as the Intuition fixes itself only upon that which we become, we see ourselves as a continual progression of movement and change in consciousness in the eternal succession of Time. We are the river, the flame of the Buddhist illustration. But there is a supreme experience and supreme Intuition by which we go back behind our surface self and find that this becoming, change, succession are only a mode of our being and that there is that in us which is not involved at all in the becoming. Not only can we have the Intuition of this that is stable and eternal in us, not only can we have the glimpse of it in experience behind the veil of continually fleeting becomings, but we can draw back into it and live in it entirely, so effecting an entire change in our external life, and in our attitude, and in our action upon the movement of the world. And this stability in which we can so live is precisely that which the pure Reason has already given us, although it can be arrived at without reasoning at all, without knowing previously what it is, - it is pure existence, eternal, infinite, indefinable, not affected by the succession of Time, not involved in the extension of Space, beyond form, quantity, quality, - Self only and absolute.
  12:The pure existent is then a fact and no mere concept; it is the fundamental reality. But, let us hasten to add, the movement, the energy, the becoming are also a fact, also a reality. The supreme Intuition and its corresponding experience may correct the other, may go beyond, may suspend, but do not abolish it. We have therefore two fundamental facts of pure existence and of worldexistence, a fact of Being, a fact of Becoming. To deny one or the other is easy; to recognise the facts of consciousness and find out their relation is the true and fruitful wisdom.
  13:Stability and movement, we must remember, are only our psychological representations of the Absolute, even as are oneness and multitude. The Absolute is beyond stability and movement as it is beyond unity and multiplicity. But it takes its eternal poise in the one and the stable and whirls round itself infinitely, inconceivably, securely in the moving and multitudinous. World-existence is the ecstatic dance of Shiva which multiplies the body of the God numberlessly to the view: it leaves that white existence precisely where and what it was, ever is and ever will be; its sole absolute object is the joy of the dancing.
  14:But as we cannot describe or think out the Absolute in itself, beyond stability and movement, beyond unity and multitude, - nor is that at all our business, - we must accept the double fact, admit both Shiva and Kali and seek to know what is this measureless Movement in Time and Space with regard to that timeless and spaceless pure Existence, one and stable, to which measure and measurelessness are inapplicable. We have seen what pure Reason, Intuition and experience have to say about pure Existence, about Sat; what have they to say about Force, about Movement, about Shakti?
  15:And the first thing we have to ask ourselves is whether that Force is simply force, simply an unintelligent energy of movement or whether the consciousness which seems to emerge out of it in this material world we live in, is not merely one of its phenomenal results but rather its own true and secret nature. In Vedantic terms, is Force simply Prakriti, only a movement of action and process, or is Prakriti really power of Chit, in its nature force of creative self-conscience? On this essential problem all the rest hinges.

11.01 - The Eternal Day The Souls Choice and the Supreme Consummation, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The body Intuition's instrument,
  And life a channel for God's visible power.

11.06 - The Mounting Fire, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   The frontal lobe is the seat of intellect and intelligence: the topmost portion, the crown of the head is usually associated with the still higher functions of mind, tending towards Intuition, direct knowledge, luminous vision, etc. The front proper, the forehead that is to say, is the seat of intellect proper, the discursive deductive rational mind. The section of the brain in the hind portion of the cranium is usually associated not with reason or understanding but with vital urges, impulsions, sentiments, passions, desires, etc.: the nervous knots there are the controlling agent of these lower functions of the mind; that is the control room, as it were, for all dynamism, for man's character and nature. And the part hidden or imbedded below houses the infra-impulses: the demands and needs that are inherent mostly in the bodily functions, all the movements that are called forth in the wake of physical existence.
   The question, the problem now is, how to change, purify these ranges of the mind or brain: to suffuse the cranium with a new functioning and organisation replacing the old order of the ordinary, more or less animal man

1.107 - The Bestowal of a Divine Gift, #The Study and Practice of Yoga, #Swami Krishnananda, #Yoga
  Even the enlightenment in respect of objects such as insight the siddhis mentioned in the Vibhuti Pada, the powers of different types, and the insights and Intuitions which may flash forth in respect of the different things of the universe should not enchant the mind even in the least, even in the minimum, because as we go higher and higher, the delights are also subtler and subtler. The joys that we have in this world are gross and crude, but even they are enough to catch us and entangle us. But when we go higher, the joys are subtler. They can catch us more powerfully than the joys of this earth, which are crude and impeded by the physical tabernacle.
  There are no physical obstacles in the higher realms. The obstacle in the physical world is the physical body. That is the object and, therefore, we cannot enjoy it properly. The presence of the physical body obstructs the union that we seek with the object, which is the reason for this search for enjoyment through the senses. But there are no physical bodies in the higher realms; therefore, the temptations are more powerful, and it is a greater difficulty there than here on earth. It is possible that one can get stuck in the higher realms more easily than on earth. All these have to be watched with great care, and the sutra tells us: What to talk of these enjoyments; you have to be free even from the desire to have omniscience, and you should ask for pure Being-consciousness only. Sarvatha vivekakhyateh it is not knowledge of things that we are asking for; it is knowledge as such, which is knowledge of being alone. This is the purusha. Then comes dharma-megha samadhi. At that time, what happens?

1.10 - Conscious Force, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  6:Physical analysis of Matter by modern Science has come to the same general conclusion, even if a few last doubts still linger. Intuition and experience confirm this concord of Science and Philosophy. Pure reason finds in it the satisfaction of its own essential conceptions. For even in the view of the world as essentially an act of consciousness, an act is implied and in the act movement of Force, play of Energy. This also, when we examine from within our own experience, proves to be the fundamental nature of the world. All our activities are the play of the triple force of the old philosophies, knowledge-force, desire-force, action-force, and all these prove to be really three streams of one original and identical Power, Adya Shakti. Even our states of rest are only equable state or equilibrium of the play of her movement.
  7:Movement of Force being admitted as the whole nature of the Cosmos, two questions arise. And first, how did this movement come to take place at all in the bosom of existence? If we suppose it to be not only eternal but the very essence of all existence, the question does not arise. But we have negatived this theory. We are aware of an existence which is not compelled by the movement. How then does this movement alien to its eternal repose come to take place in it? by what cause? by what possibility? by what mysterious impulsion?

1.10 - The Image of the Oceans and the Rivers, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Aditi, the infinite consciousness hidden in the subconscient, and the triple ghr.tam is the triple clarity of the liberated sensation finding its secret of delight, of the thought-mind attaining to light and Intuition and of the truth itself, the ultimate supra-mental vision. This is clear from the second half of the verse in which it is said, "One Indra produced, one Surya, one the gods fashioned by natural development out of Vena"; for Indra is the Master of the thought-mind, Surya of the supra-mental light, Vena is Soma, the master of mental delight of existence, creator of the sense-mind.
  The Image of the Oceans and the Rivers

1.10 - The Revolutionary Yogi, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  The intellect is an utterly useless outgrowth if the goal of evolution is merely to get out of it. It appears, however, that Nature worked against that primitive Intuition and deliberately covered it with ever thicker mental layers, increasingly complex and universal, and increasingly useless in terms of getting out; we all know how the wonderfully intuitive efflorescence of Upanishadic India at the beginning of this story, or of NeoPlatonic Greece at the beginning of this era, was leveled to be replaced by a human intellect that was inferior and denser, to be sure, but more general. We can only raise the question without trying to answer it. We wonder if the meaning of evolution is to indulge in the luxury of the mind, only to destroy it later and regress to a submental or nonmental religious stage or, on the contrary, to develop the mind to the utmost, 122 as we are being driven to do, until this exhausts its own narrowness and superficial turmoil and rises to its higher, superconscious regions, at a spiritual and supramental level where the Matter-Spirit contradiction will vanish like a mirage, and where we will no longer need to "get out" because we will be everywhere Within.
  Nevertheless, It would be wrong to believe that the experience of Nirvana is a false experience, a kind of illusion of the illusion; first,

1.10 - The Secret of the Veda, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  If this traditionlet us call it mystic or esoteric for want of a less abused wordwas already formed at the time of the Brahmanas and Upanishads, when and how did it originally arise? Two possibilities present themselves. The tradition may have grown up gradually in the period between the Vedic hymns and the exegetical writings or else the esoteric sense may have already existed in the Veda itself and descended in a stream of tradition to the later mystics, developing, modifying itself, substituting new terms for oldas is the way of traditions. The former is, practically, the European theory.We are told that this spiritual revolution, this movement away from ritual Nature-worship to Brahmavada, begun in the seed in the later Vedic hymns, is found in a more developed state in the Upanishads & culminated in Buddha. In these writings and in the Brahmanas some record can be found of the speculations by which the development was managed. If it prove to be so, if these ancient writings are really the result of progressive intellectual speculation departing from crude & imperfect beginnings of philosophic thought, the European theory justifies itself to the reason and can no longer easily be disputed. But is this the true character of the Upanishads? It seems to me that in most of their dealings with our religions and our philosophical literature European scholars have erred by imposing their own familiar ideas and the limits of their own mentality on the history of an alien mentality and an alien development. Nowhere has this error been more evident than in the failure to realise the true nature of the Upanishads. In India we have never developed, but only affirmed thought by philosophical speculation, because we have never attached to the mere intellectual idea the amazingly exaggerated value which Europe has attached to it, but regarded it only as a test of the logical value to be attached to particular intellectual statements of truth. That is not truth to us which is merely well & justly thought out & can be justified by ratiocinative argument; only that is truth which has been lived & seen in the inner experience. We meditate not to get ideas, but in order to experience, to realise. When we speak of the Jnani, the knower, we do not mean a competent and logical thinker full of wise or of brilliant ideas, but a soul which has seen and lived & spoken in himself with the living truth. Ratiocination is freely used by the later philosophers, but only for the justification against opponents of the ideas already formed by their own meditation or the meditation of others, Rishis, gurus, ancient Vedantins; it is not itself a sufficient means towards the discovery of truth, but at best a help. The ideas of our great thinkers are not mere intellectual statements or even happy or great Intuitions; they are based upon spiritual experiences formalised by the intellect into a philosophy. Shankaras passionate advocacy of the idea of Maya as an explanation of life was not merely the ardour of a great metaphysician enamoured of a beautiful idea or a perfect theory of life, but the passion of a man with a deep & vast spiritual experience which he believed to be the sole means of human salvation. Therefore philosophy in India, instead of tending as in Europe to ignore or combat religion, has always been itself deeply religious. In Europe Buddha and Shankara would have become the heads of metaphysical schools & ranked with Kant or Hegel or Nietzsche1 as strong intellectual influences; in India they became, inevitably, the founders of great religious sects, immense moral & spiritual forces;inevitably because Europe has made thought its highest & noblest aim, while India seeks not after thought but soul-vision and inner experience and even in the realm of ideas believes that they can & ought to be seen & lived inwardly rather than merely thought and allowed indirectly to influence outward action. This has been the mentality of our race for ages.Was the mentality of our Vedic forefa thers entirely different from our own? Was it, as Western scholars seem to insist, a European mentality, the mentality of incursive Western savages, (it is Sergis estimate of the Aryans), changed afterwards by the contact with the cultured & reflective Dravidians into something new and strange, rationality changing to mysticism, materialism to a metaphysical spirituality? If so, the change had already been effected when the Upanishads were written. We speak of the discussions in the Upanishads; but in all truth the twelve Upanishads contain not a single genuine discussion. Only once in that not inconsiderable mass of literature, is there something of the nature of logical argument brought to the support of a philosophical truth. The nature of debate or logical reasoning is absent from the mentality of the Upanishadic thinkers. The grand question they always asked each other was not What hast thou thought out in this matter? or What are thy reasonings & conclusions? but What dost thou know? What hast thou seen in thyself? The Vedantic like the Vedic Rishi is a drashta & srota, not a manota, a kavi, not a manishi. There is question, there is answer; but solely for the comparison of inner knowledge & experience; never for ratiocinative argument, for disputation, for the battles of the logician. Always, knowledge, spiritual vision, experience are what is demanded; and often a questioner is turned back because he is not yet prepared in soul to realise the knowledge of the master. For all knowledge is within us and needs only to be awakened by the fit touch which opens the eyes of the soul or by the powerful revealing word.We find throughout the Vedic era always the same method, always the same theory of knowledge; they persist indeed in India to the present day and later habits of metaphysical debate unknown to the Vedic Brahmavadins have never been able to dethrone them from their primaeval supremacy. Let a man present never so finely reasoned a system of metaphysical philosophy, few will turn to hear, none leave his labour to receive, but let a man say as in the old Vedantic times I have experienced, my soul has seen, & hundreds in India will yet leave all to share in this new light of the eternal Truth.
  concrete visualisation & passion for his ideas & experiences which mark off the religious from the merely philosophical mind.

1.10 - The Three Modes of Nature, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In this progression the first step is a certain detached superiority to the three modes of Nature. The soul is inwardly separated and free from the lower Prakriti, not involved in its coils, indifferent and glad above it. Nature continues to act in the triple round of her ancient habits, - desire, grief and joy attack the heart, the instruments fall into inaction and obscurity and weariness, light and peace come back into the heart and mind and body; but the soul stands unchanged and untouched by these changes. Observing and unmoved by the grief and desire of the lower members, smiling at their joys and their strainings, regarding and unoverpowered by the failing and the darknesses of the thought and the wildness or the weaknesses of the heart and nerves, uncompelled and unattached to the mind's illuminations and its relief and sense of ease or of power in the return of light and gladness, it throws itself into none of these things, but waits unmoved for the intimations of a higher Will and the Intuitions of a greater luminous knowledge. Thus doing always, it becomes eventually free even in its nature parts from the strife of the three modes and their insufficient values and imprisoning limits. For now this lower Prakriti feels progressively a compulsion from a higher Shakti. The old habits to which it
  240

1.1.1.01 - Three Elements of Poetic Creation, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The originating source may be anywhere; the poetry may arise or descend from the subtle physical plane, from the higher or lower vital itself, from the dynamic or creative intelligence, from the plane of dynamic vision, from the psychic, from the illumined mind or Intuition,even, though this is the rarest, from the Overmind widenesses. To get the Overmind inspiration is so rare that there are only a few lines or short passages in all poetic literature that give at least some appearance or reflection of it. When the source of inspiration is in the heart or the psychic there is more easily a good will in the vital channel, the flow is spontaneous; the inspiration takes at once its true form and speech and is transmitted without any interference or only a minimum of interference by the brain-mind, that great spoiler of the higher or deeper splendours. It is the character of the lyrical inspiration, to flow in a jet out of the beingwhe ther it comes from the vital or the psychic, it is usually spontaneous, for these are the two most powerfully impelling and compelling parts of the nature. When on the contrary the source of inspiration is in the creative poetic intelligence or even the higher mind or the illumined mind, the poetry which comes from this quarter is always apt to be arrested by the outer intellect, our habitual thought-production engine. This intellect is an absurdly overactive part of the nature; it always thinks that nothing can be well done unless it puts its finger into the pie and therefore it instinctively interferes with the inspiration, blocks half or more than half of it and labours to substitute its own inferior and toilsome productions for the true speech and rhythm that ought to have come. The poet labours in anguish to get the one true word, the au thentic rhythm, the real divine substance of what he has to say, while all the time it is waiting complete and ready behind; but it is denied free transmission by some part of the transmitting agency which prefers to translate and is not willing merely to receive and transcribe. When one gets something through from the illumined mind, then there is likely to come to birth work that is really fine and great. When there comes with labour or without it something reasonably like what the poetic intelligence wanted to say, then there is something fine or adequate, though it may not be great unless there is an intervention from the higher levels. But when the outer brain is at work trying to fashion out of itself or to give its own version of what the higher sources are trying to pour down, then there results a manufacture or something quite inadequate or faulty or, at the best, good on the whole, but not the thing that ought to have come.
  2 June 1931

1.1.1.03 - Creative Power and the Human Instrument, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  If the parts of a poem come from different planes, it is because one starts from some high plane but the connecting consciousness cannot receive uninterruptedly from there and as soon as it flickers or wavers it comes down to a lower, perhaps without noticing it, or the lower comes in to supply the continuation of the flow or on the contrary the consciousness starts from a lower plane and is lifted in the vea, perhaps occasionally, perhaps more continuously higher for a time or else the higher force attracted by the creative will breaks through or touches or catches up the less exalted inspiration towards or into itself. I am speaking here especially of the overhead planes where this is quite natural; for the Overmind for instance is the ultimate source of Intuition, illumination or heightened power of the planes immediately below it. It can lift them up into its own greater intensity or give out of its intensity to them or touch or combine their powers together with something of its own greater poweror they can receive or draw something from it or from each other. On the lower planes beginning from the mental downwards there can also be such variations or combinations, but the working is not the same, for the different powers here stand more on a footing of equality whether they stand apart from each other, each working in its own right, or cooperate.
  29 April 1937

11.15 - Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Standing on the mental plane, immured within the dimensions of Reason and mental intelligence, it is not easy to contemplate the type of consciousness that will be; even as it was difficult for the ape to envisage the advent of his successor, man. But certain characteristic signs, rudimentary or fragmentary movements of the higher status are visible in the mental consciousness even as it is: the ape likewise was not without a glimmer of Reason and logic, even the faculty of ratiocination that seems to be the exclusive property of man. There is, for example, a movement we call Intuition, so different from Reason to which even Scientists and Mathematicians acknowledge their debt of gratitude for so many of their discoveries and inventions. There is also the other analogous movement called Inspiration that rules the poet and the artist disclosing to them a world of beauty and reality that is not available to the normal human consciousness. Again, there is yet another group of human beings at the top of the ladder of evolutionmystics and sageswho see the truth, possess the truth direct through a luminous immediacy of perception, called Revelation. Now, all these functionings of consciousness that happen frequently enough within the domain of normal humanity are still expressions of a higher mode of consciousness: they are not the product or play of Reason or logical intelligence which marks the character, the differentia of human consciousness.
   But, as at present, these are mere glimmers and glimpses from elsewhere and man has no comm and or control over them. They are beyond the habitual conscious will, they come and go as they like, happy visitations from another world, they do not abide our question and are not at our beck and call. The Supermind, on the contrary, is in full possession of that consciousness of which these are faint beginnings and distant echoes. The Superman will be born when man has risen above his mind and emerged into the supramental consciousness.

1.11 - The Master of the Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
     A Transcendent who is beyond all world and all Nature and yet possesses the world and its nature, who has descended with something of himself into it and is shaping it into that which as yet it is not, is the Source of our being, the Source of our works and their Master. But the seat of the Transcendent Consciousness is above in an absoluteness of divine Existence -- and there too is the absolute Power, Truth, Bliss of the Eternal -- of which our mentality can form no conception and of which even our greatest spiritual experience is only a diminished reflection in the spiritualised mind and heart, a faint shadow, a thin derivate. Yet proceeding from it there is a sort of golden corona of Light, Power, Bliss and Truth -- a divine Truth-Consciousness as the ancient mystics called it, a supermind, a Gnosis, with which this world of a lesser consciousness proceeding by Ignorance is in secret relation and which alone maintains it and prevents it from falling into a disintegrated chaos. The powers we are now satisfied to call gnosis, Intuition or illumination are only fainter lights of which that is the full and flaming source, and between the highest human intelligence and it there lie many levels of ascending consciousness, highest mental or overmental, which we would have to conquer before we arrived there or could bring down its greatness and glory here. Yet, however difficult, that ascent, that victory is the destiny of the human spirit and that luminous descent or bringing down of the divine Truth is the inevitable term of the troubled evolution of the earth-nature; that intended consummation is its raison d'etre, our culminating state and the explanation of our terrestrial existence. For though the Transcendental Divine is already here as the Purushottama in the secret heart of our mystery, he is veiled by many coats and disguises of his magic world-wide Yoga-Maya; it is only by the ascent and victory of the Soul here in the body that the disguises can fall away and the dynamis of the supreme Truth replace this tangled weft of half-truth that becomes creative error, this emergent Knowledge that is converted by its plunge into the inconscience of Matter and its slow partial return towards itself into an effective Ignorance.
     For here in the world, though the gnosis is there secretly behind existence, what acts is not the gnosis but a magic of Knowledge-Ignorance, an incalculable yet apparently mechanical overmind Maya. The Divine appears to us here in one view as an equal, inactive and impersonal Witness Spirit, an immobile consenting Purusha not bound by quality or Space or Time, whose support or sanction is given impartially to the play of all action and energies which the transcendent Will has once permitted and authorised to fulfil themselves in the cosmos. This Witness Spirit, this immobile Self in things, seems to will nothing and determine nothing; yet we become aware that his very passivity, his silent presence compels all things to travel even in their ignorance towards a divine goal and attracts through division towards a yet unrealised oneness. Yet no supreme infallible Divine Will seems to be there, only a widely deployed Cosmic Energy of a mechanical executive Process, prakriti. This is one side of the cosmic Self; the other presents itself as a universal Divine, one in being, multiple in personality and power, who conveys to us, when we enter into the consciousness of his universal forces, a sense of infinite quality and will and act and a world-wide knowledge and a one yet innumerable delight; for through him we become one with all existences not only in their essence but in their play of action, see ourself in all and all in ourself, perceive all knowledge and thought and feeling as motions of the one Mind and Heart, all energy and action as kinetics of the one Will m power, all Matter and form as particles of the one Body, all personalities as projections of the one Person, all egos as deformations of the one and sole real "I" in existence. In him we no longer stand separate, but lose our active ego in the universal movement, even as by the Witness who is without qualities and for ever unattached and unentangled, we lose our static ego in the universal peace.

1.1.1 - The Mind and Other Levels of Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The Mind and Intuition
  For the human thinking mind there are always many sides to everything and it decides according to its own bent or preference or its habitual ideas or some reason that presents itself to the intellect as the best. It gets the real truth only when something else puts a higher light into itwhen the psychic or the Intuition touches it and makes it feel or see.
  ***
  It is very usual for intuitive suggestions to come like that and the mind to disregard them. It is because the mind is too accustomed to follow its own process and cannot recognise or have confidence in the Intuition when it comes. The mind has to learn to look at these things when they come and give them value if experience confirms their truth.
  ***
  --
  The heart has its Intuitions as well as the mind and these are as true as any mental perceptions. But neither all feelings nor all mental perceptions nor all rational conclusions can be true.
  ***

1.11 - The Reason as Governor of Life, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  To some this godhead is Life itself or a secret Will in life; they claim that this must rule and that the intelligence is only useful in so far as it serves that and that Life must not be repressed, minimised and mechanised by the arbitrary control of reason. Life has greater powers in it which must be given a freer play; for it is they alone that evolve and create. On the other hand, it is felt that reason is too analytical, too arbitrary, that it falsifies life by its distinctions and set classifications and the fixed rules based upon them and that there is some profounder and larger power of knowledge, Intuition or another, which is more deeply in the secrets of existence. This larger intimate power is more one with the depths and sources of existence and more able to give us the indivisible truths of life, its root realities and to work them out, not in an artificial and mechanical spirit but with a divination of the secret Will in existence and in a free harmony with its large, subtle and infinite methods. In fact, what the growing subjectivism of the human mind is beginning obscurely to see is that the one sovereign godhead is the soul itself which may use reason for one of its ministers, but cannot subject itself to its own intellectuality without limiting its potentialities and artificialising its conduct of existence.
  The highest power of reason, because its pure and characteristic power, is the disinterested seeking after true knowledge. When knowledge is pursued for its own sake, then alone are we likely to arrive at true knowledge. Afterwards we may utilise that knowledge for various ends; but if from the beginning we have only particular ends in view, then we limit our intellectual gain, limit our view of things, distort the truth because we cast it into the mould of some particular idea or utility and ignore or deny all that conflicts with that utility or that set idea. By so doing we may indeed make the reason act with great immediate power within the limits of the idea or the utility we have in view, just as instinct in the animal acts with great power within certain limits, for a certain end, yet finds itself helpless outside those limits. It is so indeed that the ordinary man uses his reasonas the animal uses his hereditary, transmitted instinctwith an absorbed devotion of it to the securing of some particular utility or with a useful but hardly luminous application of a customary and transmitted reasoning to the necessary practical interests of his life. Even the thinking man ordinarily limits his reason to the working out of certain preferred ideas; he ignores or denies all that is not useful to these or does not assist or justify or actually contradicts or seriously modifies them,except in so far as life itself compels or cautions him to accept modifications for the time being or ignore their necessity at his peril. It is in such limits that mans reason normally acts. He follows most commonly some interest or set of interests; he tramples down or through or ignores or pushes aside all truth of life and existence, truth of ethics, truth of beauty, truth of reason, truth of spirit which conflicts with his chosen opinions and interests; if he recognises these foreign elements, it is nominally, not in practice, or else with a distortion, a glossing which nullifies their consequences, perverts their spirit or whittles down their significance. It is this subjection to the interests, needs, instincts, passions, prejudices, traditional ideas and opinions of the ordinary mind1 which constitutes the irrationality of human existence.

1.1.2 - Commentary, #Kena and Other Upanishads, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  with the stuff of supermind - sympathies, unities, Intuitions,
  emergences of preexistent knowledge, instincts, imperative lights
  --
  beyond mind as the result of Intuition and spiritual experience
  and its existence is equally a necessary conclusion from the facts
  --
  the whole of its drift by synthetic Intuition rather than cut up its
  meaning so as to make it subject to our logical mentality.

1.1.2 - Intellect and the Intellectual, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is not by intellect that one can progress in the Yoga, but by psychic and spiritual receptivityas for knowledge and true understanding it grows in sadhana by the growth of the Intuition, not of the physical intellect.
  ***
  --
  Ys distinction is based on those I have made here, but these distinctions are not current in ordinary speech, except one or two and those even in a very imperfect way. If I go by these distinctions, then the intellectuals will no longer be called intellectuals but thinkers and creatorsexcept a certain class of them. An intellectual or intellectual thinker will then be one who is a thinker by his reason or mainly by his reasone.g. Bertr and Russell, Bernard Shaw, Wells etc. Tagore thinks by vision, imagination, feeling or by Intuition, not by the reasonat least that is true of his writings. C. R. Das himself would not be an intellectual; in politics, literature and everything else he was an intuitive and emotive man. But, as I say, these would be distinctions not ordinarily current. In ordinary parlance Tagore, Das and everybody else of the kind would all be called intellectuals. The general mind does not make these subtle distinctions: it takes things in the mass, roughly and it is right in doing so, for otherwise it would lose itself altogether.
  As for barristers etc., a man to succeed as a barrister must have legal knowledge and the power to apply it. It is not necessary that he should be a thinker even in his own subject or an intellectual. It is the same with all professional mendoctors, engineers etc. etc.: they may be intellectuals as well as successful in their profession, but they need not be.

1.12 - The Divine Work, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  spontaneous impulse, Intuition, instinct or acts in obedience to
  a natural necessity and law of forces without either mental planning or the urge of a conscious vital volition or emotional desire.

1.12 - The Sociology of Superman, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  The child of that City will be born with a flame, consciously, voluntarily, without having to undo millennia of animality or abysses of prejudice. He will not be told incessantly that he has to earn a living, for nobody will earn a living in the City of the Future, nobody will have money. Living will be devoted to serving the Truth, each according to his capacity or talent, and the only earnings will be joy. He will not be deluged with musts and must-nots; he will only be shown the immediate sadness of not listening to the right little note. He will not be tormented with the idea of finding a job, being a success, outranking others, passing or failing grades, for nobody succeeds or fails in the City of the Future, nobody has a job, nobody takes precedence over anybody; one does the one job of pursuing a clear little note that lights up everything, does everything for one, takes care of everything for one, unites everything in its tranquil harmony, and whose only success is to be in accord with itself and with the whole. He will not learn to depend on a teacher, a book or a machine, but to rely on that little flame inside, that sprightly little flowing that guides his steps, prompts a discovery, leads by chance to an experience and brings out knowledge effortlessly. And he will learn to cultivate the powers of his body the way others today cultivate the powers of push buttons. His faculties will not be confined in ready-made forms of vision and comprehension; in him will be fostered a vision that has nothing to do with the eyes, a comprehension that is not from books, dreams of other worlds that prepare tomorrow's, direct communications and instant Intuitions and subtle senses. And if machines are still used in the City of the Future, he will be told that they are temporary crutches until we find in our own heart the source of the pure Power which will one day transmute matter as we now transmute a blank sheet of paper into a green prairie with the stroke of a pencil. He will be taught the Look, the true and potent look, the look that creates, that changes everything he will be taught to use his own powers and to believe in his power of truth, and that the purer and clearer he is, in harmony with the Law, the more matter responds to Truth. And, instead of entering a prison, the child will grow up in an atmosphere of natural oneness, free of you, me, yours or mine, where he will not have been taught constantly to put up screens and mental barriers, but to be consciously what he unconsciously has been since the beginning of time: to extend himself into all that is and lives, to feel in all that feels, to comprehend through an identical more profound breathing, through a silence that carries everything, to recognize the same little flame everywhere, to love the same clear little flowing everywhere, and to be the self everywhere, behind a thousand different faces and in a thousand musics that are a single music.
  Then there will be no more boundaries inside or outside, no more I want, I take, no more lack or absence, no more confined and lonely self, no more against or for, good or evil. There will be one single supreme Harmony in thousands of bodies, plucking its chord in this one and that one, this circumstance and that accident, this gesture and that one, unifying everything in one single movement whose every second is perfect and every act true, every word exact, every thought right, every line rhythmical, every heart in unison and Truth will mold matter according to its right vision. And this little city without boundaries will radiate by its simple power of truth, attracting what must be attracted, discarding what must be discarded, simply by its own force of concentration, touching this point of the universe or that one, this soul or that one, answering thousands of invisible calls, continuously emitting its high, clear note which will brighten the world and lighten hearts, unbeknownst to all.

1.12 - The Superconscient, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  Discovering the Transcendent is a very lofty realization, but we lose both the individual and the world there is nothing left but That, forever outside of the human play. In theory, we can say that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are one in theory we can say anything we like but in practice, when we experience them, each of these changes of consciousness seems to be cut off from the others by a vast gulf. As long as we do not find a practical way of reconciling that triple hiatus among pantheist, individualist, and monist, there will be no fulfillment, neither for the individual nor for the world. It is not enough to find our individual center and leave out the totality of the world, or to find the totality of the world and leave out the individual, and even less so to find supreme Peace if both the world and our individuality are dissolved "I do not want to be sugar," the great Ramakrishna exclaimed, "I want to eat sugar!" In this chaotic and harried world where we have to act, to confront things, to become, we need primordially to be. Without this being, our becoming is squandered in the prevailing chaos. But without this becoming, our being dissolves into a blissful Zero.162 And without an individuality, what do marvelous realizations really matter, since we are no longer there? Such is the contradiction we must resolve, not in philosophical terms, but in terms of life and power of action. Until now, such a reconciling path has seemed nonexistent or unknown; this is why all religions and spiritualities have placed the transcendent Father at the top of the hierarchy, outside this whole unfortunate chaos, urging us to search elsewhere for the totality to which we aspire. Yet Intuition tell us that if we, beings endowed with a body, aspire to totality, then totality must be possible; it must be possible in a body, otherwise we would not aspire to it. There is no such thing as "imagination"; there are only deferred realities, or truths awaiting their time. In his own way, Jules Verne testifies to this. Is there not something else to discover, then, a fourth change of consciousness that would change everything?
  In his iron cage in the middle of the courtroom, Sri Aurobindo had reached the end of the road. One after another, he had realized the Immanent, the Transcendent, and the Universal that cage scarcely held anything more than a body: in his consciousness, he was everywhere at will. But perhaps he was recalling an individual named Aurobindo, who since Cambridge and his years in the West had continuously accumulated consciousness in that body, and now the infinite Consciousness was a reality, but that body remained the same as millions of others, subject to the same laws of Nature, hungry, thirsty, and occasionally ill, like all the other bodies, and advancing slowly but surely towards disintegration. The consciousness is vast, luminous, immortal, but underneath everything remains the same. And because he was clear-sighted, because he was no longer fooled by all the masks added on by morality or decency, perhaps he was also espying, in the subconscient, the animal grimace beneath the infinite Consciousness, and the same material squalor intact beneath the lovely halo for underneath everything continues as usual, and nothing is changed. Perhaps he was also looking, beyond the cage, at all his other selves who continued to judge and hate and suffer. Who is saved unless all is saved? And what did that infinite Consciousness do for all these people? It sees, it knows, but what can it do? Had he not left Baroda to act, to do something concrete? There he was, watching everything in his infinite consciousness, experiencing the immense joy above, feeling joy laugh nude on the peaks of the Absolute,163 but what could his joy do if the above were not also everywhere below? Below, everything continues as before, suffering, and dying. He was not listening to the judges, or even answering the questions on which his life depended; he was only hearing the Voice repeating: I am guiding, therefore fear not. Turn to your own Work for which I have brought you to jail. Thus Sri Aurobindo kept his eyes closed in that cage, searching within. Was there not a totality above that could be also the totality below? Had the road come to an end with this golden impotence?164 What was the sense of this whole journey?
  --
  But the light is still cold, somewhat hard. It is still a heavy mental substance catching the light from above and mixing it with its own substance, covering it with a thinking layer without even being aware of it, and therefore understanding the light received only after a long process of logicalization, dilution, and fragmentation into pages, words or ideas. Further, the pages and paragraphs of the higher mind derive from a single point of light, or a small number of points (this is its own preset conclusion; a small drop of Intuition hurriedly digested), and so it goes to a great deal of trouble to eliminate from its development anything that might contradict its conclusion. Indeed, it can open itself to higher planes and receive flashes, but this is not its normal altitude; its mental substance is designed to break down the light. It cannot understand unless it first explains.
  

c) The Illumined Mind


  --
  With Intuition comes a very special joy, different, it seems, from the illumined joy. No longer is there the sense of a flow coming from outside, but a kind of recognition, as if there were always two of us, a brother of light living in the light and a brother of shadow, ourself, living below, groping awkwardly in the darkness, repeating all the gestures and movements of the brother of light, imitating his knowledge and his great adventure, but in a shabby, stunted, clumsy way. Then, suddenly, there is a coincidence, and we become one. We are one in a point of light. For once, there ceases to be any difference, and this is joy. When we are one in all points, then that will be the life divine.
  This point of coincidence brings knowledge, which may translate itself in one form or another depending upon our current preoccupation, but it is always, essentially, a movement of identity, a meeting: we know because we recognize. Sri Aurobindo used to say that Intuition is a memory of the Truth.195 As the intuitive flash occurs, one clearly sees that knowledge is not discovering something unknown one only discovers oneself! there is nothing else to discover but a gradual recognition, in time, of that second of Light which we have all seen. Who has not seen, if only once? Who does not have that Memory in his life? Whatever our beliefs or unbeliefs, our capacities or incapacities, our lower or higher altitudes, there is always a moment in life that is our moment. Some lives last but a second, and all the rest is oblivion.
  The language of Intuition is concentrated into a concise phrasing, without superfluous words, in contrast to the opulent language of the illumined mind (which, through its very richness, nevertheless conveys a luminous rhythm and a truth, perhaps less precisely connoted, but warmer). When Plotinus packed the entire cycle of human effort into one phrase "A flight of the Alone to the Alone" he used a highly intuitive language, as do the Upanishads. But this quality also signals the limits of Intuition: no matter how replete with meaning our flashes and phrases, they cannot embrace the whole truth; a fuller, more encompassing warmth would be needed, like that of the illumined mind but with a higher transparency. For the Intuition . . . sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. The area unveiled by the flash is striking and irrefutable, but it is only one space of truth.196 Moreover, the mind hastens to seize upon the Intuition and, as Sri Aurobindo remarked, it makes at once too little and too much of it.197 Too much, because it unduly generalizes the intuitive message and would extend its discovery to all space; too little, because instead of letting the flash quietly perform its work of illumination and clarification of our substance, it immediately seizes it, coats it with a thinking layer (or a pictorial, poetic, mathematical, or religious one), and no longer understands its flash except through the intellectual, artistic, or religious form it has put over it. It is terribly difficult for the mind to comprehend that a revelation can be allpowerful, even overwhelming, without our understanding anything about it, and that it is especially powerful as long as it is not brought down several degrees, diluted, and fragmented in order, supposedly, to be "understood." If we could remain quiet while the intuitive flash occurs, as if suspended in its own light, without pouncing on it to cut it into intellectual pieces, we would notice, after a while, that our entire being has shifted to a different altitude, and that we possess a new kind of vision instead of a lifeless little phrase. The very act of explaining causes most of the transformative power to evaporate.
  If instead of rushing to his pen or brush or into a torrent of words to relieve himself of the excess of light received, the seeker strives to preserve his silence and transparency, if he remains patient, he will see the flashes gradually multiply, draw nearer, as it were, and observe another consciousness slowly dawn within him at once the fulfillment and the source of both the illumined mind and the intuitive mind, and of all human mental forms. This is the overmind.

1.13 - Conclusion - He is here, #Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo, #Nirodbaran, #Integral Yoga
  The question surges up like an old suppressed ache, "Why did he leave his body? What imperious necessity compelled his withdrawal, self-chosen though it was? Had the accident which had changed his rhythm of life any connection with it, however subtle or remote? What would have been the course of events had there been no accident?" The Mother told a sadhak in 1935 that in ten years' time she would look as young as a girl of 16. To me also she narrated at length a similar vision of hers, the gist of which is that she and Sri Aurobindo had become young and exquisite so much so that none of the sadhaks could recognise them. From Sri Aurobindo's letters too we had the Intuition that the Supramental descent in the physical was imminent. In one of the sonnets written in 1940 we find him speaking of abolishing death and of his physical transformation:
  ... Under the mask grows clear

1.13 - Reason and Religion, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We shall better understand what may be this higher being and those higher faculties, if we look again at the dealings of the reason with the trend towards the absolute in our other faculties, in the divergent principles of our complex existence. Let us study especially its dealings with the suprarational in them and the infrarational, the two extremes between which our intelligence is some sort of mediator. The spiritual or suprarational is always turned at its heights towards the Absolute; in its extension, living in the luminous infinite, its special power is to realise the infinite in the finite, the eternal unity in all divisions and differences. Our spiritual evolution ascends therefore through the relative to the absolute, through the finite to the infinite, through all divisions to oneness. Man in his spiritual realisation begins to find and seize hold on the satisfying intensities of the absolute in the relative, feels the large and serene presence of the infinite in the finite, discovers the reconciling law of a perfect unity in all divisions and differences. The spiritual will in his outer as in his inner life and formulation must be to effect a great reconciliation between the secret and eternal reality and the finite appearances of a world which seeks to express and in expressing seems to deny it. Our highest faculties then will be those which make this possible because they have in them the intimate light and power and joy by which these things can be grasped in direct knowledge and experience, realised and made normally and permanently effective in will, communicated to our whole nature. The infrarational, on the other hand, has its origin and basis in the obscure infinite of the Inconscient; it wells up in instincts and impulses, which are really the crude and more or less haphazard Intuitions of a subconscient physical, vital, emotional and sensational mind and will in us. Its struggle is towards definition, towards self-creation, towards finding some finite order of its obscure knowledge and tendencies. But it has also the instinct and force of the infinite from which it proceeds; it contains obscure, limited and violent velleities that move it to grasp at the intensities of the absolute and pull them down or some touch of them into its finite action: but because it proceeds by ignorance and not by knowledge, it cannot truly succeed in this more vehement endeavour. The life of the reason and intelligent will stands between that upper and this nether power. On one side it takes up and enlightens the life of the instincts and impulses and helps it to find on a higher plane the finite order for which it gropes. On the other side it looks up towards the absolute, looks out towards the infinite, looks in towards the One, but without being able to grasp and hold their realities; for it is able only to consider them with a sort of derivative and remote understanding, because it moves in the relative and, itself limited and definite, it can act only by definition, division and limitation. These three powers of being, the suprarational, rational and infrarational are present, but with an infinitely varying prominence in all our activities.
  The limitations of the reason become very strikingly, very characteristically, very nakedly apparent when it is confronted with that great order of psychological truths and experiences which we have hitherto kept in the background the religious being of man and his religious life. Here is a realm at which the intellectual reason gazes with the bewildered mind of a foreigner who hears a language of which the words and the spirit are unintelligible to him and sees everywhere forms of life and principles of thought and action which are absolutely strange to his experience. He may try to learn this speech and understand this strange and alien life; but it is with pain and difficulty, and he cannot succeed unless he has, so to speak, unlearned himself and become one in spirit and nature with the natives of this celestial empire. Till then his efforts to understand and interpret them in his own language and according to his own notions end at the worst in a gross misunderstanding and deformation. The attempts of the positive critical reason to dissect the phenomena of the religious life sound to men of spiritual experience like the prattle of a child who is trying to shape into the mould of his own habitual notions the life of adults or the blunders of an ignorant mind which thinks fit to criticise patronisingly or adversely the labours of a profound thinker or a great scientist. At the best even this futile labour can extract, can account for only the externals of the things it attempts to explain; the spirit is missed, the inner matter is left out, and as a result of that capital omission even the account of the externals is left without real truth and has only an apparent correctness.
  --
  The deepest heart, the inmost essence of religion, apart from its outward machinery of creed, cult, ceremony and symbol, is the search for God and the finding of God. Its aspiration is to discover the Infinite, the Absolute, the One, the Divine, who is all these things and yet no abstraction but a Being. Its work is a sincere living out of the true and intimate relations between man and God, relations of unity, relations of difference, relations of an illuminated knowledge, an ecstatic love and delight, an absolute surrender and service, a casting of every part of our existence out of its normal status into an uprush of man towards the Divine and a descent of the Divine into man. All this has nothing to do with the realm of reason or its normal activities; its aim, its sphere, its process is suprarational. The knowledge of God is not to be gained by weighing the feeble arguments of reason for or against his existence: it is to be gained only by a self-transcending and absolute consecration, aspiration and experience. Nor does that experience proceed by anything like rational scientific experiment or rational philosophic thinking. Even in those parts of religious discipline which seem most to resemble scientific experiment, the method is a verification of things which exceed the reason and its timid scope. Even in those parts of religious knowledge which seem most to resemble intellectual operations, the illuminating faculties are not imagination, logic and rational judgment, but revelations, inspirations, Intuitions, intuitive discernments that leap down to us from a plane of suprarational light. The love of God is an infinite and absolute feeling which does not admit of any rational limitation and does not use a language of rational worship and adoration; the delight in God is that peace and bliss which passes all understanding. The surrender to God is the surrender of the whole being to a suprarational light, will, power and love and his service takes no account of the compromises with life which the practical reason of man uses as the best part of its method in the ordinary conduct of mundane existence. Wherever religion really finds itself, wherever it opens itself to its own spirit,there is plenty of that sort of religious practice which is halting, imperfect, half-sincere, only half-sure of itself and in which reason can get in a word,its way is absolute and its fruits are ineffable.
  Reason has indeed a part to play in relation to this highest field of our religious being and experience, but that part is quite secondary and subordinate. It cannot lay down the law for the religious life, it cannot determine in its own right the system of divine knowledge; it cannot school and lesson the divine love and delight; it cannot set bounds to spiritual experience or lay its yoke upon the action of the spiritual man. Its sole legitimate sphere is to explain as best it can, in its own language and to the rational and intellectual parts of man, the truths, the experiences, the laws of our suprarational and spiritual existence. That has been the work of spiritual philosophy in the East andmuch more crudely and imperfectly doneof theology in the West, a work of great importance at moments like the present when the intellect of mankind after a long wandering is again turning towards the search for the Divine. Here there must inevitably enter a part of those operations proper to the intellect, logical reasoning, inferences from the data given by rational experience, analogies drawn from our knowledge of the apparent facts of existence, appeals even to the physical truths of science, all the apparatus of the intelligent mind in its ordinary workings. But this is the weakest part of spiritual philosophy. It convinces the rational mind only where the intellect is already predisposed to belief, and even if it convinces, it cannot give the true knowledge. Reason is safest when it is content to take the profound truths and experiences of the spiritual being and the spiritual life, just as they are given to it, and throw them into such form, order and language as will make them the most intelligible or the least unintelligible to the reasoning mind. Even then it is not quite safe, for it is apt to harden the order into an intellectual system and to present the form as if it were the essence. And, at best, it has to use a language which is not the very tongue of the suprarational truth but its inadequate translation and, since it is not the ordinary tongue either of the rational intelligence, it is open to non-understanding or misunderstanding by the ordinary reason of mankind. It is well-known to the experience of the spiritual seeker that even the highest philosophising cannot give a true inner knowledge, is not the spiritual light, does not open the gates of experience. All it can do is to address the consciousness of man through his intellect and, when it has done, to say, I have tried to give you the truth in a form and system which will make it intelligible and possible to you; if you are intellectually convinced or attracted, you can now seek the real knowledge, but you must seek it by other means which are beyond my province.
  --
  Religious forms and systems become effete and corrupt and have to be destroyed, or they lose much of their inner sense and become clouded in knowledge and injurious in practice, and in destroying what is effete or in negating aberrations reason has played an important part in religious history. But in its endeavour to get rid of the superstition and ignorance which have attached themselves to religious forms and symbols, intellectual reason unenlightened by spiritual knowledge tends to deny and, so far as it can, to destroy the truth and the experience which was contained in them. Reformations which give too much to reason and are too negative and protestant, usually create religions which lack in wealth of spirituality and fullness of religious emotion; they are not opulent in their contents; their form and too often their spirit is impoverished, bare and cold. Nor are they really rational; for they live not by their reasoning and dogma, which to the rational mind is as irrational as that of the creeds they replace, still less by their negations, but by their positive quantum of faith and fervour which is suprarational in its whole aim and has too its infrarational elements. If these seem less gross to the ordinary mind than those of less self-questioning creeds, it is often because they are more timid in venturing into the realm of suprarational experience. The life of the instincts and impulses on its religious side cannot be satisfyingly purified by reason, but rather by being sublimated, by being lifted up into the illuminations of the spirit. The natural line of religious development proceeds always by illumination; and religious reformation acts best when either it re-illuminates rather than destroys old forms or, where destruction is necessary, replaces them by richer and not by poorer forms, and in any case when it purifies by suprarational illumination, not by rational enlightenment. A purely rational religion could only be a cold and bare Deism, and such attempts have always failed to achieve vitality and permanence; for they act contrary to the dharma, the natural law and spirit of religion. If reason is to play any decisive part, it must be an intuitive rather than an intellectual reason, touched always by spiritual intensity and insight. For it must be remembered that the infrarational also has behind it a secret Truth which does not fall within the domain of the Reason and is not wholly amenable to its judgments. The heart has its knowledge, the life has its intuitive spirit within it, its intimations, divinations, outbreaks and upflamings of a Secret Energy, a divine or at least semi-divine aspiration and outreaching which the eye of Intuition alone can fathom and only intuitive speech or symbol can shape or utter. To root out these things from religion or to purge religion of any elements necessary for its completeness because the forms are defective or obscure, without having the power to illuminate them from within or the patience to wait for their illumination from above or without replacing them by more luminous symbols, is not to purify but to pauperise.
  But the relations of the spirit and the reason need not be, as they too often are in our practice, hostile or without any point of contact. Religion itself need not adopt for its principle the formula I believe because it is impossible or Pascals I believe because it is absurd. What is impossible or absurd to the unaided reason, becomes real and right to the reason lifted beyond itself by the power of the spirit and irradiated by its light. For then it is dominated by the intuitive mind which is our means of passage to a yet higher principle of knowledge. The widest spirituality does not exclude or discourage any essential human activity or faculty, but works rather to lift all of them up out of their imperfection and groping ignorance, transforms them by its touch and makes them the instruments of the light, power and joy of the divine being and the divine nature.

1.13 - The Spirit, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
  All the other qualities of the spirit are based upon these four original principles. The typical part of the fifth, say the etheric principle (akasa) manifests itself, in the highest aspect, in the faith and, in the lowest form, in the instinct of self-preservation. Each of these mentioned four elemental principles has many other aspects corresponding to the law of analogy of the polarity or the positive and negative elements. All of them together form the ego or the spirit. For this reason, we can make the fiery principle responsible for strength, power and passion; memory, power of discrimination and judgment are ascribed to the air principle, conscience and Intuition to the principle of water, egotism and the instincts of self-preservation and propagation to the earthy part of the spirit.
  It would be too long to quote all the properties of the spirit with regard to the elements. The incipient adept can enlarge these qualities by serious studies and deep meditation, with respect to the analogous laws of the four-pole magnet. This happens to be a very meritorious work which never ought to be neglected, because it will lead to great success and secure results.

1.13 - The Supermind and the Yoga of Works, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Another error that has to be guarded against is also one to which our mentality is easily prone; it is to take some higher intermediate consciousness or even any kind of supernormal consciousness for the supermind. To reach supermind it is not enough to go above the ordinary movements of the human mind; it is not enough to receive a greater light, a greater power, a greater joy or to develop capacities of knowledge, sight, effective will that surpass the normal range of the human being. All light is not the light of the spirit, still less is all light the light of the supermind; the mind, the vital, the physical itself have lights of their own, as yet hidden, which can be very inspiring, exalting, informative, powerfully executive. A breaking out into the cosmic consciousness may also bring in an immense enlargement of the consciousness and power. An opening into the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical, any range of the subliminal consciousness, can liberate an activity of abnormal or supernormal powers of knowledge, action or experience which the uninstructed mind can easily mistake for spiritual revelations, inspirations, Intuitions. An opening upward into the greater ranges of the higher mental being can bring down much light and force creating
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1.14 - INSTRUCTION TO VAISHNAVS AND BRHMOS, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
  MASTER (to Ishan): "Follow your own Intuition. I hope there is no more doubt in your mind. Is there any? The path of the Vedas is not meant for the Kaliyuga. The path of Tantra is efficacious."
  ISHAN: "I have almost resolved to perform an atonement ceremony."

1.14 - The Book of Magic Formulae, #The Practice of Magical Evocation, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
  10. Lighting of the magic lamp, including meditative attitude to cause Intuition and enlightenment
  11. Charge of the seals, pentacles or lamens of the being desired

1.14 - The Supermind as Creator, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  3:And certainly, if this consciousness had no relation at all to mind nor anywhere any identity with the mental being, it would be quite impossible to give any account of it to our human notions. Or, if it were in its nature only vision in knowledge and not at all dynamic power of knowledge, we could hope to attain by its contact a beatific state of mental illumination, but not a greater light and power for the works of the world. But since this consciousness is creatrix of the world, it must be not only state of knowledge, but power of knowledge, and not only a Will to light and vision, but a Will to power and works. And since Mind too is created out of it, Mind must be a development by limitation out of this primal faculty and this mediatory act of the supreme Consciousness and must therefore be capable of resolving itself back into it through a reverse development by expansion. For always Mind must be identical with Supermind in essence and conceal in itself the potentiality of Supermind, however different or even contrary it may have become in its actual forms and settled modes of operation. It may not then be an irrational or unprofitable attempt to strive by the method of comparison and contrast towards some idea of the Supermind from the standpoint and in the terms of our intellectual knowledge. The idea, the terms may well be inadequate and yet still serve as a finger of light pointing us onward on a way which to some distance at least we may tread. Moreover it is possible for Mind to rise beyond itself into certain heights or planes of consciousness which receive into themselves some modified light or power of the supramental consciousness and know that by an illumination, Intuition or a direct contact or experience, although to live in it and see and act from it is a victory that has not yet been made humanly possible.
  4:And first we may pause a moment and ask ourselves whether no light can be found from the past which will guide us towards these ill-explored domains. We need a name, and we need a starting-point. For we have called this state of consciousness the Supermind; but the word is ambiguous since it may be taken in the sense of mind itself supereminent and lifted above ordinary mentality but not radically changed, or on the contrary it may bear the sense of all that is beyond mind and therefore assume a too extensive comprehensiveness which would bring in even the Ineffable itself. A subsidiary description is required which will more accurately limit its significance.
  --
  11:The difficulty, in its lower term, disappears if we realise that Mind is only a preparatory form of our consciousness. Mind is an instrument of analysis and synthesis, but not of essential knowledge. Its function is to cut out something vaguely from the unknown Thing in itself and call this measurement or delimitation of it the whole, and again to analyse the whole into its parts which it regards as separate mental objects. It is only the parts and accidents that the Mind can see definitely and, after its own fashion, know. Of the whole its only definite idea is an assemblage of parts or a totality of properties and accidents. The whole not seen as a part of something else or in its own parts, properties and accidents is to the mind no more than a vague perception; only when it is analysed and put by itself as a separate constituted object, a totality in a larger totality, can Mind say to itself, "This now I know." And really it does not know. It knows only its own analysis of the object and the idea it has formed of it by a synthesis of the separate parts and properties that it has seen. There its characteristic power, its sure function ceases, and if we would have a greater, a profounder and a real knowledge, - a knowledge and not an intense but formless sentiment such as comes sometimes to certain deep but inarticulate parts of our mentality, - Mind has to make room for another consciousness which will fulfil Mind by transcending it or reverse and so rectify its operations after leaping beyond it: the summit of mental knowledge is only a vaulting-board from which that leap can be taken. The utmost mission of Mind is to train our obscure consciousness which has emerged out of the dark prison of Matter, to enlighten its blind instincts, random Intuitions, vague perceptions till it shall become capable of this greater light and this higher ascension. Mind is a passage, not a culmination.
  12:On the other hand, the unitarian consciousness or indivisible Unity cannot be that impossible entity, a thing without contents out of which all contents have issued and into which they disappear and become annihilated. It must be an original selfconcentration in which all is contained but in another manner than in this temporal and spatial manifestation. That which has thus concentrated itself, is the utterly ineffable and inconceivable Existence which the Nihilist images to his mind as the negative Void of all that we know and are but the Transcendentalist with equal reason may image to his mind as the positive but indistinguishable Reality of all that we know and are. "In the beginning," says the Vedanta, "was the one Existence without a second," but before and after the beginning, now, for ever and beyond Time is that which we cannot describe even as the One, even when we say that nothing but That is. What we can be aware of is, first, its original self-concentration which we endeavour to realise as the indivisible One; secondly, the diffusion and apparent disintegration of all that was concentrated in its unity which is the Mind's conception of the universe; and thirdly, its firm self-extension in the Truth-consciousness which contains and upholds the diffusion and prevents it from being a real disintegration, maintains unity in utmost diversity and stability in utmost mutability, insists on harmony in the appearance of an all-pervading strife and collision, keeps eternal cosmos where Mind would arrive only at a chaos eternally attempting to form itself. This is the Supermind, the Truth-consciousness, the Real-Idea which knows itself and all that it becomes.

1.14 - TURMOIL OR GENESIS?, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  the nature of an Intuition, that is to say, a kind of choice. So it is
  possible to part company from the sequence at each stage: but only,

1.15 - The Suprarational Good, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is in our ethical being that this truest truth of practical life, its real and highest practicality becomes most readily apparent. It is true that the rational man has tried to reduce the ethical life like all the rest to a matter of reason, to determine its nature, its law, its practical action by some principle of reason, by some law of reason. He has never really succeeded and he never can really succeed; his appearances of success are mere pretences of the intellect building elegant and empty constructions with words and ideas, mere conventions of logic and vamped-up syntheses, in sum, pretentious failures which break down at the first strenuous touch of reality. Such was that extraordinary system of utilitarian ethics discovered in the nineteenth century the great century of science and reason and utilityby one of its most positive and systematic minds and now deservedly discredited. Happily, we need now only smile at its shallow pretentious errors, its substitution of a practical, outward and occasional test for the inner, subjective and absolute motive of ethics, its reduction of ethical action to an impossibly scientific and quite impracticable jugglery of moral mathematics, attractive enough to the reasoning and logical mind, quite false and alien to the whole instinct and Intuition of the ethical being. Equally false and impracticable are other attempts of the reason to account for and regulate its principle and phenomena,the hedonistic theory which refers all virtue to the pleasure and satisfaction of the mind in good or the sociological which supposes ethics to be no more than a system of formulas of conduct generated from the social sense and a ruled direction of the social impulses and would regulate its action by that insufficient standard. The ethical being escapes from all these formulas: it is a law to itself and finds its principle in its own eternal nature which is not in its essential character a growth of evolving mind, even though it may seem to be that in its earthly history, but a light from the ideal, a reflection in man of the Divine.
  Not that all these errors have not each of them a truth behind their false constructions; for all errors of the human reason are false representations, a wrong building, effective misconstructions of the truth or of a side or a part of the truth. Utility is a fundamental principle of existence and all fundamental principles of existence are in the end one; therefore it is true that the highest good is also the highest utility. It is true also that, not any balance of the greatest good of the greatest number, but simply the good of others and most widely the good of all is one ideal aim of our outgoing ethical practice; it is that which the ethical man would like to effect, if he could only find the way and be always sure what is the real good of all. But this does not help to regulate our ethical practice, nor does it supply us with its inner principle whether of being or of action, but only produces one of the many considerations by which we can feel our way along the road which is so difficult to travel. Good, not utility, must be the principle and standard of good; otherwise we fall into the hands of that dangerous pretender expediency, whose whole method is alien to the ethical. Moreover, the standard of utility, the judgment of utility, its spirit, its form, its application must vary with the individual nature, the habit of mind, the outlook on the world. Here there can be no reliable general law to which all can subscribe, no set of large governing principles such as it is sought to supply to our conduct by a true ethics. Nor can ethics at all or ever be a matter of calculation. There is only one safe rule for the ethical man, to stick to his principle of good, his instinct for good, his vision of good, his Intuition of good and to govern by that his conduct. He may err, but he will be on his right road in spite of all stumblings, because he will be faithful to the law of his nature. The saying of the Gita is always true; better is the law of ones own nature though ill-performed, dangerous is an alien law however speciously superior it may seem to our reason. But the law of nature of the ethical being is the pursuit of good; it can never be the pursuit of utility.
  Neither is its law the pursuit of pleasure high or base, nor self-satisfaction of any kind, however subtle or even spiritual. It is true, here too, that the highest good is both in its nature and inner effect the highest bliss. Ananda, delight of being, is the spring of all existence and that to which it tends and for which it seeks openly or covertly in all its activities. It is true too that in virtue growing, in good accomplished there is great pleasure and that the seeking for it may well be always there as a subconscient motive to the pursuit of virtue. But for practical purposes this is a side aspect of the matter; it does not constitute pleasure into a test or standard of virtue. On the contrary, virtue comes to the natural man by a struggle with his pleasure-seeking nature and is often a deliberate embracing of pain, an edification of strength by suffering. We do not embrace that pain and struggle for the pleasure of the pain and the pleasure of the struggle; for that higher strenuous delight, though it is felt by the secret spirit in us, is not usually or not at first conscious in the conscient normal part of our being which is the field of the struggle. The action of the ethical man is not motived by even an inner pleasure, but by a call of his being, the necessity of an ideal, the figure of an absolute standard, a law of the Divine.
  --
  For the ethical being like the rest is a growth and a seeking towards the absolute, the divine, which can only be attained securely in the suprarational. It seeks after an absolute purity, an absolute right, an absolute truth, an absolute strength, an absolute love and self-giving, and it is most satisfied when it can get them in absolute measure, without limit, curb or compromise, divinely, infinitely, in a sort of godhead and transfiguration of the ethical being. The reason is chiefly concerned with what it best understands, the apparent process, the machinery, the outward act, its result and effect, its circumstance, occasion and motive; by these it judges the morality of the action and the morality of the doer. But the developed ethical being knows instinctively that it is an inner something which it seeks and the outward act is only a means of bringing out and manifesting within ourselves by its psychological effects that inner absolute and eternal entity. The value of our actions lies not so much in their apparent nature and outward result as in their help towards the growth of the Divine within us. It is difficult, even impossible to justify upon outward grounds the absolute justice, absolute right, absolute purity, love or selflessness of an action or course of action; for action is always relative, it is mixed and uncertain in its results, perplexed in its occasions. But it is possible to relate the inner being to the eternal and absolute good, to make our sense and will full of it so as to act out of its impulsion or its Intuitions and inspirations. That is what the ethical being labours towards and the higher ethical man increasingly attains to in his inner efforts.
  In fact ethics is not in its essence a calculation of good and evil in the action or a laboured effort to be blameless according to the standards of the world,those are only crude appearances,it is an attempt to grow into the divine nature. Its parts of purity are an aspiration towards the inalienable purity of Gods being; its parts of truth and right are a seeking after conscious unity with the law of the divine knowledge and will; its parts of sympathy and charity are a movement towards the infinity and universality of the divine love; its parts of strength and manhood are an edification of the divine strength and power. That is the heart of its meaning. Its high fulfilment comes when the being of the man undergoes this transfiguration; then it is not his actions that standardise his nature but his nature that gives value to his actions; then he is no longer laboriously virtuous, artificially moral, but naturally divine. Actively, too, he is fulfilled and consummated when he is not led or moved either by the infrarational impulses or the rational intelligence and will, but inspired and piloted by the divine knowledge and will made conscious in his nature. And that can only be done, first by communication of the truth of these things through the intuitive mind as it purifies itself progressively from the invasion of egoism, self-interest, desire, passion and all kinds of self-will, finally through the suprarational light and power, no longer communicated but present and in possession of his being. Such was the supreme aim of the ancient sages who had the wisdom which rational man and rational society have rejected because it was too high a truth for the comprehension of the reason and for the powers of the normal limited human will too bold and immense, too infinite an effort.

1.1.5 - Thought and Knowledge, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  That is the silliness of the mind. Why should it be impossible to fill up a vacancy?1 It is easier for things to come into an empty space than into a full one. The error comes from thinking that your thoughts are your own and that you are their maker and if you dont create thoughts (i.e. think), there will be none. A little observation ought to show that you are not manufacturing your own thoughts, but rather thoughts occur in you. Thoughts are born, not madelike poets, according to the proverb. Of course, there is a sort of labour and effort when you try to produce or else to think on a certain subject, but that is a concentration for making thoughts come up, come in, come down, as the case may be, and fit themselves together. The idea that you are shaping the thoughts or fitting them together is an egoistic delusion. They are doing it themselves, or Nature is doing it for you, only under a certain compulsion; you have to beat her often in order to make her do it, and the beating is not always successful. But the mind or nature or mental energywhatever you like to call itdoes this in a certain way and carries on with a certain order of thoughts, haphazard intelligentialities (excuse the barbarism) or asininities, rigidly ordered or imperfectly ordered intellectualities, logical sequences and logical inconsequences, etc. etc. How the devil is an Intuition to get in in the midst of that waltzing and colliding crowd? It does sometimes,in some minds often Intuitions do come in,but immediately the ordinary thoughts surround it and eat it up alive, and then with some fragment of the murdered Intuition shining through their non-intuitive stomachs they look up smiling at you and say, I am an Intuition, sir. But they are only intellect, intelligence or ordinary thought with part of a dismembered and therefore misleading Intuition inside them. Now in a vacant mind, vacant but not inert (that is important), Intuitions have a chance of getting in alive and whole. But dont run away with the idea that all that comes into an empty mind, even a clear or luminous empty mind, will be intuitive. Anything, any blessed kind of idea, can come in. One has to be vigilant and examine the credentials of the visitor. In other words, the mental being must be there, silent but vigilant, impartial but discriminating. That is, however, when you are in search of truth. For poetry so much is not necessary. There it is only the poetic quality of the visitor that has to be scrutinised and that can be done after he has left his packetby results.
  ***
  --
    The correspondent said that his mind found it hard to believe that a vacancy in the mind could suddenly be filled with an Intuition without one's thinking about it.Ed.
  ***
  --
  A thousand questions can be asked about anything whatsoever, but to answer would require a volume, and even then the mind would understand nothing. It is only by a growth in the consciousness itself that you can get some direct perception of these things. But for that the mind must be quiet and a direct feeling and Intuition take its place.
  ***
  So long as the outer mind is not quiet, it is impossible for Intuition to develop. So if you want to go on asking intellectual questions about what is beyond the intellect until the Intuition develops in spite of this activity, you will have to go on for ever.
  ***
  When you get the true intuitive plane, there will be no need for instructions or questions as to how to do sadhana. The sadhana will do itself under the light of the Intuition.
  ***
  --
  The activity of mind is necessary so long as a higher activity cannot be reached; but if the spiritual consciousness becomes active with its direct power of perception, the mind must become more and more content and give place to spiritual perception, psychic intimations and discrimination, Intuitions, a deeper knowledge from within, a higher knowledge from above.
  ***
  --
  It is in the silence of the mind that the strongest and freest action can come, e.g. the writing of a book, poetry, inspired speech etc. When the mind is active it interferes with the inspiration, puts in its own small ideas which get mixed up with the inspiration or starts something from a lower level or simply stops the inspiration altogether by bubbling up with all sorts of mere mental suggestions. So also Intuitions or action etc. can come more easily when the ordinary inferior movement of the mind is not there. It is also in the silence of the mind that it is easiest for knowledge to come from within or above, from the psychic or from the higher consciousness.
  ***

1.15 - Truth, #Initiation Into Hermetics, #Franz Bardon, #Occultism
  There is a wide difference between knowledge and wisdom and it is much easier to win knowledge than wisdom. Wisdom depends, not in the least, on knowledge, although both are identical up to a certain degree. The source of wisdom is in God, that is to say, in the causal principle (the akasa) on all planes of the material, astral, and mental worlds. Therefore wisdom does not depend on mind and memory but on the maturity, purity and perfection of the individual personality. Wisdom could also be considered as a developmental stage of the ego. Therefore, insights are not passed on thought the mind, but and this particularly through Intuition or inspiration. The degree of wisdom is therefore determined by the state of development of the individual.
  This will not mean, of course, that we ought to neglect knowledge; on the contrary, knowledge and wisdom must go hand in hand. The adept will therefore endeavour to get on in knowledge as well as in wisdom, for neither of the two must lag behind in development.

1.17 - DOES MANKIND MOVE BIOLOGICALLY UPON ITSELF?, #The Future of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  as the Intuition was increasingly confirmed by observation and ex-
  periment, it came to be embodied in the inherited core of human
  --
  lievers. It seems that already a collective Intuition in that direction,
  which nothing will be able to arrest, is on the move. 8

1.17 - The Transformation, #Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga
  Everything is involved, already there in Matter, but the involution cannot be unlocked except through a pressure from above responding to a call from below and breaking the seal, just as the sun breaks the seed's shell. At present, the supermind involved in Matter pushes from within, in the form of spiritual yearnings, human aspirations for Immortality, Truth, or Beauty, etc.; at the same time, it presses from above, from its own eternal plane, in the form of Intuitions,
  revelations, or illuminations. This is what the Scriptures expressed in their own way when they linked the appearance of a "new earth" to that of a "new heaven" ("a new heaven and a new earth wherein

1.18 - The Infrarational Age of the Cycle, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We have seen that there are necessarily three stages of the social evolution or, generally, of the human evolution in both individual and society. Our evolution starts with an infrarational stage in which men have not yet learned to refer their life and action in its principles and its forms to the judgment of the clarified intelligence; for they still act principally out of their instincts, impulses, spontaneous ideas, vital Intuitions or obey a customary response to desire, need and circumstance,it is these things that are canalised or crystallised in their social institutions. Man proceeds by various stages out of these beginnings towards a rational age in which his intelligent will more or less developed becomes the judge, arbiter and presiding motive of his thought, feeling and action, the moulder, destroyer and re-creator of his leading ideas, aims and Intuitions. Finally, if our analysis and forecast are correct, the human evolution must move through a subjective towards a suprarational or spiritual age in which he will develop progressively a greater spiritual, supra-intellectual and intuitive, perhaps in the end a more than intuitive, a gnostic consciousness. He will be able to perceive a higher divine end, a divine sanction, a divine light of guidance for all he seeks to be, think, feel and do, and able, too, more and more to obey and live in this larger light and power. That will not be done by any rule of infrarational religious impulse and ecstasy, such as characterised or rather darkly illumined the obscure confusion and brute violence of the Middle Ages, but by a higher spiritual living for which the clarities of the reason are a necessary preparation and into which they too will be taken up, transformed, brought to their invisible source.
  These stages or periods are much more inevitable in the psychological evolution of mankind than the Stone and other Ages marked out by Science in his instrumental culture, for they depend not on outward means or accidents, but on the very nature of his being. But we must not suppose that they are naturally exclusive and absolute in their nature, or complete in their tendency or fulfilment when they come, or rigidly marked off from each other in their action or their time. For they not only arise out of each other, but may be partially developed in each other and they may come to coexist in different parts of the earth at the same time. But, especially, since man as a whole is always a complex being, even man savage or degenerate, he cannot be any of these things exclusively or absolutely,so long as he has not exceeded himself, has not developed into the superman, has not, that is to say, spiritualised and divinised his whole being. At his animal worst he is still some kind of thinking or reflecting animal: even the infrarational man cannot be utterly infrarational, but must have or tend to have some kind of play more or less evolved or involved of the reason and a more or less crude suprarational element, a more or less disguised working of the spirit. At his lucid mental best, he is still not a pure mental being, a pure intelligence; even the most perfect intellectual is not and cannot be wholly or merely rational,there are vital urgings that he cannot exclude, visits or touches of a light from above that are not less suprarational because he does not recognise their source. No god, but at his highest a human being touched with a ray of the divine influence, mans very spirituality, however dominant, must have, while he is still this imperfectly evolved human, its rational and infrarational tendencies and elements. And as with the psychological life of individuals, so must it be with the ages of his communal existence; these may be marked off from each other by the predominant play of one element, its force may overpower the others or take them into itself or make some compromise, but an exclusive play seems to be neither intended nor possible.
  Thus an infrarational period of human and social development need not be without its elements, its strong elements of reason and of spirituality. Even the savage, whether he be primitive or degenerate man, has some coherent idea of this world and the beyond, a theory of life and a religion. To us with our more advanced rationality his theory of life may seem incoherent, because we have lost its point of view and its principle of mental associations. But it is still an act of reason, and within its limits he is capable of a sufficient play of thought both ideative and practical, as well as a clear ethical idea and motive, some aesthetic notions and an understood order of society poor and barbarous to our view, but well enough contrived and put together to serve the simplicity of its objects. Or again we may not realise the element of reason in a primitive theory of life or of spirituality in a barbaric religion, because it appears to us to be made up of symbols and forms to which a superstitious value is attached by these undeveloped minds. But this is because the reason at this stage has an imperfect and limited action and the element of spirituality is crude or undeveloped and not yet self-conscious; in order to hold firmly their workings and make them real and concrete to his mind and spirit primitive man has to give them shape in symbols and forms to which he clings with a barbaric awe and reverence, because they alone can embody for him his method of self-guidance in life. For the dominant thing in him is his infrarational life of instinct, vital Intuition and impulse, mechanical custom and tradition, and it is that to which the rest of him has to give some kind of primary order and first glimmerings of light. The unrefined reason and unenlightened spirit in him cannot work for their own ends; they are bond-slaves of his infrarational nature.
  At a higher stage of development or of a return towards a fuller evolution,for the actual savage in humanity is perhaps not the original primitive man, but a relapse and reversion towards primitiveness,the infrarational stage of society may arrive at a very lofty order of civilisation. It may have great Intuitions of the meaning or general intention of life, admirable ideas of the arrangement of life, a harmonious, well-adapted, durable and serviceable social system, an imposing religion which will not be without its profundities, but in which symbol and ceremonial will form the largest portion and for the mass of man will be almost the whole of religion. In this stage pure reason and pure spirituality will not govern the society or move large bodies of men, but will be represented, if at all, by individuals at first few, but growing in number as these two powers increase in their purity and vigour and attract more and more votaries.
  This may well lead to an age, if the development of reason is strongest, of great individual thinkers who seize on some idea of life and its origins and laws and erect that into a philosophy, of critical minds standing isolated above the mass who judge life, not yet with a luminous largeness, a minute flexibility of understanding or a clear and comprehensive profundity, but still with power of intelligence, insight, acuteness, perhaps even a preeminent social thinker here and there who, taking advantage of some crisis or disturbance, is able to get the society to modify or reconstruct itself on the basis of some clearly rational and intelligent principle. Such an age seems to be represented by the traditions of the beginnings of Greek civilisation, or rather the beginnings of its mobile and progressive period. Or if spirituality predominates, there will be great mystics capable of delving into the profound and still occult psychological possibilities of our nature who will divine and realise the truth of the self and spirit in man and, even though they keep these things secret and imparted only to a small number of initiates, may yet succeed in deepening with them the crude forms of the popular life. Even such a development is obscurely indicated in the old traditions of the mysteries. In prehistoric India we see it take a peculiar and unique turn which determined the whole future trend of the society and made Indian civilisation a thing apart and of its own kind in the history of the human race. But these things are only a first beginning of light in the midst of a humanity which is still infrarational as well as infra-spiritual and, even when it undergoes the influence of these precursors, responds only obscurely to their inspirations and without any clearly intelligent or awakened spiritual reception of what they impart or impose. It still turns everything into infrarational form and disfiguring tradition and lives spiritually by ill-understood ceremonial and disguising symbol. It feels obscurely the higher things, tries to live them in its own stumbling way, but it does not yet understand; it cannot lay hold either on the intellectual form or the spiritual heart of their significance.
  As reason and spirituality develop, they begin to become a larger and more diffused force, less intense perhaps, but wider and more effective on the mass. The mystics become the sowers of the seed of an immense spiritual development in which whole classes of society and even men from all classes seek the light, as happened in India in the age of the Upanishads. The solitary individual thinkers are replaced by a great number of writers, poets, thinkers, rhetoricians, sophists, scientific inquirers, who pour out a profuse flood of acute speculation and inquiry stimulating the thought-habit and creating even in the mass a generalised activity of the intelligence,as happened in Greece in the age of the sophists. The spiritual development, arising uncurbed by reason in an infrarational society, has often a tendency to outrun at first the rational and intellectual movement. For the greatest illuminating force of the infrarational man, as he develops, is an inferior Intuition, an instinctively Intuitional sight arising out of the force of life in him, and the transition from this to an intensity of inner life and the growth of a deeper spiritual Intuition which outleaps the intellect and seems to dispense with it, is an easy passage in the individual man. But for humanity at large this movement cannot last; the mind and intellect must develop to their fullness so that the spirituality of the race may rise securely upward upon a broad basis of the developed lower nature in man, the intelligent mental being. Therefore we see that the reason in its growth either does away with the distinct spiritual tendency for a time, as in ancient Greece, or accepts it but spins out around its first data and activities a vast web of the workings of the intelligence, so that, as in India, the early mystic seer is replaced by the philosopher-mystic, the religious thinker and even the philosopher pure and simple.
  For a time the new growth and impulse may seem to take possession of a whole community as in Athens or in old Aryan India. But these early dawns cannot endure in their purity, so long as the race is not ready. There is a crystallisation, a lessening of the first impetus, a new growth of infrarational forms in which the thought or the spirituality is overgrown with inferior accretions or it is imbedded in the form and may even die in it, while the tradition of the living knowledge, the loftier life and activity remains the property of the higher classes or a highest class. The multitude remains infrarational in its habit of mind, though perhaps it may still keep in capacity an enlivened intelligence or a profound or subtle spiritual receptiveness as its gain from the past. So long as the hour of the rational age has not arrived, the irrational period of society cannot be left behind; and that arrival can only be when not a class or a few but the multitude has learned to think, to exercise its intelligence activelyit matters not at first however imperfectlyupon their life, their needs, their rights, their duties, their aspirations as human beings. Until then we have as the highest possible development a mixed society, infrarational in the mass, but saved for civilisation by a higher class whose business it is to seek after the reason and the spirit, to keep the gains of mankind in these fields, to add to them, to enlighten and raise with them as much as possible the life of the whole.

1.19 - The Curve of the Rational Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  We have already seen that it is individualism which opens the way to the age of reason and that individualism gets its impulse and its chance of development because it follows upon an age of dominant conventionalism. It is not that in the pre-individualistic, pre-rational ages there were no thinkers upon society and the communal life of man; but they did not think in the characteristic method of the logical reason, critical, all-observing, all-questioning, and did not proceed on the constructive side by the carefully mechanising methods of the highly rationalised intelligence when it passes from the reasoned perception of a truth to the endeavour after its pure, perfect and universal orderly application. Their thought and their building of life were much less logical than spontaneously intelligent, organic and intuitive. Always they looked upon life as it was and sought to know its secret by keen discernment, Intuition and insight; symbols embodying the actual and ideal truth of life and being, types setting them in an arrangement and psychological order, institutions giving them a material fixity in their effectuation by life, this was the form in which they shaped their attempt to understand and mentalise life, to govern life by mind, but mind in its spontaneously intuitive or its reflectively seeing movements before they have been fixed into the geometrical patterns of the logical intelligence.
  But reason seeks to understand and interpret life by one kind of symbol only, the idea; it generalises the facts of life according to its own strongly cut ideative conceptions so that it may be able to master and arrange them, and having hold of an idea it looks for its largest general application. And in order that these ideas may not be a mere abstraction divorced from the realised or realisable truth of things, it has to be constantly comparing them with facts. It has to be always questioning facts so that it may find the ideas by which they can be more and more adequately explained, ordered and managed, and it has always to be questioning ideas in order, first, to see whether they square with actual facts and, secondly, whether there are not new facts to suit which they must be modified or enlarged or which can be evolved out of them. For reason lives not only in actual facts, but in possibilities, not only in realised truths, but in ideal truths; and the ideal truth once seen, the impulse of the idealising intelligence is to see too whether it cannot be turned into a fact, cannot be immediately or rapidly realised in life. It is by this inherent characteristic that the age of reason must always be an age of progress.

1.20 - The Hound of Heaven, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Light and Darkness, Sarama who leads in the search for the radiant herds and discovers both the path and the secret hold in the mountain must be a forerunner of the dawn of Truth in the human mind. And if we ask ourselves what power among the truth-finding faculties it is that thus discovers out of the darkness of the unknown in our being the truth that is hidden in it, we at once think of the Intuition. For Sarama is not Saraswati, she is not the inspiration, even though the names are similar. Saraswati gives the full flood of the knowledge; she is or awakens the great stream, maho arn.ah., and illumines with plenitude all the thoughts, dhiyo visva vi rajati. Saraswati possesses and is the flood of the Truth; Sarama is the traveller and seeker on its path who does not herself possess but rather finds that which is lost.
  Neither is she the plenary word of the revelation, the Teacher of man like the goddess Ila; for even when what she seeks is found, she does not take possession but only gives the message to the seers and their divine helpers who have still to fight for the possession of the light that has been discovered.
  --
  Truth which leads us to the light that is hidden in ourselves, in the subconscient. All these characteristics apply exactly to the Intuition.
  Sarama is mentioned by name only in a few hymns of the
  --
  Then the Rishi speaks of the great and ancient example which men are called upon to repeat, the example of the Angirases, the achievement of Sarama. "Here the stone was set in motion whereby the Navagwas chanted the hymn for the ten months, Sarama going to the Truth found the cows, the Angiras made all things true. When in the dawning of this vast One (Usha representing the infinite Aditi, mata devanam aditer ankam) all the Angirases came together with the cows (or rather, perhaps by the illuminations represented in the symbol of the cows or Rays); there was the fountain of these (illuminations) in the supreme world; by the path of the Truth Sarama found the cows." Here we see that it is through the movement of Sarama going straight to the Truth by the path of the Truth, that the seven seers, representing the seven-headed or seven-rayed thought of Ayasya and Brihaspati, find all the concealed illuminations and by force of these illuminations they all come together, as we have been already told by Vasishtha, in the level wideness, samane urve, from which the Dawn has descended with the knowledge (urvad janat gat, v. 2) or, as it is here expressed, in the dawning of this vast One, that is to say, in the infinite consciousness. There, as Vasishtha has said, they, united, agree in knowledge and do not strive together, sangatasah. sam janate na yatante mithas te, that is to say, the seven become as one, as is indicated in another hymn; they become the one seven-mouthed Angiras, an image corresponding to that of the seven-headed thought, and it is this single unified Angiras who makes all things true as the result of Sarama's discovery (verse 7). The harmonised, united, perfected Seer-Will corrects all falsehood and crookedness and turns all thought, life, action into terms of the Truth. In this hymn also the action of Sarama is precisely that of the Intuition
  The Hound of Heaven
  --
  Dawn); first she went, knowing, towards their cry." It is again the Intuition that leads; knowing, she speeds at once and in front of all towards the voice of the concealed illuminations, towards the place where the hill so firmly formed and impervious in appearance (vl.u, dr.d.ha) is broken and can admit the seekers.
  The rest of the hymn continues to describe the achievement of the Angirases and Indra. "He went, the greatest seer of them all, doing them friendship; the pregnant hill sent forth its contents for the doer of perfect works; in the strength of manhood he with the young (Angirases) seeking plenitude of riches attained possession, then singing the hymn of light he became at once the Angiras. Becoming in our front the form and measure of each existing thing, he knows all the births, he slays Shushna"; that is to say, the Divine Mind assumes a form answering to each existing thing in the world and reveals its true divine image and meaning and slays the false force that distorts knowledge and action. "Seeker of the cows, traveller to the seat of heaven, singing the hymns, he, the Friend, delivers his friends out of all defect (of right self-expression). With a mind that sought the
  --
  Veda do not add anything essential to the conception. We have a brief allusion in IV.16.8, "When thou didst tear the waters out of the hill, Sarama became manifest before thee; so do thou as our leader tear out much wealth for us, breaking the pens, hymned by the Angirases." It is the Intuition manifesting before the Divine Mind as its forerunner when there is the emergence of the waters, the streaming movements of the Truth that break out of the hill in which they were confined by Vritra (verse 7); and it is by means of the Intuition that this godhead becomes our leader to the rescue of the Light and the conquest of the much wealth hidden within in the rock behind the fortress gates of the Panis.
  We find another allusion to Sarama in a hymn by Parashara

1.21 - My Theory of Astrology, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  Modern astrologers multiply their charts until their desks remind me of a Bargain Basement in the rush hour! They compare and contrast until they are in bat-eyed bewilderment bemused; and when the answer turns out absolutely false, exclaim, what a shout: "By Ptolemy, I forgot to look at the last Luniation for Buda-Pesth!" But then they can always find something or other which will explain how they came to go wrong: naturally, when you have several hundred factors, helplessly bound and gagged, it would be just too bad if you couldn't pick out one to serve your turn after the event! No, dear girl, it should be obvious to an unweaned brat: (a) they can't see the wood for the trees, (b) they are using Ruach on a proposition which demands Neschamah. Intellect is quite inadequate; the problem requires mother-wit, Intuition, understanding.
  Here is my system in a Number 000 Ampoule.

1.2.2.01 - The Poet, the Yogi and the Rishi, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is quite natural for the poets to vaunt their mtier as the highest reach of human capacity and themselves as the top of creation; it is also natural for the intellectuals to run down the Yogi or the Rishi who claims to reach a higher consciousness than that which they conceive to be the summit of human achievement. The poet indeed lives still in the mind and is not yet a spiritual seer, but he represents to the human intellect the highest point of mental seership where the imagination tries to figure and embody in words its Intuition of things, though that stands far below the vision of things that can be grasped only by spiritual experience. It is for that the poet is exalted as the real seer and prophet. There is too, helping the idea, the error of the modern or European mentality which so easily confuses the mentalised vital or life being with the soul and the idealising mind with spirituality. The poet imaging mental or physical beauty is for the outer mind something more spiritual than the seer or the God-lover experiencing the eternal peace or the ineffable ecstasy. Yet the Rishi or Yogi can drink of a deeper draught of Beauty and Delight than the imagination of the poet at its highest can conceive. ( The Divine is Delight.) And it is not only the unseen Beauty that he can see but the visible and tangible also has for him a face of the All-Beautiful which the mind cannot discover.
  10 November 1934
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  He [Ramana Maharshi] has experienced certain eternal truths by process of Yoga. I dont think it is by Rishilike Intuition or illumination, nor has he the mantra.
  10 February 1936
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  Poetic Intuition and illumination is not the same thing as Rishi Intuition and illumination.
  11 February 1936

1.22 - EMOTIONALISM, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  The phrase, religion of experience, has two distinct and mutually incompatible meanings. There is the experience of which the Perennial Philosophy treats the direct apprehension of the divine Ground in an act of Intuition possible, in its fulness, only to the selflessly pure in heart. And there is the experience induced by revivalist sermons, impressive ceremonials, or the deliberate efforts of ones own imagination. This experience is a state of emotional excitementan excitement which may be mild and enduring or brief and epileptically violent, which is sometimes exultant in tone and sometimes despairing, which expresses itself here in song and dance, there in uncontrollable weeping. But emotional excitement, whatever its cause and whatever its nature, is always excitement of that individualized self, which must be thed to by anyone who aspires to live to divine Reality. Experience as emotion about God (the highest form of this kind of excitement) is incompatible with experience as imme thate awareness of God by a pure heart which has mortified even its most exalted emotions. That is why Fnelon, in the foregoing extract, insists upon the need for calm and simplicity, why St. Franois de Sales is never tired of preaching the serenity which he himself so consistently practised, why all the Buddhist scriptures harp on tranquillity of mind as a necessary condition of deliverance. The peace that passes all understanding is one of the fruits of the spirit. But there is also the peace that does not pass understanding, the humbler peace of emotional self-control and self-denial; this is not a fruit of the spirit, but rather one of its indispensable roots.
  The imperfect destroy true devotion, because they seek sensible sweetness in prayer.

1.22 - The Necessity of the Spiritual Transformation, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In fact, as we have seen, the mind and the intellect are not the key-power of our existence. For they can only trace out a round of half-truths and uncertainties and revolve in that unsatisfying circle. But concealed in the mind and life, in all the action of the intellectual, the aesthetic, the ethical, the dynamic and practical, the emotional, sensational, vital and physical being, there is a power that sees by identity and Intuition and gives to all these things such truth and such certainty and stability as they are able to compass. Obscurely we are now beginning to see something of this behind all our science and philosophy and all our other activities. But so long as this power has to work for the mind and life and not for itself, to work in their forms and not by its own spontaneous light, we cannot make any great use of this discovery, cannot get the native benefit of this inner Daemon. Mans road to spiritual supermanhood will be open when he declares boldly that all he has yet developed, including the intellect of which he is so rightly and yet so vainly proud, are now no longer sufficient for him, and that to uncase, discover, set free this greater Light within shall be henceforward his pervading preoccupation. Then will his philosophy, art, science, ethics, social existence, vital pursuits be no longer an exercise of mind and life, done for themselves, carried in a circle, but a means for the discovery of a greater Truth behind mind and life and for the bringing of its power into our human existence. We shall be on the right road to become ourselves, to find our true law of perfection, to live our true satisfied existence in our real being and divine nature.
  ***

1.2.2 - The Place of Study in Sadhana, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Yes, that [to read critically] is the right way to read these things. These philosophies [of the early Greeks] are mostly mental Intuitions mixed with much guessing (speculation), but behind, if one knows, one can catch some Truth to which they correspond.
  ***
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  It [the study of logic] is a theoretical training; you learn by it some rules of logical thinking. But the application depends on your own intelligence. In any sphere of knowledge or action a man may be a good theorist but a poor executant. A very good military theorist and critic if put in comm and of an army might very well lose all his battles, not being able to suit the theories rightly to the occasion. So a theoretical logician may bungle the problems of thought by want of insight, of quickness of mind or of plasticity in the use of his capacities. Besides, logic is not the whole of thinking; observation, Intuition, sympathy, many-sidedness are more important.
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1.23 - Conditions for the Coming of a Spiritual Age, #The Human Cycle, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The spiritual age will be ready to set in when the common mind of man begins to be alive to these truths and to be moved or desire to be moved by this triple or triune Spirit. That will mean the turning of the cycle of social development which we have been considering out of its incomplete repetitions on a new upward line towards its goal. For having set out, according to our supposition, with a symbolic age, an age in which man felt a great Reality behind all life which he sought through symbols, it will reach an age in which it will begin to live in that Reality, not through the symbol, not by the power of the type or of the convention or of the individual reason and intellectual will, but in our own highest nature which will be the nature of that Reality fulfilled in the conditionsnot necessarily the same as nowof terrestrial existence. This is what the religions have seen with a more or less adequate Intuition, but most often as in a glass darkly, that which they called the kingdom of God on earth,his kingdom within in mans spirit and therefore, for the one is the material result of the effectivity of the other, his kingdom without in the life of the peoples.
  ***

1.2.3 - The Power of Expression and Yoga, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The use of your writing is to keep you in touch with the inner source of inspiration and Intuition, so as to wear thin the crude external crust in the consciousness and encourage the growth of the inner being.
  ***

1.25 - SPIRITUAL EXERCISES, #The Perennial Philosophy, #Aldous Huxley, #Philosophy
  In India the repetition of the divine name or the mantram (a short devotional or doctrinal affirmation) is called japam and is a favourite spiritual exercise among all the sects of Hinduism and Buddhism. The shortest mantram is OMa spoken sym bol that concentrates within itself the whole Vedanta philosophy. To this and other mantrams Hindus attribute a kind of magical power. The repetition of them is a sacramental act, conferring grace ex opere operato. A similar efficacity was and indeed still is attri buted to sacred words and formulas by Buddhists, Moslems, Jews and Christians. And, of course, just as traditional religious rites seem to possess the power to evoke the real presence of existents projected into psychic objectivity by the faith and devotion of generations of worshippers, so too long-hallowed words and phrases may become channels for conveying powers other and greater than those belonging to the individual who happens at the moment to be pronouncing them. And meanwhile the constant repetition of this word GOD or this word LOVE may, in favourable circumstances, have a profound effect upon the subconscious mind, inducing that selfless one-pointedness of will and thought and feeling, without which the unitive knowledge of God is impossible. Furthermore, it may happen that, if the word is simply repeated all whole, and not broken up or undone by discursive analysis, the Fact for which the word stands will end by presenting itself to the soul in the form of an integral Intuition. When this happens, the doors of the letters of this word are opened (to use the language of the Sufis) and the soul passes through into Reality. But though all this may happen, it need not necessarily happen. For there is no spiritual patent medicine, no pleasant and infallible panacea for souls suffering from separateness and the deprivation of God. No, there is no guaranteed cure; and, if used improperly, the medicine of spiritual exercises may start a new disease or aggravate the old. For example, a mere mechanical repetition of the divine name can result in a kind of numbed stupefaction that is as much below analytical thought as intellectual vision is above it. And because the sacred word constitutes a kind of prejudgment of the experience induced by its repetition, this stupefaction, or some other abnormal state, is taken to be the imme thate awareness of Reality and is idolatrously cultivated and hunted after, with a turning of the will towards what is supposed to be God before there has been a turning of it away from the self.
  The dangers which beset the practicer of japam, who is insufficiently mortified and insufficiently recollected and aware, are encountered in the same or different forms by those who make use of more elaborate spiritual exercises. Intense concentration on an image or idea, such as is recommended by many teachers, both Eastern and Western, may be very helpful for certain persons in certain circumstances, very harmful in other cases. It is helpful when the concentration results in such mental stillness, such a silence of intellect, will and feeling, that the divine Word can be uttered within the soul. It is harmful when the image concentrated upon becomes so hallucinatingly real that it is taken for objective Reality and idolatrously worshipped; harmful, too, when the exercise of concentration produces unusual psycho-physical results, in which the person experiencing them takes a personal pride, as being special graces and divine communications. Of these unusual psycho-physical occurrences the most ordinary are visions and auditions, foreknowledge, telepathy and other psychic powers, and the curious bodily phenomenon of intense neat. Many persons who practise concentration exercises experience this heat occasionally. A number of Christian saints, of whom the best known are St. Philip Neri and St. Catherine of Siena, have experienced it continuously. In the East techniques have been developed whereby the accession of heat resulting from intense concentration can be regulated, controlled and put to do useful work, such as keeping the contemplative warm in freezing weather. In Europe, where the phenomenon is not well understood, many would-be contemplatives have experienced this heat, and have imagined it to be some special divine favour, or even the experience of union, and being insufficiently mortified and humble, have fallen into idolatry and a God-eclipsing spiritual pride.

1.28 - Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  4:But when we look more closely, we perceive that this normality is deceptive and that in fact there are several directions in which human mind reaches beyond itself, tends towards selfexceeding; these are precisely the necessary lines of contact or veiled or half-veiled passages which connect it with higher grades of consciousness of the self-manifesting Spirit. First, we have noted the place Intuition occupies in the human means of knowledge, and Intuition is in its very nature a projection of the characteristic action of these higher grades into the mind of Ignorance. It is true that in human mind its action is largely hidden by the interventions of our normal intelligence; a pure Intuition is a rare occurrence in our mental activity: for what we call by the name is usually a point of direct knowledge which is immediately caught and coated over with mental stuff, so that it serves only as an invisible or a very tiny nucleus of a crystallisation which is in its mass intellectual or otherwise mental in character; or else the flash of Intuition is quickly replaced or intercepted, before it has a chance of manifesting itself, by a rapid imitative mental movement, insight or quick perception or some swift-leaping process of thought which owes its appearance to the stimulus of the coming Intuition but obstructs its entry or covers it with a substituted mental suggestion true or erroneous but in either case not the au thentic intuitive movement. Nevertheless, the fact of this intervention from above, the fact that behind all our original thinking or au thentic perception of things there is a veiled, a halfveiled or a swift unveiled intuitive element is enough to establish a connection between mind and what is above it; it opens a passage of communication and of entry into the superior spiritranges. There is also the reaching out of mind to exceed the personal ego limitation, to see things in a certain impersonality and universality. Impersonality is the first character of cosmic self; universality, non-limitation by the single or limiting point of view, is the character of cosmic perception and knowledge: this tendency is therefore a widening, however rudimentary, of these restricted mind areas towards cosmicity, towards a quality which is the very character of the higher mental planes, - towards that superconscient cosmic Mind which, we have suggested, must in the nature of things be the original mind-action of which ours is only a derivative and inferior process. Again, there is not an entire absence of penetration from above into our mental limits. The phenomena of genius are really the result of such a penetration, - veiled no doubt, because the light of the superior consciousness not only acts within narrow limits, usually in a special field, without any regulated separate organisation of its characteristic energies, often indeed quite fitfully, erratically and with a supernormal or abnormal irresponsible governance, but also in entering the mind it subdues and adapts itself to mind substance so that it is only a modified or diminished dynamis that reaches us, not all the original divine luminosity of what might be called the overhead consciousness beyond us.
  Still the phenomena of inspiration, of revelatory vision or of intuitive perception and intuitive discernment, surpassing our less illumined or less powerful normal mind-action, are there and their origin is unmistakable. Finally, there is the vast and multitudinous field of mystic and spiritual experience, and here the gates already lie wide open to the possibility of extending our consciousness beyond its present limits, - unless, indeed, by an obscurantism that refuses to inquire or an attachment to our boundaries of mental normality we shut them or turn away from the vistas they open before us. But in our present investigation we cannot afford to neglect the possibilities which these domains of mankind's endeavour bring near to us, or the added knowledge of oneself and of the veiled Reality which is their gift to human mind, the greater light which arms them with the right to act upon us and is the innate power of their existence.
  --
  7:It is in the latter alternative that we find the secret we are seeking, the means of the transition, the needed step towards a supramental transformation; for we perceive a graduality of ascent, a communication with a more and more deep and immense light and power from above, a scale of intensities which can be regarded as so many stairs in the ascension of Mind or in a descent into Mind from That which is beyond it. We are aware of a sealike downpour of masses of a spontaneous knowledge which assumes the nature of Thought but has a different character from the process of thought to which we are accustomed; for there is nothing here of seeking, no trace of mental construction, no labour of speculation or difficult discovery; it is an automatic and spontaneous knowledge from a Higher Mind that seems to be in possession of Truth and not in search of hidden and withheld realities. One observes that this Thought is much more capable than the mind of including at once a mass of knowledge in a single view; it has a cosmic character, not the stamp of an individual thinking. Beyond this Truth-Thought we can distinguish a greater illumination instinct with an increased power and intensity and driving force, a luminosity of the nature of Truth-Sight with thought formulation as a minor and dependent activity. If we accept the Vedic image of the Sun of Truth, - an image which in this experience becomes a reality, - we may compare the action of the Higher Mind to a composed and steady sunshine, the energy of the Illumined Mind beyond it to an outpouring of massive lightnings of flaming sun-stuff. Still beyond can be met a yet greater power of the Truth-Force, an intimate and exact Truth-vision, Truth-thought, Truth-sense, Truth-feeling, Truthaction, to which we can give in a special sense the name of Intuition; for though we have applied that word for want of a better to any supra-intellectual direct way of knowing, yet what we actually know as Intuition is only one special movement of self-existent knowledge. This new range is its origin; it imparts to our Intuitions something of its own distinct character and is very clearly an intermediary of a greater Truth-Light with which our mind cannot directly communicate. At the source of this Intuition we discover a superconscient cosmic Mind in direct contact with the Supramental Truth-Consciousness, an original intensity determinant of all movements below it and all mental energies, - not Mind as we know it, but an Overmind that covers as with the wide wings of some creative Oversoul this whole lower hemisphere of Knowledge-Ignorance, links it with that greater Truth-Consciousness while yet at the same time with its brilliant golden Lid it veils the face of the greater Truth from our sight, intervening with its flood of infinite possibilities as at once an obstacle and a passage in our seeking of the spiritual law of our existence, its highest aim, its secret Reality. This then is the occult link we were looking for; this is the Power that at once connects and divides the supreme Knowledge and the cosmic Ignorance.
  8:In its nature and law the Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light. Even, it is by the projection of this luminous Overmind corona that the diffusion of a diminished light in the Ignorance and the throwing of that contrary shadow which swallows up in itself all light, the Inconscience, became at all possible. For Supermind transmits to Overmind all its realities, but leaves it to formulate them in a movement and according to an awareness of things which is still a vision of Truth and yet at the same time a first parent of the Ignorance. A line divides Supermind and Overmind which permits a free transmission, allows the lower Power to derive from the higher Power all it holds or sees, but automatically compels a transitional change in the passage. The integrality of the Supermind keeps always the essential truth of things, the total truth and the truth of its individual self-determinations clearly knit together; it maintains in them an inseparable unity and between them a close interpenetration and a free and full consciousness of each other: but in Overmind this integrality is no longer there. And yet the Overmind is well aware of the essential Truth of things; it embraces the totality; it uses the individual self-determinations without being limited by them: but although it knows their oneness, can realise it in a spiritual cognition, yet its dynamic movement, even while relying on that for its security, is not directly determined by it. Overmind Energy proceeds through an illimitable capacity of separation and combination of the powers and aspects of the integral and indivisible all-comprehending Unity. It takes each Aspect or Power and gives to it an independent action in which it acquires a full separate importance and is able to work out, we might say, its own world of creation. Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature, are in the supramental harmony a two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis of the Reality; there can be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage, the trenchant distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas in which they appear as two independent entities, Prakriti able to dominate Purusha and cloud its freedom and power, reducing it to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions, Purusha able to return to its separate existence and abide in a free self-sovereignty by rejection of her original overclouding material principle. So with the other aspects or powers of the Divine Reality, One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine Impersonality, and the rest; each is still an aspect and power of the one Reality, but each is empowered to act as an independent entity in the whole, arrive at the fullness of the possibilities of its separate expression and develop the dynamic consequences of that separateness. At the same time in Overmind this separateness is still founded on the basis of an implicit underlying unity; all possibilities of combination and relation between the separated Powers and Aspects, all interchanges and mutualities of their energies are freely organised and their actuality always possible.
  --
  16:Two things render that culmination more facile than it would otherwise be. Overmind in the descent towards material creation has originated modifications of itself, - Intuition especially with its penetrative lightning flashes of truth lighting up local points and stretches of country in our consciousness, - which can bring the concealed truth of things nearer to our comprehension, and, by opening ourselves more widely first in the inner being and then as a result in the outer surface self also to the messages of these higher ranges of consciousness, by growing into them, we can become ourselves also intuitive and overmental beings, not limited by the intellect and sense, but capable of a more universal comprehension and a direct touch of truth in its very self and body. In fact flashes of enlightenment from these higher ranges already come to us, but this intervention is mostly fragmentary, casual or partial; we have still to begin to enlarge ourselves into their likeness and organise in us the greater Truth activities of which we are potentially capable. But, secondly, Overmind, Intuition, even Supermind not only must be, as we have seen, principles inherent and involved in the Inconscience from which we arise in the evolution and inevitably destined to evolve, but are secretly present, occult actively with flashes of intuitive emergence in the cosmic activity of Mind, Life and Matter. It is true that their action is concealed and, even when they emerge, it is modified by the medium, material, vital, mental in which they work and not easily recognisable. Supermind cannot manifest itself as the Creator Power in the universe from the beginning, for if it did, the Ignorance and Inconscience would be impossible or else the slow evolution necessary would change into a rapid transformation scene. Yet at every step of the material energy we can see the stamp of inevitability given by a supramental creator, in all the development of life and mind the play of the lines of possibility and their combination which is the stamp of Overmind intervention. As Life and Mind have been released in Matter, so too must in their time these greater powers of the concealed Godhead emerge from the involution and their supreme Light descend into us from above.
  17:A divine Life in the manifestation is then not only possible as the high result and ransom of our present life in the Ignorance but, if these things are as we have seen them, it is the inevitable outcome and consummation of Nature's evolutionary endeavour.

1.3.5.03 - The Involved and Evolving Godhead, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Its greater subsequent and deliberately emerging movements, life and mind and Intuition and soul and supermind and the light of the Godhead are already there, locked up and obscurely compressed into the initial power and first expressive values of
  Matter.

1.35 - The Tao 2, #Magick Without Tears, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  During my solitary wanderings among the mountainous wastes of Yun Nan, the spiritual atmosphere of China penetrated my consciousness, thanks to the absence of any intellectual impertinences from the organ of knowledge. The Tao Teh King revealed its simplicity and sublimity to my soul, little by little, as the conditions of my physical, no less than of my spiritual life, penetrated the sanctuaries of my spirit. The philosophy of Lao Tze communicated itself to me, in despite of the persistent efforts of my mind to compel it to conform with my preconceived notions of what the text must mean. This process, having thus taken root in my innermost Intuition during those tremendous months of wandering Yun Nan, grew continually throughout succeeding years. Whenever I found myself able once more to withdraw myself from the dissipations and distractions which contact with civilization forces upon a man, no matter how vigorously he may struggle against their insolence, to the sacred solitude of he desert, whether among the sierras of Spain or the sands of the Sahara, I found that the philosophy of Lao Tze resumed its sway upon my soul, subtler and stronger on each successive occasion.
  But neither Europe nor Africa can show any such desolation as America. The proudest, stubbornest, bitterest peasant of deserted Spain, the most primitive and superstitious Arab of the remotest oases, are a little more than kin and never less than kind at their worst; whereas in the United States one is almost always conscious of an instinctive lack of sympathy and understanding with even the most charming and cultured people. It was therefore during my exile in America that the doctrines of Lao Tze developed most rapidly in my soul, ever forcing their way outwards until I felt it imperious, nay inevitable, to express them in terms of conscious thought.
  --
  It is therefore not altogether without confidence that I present this translation of the Tao Teh King to the public. I hope and believe that careful study of the text, as elucidated by my commentary, will enable serious aspirants to the hidden Wisdom to understand (with fair accuracy) what Lao Tze taught. It must however be laid to heart that the essence of his system will inevitably elude intellectual apprehension, unless it be illuminated from above by actual living experience of the truth. Such experience is only to be attained by unswerving application to the practices which he advocates. Nor must the aspirant content himself with the mere attainment of spiritual enlightenment, however sublime. All such achievements are barren unless they be regarded as the means rather than the end of spiritual progress; allowed to infiltrate every detail of the life, not only of the spirit, but of the senses. The Tao can never be known until it interprets the most trivial actions of every day routine. It is a fatal mistake to discriminate between the spiritual importance of meditation and playing golf. To do so is to create an internal conflict. "Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt." He who knows the Tao knows it to be the source of all things soever; the most exalted spiritual ecstasy and the most trivial internal impression are from our point of view equally illusions, worthless masks, which hide, with grotesque painted pasteboard false and lifeless, the living face of truth. Yet, from another point of view, they are equally expressions of the ecstatic genius of truth natural images of the reaction between the essence of one's self and one's particular environment at the moment of their occurrence. They are equally tokens of the Tao by whom, in whom, and of whom, they are. To value them for themselves is to deny the Tao and to be lost in delusion. To despise them is to deny the omnipresence of the Tao, and to suffer the illusion of sorrow. To discriminate between them is to set up the accursed dyad, to surrender to the insanity of intellect, to overwhelm the Intuition of truth, and to create civil war in the consciousness.
  From 1905 to 1918 the Tao Teh King was my continual study. I constantly recommended it to my friends as the supreme masterpiece of initiated wisdom, and I was as constantly disappointed when they declared that it did not impress them, especially as my preliminary descriptions of the book had aroused their keenest interest. I thus came to see that the fault lay with Legge's translation, and I felt myself impelled to undertake the task of presenting Lao Tze in language informed by the sympathetic understanding which initiation and spiritual experience had conferred on me. During my Great Magical Retirement on Aesopus Island in the Hudson River during the summer of 1918, I set myself to this work, but I discovered immediately that I was totally incompetent. I therefore appealed to an Adept named Amalantrah, which whom I was at that time in almost daily communication. He came readily to my aid, and exhibited to me a codex of the original, which conveyed to me with absolute certitude the exact significance of the text. I was able to divine without hesitation or doubt the precise manner in which Legge had been deceived. He had translated the Chinese with singular fidelity, yet in almost every verse the interpretation was altogether misleading. There was no need to refer to the text from the point of view of scholarship. I had merely to paraphrase his translation in the light of actual knowledge of the true significance of the terms employed. Any one who cares to take the trouble to compare the two versions will be astounded to see how slight a remodeling of a paragraph is sufficient to disperse the obstinate obscurity of prejudice, and let loose a fountain and a flood of living light; to kindle the gnarled prose of stolid scholarship into the burgeoning blossom of lyrical flame.

1.4.01 - The Divine Grace and Guidance, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Divine are not often like that - they come rather as a touch, a pressure one must be in a condition to recognise and to accept, or it is a voice of assurance, sometimes a very "still small voice", a momentary Image or Presence; a whisper of Guidance sometimes, - there are many forms it may take. Then it withdraws and the preparation of the nature goes on till it is possible for the touch to come again and again, to last longer, to change into something more pressing and near and intimate. The Divine in the beginning does not impose himself - he asks for recognition, for acceptance. That is one reason why the mind must fall silent, not put tests, not make claims - there must be room for the true Intuition which recognises at once the true touch and accepts it.
  The Divine Guidance

1.4.03 - The Guru, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  All true Gurus are the same, the one Guru, because all are the one Divine. That is a fundamental and universal truth. But there is also a truth of difference; the Divine dwells in different personalities with different minds, teachings, influences so that He may lead different disciples with their special need, character, destiny by different ways to the realisation. Because all Gurus are the same Divine, it does not follow that the disciple does well if he leaves the one meant for him to follow another. Fidelity to the Guru is demanded of every disciple, according to the Indian tradition. "All are the same" is a spiritual truth, but you cannot convert it indiscriminately into action; you cannot deal with all persons in the same way because they are the one Brahman: if one did, the result pragmatically would be an awful mess. It is a rigid mental logic that makes the difficulty but in spiritual matters mental logic easily blunders; Intuition, faith, a plastic spiritual reason are here the only guides.
  To respect the spiritual attainment of X [another spiritual teacher] is all right, but it is a rule of this Yoga not to mix influences (and what he [a sadhak] has described is very much like undergoing an influence). Otherwise there may be harm done by two different methods getting mixed together - e.g. the vital being awakened to a Bhakti-Ananda influence on that plane before it is purified and ready.

1914 06 24p, #Prayers And Meditations, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   It is always wrong to want to evaluate the future or even to foresee it by the thought we have about it, for this thought is the present, it is in its very impersonality the translation of present relations which are necessarily not the future relations between all the elements of the terrestrial problem. Deducing future circumstances from present ones is a mental activity of the nature of reasoning, even if the deduction takes place in the subconscient and is translated in the being into the form of Intuition; but reasoning is a human faculty, that is, it is individual; its inspirations do not come from the infinite, the unlimited, the Divine. It is only in the Omniscience, only when one is at once What knows, what is to be known and the power of knowing that one can become conscious of all relations, past, present and future; but in this state there is no longer a past, present or future, all is eternally. The order of manifestation of all these relations does not solely depend upon the supreme impulsion, the divine Law, it depends also upon the resistance put up against this law by the most external world; from the combination of the two there comes forth the manifestation and so far as it is at present possible for me to know, this combination is in a way undetermined. This is what makes the play, the unexpectedness of the play.
   ***

1950-12-25 - Christmas - festival of Light - Energy and mental growth - Meditation and concentration - The Mother of Dreams - Playing a game well, and energy, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  In adults mental activity tends to paralyse the spontaneous movement of exchange of energies. Till he is fourteen, every child, apart from a few rare exceptions, is a little animal; he renews his energies spontaneously like an animal by means of the same activities and exchanges. But the mind introduces a disequilibrium in the being; spontaneous action is replaced by something that wants to know, to regulate, to decide, etc., and to get back this capacity to renew spontaneously ones energies, one must rise to a higher rung above the instincts, that is, from ordinary mental activity one must pass directly into Intuition.
  Yet there is a source of energy which, once discovered, never dries up, whatever the circumstances and the physical conditions in life. It is the energy that can be described as spiritual, that which is received not from below, from the depths of inconscience, but from above, from the supreme origin of men and the universe, from the all-powerful and eternal splendours of the superconscious. It is there, everywhere around us, penetrating everything and to enter into contact with it and receive it, it is sufficient to sincerely aspire for it, to open oneself to it in faith and confidence so as to enlarge ones consciousness for identifying it with the universal Consciousness.

1951-02-08 - Unifying the being - ideas of good and bad - Miracles - determinism - Supreme Will - Distinguishing the voice of the Divine, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There is a miracle because you do not give people time to see the procedure by which you do things, you do not show them the stages. Thus, some men have reached higher mental regions and do not need to follow step by step all the gradations of thought; they can jump from one idea to a far distant inference without the intermediary links; this is usually called Intuition (it is not altogether an Intuition; it is that the idea, to begin with, is at a great height and from there these people can see while descending the whole totality of things and consequences without passing through all the gradations as ordinary human thought is obliged to do). It is an experience I have had; when I used to speak with Sri Aurobindo, we never had the need to go through intermediary ideas; he said one thing and I saw the far off result; we used to talk always like that, and if a person had happened to be present at our conversations he would have said, What are they talking about! But for us, you know, it was as clear as a continuous sentence. You could call that a mental miracleit was not a miracle, it was simply that Sri Aurobindo had the vision of the totality of mental phenomena and hence we had no need to waste a good deal of time in going through all the gradations. For any person capable of following the line, the thing would have been quite natural and logical; for ignorant people it was a miracle.
   They [powers] have to be used in the same way as they came. They come by union with the Divine. They must be used by the will of the Divine and not for display.

1951-03-22 - Relativity- time - Consciousness - psychic Witness - The twelve senses - water-divining - Instinct in animals - story of Mothers cat, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The perception is different with each individual. For some, it is as though they saw the water; for others, as though they got the smell of water; and for others yet, it is a kind of Intuition from the mental field; but then it is not a physical perception, it is a sort of direct knowledge. There was a man here who used to say he smelt water; he had an instrument, but it was only a pretext. It is like a rod which bends, you know; try as you may to be as passive as possible, you will always make a slight movement when you have the feeling that something is there. I have tried this experiment many times: you give the rod to someone, you ask him to walk; you are silent, the man is silent, quite concentrated; then, suddenly, you think powerfully: Here there is water and hop! The rod makes a little movementit is quite evident that it is your suggestion. I had thought thus, without having the least idea that there was water there, simply to make an experiment; and in the hand of the dowser the rod came down; he had received the suggestion in his subconscient.
   If one is sufficiently quiet, the nerves can receive the vibrations of the water?

1951-04-12 - Japan, its art, landscapes, life, etc - Fairy-lore of Japan - Culture- its spiral movement - Indian and European- the spiritual life - Art and Truth, #Questions And Answers 1950-1951, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   You have said that Wagner had an Intuition of the occult and that to have spiritual power one must conquer sexuality. In fact, Wagner had the Intuition of this victory to be achieved, for in The Ring of the Niebelungen there is a treasure hidden at the bottom of a river. Three nymphs guard the treasure and to take it one must renounce all desire for love and woman.
   This is an old tradition in Nordic countries. But in his story it ends badly: the one who had to renounce the love of woman is drowned and it ends with the twilight of the gods.

1954-11-24 - Aspiration mixed with desire - Willing and desiring - Children and desires - Supermind and the higher ranges of mind - Stages in the supramental manifestation, #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  When he speaks of the higher ranges of the mind, one becomes aware that one very rarely lives in these places. It is very rare for one to be in this state of consciousness. On the contrary it is in what he calls the altogether ordinary mind, the mind of the ordinary man that we live. And to the ordinary consciousness the reason seems to belong to a very high region; and the reason for him is one of the average faculties of the human mind. There are mental regions very much higher than that, which he has described in detail. And it is quite certain that those correspondents, if they had... Suddenly they said that they were having wonderful supramental experiences, because one is rarely in these regions which lie beyond the reason, which are regions of direct perception, Intuition and other faculties of Intuition of the same kind, which go far beyond the reason; and these are still mental regions, they have nothing of the supramental.
  Mother, you said that between the supermind and the mind there are many stages, didn't you? And it is written that the next logical stage in the evolution of Nature is the superman. Why not a race which is...

1954-12-08 - Cosmic consciousness - Clutching - The central will of the being - Knowledge by identity, #Questions And Answers 1954, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Sweet Mother, to what plane does Intuition belong?
  It is one of those planes, one of those regions we were speaking about last time, which are intermediary between the higher mind and the Overmind.

1956-06-13 - Effects of the Supramental action - Education and the Supermind - Right to remain ignorant - Concentration of mind - Reason, not supreme capacity - Physical education and studies - inner discipline - True usefulness of teachers, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    Already in the process of spiritualisation it [the spiritualised mind] will have begun to pass out of the brilliant poverty of the human intellect; it will mount successively into the pure broad reaches of a higher mind and next into the gleaming belts of a still greater free intelligence illumined with a Light from above. At this point it will begin to feel more freely, admit with a less mixed response the radiant beginnings of an Intuition, not illumined, but luminous in itself, true in itself, no longer entirely mental and therefore subjected to the abundant intrusion of error. Here too is not an end, for it must rise beyond into the very domain of that untruncated Intuition, the first direct light from the self-awareness of essential Being and, beyond it, attain that from which this light comes. For there is an Overmind behind Mind, a Power more original and dynamic which supports Mind, sees it as a diminished radiation from itself, uses it as a transmitting belt of sage downward or an instrument for the creations of the Ignorance. The last step of the ascension would be the surpassing of Overmind itself or its return into its own still greater origin, its conversion into the supramental light of the Divine Gnosis.
    Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, pp. 138-39

1956-06-20 - Hearts mystic light, intuition - Psychic being, contact - Secular ethics - True role of mind - Realise the Divine by love - Depression, pleasure, joy - Heart mixture - To follow the soul - Physical process - remember the Mother, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  object:1956-06-20 - Hearts mystic light, Intuition - Psychic being, contact - Secular ethics - True role of mind - Realise the Divine by love - Depression, pleasure, joy - Heart mixture - To follow the soul - Physical process - remember the Mother
  author class:The Mother
  --
  But after that, Sri Aurobindo continues: which, if not what we call Intuition for that, though not of the mind, yet descends through the mindhas yet a direct touch upon Truth and is nearer to the Divine than the human intellect in its pride of knowledge. Is there a relation between this mystic light and Intuition?
  It is not Intuition. It is knowledge through love, light through love, understanding through love. Sri Aurobindo says that it is not Intuition, for Intuition belongs to the intellect at least in its expression, the expression of Intuition is intellectual. While this is a kind of direct knowledge almost by identity, which comes from love.
  And the inner oracle?

1956-12-05 - Even and objectless ecstasy - Transform the animal - Individual personality and world-personality - Characteristic features of a world-personality - Expressing a universal state of consciousness - Food and sleep - Ordered intuition, #Questions And Answers 1956, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  object:1956-12-05 - Even and objectless ecstasy - Transform the animal - Individual personality and world-personality - Characteristic features of a world-personality - Expressing a universal state of consciousness - Food and sleep - Ordered Intuition
  author class:The Mother
  --
    Transform reason into ordered Intuition; let all thyself be light. This is thy goal.
    Transform effort into an even and sovereign over-flowing of the soul-strength; let all thyself be conscious force. This is thy goal.
  --
  Mother, what does ordered Intuition mean? (Transform reason into ordered Intuition.)
  Ordered Intuition. For at the beginning, when one enters into contact with the realm of Intuition, it is a sort of spasmodic contact; that is, from time to time, for more or less explicable or conscious reasons, one suddenly has an Intuition or is possessed by the spirit of Intuition; but it is not methodical, not a phenomenon which occurs at will, organised and obeying a central will. But Sri Aurobindo says that if the entire reason is transformedhe speaks of transformation, you knowif the reason is transformed into the very essence, the substance of Intuition, then the whole inner movement of the inner mind becomes a movement of Intuition, organised as the reason is organised, that is, it becomes active at will, answers all needs and comes into the being in accordance with a methodical system. It is not something which appears and disappears one doesnt know how or why; it is the result of the transformation of the reason, which is the higher part of the human mind, into a light higher than the mental light, a light of Intuition. So it becomes ordered, organised, instead of being spasmodic and uncoordinated.
  ***

1958-07-23 - How to develop intuition - Concentration, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  object:1958-07-23 - How to develop Intuition - Concentration
  class:chapter
  --
  Mother, how can the faculty of Intuition be developed?
  There are different kinds of Intuition, and we carry these capacities within us. They are always active to some extent but we dont notice them because we dont pay enough attention to what is going on in us.
  Behind the emotions, deep within the being, in a consciousness seated somewhere near the level of the solar plexus, there is a sort of prescience, a kind of capacity for foresight, but not in the form of ideas: rather in the form of feelings, almost a perception of sensations. For instance, when one is going to decide to do something, there is sometimes a kind of uneasiness or inner refusal, and usually, if one listens to this deeper indication, one realises that it was justified.
  In other cases there is something that urges, indicates, insists I am not speaking of impulses, you understand, of all the movements which come from the vital and much lower stillindications which are behind the feelings, which come from the affective part of the being; there too one can receive a fairly sure indication of the thing to be done. These are forms of Intuition or of a higher instinct which can be cultivated by observation and also by studying the results. Naturally, it must be done very sincerely, objectively, without prejudice. If one wants to see things in a particular way and at the same time practise this observation, it is all useless. One must do it as if one were looking at what is happening from outside oneself, in someone else.
  It is one form of Intuition and perhaps the first one that usually manifests.
  There is also another form but that one is much more difficult to observe because for those who are accustomed to think, to act by reasonnot by impulse but by reasonto reflect before doing anything, there is an extremely swift process from cause to effect in the half-conscious thought which prevents you from seeing the line, the whole line of reasoning and so you dont think that it is a chain of reasoning, and that is quite deceptive. You have the impression of an Intuition but it is not an Intuition, it is an extremely rapid subconscious reasoning, which takes up a problem and goes straight to the conclusions. This must not be mistaken for Intuition.
  In the ordinary functioning of the brain, Intuition is something which suddenly falls like a drop of light. If one has the faculty, the beginning of a faculty of mental vision, it gives the impression of something coming from outside or above, like a little impact of a drop of light in the brain, absolutely independent of all reasoning.
  This is perceived more easily when one is able to silence ones mind, hold it still and attentive, arresting its usual functioning, as if the mind were changed into a kind of mirror turned towards a higher faculty in a sustained and silent attention. That too one can learn to do. One must learn to do it, it is a necessary discipline.
  When you have a question to solve, whatever it may be, usually you concentrate your attention here (pointing between the eyebrows), at the centre just above the eyes, the centre of the conscious will. But then if you do that, you cannot be in contact with Intuition. You can be in contact with the source of the will, of effort, even of a certain kind of knowledge, but in the outer, almost material field; whereas, if you want to contact the Intuition, you must keep this (Mother indicates the forehead) completely immobile. Active thought must be stopped as far as possible and the entire mental faculty must format the top of the head and a little further above if possiblea kind of mirror, very quiet, very still, turned upwards, in silent, very concentrated attention. If you succeed, you canperhaps not immediately but you can have the perception of the drops of light falling upon the mirror from a still unknown region and expressing themselves as a conscious thought which has no connection with all the rest of your thought since you have been able to keep it silent. That is the real beginning of the intellectual Intuition.
  It is a discipline to be followed. For a long time one may try and not succeed, but as soon as one succeeds in making a mirror, still and attentive, one always obtains a result, not necessarily with a precise form of thought but always with the sensations of a light coming from above. And then, if one can receive this light coming from above without entering immediately into a whirl of activity, receive it in calm and silence and let it penetrate deep into the being, then after a while it expresses itself either as a luminous thought or as a very precise indication here (Mother indicates the heart), in this other centre.
  Naturally, first these two faculties must be developed; then, as soon as there is any result, one must observe the result, as I said, and see the connection with what is happening, the consequences: see, observe very attentively what has come in, what may have caused a distortion, what one has added by way of more or less conscious reasoning or the intervention of a lower will, also more or less conscious; and it is by a very deep studyindeed, almost of every moment, in any case daily and very frequent that one succeeds in developing ones Intuition. It takes a long time. It takes a long time and there are ambushes: one can deceive oneself, take for Intuitions subconscious wills which try to manifest, indications given by impulses one has refused to receive openly, indeed all sorts of difficulties. One must be prepared for that. But if one persists, one is sure to succeed.
  And there comes a time when one feels a kind of inner guidance, something which is leading one very perceptibly in all that one does. But then, for the guidance to have its maximum power, one must naturally add to it a conscious surrender: one must be sincerely determined to follow the indication given by the higher force. If one does that, then one saves years of study, one can seize the result extremely rapidly. If one also does hat, the result comes very rapidly. But for that, it must be done with sincerity and a kind of inner spontaneity. If one wants to try without this surrender, one may succeedas one can also succeed in developing ones personal will and making it into a very considerable power but that takes a very long time and one meets many obstacles and the result is very precarious; one must be very persistent, obstinate, persevering, and one is sure to succeed, but only after a great labour.

1958-09-10 - Magic, occultism, physical science, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    Occultism is associated in popular idea with magic and magical formulas and a supposed mechanism of the supernatural. But this is only one side, nor is it altogether a superstition as is vainly imagined by those who have not looked deeply or at all at this covert side of secret Nature-Force or experimented with its possibilities. Formulas and their application, a mechanisation of latent forces, can be astonishingly effective in the occult use of mind-power and life-power just as it is in physical Science, but this is only a subordinate method and a limited direction. For mind and life forces are plastic, subtle and variable in their action and have not the material rigidity; they need a subtle and plastic Intuition in the knowledge of them, in the interpretation of their action and process and in their application,even in the interpretation and action of their established formulas. An overstress on mechanisation and rigid formulation is likely to result in sterilisation or a formalised limitation of knowledge and, on the pragmatic side, to much error, ignorant convention, misuse and failure. Now that we are outgrowing the superstition of the sole truth of Matter, a swing backward towards the old occultism and to new formulations, as well as to a scientific investigation of the still hidden secrets and powers of Mind and a close study of psychic and abnormal or supernormal psychological phenomena, is possible and, in parts, already visible. But if it is to fulfil itself, the true foundation, the true aim and direction, the necessary restrictions and precautions of this line of inquiry have to be rediscovered; its most important aim must be the discovery of the hidden truths and powers of the mind-force and the life-power and the greater forces of the concealed spirit. Occult science is, essentially, the science of the subliminal, the subliminal in ourselves and the subliminal in world-nature, and of all that is in connection with the subliminal, including the subconscient and the superconscient, and the use of it as part of self-knowledge and world-knowledge and for the right dynamisation of that knowledge.
    The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 875-77

1958-09-17 - Power of formulating experience - Usefulness of mental development, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    An intellectual approach to the highest knowledge, the minds possession of it, is an indispensable aid to this movement of Nature in the human being. Ordinarily, on our surface, mans chief instrument of thought and action is the reason, the observing, understanding and arranging intellect. In any total advance or evolution of the Spirit, not only the Intuition, insight, innefr sense, the hearts devotion, a deep and direct life-experience of the things of the Spirit have to be developed, but the intellect also must be enlightened and satisfied; our thinking and reflecting mind must be helped to understand, to form a reasoned and systematised idea of the goal, the method, the principles of this highest development and activity of our nature and the truth of all that lies behind it. Spiritual realisation and experience, an intuitive and direct knowledge, a growth of inner consciousness, a growth of the soul and of an intimate soul-perception, soul- vision and a soul-sense, are indeed the proper means of this evolution: but the support of the reflective and critical reason is also of great importance; if many can dispense with it, because they have a vivid and direct contact with inner realities and are satisfied with experience and insight, yet in the whole movement it is indispensable. If the supreme truth is a spiritual Reality, then the intellect of man needs to know what is the nature of that original Truth and the principle of its relations to the rest of existence, to ourselves and the universe. The intellect is not capable by itself of bringing us into touch with the concrete spiritual reality, but it can help by a mental formulation of the truth of the Spirit which explains it to the mind and can be applied even in the more direct seeking: this help is of a capital importance.
    The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 877-78
  --
  The mind, in its outermost form, is a means of action, an instrument for organisation and execution. It puts concepts in order, relates them to one another, draws conclusions for action from them and gives impulse to this action. This power of organisation and impulse to action can be produced directly by the spiritual force which takes hold of the mental consciousness without these processes of analysis, deduction, reasoning being necessary. In Intuition things already happen somewhat in this way; but spiritual intervention is, as it were, a super- Intuition, a direct expression of the vision, of the experience, of knowledge by identity.
  (Silence)
  There are many stages in this transformation and the first are like a kind of mental imitation of the movement. The whole process of analysis, reasoning, deduction and formulation of conclusions occurs almost spontaneously in a mental background and gives us the result which seems to us an Intuition but which is still the result of all that work which was carried out very swiftly and, as I said, in a sort of background of which we are not fully conscious, so that we see the starting-point and the result without following the whole process in detail, the whole development of the mental activity. People who have a very quick mind and can grasp things very fast, people whose mental activity is extremely swift, immediate, can give the impression that they have Intuition but this is only an outer form and almost an imitation of true Intuition. Intuition is already a direct vision, something that dispenses with reasoning and deduction. Through Intuition there is already an expression of direct knowledge.
  But before reaching this stage, all the experiences one has must pass through the ordinary mental method of observation, analysis and deduction in order to reach the outer consciousness. The very essence of the experience fades away and there remains only a sort of very dry husk which has lost all its power of realisationalmost, almost lost it.

1958 09 19, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   Some of the other questions concern the difference between inspiration and Intuition. They are not the same thing; but I think that we will have the opportunity of returning to this subject in the course of our reading. When Sri Aurobindo tells us what he considers Intuition to be, we shall come back to it.
   In a general and almost absolute way, if you truly wish to profit from these readings, as from all of Sri Aurobindos writings, the best method is this: having gathered your consciousness and focused your attention on what you are reading, you must establish a minimum of mental tranquillity the best thing would be to obtain perfect silence and achieve a state of immobility of the mind, immobility of the brain, I might say, so that the attention becomes as still and immobile as a mirror, like the surface of absolutely still water. Then what one has read passes through the surface and penetrates deep into the being where it is received with a minimum of distortion. Afterwards sometimes long afterwardsit wells up again from the depths and manifests in the brain with its full power of comprehension, not as knowledge acquired from outside, but as a light one carried within.

1958-09-24 - Living the truth - Words and experience, #Questions And Answers 1957-1958, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
    The means by which this need [of intellectual understanding] can be satisfied and with which our nature of mind has provided us is philosophy, and in this field it must be a spiritual philosophy. Such systems have arisen in numbers in the East; for almost always, wherever there has been a considerable spiritual development, there has arisen from it a philosophy justifying it to the intellect. The method was at first an intuitive seeing and an intuitive expression, as in the fathomless thought and profound language of the Upanishads, but afterwards there was developed a critical method, a firm system of dialectics, a logical organisation. The later philosophies were an intellectual account1 or a logical justification of what had been found by inner realisation; or they provided themselves with a mental ground or a systematised method for realisation and experience.2 In the West where the syncretic tendency of the consciousness was replaced by the analytic and separative, the spiritual urge and the intellectual reason parted company almost at the outset; philosophy took from the first a turn towards a purely intellectual and ratiocinative explanation of things. Nevertheless, there were systems like the Pythagorean, Stoic, and Epicurean, which were dynamic not only for thought but for conduct of life and developed a discipline, an effort at inner perfection of the being; this reached a higher spiritual plane of knowledge in later Christian or Neo-pagan thought-structures where East and West met together. But later on the intellectualisation became complete and the connection of philosophy with life and its energies or spirit and its dynamism was either cut or confined to the little that the metaphysical idea can impress on life and action by an abstract and secondary influence. Religion has supported itself in the West not by philosophy but by a credal theology; sometimes a spiritual philosophy emerges by sheer force of individual genius, but it has not been as in the East a necessary adjunct to every considerable line of spiritual experience and endeavour. It is true that a philosophic development of spiritual thought is not entirely indispensable; for the truths of spirit can be reached more directly and completely by Intuition and by a concrete inner contact. It must also be said that the critical control of the intellect over spiritual experience can be hampering and unreliable, for it is an inferior light turned upon a field of higher illumination; the true controlling power is an inner discrimination, a psychic sense and tact, a superior intervention of guidance from above or an innate and luminous inner guidance. But still this line of development too is necessary, because there must be a bridge between the spirit and the intellectual reason: the light of a spiritual or at least a spiritualised intelligence is necessary for the fullness of our total inner evolution, and without it, if another deeper guidance is lacking, the inner movement may be erratic and undisciplined, turbid and mixed with unspiritual elements or one-sided or incomplete in its catholicity. For the transformation of the Ignorance into the integral Knowledge the growth in us of a spiritual intelligence ready to receive a higher light and canalise it for all the parts of our nature is an intermediate necessity of great importance.
    The Life Divine, SABCL, Vol. 19, pp. 878-80

1960 01 27, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   There are many planes or zones of the mind, from the plane of the physical mind, the lower zone of ordinary thoughts, full of error and ignorance and falsehood, to the plane of the higher mind which receives, in the form of Intuitions, the rays of the supramental truth. Between these two extremes there is a gradation of countless intermediate planes that are superimposed one upon another and which influence each other. In one of the lower zones lies the practical reason, the common sense of which man is so proud and which, for ordinary minds, appears to be the expression of wisdom, although it still works wholly in the field of ignorance. To this region of practical reason belong the polysyllables of which Sri Aurobindo speaks, the common-places and clichs, all the ready-made phrases which run about in the mental atmosphere from one brain to another and which people repeat when they want to appear knowledgeable, or when they think themselves wise.
   Sri Aurobindo puts us on our guard against this trite and inferior way of thinking when we are faced with a new or unexpected phenomenon and try to explain it. He tells us to search always, untiringly, using our highest intelligence, the intelligence which thirsts to know the true cause of things, and to go on searching without being satisfied by facile and popular explanations, until we have discovered a more subtle and truer truth. Then at the same time we shall find that behind everything, even what seems to be chance and illusion, there is a conscious will at work to express the Supreme Vision.

1963 08 11? - 94, #On Thoughts And Aphorisms, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
   The only process that I have known, and which has been repeated several times during my life, is the renunciation of an error: something you believe to be truewhich probably was true for a timeon which you base part of your action, but which in fact was only an opinion. You thought that it was a true evaluation with all its logical consequences, and your actionpart of your actionwas based on that, and it all followed automatically; and suddenly, an experience, a circumstance or an Intuition, warns you that your evaluation is not as true as it looked. Then there is a whole period of observation, of studyor sometimes it comes like a revelation, a massive demonstration and not only the idea or the false knowledge, but all its consequences must be changedperhaps a whole way of acting on some point. And at that moment there is a kind of sensation, something akin to the sensation of renunciation, which means that you must break up a whole set of things which had been built sometimes it can be quite extensive, sometimes it is something very small, but the experience is the same: it is the movement of a force, a power that dissolves, and there is resistance from everything which has to be dissolved, from all the past habits; and it is this movement of dissolution, with its corresponding resistance, which is probably expressed in the ordinary human consciousness as a feeling of renunciation.
   I saw this very recentlyit is insignificant, these circumstances have no importance in themselves; they are interesting only in the context of the study. This is the only phenomenon that is familiar to me because it has been repeated several times in my life. As the being progresses, the power of dissolution increases, becomes more and more immediate and the resistance diminishes. But I have the memory of a period of maximum resistanceit was more than half a century agoand it was nothing but that, it was always something outside myselfnot outside my consciousness, but outside my will something which resisted the will. I have never had the feeling of having to renounce anything, but I have had the feeling of having to apply pressure on things to dissolve them. Whereas now, more and more, the pressure is imperceptible, it is immediate; as soon as the force to dissolve a whole set of things manifests, there is no resistance, everything dissolves; on the contrary, there is hardly any feeling of liberation there is something which is amused again and says: Oh, again! How many times one limits oneself. How many times you think that you are advancing, continuously, smoothly, uninterruptedly, and yet how many times you set a little limit in front of yourself. It is not a big limit, for it is a very small thing in an immense whole, but it is a small limit to your action. And so when the Force acts to dissolve the limit, at first you feel liberated, you are glad; but now, it is not even that, it is a smile. Because it is not a feeling of liberation, it is simply like removing a stone from your path so that you can go on.

1.A - ANTHROPOLOGY, THE SOUL, #Philosophy of Mind, #unset, #Zen
  But this abstract realization of the soul in its corporeal vehicle is not yet the self - not the existence of the universal which is for the universal. It is the corporeity reduced to its mere ideality; and so far only does corporeity belong to the soul as such. That is to say, just as space and time as the abstract oneoutside-another, as, therefore, empty space and empty time, are only subjective forms, a pure act of Intuition; so is that pure being (which, through the supersession in it of the particularity of the corporeity, or of the immediate corporeity as such, has realized itself) mere Intuition and no more, lacking consciousness, but the basis of consciousness. And consciousness it becomes, when the corporcity, of which it is the subjective substance, and which still continues to exist, and that as a barrier for it, has been absorbed by it, and it has been invested with the character of self-centred subject.
   410 The soul's making itself an abstract universal being, and reducing the particulars of feelings (and of consciousness) to a mere feature of its being is Habit. In this manner the soul has the contents in possession, and contains them in such manner that in these features it is not as sentient, nor does it stand in relationship with them as distinguishing itself from them, nor is absorbed in them, but has them and moves in them, without feeling or consciousness of the fact. The soul is freed from them, so far as it is not interested in or occupied with them: and whilst existing in these forms as its possession, it is at the same time open to be otherwise occupied and engaged - say with feeling and with mental consciousness in general.
  --
  The form of habit applies to all kinds and grades of mental action. The most external of them, i.e. the spatial direction of an individual, viz. his upright posture, has been by will made a habit - a position taken without adjustment and without consciousness - which continues to be an affair of his persistent will; for the man stands only because and in so far as he wills to stand, and only so long as he wills it without consciousness. Similarly our eyesight is the concrete habit which, without an express adjustment, combines in a single act the several modifications of sensation, consciousness, Intuition, intelligence, etc., which make it up. Thinking, too, however free and active in its own pure element it becomes, no less requires habit and familiarity (this impromptuity or form of immediacy), by which it is the property of my single self where I can freely and in all directions range. It is through this habit that I come to realize my existence as a thinking being. Even here, in this spontaneity of self-centred thought, there is a partnership of soul and body (hence, want of habit and too-long-continued thinking cause headache); habit diminishes this feeling, by making the natural function an immediacy of the
   soul. Habit on an ampler scale, and carried out in the strictly intellectual range, is recollection and memory, whereof we shall speak later.

1f.lovecraft - The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   meet him, but he yielded to no whim and deferred to no Intuition. There
   was nothing alive here to harm him, and he would not be stayed in his

1f.lovecraft - The Challenge from Beyond, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   no more, at least it offered no less. Intuition told him it offered
   moremuch more.

1f.lovecraft - The Last Test, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   Dalton suddenly felt a wave of Intuition warning him that Georgina must
   not receive that intended dose. There was something sinister about it.

1f.lovecraft - The Trap, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   my Intuition would have liked to imply, it could reject that stupendous
   conception no longer. What was fantasy in the tale of Alice now came

1f.lovecraft - The Tree on the Hill, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   the absurd Intuition and sat down, trying to collect my senses. Never
   had I dreamed anything so realistic; so horrifying. What had caused the

1f.lovecraft - The Unnamable, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   five senses or our religious Intuitions; wherefore it is quite
   impossible to refer to any object or spectacle which cannot be clearly

1f.lovecraft - Through the Gates of the Silver Key, #Lovecraft - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   individuality which had at first so horrified him. His Intuition pieced
   together the fragments of revelation, and brought him closer and closer

1.fua - Mysticism, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   English version by Coleman Barks Original Language Persian/Farsi The sun can only be seen by the light of the sun. The more a man or woman knows, the greater the bewilderment, the closer to the sun the more dazzled, until a point is reached where one no longer is. A mystic knows without knowledge, without Intuition or information, without contemplation or description or revelation. Mystics are not themselves. They do not exist in selves. They move as they are moved, talk as words come, see with sight that enters their eyes. I met a woman once and asked her where love had led her. "Fool, there's no destination to arrive at. Loved one and lover and love are infinite." [1841.jpg] -- from The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia, with Lectures by Inayat Khan, Translated by Coleman Barks <
1.jk - Sonnet To Homer, #Keats - Poems, #John Keats, #Poetry
  I understand the "giant ignorance" of line I to have reference to Keats's inability to enjoy Homer in the original Greek, and not to an entire ignorance of the Iliad and Odyssey such as might have characterized the period before the sonnet on Chapman's version was written in 1816. Indeed the second quatrain seems to me to be too well felt for so vague an attitude as Keats's must have been towards Homer before he knew any version at all; but the late Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose Intuitions in such matters were of the keenest, and entitled to the most careful consideration, held that the present sonnet must have preceded that of 1816, and received with considerable reserve the evidence as to the date which I communicated to him in the course of our correspondence. It will be of interest to many lovers both of Keats and of Rossetti to learn that the latter poet whom we have but lately lost considered this sonnet to contain Keats's finest single line of poetry --
  'There is a budding morrow in midnight,'

1.poe - Eureka - A Prose Poem, #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  "Now I do not quarrel with these ancients," continues the letter-writer, "so much on account of the transparent frivolity of their logic -which, to be plain, was baseless, worthless and fantastic altogether -as on account of their pompous and infatuate proscription of all other roads to Truth than the two narrow and crooked paths -the one of creeping and the other of crawling -to which, in their ignorant perversity, they have dared to confine the Soul -the Soul which loves nothing so well as to soar in those regions of illimitable Intuition which are utterly incognizant of 'path.'
  "By the bye, my dear friend, is it not an evidence of the mental slavery entailed upon those bigoted people by their Hogs and Rams, that in spite of the eternal prating of their savans about roads to Truth, none of them fell, even by accident, into what we now so distinctly perceive to be the broadest, the straightest and most available of all mere roads -the great thoroughfare -the majestic highway of the Consistent? Is it not wonderful that they should have failed to deduce from the works of God the vitally momentous consideration that a perfect consistency can be nothing but an absolute truth? How plain -how rapid our progress since the late announcement of this proposition! By its means, investigation has been taken out of the hands of the ground-moles, and given as a duty, rather than as a task, to the true -to the only true thinkers -to the generally-educated men of ardent imagination. These latter -our Keplers -our Laplaces -'speculate' -'theorize' -these are the terms can you not fancy the shout of scorn with which they would be received by our progenitors, were it possible for them to be looking over my shoulders as I write? The Keplers, I repeat, speculate -theorize and their theories are merely corrected -reduced -sifted -cleared, little by little, of their chaff of inconsistency -until at length there stands apparent an unencumbered Consistency -a consistency which the most stolid admit -because it is a consistency -to be an absolute and unquestionable TRuth.
  "I have often thought, my friend, that it must have puzzled these dogmaticians of a thousand years ago, to determine, even, by which of their two boasted roads it is that the cryptographist attains the solution of the more complicated cyphers -or by which of them Champollion guided mankind to those important and innumerable truths which, for so many centuries, have lain entombed amid the phonetical hieroglyphics of Egypt. In especial, would it not have given these bigots some trouble to determine by which of their two roads was reached the most momentous and sublime of their truths -the truth -the fact of gravitation? Newton deduced it from the laws of Kepler. Kepler admitted that these laws he guessed -these laws whose investigation disclosed to the greatest of British astronomers that principle, the basis of all (existing) physical principle, in going behind which we enter at once the nebulous kingdom of Metaphysics. Yes! -these vital laws Kepler guessed -that it is to say, he imagined them. Had he been asked to point out either the de ductive or in ductive route by which he attained them, his reply might have been -'I know nothing about routes -but I do know the machinery of the Universe. Here it is. I grasped it with my soul -I reached it through mere dint of Intuition.' Alas, poor ignorant old man! Could not any metaphysician have told him that what he called ' Intuition' was but the conviction resulting from de ductions or in ductions of which the processes were so shadowy as to have escaped his consciousness, eluded his reason, or bidden defiance to his capacity of expression? How great a pity it is that some 'moral philosopher' had not enlightened him about all this! How it would have comforted him on his death-bed to know that, instead of having gone intuitively and thus unbecomingly, he had, in fact, proceeded decorously and legitimately -that is to say Hog-ishly, or at least Ram-ishly -into the vast halls where lay gleaming, untended, and hitherto untouched by mortal hand -unseen by mortal eye -the imperishable and priceless secrets of the Universe!
  "Yes, Kepler was essentially a theorist; but this title, now of so much sanctity, was, in those ancient days, a designation of supreme contempt. It is only now that men begin to appreciate that divine old man -to sympathize with the prophetical and poetical rhapsody of his ever-memorable words. For my part," continues the unknown correspondent, "I glow with a sacred fire when I even think of them, and feel that I shall never grow weary of their repetition: in concluding this letter, let me have the real pleasure of transcribing them once again: -'I care not whether my work be read now or by posterity. I can afford to wait a century for readers when God himself has waited six thousand years for an observer. I triumph. I have stolen the golden secret of the Egyptians. I will indulge my sacred fury.'"
  --
  We have attained a point where only Intuition can aid us: -but now let me recur to the idea which I have already suggested as that alone which we can properly entertain of Intuition. It is but the conviction arising from those inductions or deductions of which the processes are so shadowy as to escape our consciousness, elude our reason, or defy our capacity of expression. With this understanding, I now assert -that an Intuition altogether irresistible, although inexpressible, forces me to the conclusion that what God originally created -that that Matter which, by dint of his Volition, he first made from his Spirit, or from Nihility, Could have been nothing but Matter in its utmost conceivable state of what? -of Simplicity?
  This will be found the sole absolute assumption of my Discourse. I use the word "assumption" in its ordinary sense; yet I maintain that even this my primary proposition, is very, very far indeed, from being really a mere assumption. Nothing was ever more certainly -no human conclusion was ever, in fact, more regularly -more rigorously de duced: -but, alas! the processes lie out of the human analysis -at all events are beyond the utterance of the human tongue.
  --
  The reversal of our processes has thus brought us to an identical result; but, while in the one process Intuition was the starting-point, in the other it was the goal. In commencing the former journey I could only say that, with an irresistable Intuition, I felt Simplicity to have been the characteristic of the original action of God: -in ending the latter I can only declare that, with an irresistible Intuition, I perceive Unity to have been the source of the observed phaenomena of the Newtonian gravitation. Thus, according to the schools, I prove nothing. So be it: -I design but to suggest-and to Convince through the suggestion. I am proudly aware that there exist many of the most profound and cautiously discriminative human intellects which cannot help being abundantly content with my -suggestions. To these intellects -as to my own -there is no mathematical demonstration which Could bring the least additional TRue proof of the great TRuth which I have advanced the truth of Original Unity as the source -as the principle of the Universal Phaenomena. For my part, I am not sure that I speak and see -I am not so sure that my heart beats and that my soul lives: of the rising of to-morrow's sun -a probability that as yet lies in the Future -I do not pretend to be one thousandth part as sure -as I am of the irretrievably by-gone Fact that All Things and All Thoughts of Things, with all their ineffable Multiplicity of Relation, sprang at once into being from the primordial and irrelative One.
  Referring to the Newtonian Gravity, Dr. Nichol, the eloquent author of "The Architecture of the Heavens," says: -"In truth we have no reason to suppose this great Law, as now revealed, to be the ultimate or simplest, and therefore the universal and all-comprehensive, form of a great Ordinance. The mode in which its intensity diminishes with the element of distance, has not the aspect of an ultimate principle; which always assumes the simplicity and self-evidence of those axioms which constitute the basis of Geometry."

1.poe - The Power Of Words Oinos., #Poe - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  demanded. Not even here is knowledge a thing of Intuition.
  For wisdom, ask of the angels freely, that it may be given!

1.rb - Paracelsus - Part V - Paracelsus Attains, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  Knowledgenot Intuition, but the slow
  Uncertain fruit of an enhancing toil,

1.rb - Pauline, A Fragment of a Question, #Browning - Poems, #Robert Browning, #Poetry
  Too trusted my vain self, vague Intuition
  Draining soul's wine alone in the still night,

1.tm - The Sowing of Meanings, #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
   Original Language English See the high birds! Is theirs the song That dies among the wood-light Wounding the listener with such bright arrows? Or do they play in wheeling silences Defining in the perfect sky The bounds of (here below) our solitude, Where spring has generated lights of green To glow in clouds upon the sombre branches? Ponds full of sky and stillnesses What heavy summer songs still sleep Under the tawny rushes at your brim? More than a season will be born here, nature, In your world of gravid mirrors! The quiet air awaits one note, One light, one ray and it will be the angels' spring: One flash, one glance upon the shiny pond, and then Asperges me! sweet wilderness, and lo! we are redeemed! For, like a grain of fire Smouldering in the heart of every living essence God plants His undivided power -- Buries His thought too vast for worlds In seed and root and blade and flower, Until, in the amazing light of April, Surcharging the religious silence of the spring, Creation finds the pressure of His everlasting secret Too terrible to bear. Then every way we look, lo! rocks and trees Pastures and hills and streams and birds and firmament And our own souls within us flash, and shower us with light, While the wild countryside, unknown, unvisited of men, Bears sheaves of clean, transforming fire. And then, oh then the written image, schooled in sacrifice, The deep united threeness printed in our being, Shot by the brilliant syllable of such an Intuition, turns within, And plants that light far down into the heart of darkness and oblivion, Dives after, and discovers flame. [1499.jpg] -- from Selected Poems of Thomas Merton, by Thomas Merton <
1.whitman - Passage To India, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
   Back, back to wisdom's birth, to innocent Intuitions,
   Again with fair Creation.

1.whitman - Thoughts, #Whitman - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  Of the rising forever taller and stronger and broader of the Intuitions of men and women, and of Self-esteem and Personality;
  Of the true New World--of the Democracies resplendent en-masse,

1.ww - Book Eleventh- France [concluded], #unset, #Arthur C Clarke, #Fiction
  This Intuition led me to confound
  One victory with another, higher far,--

1.ww - The Excursion- V- Book Fouth- Despondency Corrected, #Wordsworth - Poems, #unset, #Zen
  And Intuitions moral and divine)
  Fell Human-kind--to banishment condemned
  --
  A passionate Intuition; whence the Soul,
  Though bound to earth by ties of pity and love,

2.01 - Indeterminates, Cosmic Determinations and the Indeterminable, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Overmind consciousness is such a state or principle beyond individual mind, beyond even universal mind in the Ignorance; it carries in itself a first direct and masterful cognition of cosmic truth: here then we might hope to understand something of the original working of things, get some insight into the fundamental movements of cosmic Nature. One thing indeed becomes clear; it is self-evident here that both the individual and the cosmos come from a transcendent Reality which takes form in them: the mind and life of the individual being, its self in nature must therefore be a partial self-expression of the cosmic Being and, both through that and directly, a self-expression of the transcendent Reality, - a conditional and half-veiled expression it may be, but still that is its significance. But also we see that what the expression shall be is also determined by the individual himself: only what he can in his nature receive, assimilate, formulate, his portion of the cosmic being or of the Reality, can find shape in his mind and life and physical parts; something that derives from the Reality, something that is in the cosmos he expresses, but in the terms of his own self-expression, in the terms of his own nature. But the original question set out for us by the phenomenon of the universe is not solved by the Overmind knowledge, - the question, in this case, whether the building of thought, experience, world of perceptions of the mental Person, the mind Purusha, is truly a self-expression, a self-determination proceeding from some truth of his own spiritual being, a manifestation of that truth's dynamic possibilities, or whether it is not rather a creation or construction presented to him by Nature, by Prakriti, and only in the sense of being individualised in his personal formation of that Nature can it be said to be his own or dependent on him; or, again, it might be a play of a cosmic Imagination, a fantasia of the Infinite imposed on the blank indeterminable of his own eternal pure existence. These are the three views of creation that seem to have an equal chance of being right, and mind is incapable of definitely deciding between them; for each view is armed with its own mental logic and its appeal to Intuition and experience.
  Overmind seems to add to the perplexity, for the overmental view of things allows each possibility to formulate itself in its own independent right and realise its own existence in cognition, in dynamic self-presentation, in substantiating experience.
  --
  Our fundamental cognition of the Absolute, our substantial spiritual experience of it is the Intuition or the direct experience of an infinite and eternal Existence, an infinite and eternal Consciousness, an infinite and eternal Delight of Existence. In overmental and mental cognition it is possible to make discrete and even to separate this original unity into three self-existent aspects: for we can experience a pure causeless eternal Bliss so intense that we are that alone; existence, consciousness seem to be swallowed up in it, no longer ostensibly in presence; a similar experience of pure and absolute consciousness and a similar exclusive identity with it is possible, and there can be too a like identifying experience of pure and absolute existence. But to a supermind cognition these three are always an inseparable Trinity, even though one can stand in front of the others and manifest its own spiritual determinates; for each has its primal aspects or its inherent self-formations, but all of these together are original to the triune Absolute. Love, Joy and Beauty are the fundamental determinates of the Divine Delight of Existence, and we can see at once that these are of the very stuff and nature of that Delight: they are not alien impositions on the being of the Absolute or creations supported by it but outside it; they are truths of its being, native to its consciousness, powers of its force of existence. So too is it with the fundamental determinates of the absolute consciousness, - knowledge and will; they are truths and powers of the original Consciousness-Force and are inherent in its very nature. This au thenticity becomes still more evident when we regard the fundamental spiritual determinates of the absolute Existence; they are its triune powers, necessary first postulates for all its self-creation or manifestation, - Self, the Divine, the Conscious Being; Atman, Ishwara, Purusha.
  If we pursue the process of self-manifestation farther, we shall see that each of these aspects or powers reposes in its first action on a triad or trinity; for Knowledge inevitably takes its stand in a trinity of the Knower, the Known and Knowledge; Love finds itself in a trinity of the Lover, the Beloved and Love; Will is self-fulfilled in a trinity of the Lord of the Will, the object of the Will and the executive Force; Joy has its original and utter gladness in a trinity of the Enjoyer, the Enjoyed and the Delight that unites them; Self as inevitably appears and founds its manifestation in a trinity of Self as subject, Self as object and self-awareness holding together Self as subject-object.
  --
  At the stage when from the mental it has to move towards its supramental status, one most liberatingly helpful, if not indispensable experience that may intervene is the entry into a total Nirvana of mentality and mental ego, a passage into the silence of the Spirit. In any case, a realisation of the pure Self must always precede the transition to that mediating eminence of the consciousness from which a clear vision of the ascending and descending stairs of manifested existence is commanded and the possession of the free power of ascent and descent becomes a spiritual prerogative. An independent completeness of identity with each of the primal aspects and powers - not narrowing as in the mind into a sole engrossing experience seeming to be final and integral, for that would be incompatible with the realisation of the unity of all aspects and powers of existence is a capacity inherent in consciousness in the Infinite; that indeed is the base and justification of the overmind cognition and its will to carry each aspect, each power, each possibility to its independent fullness. But the Supermind keeps always and in every status or condition the spiritual realisation of the Unity of all; the intimate presence of that unity is there even within the completest grasp of each thing, each state given its whole delight of itself, power and value: there is thus no losing sight of the affirmative aspects even when there is the full acceptance of the truth of the negative. The Overmind keeps still the sense of this underlying Unity; that is for it the secure base of the independent experience. In Mind the knowledge of the unity of all aspects is lost on the surface, the consciousness is plunged into engrossing, exclusive separate affirmations; but there too, even in the Mind's ignorance, the total reality still remains behind the exclusive absorption and can be recovered in the form of a profound mental Intuition or else in the idea or sentiment of an underlying truth of integral oneness; in the spiritual mind this can develop into an ever-present experience.
  All aspects of the omnipresent Reality have their fundamental truth in the Supreme Existence. Thus even the aspect or power of Inconscience, which seems to be an opposite, a negation of the eternal Reality, yet corresponds to a Truth held in itself by the self-aware and all-conscious Infinite. It is, when we look closely at it, the Infinite's power of plunging the consciousness into a trance of self-involution, a self-oblivion of the Spirit veiled in its own abysses where nothing is manifest but all inconceivably is and can emerge from that ineffable latency. In the heights of Spirit this state of cosmic or infinite trance-sleep appears to our cognition as a luminous uttermost Superconscience: at the other end of being it offers itself to cognition as the Spirit's potency of presenting to itself the opposites of its own truths of being - an abyss of non-existence, a profound Night of inconscience, a fathomless swoon of insensibility from which yet all forms of being, consciousness and delight of existence can manifest themselves, - but they appear in limited terms, in slowly emerging and increasing self-formulations, even in contrary terms of themselves; it is the play of a secret all-being, all-delight, allknowledge, but it observes the rules of its own self-oblivion, self-opposition, self-limitation until it is ready to surpass it. This is the Inconscience and Ignorance that we see at work in the material universe. It is not a denial, it is one term, one formula of the infinite and eternal Existence.

2.01 - Mandala One, #Vedic and Philological Studies, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  (12) Saraswati awakens us by the Intuition conscious of theGreat Sea of the Light and illumines all our thoughts.
  ***

2.01 - On Books, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: It is by an Intuition and repetition of experience and not merely by reason that man finds that one is right and the other wrong.
   Now even the scientists have been forced to admit that their conclusions are not all based on reason. Their formulas have become like magic formulas.
  --
   The only books that have influenced me are the Gita and the Upanishads. What I wrote was the work of Intuition and inspiration working on the basis of my spiritual experience. I have no other technique like the modern philosopher whose philosophy I consider only intellectual and therefore of secondary value. Experience and formulation of experience I consider as the true aim of philosophy. The rest is merely intellectual work and may be interesting but nothing more.
   4 SEPTEMBER 1940

2.01 - THE ADVENT OF LIFE, #The Phenomenon of Man, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  disintegrates, the liquid boils, the germ cell divides, Intuition
  suddenly bursts on the piled up facts . . . Critical points have been
  --
  minds can reach reality. What escapes the Intuition of our senses
  we can encircle and define approximately by a series of indirect

2.01 - The Attributes of Omega Point - a Transcendent God, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  fondamental Intuition:
  'The world would justifiably and infallibly cease to act -

2.02 - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - Maya, Prakriti, Shakti, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But although thus indeterminable to Mind, because of its absoluteness and infinity, we discover that this Supreme and Eternal Infinite determines itself to our consciousness in the universe by real and fundamental truths of its being which are beyond the universe and in it and are the very foundation of its existence. These truths present themselves to our conceptual cognition as the fundamental aspects in which we see and experience the omnipresent Reality. In themselves they are seized directly, not by intellectual understanding but by a spiritual Intuition, a spiritual experience in the very substance of our consciousness; but they can also be caught at in conception by a large and plastic idea and can be expressed in some sort by a plastic speech which does not insist too much on rigid definition or limit the wideness and subtlety of the idea. In order to express this experience or this idea with any nearness a language has to be created which is at once intuitively metaphysical and revealingly poetic, admitting significant and living images as the vehicle of a close, suggestive and vivid indication, - a language such as we find hammered out into a subtle and pregnant massiveness in the Veda and the Upanishads. In the ordinary tongue of metaphysical thought we have to be content with a distant indication, an approximation by abstractions, which may still be of some service to our intellect, for it is this kind of speech which suits our method of logical and rational understanding; but if it is to be of real service, the intellect must consent to pass out of the bounds of a finite logic and accustom itself to the logic of the Infinite. On this condition alone, by this way of seeing and thinking, it ceases to be paradoxical or futile to speak of the Ineffable: but if we insist on applying a finite logic to the Infinite, the omnipresent Reality will escape us and we shall grasp instead an abstract shadow, a dead form petrified into speech or a hard incisive graph which speaks of the Reality but does not express it. Our way of knowing must be appropriate to that which is to be known; otherwise we achieve only a distant speculation, a figure of knowledge and not veritable knowledge.
  The supreme Truth-aspect which thus manifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence, self-awareness, self-delight of being; this founds all things and secretly supports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals itself again in three terms of its essential nature, self, conscious being or spirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more satisfactory, Brahman the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms grew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness, are capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and the rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept.
  The Supreme Brahman is that which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the same time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its forms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its embrace. The Upanishads affirm that all this is the Brahman; Mind is Brahman, Life is Brahman, Matter is Brahman; addressing Vayu, the Lord of Air, of Life, it is said "O Vayu, thou art manifest Brahman"; and, pointing to man and beast and bird and insect, each separately is identified with the One, "O Brahman, thou art this old man and boy and girl, this bird, this insect." Brahman is the Consciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the Force that sustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and animal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret Bliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could brea the or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in correspondence with each created form which it inhabits. The Lord of Beings is that which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in inconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are passive in the hands of ForceNature. He is the Timeless and Time; He is Space and all that is in Space; He is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is the thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his dice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman; Brahman is the Absolute, the Transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic Existence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but It is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal portion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has become the living being in a world of living beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the Brahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and Nature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his Consciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being, Soul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious self-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and omnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he manifests himself in Time and governs the universe. These and similar statements taken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and select, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within it; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our stand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge.
  --
  An instinct, an Intuition is needed which the intellect has not at its comm and and does not always listen to when it comes in of itself to help the mental working. But still more difficult must it be for our reason to understand and deal with the suprarational; the suprarational is the realm of the spirit, and in the largeness, subtlety, profundity, complexity of its movement the reason is lost; here Intuition and inner experience alone are the guide, or, if there is any other, it is that of which Intuition is only a sharp edge, an intense projected ray, - the final enlightenment must come from the suprarational Truth-consciousness, from a supramental vision and knowledge.
  But the being and action of the Infinite must not be therefore regarded as if it were a magic void of all reason; there is, on the contrary, a greater reason in all the operations of the Infinite, but it is not a mental or intellectual, it is a spiritual and supramental reason: there is a logic in it, because there are relations and connections infallibly seen and executed; what is magic to our finite reason is the logic of the Infinite. It is a greater reason, a greater logic because it is more vast, subtle, complex in its operations: it comprehends all the data which our observation fails to seize, it deduces from them results which neither our deduction nor
  --
  All this our reason cannot grasp because it is the instrument of an ignorance with a very limited vision and a small stock of accumulated and not always very certain or reliable knowledge and because too it has no means of direct awareness; for this is the difference between Intuition and intellect, that Intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect action of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown from signs and indications and gathered data. But what is not evident to our reason and senses, is self-evident to the Infinite Consciousness, and, if there is a Will of the Infinite, it must be a Will that acts in this full knowledge and is the perfect spontaneous result of a total self-evidence. It is neither a hampered evolutionary Force bound by what it has evolved nor an imaginative Will acting in the void upon a free caprice; it is the truth of the Infinite affirming itself in the determinations of the finite.
  It is evident that such a Consciousness and Will need not act in harmony with the conclusions of our limited reason or according to a procedure familiar to it and approved of by our constructed notions or in subjection to an ethical reason working for a limited and fragmentary good; it might and does admit things deemed by our reason irrational and unethical because that was necessary for the final and total Good and for the working out of a cosmic purpose. What seems to us irrational or reprehensible in relation to a partial set of facts, motives, desiderata might be perfectly rational and approvable in relation to a much vaster motive and totality of data and desiderata.
  Reason with its partial vision sets up constructed conclusions which it strives to turn into general rules of knowledge and action and it compels into its rule by some mental device or gets rid of what does not suit with it: an infinite Consciousness would have no such rules, it would have instead large intrinsic truths governing automatically conclusion and result, but adapting them differently and spontaneously to a different total of circumstances, so that by this pliability and free adaptation it might seem to the narrower faculty to have no standards whatever. In the same way, we cannot judge of the principle and dynamic operation of infinite being by the standards of finite existence, - what might be impossible for the one would be normal and self-evidently natural states and motives for the greater freer Reality. It is this that makes the difference between our fragmentary mind consciousness constructing integers out of its fractions and an essential and total consciousness, vision and knowledge. It is not indeed possible, so long as we are compelled to use reason as our main support, for it to abdicate altogether in favour of an undeveloped or half-organised Intuition; but it is imperative on us in a consideration of the Infinite and its being and action to enforce on our reason an utmost plasticity and open it to an awareness of the larger states and possibilities of that which we are striving to consider. It will not do to apply our limited and limiting conclusions to That which is illimitable. If we concentrate only on one aspect and treat it as the whole, we illustrate the story of the blind men and the elephant; each of the blind inquirers touched a different part and concluded that the whole animal was some object resembling the part of which he had had the touch. An experience of some one aspect of the Infinite is valid in itself; but we cannot generalise from it that the Infinite is that alone, nor would it be safe to view the rest of the Infinite in the terms of that aspect and exclude all other view-points of spiritual experience. The Infinite is at once an essentiality, a boundless totality and a multitude; all these have to be known in order to know truly the Infinite. To see the parts alone and the totality not at all or only as a sum of the parts is a knowledge, but also at the same time an ignorance; to see the totality alone and ignore the parts is also a knowledge and at the same time an ignorance, for a part may be greater than the whole because it belongs to the transcendence; to see the essence alone because it takes us back straight towards the transcendence and negate the totality and the parts is a penultimate knowledge, but here too there is a capital ignorance. A whole knowledge must be there and the reason must become plastic enough to look at all sides, all aspects and seek through them for that in which they are one.
  Thus too, if we see only the aspect of self, we may concentrate on its static silence and miss the dynamic truth of the Infinite; if we see only the Ishwara, we may seize the dynamic truth but miss the eternal status and the infinite silence, become aware of only dynamic being, dynamic consciousness, dynamic delight of being, but miss the pure existence, pure consciousness, pure bliss of being. If we concentrate on Purusha-Prakriti alone, we may see only the dichotomy of Soul and Nature, Spirit and Matter, and miss their unity. In considering the action of the Infinite we have to avoid the error of the disciple who thought of himself as the Brahman, refused to obey the warning of the elephant-driver to budge from the narrow path and was taken up by the elephant's trunk and removed out of the way; "You are no doubt the Brahman," said the master to his bewildered disciple, "but why did you not obey the driver Brahman and get out of the path of the elephant Brahman?" We must not commit the mistake of emphasising one side of the Truth and concluding from it or acting upon it to the exclusion of all other sides and aspects of the Infinite. The realisation "I am That" is true, but we cannot safely proceed on it unless we realise also that all is That; our self-existence is a fact, but we must also be aware of other selves, of the same Self in other beings and of That which exceeds both own-self and other-self. The Infinite is one in a multiplicity and its action is only seizable by a supreme Reason which regards all and acts as a one-awareness that observes itself in difference and respects its own differences, so that each thing and each being has its form of essential being and its form of dynamic nature, svarupa, svadharma, and all are respected in the total working. The knowledge and action of the Infinite is one in an unbound variability: it would be from the point of view of the infinite Truth equally an error to insist either on a sameness of action in all circumstances or on a diversity of action without any unifying truth and harmony behind the diversity. In our own principle of conduct, if we sought to act in this greater Truth, it would be equally an error to insist on our self alone or to insist on other selves alone; it is the Self of all on which we have to found a unity of action and a total, infinitely plastic yet harmonious diversity of action; for that is the nature of the working of the Infinite.

2.02 - Indra, Giver of Light, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   in the universal Purusha and, when man is produced, expresses himself again as sense-mentality in the human being. For delight is the raison d'etre of sensation, or, we may say, sensation is an attempt to translate the secret delight of existence into the terms of physical consciousness. But in that consciousness, - often figured as adri, the hill, stone, or dense substance, - divine light and divine delight are both of them concealed and confined, and have to be released or extracted. Ananda is retained as rasa, the sap, the essence, in sense-objects and sense-experiences, in the plants and growths of the earth-nature, and among these growths the mystic Soma-plant symbolises that element behind all sense activities and their enjoyments which yields the divine essence. It has to be distilled and, once distilled, purified and intensified until it has grown luminous, full of radiance, full of swiftness, full of energy, gomat, asu, yuvaku. It becomes the chief food of the gods who, called to the Soma-oblation, take their share of the enjoyment and in the strength of that ecstasy increase in man, exalt him to his highest possibilities, make him capable of the supreme experiences. Those who do not give the delight in them as an offering to the divine Powers, preferring to reserve themselves for the sense and the lower life, are adorers not of the gods, but of the Panis, lords of the senseconsciousness, traffickers in its limited activities, they who press not the mystic wine, give not the purified offering, raise not the sacred chant. It is the Panis who steal from us the Rays of the illumined consciousness, those brilliant herds of the sun, and pen them up in the cavern of the subconscient, in the dense hill of matter, corrupting even Sarama, the hound of heaven, the luminous Intuition, when she comes on their track to the cave of the Panis.
  But the conception of this hymn belongs to a stage in our inner progress when the Panis have been exceeded and even the Vritras or Coverers who seclude from us our full powers and activities and Vala who holds back the Light, are already overpassed. But there are even then powers that stand in the way of our perfection. They are the powers of limitation, the

2.02 - On Letters, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   These classifications are there as steps and as general guidance. Once you have the experience you can have your own classification for guidance. Of course, general things about the physical, the vital which everybody can experience and which are the same for all can be given in book-form; or when the higher experiences come, for instance, Intuition and Revelation, etc., then you can know them yourself.
   Disciple: Once it seems the Divine Mother came to Ramakrishna with a golden body, and told him to take it. But he said, "No. I don't want it," and then later he said: "Suppose I kept it, then all people would rush to me."
   Sri Aurobindo: Was he afraid of that? In Ramakrishna you find clear Intuition, and revelations of the higher order within a limited area, they are not of the universal kind. In this Yoga one has to go beyond conventional ideas and also to have a mind which is elastic.
   In the jail I was proceeding by the old method and I found all the conventional ideas were broken. For eight or ten days all sorts of ideas, of cruelty, hatred, and other disgusting thoughts came till the mind ceased to give any reaction to them and then all old ideas were broken. You can't have the Higher Consciousness unless the mind is very elastic and open and receptive.
  --
   There are people who follow up their Intuition or inspiration and turn out solid work like J. C. Bose.
   Disciple: At the time of the non-cooperation Dr. P. C. Ray came forward enthusiastically and joined the movement. But J. C. Bose said that if he was to do service to India he could only do it through his scientific work.

2.02 - Surrender, Self-Offering and Consecration, #Questions And Answers 1929-1931, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Surrender is the decision taken to hand over the responsibility of your life to the Divine. Without this decision nothing is at all possible; if you do not surrender, the Yoga is entirely out of the question. Everything else comes naturally after it, for the whole process starts with surrender. You can surrender either through knowledge or through devotion. You may have a strong Intuition that the Divine alone is the truth and a luminous conviction that without the Divine you cannot manage. Or you may have a spontaneous feeling that this line is the only way of being happy, a strong psychic desire to belong exclusively to the Divine: I do not belong to myself, you say, and give up the responsibility of your being to the Truth. Then comes self-offering: Here I am, a creature of various qualities, good and bad, dark and enlightened. I offer myself as I am to you, take me up with all my ups and downs, conflicting impulses and tendenciesdo whatever you like with me. In the course of your self-offering, you start unifying your being around what has taken the first decision the central psychic will. All the jarring elements of your nature have to be harmonised, they have to be taken up one after another and unified with the central being. You may offer yourself to the Divine with a spontaneous movement, but it is not possible to give yourself effectively without this unification. The more you are unified, the more you are able to realise self-giving. And once the self-giving is complete, consecration follows: it is the crown of the whole process of realisation, the last step of the gradation, after which there is no more trouble and everything runs smoothly. But you must not forget that you cannot become integrally consecrated at once. You are often deluded into such a belief when, for a day or two, you have a strong movement of a particular kind. You are led to hope that everything else will automatically follow in its wake; but in fact if you become the least bit self-complacent you retard your own advance. For your being is full of innumerable tendencies at war with one anotheralmost different personalities, we may say. When one of them gives itself to the Divine, the others come up and refuse their allegiance. We have not given ourselves, they cry, and start clamouring for their independence and expression. Then you bid them be quiet and show them the Truth. Patiently you have to go round your whole being, exploring each nook and corner, facing all those anarchic elements in you which are waiting for their psychological moment to come up. And it is only when you have made the entire round of your mental, vital and physical nature, persuaded everything to give itself to the Divine and thus achieved an absolute unified consecration that you put an end to your difficulties. Then indeed yours is a glorious walk towards transformation, for you no longer go from darkness to knowledge but from knowledge to knowledge, light to light, happiness to happiness. The complete consecration is undoubtedly not an easy matter, and it might take an almost indefinitely long time if you had to do it all by yourself, by your own independent effort. But when the Divines Grace is with you it is not exactly like that. With a little push from the Divine now and then, a little push in this direction and in that, the work becomes comparatively quite easy. Of course the length of time depends on each individual, but it can be very much shortened if you make a really firm resolve. Resolution is the one thing requiredresolution is the master-key.
  ***

2.02 - The Ishavasyopanishad with a commentary in English, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  luminously & distinctly by sheer Intuition and whose divinations
  become, by their own overflow, creations. Paramatman as SatBrahma-Hiranyagarbha has this divine quality of poethood, -

2.03 - Indra and the Thought-Forces, #The Secret Of The Veda, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Vedic psychology is not restricted to the seat of the emotions; it includes all that large tract of spontaneous mentality, nearest to the subconscient in us, out of which rise the sensations, emotions, instincts, impulses and all those Intuitions and inspirations
  Also found in the form br.h (Brihaspati, Brahmanaspati); and there seem to have been older forms, br.han and brahan. It is from brahan (gen. brahnas) that, in all probability, we have the Greek phren, phrenos, signifying mind.

2.03 - Karmayogin A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad, #Isha Upanishad, #unset, #Zen
  the Waking State on gross matter. His mental and Intuitional processes were found to operate freely and perfectly in subtle matter,
  but in gross matter with a hampered and imperfect activity; they
  --
  reason and Intuition, its superstructure, and culminates spiritually in self-knowledge and the awareness of one's own eternal
  and unabridged reality. The third characteristic of consciousness

2.03 - On Medicine, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: It ultimately becomes inspiration, when it ascends higher. The purer it becomes the nearer it gets to Truth. For instance, in the case of poets, generally it is the inspired imagination that works. What you meant to say about the scientist was perhaps Intuition.
   (After a pause) The capital period of my intellectual development was when I could see clearly that what the intellect said might be correct and not correct, that what the intellect justified was true and its opposite also was true. I never admitted a truth in the mind without simultaneously keeping it open to the contrary of it.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: There is no argument advanced against Abraham's theory. I am sure his Intuition is correct and it will be much more easily worked out by him when the science and experiment are settled so that anyone can do the thing. But, generally, in a discovery a man works by an Intuition and the man who first sees the thing can very easily work it out.
   I am also pretty sure that the idea that diseases are due to electrical vibrations and that they can be cured by producing certain other more powerful vibrations is also correct.
  --
   That is the difficulty: to isolate the true Intuition from the mixture mental as well as vital. It would be quite another matter if one could keep the mind completely passive. But, evidently, that is impossible. The mind enters so much and also the vital being they are both great and active creators.
   Disciple: But what you see on the vital plane in that state is it true?
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: Why not? How do you know they are not correct? Many sciences are built up by experience and Intuition. They are handed down by tradition; for example, the Chinese method of treatment by finding and pricking the nerve-centres.
   Disciple: It is said of Dhanvantari, the father of Ayurveda, that he came to know the medicinal properties of plants by Intuition. He would, it seems, stand before a plant and question the plant and it would reveal its properties to him.
   Sri Aurobindo (smiling) : He was the physician of the Gods and so nothing is unnatural for him. (Laughter)
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: Why! Anatomy and surgery were known to Indians. There were many surgical instruments in India. For an ancient system like the Ayurveda I doubt if the modern method of teaching would do. Modern methods make the whole subject too mental, too intellectual, while the ancient systems were more Intuitional. These subjects used to be handed down from Guru to disciple. The same is true of Yoga. One can't think of schools and colleges and studies of Yoga. That would be an American idea. The centre of Yoga teaching in America has been holding classes and giving lectures and courses.
   Disciple: Perhaps Hatha Yoga can be taught that way.

2.03 - The Christian Phenomenon and Faith in the Incarnation, #Let Me Explain, #Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, #Christianity
  the road of reason, each of our successive Intuitions operating
  within the scientific framework of 'hypothesis'. From the

2.03 - The Eternal and the Individual, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Our mistake is that in trying to define the indefinable we think we have succeeded when we have described by an allexclusive negation this Absolute which we are yet compelled to conceive of as a supreme positive and the cause of all positives. It is not surprising that so many acute thinkers, with their eye on the facts of being and not on verbal distinctions, should be driven to infer that the Absolute is a fiction of the intelligence, an idea born of words and verbal dialectics, a zero, non-existent, and to conclude that an eternal Becoming is the only truth of our existence. The ancient sages spoke indeed ofBrahman negatively, - they said of it, neti neti, it is not this, it is not that, - but they took care also to speak of it positively; they said of it too, it is this, it is that, it is all: for they saw that to limit it either by positive or negative definitions was to fall away from its truth. Brahman, they said, is Matter, is Life, is Mind, is Supermind, is cosmic Delight, is Sachchidananda; yet it cannot really be defined by any of these things, not even by our largest conception of Sachchidananda. In the world as we see it, for our mental consciousness however high we carry it, we find that to every positive there is a negative. But the negative is not a zero, - indeed whatever appears to us a zero is packed with force, teeming with power of existence, full of actual or potential contents. Neither does the existence of the negative make its corresponding positive non-existent or an unreality; it only makes the positive an incomplete statement of the truth of things and even, we may say, of the positive's own truth. For the positive and the negative exist not only side by side, but in relation to each other and by each other; they complete and would to the all-view, which a limited mind cannot reach, explain one another. Each by itself is not really known; we only begin to know it in its deeper truth when we can read into it the suggestions of its apparent opposite. It is through such a profounder catholic Intuition and
   not by exclusive logical oppositions that our intelligence ought to approach the Absolute.

2.03 - The Purified Understanding, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But the term buddhi is also used in another and profounder sense. The intellectual understanding is only the lower hhddhi; there is another and a higher buddhi which is not intelligence but vision, is not understanding but rather an over-standings297 in knowledge, and does not seek knowledge and attain it in subjection to the data it observes but possesses already the truth and brings it out in the terms of a revelatory and Intuitional thought. The nearest the human mind usually gets to this truth-conscious knowledge is that imperfect action of illumined finding which occurs when there is a great stress of thought and the intellect electrified by constant discharges from behind the veil and yielding to a higher enthusiasm admits a considerable instreaming from the intuitive and inspired faculty of knowledge. For there is an intuitive mind in man which serves as a recipient and channel for these instreamings from a supramental faculty. But the action of Intuition and inspiration in us is imperfect in kind as well as intermittent in action; ordinarily, it comes in response to a claim from the labouring and struggling heart or intellect and, even before its givings enter the conscious mind, they are already affected by the thought or aspiration which went up to meet them, are no longer pure but altered to the needs of the heart or intellect; and after they enter the conscious mind, they are immediately seized upon by the intellectual understanding and dissipated or broken up so as to fit in with our imperfect intellectual knowledge, or by the heart and remoulded to suit our blind or half-blind emotional longings and preferences, or even by the lower cravings and distorted to the vehement uses of our hungers and passions.
  If this higher Buddhi could act pure of the interference of these lower members, it would give pure forms of the truth; observation would be dominated or replaced by a vision which could see without subservient dependence on the testimony of the sense-mind and senses; imagination would give place to the self-assured inspiration of the truth, reasoning to the spontaneous discernment of relations and conclusion from reasoning to an Intuition containing in itself those relations and not building laboriously upon them, judgment to a thought-vision in whose light the truth would stand revealed without the mask which it now wears and which our intellectual judgment has to penetrate; while memory too would take upon itself that larger sense given to it in Greek thought and be no longer a paltry selection from the store gained by the individual in his present life, but rather the all-recording knowledge which secretly holds and constantly gives from itself everything that we now seem painfully to acquire but really in this sense remember, a knowledge which includes the future298a no less than the past. Certainly, we are intended to grow in our receptivity to this higher faculty of truth-conscious knowledge, but its full and unveiled use is as yet the privilege of the gods and beyond our present human stature.
  We see then what we mean precisely by the understanding and by that higher faculty which we may call for the sake of convenience the ideal faculty and which stands to the developed intellect much in the same relation as the intellect stands to the half-animal reason of the undeveloped man. It becomes evident also what is the nature of the purification which is necessary before the understanding can fulfil rightly its part in the attainment of right knowledge. All impurity is a confusion of working, a departure from the dharma, the just and inherently right action of things which in that right action are pure and helpful to our perfection and this departure is usually the result of an ignorant confusion298b of Dharmas in which the function lends itself to the demand of other tendencies than those which are properly its own.
  --
  In the first place we have seen that intellectual thought is in itself inadequate and is not the highest thinking; the highest is that which comes through the intuitive mind and from the supramental faculty. So long as we are dominated by the intellectual habit and by the lower workings, the intuitive mind can only send its messages to us subconsciously and subject to a distortion more or less entire before it reaches the conscious mind; or if it works consciously, then only with an inadequate rarity and a great imperfection in its functioning. In order to streng then the higher knowledge-faculty in us we have to effect the same separation between the intuitive and intellectual elements of our thought as we have already effected between the understanding and the sense-mind; and this is no easy task, for not only do our Intuitions come to us incrusted in the intellectual action, but there are a great number of mental workings which masquerade and ape the appearances of the higher faculty. The remedy is to train first the intellect to recognise the true intuilion, to distinguish it from the false and then to accustom it, when it arrives at an intellectual perception or conclusion, to attach no final value to it, but rather look upward, refer all to the divine principle and wait in as complete a silence as it can comm and for the light from above. In this way it is possible to transmute a great part of our intellectual thinking into the luminous truth-conscious vision, -- the ideal would be a complete transition, -- or at least to increase greatly the frequency, purity and conscious force of the ideal knowledge working behind the intellect. The latter must learn to be subject and passive to the ideal faculty.
  But for the knowledge of the Self it is necessary to have the power of a complete intellectual passivity, the power of dismissing all thought, the power of the mind to think not at all which the Gita in one passage enjoins. This is a hard saying for the occidental mind to which thought is the highest thing and which will be apt to mistake the power of the mind not to think, its complete silence for the incapacity of thought. But this power of silence is a capacity and not an incapacity, a power and not a weakness. It is a profound and pregnant stillness. Only when the mind is thus entirely still, like clear, motionless and level water, in a perfect purity and peace of the whole being and the soul transcends thought, can the Self which exceeds and originates all activities and becomings, the Silence from which all words are born, the Absolute of which all relativities are partial reflections manifest itself in the pure essence of our being. In a complete silence only is the Silence heard; in a pure peace only is its Being revealed. Therefore to us the name of That is the Silence and the Peace.

2.04 - The Divine and the Undivine, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But these conclusions are only first reasonings or primary Intuitions founded on our inner self-experience and the apparent facts of universal existence. They cannot be entirely validated unless we know the real cause of ignorance, imperfection and suffering and their place in the cosmic purpose or cosmic order.
  There are three propositions about God and the world, - if we admit the Divine Existence, - to which the general reason and consciousness of mankind bear witness; but, one of the three,

2.05 - Apotheosis, #The Hero with a Thousand Faces, #Joseph Campbell, #Mythology
  there lies a profound Intuition, world-redeeming, world-sustaining.
  The pause on the threshold of Nirvana, the resolution to forego
  --
  etic Intuition. Called too "the abode of vacancy," it is devoid of
  ornamentation. Temporarily it contains a single picture or

2.05 - On Poetry, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: It is poetry on the plane of Intuitional vision. There are rhythm, force and other elements of poetry in it, but the psychic element is not so prominent. It is from a plane much higher than the mental. It moves by vision on the plane of Intuition, though there are passages in which you may find the psychic element. It is a wide and calm plane, it also moves you but not in the same way as the poetry which contains the psychic feeling. It has got its own depth but psychic poetry differs from it in its depth and feeling.
   Disciple: Is it true that psychic poetry would be more personal?

2.05 - The Cosmic Illusion; Mind, Dream and Hallucination, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Our waking state is unaware of its connection with the subliminal being, although it receives from it - but without any knowledge of the place of origin - the inspirations, Intuitions, ideas, will-suggestions, sense-suggestions, urges to action that rise from below or from behind our limited surface existence.
  Sleep like trance opens the gate of the subliminal to us; for in sleep, as in trance, we retire behind the veil of the limited waking personality and it is behind this veil that the subliminal has its existence. But we receive the records of our sleep experience through dream and in dream figures and not in that condition which might be called an inner waking and which is the most accessible form of the trance state, nor through the supernormal clarities of vision and other more luminous and concrete ways of communication developed by the inner subliminal cognition when it gets into habitual or occasional conscious connection with our waking self. The subliminal, with the subconscious as an annexe of itself, - for the subconscious is also part of the behind-the-veil entity, - is the seer of inner things and of supraphysical experiences; the surface subconscious is only a transcriber. It is for this reason that the Upanishad describes the subliminal being as the Dream Self because it is normally in dreams, visions, absorbed states of inner experience that we enter into and are part of its experiences, - just as it describes the superconscient as the Sleep Self because normally all mental or sensory experiences cease when we enter this superconscience.
  --
  If this is a true account of dream experience, dreams can no longer be classed as a mere unreal figure of unreal things temporarily imposed upon our half-unconsciousness as a reality; the analogy therefore fails even as an illustrative support for the theory of the cosmic Illusion. It may be said, however, that our dreams are not themselves realities but only a transcript of reality, a system of symbol-images, and our waking experience of the universe is similarly not a reality but only a transcript of reality, a series or collection of symbol-images. It is quite true that primarily we see the physical universe only through a system of images impressed or imposed on our senses and so far the contention is justified; it may also be admitted that in a certain sense and from one view-point our experiences and activities can be considered as symbols of a truth which our lives are trying to express but at present only with a partial success and an imperfect coherence. If that were all, life might be described as a dream-experience of self and things in the consciousness of the Infinite. But although our primary evidence of the objects of the universe consists of a structure of sense images, these are completed, validated, set in order by an automatic Intuition in the consciousness which immediately relates the image with the thing imaged and gets the tangible experience of the object, so that we are not merely regarding or reading a translation or sense-transcript of the reality but looking through the senseimage to the reality. This adequacy is amplified too by the action
  The Cosmic Illusion
  --
   of a reason which fathoms and understands the law of things sensed and can observe scrupulously the sense-transcript and correct its errors. Therefore we may conclude that we experience a real universe through our imaged sense-transcript by the aid of the Intuition and the reason, - an Intuition which gives us the touch of things and a reason which investigates their truth by its conceptive knowledge. But we must note also that even if our image view of the universe, our sense-transcript, is a system of symbol images and not an exact reproduction or transcription, a literal translation, still a symbol is a notation of something that is, a transcript of realities. Even if our images are incorrect, what they endeavour to image are realities, not illusions; when we see a tree or a stone or an animal, it is not a non-existent figure, a hallucination that we are seeing; we may not be sure that the image is exact, we may concede that other-sense might very well see it otherwise, but still there is something there that justifies the image, something with which it has more or less correspondence. But in the theory of Illusion the only reality is an indeterminable featureless pure Existence, Brahman, and there is no possibility of its being translated or mistranslated into a system of symbol-figures, for that could only be if this Existence had some determinate contents or some unmanifested truths of its being which could be transcribed into the forms or names given to them by our consciousness: a pure Indeterminable cannot be rendered by a transcript, a multitude of representative differentiae, a crowd of symbols or images; for there is in it only a pure Identity, there is nothing to transcribe, nothing to symbolise, nothing to image. Therefore the dream analogy fails us altogether and is better put out of the way; it can always be used as a vivid metaphor of a certain attitude our mind can take towards its experiences, but it has no value for a metaphysical inquiry into the reality and fundamental significances or the origin of existence.
  If we take up the analogy of hallucination, we find it hardly more helpful for a true understanding of the theory of cosmic
  --
  This at once raises the question of the nature of Mind, the parent of these illusions, and its relation to the original Existence. Is mind the child and instrument of an original Illusion, or is it itself a primal miscreating Force or Consciousness? or is the mental ignorance a misprision of the truths of Existence, a deviation from an original Truth-Consciousness which is the real world-builder? Our own mind, at any rate, is not an original and primary creative power of Consciousness; it is, and all mind of the same character must be, derivative, an instrumental demiurge, an intermediary creator. It is likely then that analogies from the errors of mind, which are the outcome of an intermediate Ignorance, may not truly illustrate the nature or action of an original creative Illusion, an all-inventing and all-constructing Maya. Our mind stands between a superconscience and an inconscience and receives from both these opposite powers: it stands between an occult subliminal existence and an outward cosmic phenomenon; it receives inspirations, Intuitions, imaginations, impulsions to knowledge and action, figures of subjective realities or possibilities from the unknown inner source; it receives the figures of realised actualities and their suggestions of further possibility from the observed cosmic phenomenon. What it receives are truths essential, possible or actual; it starts from the realised actualities of the physical universe and it brings out from them in its subjective action the unrealised possibilities which they contain or suggest or to which it can arrive by proceeding from them as a starting-point: it selects some out of these possibilities for a subjective action and plays with imagined or inwardly constructed forms of them; it chooses others for objectivisation and attempts to realise them.
  But it receives inspirations also from above and within, from invisible sources and not only from the impacts of the visible cosmic phenomenon; it sees truths other than those suggested by the actual physicality around it, and here too it plays subjectively with transmitted or constructed forms of these truths or it selects for objectivisation, attempts to realise.
  --
  Again, when we look into the origin of mental error, we find normally that it is a miscombination, misplacement, misuse, misunderstanding or misapplication of elements of experience and knowledge. Imagination itself is in its nature a substitute for a truer consciousness's faculty of Intuition of possibility: as the mind ascends towards the truth-consciousness, this mental power becomes a truth imagination which brings the colour and light of the higher truth into the limited adequacy or inadequacy of the knowledge already achieved and formulated and, finally, in the transforming light above it gives place wholly to higher truth-powers or itself turns into Intuition and inspiration; the
  Mind in that uplifting ceases to be a creator of delusions and an architect of error. Mind then is not a sovereign creator of things non-existent or erected in a void: it is an ignorance trying to know; its very illusions start from a basis of some kind and are the results of a limited knowledge or a half-ignorance. Mind is an instrument of the cosmic Ignorance, but it does not seem to be or does not act like a power or an instrument of a cosmic

2.06 - On Beauty, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: That is to say, something from above comes down through Intuition?
   Sri Aurobindo: Yes, some power from above. I use the word ' Intuition' in the general sense for all the faculties that act; more properly it is 'inspiration'.

2.06 - Reality and the Cosmic Illusion, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   any finality, - the conflict of an Intuition intensely aware of an absolute transcendent and inmost Reality and a strong intellectual reason regarding the world with a keen and vigorous rational intelligence. The intellect of the thinker regards the phenomenal world from the standpoint of the reason; reason is there the judge and the authority and no suprarational authority can prevail against it: but behind the phenomenal world is a transcendent Reality which the Intuition alone can see; there reason - at least a finite dividing limited reason - cannot prevail against the intuitive experience, it cannot even relate the two, it cannot therefore solve the mystery of the universe. The reason has to affirm the reality of the phenomenal existence, to affirm its truths as valid; but they are valid only in that phenomenal existence. This phenomenal existence is real because it is a temporal phenomenon of the eternal Existence, the Reality: but it is not itself that Reality and, when we pass beyond the phenomenon to the Real, it still exists but is no longer valid to our consciousness; it is therefore unreal. Shankara takes up this contradiction, this opposition which is normal to our mental consciousness when it becomes aware of both sides of existence and stands between them; he resolves it by obliging the reason to recognise its limits, in which its unimpaired sovereignty is left to it within its own cosmic province, and to acquiesce in the soul's Intuition of the transcendent Reality and to support, by a dialectic which ends by dissolving the whole cosmic phenomenal and rational-practical edifice of things, its escape from the limitations constructed and imposed on the mind by Maya. The explanation of cosmic existence by which this is brought about seems to be - or so we may translate it to our understanding, for there have been different expositions of this profound and subtle philosophy, - that there is a Transcendence which is for ever self-existent and immutable and a world which is only phenomenal and temporal. The eternal Reality manifests itself in regard to the phenomenal world as Self and Ishwara. The Ishwara by his Maya, his power of phenomenal creation, constructs this world as a temporal phenomenon, and this phenomenon of things which do not exist in the utterly Real is imposed by
  Reality and the Cosmic Illusion
  --
  This is an arrangement which puts into relation with each other the data of the spiritual Intuition and the data of the reason and sense, and it opens to us a way out from their contradiction, a spiritual and practical issue: but it is not a solution, it does not resolve the contradiction. Maya is real and unreal; the world is not a mere illusion, for it exists and is real in Time, but eventually and transcendentally it turns out to be unreal. This creates an ambiguity which extends beyond itself and touches all that is not the pure self-existence. Thus the Ishwara, though he is undeluded by Maya and the creator of Maya, seems himself to be a phenomenon of Brahman and not the ultimate Reality, he is real only with regard to the Time-world he creates; the individual self has the same ambiguous character. If Maya were to cease altogether from its operations, Ishwara, the world and the individual would no longer be there; but Maya is eternal,
  Ishwara and the world are eternal in Time, the individual endures so long as he does not annul himself by knowledge. Our thought on these premisses has to take refuge in the conception of an ineffable suprarational mystery which is to the intellect insoluble. But, faced with this ambiguity, this admission of an insoluble mystery at the commencement of things and at the end of the process of thought, we begin to suspect that there is a link missing. Ishwara is not himself a phenomenon of Maya, he is real; he must then be the manifestation of a truth of the Transcendence, or he must be the Transcendent itself dealing with a cosmos manifested in his own being. If the world is at all real, it also must be the manifestation of a truth of the Transcendence; for only that can have any reality. If the individual has the power
  --
  - because it does not disclose all the Reality through any form or sum of its forms of self-expression; but still all its forms are forms of the substance and being of that Reality. All finites are in their spiritual essence the Infinite and, if we look deep enough into them, manifest to Intuition the Identical and Infinite. It is contended indeed that the universe cannot be a manifestation because the Reality has no need of manifestation, since it is for ever manifest to itself; but so equally it can be said that the Reality has no need of self-illusion or illusion of any kind,
  482

2.06 - The Synthesis of the Disciplines of Knowledge, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But again Nature has created within her mental unity, formed in the universal Mind separate-seeming dynamos as it were of mentality, constant centres for the generation, distribution and reabsorption of mental force and mental activities, stations as it were in a system of mental telegraphy where messages are conceived, written, sent, received, deciphered, and these messages and these activities are of many kinds, sensational, emotional, perceptual, conceptual, Intuitional, all of which the Soul manifested in mental Nature accepts, uses for its outlook on the world and seems to itself to project and to receive their shocks, to suffer or to master their consequences. Nature installs the base of these dynamos in the material bodies she has formed, makes these bodies the ground for her stations and connects the mental with the material by a nerve-system full of the movement of vital currents through which the mind becomes conscious of the material world and, so far as it chooses, of the vital world of Nature. Otherwise the mind would be conscious of the mental world first and chiefly and would only indirectly glimpse the material. As it is, its attention is fixed on the body and the material world in which it has been installed and it is aware of the rest of existence only dimly, indirectly or subconsciously in that vast remainder of itself with regard to which superficially it has become irresponsive and oblivious.
  The Soul identifies itself with this mental dynamo or station and says "I am this mind." And since the mind is absorbed in the bodily life, it thinks "I am a mind in a living body" or, still more commonly, "I am a body which lives and thinks." It identifies itself with the thoughts, emotions, sensations of the embodied mind and imagines that because when the body is dissolved all this will dissolve, itself also will cease to exist. Or if it becomes conscious of the current of persistence of mental personality, it thinks of itself as a mental soul occupying the body whether once or repeatedly and returning from earthly living to mental worlds beyond; the persistence of this mental being mentally enjoying or suffering sometimes in the body, sometimes on the mental or vital plane of Nature it calls its immortal existence. Or else, because the mind is a principle of light and knowledge, however imperfect, and can have some notion of what is beyond it, it sees the possibility of a dissolution of the mental being into that which is beyond, some Void or some eternal Existence, and it says, "There I, the mental soul, cease to be." Such dissolution it dreads or desires, denies or affirms according to its measure of attachment to or repulsion from this present play of embodied mind and vitality.

2.07 - On Congress and Politics, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: If we have our own Government we could throw out the Mahant and settle the affair once for all; but under a foreign rule if Das can establish the authority of the committee legally, it would be the cleverest thing to do, so that in case of emergency the committee can enforce its mandate by law. As it is, the whole law is against the public. After all Das is a man who 'muddles through' he acts on his Intuitions and impulses and somehow muddles through a difficulty.
   Disciple: He is very impulsive.
   Sri Aurobindo: Yes, impulses are vital Intuitions. Not that he commits no mistakes. He goes on committing mistakes and tries to rectify them and somehow comes to something.
   Disciple: He may bungle into Swaraj.

2.07 - The Knowledge and the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   featureless Absolute; if the soul or mind of the illusion-driven individual has dreamed of a divine realisation in this ephemeral world of the Ignorance, it must in the end recognise its mistake and renounce its vain endeavour. But still, since there are these two sides of existence, the ignorance of Nature and the light of the Spirit, and since there is behind them the One Reality, the reconciliation or at any rate the bridging of the gulf forecast in the mystic parables of the Veda ought to be possible. It is a keen sense of this possibility which has taken different shapes and persisted through the centuries, - the perfectibility of man, the perfectibility of society, the Alwar's vision of the descent of Vishnu and the Gods upon earth, the reign of the saints, sadhunam rajyam, the city of God, the millennium, the new heaven and earth of the Apocalypse. But these Intuitions have lacked a basis of assured knowledge and the mind of man has remained swinging between a bright future hope and a grey present certitude. But the grey certitude is not so certain as it looks and a divine life evolving or preparing in earth Nature need not be a chimera. All acceptations of our defeat or our limitation start from the implied or explicit recognition, first, of an essential dualism and, then, of an irreconcilable opposition between the dual principles, between the Conscient and the
  Inconscient, between Heaven and Earth, between God and the

2.07 - The Supreme Word of the Gita, #Essays On The Gita, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  But the weakness of the kinetic and the emotional religions is that they are too much absorbed in some divine Personality and in the divine values of the finite. And, even when they have a conception of the infinite Godhead, they do not give us the full satisfaction of knowledge because they do not follow it out into its most ultimate and supernal tendencies. These religions fall short of a complete absorption in the Eternal and the perfect union by identity, - and yet to that identity in some other way, if not in the abstractive, since there all oneness has its basis, the spirit that is in man must one day arrive. On the other hand, the weakness of a contemplative quietistic spirituality is that it arrives at this result by a too absolute abstraction and in the end it turns into a nothing or a fiction the human soul whose aspiration was yet all the time the whole sense of this attempt at union; for without the soul and its aspiration liberation and union could have no meaning. The little that this way of thinking recognises of his other powers of existence, it relegates to an inferior preliminary action which never arrives at any full or satisfying realisation in the Eternal and Infinite. Yet these things too which it restricts unduly, the potent will, the strong yearning of love, the positive light and all-embracing Intuition
  340

2.08 - On Non-Violence, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: Yes. It may be a correct Intuition. But I cannot understand how his argument about Khaddar bringing Swaraj holds. He says that if he can universalise Khaddar he can also make all who use it resort to civil disobedience. I do not quite see how it follows; for, putting on Khaddar is harmless except for the inconvenience in summer perhaps but civil disobedience is not harmless. One who puts on Khaddar may not join civil disobedience.
   Disciple: He has advised moderation in Vaikom Satyagraha perhaps because he feels humble.

2.09 - On Sadhana, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Life has no 'isms' in it, Supermind also has no 'isms'. It is the mind that introduces all 'isms' and creates confusion. That is the difference between a man who lives and a thinker who can't. A leader who thinks too much and is busy with ideas, trying all the time to fit the realities of life to his ideas hardly succeeds. While the leader who is destined to succeed does not bother his head about ideas. He sees the forces at work and knows by Intuition those that make for success. He also knows the right combination of forces and the right moment when he should act.
   Not that such a man does not make a plan with his mind for himself and for others, but even after making his plan if he finds that the forces have changed he does not hesitate to turn round and adopt another course. Look at Indian politicians: all ideas, ideas they are busy with ideas. Take the Hindu-Moslem problem. I don't know why our politicians accepted Gandhi's Khilafat agitation. With the mentality of the ordinary Mahomedan it was bound to produce the reaction it has produced: You fed the force, it gathered power and began to make demands which the Hindu mentality had to rise up and reject. That does not require Supermind to find out, it requires common sense. Then, the Mahomedan reality and the Hindu reality began to break heads at Calcutta. The leaders are busy trying to square the realities with their mental ideas instead of facing them straight.
  --
   Generally, one goes through the gradations of the Supermind. I have written about it in the Arya. There I was speaking not about the highest Supermind but about the highest Supermind "in the Mind". There is, for instance, the Intuitive Mentality. It is not Supermind but Mind. You can say it is Supermind working on the basis of Mind by flashes. From the point of view of the highest Supermind, Intuitions are 'glorious guesses'. Of course, the guesses may be quite correct.
   The other three gradations are: the Representative, the Interpretative, the Imperative. As you go on developing, the higher and higher grades become active. The Intuitive Mentality is a kind of modified Supermind.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: The reasonings and the fanciful constructions of the mind cease; there remains only a play of Intuitions.
   Disciple: Does not reason remain at all?
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: Mind may build on its Intuitions, but there is every likelihood of its committing mistakes. Mental transformation is a gradual process. First, the reasonings and constructions are silenced. Then the mind becomes intuitivised. Then one feels that there is something above which is much more than Intuition. Intuition goes downwards and the Higher Truth takes the place of Intuition. At present, you find it difficult to understand how all reasonings and constructions of the mind can cease. That can be understood when you know what is Intuition.
   Disciple: I understand that reasonings and constructions are obstacles to the coming of the Truth.

2.1.01 - God The One Reality, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  - perfection in our deepest spiritual being, perfectibility in our nature; we have the instinct and Intuition of the Divine.
  Even to Time and Space our mind cannot fix or conceive a beginning or an end; it cannot conceive a first bound or a last, a primary or ultimate moment without at once looking beyond it. If we see the imperfection of things, the very idea implies a potentiality of a perfection by comparison with which they are imperfect, and this potentiality points to a beyond Mind and beyond Sense which is the integrally and permanently perfect.

2.1.02 - Classification of the Parts of the Being, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   will, feeling, emotion, sensation and physical contact. So, proceeding from Intuition to a greater overmind height, there is a new conversion and we look at and experience everything from the overmind consciousness and through a mind, heart, vital and body surcharged with the overmind thought, sight, will, feeling, sensation, play of force and contact. But the last conversion is the supramental, for once there, once the nature is supramentalised, we are beyond the Ignorance and conversion of consciousness is no longer needed, though a farther divine progression, even an infinite development is still possible.
  The inner consciousness means the inner mind, inner vital, inner physical and behind them the psychic which is their inmost being. But the inner mind is not the higher mind; it is more in touch with the universal forces and more open to the higher consciousness and capable of an immensely deeper and larger range of action than the outer or surface mind - but it is of the same essential nature. The higher consciousness is that above the ordinary mind and different from it in its workings; it ranges from higher mind through illumined mind, Intuition and overmind up to the border line of the supramental.
  If the psychic were liberated, free to act in its own way, there would not be all this stumbling in the Ignorance. But the psychic is covered up by the ignorant mind, vital and physical and compelled to act through them according to the law of the Ignorance. If it is liberated from this covering, then it can act according to its own nature with a free aspiration, a direct contact with the higher consciousness and a power to change the ignorant nature.

2.1.02 - Nature The World-Manifestation, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Change is evidently the change of some form or state of existence from one condition to another condition. Otherwise, what is it? Is it itself fundamental and absolute, not explicable or definable by any other term than itself, perceivable and intelligible as the sole reality by a naked Intuition which feels and cries out "Change = reality" and then falls dumb and can say no more?
  An object changes, a person changes, a condition of things changes. But can it be said that the object is no real object but only a continuity of change, or that a person is not a person but a continuity of change, a condition of things is not a condition and there are no things but there is only a continuity of change? This seems to be an illustration of the besetting sin of metaphysics - to exalt a word into a reality or an idea into a reality - without fathoming what is the reality which it tries to indicate. For to label with a word or name is not to fathom and to define, to erect a concept is not to fathom. Fathom for us then what is change before you ask us to accept it as the only reality. You may say I have fathomed it, I have seen it to be the one constant real, but do not ask me to define what it is; "listen rather in silence to the silence of Nature and you too will fathom". But what if, so listening, I fathom other realities than change - let us say, immutable being as well as mutable force, status as well as change? To prevent that you plunge into speech and not silence, into dialectics of the intellect instead of the undebatable certitudes of Intuition, and so abandon your own methodology. If Intuition alone is to be used, then you must give a place to my Intuition as well as yours and all, however
  Nature: The World-Manifestation
  --
   contradictory in appearance must stand until a greater Intuition comes in to put all in their place, reconcile, include in a consistent whole.
  In the world of our experience contradictories [are] often complements and necessary to each other's existence. Change is possible only if there is a status from which to change; but status again exists only as a step that pauses, a step in the continuous passage of change or a step on which change pauses before it passes on to another step in its creative passage. And behind this relation is a duality of eternal status and eternal motion and behind this duality is something that is neither status nor change but contains both as its aspects - and That is likely to be the true Reality.

2.1.03 - Man and Superman, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The office of intellect is not to fathom reality, but to fabricate and preside over action; intellect cannot comprehend life and reality. Intellect (logic) goes round the object, Intuition enters into the object; one stops at the [? ], the other enters into the absolute[.]
   Intuition, - but what do we mean when we speak of Intuition?
  What is its origin, nature, working, and how is it connected with intelligence and sense and instinct, our other ways of knowing, or what is the difference? Is Intuition the one means of true and complete knowledge or does it need intelligence, sense, instinct to complete it? Is there a greater power of direct and absolute and complete knowledge of which Intuition is only a special or part action, - some first and last potency, the Alpha and Omega
  258
  --
  These are the queries it is proposed to answer here; but the answer can come only from Intuition itself, from a direct seeing and experience, for if Intuition exists, it and its way of working must obviously be something beyond the reasoning intelligence and therefore not entirely seizable by the reasoning intelligence.
  I know myself because I am myself, I know the movements of my mind, joy, anger, love, thought, will, because they are myself or parts of myself; I have a direct knowledge of myself, a knowledge by identity. Observation, reasoning there can be as a subsidiary process; but it is not by observation or reasoning that
  --
  An air from a consciousness greater than mind has already been felt by many of those who have climbed to the human summits and to the glow that has come from above they have given many names, bodhi, Intuition, gnosis. But these things are only the faint edge of that greater light thrust into the pallid twilight that we call mind. Only when the lid between mind and supermind has been utterly rent apart and the full power of the sun of a divine Gnosis can pour down - not trickling through mind as in diminished and deflected beams - and transform the whole mind and life and body of the human creature, can man's labour finish. Then only shall begin the divine play and the free outpouring of the liberated self-creating Spirit.
  To rise into this greater consciousness above our mental level of humanity as man has risen above the level of the life-mind of the beast, to grow from mind into supermind, from twilight into light, from the mind's half-consciousness into what is now to us superconscient, from a narrow imprisoned ego into the transcendent and universalised individual, from a struggling half effective into a throned and master power, from little transient joys and sorrows into an unalloyed divine delight, this is the goal of our journey, the secret of our struggle.

2.10 - Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In the cognition of external things, our knowledge has an entirely separative basis; its whole machinery and process are of the nature of an indirect perception. We do not identify ourselves with external objects, not even with other men though they are beings of our own nature; we cannot enter into their existence as if it were our own, we cannot know them and their movements with the directness, immediateness, intimacy with which we know - even though incompletely - ourselves and our movements. But not only identification lacks, direct contact also is absent; there is no direct touch between our consciousness and their consciousness, our substance and their substance, our self of being and their self-being. The only seemingly direct contact with them or direct evidence we have of them is through the senses; sight, hearing, touch seem to initiate some kind of a direct intimacy with the object of knowledge: but this is not so really, not a real directness, a real intimacy, for what we get by our sense is not the inner or intimate touch of the thing itself, but an image of it or a vibration or nerve message in ourselves through which we have to learn to know it. These means are so ineffective, so exiguous in their poverty that, if that were the whole machinery, we could know little or nothing or only achieve a great blur of confusion. But there intervenes a sense-mind Intuition which seizes the suggestion of the image or vibration and equates it with the object, a vital Intuition which seizes the energy or figure of power of the object through another kind of vibration created by the sense contact, and an Intuition of the perceptive mind which at once forms a right
  548
  --
   idea of the object from all this evidence. Whatever is deficient in the interpretation of the image thus constructed is filled up by the intervention of the reason or the total understanding intelligence. If the first composite Intuition were the result of a direct contact or if it summarised the action of a total intuitive mentality master of its perceptions, there would be no need for the intervention of the reason except as a discoverer or organiser of knowledge not conveyed by the sense and its suggestions: it is, on the contrary, an Intuition working on an image, a sense document, an indirect evidence, not working upon a direct contact of consciousness with the object. But since the image or vibration is a defective and summary documentation and the Intuition itself limited and communicated through an obscure medium, acting in a blind light, the accuracy of our Intuitional interpretative construction of the object is open to question or at least likely to be incomplete. Man has had perforce to develop his reason in order to make up for the deficiencies of his sense instrumentation, the fallibility of his physical mind's perceptions and the paucity of its interpretation of its data.
  Our world-knowledge is therefore a difficult structure made up of the imperfect documentation of the sense image, an Intuitional interpretation of it by perceptive mind, life-mind and sense-mind, and a supplementary filling up, correction, addition of supplementary knowledge, co-ordination, by the reason. Even so our knowledge of the world we live in is narrow and imperfect, our interpretations of its significances doubtful: imagination, speculation, reflection, impartial weighing and reasoning, inference, measurement, testing, a further correction and amplification of sense evidence by Science, - all this apparatus had to be called in to complete the incompleteness. After all that the result still remains a half-certain, half-dubious accumulation of acquired indirect knowledge, a mass of significant images and ideative representations, abstract thought counters, hypotheses, theories, generalisations, but also with all that a mass of doubts and a never-ending debate and inquiry. Power has come with knowledge, but our imperfection of knowledge leaves us without any idea of the true use of the power, even of the aim towards
  Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge
  --
  But the first of these two movements, the awakening to our inner realities, imposes itself as the prior necessity because it is by this inward self-finding that the second - the cosmic selffinding - can become entirely possible: we have to go into our inner being and learn to live in it and from it; the outer mind and life and body must become for us only an antechamber. All that we are on the outside is indeed conditioned by what is within, occult, in our inner depths and recesses; it is thence that come the secret initiatives, the self-effective formations; our inspirations, our Intuitions, our life-motives, our mind's preferences, our will's selections are actuated from there, - in so far as they are not shaped or influenced by an insistence, equally hidden, of a surge of cosmic impacts: but the use we make of these emergent powers and these influences is conditioned, largely determined and, above all, very much limited by our outermost nature. It is then the knowledge of this inner initiating self coupled with the
  552
  --
  But the subliminal being has also a larger direct contact with the world; it is not confined like the surface Mind to the interpretation of sense-images and sense-vibrations supplemented by the mental and vital Intuition and the reason. There is indeed an inner sense in the subliminal nature, a subtle sense of vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste; but these are not confined to the creation of images of things belonging to the physical environment, - they can present to the consciousness visual, auditory, tactual and other images and vibrations of things beyond the restricted range of the physical senses or belonging to other planes or spheres of existence. This inner sense can create or present images, scenes, sounds that are symbolic rather than actual or that represent possibilities in formation, suggestions, thoughts, ideas, intentions of other beings, image forms also of powers or potentialities in universal Nature; there is nothing that it cannot image or visualise or turn into sensory formations. It is the subliminal in reality and not the outer mind that possesses the powers of telepathy, clairvoyance, second sight and other supernormal faculties whose occurrence in the surface consciousness is due to openings or rifts in the wall erected by the outer personality's unseeing labour of individualisation and interposed between itself and the inner domain of our being.
  556
  --
  It should be noted, however, that owing to this complexity the action of the subliminal sense can be confusing or misleading, especially if it is interpreted by the outer mind to which the secret of its operations is unknown and its principles of sign construction and symbolic figure-languages foreign; a greater inner power of Intuition, tact, discrimination is needed to judge and interpret rightly its images and experiences. It is still the fact that they add immensely to our possible scope of knowledge and widen the narrow limits in which our sense-bound outer physical consciousness is circumscribed and imprisoned.
  But more important is the power of the subliminal to enter into a direct contact of consciousness with other consciousness or with objects, to act without other instrumentation, by an essential sense inherent in its own substance, by a direct mental vision, by a direct feeling of things, even by a close envelopment and intimate penetration and a return with the contents of what is enveloped or penetrated, by a direct intimation or impact on the substance of mind itself, not through outward signs or figures, - a revealing intimation or a self-communicating impact of thoughts, feelings, forces. It is by these means that the inner being achieves an immediate, intimate and accurate spontaneous knowledge of persons, of objects, of the occult and to us intangible energies of world-Nature that surround us and impinge upon our own personality, physicality, mindforce and life-force. In our surface mentality we are sometimes aware of a consciousness that can feel or know the thoughts and inner reactions of others or become aware of objects or happenings without any observable sense-intervention or otherwise exercise powers supernormal to our ordinary capacity; but these capacities are occasional, rudimentary, vague. Their possession is proper to our concealed subliminal self and, when they emerge, it is by a coming to the surface of its powers or operations. These emergent operations of the subliminal being or some of them are now fragmentarily studied under the name of psychic phenomena, - although they have ordinarily nothing to do with the psyche, the soul, the inmost entity in us, but only with the inner mind, the inner vital, the subtle-physical parts
  --
  Equally important would be the change in our dealings with the impersonal forces of the world that surround us. These we know only by their results, by the little that we can seize of their visible action and consequence. Among them it is mostly the physical world-forces of which we have some knowledge, but we live constantly in the midst of a whirl of unseen mindforces and life-forces of which we know nothing, we are not even aware of their existence. To all this unseen movement and action the subliminal inner consciousness can open our awareness, for it has a knowledge of it by direct contact, by inner vision, by a psychic sensitiveness; but at present it can only enlighten our obtuse superficiality and outwardness by unexplained warnings, premonitions, attractions and repulsions, ideas, suggestions, obscure Intuitions, the little it can get through imperfectly to the surface. The inner being not only contacts directly and concretely the immediate motive and movement of these universal
  Knowledge by Identity and Separative Knowledge
  --
  Ignorance becomes complete with the entire separation of being from being: the direct contact of consciousness with consciousness is then entirely veiled or heavily overlaid, even though it still goes on within our subliminal parts, just as there is also, though wholly concealed and not directly operative, the underlying secret identity and oneness. There is on the surface a complete separateness, a division into self and not-self; there is the necessity of dealing with the not-self, but no direct means of knowing it or mastering it. Nature then creates indirect means, a contact by physical organs of sense, a penetration of outside impacts through the nerve currents, a reaction of mind and its co-ordinations acting as an aid and supplement to the activity of the physical organs, - all of them methods of an indirect knowledge; for the consciousness is forced to rely on these instruments and cannot act directly on the object. To these means is added a reason, intelligence and Intuition which seize on the communications thus indirectly brought to them, put all in order and utilise their data to get as much knowledge and mastery and possession of the not-self or as much partial unity
  570
  --
  The Inconscience is an inverse reproduction of the supreme superconscience: it has the same absoluteness of being and automatic action, but in a vast involved trance; it is being lost in itself, plunged in its own abyss of infinity. Instead of a luminous absorption in self-existence there is a tenebrous involution in it, the darkness veiled within darkness of the Rig Veda, tama ast tamasa gud.ham, which makes it look like Non-Existence; instead of a luminous inherent self-awareness there is a consciousness plunged into an abyss of self-oblivion, inherent in being but not awake in being. Yet is this involved consciousness still a concealed knowledge by identity; it carries in it the awareness of all the truths of existence hidden in its dark infinite and, when it acts and creates, - but it acts first as Energy and not as Consciousness, - everything is arranged with the precision and perfection of an intrinsic knowledge. In all material things reside a mute and involved Real-Idea, a substantial and selfeffective Intuition, an eyeless exact perception, an automatic intelligence working out its unexpressed and unthought conceptions, a blindly seeing sureness of sight, a dumb infallible sureness of suppressed feeling coated in insensibility, which effectuate all that has to be effected. All this state and action of the
  Inconscient corresponds very evidently with the same state and action of the pure Superconscience, but translated into terms of self-darkness in place of the original self-light. Intrinsic in the material form, these powers are not possessed by the form, but yet work in its mute subconscience.
  --
  We see then all the powers inherent in the original selfexistent spiritual Awareness slowly brought out and manifested in this growing separative consciousness; they are activities suppressed but native to the secret and involved knowledge by identity and they now emerge by degrees in a form strangely diminished and tentative. First, there emerges a crude or veiled sense which develops into precise sensations aided by a vital instinct or concealed Intuition; then a life-mind perception manifests and at its back an obscure consciousness-sight and feeling of things; emotion vibrates out and seeks an interchange with others; last arises to the surface conception, thought, reason comprehending and apprehending the object, combining its data of knowledge. But all are incomplete, still maimed by the separative ignorance and the first obscuring inconscience; all are dependent on the outward means, not empowered to act in their own right: consciousness cannot act directly on consciousness; there is a constructive envelopment and penetration of things by the mind consciousness, but not a real possession; there is no knowledge by identity. Only when the subliminal is able to force upon the frontal mind and sense some of its secret activities pure and untranslated into the ordinary forms of mental intelligence, does a rudimentary action of the deeper methods lift itself to the surface; but such emergences are still an exception, they strike across the normality of our acquired and learned knowledge with a savour of the abnormal and the supernormal. It is only by an opening to our inner being or an entry into it that a direct intimate awareness can be added to the outer indirect awareness.
  It is only by our awakening to our inmost soul or superconscient self that there can be a beginning of the spiritual knowledge with identity as its basis, its constituent power, its intrinsic substance.

2.12 - On Miracles, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: How did the poet get them? Did he get them by psychic Intuition or from the physical life only?
   Sri Aurobindo: You can't take these things so literally and scientifically. The poet was not writing history, he was only writing poetry. He may have got his materials from the psychic intuitive plane, and from his own imagination, or from the psycho-mental or any other plane.

2.1.2 - The Vital and Other Levels of Being, #Letters On Yoga IV, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  When you rise with the vital from its lower reaches and join it to the psychic, then your vital being fills with the pure aspiration and devotion natural to the psychic; at the same time it gives to the feelings its own abundant energy, it makes them dynamic for the change of the whole nature down to the most physical and for the bringing down of the divine consciousness into earth matter. When it not only touches the psychic but fuses with the higher mind, it is able to come into contact with and obey a greater light and knowledge. Ordinarily, the vital is either moved by the human mind and governed by its more or less ignorant dictates, or takes violent hold of this mind and uses it for the satisfaction of its own passions, impulses or desires. Or it makes a mixture of these two movements; for the ordinary human mind is too ignorant for a better action or a perfect guidance. But when the vital is in contact with the higher mind, it is possible for it to be guided by a greater light and knowledge, by a higher Intuition and inspiration, a truer discrimination and some revelations of the divine truth and the divine will. This obedience of the vital to the psychic and the higher mind is the beginning of the outgoing of the Yogic consciousness in its dynamic action upon life.
  But this, too, is not sufficient for the divine life. To come into contact with the higher mind consciousness is not enough, it is only an indispensable stage. There must be a descent of the Divine Force from yet loftier and more powerful reaches. A transformation of the higher consciousness into a supramental light and power, a transformation of the vital and its life-force into a pure, wide, calm, intense and powerful instrument of the Divine Energy, a transformation of the physical itself into a form of divine light, divine action, strength, beauty and joy are impossible without this descending Force from the now invisible summits. That is why in this Yoga the ascent to the Divine which it has in common with other paths of Yoga is not enough; there must be too a descent of the Divine to transform all the energies of the mind, life and body.
  --
  The Intuition and the Vital
  The vital controlled and transformed by the Intuition has the spontaneous right sense of things instead of groping and getting things by the wrong end due to passion, desire etc.
  ***

2.1.3.2 - Study, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  The cure is not in trying to wake up the mind but in turning it, immobile and silent, upward towards the region of intuitive light, in a steady and quiet aspiration, and to wait in silence, for the light to come down and flood your brain which will, little by little, wake up to this influence and become capable of receiving and expressing the Intuition.
  Love and blessings.
  --
  I shall try to work with the help of Intuition. Help me in my efforts.
  Calm the vital.

2.1.3.3 - Reading, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  I havent read much of English literature I have gone through only a few hundred books. But I know French literature very well I have read a whole library of it. And I can say that it has no great value in terms of Truth. Real knowledge comes from above the mind. What literature gives is the play of a lot of common or petty ideas. Only on a rare occasion does some ray from above come in. If you look into thousands and thousands of books, you will find just one small Intuition here and there. The rest is nothing.
  I cant say that the reading of literature equips one better to understand Sri Aurobindo. On the contrary, it can be a hindrance. For, the same words are used and the purpose for which they are used is so different from the purpose for which Sri Aurobindo has made use of them, the manner in which they have been put together to express things is so different from Sri Aurobindos that these words tend to put one off from the light which Sri Aurobindo wants to convey to us through them. To get to Sri Aurobindos light we must empty our minds of all that literature has said and done. We must go inward and stay in a receptive silence and turn it upward. Then alone we get something in the right way. At the worst, I have seen that the study of literature makes one silly and perverse enough to sit in judgment on Sri Aurobindos English and find fault with his grammar!

2.13 - Exclusive Concentration of Consciousness-Force and the Ignorance, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   existence containing what was, is and will be. An Intuition of self is behind it, but that is an underlying identity, unaffected by the changes of his personality; in his surface formation of being he is not that but what he is at the moment. Yet all the time this existence in the moment is not the real or the whole truth of his being, but only a practical or pragmatic truth for the purposes of the superficial movement of his life and within its limits. It is a truth, not an unreality, but a truth only in its positive part; in its negative parts it is an ignorance, and this negative ignorance limits and often distorts even the practical truth, so that the conscious life of man proceeds according to an ignorance, a partial, a half-true half-false knowledge, not according to the real truth of himself of which he is oblivious. Yet because his real self is the true determinator and governs all secretly from behind, it is after all a knowledge behind which really determines the formed course of his existence; the superficial ignorance erects a necessary limiting outline and supplies the factors by which the outward colour and turn needed for his present human life and his present moment are given to his consciousness and his action. In the same way and for the same reason man identifies himself solely with the name and form he wears in his present existence; he is ignorant of his past before birth even as of his future after death. Yet all that he forgets is contained, present and effective, in the all-retaining integral consciousness within him.
  There is a minor pragmatic use of exclusive concentration on the surface which may also give us an indication in spite of its temporary character. The superficial man living from moment to moment plays, as it were, several parts in his present life and, while he is busy with each part, he is capable of an exclusive concentration, an absorption in it, by which he forgets the rest of himself, puts it behind him for the moment, is to that extent self-oblivious. The man is for the moment the actor, the poet, the soldier or whatever else he may have been constituted and formed into by some peculiar and characteristic action of his force of being, his Tapas, his past conscious energy and by the action which develops from it. Not only is he apt to deliver

2.13 - On Psychology, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: Bergson says that mental knowledge only applies to the physico-chemical world and that the problem of life can only be grasped by Intuition.
   Sri Aurobindo: Yes, it is true. Mind itself understands nothing. You say "this is the reason" but the same act of reasoning can lead you to a quite opposite conclusion. Even when a man acts, or seems to act, according to some 'reason' he acts not by mental reasoning but by something from above Intuition. At a certain stage the substance of the mind itself is transformed into the intuitive mind. Then it is found impossible to resume the old mental activity. Intuition is an image of the Supermind; materials collected by the mind are there, of course, but they don't enter into the final decision. They are not the chief determining factor.
   Then you go on developing more and more and manifest higher and higher degrees of supramental working in which the action becomes increasingly more independent of the mind.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: Supermind on the mental level is Intuition. It is not pure Supermind. It is the mental form of it.
   Then there is the vital being from the navel and below it, or, according to some, from the heart down to the navel. In its own nature it is life-movement or force trying to effectuate itself in life. Its crudest form is 'desire'. In feet, it is force trying to possess and enjoy. It lays hold on objects and puts its own stamp upon them. It lays hold on things for possession and enjoyment. It is that which creates in man ambition, lust, greed for money, for power, all egoistic forms of desire, etc. Well, that crude form is very useful for perpetuating life in Nature.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: The supramental in the vital is, you can say, vital Intuitions and inspired impulsions and inspirations. It is something that comes down from above direct to the vital being not necessarily touching the mind. It is that which gives correct Intuitions as to what is to be done. There are persons not necessarily yogis who, without reasoning or thinking, at once find out the right thing to be done.
   All men of genius have got that capacity a sort of half-supramentalised vital being, which makes them always do the right thing, the thing that ought to be done. They don't commit mistakes in their actions. Generally they don't reason. In fact they can't give reasons. But yet they do the right thing and succeed.

2.1.4.1 - Teachers, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  It is by cultivating Intuition that one prepares to live for the future.
  18 September 1967

2.1.4.2 - Teaching, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Most teachers want to have good students: students who are studious and attentive, who understand and know many things, who can answerwell good students. This spoils everything. The students begin to consult books, to study, to learn. Then they rely only on books, on what others say or write, and they lose contact with the superconscient part which receives knowledge by Intuition. This contact often exists in a small child but it is lost in the course of his education.
  For the students to be able to progress in the right direction, it is obvious that the teachers should have understood this and changed their old way of seeing and teaching. Without that, my work is at a standstill.1

2.14 - The Origin and Remedy of Falsehood, Error, Wrong and Evil, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
   either too narrow and rigid or complex and confused, uncertain, subject to alteration by a mental or a vital change or evolution; yet it is felt that there is a deeper abiding truth and something within us that can have the Intuition of that truth, - in other words, that the real sanction is inward, spiritual and psychic.
  The traditional account of this inner witness is conscience, a power of perception in us half mental, half intuitive; but this is something superficial, constructed, unreliable: there is certainly within us, though less easily active, more masked by surface elements, a deeper spiritual sense, the soul's discernment, an inborn light within our nature.
  --
  The individual animal being in its first conscious selfaffirmation has to rely on two sources of knowledge. As it is nescient and helpless, a small modicum of uninformed surface consciousness in a world unknown to it, the secret ConsciousForce sends up to this surface the minimum of Intuition necessary for it to maintain its existence and go through the operations indispensable to life and survival. This Intuition is not possessed by the animal, but possesses and moves it; it is something that manifests of itself in the grain of the vital and physical substance of consciousness under pressure of a need and for the needed occasion: but at the same time a surface result of this Intuition accumulates and takes the form of an automatic instinct which works whenever the occasion for it recurs; this instinct belongs to the race and is imparted at birth to its individual members. The Intuition, when it occurs or recurs, is unerring; the instinct is automatically correct as a rule, but can err, for it fails or blunders when the surface consciousness or an ill-developed intelligence interferes or if the instinct continues to act mechanically when, owing to changed circumstances, the need or the necessary circumstances are no longer there. The second source of knowledge is surface contact with the world outside the natural individual being; it is this contact which is the cause first of a conscious sensation and sense-perception and then of intelligence. If there were not an underlying consciousness, the contact would not create any
  636
  --
   when they appear, are involved in these automatisms, they occur as a subordinate mental notation within the predominant vital sense-notation. But slowly mind starts its task of disengaging itself; it still works for the life-instinct, life-need and life-desire, but its own special characters emerge, observation, invention, device, intention, execution of purpose, while sensation and impulse add to themselves emotion and bring a subtler and finer affective urge and value into the crude vital reaction. Mind is still much involved in life and its highest purely mental operations are not in evidence; it accepts a large background of instinct and vital Intuition as its support, and the intelligence developed, though always growing as the animal life-scale rises, is an added superstructure.
  When human intelligence adds itself to the animal basis, this basis still remains present and active, but it is largely changed, subtilised and uplifted by conscious will and intention; the automatic life of instinct and vital Intuition diminishes and cannot keep its original predominant proportion to the self-aware mental intelligence. Intuition becomes less purely intuitive: even when there is still a strong vital Intuition, its vital character is concealed by mentalisation, and mental Intuition is most often a mixture, not the pure article, for an alloy is added to make it mentally current and serviceable. In the animal also the surface consciousness can obstruct or alter the Intuition but, because its capacity is less, it interferes less with the automatic, mechanical or instinctive action of Nature: in mental man when the Intuition rises towards the surface, it is caught at once before it reaches and is translated into terms of mind-intelligence with a gloss or mental interpretation added which conceals the origin of the knowledge. Instinct also is deprived of its intuitive character by being taken up and mentalised and by that change becomes less sure, though more assisted, when not replaced, by the plastic power of adaptation of things and self-adaptation proper to the intelligence. The emergence of mind in life brings an immense increase of the range and capacity of the evolving consciousness-force; but it also brings an immense increase in the range and capacity of error. For evolving mind trails constantly error as
  638
  --
  If in the evolution the surface consciousness were always open to the action of Intuition, the intervention of error would not be possible. For Intuition is an edge of light thrust out by the secret supermind, and an emergent truth-consciousness, however limited, yet sure in its action, would be the consequence.
  Instinct, if it had to form, would be plastic to the Intuition and adapt itself freely to evolutionary change and the change of inner or environing circumstance. Intelligence, if it had to form, would be subservient to Intuition and would be its accurate mental expression; its brilliancy would perhaps be modulated to suit a diminished action serving as a minor, not, as it is now, a major function and movement, but it would not be erratic by deviation, would not by its parts of obscurity sink into the false or fallible. But this could not be, because the hold of Inconscience on the matter, the surface substance, in which mind and life have to express themselves, makes the surface consciousness obscure and unresponsive to the light within; it is impelled moreover to cherish this defect, to substitute more and more its own incomplete but better grasped clarities for the unaccountable inner intimations, because a rapid development of the truth-consciousness is not the intention in Nature. For the method chosen by her is a slow and difficult evolution of
  Inconscience developing into Ignorance and Ignorance forming itself into a mixed, modified and partial knowledge before it can be ready for transformation into a higher truth-consciousness and truth-knowledge. Our imperfect mental intelligence is a necessary stage of transition before this higher transformation can be made possible.
  --
   in it; if it were intrinsically an entire absence of consciousness, the change would be impossible: but still it works as an inconscience trying to be conscious; it is at first a nescience compelled by need and outer impact to feeling and response and then an ignorance labouring to know. The means used is a contact with the world and its forces and objects which, like the rubbing of tinders, creates a spark of awareness; the response from within is that spark leaping out into manifestation. But the surface nescience in receiving the response from an underlying source of knowledge subdues and changes it into something obscure and incomplete; there is an imperfect seizure or a misprision of the Intuition that answers to the contact: still by this process an initiation of responsive consciousness, a first accumulation of ingrained or habitual instinctive knowledge begins, and there follows upon it first a primitive and then a developed capacity of receptive awareness, understanding, reply of action, previsional initiation of action, - an evolving consciousness which is halfknowledge, half-ignorance. All that is unknown is met on the basis of what is known; but as this knowledge is imperfect, as it receives imperfectly and responds imperfectly to the contacts of things, there can be a misprision of the new contact as well as a misprision or deformation of the intuitive response, a double source of error.
  It is evident, in these conditions, that Error is a necessary accompaniment, almost a necessary condition and instrumentation, an indispensable step or stage in the slow evolution towards knowledge in a consciousness that begins from nescience and works in the stuff of a general nescience. The evolving consciousness has to acquire knowledge by an indirect means which does not give even a fragmentary certitude; for there is at first only a figure or a sign, an image or a vibration physical in character created by contact with the object and a resulting vital sensation which have to be interpreted by mind and sense and turned into a corresponding mental idea or figure. Things thus experienced and mentally known have to be related together; things unknown have to be observed, discovered, fitted into the already acquired sum of experience and knowledge. At each
  --
  Consciousness in its acquisition of knowledge proceeds from the known to the unknown; it builds a structure of acquired experience, memories, impressions, judgments, a composite mental plan of things which is of the nature of a shifting and ever modifiable fixity. In the reception of new knowledge, what comes in to be received is judged in the light of past knowledge and fitted into the structure; if it cannot properly fit, it is either dovetailed in anyhow or rejected: but the existing knowledge and its structures or standards may not be applicable to the new object or new field of knowledge, the fitting may be a misfitting or the rejection may be an erroneous response. To misprision and wrong interpretation of facts, there is added misapplication of knowledge, miscombination, misconstruction, misrepresentation, a complicated machinery of mental error. In all this enlightened obscurity of our mental parts a secret Intuition is at work, a truth-urge that corrects or pushes the intelligence to correct what is erroneous, to labour towards a true picture of things and a true interpretative knowledge. But Intuition itself is limited in the human mind by mental misprision of its intimations and is unable to act in its own right; for whether it be physical, vital or mental Intuition, it has to present itself in order to be received, not nude and pure, but garbed with a mental coating or entirely enveloped in an ample mental vesture;
  The Origin of Falsehood and Evil
  --
   so disguised, its true nature cannot be recognised and its relation to mind and its office are not understood, its way of working is ignored by the hasty and half-aware human intelligence. There are Intuitions of actuality, of possibility, of the determining truth behind things, but all are mistaken by the mind for each other.
  A great confusion of half-grasped material and an experimental building with it, a representation or mental structure of the figure of self and things rigid and yet chaotic, half formed and arranged half jumbled, half true half erroneous, but always imperfect, is the character of human knowledge.
  --
   us evil and so to re-form our being, to reconstitute and shape ourselves into the image of an ideal, is a more profound ethical motive, because it comes nearer to the true issue; it rests on the sound idea that our life is a becoming and that there is something which we have to become and be. But the ideals constructed by the human mind are selective and relative; to shape our nature rigidly according to them is to limit ourselves and make a construction where there should be growth into larger being. The true call upon us is the call of the Infinite and the Supreme; the self-affirmation and self-abnegation imposed on us by Nature are both movements towards that, and it is the right way of self-affirmation and self-negation taken together in place of the wrong, because ignorant, way of the ego and in place of the conflict between the yes and the no of Nature that we have to discover. If we do not discover that, either the push of life will be too strong for our narrow ideal of perfection, its instrumentation will break and it will fail to consummate and perpetuate itself, or at best a half result will be all that we shall obtain, or else the push away from life will present itself as the only remedy, the one way out of the otherwise invincible grasp of the Ignorance. This indeed is the way out usually indicated by religion; a divinely enjoined morality, a pursuit of piety, righteousness and virtue as laid down in a religious code of conduct, a law of God determined by some human inspiration, is put forward as a part of the means, the direction, by which we can tread the way that leads to the exit, the issue. But this exit leaves the problem where it was; it is only a way of escape for the personal being out of the unsolved perplexity of the cosmic existence. In ancient Indian spiritual thought there was a clearer perception of the difficulty; the practice of truth, virtue, right will and right doing was regarded as a necessity of the approach to spiritual realisation, but in the realisation itself the being arises to the greater consciousness of the Infinite and Eternal and shakes away from itself the burden of sin and virtue, for that belongs to the relativity and the Ignorance. Behind this larger truer perception lay the Intuition that a relative good is a training imposed by World-Nature upon us so that we may pass through
  650

2.14 - The Unpacking of God, #Sex Ecology Spirituality, #Ken Wilber, #Philosophy
  THE GOD THAT was to come. The Descent of the all-pervading World Soul. The coming of the Over-human, the Over-Soul, the transpersonal dawn, Homo universalis. And not merely in rare, individual, isolated cases, but as a center of social organizing forces-just as magic and mythic and mental had previously emerged at large and organized cultures around the world according to their basic patterns. The coming of the World Soul, blessing each and all with Intuitions of the Over-Soul, joined each and all in the council and communion of all sentient beings, the community of all souls, likewise institutionalized in structures that guard its preciousness the way the worldcentric rationality is now institutionalized and guarded in law and education and government and community. The integration of the physiosphere and biosphere and noosphere in each and every compound individual, not as a theory but as a central identity in consciousness (just as the ego or person is the central identity institutionalized in rational cultures of today).
  The coming of the Over-Soul that is the World Soul, touching each and all with its Goodness and its Glory, baptizing each with its Brilliance and its Blessing. The coming of the World Soul, trailing clouds of wonderment, singing songs of liberation, dancing madly and divine in splendor and salvation. The long-sought coming of the World Soul, changing every "it" and every "we" and every "I" it touches: in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, we will be changed, we all will be changed.
  --
  And perhaps it will not. I believe that the Intuition of the Over-Soul, the World Soul, is indeed increasing in frequency and in intensity in more and more individuals around the globe; and in the next two volumes in this series we will look more closely at the evidence, quite impressive, I believe, that this is indeed happening.
  But as always, we have to make the future that is given to us. And it is my strongest conviction that the Descent of the all-pervading World Soul is facilitated, or hindered, to precisely the degree that we unpack its Intuition adequately.
  As we have seen, all depth must be interpreted. And how we interpret depth is crucially important for the birth of that depth itself. New depth allows us new interpretations; the new interpretations cocreate and give birth to that depth, help unpack that depth. Unpacking the depth is the emergence of that depth.
  And thus, let us oh-so-carefully unpack this precious Gift of spiritual Intuition.
  Many individuals intuit the Over-Soul (or higher) and yet unpack that Intuition, interpret that Intuition, in terms merely or solely of the Higher Self, the Inner Voice, the care of the Soul, interior Witnessing, the Universal Mind, pure Awareness, transcendental Consciousness, or similar such Upper-Left quadrant terms. And however true that aspect of the Intuition is, this unpacking leaves out, or seriously diminishes, the "we" and the "it" dimensions. It leaves out the social and cultural and objective manifestations: it fails to give a seamless account of the types of community and social service and cultural activity that are inherently demanded by a higher Self; it ignores or neglects the changes in the techno-economic infrastructures that support each and every type of embodied self (whether higher or lower or anything in between); it ignores the overall objective state of affairs or objective reality that does not detract from the Self but is an unavoidable aspect of that Self's very manifestation.
  The idea seems to be that if I can just contact my higher Self, then everything else will take care of itself. But this fails miserably to see that Spirit manifests always and simultaneously as the four quadrants of the Kosmos. Spirit (at any level) manifests as a self in a community with social and cultural foundations and objective correlates, and thus any higher Self will inextricably involve a wider community existing in a deeper objective state of affairs.
  --
  Thus, a true and profound Intuition is corrupted, or distorted, or tilted, by a well-meaning but not very adequate interpretation. The Intuition of Spirit is unpacked poorly, hastily, and the Gift is damaged in the process. Conversely, a more graceful unpacking facilitates further and deeper Intuitions, Intuitions touching the I and the We and the It domains: not just how to contact the higher Self, but how to see it embraced in culture, embodied in nature, and embedded in social institutions.
  Realized, embraced, embodied, embedded: a more graceful interpretation covering all four quadrants (because Spirit itself manifests as all four quadrants) facilitates the birth of that Spirit which is demanding the interpretation. Graceful interpretation midwifes Spirit's birth, Spirit's descent. The more adequately I can interpret the Intuition of Spirit, the more that Spirit can speak to me, the more the channels of communication are open, leading from communication to communion to union to identity.
  And Spirit's interpretation merely as a Higher Self is not very graceful, I don't think.1
  Likewise, there are many good souls who have a profound Intuition of Spirit but unpack that Intuition in merely "It" terms, describing Spirit as the sum total of all phenomena or processes interwoven together in a great unified system or net or web or implicate order or unified field (Lower-Right quadrant). All of which is true enough, but all of which leaves out entirely the interior dimensions of "I" and "we." This less-than-adequate interpretation is monological to the core, flatl and through and through.
  It is the old Spinozist move, the other pole-the Eco pole-of the fundamental Enlightenment paradigm (in the form of the Romantic rebellion). It thinks that the enemy is atomism, and that the central problem is simply to be able to prove or demonstrate once and for all that the universe is a great and unified holistic System or Order or Web. It marshals a vast amount of scientific evidence, from physics to biology, and offers extensive arguments, all geared to objectively proving the holistic nature of the universe. It fails to see that if we take a bunch of egos with atomistic concepts and teach them that the universe is holistic, all we will actually get is a bunch of egos with holistic concepts.
  Precisely because this monological approach, with its unskillful interpretation of an otherwise genuine Intuition, ignores or neglects the "I" and the "we" dimensions, it doesn't understand very well the exact nature of the inner transformations that are necessary in the first place in order to be able to find an identity that embraces the manifest All. Talk about the All as much as we want, nothing fundamentally changes.
  And nothing changes because the "proof" or the "new paradigm" or "great system" is still being put in monological it-language. This doesn't engage the process of inner transformation. The profoundly transformative question is not: is the world holistic or atomistic? The transformative question is: who or what is aware of both holistic and atomistic concepts? (The move from the exterior to the interior.) And then: having rested in the Witness of those concepts, a Witness that itself is neither holistic nor atomistic, see here the Witness dissolve in an
  --
  Long ago Nagarjuna devastated such approaches, pointing out that holistic or atomistic, or both or neither, are all beside the point (and, he added, they're all false anyway). It is the radical deconstruction of all conceptualizations whatsoever that paves the way for pure Intuition (prajna) of Shunyata (Emptiness or Openness). If we meet even the Buddha and are supposed to kill him, guess how holism will fare.
  Thus, however true the original Intuition of Spirit is (and I do not doubt that it is true), it is not facilitated by an interpretation that reduces all of Spirit's dimensions merely to the Right-Hand path, merely to descriptions of the great interlocking order (even if those descriptions are true enough).2 Those interpretations, taken in and by themselves, block the transformative event; those interpretations, driven originally by a true Intuition of the very Divine, do not facilitate the further descent of that Divine; those interpretations are unskillful to midwife the birth of Spirit (which is nonetheless the original source of what turns out to be less-than-adequate interpretations).
  And worse: when the Intuition of Spirit is unpacked merely or solely in it-terms, in monological terms, the approach ends up being a purely Descended worldview. Spirit is simply identified with the Sum Total of exteriors, the
  Sum Total of the shadows in the Cave. So intent are we on proving that the shadows are one great interlocking order that we never move from these exteriors to the real interior, and thus we never find the genuine superior.
  --
  My point is that less-than-skillful interpretations of otherwise genuine Spiritual Intuitions do not facilitate the birthing of further Intuitions, and thus a special care and thoroughness is required in the unpacking of this Gift of
  God, this precious spiritual Intuition.
  I would like to spend the rest of this chapter exploring this idea, and end with a brief review and summary of the difficulties in both the Ego and the Eco views. And we will finish our account of the Idealists and their enduring legacy. But I would like to start with one last reason that an approach to Spirit based on monological exteriors is a losing proposition.
  --
  And although the great Idealist movement finally failed, its enduring contri butions will, I believe, be part of any graceful unpacking of spiritual Intuition for the modern and postmodern world. Its enduring contri butions will, I think, be a necessary component in any sort of truly comprehensive worldview, a worldview still begging to emerge, a World Soul still struggling to break into collective consciousness and heal the fragments of a modernity gone slightly mad.
  The details of the Idealist system are explored in volume 3. For the moment, I think we could fairly summarize the thrust of the Idealist movement as: an Intuition of the transpersonal domain expressed in vision-logic. And there was both its great strength and its fatal weakness.
  As vision-logic, it was a developmental evolution beyond simple formal operational rationality, a move beyond instrumental and ego-centered rationality (Verstand) into dialogical, dialectical, intersubjective reason (Vernunft), carrying with it a unifying of opposites and a reconciliation of fragments.
  --
  The great Idealist realization was that both the Ego and the Eco are manifestations of Spirit, and Spirit redeems all IOUs. On the one hand, the Spirit (or highest Self or pure Ego or I-I) of the Kosmos is perfectly autonomous, because it is the pure Self (which is self-positing and self-defining and thus completely free or autonomous); and, on the other, it is perfect wholeness at the same time, because there is nothing outside of it: both Mind and Nature are expressions of its own Being and Becoming. And thus, to the extent that I rise to a Intuition and identity with Spirit, then both the free will of Mind and the union with Nature are given to me simultaneously. I-I am everything that is arising, and thus I am autonomous and whole, free and determined, ascended and descended, one and many, wisdom and compassion, eros and agape.
  Thus, Spirit redeems all IOUs, because in Spirit I am not a whole/part, but the infinity in which all whole/parts arise, remain a bit, and pass. And thus, by developing from nature to mind to Spirit, I can embrace the entire
  --
  The second failure: although profound Intuitions and insights into the genuinely transpersonal domains were clearly some of the major, I would say the major, driving forces behind the Idealist movement, these Intuitions and insights were expressed almost totally in and through vision-logic, and this burdened Reason with a task it could never carry.8 Particularly with Hegel, the transpersonal and transrational Spirit becomes wholly identified with vision-logic or mature Reason, which condemns Reason to collapsing under a weight it could never carry.
  In 1796, Hegel wrote a poem for Holderlin, which says in part: "For thought cannot grasp the soul which forgetting itself plunges out of space and time into a presentiment of infinity, and now reawakens. Whoever wanted to speak of this to others, though he spoke with the tongues of angels, would feel the poverty of words."
  --
  With "No more Ascent!" the infinite vertical yearning toppled forward, and that correct Intuition of infinity was now misplaced and displaced onto the horizons of a temporal and agitated and insatiable hunger for all things material and "natural," a hunger driven by the same power of infinite yearning, but now under the gaze of a different God.
  And there remains the modern-and the postmodern-mind. People had, and have, two basic choices in these modern times: myth or naturalism. Remain at a mythic level of development, and embrace this or that imperialistic fundamentalism with its (promised and frustrated) Ascent; or evolve to rationality, shed the myths, and embrace a world of pure Descent, basking in the shadows, never getting metaphysical sunburn of any imaginable variety, "tracing science then with modesty thy guide," but seeking always to reform the phenomena, tinker with the shades, eat the shadows, endlessly.
  --
  And thus, to return to my point at the beginning of the chapter: stuck with these two variants of flatl and ideology, any Intuitions of deeper and higher occasions become immediately misinterpreted in terms of one or the other of these monological paradigms. People continue to have strong and powerful Intuitions of the Over-Soul and World Soul, but they immediately misinterpret these otherwise correct Intuitions in terms of either a disengaged "Higher Self" ( la Fichte) or a "reengaged biospheric union" ( la Spinoza).
  The "Higher Self" camp is notoriously immune to social concerns. Everything that happens to one is said to be "one's own choice"-the hyper-agentic Higher Self is responsible for everything that happens-this is the monological and totally disengaged Ego gone horribly amok in omnipotent self-only fantasies. This simply represses the networks of communions that are just as important as agency in constituting the manifestation of Spirit.
  --
  The Eco camps likewise too often misinterpret the Intuition of the World Soul, but in the other direction, as some sort of Gaia-self, but still and equally framed in monological and flatl and terms. Not NATURE, but nature, is their beloved God/dess. Actual hierarchies of any sort are denied in the name of a diversitarian stance that explicitly denies that which its own stance implicitly presupposes. In their understandable zeal to go transrational, they often embrace any prerational occasion simply because it is nonrational-any occasion that looks biocentrically oriented, from horticultural planting mythology to rampant tribalism to indissociated magic and sensual glorification of a sentimental nature, all in the name of saving Gaia.
  The Eco-Noetic Self is thus often misinterpreted as a merely ecological self (the absolutizing of the biosphere)-completely overlooking the fact that no ecological self can take the role of other. The resultant regressive slide is just as disheartening as the Ego's aggressive repression. This is not Agape; this is Thanatos. An attempt to save the lower by killing the higher.
  --
  The point, it is argued, is that all holons, or certainly all life forms, have equal value and equal worth (another qualitative distinction that denies all qualitative distinctions). This environmental ethics-noble enough in itself, and often driven by a profound Intuition of the World Soul, the Eco-Noetic Self-is nonetheless crippled by operating within the flatl and paradigm.
  In volume 2, I will examine each of the major ecophilosophies in great detail, and then present an alternative-holonic ecology-which may be very briefly summarized as follows:
  --
  As I said, I believe in many cases the original Intuition is true and good, namely, all holons have equal Groundvalue (I believe that is the primary Intuition behind the noble attempts to deanthropocentrize ethics). But in unpacking this noble Intuition merely in terms of a flatl and holism (the Right-Hand path, which always embodies a qualitative distinction that denies all qualitative distinctions: in this case, "bioequality"), we end up instrumentalizing everything: precisely the fundamental Enlightenment paradigm most responsible for despoiling
  Gaia is still claiming, in its new guise, to save that which it is inexorably destroying.15
  Thus, a correct and often noble Intuition of the World Soul and Eco-Noetic Self is misinterpreted in terms of a flatl and holism that, in leveling qualitative distinctions, paralyzes actions that would further the descent of that World Soul. And in this case it is still true: that which is not part of the solution is most definitely part of the problem.
  EGO AND ECO: THE ASCENDERS AND THE DESCENDERS

2.1.5.1 - Study of Works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, #On Education, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
  Then and then onlyyou will be able to discern, from time to time, from place to place, an Intuition that something else is possible; in the Vedas, for instance (the injunction to descend deep into the cave of the Panis); in the Tantras also a little light is burning.1
  31 March 1967

2.15 - Reality and the Integral Knowledge, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Our present state is an Ignorance and a many-sided seeking; it seeks for the truth of all things but, - as is evident from the insistence and the variety of the human mind's speculations as to the fundamental Truth which explains all others, the Reality at the basis of all things, - the fundamental truth of things, their basic reality must be found in some at once fundamental and universal Real; it is that which, once discovered, must embrace and explain all, - for "That being known all will be known": the fundamental Real must necessarily be and contain the truth of all existence, the truth of the individual, the truth of the universe, the truth of all that is beyond the universe. The Mind, in seeking for such a Reality and testing each thing from Matter upwards to see if that might not be It, has not proceeded on a wrong Intuition. All that is necessary is to carry the inquiry to its end and test the highest and ultimate levels of experience.
  But since it is from the Ignorance that we proceed to the Knowledge, we have had first to discover the secret nature and full extent of the Ignorance. If we look at this Ignorance in which ordinarily we live by the very circumstance of our separative existence in a material, in a spatial and temporal universe, we see that on its obscurer side it reduces itself, from whatever direction we look at or approach it, into the fact of a manysided self-ignorance. We are ignorant of the Absolute which is the source of all being and becoming; we take partial facts of being, temporal relations of the becoming for the whole truth of existence, - that is the first, the original ignorance. We are ignorant of the spaceless, timeless, immobile and immutable Self; we take the constant mobility and mutation of the cosmic becoming in Time and Space for the whole truth of existence, - that is the second, the cosmic ignorance. We are ignorant of our universal self, the cosmic existence, the cosmic consciousness, our infinite unity with all being and becoming; we take our limited egoistic mentality, vitality, corporeality for our true self and regard everything other than that as not-self, - that is the third, the egoistic ignorance. We are ignorant of our eternal becoming in Time; we take this little life in a small span of Time, in a petty field of Space, for our beginning, our middle and our end, - that is the fourth, the temporal ignorance. Even within this brief temporal becoming we are ignorant of our large and complex being, of that in us which is superconscient, subconscient, intraconscient, circumconscient to our surface becoming; we take that surface becoming with its small selection of overtly mentalised experiences for our whole existence, - that is the fifth, the psychological ignorance. We are ignorant of the true constitution of our becoming; we take the mind or life or body or any two of these or all three for our true principle or the whole account of what we are, losing sight of that which constitutes them and determines by its occult presence and is meant to determine sovereignly by its emergence their operations, - that is the sixth, the constitutional ignorance. As a result of all these ignorances, we miss the true knowledge, government and enjoyment of our life in the world; we are ignorant in our thought, will, sensations, actions, return wrong or imperfect responses at every point to the questionings of the world, wander in a maze of errors and desires, strivings and failures, pain and pleasure, sin and stumbling, follow a crooked road, grope blindly for a changing goal, - that is the seventh, the practical ignorance.

2.16 - The 15th of August, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   There are three layers of the Supermind corresponding to the three activities of the Intuitive Mind. First is what I call the Interpretative Supermind. I call it interpretative because what is a possibility on the mental plane becomes a potentiality on the Supramental plane. The Interpretative Supermind puts all the potentialities before you. It shows the root cause of events that may come true on the physical plane. When Intuition is changed into its Supramental value, it becomes Interpretative Supermind.
   Next comes what I call the Representative Supermind. It represents the actual movements of the potentialities and shows what is in operation. When Inspiration is changed into its Supramental value then it becomes this Representative Supermind. This is not the highest Supermind. You know certain potentialities are working and in many cases you can say what would happen, or how a certain thing happened or can happen. But there may be no certainty. Finally there is the Imperative Supermind which corresponds to Revelation. It is always true as nothing can stand against it. It is Knowledge fulfilling itself by its own inherent power.

2.16 - The Integral Knowledge and the Aim of Life; Four Theories of Existence, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In the ordinary view of a sole terrestrial life or a restricted transient passage in the material universe, - for possibly there may be thinking living beings in other planets, - an acceptance of man's mortality and a passive endurance of it or an active dealing with a limited personal or collective life and life-aims are the only choice possible. The one high and reasonable course for the individual human being, - unless indeed he is satisfied with pursuing his personal purposes or somehow living his life until it passes out of him, - is to study the laws of the Becoming and take the best advantage of them to realise, rationally or Intuitionally, inwardly or in the dynamism of life, its potentialities in himself or for himself or in or for the race of which he is a member; his business is to make the most of such actualities as exist and to seize on or to advance towards the highest possibilities that can be developed here or are in the making.
  Only mankind as a whole can do this with entire effect, by the mass of individual and collective action, in the process of time, in the evolution of the race experience: but the individual man can help towards it in his own limits, can do all these things for himself to a certain extent in the brief space of life allotted to him; but, especially, his thought and action can be a contri bution towards the present intellectual, moral and vital welfare and the future progress of the race. He is capable of a certain nobility of being; an acceptance of his inevitable and early individual annihilation does not preclude him from making a high use of the will and thought which have been developed in him or from directing them to great ends which shall or may be worked out by humanity. Even the temporary character of the collective being of humanity does not so very much matter, - except in the most materialist view of existence; for so long as the universal Becoming takes the form of human body and mind, the thought, the will it has developed in its human creature will work itself out and to follow that intelligently is the natural law and best rule of human life. Humanity and its welfare and progress during its persistence on earth provide the largest field and the natural limits for the terrestrial aim of our being; the superior persistence of the race and the greatness and importance of the collective life should determine the nature and scope of our ideals. But if the progress or welfare of humanity be excluded as not our business or as a delusion, the individual is there; to achieve his greatest possible perfection or make the most of his life in whatever way his nature demands will then be life's significance.
  --
  These are the three fundamental ways of seeing, each with its mental attitude towards life, that can be adopted with regard to our existence; the rest are usually midway stations or else variations or composites which attempt to adapt themselves more freely to the complexity of the problem. For, practically, it is impossible for man taken as a race, whatever a few individuals may succeed in doing, to guide his life permanently or wholly by the leading motive of any of these three attitudes, uniquely, to the exclusion of the others' claim upon his nature. A confused amalgam of two or more of them, a conflict or division of his lifemotives between them or some attempt at synthesis is his way of dealing with the various impulses of his complex being and the Intuitions of his mind to which they appeal for their sanction.
  Almost all men normally devote the major part of their energy to the life on earth, to the terrestrial needs, interests, desires, ideals of the individual and the race. It could not be otherwise; for the care of the body, the sufficient development and satisfaction of the vital and the mental being of man, the pursuit of high individual and large collective ideals which start from the idea of an attainable human perfection or nearer approach to perfection through his normal development, are imposed upon us by the very character of our terrestrial being; they are part of its law, its natural impulse and rule, its condition of growth, and without these things man could not attain to his full manhood.
  --
  But also she has implanted in us a sense that there is something in our composition which goes beyond this first terrestrial nature of humanity. For this reason the race cannot accept or follow for a very long time any view of being which ignores this higher and subtler sense and labours to confine us entirely to a purely terrestrial way of living. The Intuition of a beyond, the idea and feeling of a soul and spirit in us which is other than the mind, life and body or is greater, not limited by their formula, returns upon us and ends by resuming possession. The ordinary man satisfies this sense easily enough by devoting to it his exceptional moments or the latter part of his life when age shall have blunted the zest of his earthly nature, or by recognising it as something behind or above his normal action to which he can more or less imperfectly direct his natural being: the exceptional man turns to the supraterrestrial as the one aim and law of living and diminishes or mortifies as much as possible his earthly parts in the hope of developing his celestial nature.
  There have been epochs in which the supraterrestrial view has gained a very powerful hold and there has been a vacillation between an imperfect human living which cannot take its large natural expansion and a sick ascetic longing for the celestial life which also does not acquire in more than a few its best pure and happy movement. This is a sign of the creation of some false war in the being by the setting up of a standard or a device that ignores the law of evolutionary capacity or an overstress that misses the reconciling equation which must exist somewhere in a divine dispensation of our nature.

2.1.7.08 - Comments on Specific Lines and Passages of the Poem, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  This passage is, I believe, what I might call the Overmind Intuition at work expressing itself in something like its own rhythm and language. It is difficult to say about ones own poetry, but I think I have succeeded here and in some passages later on in catching that very difficult note; in separate lines or briefer passages (i.e. a few lines at a time) I think it comes in not unoften.
  3 November 1936

2.17 - December 1938, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: Oh, that is different. But you said you have no latent medico in you and hence you can't say. I thought you could say by your Intuition.
   Sri Aurobindo (addressing X) : I was telling you we know what we have got to know. But it is not always good to know. For instance, if I know a thing is going to happen I am bound to it, and even if it is not what I wanted, I have to accept it, and this prevents my having a greater or another possibility. So I want to keep myself free and deal with various possibilities. Below the Supermind everything is a question of possibilities; so if I keep myself free, I can accept or reject as I like. Destiny is not a thing fixed. It is just a complex of forces which can be changed.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: Knowledge comes by Intuition. One can reject but the result is not sure though failure may show the way for later success.
   Disciple (X) : You have said in an August 15th conversation that you have conquered death by natural process but you do not have complete control over accidents.
  --
   Dr. Savour, a homeopath, had come. The Mother also came. N asked S how he knew his Intuition in diagnosis and prescription was correct. S said as it was not obtained through logical reasoning, it had to be correct.
   N (to Sri Aurobindo) : You told me R [the Ashram homeopath] uses mental Intuition. So there must be various levels of Intuition.
   Sri Aurobindo: By mental Intuition I mean the Intuition which comes from Above but gets mixed with the mind. I don't say that mental Intuition is not correct but it is always limited because of the mixture. There is also the vital Intuition which very often becomes mixed up with one's desires.
   Disciple: How to get true Intuition By calmness of mind?
   Sri Aurobindo: Calmness is not enough. Mind must be silent.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: You know I was talking about the tail of the Supermind to Y. I know what it is, I had flashes and glimpses of it. I have been trying to Supramentalise the Overmind. Not that the Supermind is not acting. It is doing so through Overmind and Intuition and the intermediate powers have come down. Supermind is above the Overmind (he showed it by placing one palm above the other) so that one may mistake one for the other. I remember the day when people here claimed to have got it. I myself had made mistakes about it in the beginning, and I did not know about the many planes. It was Vivekananda who used to come to me in Alipore Jail who showed to me the Intuitive plane. For about two to three weeks, he gave me instructions regarding Intuition. Afterwards I began to see the still higher planes. I am not satisfied with only a part, or a flash of Supermind, I want to bring down the whole mass of the Supermind pure, and that is an extremely difficult business.
   Disciple: We hear that there will be a selected number of people who will first receive the Supermind.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: If none is ready to receive how will the Supermind manifest itself? But instead of thinking of the Supermind one has first to open oneself to Intuition.
   ( At this time Mother came and asked about what we were talking.)
   Sri Aurobindo: About Intuition, etc.
   ( Then as Mother went into meditation we all joined. Mother left for the collective meditation downstairs at about 7 p.m.)
  --
   Disciple: But why then did you appear in the I.C.S.? Was it by some Intuition that you did not go for the riding test?
   Sri Aurobindo: Not at all. I knew nothing of Yoga at that time. I appeared for I.C.S. because my father wanted it and I was too young to understand. Later I found out what sort of work it is and I had a disgust for administrative life and I had no interest in administrative work. My interest was in poetry and literature and study of languages and patriotic action.

2.17 - The Progress to Knowledge - God, Man and Nature, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Neither his intellect, nor his Intuitions, nor his feeling can do without a One or a Oneness to whom or to which these worldforces and himself may stand in some relation which supports them and gives them their significance. He feels that there must be an Infinite which holds these finites, is in, behind and about all this visible cosmos, bases the harmony and interrelation and essential oneness of multitudinous things. His thought needs an Absolute on which these innumerable and finite relativities depend for their existence, an ultimate Truth of things, a creating Power or Force or a Being who originates and upholds all these innumerable beings in the universe. Let him call it what he will, he must arrive at a Supreme, a Divine, a Cause, an Infinite and Eternal, a Permanent, a Perfection to which all tends and aspires, or an All to which everything perpetually and invisibly amounts and without which they could not be.
  Yet even this Absolute he cannot really affirm by itself and to the exclusion of the two other categories; for then he has only made a violent leap away from the problem he is here to solve, and he himself and the cosmos remain an inexplicable mystification or a purposeless mystery. A certain part of his intellect and his longing for rest may be placated by such a solution, just as his physical intelligence is easily satisfied by a denial of the Beyond and a deification of material Nature; but his heart, his will, the strongest and intensest parts of his being remain without a meaning, void of purpose or justification, or become merely a random foolishness agitating itself like a vain and restless shadow against the eternal repose of the pure Existence or amidst the eternal inconscience of the universe. As for the cosmos, it remains there in the singular character of a carefully constructed lie of the Infinite, a monstrously aggressive and yet really non-existent anomaly, a painful and miserable paradox with false shows of wonder and beauty and delight.
  --
  The quest of man for God, which becomes in the end the most ardent and enthralling of all his quests, begins with his first vague questionings of Nature and a sense of something unseen both in himself and her. Even if, as modern Science insists, religion started from animism, spirit-worship, demon-worship and the deification of natural forces, these first forms only embody in primitive figures a veiled Intuition in the subconscient, an obscure and ignorant feeling of hidden influences and incalculable forces, or a vague sense of being, will, intelligence in what seems to us inconscient, of the invisible behind the visible, of the secretly conscious spirit in things distributing itself in every working of energy. The obscurity and primitive inadequacy of the first perceptions do not detract from the value or the truth of this great quest of the human heart and mind, since all our seekings - including Science itself - must start from an obscure and ignorant perception of hidden realities and proceed to the more and more luminous vision of the Truth which at first comes to us masked, draped, veiled by the mists of the Ignorance.
  Anthropomorphism is an imaged recognition of the truth that man is what he is because God is what He is and that there is one soul and body of things, humanity even in its incompleteness the most complete manifestation yet achieved here and divinity the perfection of what in man is imperfect. That he sees himself everywhere and worships that as God is also true; but here too he has laid confusedly the groping hand of Ignorance on a truth - that his being and the Being are one, that this is a partial reflection of That, and that to find his greater Self everywhere is to find God and to come near to the Reality in things, the Reality of all existence.

2.18 - January 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Work as part of Sadhana is all right, but work as part of spiritual creation we cannot take up unless the inner difficulties are overcome. It is not that we don't want to do it, but a spiritual creation cannot be done according to mental constructions it must be left entirely to the Mother's Intuition. Even then there are difficulties!
   Disciple: What is the difference between peace and silence?

2.19 - Feb-May 1939, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Sri Aurobindo: Intuition is the only way. But even there mental Intuition may be right, but not always. Mind deals with the possibilities and some may come true. Again, true Intuition has to be distinguished from the mental imitation of the same, or from mere suggestion or a strong impression.
   Disciple: How can one save oneself from error?
   Sri Aurobindo: There is no outer rule; you have to get the psychic tact which throws out the error. For example, the Mother used to feel about the soundness of houses and our engineer used to find out afterwards that her feeling was true, though she does not know architecture or engineering. Another necessity is that one must be sincere about finding the truth by Intuition. That is to say, one must not jump at the first idea and run away with it. The mind must be absolutely impartial and also one must be patient and one must wait. One must also test his Intuitions.
   16 MAY 1939

2.2.02 - Becoming Conscious in Work, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Noit is only if it [turning inwards during work] is an inner absorption that it would come in the way. But what I mean is a sort of stepping backward into something silent and observant within which is not involved in the action, yet sees and can shed its light upon it. There are then two parts of the being, one inner looking at and witnessing and knowing, the other executive and instrumental and doing. This gives not only freedom but power and in this inner being one can get into touch with the Divine not through mental activity but through the substance of the being, by a certain inward touch, perception, reception, receiving also the right inspiration or Intuition of the work.
  ***
  --
  It needs a quiet mind [to know the Divine Will]. In the quiet mind turned towards the Divine the Intuition (higher mind) comes of the Divines Will and the right way to do it.
  ***
  Once the mental silence is attained, then in that the mental thoughts can be replaced by some vision and Intuition regarding the work.
  ***
  The transcendental Will for us is the supramental Will. For that to act in you directly, it is necessary to grow upward into the consciousness above the ordinary mind and to bring down these higher ranges into the mind, life and body. Indirectly through the higher Mind and Intuition the supramental Will is already acting on you, but naturally this indirect action does not bring the full power.
  ***

2.2.03 - The Science of Consciousness, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Vedantic psychology explores the idea and Intuition of a higher reality than mind.
  The Intuition can only be verified by psychological experience exceeding the normal action of mind. This experience may lead to constantly ascending Intuitions verified by an ascent of experience to some summit of being.
  Beyond mind psychological experience finds another power of energy, another note in the scale of being. This we will call the supermind. This supermind lives and acts natively in a domain of experience of which the mind becomes aware by a reflective experience and calls vaguely spirit or spiritual being.

2.2.05 - Creative Activity, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The use of your writing is to keep you in touch with the inner source of inspiration and Intuition, so as to wear thin the crude external crust in the consciousness and encourage the growth of the inner being.
  ***

2.21 - 1940, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   Disciple: I am trying to get Intuition but I fail.
   Sri Aurobindo: Perhaps you were disappointed with your last brinjal Intuition, and so it is not coming.
   Disciple: But Nolini Sen began to have guidance as soon as he started Yoga. He has a mind which seems open to the intuitive faculty.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: He has, but for action he feels what will hapen and seizes upon it. He acts upon the suggestion and in most cases it turns out to be right. Not that he does not go wrong at all. The nature of his mind is such that he is open to this intuitive faculty of action. The English people are so successful because they have a knack of getting vital Intuition which leads to success. Even if they commit mistakes and jumble things together, in the end their Intuition comes to their help and pulls them out of the difficulty. The French on the other hand are more logical. They think and reason.
   Disciple: The English are thinking of helping Finland more actively because they are afraid of a German-Russian naval combination in the Baltic.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo (to N) : Are you trying to get Intuition in a special way?
   Disciple: Yes, in my medical work.
  --
   Sri Aurobindo: For everything. For example, what S is going to do next. Or, if you are a reader of novels, try to guess what will follow; of course, it is easy for an expert reader to do this. After all, many people get Intuition without knowing it.
   8 JANUARY 1940

2.21 - The Ladder of Self-transcendence, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is possible for man to awaken to this higher mental consciousness, to become this mental being,452 put on, this mental nature and live not only in the vital and physical sheaths, but in this mental body. If there were a sufficient completeness in this transformation he would become capable of a life and a being at least half divine. For he would enjoy powers and a vision and perceptions beyond the scope of this ordinary life and body; he would govern all by the clarities of pure knowledge; he would be united to other beings by a sympathy of love and happiness; his emotions would be lifted to the perfection of the psychomental plane, his sensations rescued from grossness, his intellect subtle, pure and flexible, delivered from the deviations of the impure pranic energy and the obstructions of matter. And he would develop too the reflection of a wisdom and bliss higher than any mental joy and knowledge; for he could receive more fully and without our incompetent mind's deforming and falsifying mixture the inspirations and Intuitions that are the arrows of the supramental Light and form his perfected mental existence in the mould and power of that vaster splendour. He could then realise too the self or Spirit in a much larger and more luminous and more intimate intensity than is now possible and with a greater play of its active power and bliss in the satisfied harmony of his existence.
  And to our ordinary notions this may well seem to be a consummate perfection, something to which man might aspire in his highest flights of idealism. No doubt, it would be a sufficient perfection for the pure mental being in its own character, but it would still fall far below the greater possibilities of the spiritual nature. For here too our spiritual realisation would be subject to the limitations of the mind which is in the nature of a reflected, diluted and diffused or narrowly intensive light, not the vast and comprehensive self-existent luminosity and joy of the spirit. That vaster light, that profounder bliss are beyond the mental reaches. Mind indeed can never be a perfect instrument of the Spirit; a supreme self-expression is not possible in its movements because to separate, divide, limit is its very character. Even if mind could be free from all positive falsehood and error, even if it could be all intuitive and infallibly intuitive, it could still present and organise only half-truths or separate truths and these too not in their own body but in luminous representative figures put together to make an accumulated total or a massed structure. Therefore the self-perfecting mental being here must either depart into pure spirit by the shedding of its lower existence or return upon the physical life to develop in it a capacity not yet found in our mental and psychic nature. This is what the Upanishad expresses when, it says that the heavens attained by the mind Purusha are those to which man is lifted by the rays of the sun, the diffused, separated, though intense beams of the supramental truth-consciousness, and from these it has to return to the earthly existence. But the illuminates who renouncing earth-life go beyond through the gateways of the sun, do not return hither. The mental being exceeding his sphere does not return because by that transition he enters a high range of existence peculiar to the superior hemisphere. He cannot bring down its greater spiritual nature into this lower triplicity; for here the mental being is the highest expression of the Self. Here the triple mental, vital and physical body provides almost the whole range of our capacity and cannot suffice for that greater consciousness; the vessel has not been built to contain a greater godhead or to house the splendours of this supramental force and knowledge.

2.21 - The Order of the Worlds, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  These accounts are evidently built largely by imagination, but there is an element also of Intuition and divination, a feeling of what life can be and surely is in some domain of its manifested or its realisable nature; there is also an element of true subliminal contact and experience. But the mind of man translates what he sees or receives or contacts from other-nature into figures proper to his own consciousness; they are his translations of supraphysical realities into his own significant forms and images and through these forms and images he enters into communication with the realities and can make them to a certain degree present and effective. The experience of an after-death continuance of a modified earth-life may be explained as due to this kind of translation; but it is also explainable partly as the creation of a subjective post-mortal state in which he still lives in figures of habitual experience before he enters into otherworldly realities, partly as a passage through life-worlds where the type of things expresses itself in formations originative of those to which he was attached in his earthly body or akin to them and therefore exercises a natural attraction on the vital being after its exit from the body. But, apart from these subtler life-states, the traditional accounts of other-worldly existence contain, though as a rarer more elevated element not included in the popular notion of these things, a higher grade of states of existence which are clearly of a mental and not a vital character and others founded on some spiritual-mental principle; these higher principles are formulated in states of being into which our inner experience can rise or the soul enter. The principle of gradation we have accepted is therefore justified provided we recognise that it is one way of organising our experience and that other ways proceeding from other view-points are possible.
  For a classification can always be valid from the principle and view-point adopted by it while from other principles and viewpoints another classification of the same things can be equally valid. But for our purpose the system we have chosen is of the greatest value because it is fundamental and answers to a truth of the manifestation which is of the utmost practical importance; it helps us to understand our own constituted existence and the course of the involution and the evolutionary motion of Nature.

2.22 - Vijnana or Gnosis, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Even the purest reason, the most luminous rational intellectuality is not the gnosis. Reason or intellect is only the lower buddhi; it is dependent for its action on the percepts of the sense-mind and on the concepts of the mental intelligence. It is not like the gnosis, self-luminous, au thentic, making the subject one with the object. There is, indeed, a higher form of the buddhi that can be called the intuitive mind or intuitive reason, and this by its Intuitions, its inspirations, its swift revelatory vision, its luminous insight and discrimination can do the work of the reason with a higher power, a swifter action, a greater and spontaneous certitude. It acts in a self-light of the truth which does not depend upon the torch-flares of the sense-mind and its limited uncertain percepts; it proceeds not by intelligent but by visional concepts: It is a kind of truth-vision, truth-hearing, truth-memory, direct truth-discernment. This true and au thentic Intuition must be distinguished from a power of the ordinary mental reason which is too easily confused with it, that power of Involved reasoning that reaches its conclusion by a bound and does not need the ordinary steps of the logical mind. The logical reason proceeds pace after pace and tries the sureness of each step like a marl who is walking over unsafe ground and has to test by the hesitating touch of his foot each span of soil that he perceives with his eye. But this other supralogical process of the reason is a motion of rapid insight or swift discernment; it proceeds by a stride or leap, like a man who springs from one sure spot to another point of sure footing, -- or at least held by him to be sure. He sees this space he covers in one compact and flashing view, but he does not distinguish or measure either by eye or touch its successions, features and circumstances. This movement has something of the sense of power of the Intuition, something of its velocity, some appearance of its light and certainty, arid we always are apt to take it for the Intuition. But our assumption is an error and, if we trust to it, it may lead us into grievous blunders.
  It is even thought by the intellectualists that the Intuition itself is nothing more than this rapid process in which the whole action of the logical mind is swiftly done or perhaps half-consciously or subconsciously done, not deliberately worked out in its reasoned method. In its nature, however, this proceeding is quite different from the Intuition and it is not necessarily a truth-movement. The power of its leap may end in a stumble, its swiftness may betray, its certainty is too often a confident error. The validity of its conclusion must always depend on a subsequent verification or support from the evidence of the sense-perceptions or a rational linking of intelligent conceptions must intervene to explain to it its own certitudes. This lower light may indeed receive very readily a mixture of actual Intuition into it and then a pseudo-intuitive or half intuitive mind is created, very misleading by its frequent luminous successes palliating a whirl of intensely self-assured false certitudes. The true Intuition on the contrary carries in itself its own guarantee of truth; it is sure and infallible within its limit. And so long as it is pure Intuition and does not admit into itself any mixture of sense-error or intellectual ideation, it is never contradicted by experience. The Intuition may be verified by the reason or the sense-perception afterwards, but its truth does not depend on that verification, it is assured by an automatic self-evidence. If the reason depending on its inferences contradicts the greater light, it will be found in the end on ampler knowledge that the Intuitional conclusion was correct and that the more plausible rational and inferential conclusion was an error. For the true Intuition proceeds from the self-existent truth of things and is secured by that self-existent truth and riot by any indirect, derivatory or dependent method of arriving at knowledge.
  But even the intuitive reason is not the gnosis; it is only an edge of light of the supermind finding its way by flashes of illumination into the mentality like lightnings in dim and cloudy places. Its inspirations, revelations, Intuitions, self-luminous discernings are messages from a higher knowledge-plane that make their way opportunely into our lower level of consciousness. The very character of the intuitive mind sets a gulf of great difference between its action and the action of the self-contained gnosis. In the first place it acts by separate and limited illuminations and its truth is restricted to the often narrow reach or the one brief spot of knowledge lit up by that one lightning-flash with which its intervention begins and terminates. We see the action of the instinct in animals -- an automatic Intuition in that vital or sense-mind which is the highest and surest instrument that the animal has to rely on, since it does not possess the human light of the reason, only a cruder and yet ill-formed intelligence. And we can observe at once that the marvellous truth of this instinct which seems so much surer than the reason, is limited in the bird, beast or insect to some particular and restricted utility it is admitted to serve. When the vital mind of the animal tries to act beyond that restricted limit, it blunders in a much blinder way than the reason of man and has to learn with difficulty by a succession of sense-experiences. The higher mental Intuition of the human being is an inner visional, not a sense Intuition; for it illumines the intelligence and not sense-mind, it is self-conscious and luminous, not a half subconscious blind light: it is freely self-acting, not mechanically automatic. But still, even when it is not marred by the imitative pseudo- Intuition, it is restricted in man like tile instinct in the animal, restricted to a particular purpose of will or knowledge -- as is the instinct to a particular life utility or Nature purpose. And when the intelligence, as is its almost invariable habit, tries to make use of it, to apply it, to add to it, it builds round the intuitive nucleus in its own characteristic fashion a mass of mixed truth and error. More often than not, by foisting an element of sense-error and conceptual error into the very substance of the Intuition or by coating it up in mental additions and deviations, it not merely deflects but deforms its truth and converts it into a falsehood. At the best therefore the Intuition gives us only a limited, though an intense light; at the worst, through our misuse of it or false imitations of it, it may lead us into perplexities and confusions which the less ambitious intellectual reason avoids by remaining satisfied with its own safe and plodding method, -- safe for the inferior purposes of the reason, though never a satisfying guide to the inner truth of things.
  It is possible to cultivate and extend the use of the intuitive mind in proportion as we rely less predominantly upon the reasoning intelligence. We may train our mentality not to seize, as it does now, upon every separate flash of intuitive illumination for its own inferior purposes, not to precipitate our thought at once into a crystallising intellectual action around it; we can train it to think in a stream of successive and connected Intuitions, to pour light upon light in a brilliant and triumphant series. We shall succeed in this difficult change in proportion as we purify the interfering intelligence, -if we can reduce in it the element of material thought enslaved to the external appearances of things, the element of vital thought enslaved to the wishes, desires, impulses of the lower nature, the element of intellectual thought enslaved to our preferred, already settled or congenial ideas, conceptions, opinions, fixed operations of intelligence, if, having reduced to a minimum those elements, we can replace them by an intuitive vision and sense of things, an intuitive insight into appearances, an intuitive will, and intuitive ideation. This is hard enough for our consciousness naturally bound by the triple tie of mentality, vitality, corporeality to its own imperfection and ignorance, the upper, middle and lower cord in the Vedic parable of the soul's bondage, cords of the mixed truth and falsehood of appearances by which sunahsepa was bound to the post of sacrifice.
  But even if this difficult thing were perfectly accomplished, still the Intuition would not be the gnosis; it would only be its thin prolongation into mind or its sharp edge of first entrance. The difference, not easy to define except by symbols, may be expressed if we take the Vedic image in which the Sun represents the gnosis462 and the sky, mid-air and earth, the mentality, vitality, physicality of man and of the universe. Living on the earth, climbing into the mid-air or even winging in the sky, the mental being, the manomya purusa, would still live in the rays of the sun and not in its bodily light. And in those rays he would see things not as they are but as reflected in his organ of vision, deformed by its faults or limited in their truth by its restrictions. But the vijnanamaya purusa lives in the Sun itself, in the very body and blaze of the true light; he knows this light to be his own self-luminous being and he sees the whole truth of the lower triplicity and each thing that is in it. He sees it not by reflection in a mental organ of vision, but with the Sun of gnosis itself as his eye, -- for the Sun, says the Veda, is the eye of the gods. The mental being, even in the intuitive mind, can perceive the truth only by a brilliant reflection or limited communication and subject to the restrictions and the inferior capacity of the mental vision; but the supramental being sees it by the gnosis itself, from the very centre and outwelling fount of the truth, in its very form and by its own spontaneous and self-illumining process. For the Vijnana is a direct and divine as opposed to an indirect and human knowledge.
  The nature of the gnosis can only be indicated to the intellect by contrasting it with the nature of the intellect, and even then the phrases we must use cannot illuminate unless aided by some amount of actual experience. For what language forged by the reason can express the supraratiorlal? Fundamentally, this is the difference between these two powers that the mental reason proceeds with labour from ignorance to truth, but the gnosis has in itself the direct contact, the immediate vision, the easy and constant possession of the truth and has no need of seeking or any kind of procedure. The reason starts with appearances and labours, never or seldom losing at least a partial dependence on appearances, to arrive at the truth behind them; it shows the truth in the light of the appearances. The gnosis starts from the truth and shows the appearances in the light of the truth; it is itself the body of the truth and its spirit. The reason proceeds by inference, it concludes; but the gnosis proceeds by identity or vision, -- it is, sees and knows. As directly as the physical vision sees and grasps the appearance of objects, so and far more directly the gnosis sees and grasps the truth of things. But where the physical sense gets into relation with objects by a veiled contact, the gnosis gets into identity with things by an unveiled oneness. Thus it is able to know all things as a man knows his own existence, simply, convincingly, directly. To the reason only what the senses give is direct knowledge, pratyaksa, the rest of truth is arrived at indirectly; to the gnosis all its truth is direct knowledge, pratyaksa. Therefore the truth gained by the intellect is an acquisition over which there hangs always a certain shadow of doubt, an incompleteness, a surrounding penumbra of night and ignorance or half-knowledge, a possibility of alteration or annullation by farther knowledge. The truth of the gnosis is free from doubt, self-evident, self-existent, irrefragable, absolute.

2.23 - Man and the Evolution, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In fact, the idea of the priority of the lower forms of life is not altogether absent in ancient thinking. Apart from mythical accounts of creation, we find already in ancient and mediaeval thought in India utterances that favour the priority of the animal over man in the time succession in a sense that agrees with the modern evolutionary conception. An Upanishad declares that the Self or Spirit after deciding on life creation first formed animal kinds like the cow and horse, but the gods, - who are in the thought of the Upanishads powers of Consciousness and powers of Nature, - found them to be insufficient vehicles, and the Spirit finally created the form of man which the gods saw to be excellently made and sufficient and they entered into it for their cosmic functions. This is a clear parable of the creation of more and more developed forms till one was found that was capable of housing a developed consciousness. In the Puranas it is stated that the tamasic animal creation was the first in time. Tamas is the Indian word for the principle of inertia of consciousness and force: a consciousness dull and sluggish and incompetent in its play is said to be tamasic; a force, a life-energy that is indolent and limited in its capacity, bound to a narrow range of instinctive impulses, not developing, not seeking farther, not urged to a greater kinetic action or a more luminously conscious action, would be assigned to the same category. The animal, in whom there is this less developed force of consciousness, is prior in creation; the more developed human consciousness, in which there is a greater force of kinetic mindenergy and light of perception, is a later creation. The Tantra speaks of a soul fallen from its status passing through many lacs of births in plant and animal forms before it can reach the human level and be ready for salvation. Here, again, there is implied the conception of vegetable and animal life-forms as the lower steps of a ladder, humanity as the last or culminating development of the conscious being, the form which the soul has to inhabit in order to be capable of the spiritual motive and a spiritual issue out of mentality, life and physicality. This is indeed the normal conception, and it recommends itself so strongly both to reason and Intuition that it hardly needs debate, - the conclusion is almost unescapable.
  It is against this background of a developing evolutionary process that we have to look at man, his origin and first appearance, his status in the manifestation. There are here two possibilities; either there was the sudden appearance of a human body and consciousness in the earth nature, an abrupt creation or independent automatic manifestation of reasoning mentality in the material world intervening upon a previous similar manifestation of subconscious life-forms and of living conscious bodies in Matter, or else there was an evolution of humanity out of animal being, slow perhaps in its preparation and in its stages of development, but with strong leaps of change at the decisive points of the transition. The latter theory offers no difficulty: for it is certain that changes of characteristics in the type, though not of the fundamental type itself, can be brought about in species or genus, - indeed this has already been done by man himself and its possibilities are being strikingly worked out on a small scale by experimental Science, - and it may fairly be assumed that the secretly conscious Energy in Nature could effect largescale operations of the kind and bring about considerable and decisive developments by means of its own creative conventions.
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  But the Ignorance is only a portion of this world-Nature; it is not the whole of it, not the original power or creator: it is in its higher origin a self-limiting Knowledge and even in its lower origin, its emergence out of the sheer material Inconscience, it is a suppressed Consciousness labouring to find, to recover itself, to manifest Knowledge, which is its true character, as the foundation of existence. In universal Mind itself there are ranges above our mentality which are instruments of the cosmic truth-cognition, and into these the mental being can surely rise; for already it rises towards them in supernormal conditions or receives from them without yet knowing or possessing them Intuitions, spiritual intimations, large influxes of illumination or spiritual capacity. All these ranges are conscious of what is beyond them, and the highest of them is directly open to the Supermind, aware of the Truth-consciousness which exceeds it.
  Moreover, in the evolving being itself, those greater powers of consciousness are here, supporting mind-truth, underlying its action which screens them; this Supermind and those Truthpowers uphold Nature by their secret presence: even, truth of mind is their result, a diminished operation, a representation in partial figures. It is, therefore, not only natural but seems inevitable that these higher powers of Existence should manifest here in Mind as Mind itself has manifested in Life and Matter.

2.24 - The Evolution of the Spiritual Man, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Evolutionary Nature in her first awakening of man to a rudimentary spiritual consciousness must begin with a vague sense of the Infinite and the Invisible surrounding the physical being, a sense of the limitation and impotence of human mind and will and of something greater than himself concealed in the world, of Potencies beneficent or maleficent which determine the results of his action, a Power that is behind the physical world he lives in and has perhaps created it and him, or Powers that inform and rule her movements while they themselves perhaps are ruled by the greater Unknown that is beyond them. He had to determine what they are and find means of communication so that he might propitiate them or call them to his aid; he sought also for means by which he could find out and control the springs of the hidden movements of Nature. This he could not do at once by his reason because his reason could at first deal only with physical facts, but this was the domain of the Invisible and needed a supraphysical vision and knowledge; he had to do it by an extension of the faculty of Intuition and instinct which was already there in the animal. This faculty, prolonged in the thinking being and mentalised, must have been more sensitive and active in early man, though still mostly on a lower scale, for he had to rely on it largely for all his first necessary discoveries: he had to rely also on the aid of subliminal experience; for the subliminal too must have been more active, more ready to upsurge in him, more capable of formulating its phenomena on the surface, before he learned to depend completely on his intellect and senses. The Intuitions that he thus received by contact with Nature, his mind systematised and so created the early forms of religion. This active and ready power of Intuition also gave him the sense of supraphysical forces behind the physical, and his instinct and a certain subliminal or supernormal experience of supraphysical beings with whom he could somehow communicate turned him towards the discovery of effective and canalising means for a dynamic utilisation of this knowledge; so were created magic and the other early forms of occultism. At some time it must have dawned on him that he had something in him which was not physical, a soul that survived the body; certain supernormal experiences which became active because of the pressure to know the invisible, must have helped to formulate his first crude ideas of this entity within him. It would only be later that he began to realise that what he perceived in the action of the universe was also there in some form within him and that in him also were elements that responded to invisible powers and forces for good or for evil; so would begin his religio-ethical formations and his possibilities of spiritual experience. An amalgam of primitive Intuitions, occult ritual, religio-social ethics, mystical knowledge or experiences symbolised in myth but with their sense preserved by a secret initiation and discipline is the early, at first very superficial and external stage of human religion. In the beginning these elements were, no doubt, crude and poor and defective, but they acquired depth and range and increased in some cultures to a great amplitude and significance.
  But as the mental and life development increased, - for that is Nature's first preoccupation in man and she does not hesitate to push it forward at the cost of other elements that will need to be taken up fully hereafter, - there is a tendency towards intellectualisation, and the first necessary intuitive, instinctive and subliminal formations are overlaid with the structures erected by a growing force of reason and mental intelligence. As man discovers the secrets and processes of physical Nature, he moves more and more away from his early recourse to occultism and magic; the presence and felt influence of gods and invisible powers recedes as more and more is explained by natural workings, the mechanical procedure of Nature: but he still feels the need of a spiritual element and spiritual factors in his life and therefore keeps for a time the two activities running together. But the occult elements of religion, though still held as beliefs or preserved but also buried in rites and myths, lose their significance and diminish and the intellectual element increases; finally, where and when the intellectualising tendency becomes too strong, there is a movement to cut out everything but creed, institution, formal practice and ethics. Even the element of spiritual experience dwindles and it is considered sufficient to rely only on faith, emotional fervour and moral conduct; the first amalgam of religion, occultism and mystic experience is disrupted, and there is a tendency, not by any means universal or complete but still pronounced or visible, for each of these powers to follow its own way to its own goal in its own separate and free character.
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  If we look at the past, we can still see the evidences of this line of natural evolution, although most of its earlier stages are hidden from us in the unwritten pages of prehistory. It has been contended that religion in its beginnings was nothing but a mass of animism, fetishism, magic, totemism, taboo, myth, superstitious symbol, with the medicine-man as priest, a mental fungus of primitive human ignorance, - later on at its best a form of Nature-worship. It could well have been so in the primitive mind, though we have to add the proviso that behind much of its beliefs and practices there may have been a truth of an inferior but very effective kind that we have lost with our superior development. Primitive man lives much in a low and small province of his life-being, and this corresponds on the occult plane to an invisible Nature which is of a like character and whose occult powers can be called into activity by a knowledge and methods to which the lower vital Intuitions and instincts may open a door of access. This might be formulated in a first stage of religious belief and practice which would be occult after a crude inchoate fashion in its character and interests, not yet spiritual; its main element would be a calling in of small lifepowers and elemental beings to the aid of small life-desires and a rude physical welfare.
  But this primitive stage, - if it is indeed such and not, in what we still see of it, a fall or a vestige, a relapse from a higher knowledge belonging to a previous cycle of civilisation or the debased remnants of a dead or obsolete culture, - can have been only a beginning. It was followed, after whatever stages, by the more advanced type of religion of which we have a record in the literature or surviving documents of the early civilised peoples. This type, composed of a polytheistic belief and worship, a cosmology, a mythology, a complexus of ceremonies, practices, ritual and ethical obligations interwoven sometimes deeply into the social system, was ordinarily a national or tribal religion intimately expressive of the stage of evolution of thought and life reached by the community. In the outer structure we still miss the support of a deeper spiritual significance, but this gap was filled in in the greater more developed cultures by a strong background of occult knowledge and practices or else by carefully guarded mysteries with a first element of spiritual wisdom and discipline.
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  It is possible indeed that it is the mystic or the incipient occultist who was everywhere the creator of religion and imposed his secret discoveries in the form of belief, myth and practice on the mass human mind; for it is always the individual who receives the Intuitions of Nature and takes the step forward dragging or drawing the rest of humanity behind him. But even if we give the credit of this new creation to the subconscious mass mind, it is the occultist and mystic element in that mind which created it and it must have found individuals through whom it could emerge; for a mass experience or discovery or expression is not the first method of Nature; it is at some one point or a few points that the fire is lit and spreads from hearth to hearth, from altar to altar. But the spiritual aspiration and experience of the mystics was usually casketed in secret formulas and given only to a few initiates; it was conveyed to the rest or rather preserved for them in a mass of religious or traditional symbols. It is these symbols that were the heart's core of religion in the mind of an early humanity.
  Out of this second stage there emerged a third which tried to liberate the secret spiritual experience and knowledge and put it at the disposal of all as a truth that could have a common appeal and must be made universally available. A tendency prevailed, not only to make the spiritual element the very kernel of the religion, but to render it attainable to all the worshippers by an exoteric teaching; as each esoteric school had had its system of knowledge and discipline, so now each religion was to have its system of knowledge, its creed and its spiritual discipline. Here, in these two forms of the spiritual evolution, the esoteric and the exoteric, the way of the mystic and the way of the religious man, we see a double principle of evolutionary Nature, the principle of intensive and concentrated evolution in a small space and the principle of expansion and extension so that the new creation may be generalised in as large a field as possible. The first is the concentrated dynamic and effective movement; the second tends towards diffusion and status. As a result of this new development, the spiritual aspiration at first carefully treasured by a few became more generalised in mankind, but it lost in purity, height and intensity. The mystics founded their endeavour on a power of suprarational knowledge, intuitive, inspired, revelatory and on the force of the inner being to enter into occult truth and experience: but these powers are not possessed by men in the mass or possessed only in a crude, undeveloped and fragmentary initial form on which nothing could be safely founded; so for them in this new development the spiritual truth had to be clothed in intellectual forms of creed and doctrine, in emotional forms of worship and in a simple but significant ritual. At the same time the strong spiritual nucleus became mixed, diluted, alloyed; it tended to be invaded and aped by the lower elements of mind and life and physical nature. It was this mixture and alloy and invasion of the spurious, this profanation of the mysteries and the loss of their truth and significance, as well as the misuse of the occult power that comes by communication with invisible forces, that was most dreaded by the early mystics and prevented by secrecy, by strict discipline, by restriction to the few fit initiates.
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  It would have been possible for the evolutionary principle to have preserved its pristine wholeness of movement while pressing on, by an expansion and not a disruption of the wiser ancient harmony, to a greater synthesis of the principle of concentration and the principle of diffusion. In India, we have seen, there has been a persistence of the original Intuition and total movement of evolutionary Nature. For religion in India limited itself by no one creed or dogma; it not only admitted a vast number of different formulations, but contained successfully within itself all the elements that have grown up in the course of the evolution of religion and refused to ban or excise any: it developed occultism to its utmost limits, accepted spiritual philosophies of all kinds, followed to its highest, deepest or largest outcome every possible line of spiritual realisation, spiritual experience, spiritual self-discipline. Its method has been the method of evolutionary Nature herself, to allow all developments, all means of communication and action of the spirit upon the members, all ways of communion between man and the Supreme or Divine, to follow every possible way of advance to the goal and test it even to its extreme. All stages of spiritual evolution are there in man and each has to be allowed or provided with its means of approach to the spirit, an approach suited to its capacity, adhikara.
  Even the primitive forms that survived were not banned but were lifted to a deeper significance, while still there was the pressure to the highest spiritual pinnacles in the rarest supreme ether. Even the exclusive credal type of religion was not itself excluded; provided its affinity to the general aim and principle was clear, it was admitted into the infinite variety of the general order.
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  Occultism is in its essence man's effort to arrive at a knowledge of secret truths and potentialities of Nature which will lift him out of slavery to his physical limits of being, an attempt in particular to possess and organise the mysterious, occult, outwardly still undeveloped direct power of Mind upon Life and of both Mind and Life over Matter. There is at the same time an endeavour to establish communication with worlds and entities belonging to the supraphysical heights, depths and intermediate levels of cosmic Being and to utilise this communion for the mastery of a higher Truth and for a help to man in his will to make himself sovereign over Nature's powers and forces. This human aspiration takes its stand on the belief, Intuition or intimation that we are not mere creatures of the mud, but souls, minds, wills that can know all the mysteries of this and every world and become not only Nature's pupils but her adepts and masters. The occultist sought to know the secret of physical things also and in this effort he furthered astronomy, created chemistry, gave an impulse to other sciences, for he utilised geometry also and the science of numbers; but still more he sought to know the secrets of supernature. In this sense occultism might be described as the science of the supernatural; but it is in fact only the discovery of the supraphysical, the surpassing of the material limit, - the heart of occultism is not the impossible chimera which hopes to go beyond or outside all force of Nature and make pure phantasy and arbitrary miracle omnipotently effective. What seems to us supernatural is in fact either a spontaneous irruption of the phenomena of other-Nature into physical Nature or, in the work of the occultist, a possession of the knowledge and power of the higher orders or grades of cosmic Being and Energy and the direction of their forces and processes towards the production of effects in the physical world by seizing on possibilities of interconnection and means for a material effectuality. There are powers of the mind and the life-force which have not been included in Nature's present systematisation of mind and life in matter, but are potential and can be brought to bear upon material things and happenings or even brought in and added to the present systematisation so as to enlarge the control of mind over our own life and body or to act on the minds, lives, bodies of others or on the movements of cosmic Forces. The modern admission of hypnotism is an example of such a discovery and systematised application, - though still narrow and limited, limited by its method and formula, - of occult powers which otherwise touch us only by a casual or a hidden action whose process is unknown to us or imperfectly caught by a few; for we are all the time undergoing a battery of suggestions, thought suggestions, impulse suggestions, will suggestions, emotional and sensational suggestions, thought waves, life waves that come on us or into us from others or from the universal Energy, but act and produce their effects without our knowledge. A systematised endeavour to know these movements and their law and possibilities, to master and use the power or Nature-force behind them or to protect ourselves from them would fall within one province of occultism: but it would only be a small part even of that province; for wide and multiple are the possible fields, uses, processes of this vast range of little explored Knowledge.
  In modern times, as physical Science enlarged its discoveries and released the secret material forces of Nature into an action governed by human knowledge for human use, occultism receded and was finally set aside on the ground that the physical alone is real and mind and life are only departmental activities of Matter. On this basis, believing material Energy to be the key of all things, Science has attempted to move towards a control of mind and life processes by a knowledge of the material instrumentation and process of our normal and abnormal mind and life functionings and activities; the spiritual is ignored as only one form of mentality. It may be observed in passing that if this endeavour succeeded, it might not be without danger for the existence of the human race, even as now are certain other scientific discoveries misused or clumsily used by a humanity mentally and morally unready for the handling of powers so great and perilous; for it would be an artificial control applied without any knowledge of the secret forces which underlie and sustain our existence. Occultism in the West could be thus easily pushed aside because it never reached its majority, never acquired ripeness and a philosophic or sound systematic foundation. It indulged too freely in the romance of the supernatural or made the mistake of concentrating its major effort on the discovery of formulas and effective modes for using supernormal powers. It deviated into magic white and black or into a romantic or thaumaturgic paraphernalia of occult mysticism and the exaggeration of what was after all a limited and scanty knowledge. These tendencies and this insecurity of mental foundation made it difficult to defend and easy to discredit, a target facile and vulnerable. In Egypt and the East this line of knowledge arrived at a greater and more comprehensive endeavour: this ampler maturity can be seen still intact in the remarkable system of the Tantras; it was not only a many-sided science of the supernormal but supplied the basis of all the occult elements of religion and even developed a great and powerful system of spiritual discipline and self-realisation. For the highest occultism is that which discovers the secret movements and dynamic supernormal possibilities of mind and life and spirit and uses them in their native force or by an applied process for the greater effectivity of our mental, vital and spiritual being.
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  For mind and life forces are plastic, subtle and variable in their action and have not the material rigidity; they need a subtle and plastic Intuition in the knowledge of them, in the interpretation of their action and process and in their application, - even in the interpretation and action of their established formulas. An overstress on mechanisation and rigid formulation is likely to result in sterilisation or a formalised limitation of knowledge and, on the pragmatic side, to much error, ignorant convention, misuse and failure. Now that we are outgrowing the superstition of the sole truth of Matter, a swing backward towards the old occultism and to new formulations, as well as to a scientific investigation of the still hidden secrets and powers of mind and a close study of psychic and abnormal or supernormal psychological phenomena, is possible and, in parts, already visible.
  But if it is to fulfil itself, the true foundation, the true aim and direction, the necessary restrictions and precautions of this line of inquiry have to be rediscovered; its most important aim must be the discovery of the hidden truths and powers of the mindforce and the life-power and the greater forces of the concealed spirit. Occult science is, essentially, the science of the subliminal, the subliminal in ourselves and the subliminal in world-nature, and of all that is in connection with the subliminal, including the subconscient and the superconscient, and the use of it as part of self-knowledge and world-knowledge and for the right dynamisation of that knowledge.
  An intellectual approach to the highest knowledge, the mind's possession of it, is an indispensable aid to this movement of Nature in the human being. Ordinarily, on our surface, man's chief instrument of thought and action is the reason, the observing, understanding and arranging intellect. In any total advance or evolution of the spirit, not only the Intuition, insight, inner sense, the heart's devotion, a deep and direct lifeexperience of the things of the spirit have to be developed, but the intellect also must be enlightened and satisfied; our thinking and reflecting mind must be helped to understand, to form a reasoned and systematised idea of the goal, the method, the principles of this highest development and activity of our nature and the truth of all that lies behind it. Spiritual realisation and experience, an intuitive and direct knowledge, a growth of inner consciousness, a growth of the soul and of an intimate soul perception, soul vision and a soul sense, are indeed the proper means of this evolution: but the support of the reflective and critical reason is also of great importance; if many can dispense with it, because they have a vivid and direct contact with inner realities and are satisfied with experience and insight, yet in the whole movement it is indispensable. If the supreme truth is a spiritual Reality, then the intellect of man needs to know what is the nature of that original Truth and the principle of its relations to the rest of existence, to ourselves and the universe.
  The intellect is not capable by itself of bringing us into touch with the concrete spiritual reality, but it can help by a mental formulation of the truth of the Spirit which explains it to the mind and can be applied even in the more direct seeking: this help is of a capital importance.
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  Stoic and Epicurean, which were dynamic not only for thought but for conduct of life and developed a discipline, an effort at inner perfection of the being; this reached a higher spiritual plane of knowledge in later Christian or Neo-pagan thought-structures where East and West met together. But later on the intellectualisation became complete and the connection of philosophy with life and its energies or spirit and its dynamism was either cut or confined to the little that the metaphysical idea can impress on life and action by an abstract and secondary influence. Religion has supported itself in the West not by philosophy but by a credal theology; sometimes a spiritual philosophy emerges by sheer force of individual genius, but it has not been as in the East a necessary adjunct to every considerable line of spiritual experience and endeavour. It is true that a philosophic development of spiritual thought is not entirely indispensable; for the truths of spirit can be reached more directly and completely by Intuition and by a concrete inner contact. It must also be said that the critical control of the intellect over spiritual experience can be hampering and unreliable, for it is an inferior light turned upon a field of higher illumination; the true controlling power is an inner discrimination, a psychic sense and tact, a superior intervention of guidance from above or an innate and luminous inner guidance. But still this line of development too is necessary, because there must be a bridge between the spirit and the intellectual reason: the light of a spiritual or at least a spiritualised intelligence is necessary for the fullness of our total inner evolution, and without it, if another deeper guidance is lacking, the inner movement may be erratic and undisciplined, turbid and mixed with unspiritual elements or one-sided or incomplete in its catholicity. For the transformation of the Ignorance into the integral Knowledge the growth in us of a spiritual intelligence ready to receive a higher light and canalise it for all the parts of our nature is an intermediate necessity of great importance.
  But none of these three lines of approach can by themselves entirely fulfil the greater and ulterior intention of Nature; they cannot create in mental man the spiritual being, unless and until they open the door to spiritual experience. It is only by an inner realisation of what these approaches are seeking after, by an overwhelming experience or by many experiences building up an inner change, by a transmutation of the consciousness, by a liberation of the spirit from its present veil of mind, life and body that there can emerge the spiritual being. That is the final line of the soul's progress towards which the others are pointing and, when it is ready to disengage itself from the preliminary approaches, then the real work has begun and the turning-point of the change is no longer distant. Till then all that the human mental being has reached is a familiarity with the idea of things beyond him, with the possibility of an other-worldly movement, with the ideal of some ethical perfection; he may have made too some contact with greater Powers or Realities which help his mind or heart or life. A change there may be, but not the transmutation of the mental into the spiritual being. Religion and its thought and ethics and occult mysticism in ancient times produced the priest and the mage, the man of piety, the just man, the man of wisdom, many high points of mental manhood; but it is only after spiritual experience through the heart and mind began that we see arise the saint, the prophet, the Rishi, the Yogi, the seer, the spiritual sage and the mystic, and it is the religions in which these types of spiritual manhood came into being that have endured, covered the globe and given mankind all its spiritual aspiration and culture.
  When spirituality disengages itself in the consciousness and puts on its distinctive character, it is only at first a small kernel, a growing tendency, an exceptional light of experience amidst the great mass of normal unenlightened human mind, vitality, physicality which forms the outer self and engrosses our natural preoccupation. There are tentative beginnings and a slow evolution and hesitating emergence. An earlier first preliminary form of it creates a certain kind of religiosity which is not the pure spiritual temperament, but is of the nature of mind or life seeking or finding in itself a spiritual support or factor; in this stage man is mostly preoccupied with the utilisation of such contacts as he can get or construct with what is beyond him to help or serve his mental ideas or moral ideals or his vital and physical interests; the true turn to some spiritual change has not come. The first true formations take the shape of a spiritualisation of our natural activities, a permeating influence on them or a direction: there is a preparatory influence or influx in some part or tendency of the mind or life, - a spiritualised turn of thought with uplifting illuminations, or a spiritualised turn of the emotional or the aesthetic being, a spiritualised ethical formation in the character, a spiritualised urge in some life-action or other dynamic vital movement of the nature. An awareness comes perhaps of an inner light, of a guidance or a communion, of a greater Control than the mind and will to which something in us obeys; but all is not yet recast in the mould of that experience. But when these Intuitions and illuminations grow in insistence and canalise themselves, make a strong inner formation and claim to govern the whole life and take over the nature, then there begins the spiritual formation of the being; there emerges the saint, the devotee, the spiritual sage, the seer, the prophet, the servant of God, the soldier of the spirit. All these take their stand on one part of the natural being lifted up by a spiritual light, power or ecstasy. The sage and seer live in the spiritual mind, their thought or their vision is governed and moulded by an inner or a greater divine light of knowledge; the devotee lives in the spiritual aspiration of the heart, its self-offering and its seeking; the saint is moved by the awakened psychic being in the inner heart grown powerful to govern the emotional and vital being; the others stand in the vital kinetic nature driven by a higher spiritual energy and turned by it towards an inspired action, a God-given work or mission, the service of some divine Power, idea or ideal. The last or highest emergence is the liberated man who has realised the Self and Spirit within him, entered into the cosmic consciousness, passed into union with the Eternal and, so far as he still accepts life and action, acts by the light and energy of the Power within him working through his human instruments of Nature. The largest formulation of this spiritual change and achievement is a total liberation of soul, mind, heart and action, a casting of them all into the sense of the cosmic Self and the Divine Reality.10 The spiritual evolution of the individual has then found its way and thrown up its range of Himalayan eminences and its peaks of highest nature. Beyond this height and largeness there opens only the supramental ascent or the incommunicable Transcendence.
  This then has been up till now the course of Nature's evolution of the spiritual man in the human mental being, and it may be questioned what is the exact sum of this achievement and its actual significance. In the recent reaction towards the life of the mind in Matter, this great direction and this rare change have been stigmatised as no true evolution of consciousness but rather a sublimated crudity of ignorance deviating from the true human evolution, which should be solely an evolution of life-power, the practical physical mind, the reason governing thought and conduct and the discovering and organising intelligence. In this epoch religion was pushed aside as an out-of-date superstition and spiritual realisation and experience discredited as a shadowy mysticism; the mystic in this view is the man who turns aside into the unreal, into occult regions of a self-constructed land of chimeras and loses his way there. This judgment proceeds from a view of things which is itself bound to pass into discredit, because it depends ultimately on the false perception of the material as alone real and the outward life as alone of importance.

2.25 - List of Topics in Each Talk, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
   | 11-11-23 | Yoga: balance, development; imagination, inspiration, Intuition |
   | 05-07-24 | Dr. Abraham's theory of disease |
  --
   | 15-12-38 | Mental Intuition and medical diagnosis; Kundalini |
   | 18-12-38 | Americans; Supermind; Barin; Sri Aurobindo in England, Baroda, Calcutta, Pondicherry |
  --
   | 06-05-39 | Arjava, medical diagnosis, Intuition |
   | 16-05-39 | Spiritual experience, resistance in the physical, and the ego |
  --
   | 05-01-40 | Successful action: Intuition, intellect |
   | 08-01-40 | Science: elements, matter, energy, causation, Being behind. Brahman |

2.25 - The Triple Transformation, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  An Intuition in the heart sees that truth. Rig Veda.2
  I abide in the spiritual being and from there destroy the darkness born of ignorance with the shining lamp of knowledge. Gita.3
  --
  But this aggregate is, because of its composition, a heterogeneous compound, not a single harmonious and homogeneous whole. This is the reason why there is a constant confusion and even a conflict in our members which our mental reason and will are moved to control and harmonise and have often much difficulty in creating out of their confusion or conflict some kind of order and guidance; even so, ordinarily, we drift too much or are driven by the stream of our nature and act from whatever in it comes uppermost at the time and seizes the instruments of thought and action, - even our seemingly deliberate choice is more of an automatism than we imagine; our co-ordination of our multifarious elements and of our consequent thoughts, feelings, impulses, actions by the reason and will is incomplete and a half-measure. In animal being Nature acts by her own mental and vital Intuitions; she works out an order by the compulsion of habit and instinct which the animal implicitly obeys, so that the shiftings of its consciousness do not matter. But man cannot altogether act in the same way without forfeiting his prerogative of manhood; he cannot leave his being to be a chaos of instincts and impulses regulated by the automatism of Nature: mind has become conscious in him and is therefore self-compelled to make some attempt, however elementary in many, to see and control and in the end more and more perfectly harmonise the manifold components, the different and conflicting tendencies that seem to make up his surface being. He does succeed in setting up a sort of regulated chaos or ordered confusion in him, or at least succeeds in thinking that he is directing himself by his mind and will, even though in fact that direction is only partial; for not only a disparate consortium of habitual motive-forces but also newly emergent vital and physical tendencies and impulses, not always calculable or controllable, and many incoherent and inharmonious mental elements use his reason and will, enter into and determine his self-building, his nature-development, his life action. Man is in his self a unique Person, but he is also in his manifestation of self a multiperson; he will never succeed in being master of himself until the Person imposes itself on his multipersonality and governs it: but this can only be imperfectly done by the surface mental will and reason; it can be perfectly done only if he goes within and finds whatever central being is by its predominant influence at the head of all his expression and action. In inmost truth it is his soul that is this central being, but in outer fact it is often one or other of the part beings in him that rules, and this representative of the soul, this deputy self he can mistake for the inmost soul principle.
  This rule of different selves in us is at the root of the stages of the development of human personality which we have already had occasion to differentiate, and we can reconsider them now from the point of view of the government of the nature by the inner principle. In some human beings it is the physical Purusha, the being of body, who dominates the mind, will and action; there is then created the physical man mainly occupied with his corporeal life and habitual needs, impulses, life habits, mind habits, body habits, looking very little or not at all beyond that, subordinating and restricting all his other tendencies and possibilities to that narrow formation. But even in the physical man there are other elements and he cannot live altogether as the human animal concerned with birth and death and procreation and the satisfaction of common impulses and desires and the maintenance of the life and the body: this is his normal type of personality, but it is crossed, however feebly, with influences by which he can proceed, if they are developed, to a higher human evolution. If the inner subtle-physical Purusha insists, he can arrive at the idea of a finer, more beautiful and perfect physical life and hope or attempt to realise it in his own or in the collective or group existence. In others it is the vital self, the being of life, who dominates and rules the mind, the will, the action; then is created the vital man, concerned with self-affirmation, selfaggrandisement, life-enlargement, satisfaction of ambition and passion and impulse and desire, the claims of his ego, domination, power, excitement, battle and struggle, inner and outer adventure: all else is incidental or subordinated to this movement and building and expression of the vital ego. But still in the vital man too there are or can be other elements of a growing mental or spiritual character, even if these happen to be less developed than his life-personality and life-power. The nature of the vital man is more active, stronger and more mobile, more turbulent and chaotic, often to the point of being quite unregulated, than that of the physical man who holds on to the soil and has a certain material poise and balance, but it is more kinetic and creative: for the element of the vital being is not earth but air; it has more movement, less status. A vigorous vital mind and will can grasp and govern the kinetic vital energies, but it is more by a forceful compulsion and constraint than by a harmonisation of the being. If, however, a strong vital personality, mind and will can get the reasoning intelligence to give it a firm support and be its minister, then a certain kind of forceful formation can be made, more or less balanced but always powerful, successful and effective, which can impose itself on the nature and environment and arrive at a strong self-affirmation in life and action. This is the second step of harmonised formulation possible in the ascent of the nature.
  --
  The soul may attempt to achieve this contact mainly through the thinking mind as intermediary and instrument; it puts a psychic impression on the intellect and the larger mind of insight and Intuitional intelligence and turns them in that direction.
  At its highest the thinking mind is drawn always towards the impersonal; in its search it becomes conscious of a spiritual essence, an impersonal Reality which expresses itself in all these outward signs and characters but is more than any formation or manifesting figure. It feels something of which it becomes intimately and invisibly aware, - a supreme Truth, a supreme Good, a supreme Beauty, a supreme Purity, a supreme Bliss; it bears the increasing touch, less and less impalpable and abstract, more and more spiritually real and concrete, the touch and pressure of an Eternity and Infinity which is all this that is and more. There is a pressure from this Impersonality that seeks to mould the whole mind into a form of itself; at the same time the impersonal secret and law of things becomes more and more visible. The mind develops into the mind of the sage, at first the high mental thinker, then the spiritual sage who has gone beyond the abstractions of thought to the beginnings of a direct experience. As a result the mind becomes pure, large, tranquil, impersonal; there is a similar tranquillising influence on the parts of life: but otherwise the result may remain incomplete; for the mental change leads more naturally towards an inner status and an outer quietude, but, poised in this purifying quietism, not drawn like the vital parts towards a discovery of new life-energies, does not press for a full dynamic effect on the nature.
  --
  This is the first result, but the second is a free inflow of all kinds of spiritual experience, experience of the Self, experience of the Ishwara and the Divine Shakti, experience of cosmic consciousness, a direct touch with cosmic forces and with the occult movements of universal Nature, a psychic sympathy and unity and inner communication and interchanges of all kinds with other beings and with Nature, illuminations of the mind by knowledge, illuminations of the heart by love and devotion and spiritual joy and ecstasy, illuminations of the sense and the body by higher experience, illuminations of dynamic action in the truth and largeness of a purified mind and heart and soul, the certitudes of the divine light and guidance, the joy and power of the divine force working in the will and the conduct. These experiences are the result of an opening outward of the inner and inmost being and nature; for then there comes into play the soul's power of unerring inherent consciousness, its vision, its touch on things which is superior to any mental cognition; there is there, native to the psychic consciousness in its pure working, an immediate sense of the world and its beings, a direct inner contact with them and a direct contact with the Self and with the Divine, - a direct knowledge, a direct sight of Truth and of all truths, a direct penetrating spiritual emotion and feeling, a direct Intuition of right will and right action, a power to rule and to create an order of the being not by the gropings of the superficial self, but from within, from the inner truth of self and things and the occult realities of Nature.
  Some of these experiences can come by an opening of the inner mental and vital being, the inner and larger and subtler mind and heart and life within us, without any full emergence of the soul, the psychic entity, since there too there is a power of direct contact of consciousness: but the experience might then be of a mixed character; for there could be an emergence not only of the subliminal knowledge but of the subliminal ignorance. An insufficient expansion of the being, a limitation by mental idea, by narrow and selective emotion or by the form of the temperament so that there would be only an imperfect self-creation and action and not the free soul-emergence, could easily occur. In the absence of any or of a complete psychic emergence, experiences of certain kinds, experiences of a greater knowledge and force, a surpassing of the ordinary limits, might lead to a magnified ego and even bring about instead of an outflowering of what is divine or spiritual an uprush of the titanic or demoniac, or might call in agencies and powers which, though not of this disastrous type, are of a powerful but inferior cosmic character. But the rule and guidance of the soul brings into all experience the tendency of light, of integration, of harmony and intimate rightness which is native to the psychic essence. A psychic or, more widely speaking, a psycho-spiritual transformation of this kind would be already a vast change of our mental human nature.
  --
  This is the third motion, the descent which is essential for bringing the permanent ascension, an increasing inflow from above, an experience of reception and retention of the descending spirit or its powers and elements of consciousness. This experience of descent can take place as a result of the other two movements or automatically before either has happened, through a sudden rift in the lid or a percolation, a downpour or an influx. A light descends and touches or envelops or penetrates the lower being, the mind, the life or the body; or a presence or a power or a stream of knowledge pours in waves or currents, or there is a flood of bliss or a sudden ecstasy; the contact with the superconscient has been established. For such experiences repeat themselves till they become normal, familiar and wellunderstood, revelatory of their contents and their significance which may have at first been involved and wrapped into secrecy by the figure of the covering experience. For a knowledge from above begins to descend, frequently, constantly, then uninterruptedly, and to manifest in the mind's quietude or silence; Intuitions and inspirations, revelations born of a greater sight, a higher truth and wisdom, enter into the being, a luminous intuitive discrimination works which dispels all darkness of understanding or dazzling confusions, puts all in order; a new consciousness begins to form, the mind of a high wide selfexistent thinking knowledge or an illumined or an intuitive or an overmental consciousness with new forces of thought or sight and a greater power of direct spiritual realisation which is more than thought or sight, a greater becoming in the spiritual substance of our present being; the heart and the sense become subtle, intense, large to embrace all existence, to see God, to feel and hear and touch the Eternal, to make a deeper and closer unity of self and the world in a transcendent realisation. Other decisive experiences, other changes of consciousness determine themselves which are corollaries and consequences of this fundamental change. No limit can be fixed to this revolution; for it is in its nature an invasion by the Infinite.
  This, effected little by little or in a succession of great and swift definitive experiences, is the process of the spiritual transformation. It achieves itself and culminates in an upward ascent often repeated by which in the end the consciousness fixes itself on a higher plane and from there sees and governs the mind, life and body; it achieves itself also in an increasing descent of the powers of the higher consciousness and knowledge which become more and more the whole normal consciousness and knowledge. A light and power, a knowledge and force are felt which first take possession of the mind and remould it, afterwards of the life part and remould that, finally of the little physical consciousness and leave it no longer little but wide and plastic and even infinite. For this new consciousness has itself the nature of infinity: it brings to us the abiding spiritual sense and awareness of the infinite and eternal with a great largeness of the nature and a breaking down of its limitations; immortality becomes no longer a belief or an experience but a normal selfawareness; the close presence of the Divine Being, his rule of the world and of our self and natural members, his force working in us and everywhere, the peace of the infinite, the joy of the infinite are now concrete and constant in the being; in all sights and forms one sees the Eternal, the Reality, in all sounds one hears it, in all touches feels it; there is nothing else but its forms and personalities and manifestations; the joy or adoration of the heart, the embrace of all existence, the unity of the spirit are abiding realities. The consciousness of the mental creature is turning or has been already turned wholly into the consciousness of the spiritual being. This is the second of the three transformations; uniting the manifested existence with what is above it, it is the middle step of the three, the decisive transition of the spiritually evolving nature.
  --
  This is indeed the reason of the slow and difficult emergence of the Consciousness-Force in Nature: for mind and life have to descend into Matter and suit themselves to its conditions; changed and diminished by the obscurity and reluctant inertia of the substance and force in which they work, they are not able to make a complete transformation of their material into a fit instrument and a changed substance revelatory of their real and native power. The life consciousness is unable to effectuate the greatness and felicity of its mighty or beautiful impulses in the material existence; its impetus fails it, its force of effectuation is inferior to the truth of its conceptions, the form betrays the life Intuition within it which it tries to render into terms of life being. The mind is unable to achieve its high ideas in the medium of life or matter without deductions and compromises which deprive them of their divinity; its clarities of knowledge and will are not matched by its force to mould this inferior substance to obey and express it: on the contrary, its own powers get affected, its will is divided, its knowledge confused and clouded by the turbidities of life and the incomprehension of Matter.
  Neither life nor mind succeeds in converting or perfecting the material existence, because they cannot attain to their own full force in these conditions; they need to call in a higher power to liberate and fulfil them. But the higher spiritual-mental powers also undergo the same disability when they descend into life and matter; they can do much more, achieve much luminous change, but the modification, the limitation, the disparity between the consciousness that comes in and the force of effectuation that it can mentalise and materialise, are constantly there and the result is a diminished creation. The change made is often extraordinary, there is even something which looks like a total conversion and reversal of the state of consciousness and an uplifting of its movements, but it is not dynamically absolute.

2.26 - The Ascent towards Supermind, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  An increasing control of the individual over his own action of nature, a more and more conscious participation in the action of universal Nature, is a marked character, it is indeed a logical consequence, of the evolutionary principle and process. All action, all mental, vital, physical activities in the world are the operation of a universal Energy, a Consciousness-Force which is the power of the Cosmic Spirit working out the cosmic and individual truth of things. But since this creative Consciousness assumes in Matter a mask of inconscience and puts on the surface appearance of a blind universal Force executing a plan or organisation of things without seeming to know what it is doing, the first result is kin to this appearance; it is the phenomenon of an inconscient physical individualisation, a creation not of beings but of objects. These are formed existences with their own qualities, properties, power of being, character of being; but Nature's plan in them and organisation of them have to be worked out mechanically without any beginning of participation, initiation or conscious awareness in the individual object which emerges as the first dumb result and inanimate field of her action and creation. In animal life the Force begins to become slowly conscious on the surface and puts forth the form, no longer of an object, but of an individual being; but this imperfectly conscious individual, although it participates, senses, feels, yet only works out what the Force does in it without any clear intelligence or observation of what is being done; it seems to have no other choice or will than that which is imposed on it by its formed nature. In human mind there is the first appearance of an observing intelligence that regards what is being done and of a will and choice that have become conscious; but the consciousness is still limited and superficial: the knowledge also is limited and imperfect, it is a partial intelligence, a half understanding, groping and empirical in great part or, if rational, then rational by constructions, theories, formulas. There is not as yet a luminous seeing which knows things by a direct grasp and arranges them with a spontaneous precision according to the seeing, according to the scheme of their inherent truth; although there is a certain element of instinct and Intuition and insight which has some beginning of this power, the normal character of human intelligence is an inquiring reason or reflective thought which observes, supposes, infers, concludes, arrives by labour at a constructed truth, a constructed scheme of knowledge, a deliberately arranged action of its own making. Or rather this is what it strives to be and partly is; for its knowledge and will are constantly invaded, darkened or frustrated by forces of the being which are half-blind instruments of the mechanism of Nature.
  This is evidently not the utmost of which consciousness is capable, not its last evolution and highest summit. A greater and more intimate Intuition must be possible which would enter into the heart of things, be in luminous identity with the movements of Nature, assure to the being a clear control of his life or at least a harmony with his universe. It is only a free and entire intuitive consciousness which would be able to see and to grasp things by direct contact and penetrating vision or a spontaneous truthsense born of an underlying unity or identity and arrange an action of Nature according to the truth of Nature. This would be a real participation by the individual in the working of the universal Consciousness-Force; the individual Purusha would become the master of his own executive energy and at the same time a conscious partner, agent, instrument of the Cosmic Spirit in the working of the universal Energy: the universal Energy would work through him, but he also would work through her and the harmony of the intuitive truth would make this double working a single action. A growing conscious participation of this higher and more intimate kind must be one accompaniment of the transition from our present state of being to a state of supernature.
  A harmonious other-world in which an intuitive mental intelligence of this kind and its control would be the rule, is conceivable; but in our plane of being, owing to the original intention and past history of the evolutionary plan, such a rule and control could with difficulty be stabilised and it is not likely that it could be complete, final and definitive. For an intuitive mentality intervening in a mixed mental, vital, physical consciousness would normally be forced to undergo a mixture with the inferior stuff of consciousness already evolved; in order to act on it, it would have to enter into it and, entering in it, would get entangled in it, penetrated by it, affected by the separative and partial character of our mind's action and the limitation and restricted force of the Ignorance. The action of intuitive intelligence is keen and luminous enough to penetrate and modify, but not large and whole enough to swallow up into itself and abolish the mass of the Ignorance and Inconscience; it could not effect an entire transformation of the whole consciousness into its own stuff and power. Still, even in our present state, a participation of a kind is there and our normal intelligence is sufficiently awake for the universal Conscious-Force to work through it and allow the intelligence and will to exercise a certain amount of direction of inner and outer circumstance, fumbling enough and at every moment dogged by error, capable only of a limited effect and power, not commensurate with the larger totality of her vast operations. In the evolution towards Supernature, this initial power of conscious participation in the universal working would enlarge in the individual into a more and more intimate and extended vision of her workings in himself, a sensitive perception of the course she was taking, a growing understanding or intuitive idea of the methods that had to be followed for a more rapid and more conscious self-evolution. As his inner psychic or occult inner mental being came more to the front, there would be a streng thened power of choice, of sanction, a beginning of au thentic free will which would grow more and more effective. But this free will would be mostly in relation to his own workings of Nature; it would mean only a freer, fuller and more immediately perceptive control of the motions of his own being: even there it could not be at first completely free, so long as it was imprisoned in the limits created by its own formations or combated by imperfection due to a mixture of the old and the new consciousness.
  --
  A unification of the entire being by a breaking down of the wall between the inner and outer nature, - a shifting of the position and centration of the consciousness from the outer to the inner self, a firm foundation on this new basis, a habitual action from this inner self and its will and vision and an opening up of the individual into the cosmic consciousness, - is another necessary condition for the supramental change. It would be chimerical to hope that the supreme Truth-consciousness can establish itself in the narrow formulation of our surface mind and heart and life, however turned towards spirituality. All the inner centres must have burst open and released into action their capacities; the psychic entity must be unveiled and in control. If this first change establishing the being in the inner and larger, a Yogic in place of an ordinary consciousness has not been done, the greater transmutation is impossible. Moreover the individual must have sufficiently universalised himself, he must have recast his individual mind in the boundlessness of a cosmic mentality, enlarged and vivified his individual life into the immediate sense and direct experience of the dynamic motion of the universal life, opened up the communications of his body with the forces of universal Nature, before he can be capable of a change which transcends the present cosmic formulation and lifts him beyond the lower hemisphere of universality into a consciousness belonging to its spiritual upper hemisphere. Besides he must have already become aware of what is now to him superconscient; he must be already a being conscious of the higher spiritual Light, Power, Knowledge, Ananda, penetrated by its descending influences, new-made by a spiritual change. It is possible for the spiritual opening to take place and its action to proceed before the psychic is far advanced or complete; for the spiritual influence from above can awaken, assist and complete the psychic transmutation: all that is necessary is that there should be a sufficient stress of the psychic entity for the spiritual higher overture to take place. But the third, the supramental change does not admit of any premature descent of the highest Light; for it can only commence when the supramental Force begins to act directly, and this it does not do if the nature is not ready. For there is too great a disparity between the power of the supreme Force and the capacity of the ordinary nature; the inferior nature would either be unable to bear or, bearing, unable to respond and receive or, receiving, unable to assimilate. Till Nature is ready, the supramental Force has to act indirectly; it puts the intermediary powers of overmind or Intuition in front, or it works through a modification of itself to which the already half-transformed being can be wholly or partially responsive.
  The spiritual evolution obeys the logic of a successive unfolding; it can take a new decisive main step only when the previous main step has been sufficiently conquered: even if certain minor stages can be swallowed up or leaped over by a rapid and brusque ascension, the consciousness has to turn back to assure itself that the ground passed over is securely annexed to the new condition. It is true that the conquest of the spirit supposes the execution in one life or a few lives of a process that in the ordinary course of Nature would involve a slow and uncertain procedure of centuries or even of millenniums: but this is a question of the speed with which the steps are traversed; a greater or concentrated speed does not eliminate the steps themselves or the necessity of their successive surmounting. The increased rapidity is possible only because the conscious participation of the inner being is there and the power of the Supernature is already at work in the half-transformed lower nature, so that the steps which would otherwise have had to be taken tentatively in the night of Inconscience or Ignorance can now be taken in an increasing light and power of Knowledge. The first obscure material movement of the evolutionary Force is marked by an aeonic graduality; the movement of life progress proceeds slowly but still with a quicker step, it is concentrated into the figure of millenniums; mind can still further compress the tardy leisureliness of Time and make long paces of the centuries; but when the conscious Spirit intervenes, a supremely concentrated pace of evolutionary swiftness becomes possible. Still, an involved rapidity of the evolutionary course swallowing up the stages can only come in when the power of the conscious Spirit has prepared the field and the supramental Force has begun to use its direct influence. All Nature's transformations do indeed wear the appearance of a miracle, but it is a miracle with a method: her largest strides are taken over an assured ground, her swiftest leaps are from a base that gives security and certainty to the evolutionary saltus; a secret all-wisdom governs everything in her, even the steps and processes that seem to be most unaccountable.
  --
  It is not to be supposed that the circumstances and the lines of the transition would be the same for all, for here we enter into the domain of the infinite: but, since there is behind all of them the unity of a fundamental truth, the scrutiny of a given line of ascent may be expected to throw light on the principle of all ascending possibilities; such a scrutiny of one line is all that can be attempted. This line is, as all must be, governed by the natural configuration of the stair of ascent: there are in it many steps, for it is an incessant gradation and there is no gap anywhere; but, from the point of view of the ascent of consciousness from our mind upwards through a rising series of dynamic powers by which it can sublimate itself, the gradation can be resolved into a stairway of four main ascents, each with its high level of fulfilment. These gradations may be summarily described as a series of sublimations of the consciousness through Higher Mind, Illumined Mind and Intuition into Overmind and beyond it; there is a succession of self-transmutations at the summit of which lies the Supermind or Divine Gnosis. All these degrees are gnostic in their principle and power; for even at the first we begin to pass from a consciousness based on an original Inconscience and acting in a general Ignorance or in a mixed Knowledge-Ignorance to a consciousness based on a secret selfexistent Knowledge and first acted upon and inspired by that light and power and then itself changed into that substance and using entirely this new instrumentation. In themselves these grades are grades of energy-substance of the Spirit: for it must not be supposed, because we distinguish them according to their leading character, means and potency of knowledge, that they are merely a method or way of knowing or a faculty or power of cognition; they are domains of being, grades of the substance and energy of the spiritual being, fields of existence which are each a level of the universal Consciousness-Force constituting and organising itself into a higher status. When the powers of any grade descend completely into us, it is not only our thought and knowledge that are affected, - the substance and very grain of our being and consciousness, all its states and activities are touched and penetrated and can be remoulded and wholly transmuted. Each stage of this ascent is therefore a general, if not a total, conversion of the being into a new light and power of a greater existence.
  The gradation itself depends fundamentally upon a higher or lower substance, potency, intensity of vibrations of the being, of its self-awareness, of its delight of existence, of its force of existence. Consciousness, as we descend the scale, becomes more and more diminished and diluted, - dense indeed by its coarser crudity, but while that crudity of consistence compacts the stuff of Ignorance, it admits less and less the substance of light; it becomes thin in pure substance of consciousness and reduced in power of consciousness, thin in light, thin and weak in capacity of delight; it has to resort to a grosser thickness of its diminished stuff and to a strenuous output of its obscurer force to arrive at anything, but this strenuousness of effort and labour is a sign not of strength but of weakness. As we ascend, on the contrary, a finer but far stronger and more truly and spiritually concrete substance emerges, a greater luminosity and potent stuff of consciousness, a subtler, sweeter, purer and more powerfully ecstatic energy of delight. In the descent of these higher grades upon us it is this greater light, force, essence of being and consciousness, energy of delight that enter into mind, life, body, change and repair their diminished and diluted and incapable substance, convert it into its own higher and stronger dynamis of spirit and intrinsic form and force of reality. This can happen because all is fundamentally the same substance, the same consciousness, the same force, but in different forms and powers and degrees of itself: a taking up of the lower by the higher is therefore a possible and, but for our second nature of inconscience, a spiritually natural movement; what was put forth from the superior status is enveloped and taken up into its own greater being and essence.
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  But these two stages of the ascent enjoy their authority and can get their own united completeness only by a reference to a third level; for it is from the higher summits where dwells the Intuitional being that they derive the knowledge which they turn into thought or sight and bring down to us for the mind's transmutation. 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. This close perception is more than sight, more than conception: it is the result of a penetrating and revealing touch which carries in it sight and conception as part of itself or as its natural consequence. A concealed or slumbering identity, not yet recovering itself, still remembers or conveys by the Intuition its own contents and the intimacy of its self-feeling and self-vision of things, its light of truth, its overwhelming and automatic certitude.
  In the human mind the Intuition is even such a truthremembrance or truth-conveyance, or such a revealing flash or blaze breaking into a great mass of ignorance or through a veil of nescience: but we have seen that it is subject there to an invading mixture or a mental coating or an interception and substitution; there is too a manifold possibility of misinterpretation which comes in the way of the purity and fullness of its action. Moreover, there are seeming Intuitions on all levels of the being which are communications rather than Intuitions, and these have a very various provenance, value and character. The infrarational "mystic", so styled, - for to be a true mystic it is not sufficient to reject reason and rely on sources of thought or action of which one has no understanding, - is often inspired by such communications on the vital level from a dark and dangerous source. In these circumstances we are driven to rely mainly on the reason and are disposed even to control the suggestions of the Intuition - or the pseudo- Intuition, which is the more frequent phenomenon, - by the observing and discriminating intelligence; for we feel in our intellectual part that we cannot be sure otherwise what is the true thing and what the mixed or adulterated article or false substitute. But this largely discounts for us the utility of the Intuition: for the reason is not in this field a reliable arbiter, since its methods are different, tentative, uncertain, an intellectual seeking; even though it itself really relies on a camouflaged Intuition for its conclusions, - for without that help it could not choose its course or arrive at any assured finding, - it hides this dependence from itself under the process of a reasoned conclusion or a verified conjecture. An Intuition passed in judicial review by the reason ceases to be an Intuition and can only have the authority of the reason for which there is no inner source of direct certitude. But even if the mind became predominantly an intuitive mind reliant upon its portion of the higher faculty, the co-ordination of its cognitions and its separated activities, - for in mind these would always be apt to appear as a series of imperfectly connected flashes, - would remain difficult so long as this new mentality has not a conscious liaison with its suprarational source or a self-uplifting access to a higher plane of consciousness in which an intuitive action is pure and native.
   Intuition is always an edge or ray or outleap of a superior light; it is in us a projecting blade, edge or point of a far-off supermind light entering into and modified by some intermediate truth-mind substance above us and, so modified, again entering into and very much blinded by our ordinary or ignorant mind substance; but on that higher level to which it is native its light is unmixed and therefore entirely and purely veridical, and its rays are not separated but connected or massed together in a play of waves of what might almost be called in the Sanskrit poetic figure a sea or mass of "stable lightnings". When this original or native Intuition begins to descend into us in answer to an ascension of our consciousness to its level or as a result of our finding of a clear way of communication with it, it may continue to come as a play of lightning-flashes, isolated or in constant action; but at this stage the judgment of reason becomes quite inapplicable, it can only act as an observer or registrar understanding or recording the more luminous intimations, judgments and discriminations of the higher power. To complete or verify an isolated Intuition or discriminate its nature, its application, its limitations, the receiving consciousness must rely on another completing Intuition or be able to call down a massed Intuition capable of putting all in place. For once the process of the change has begun, a complete transmutation of the stuff and activities of the mind into the substance, form and power of Intuition is imperative; until then, so long as the process of consciousness depends upon the lower intelligence serving or helping out or using the Intuition, the result can only be a survival of the mixed Knowledge-Ignorance uplifted or relieved by a higher light and force acting in its parts of Knowledge.
   Intuition has a fourfold power. A power of revelatory truth- seeing, a power of inspiration or truth-hearing, a power of truth-touch or immediate seizing of significance, which is akin to the ordinary nature of its intervention in our mental intelligence, a power of true and automatic discrimination of the orderly and exact relation of truth to truth, - these are the fourfold potencies of Intuition. Intuition can therefore perform all the action of reason - including the function of logical intelligence, which is to work out the right relation of things and the right relation of idea with idea, - but by its own superior process and with steps that do not fail or falter. It takes up also and transforms into its own substance not only the mind of thought, but the heart and life and the sense and physical consciousness: already all these have their own peculiar powers of Intuition derivative from the hidden Light; the pure power descending from above can assume them all into itself and impart to these deeper heartperceptions and life-perceptions and the divinations of the body a greater integrality and perfection. It can thus change the whole consciousness into the stuff of Intuition; for it brings its own greater radiant movement into the will, into the feelings and emotions, the life-impulses, the action of sense and sensation, the very workings of the body consciousness; it recasts them in the light and power of truth and illumines their knowledge and their ignorance. A certain integration can thus take place, but whether it is a total integration must depend on the extent to which the new light is able to take up the subconscient and penetrate the fundamental Inconscience. Here the intuitive light and power may be hampered in its task because it is the edge of a delegated and modified supermind, but does not bring in the whole mass or body of the identity knowledge. The basis of Inconscience in our nature is too vast, deep and solid to be altogether penetrated, turned into light, transformed by an inferior power of the Truth-nature.
  The next step of the ascent brings us to the Overmind; the Intuitional change can only be an introduction to this higher spiritual overture. But we have seen that the Overmind, even when it is selective and not total in its action, is still a power of cosmic consciousness, a principle of global knowledge which carries in it a delegated light from the supramental gnosis. It is, therefore, only by an opening into the cosmic consciousness that the overmind ascent and descent can be made wholly possible: a high and intense individual opening upwards is not sufficient, - to that vertical ascent towards summit Light there must be added a vast horizontal expansion of the consciousness into some totality of the Spirit. At the least, the inner being must already have replaced by its deeper and wider awareness the surface mind and its limited outlook and learned to live in a large universality; for otherwise the overmind view of things and the overmind dynamism will have no room to move in and effectuate its dynamic operations. When the overmind descends, the predominance of the centralising ego-sense is entirely subordinated, lost in largeness of being and finally abolished; a wide cosmic perception and feeling of a boundless universal self and movement replaces it: many motions that were formerly ego-centric may still continue, but they occur as currents or ripples in the cosmic wideness. Thought, for the most part, no longer seems to originate individually in the body or the person but manifests from above or comes in upon the cosmic mindwaves: all inner individual sight or intelligence of things is now a revelation or illumination of what is seen or comprehended, but the source of the revelation is not in one's separate self but in the universal knowledge; the feelings, emotions, sensations are similarly felt as waves from the same cosmic immensity breaking upon the subtle and the gross body and responded to in kind by the individual centre of the universality; for the body is only a small support or even less, a point of relation, for the action of a vast cosmic instrumentation. In this boundless largeness, not only the separate ego but all sense of individuality, even of a subordinated or instrumental individuality, may entirely disappear; the cosmic existence, the cosmic consciousness, the cosmic delight, the play of cosmic forces are alone left: if the delight or the centre of Force is felt in what was the personal mind, life or body, it is not with a sense of personality but as a field of manifestation, and this sense of the delight or of the action of Force is not confined to the person or the body but can be felt at all points in an unlimited consciousness of unity which pervades everywhere.
  But there can be many formulations of overmind consciousness and experience; for the overmind has a great plasticity and is a field of multiple possibilities. In place of an uncentred and unplaced diffusion there may be the sense of the universe in oneself or as oneself: but there too this self is not the ego; it is an extension of a free and pure essential self-consciousness or it is an identification with the All, - the extension or the identification constituting a cosmic being, a universal individual.
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  The consciousness that thus acts is experienced as a consciousness of Light and Truth, a power, force, action full of Light and Truth, an aesthesis and sensation of beauty and delight universal and multitudinous in detail, an illumination in the whole and in all things, in the one movement and all movements, with a constant extension and play of possibilities which is infinite, even in its multitude of determinations endless and indeterminable. If the power of an ordering overmind gnosis intervenes, then there is a cosmic structure of the consciousness and action, but this is not like the rigid mental structures; it is plastic, organic, something that can grow and develop and stretch into the infinite. All spiritual experiences are taken up and become habitual and normal to the new nature; all essential experiences belonging to the mind, life, body are taken up and spiritualised, transmuted and felt as forms of the consciousness, delight, power of the infinite existence. Intuition, illumined sight and thought enlarge themselves; their substance assumes a greater substantiality, mass, energy, their movement is more comprehensive, global, many-faceted, more wide and potent in its truth-force: the whole nature, knowledge, aesthesis, sympathy, feeling, dynamism become more catholic, all-understanding, all-embracing, cosmic, infinite.
  The overmind change is the final consummating movement of the dynamic spiritual transformation; it is the highest possible status-dynamis of the spirit in the spiritual-mind plane. It takes up all that is in the three steps below it and raises their characteristic workings to their highest and largest power, adding to them a universal wideness of consciousness and force, a harmonious concert of knowledge, a more manifold delight of being.
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  This entails certain consequences which modify the clear successions of the evolution and prevent it from following the cleanly determined and firmly arranged course which our logical intelligence demands from Nature but seldom gets from her. As life and mind begin to appear when the organisation of Matter is sufficient to admit them but the more complex and perfect organisation of Matter comes with the evolution of life and mind, as mind appears when life is sufficiently organised to admit of a developed vibration of consciousness but life receives its full organisation and development only after mind can act upon it, as the spiritual evolution begins when man as mind is capable of the movements of spirituality but mind also rises to its own highest perfection by the growth of the intensities and luminosities of the spirit, so it is with this higher evolution of the ascending powers of the Spirit. As soon as there is a sufficient spiritual development, something of Intuition, illumination of the being, the movements of the higher spiritual grades of Consciousness begins to manifest, - sometimes one, sometimes the other or all together, and they do not wait for each power in the series to complete itself before a higher power comes into action. An Overmind light and power may descend in some sort, create a partial form of itself in the being and take a leading part or supervise or intervene while the intuitive and illumining mind and higher mind are still incomplete; these would then remain in the whole, acting along with the greater Power, often penetrated or sublimated by it or rising into it to form a greater or overmind Intuition, a greater or overmind illumination, a greater or overmind spiritual thinking. This intricate action takes place because each descending power by its intensity of pressure on the nature and uplifting effect makes the being already capable of a still higher invasion before that earlier power itself is complete in its self-formation; but also it happens because the work of assumption and transformation of the lower nature can with difficulty be done if a higher and higher intervention does not take place. The illumination and the higher thought need the help of the Intuition, the Intuition needs the help of the overmind to combat the darkness or ignorance in which they labour and to give them their own fullness. Still, it is not possible in the end for the overmind status and integration to be complete until the higher mind and the illumined mind have been integrated and taken up into the Intuition and the Intuition itself subsequently integrated and taken up into the all-enlarging and all-sublimating overmind energy. The law of the gradation has to be satisfied even in the complexity of the process of evolutionary Nature.
  A further cause of complexity arises from the need of integration itself; for the process is not only an ascent of the soul to a higher status, but a descent of the higher consciousness so gained to take up and transform the inferior nature. But this nature has a density of previous formation which resists and obstructs the descent; even when the higher power has broken the barrier and descended and is at work, we have seen that the nature of the Ignorance resists and obstructs the working, that it either strives to refuse transformation altogether or tries to modify the new power into some conformity with its own workings, or even throws itself upon it to seize and degrade and enslave it to its own way of action and lower purpose. Ordinarily, in their task of assumption and assimilation of this difficult stuff of Nature, the higher powers descend first into the mind and occupy the mind centres because these are nearest to themselves in intelligence and knowledge-power; if they descend first into the heart or into the vital being of force and sensation, as they sometimes do because these happen to be in some individuals more open and call them first, the results are more mixed and dubious, imperfect and insecure than if things happen in the logical order. But, even in its normal working when it takes up the being part by part in the natural order of descent, the descending power is not able to bring about a total occupation and transformation of each before it goes farther. It can only effect a general and incomplete occupation, so that the workings of each remain still partly of the new higher, partly of a mixed, partly of the old unchanged lower order. All the mind in its whole range cannot be transmuted at once, for the mind centres are not a region isolated from the rest of the being; the mind action is penetrated by the action of the vital and physical parts, and in those parts themselves are lower formations of mind, a vital mind, a physical mind, and these have to be changed before there can be an entire transformation of the mental being. The higher transforming power has, therefore, to descend, as soon as may be and without waiting for an integral mental change, into the heart so as to occupy and change the emotional nature, and afterwards into the inferior vital centres to occupy and change the whole vital and kinetic and sensational nature, and, finally, into the physical centres so as to occupy and change the whole physical nature. But even this finality is not final, for there are still left the subconscient parts and the inconscient foundation.

2.27 - Hathayoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is the sign of a constant inability of the body to hold even the limited life-energy that enters into or is generated in it, and consequently of a general dissipation of this Pranic force with a quite subordinate element of ordered and well-economised activity. Moreover, in the consequent interchange and balancing between the movement and interaction of the vital energies normally at work in the body and their interchange with those which act upon it from outside, whether the energies of others or of the general Pranic force variously active in the environment, there is a constant precarious balancing and adjustment which may at any moment go wrong. Every obstruction, every defect, every excess, every lesion creates impurities and disorders. Nature manages it all well enough for her own purposes, when left to herself; but the moment the blundering mind and will of the human being interfere with her habits and her vital instincts and Intuitions, especially when they create false or artificial habits, a still more precarious order and frequent derangement become the rule of the being. Yet this interference is inevitable, since man lives not for the purposes of the vital Nature in him alone, but for higher purposes which she had not contemplated in her first balance and to which she has with difficulty to adjust her operations. Therefore the first necessity of a greater status or action is to get rid of this disordered restlessness, to still the activity and to regulate it. The Hathayogin has to bring about an abnormal poise of status and action of the body and the life-energy, abnormal not in the direction of greater disorder, but of superiority and self-mastery.
  The first object of the immobility of the Asana is to get rid of the restlessness imposed on the body and to force it to hold the Pranic energy instead of dissipating and squandering it. The experience in the practice of Asana is not that of a cessation and diminution of energy by inertia, but of a great increase, inpouring, circulation of force. The body, accustomed to work off superfluous energy by movement, is at first ill able to bear this increase and this retained inner action and betrays it by violent tremblings; afterwards it habituates itself and, when the Asana is conquered, then it finds as much ease m the posture, however originally difficult or unusual to it, as in its easiest attitudes sedentary or recumbent. It becomes increasingly capable of holding whatever amount of increased vital energy is brought to bear upon it without needing to spill it out in movement, and this increase is so enormous as to seem illimitable, so that the body of the perfected Hathayogin is capable of feats of endurance, force, unfatigued expenditure of energy of which the normal physical powers of man at their highest would be incapable. For it is not only able to hold and retain this energy, but to bear its possession of the physical system and its more complete movement through it. The life-energy, thus occupying and operating in a powerful, unified movement on the tranquil and passive body, freed from the restless balancing between the continent power and the contained, becomes a much greater and more effective force. In fact, it seems then rather to contain and possess and use the body than to be contained, possessed and used by it, -- just as the restless active mind seems to seize on and use irregularly and imperfectly whatever spiritual force comes into it, but the tranquillised mind is held, possessed and used by the spiritual force.

2.27 - The Gnostic Being, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The creation of a supramental being, nature, life on earth, will not be the sole result of this evolution; it will also carry with it the consummation of the steps that have led up to it: for it will confirm in possession of terrestrial birth the overmind, the Intuition and the other gradations of the spiritual natureforce and establish a race of gnostic beings and a hierarchy, a shining ladder of ascending degrees and successive constituent formations of the gnostic light and power in earth-nature. For the description of gnosis applies to all consciousness that is based upon Truth of being and not upon the Ignorance or Nescience.
  All life and living beings ready to rise beyond the mental ignorance, but not ready yet for the supramental height, would find in a sort of echelon or a scale with overlapping degrees their assured basis, their intermediate steps of self-formation, their expression of realised capacity of spiritual existence on the way to the supreme Reality. But also the presence of the liberated and now sovereign supramental light and force at the head of evolutionary Nature might be expected to have its consequences in the whole evolution. An incidence, a decisive stress would affect the life of the lower evolutionary stages; something of the light, something of the force would penetrate downwards and awaken into a greater action the hidden TruthPower everywhere in Nature. A dominant principle of harmony would impose itself on the life of the Ignorance; the discord, the blind seeking, the clash of struggle, the abnormal vicissitudes of exaggeration and depression and unsteady balance of the unseeing forces at work in their mixture and conflict, would feel the influence and yield place to a more orderly pace and harmonic steps of the development of being, a more revealing arrangement of progressing life and consciousness, a better lifeorder. A freer play of Intuition and sympathy and understanding would enter into human life, a clearer sense of the truth of self and things and a more enlightened dealing with the opportunities and difficulties of existence. Instead of a constant intermixed and confused struggle between the growth of Consciousness and the power of the Inconscience, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, the evolution would become a graded progression from lesser light to greater light; in each stage of it the conscious beings belonging to that stage would respond to the inner Consciousness-Force and expand their own law of cosmic Nature towards the possibility of a higher degree of that Nature. This is at least a strong possibility and might be envisaged as the natural consequence of the direct action of supermind on the evolution. This intervention would not annul The Gnostic Being the evolutionary principle, for supermind has the power of withholding or keeping in reserve its force of knowledge as well as the power of bringing it into full or partial action; but it would harmonise, steady, facilitate, tranquillise and to a great extent hedonise the difficult and afflicted process of the evolutionary emergence.
  There is something in the nature of supermind itself that would make this great result inevitable. It is in its foundation a unitarian and integralising and harmonic consciousness, and in its descent and evolutionary working out of the diversity of the Infinite it would not lose its unitarian trend, its push towards integralisation or its harmonic influence. The Overmind follows out diversities and divergent possibilities on their own lines of divergence: it can allow contradictions and discords, but it makes them elements of a cosmic whole so that they are forced, however unwittingly and in spite of themselves, to contri bute their share to its wholeness. Or we may say that it accepts and even encourages contradictions, but obliges them to support each other's existence so that there may be divergent roads of being and consciousness and experience that lead away from the One and from each other but still maintain themselves on the Oneness and can lead back again each on its own path to the Oneness. That is the secret sense even of our own world of Ignorance which works from the Inconscience but with the underlying cosmicity of the overmind principle. But the individual being in such a creation does not possess this secret principle in knowledge and does not base upon it his action. An overmind being here would perceive this secret; but he might still work on his own lines of Nature and law of action, Swabhava, Swadharma, according to the inspiration, the dynamic control or the inner governance of the Spirit or the Divine within him and leave the rest to their own line in the whole: an overmind creation of knowledge in the Ignorance might therefore be something separate from the surrounding world of Ignorance and guarded from it by the luminous encircling and separating wall of its own principle. The supramental gnostic being, on the contrary, would not only found all his living on an intimate sense and effective realisation of harmonic unity in his own inner and outer life or group life, but would create a harmonic unity also with the still surviving mental world, even if that world remained altogether a world of Ignorance. For the gnostic consciousness in him would perceive and bring out the evolving truth and principle of harmony hidden in the formations of the Ignorance; it would be natural to his sense of integrality and it would be within his power to link them in a true order with his own gnostic principle and the evolved truth and harmony of his own greater life-creation. That might be impossible without a considerable change in the life of the world, but such a change would be a natural consequence of the appearance of a new Power in Nature and its universal influence. In the emergence of the gnostic being would be the hope of a more harmonious evolutionary order in terrestrial Nature.
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  The finding of the one truth underlying all things will be the Identical discovering identity and identical truth everywhere and discovering too the power and workings and relations of that identity. The revelation of the detail, the circumstance, the abundant ways and forms of the manifestation will be the unveiling of the endless opulence of the truths of that identity, its forms and powers of self, its curious manifoldness and multiplicity of form bringing out infinitely its oneness. This knowledge will proceed by identification with all, by entering into all, by a contact bringing with it a leap of self-discovery and a flame of recognition, a greater and surer Intuition of truth than the mind can reach; there will be an Intuition too of the means of embodying and utilising the truth seen, an operative Intuition of its dynamic processes, a direct intimate awareness guiding the life and the physical senses in every step of their action and service to the Spirit when they have to be called in as instruments for the effectuation of process in life and matter.
  A replacement of intellectual seeking by supramental identity and gnostic Intuition of the contents of the identity, an omnipresence of spirit with its light penetrating the whole process of knowledge and all its use, so that there is an integration between the knower, knowledge and the thing known, between the operating consciousness, the instrumentation and the thing done, while the single self watches over the whole integrated movement and fulfils itself intimately in it, making it a flawless unit of self-effectuation, will be the character of The Gnostic Being each gnostic movement of knowledge and action of knowledge.
  Mind, observing and reasoning, labours to detach itself and see objectively and truly what it has to know; it tries to know it as not-self, independent other-reality not affected by process of personal thinking or by any presence of self: the gnostic consciousness will at once intimately and exactly know its object by a comprehending and penetrating identification with it. It will overpass what it has to know, but it will include it in itself; it will know the object as part of itself as it might know any part or movement of its own being, without any narrowing of itself by the identification or snaring of its thought in it so as to be bound or limited in knowledge. There will be the intimacy, accuracy, fullness of a direct internal knowledge, but not that misleading by personal mind by which we constantly err, because the consciousness will be that of a universal and not a restricted and ego-bound person. It will proceed towards all knowledge, not setting truth against truth to see which will stand and survive, but completing truth by truth in the light of the one Truth of which all are the aspects. All idea and vision and perception will have this character of an inner seeing, an intimate extended selfperception, a large self-integrating knowledge, an indivisible whole working itself out by light acting upon light in a selfexecuting harmony of truth-being. There will be an unfolding, not as a delivery of light out of darkness, but as a delivery of light out of itself; for if an evolving supramental Consciousness holds back part of its contents of self-awareness behind in itself, it does this not as a step or by an act of Ignorance, but as the movement of a deliberate bringing out of its timeless knowledge into a process of Time-manifestation. A self-illumination, a revelation of light out of light will be the method of cognition of this evolutionary supramental Nature.
  --
  This would be the nature of the being, life and action of the gnostic individual so far as we can follow the evolution with our mental conception up to that point where it will emerge out of overmind and cross the border into supramental gnosis. This nature of the gnosis would evidently determine all the relations of the life or group-life of gnostic beings; for a gnostic collectivity would be a collective soul-power of the Truth-consciousness, even as the gnostic individual would be an individual soulpower of it: it would have the same integration of life and action in unison, the same realised and conscious unity of being, the same spontaneity, intimate oneness-feeling, one and mutual truth-vision and truth-sense of self and each other, the same truth-action in the relation of each with each and all with all; this collectivity would be and act not as a mechanical but a spiritual integer. A similar inevitability of the union of freedom and order would be the law of the collective life; it would be a freedom of the diverse play of the Infinite in divine souls, an order of the conscious unity of souls which is the law of the supramental Infinite. Our mental rendering of oneness brings into it the rule of sameness; a complete oneness brought about by the mental reason drives towards a thoroughgoing standardisation as its one effective means, - only minor shades of differentiation would be allowed to operate: but the greatest richness of diversity in the self-expression of oneness would be the law of the gnostic life. In the gnostic consciousness difference would not lead to discord but to a spontaneous natural adaptation, a sense of The Gnostic Being complementary plenitude, a rich many-sided execution of the thing to be collectively known, done, worked out in life. For the difficulty in mind and life is created by ego, by separation of integers into component parts which figure as contraries, opposites, disparates: all in which they separate from each other is easily felt, affirmed and stressed; that in which they meet, whatever holds their divergences together, is largely missed or found with difficulty; everything has to be done by an overcoming or an adjustment of difference, by a constructed unity. There is, indeed, an underlying principle of oneness and Nature insists on its emergence in a construction of unity; for she is collective and communal as well as individual and egoistic and has her instrumentation of associativeness, sympathies, common needs, interests, attractions, affinities as well as her more brutal means of unification: but her secondary imposed and too prominent basis of ego-life and ego-nature overlays the unity and afflicts all its constructions with imperfection and insecurity. A farther difficulty is created by the absence or rather the imperfection of Intuition and direct inner contact making each a separate being forced to learn with difficulty the other's being and nature, to arrive at understanding and mutuality and harmony from outside instead of inwardly through a direct sense and grasp, so that all mental and vital interchange is hampered, rendered ego-tainted or doomed to imperfection and incompleteness by the veil of mutual ignorance. In the collective gnostic life the integrating truth-sense, the concording unity of gnostic nature would carry all divergences in itself as its own opulence and turn a multitudinous thought, action, feeling into the unity of a luminous life-whole. This would be the evident principle, the inevitable result of the very character of the Truth-Consciousness and its dynamic realisation of the spiritual unity of all being.
  This realisation, the key to the perfection of life, difficult to arrive at on the mental plane, difficult even when realised to dynamise or organise, would be naturally dynamic, spontaneously self-organised in all gnostic creation and gnostic life.

2.28 - The Divine Life, #The Life Divine, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  May the invincible rays of his Intuition be there seeking immortality, pervading both the births; for by them he sets flowing in one movement human strengths and things divine. Rig Veda.4
  Let all accept thy will when thou art born a living god from the dry tree, that they may attain to divinity and reach by the speed of thy movements to possession of the Truth and the Immortality. Rig Veda.5
  --
  52: An evolution of innate and latent but as yet unevolved powers of consciousness is not considered admissible by the modern mind, because these exceed our present formulation of Nature and, to our ignorant preconceptions founded on a limited experience, they seem to belong to the supernatural, to the miraculous and occult; for they surpass the known action of material Energy which is now ordinarily accepted as the sole cause and mode of things and the sole instrumentation of the World-Force. A human working of marvels, by the conscious being discovering and developing an instrumentation of material forces overpassing anything that Nature has herself organised, is accepted as a natural fact and an almost unlimited prospect of our existence; an awakening, a discovery, an instrumentation of powers of consciousness and of spiritual, mental and life forces overpassing anything that Nature or man has yet organised is not admitted as possible. But there would be nothing supernatural or miraculous in such an evolution, except in so far as it would be a supernature or superior nature to ours just as human nature is a supernature or superior nature to that of animal or plant or material objects. Our mind and its powers, our use of reason, our mental Intuition and insight, speech, possibilities of philosophical, scientific, aesthetic discovery of the truths and potencies of being and a control of its forces are an evolution that has taken place: yet it would seem impossible if we took our stand on the limited animal consciousness and its capacities; for there is nothing there to warrant so prodigious a progression.
  53: But still there are vague initial manifestations, rudimentary elements or arrested possibilities in the animal to which our reason and intelligence with their extraordinary developments stand as an unimaginable journey from a poor and unpromising point of departure. The rudiments of spiritual powers belonging to the gnostic supernature are similarly there even in our ordinary composition, but only occasionally and sparsely active. It is not irrational to suppose that at this much higher stage of the evolution a similar but greater progression starting from these rudimentary beginnings might lead to another immense development and departure.
  --
  58: It should be evident that no rationalised piecing together or ingenuity of mental construction can accord or harmonise this complexity; it is only the Intuition and self-knowledge of an awakened spirit that can do it. That would be the nature of the evolved supramental being and his existence; his spiritual sight and sense would take up all the forces of the being in a unifying consciousness and bring them into a normality of accorded action: for this accord and concord are the true normality of the spirit; the discord, the disharmony of our life and nature is abnormal to it although it is normal to the life of the Ignorance. It is indeed because it is not normal to the spirit that a knowledge within us is dissatisfied and strives towards a greater harmony in our existence. This accord and concord of the whole being, which is natural to the gnostic individual, would be equally natural to a community of gnostic beings; for it would rest on a union of self with self in the light of a common and mutual self-awareness. It is true that in the total terrestrial existence of which the gnostic life would be a part, there would be still continuing within it a life belonging to a less evolved order; the intuitive and gnostic life would have to fit into this total existence and carry into it as much of its own law of unity and harmony as may be possible. Here the law of spontaneous harmony might seem to be inapplicable, since the relation of the gnostic life with the ignorant life around it would not be founded on a mutuality of self-knowledge and a sense of one being and common consciousness; it would be a relation of action of knowledge to action of ignorance. But this difficulty need not be so great as it seems now to us; for the gnostic knowledge would carry in it a perfect understanding of the consciousness of the Ignorance, and it would not be impossible, therefore, for an assured gnostic life to harmonise its existence with that of all the less developed life coexistent with it in the earth-nature.
  59: If this is our evolutionary destiny, it remains for us to see where we stand at this juncture in the evolutionary progression, - a progression which has been cyclic or spiral rather than in a straight line or has at least journeyed in a very zigzag swinging curve of advance, - and what prospect there is of any turn towards a decisive step in the near or measurable future. In our human aspiration towards a personal perfection and the perfection of the life of the race the elements of the future evolution are foreshadowed and striven after, but in a confusion of half-enlightened knowledge; there is a discord between the necessary elements, an opposing emphasis, a profusion of rudimentary unsatisfying and ill-accorded solutions. These sway between the three principal preoccupations of our idealism, - the complete single development of the human being in himself, the perfectibility of the individual, a full development of the collective being, the perfectibility of society, and, more pragmatically restricted, the perfect or best possible relations of individual with individual and society and of community with community.

2.2.9.02 - Plato, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  He was trying to express in a mental way the One containing the multiplicity which is brought out (created) from the One that is the Overmind realisation. Plato had these ideas not as realisations but as Intuitions which he expressed in his own mental form.
  There are many such thoughts in Platos philosophy. Did he get them from Indian books?
  Not from Indian books something of the philosophy of India got through by means of Pythagoras and others. But I think Plato got most of these things from Intuition.
  8 October 1933
  --
  The idea that the soul has to get knowledge at all would seem to us to be without meaning unless we take it in the sense that one has to develop the Intuition as an instrumental faculty.
  Yes, all these phrases are loose. At most one could say that the soul must bring out or develop the inner knowledge that which is already there within or that the lower nature must receive the higher knowledge,but not that the soul must get knowledge. I believe Plato himself held that all knowledge already was there within,so even from that point of view this expression would be inaccurate.

2.2.9.04 - Plotinus, #Letters On Poetry And Art, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Plotinus says [according to Weber, p. 173]: The intelligence, too, is creative. Its emanation or radiation is the soul. The soul is not, like the intellect, endowed with immediate and complete Intuition: it is restricted to the discursive thought, or analysis.
  It is subordinate to the intellect. There is, at the bottom of all individual souls, but one single soul manifesting itself infinitely in different forms: the soul of the world. What does Plotinus mean by soul and intelligence in this passage?
  --
  )while by intelligence he means buddhi (cosmic), but endows the buddhi with the qualities proper to the Intuition and Overmind.
  12 October 1933

2.3.01 - The Planes or Worlds of Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The physical is not the only world; there are others that we become aware of through dream records, through the subtle senses, through influences and contacts, through imagination, Intuition and vision. There are worlds of a larger subtler life than ours, vital worlds; worlds in which Mind builds its own forms and figures, mental worlds; psychic worlds which are the soul's home; others above with which we have little contact. In each of us there is a mental plane of consciousness, a psychic, a vital, a subtle physical as well as the gross physical and material plane.
  The same planes are situated in the consciousness of general

2.3.02 - The Supermind or Supramental, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is hardly possible to say what the Supermind is in the language of Mind, even spiritualised Mind, for it is a different consciousness altogether and acts in a different way. Whatever may be said of it is likely to be not understood or misunderstood. It is only by growing into it that one can know what it is and this also cannot be done until after a long process by which mind heightening and illuminating becomes pure Intuition (not the mixed thing that ordinarily goes by that name) and Intuition widens and masses itself into Overmind; after that Overmind can be lifted into and suffused with Supermind till it undergoes a transformation.
  In the Supermind all is self-known self-luminously, there are no divisions, oppositions or separated aspects as in Mind whose principle is division of Knowledge into parts and setting each part against another. Overmind approaches this at its top and is often mistaken for Supermind, but it cannot reach it - except by uplifting and transformation.

2.3.03 - Integral Yoga, #Essays Divine And Human, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Yoga. Mind the thinker is the prime minister in us who covers the king, but mind too is dominated and led by the vital powers, the strong and violent of the realm, who force it to serve their purpose and these too can only act with the means given them by the body and physical nature, the inert hardly conscious subject existence whose passive assent and docile instrumentation is yet indispensable to its rulers. This is our present constitution and it amounts to no more than a sort of organised confusion, a feudal order that is an ignorant half anarchy and cannot make the most of the possibilities and resources even of the limited tract of nature which we inhabit, much less reveal to us and exploit our spiritual empire. To reinstate the king-soul is the first step in a needed revolution - the soul directing the mind will exercise through it its sovereign power over the powers of life and subject to them in their turn an enlightened and psychically consenting body. But this is not all; for soul-discovery is not complete without a psychic new creation of the mental, vital and physical instrumentation of nature. The mind will be recast by the soul's Intuition of Truth, the vital being by its perception of power and good, the body and whole nature by its comm and for light, harmony and beauty. Our nature will become that of a true psychic entity, not a brute creation unified by a precarious life and illumined by the candlelight of a struggling intelligence.
  166

2.3.03 - The Mother's Presence, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  In this respect the Mother is guided by her Intuitions which tell her which flower is needed at the moment or helpful. Sometimes it is accompanied by a perception of a particular state of consciousness, sometimes by that of a material fact; but only
  180
  --
  In the case of X, the Mother fined the servant boy on such apparently insufficient grounds that it looks illogical. I cannot help thinking that she acted on a strong Intuition which she felt and knew to be correct.
  Mother acted on her inner perception about the whole affair; she does not act only on the outer facts but on what she feels or sees lying behind them.

2.3.03 - The Overmind, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Overmind is the highest source of the cosmic consciousness available to the embodied being in the Ignorance. It is part of the cosmic consciousness - but the human individual when he opens into the cosmic usually remains in the cosmic Mind-LifeMatter receiving only inspirations and influences from the higher planes of Intuition and Overmind. He receives through the spiritualised higher and illumined mind the fundamental experiences on which spiritual knowledge is based; he can become even full of intuitive mind movements, illuminations, various kinds of powers and illumined light, liberation, Ananda. But to rise fully into the Intuition is rare, to reach the Overmind still rarer - although influences and experiences can come down from there.
  It is (sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly) by the power of the Overmind releasing the mind from its close partitions that the cosmic consciousness opens in the seeker and he becomes aware of the cosmic spirit and the play of the cosmic forces.
  --
  You cannot do it [recognise the different planes of the Overmind] at present. Only those who have got fully into the cosmic consciousness can do it and even they cannot do it at first. One must first go fully through the experience of higher mind and illumined mind and Intuition before it can be done.
  Planes of the Overmind
  There are different planes of the Overmind. One is mental, directly creative of all the formations that manifest below in the mental world - that is the mental Overmind. Above is the overmind Intuition. Still above are the planes of overmind that are more and more connected with the supermind and have a
  154
  --
  The Overmind, the Intuition and Below
  The Overmind receives the Divine Truth and disperses it in various formations and diverse play of forces, building thus different worlds out of this dispersion.
  In the Intuition the nature of Knowledge is Truth not global or whole, but coming out in so many points, edges, flashes of a
  Truth that is behind it and supplies it with its direct perceptions.
  --
  It is from the Overmind that all these different arrangements of the creative Truth of things originate. Out of the Overmind they come down to the Intuition and are transmitted from it to the
  Illumined and higher Mind to be arranged there for our intelligence. But they lose more and more of their power and certitude in the transmission as they come down to the lower levels. What energy of directly perceived Truth they have is lost in the human mind; for to the human intellect they present themselves only as speculative ideas, not as realised Truth, not as direct sight, a dynamic vision coupled with a concrete undeniable experience.

2.3.04 - The Higher Planes of Mind, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The Plane of Intuition
   Intuition sees the truth of things by a direct inner contact, not like the ordinary mental intelligence by seeking and reaching out for indirect contacts through the senses etc. But the limitation of the Intuition as compared with the Supermind is that it sees things by flashes, point by point, not as a whole. Also in coming into the mind it gets mixed with the mental movement and forms a kind of intuitive-mind activity which is not the pure truth, but something in between the higher Truth and the mental seeking.
  It can lead the consciousness through a sort of transitional stage and that is practically its function.
   Intuition is in direct contact with the higher Truth but not in an integral contact. It gets the Truth in flashes and turns these flashes of Truth-perception into Intuitions - intuitive ideas. The ideas of the true Intuition are always correct so far as they go
  - but when Intuition is diluted in the ordinary mind stuff, its truth gets mixed with error.
  160
  --
  One can get Intuitions - communications from there [the intuitive plane] even while the ego exists - but to live in the wideness of the Intuition is not possible with the limitation of the ego.
  The Intuition is the first plane on which there is a real opening to the full possibility of realisation - it is through it that one goes farther - first to Overmind and then to Supermind.
  It [the individual Self] is not specially related [to Intuition] - Intuition is the highest power the embodied individual can reach without universalising itself; when it universalises itself it is then possible for it to come in contact with overmind. If by the individual Self is meant the Jivatman, it can be on any plane of consciousness.
  By the intuitive self I meant the intuitive being, that part which belongs to the intuitive plane or is in connection with it. The Intuition is one of the higher planes of consciousness between the human thinking mind and the supramental plane.
  The difference between Intuition and thought is very much like that between seeing a thing and badgering one's brains to find out what the thing can possibly be like. Intuition is truth-sight.
  The Higher Planes of Mind
  --
  The Plane of Intuition and the Intuitive Mind
   Intuition proper is true in itself (when not interpreted or altered by mind), although fragmentary - intuitive mind is mixed with mind and therefore not infallible because the truth Intuition gives may be mixed or imperfectly put by mind.
  There is the Intuition and below it there is the intuitive mind which may have several degrees or layers. Also there is a partial power of Intuition in ordinary mind itself, in the vital, in the physical consciousness, in the material itself.
  To live in the Intuitive it is necessary first to have the opening into the cosmic consciousness and to live first in the higher and the illumined Mind, seeing everything from there. To receive constantly the Intuition from above, that is not necessary - it is sufficient to have the sense of the One everywhere and to get into contact with things and people through the inner mind and senses more than with the outer mind and senses - for the latter meet only the surface of things and are not intuitive.
  The intuitive "mind" does not get the touch direct from the supramental. Above it is the Overmind - in which there is a higher and greater Intuition and above that are the supermind ranges.
  162
  --
  Yogic Intuition and Ordinary Intuitions
  Some people have a faculty of receiving impressions about others which is not by any means infallible, but often turns out to be right. That is one thing and the Yogic Intuition by which one directly knows or feels what is in a man, his capacities, character, temperament, is another. The first may be a help for developing the other, but it is not the same thing. The Yogic faculty has to be and it can be complete only with a great development of the inner consciousness.
  To have the true Intuition one must get rid of the mind's self-will and the vital's also, their preferences, fancies, fantasies, strong insistences, and eliminate the mental and vital ego's pressure which sets the consciousness to work in the service of its own claims and desires. Otherwise these things will come in with force and claim to be Intuitions, inspirations and the rest of it.
  Or if any Intuitions come, they can be twisted and spoiled by the mixture of these forces of the Ignorance.
  It [ Intuition] is the power of knowing any truth or fact directly without reasoning or sense-proof, by a spontaneous right perception.
  --
  As for Intuition - well! One has to make a distinction - if one can - between a pure Intuition and a mixed one. A pure Intuition carries in it a truth, even if it is only a fragment or point of truth, and can be trusted. A mixed one carries in it some suggestion of truth which gets coated with mental matter - here one has to use discrimination and separate the true suggestion from the less reliable mental matter. Intuition and discrimination must always go together so long as one mixes in the mental plane
  - and for some time after.
  Mental intuitive knowledge catches directly some aspect of a truth but without any completeness or certitude and the Intuition is easily mixed with ordinary mental stuff that may be erroneous; in application it may easily be a half truth or be so misinterpreted and misapplied as to become an error. Also, the mind easily imitates the Intuition in such a way that it is difficult to distinguish between a true or a false Intuition. That is the reason why men of intellect distrust the mental Intuition and say that it cannot be accepted or followed unless it is tested and confirmed by the intellect. What comes from the overmind Intuition has a light, a certitude, an effective force of Truth in it that the mental Intuition at its best even has not.
  Yes,1 but it does not necessarily come from the original source
  - the plane of Intuition. There are mental, vital, subtle physical Intuitions as well as Intuitions from the higher and the illumined
  Mind.
  --
   same kind as one would get by Intuition? Is the source of the knowledge not the same?
  - Ed.
  --
  Mind raised to a great luminosity and more open to modified forms of Intuition and inspiration.
  The substance of knowledge is the same [in the higher mind and the illumined mind], but the higher mind gives only the substance and form of knowledge in thought and word - in the illumined mind there begins to be a peculiar light and energy and ananda of knowledge which grows as one rises higher in the scale or else as the knowledge comes from a higher and higher source. This light etc. are still rather diluted and diffused in the illumined mind; it becomes more and more intense, clearly defined, dynamic and effective on the higher planes, so much so as to change always the character and power of the knowledge.

2.3.04 - The Mother's Force, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The experiences you have are a good starting-point for realisation. They have to develop into the light of a deeper state in which there will be the descent of a higher consciousness into you. Your present consciousness in which you feel these things is only a preparatory one - in which the Mother works in you through the cosmic power according to your state of consciousness and your karma and in that working both success and failure can come - one has to remain equal-minded to both while trying always for success. A surer guidance can come even in this preparatory consciousness if you are entirely turned towards her alone in such a way that you can feel her direct guidance and follow it without any other influence or force intervening to act upon you, but that condition is not easy to get or keep - it needs a great one-pointedness and constant singleminded dedication. When the higher consciousness will descend, then a closer union, a more intimate consciousness of the Presence and a more illumined Intuition will become possible.
  17 November 1934

2.3.05 - Sadhana through Work for the Mother, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  Mother and aware of her higher Force acting within you. So here too your Intuition was perfectly true.
  But all this cannot be done in a day. So you are once more right in not being anxious or uneasy. One must be vigilant, but not anxious and uneasy, b . The Mother's Force will act and bring the result in its own time - provided one offers all to her and aspires and is vigilant, calling and remembering her at all times, rejecting quietly all that stands in the way of the action of her transforming Force. Your second view of this was more from the right angle of vision than the first. To say that it is not
  --
  One begins to feel the Mother's force doing the work; the psychic grows through a certain inner attitude behind the work and the adhar becomes open both to the psychic Intuitions and influences from within and to the descent from above. Then the result of
  5 May 1936 meditation can come through the work itself.

2.3.06 - The Mind, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  The right activity of the buddhi is always to observe, discern, discriminate, understand rightly and give the right direction to the vital and the body. But it does it imperfectly so long as it is in the Ignorance; by opening to the Mother it begins to get the true light and direction. Afterwards it is transformed into Intuition and from Intuition to the instrumental action of the overmind or the supermind Consciousness.
  Chitta
  --
  Above the physical mind and the vital mind is the mental intelligence, the mind proper. Beyond the ordinary thinking mind or intellect is the higher mind; beyond the higher mind is the illumined mind and beyond that is the intuitive mind. Above the intuitive mind are the Intuition and the Overmind.
  The Mind proper is divided into three parts - thinking Mind, dynamic Mind, externalising Mind - the former concerned with ideas and knowledge in their own right, the second with the putting out of mental forces for realisation of the idea, the third with the expression of them in life (not only by speech, but by any form it can give). The word "physical mind" is rather ambiguous, because it can mean this externalising mind and the mental in the physical taken together.

2.3.06 - The Mother's Lights, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  - for that is a ray of the Mother's light, the white light, and the illumining of the heart by this light is a thing of great power for this sadhana. The Intuitions she speaks of are a sign of the inner consciousness growing in her - the consciousness which is necessary for Yoga.
  28 July 1937

2.3.07 - The Mother in Visions, Dreams and Experiences, #The Mother With Letters On The Mother, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It is difficult to distinguish the borderline between imagination, Intuition and feelings unless they are substantiated by
  278

2.3.07 - The Vital Being and Vital Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  By the higher vital parts of the nature I mean the vital mind, the emotional nature, the life-force dynamis in the being. The vital mind is that part of the vital being which builds, plans, imagines, arranges things and thoughts according to the life-pushes, desires, will to power or possession, will to action, emotions, vital ego reactions of the nature. It must be distinguished from the reasoning will which plans and arranges things according to the dictates of the thinking mind proper, the discriminating reason or according to the mental Intuition or a direct insight and judgment. The vital mind uses thought for the service not of reason but of life-push and life-power and when it calls in reasoning it uses that for justifying the dictates of these powers, imposes their dictates on the reason instead of governing by a discriminating will the action of the life-forces. This higher vital with all its parts is situated in the chest and has the cardiac centre as its main stronghold governing all this part down to the navel. I need not say anything about the emotional nature, for its character and movements are known to all. From the navel downwards is the reign of the vital passions and sensations and all the small life-impulses that constitute the bulk of the ordinary human life and character. This is what we call the lower vital nature. The Muladhara is the main support of the physical
  The Vital Being and Vital Consciousness

2.3.08 - The Physical Consciousness, #Letters On Yoga I, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  You can only distinguish [the different sheaths] either by Intuition or by experience and then you have established direct knowledge of the different sheaths.
  Chapter Nine

2.4.02 - Bhakti, Devotion, Worship, #Letters On Yoga II, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  It [an inner state of dryness] is because it is the analysing mind that is active that always brings a certain dryness; the higher mind or the Intuition bring a much more spontaneous and complete knowledge the beginning of the real Jnana without this effect. The bhakti which you feel is psychic, but with a strong vital tinge; and it is the mind and the vital between them that bring in the opposition between the bhakti and the Jnana. The vital concerned only with emotion finds the mental knowledge dry and without rasa, the mind finds the bhakti to be a blind emotion fully interesting only when its character has been analysed and understood. There is no such opposition when the psychic and the higher plane knowledge act together predominantly the psychic welcomes knowledge that supports its emotion, the higher thought consciousness rejoices in the bhakti.
  ***

2 - Other Hymns to Agni, #Hymns to the Mystic Fire, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
  17. O Fire, thou becomest in us the rapturous ray of Intuition
  of the gods that knows all seer-wisdoms; established in thy
  --
  looks upon the sun-world, heaven's ray of Intuition, standing in the luminous planes, waking in the Dawn, Fire, head
  of heaven, whom no darkness can cover, him we desire with
  --
  3. Ray of Intuition of their sacrifices, effective means of the
  finding of knowledge, the illumined seers greatened the Fire
  --
  our satisfactions, with their true speech, their rays of Intuition. And do thou, O Fire, by the greatness of the earth cut
  away for the Vast even the sin that has been done.
  --
  4. He is the ray of Intuition in the sacrifices; may he, the Fire,
  come with the gods, anointed by the seven priests of the
  --
  is the supreme39 ray of Intuition in the sacrifice; it is he who
  crosses through to man's goal.
  --
  is the supreme Intuition in the sacrifice, the blissful one,
  bring to birth in your front, O men.
  --
  the seeing people; men hold him as the ray of Intuition and
  he shines as the Bhrigu-flame-seer for each being.
  --
  2. The creator Sun is lodged in his high ray of Intuition fashioning the light for the whole world; the Sun in his universal
  knowledge has filled earth and heaven and the mid-world
  --
  4. Yea, he creates the light of Intuition even for one who is far off in the night, the purifying and imperishable Fire ravages the trees of the forest.
  5. When in his service men cast down their sweat on the paths, they ascend to a self-born ground as if to wide levels.
  --
  2. Fire the supreme Intuition of the sacrifice, the representative
  priest, men have kindled high in the triple world of his
  --
  ray of Intuition lodged in heaven.
  aE`nno y.m;p v
  --
  2. Him they send the seer, the ray of Intuition, the foundation,
  the light on the hill, the kingdom of peace in earth and
  --
  founds the ray of Intuition for both kinds of being born, the
  offerings in the gods, the riches in the doers of good.
  --
  seek, the ray of Intuition of the sacrifices.
  a`n
  --
  18. O Fire, to thee constant in the peace of a deep calm I come with the Intuition that awakes to knowledge; by our impulsion bring to us for our protection wealth of many forms that is most close.
  19. O Fire, O god, for thy adorer thou art the lord of creatures, thou art the master of his house who departs not from him, afflicting the demons; great art thou, the guardian of heaven who comes to his gated home.
  --
  5. The priest of the call of the pilgrim-rite with his manyhued chariot, in the brilliant ray of Intuition of sacrifice on
  sacrifice, Fire the guest of man who takes to himself the half
  --
  6. The father brought thee to birth, the force of all pilgrimsacrifices, the many-hued ray of Intuition; so do thou win for
  us by sacrifice in the line of the planes with their godheads,
  --
  the gods walked by the ray of thy Intuition, then they grew
  and were the first and supreme helpers.
  --
  1. The Fire journeys on with his vast ray of Intuition, the Bull
  bellows to earth and heaven; he has reached up to the highest
  --
  ray of Intuition by his lustre they increase; he blazes with
  his row of flaming tusks.
  --
  6. The ray of Intuition of the universe, the child in the womb of
  the world, in his coming to birth he filled earth and heaven;
  --
  light of knowledge brilliant like the rays of Intuition of the
  dawns; when loosed on the growths of earth and woods of
  --
  the supreme Ray of Intuition, the vicar of the sacrifice, Fire,
  the Bull with the luminous back who hears our words, the
  --
  5. O Fire, thou art the ray of Intuition in creatures, most dear,
  most glorious, seated in the centre.44 Awake, founding his

30.03 - Spirituality in Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Greek Drama Intuition and Inspiration in Art
   Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta On Art and LiteratureSpirituality in Art
  --
   Greek Drama Intuition and Inspiration in Art

30.04 - Intuition and Inspiration in Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
  object:30.04 - Intuition and Inspiration in Art
  author class:Nolini Kanta Gupta
  --
   Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta On Art and Literature Intuition and Inspiration in Art
   Intuition and Inspiration in Art
   As Intuition plays the major role in one kind of art, even so inspiration in another. Two kinds of beauty have sprung into existence from these two faculties. Why speak of the artist alone - all powerful creators, in fact all human beings, differ in their individual nature, but they may be broadly classified under these two heads.
   Knowledge is quite evidently the principle in one, life-energy in the other. Steadiness is the mark of the one, speed of the other. One has wideness, the other depth. One is comprehensive, the other penetrative. One gives forth light, the other heat. One is illumined, the other dynamic.
   Intuition is inner seeing, inspiration inner hearing. Poetry breaks out of the former, music of the later. We find a considerable influence of inspiration in poetry where music looms large; e.g. in lyrics. Likewise a poetic form can often be found to a large extent in music - Wagner is an immortal instance. Inspiration is the fount of the lyric, Intuition of the epic.
   Forms of beauty and truth come into existence through the creator's Intuition, and the rhythm, the gesture of truth and beauty through his inspiration. "The thing in itself," the substance, shines clear and lucid in Intuition, while its character or "nature" reveals itself poignant and intimate through inspiration. One is the formative force, the other the kinetic or executive.
   The following line of Kalidasa is an embodied figure of truth and beauty:
  --
   In a way, the creators of the East seem to proceed more by Intuition, while the creators of the West by inspiration. And it is here that we get some explanation for the charge that the East is inert and conservative in contrast to the dynamic and progressive West. The East is after beautiful static forms in her creations and the West is fond of sprightly flow.
   One may say that inspiration reigns supreme in the West; and yet currents of Intuition are found there side by side with it. The genius of the Latin is replete with Intuition and that of the Celtic, the Slav, the Teuton with inspiration. If Shakespeare, Ibsen and Dostoevsky belong to the latter category, Virgil, Petrarch and Racine represent the former.
   Intuition and inspiration do not limit themselves, however, to particular countries or races, but the two appear in all ideological schools and even through social customs. The Classical and the Romantic can be differentiated by these two principles. The Classical is motivated by Intuition, the Romantic by inspiration.
   Again the same difference is apparent between the ancient and the modern. Sparks of Intuition are scattered all over the ancient arts, and inspiration marks the modern. The Renaissance of Europe failed in its attempt, however sincere, at imitating the Intuition of Homer and Virgil of the remote past and unwittingly managed to usher in the epoch of inspiration. Dante was the harbinger of the spirit of this new age, while Shakespeare of the English and Ronsard of the French developed and exampled it in the comity of cultures. Again the glimpses of Intuition that we come across in the inspiration of Dante, Shakespeare and Ronsard have further diminished in Shelley, Byron and Hugo. Finally, inspiration has become all in all among the modern and the ultra-modern artists including the Symbolists and the Impressionists of whom Paul Verlaine at one time was a leader.
   It may be said that to a great extent in the East the whole of Sanskrit literature was founded on Intuition. In the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Ramayana and even in the Mahabharata, very often we find instances where the rein of knowledge has prevented the emotion and the zeal of the heart from running riot. In fact the speciality of Indian art does not lie so much in the play of colours as in the drawing of lines. Colour gives the tinge of the vital urge, while it is the lines that create here the real beauty by circumscribing or delimiting the object in view. Indian sculpture and architecture embody, the quintessential spirit and gracefulness of Intuition.
   Perhaps in India the Vaishnavas or the followers of the path of devotion have replaced Intuition by inspiration. It is by their influence and at their hands that literature based on inspiration has become so rich, eloquent and intense. Western scholars say that the Aryans were mostly intellectual, principally guided by reason; it is the non-Aryans, the Dravidians, who have introduced the element of emotion into Indian culture. The Aryans generally followed the path of knowledge and the South Indians were predominantly devotional. Perhaps there is some truth in this saying. The Buddhists were also to some extent responsible for the change in the even and tranquil tenor of Aryan culture. In the beginning the Buddhists, like the Vedic Aryans, laid the greatest stress on knowledge. Later on, when Mahayana, the Great Path, came into vogue, there commenced the worship of the Buddha. When the compassion of the Buddha was recognised as the principal trait of Buddhism we moved away from Intuition and resorted to inspiration.
   Bengal is chiefly the field of inspiration. It is inspiration that dominates the field of action, the art and religion of Bengal. Scholars hold that the Bengalees are three-fourths Buddhists in their culture and education and as a race they are Dravidians to the same degree. No wonder that by the union of these two currents Bengal has become the holy confluence of inspiration like Prayag,the place of pilgrimage, where the Ganga and the Jamuna have met.
   Now, in the creation nothing can remain itself and unaltered for good. Difference and polarity are the inviolable laws of nature. Therefore it is not that we do not find glimpses of pure Intuition here and there among the Bengalees. Chandidas, the pioneer poet of Bengal, represents an unalloyed, pure inspiration and Vidyapati reflects glimpses of Intuition. When a feeling of emotion tingled through the blood of Chandidas he turned deep within and sang to himself with his eyes closed, in trance as it were:
   Sister, who has sung first the sweet name of the Lord
  --
   Again, if in Rabindranath we get at the fountainhead of some of the deepest, purest inspiration, we see on the other hand an effort and aspiration for Intuition in Madhusudan.
   Intuition and inspiration do not necessarily mean the same thing always and everywhere. Both differ in kind and degree - ranging from the subtlest to the grossest, from the highest to the lowest. If we want to make a differentiation between them, we have to look to the source from where they originate; otherwise by itself neither can claim superiority.
   Besides, we must not forget that after all - even as the Vedic all-gods - Intuition and inspiration exist together and overlap each other. At places one takes the lead and comes to the fore and the other is subordinate and remains in the background.
   To be sure, there is no such gulf between the two as we may imagine and construct in order to understand and distinguish them clearly and logically by our mind, which cannot grasp anything except by division.

30.05 - Rhythm in Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Intuition and Inspiration in Art The Poet and The Seer
   Other Authors Nolini Kanta Gupta On Art and LiteratureRhythm in Poetry
  --
   Intuition and Inspiration in Art The Poet and The Seer

3.00 - The Magical Theory of the Universe, #Liber ABA, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
  Gemini, the Oracles of the Gods, or the Intuition. That is, the attri bution represents
  a psychological fact: to replace it by The Devil is either humour or plain idiocy.

30.14 - Rabindranath and Modernism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Rabindranath has the Intuition of the Brahman, the infinite Bliss, the One without a second, which is beyond all limits and is the support of all, as the vital principle. He has, at every step, sung the victory and glory of this vital aspect of the Brahman. He has often cited this aphorism of the Upanishad:
   All created things are moved by the pranicpower.

30.15 - The Language of Rabindranath, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
   Tagore's Goddess of speech is a pinnacled exquisiteness of beauty, harmony, balance and skill. Bankim's language also is beautiful and graceful - it is not rough and masculine; it is also charming but there is not in it such profusion, intensity and almost exclusiveness of grace, sweetness, beauty and tenderness as are found in Rabindranath. Prodigality, luxuriance and even complexity are hall-marks of Tagore's style. Bankim's is more simple and straight and transparent, less decorating and ambulating. There is in Bankim what is called decorum, restraint, stability and clarity, qualities of the classics; he reminds us of the French language - the French of Racine and Voltaire. In Rabindranath's nature and atmosphere we find the blossoming heart of the Romantics. That is why the manner of his expression is not so much simple arid straight as it is skillful and ornamental. There is less of transparency than the play of hues. Eloquence overweighs reticence. Echoes and pitches of many kinds of different thoughts, sentiments and emotions intermingle - his language moves on spreading all around, sparkling at every step. Subtlety of suggestion, irony and obliquity, a lilting grace of movement carry us over, almost without our knowing it, to the threshold of some other world. Rabindranath's style is neither formed nor regulated by the laws and patterns of reason, the arguments and counter-arguments of logic. It is an inherent discernment, the choice of a deep and aspiring idealism, the poignant power of an Intuition welling out of a sensitive heart, that have given form and pace to his language. Reason or argument in itself finds no room here. That is only an indirect support of a direct feeling, a throb in vitality. This language has no love, no need for set rules, for a prescribed technique, so that it may attain to a tranquil and peaceful gait. It has need of emotion, impetus and sharpness. It is like the free stepping of a lightning flare, as if an Urvasie dancing in Tagore's own hall of music.
   But it does not mean that this language is overflowing with mere emotion. Here too there is a regulated order and restraint. The ultimate growth and perfection of a language has something of the rhythm of an athlete's body in movement - in the steadied measure of the strides of a sprinter, for example. The transparency of intelligence as reflected in the classical manner, the firmness and fixity delivered by reason, the simplicity of syllogistic orderliness are not to be found here. But in our poet's creation, even in his prose the logic of intelligence may not be evident but there is a logic of feeling which is still, cogent and convincing, yet more living and dynamic.

WORDNET



--- Overview of noun intuition

The noun intuition has 2 senses (first 2 from tagged texts)
                  
1. (4) intuition ::: (instinctive knowing (without the use of rational processes))
2. (1) intuition, hunch, suspicion ::: (an impression that something might be the case; "he had an intuition that something had gone wrong")


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun intuition

2 senses of intuition                        

Sense 1
intuition
   => basic cognitive process
     => process, cognitive process, mental process, operation, cognitive operation
       => cognition, knowledge, noesis
         => psychological feature
           => abstraction, abstract entity
             => entity

Sense 2
intuition, hunch, suspicion
   => impression, feeling, belief, notion, opinion
     => idea, thought
       => content, cognitive content, mental object
         => cognition, knowledge, noesis
           => psychological feature
             => abstraction, abstract entity
               => entity


--- Hyponyms of noun intuition

2 senses of intuition                        

Sense 1
intuition
   => feeling, intuitive feeling
   => gnosis
   => insight, sixth sense
   => immediacy, immediate apprehension
   => inspiration

Sense 2
intuition, hunch, suspicion
   => heart, bosom


--- Synonyms/Hypernyms (Ordered by Estimated Frequency) of noun intuition

2 senses of intuition                        

Sense 1
intuition
   => basic cognitive process

Sense 2
intuition, hunch, suspicion
   => impression, feeling, belief, notion, opinion




--- Coordinate Terms (sisters) of noun intuition

2 senses of intuition                        

Sense 1
intuition
  -> basic cognitive process
   => attention, attending
   => inattention
   => intuition
   => perception
   => apperception
   => believing
   => classification, categorization, categorisation, sorting
   => discrimination, secernment
   => learning, acquisition
   => memory, remembering
   => representational process

Sense 2
intuition, hunch, suspicion
  -> impression, feeling, belief, notion, opinion
   => presence
   => effect
   => first blush
   => intuition, hunch, suspicion




--- Grep of noun intuition
intuition
intuitionism



IN WEBGEN [10000/134]

Wikipedia - Category:Intuitionism
Wikipedia - Counterintuitive -- Quality of being surprising and contrary to intuition
Wikipedia - Ethical Intuitionism (book)
Wikipedia - Ethical intuitionism
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Wikipedia - Intuition (film) -- 2020 film
Wikipedia - Intuitionism (philosophy of mathematics)
Wikipedia - Intuitionism
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Wikipedia - Intuitionistic type theory -- Alternative foundation of mathematics
Wikipedia - Intuitionist logic
Wikipedia - Intuition (Jewel song) -- 2003 single by Jewel
Wikipedia - Intuition (knowledge)
Wikipedia - Intuition (Linx song) -- 1981 single by Linx
Wikipedia - Intuition (philosophy)
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Wikipedia - Intuition
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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10266528-holly-s-intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11737342-the-art-of-intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12305063-the-intuition-guidebook
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1242635.Practical_Intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12971005-intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13281637-intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13281637.Intuition__The_Premonition___2_
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13551347-intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1380306.Ethical_Intuitionism
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1528342.Creative_Intuition_in_Art_and_Poetry
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1556722.Intuition_for_Starters
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/157232.101_Ways_to_Jump_Start_Your_Intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16059379-intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16271.The_Intuitionist
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17071900-higher-intuitions-oracle
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17738760-the-magic-path-of-intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17861132-intuition-imagination-and-philosophical-methodology
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18378002-intuition-pumps-and-other-tools-for-thinking
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1908270.Rigorous_Intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19592433-intuition-at-work
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20203633-rethinking-intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20543271-intuition-for-starters
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21801225-intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27195788-increasing-intuitional-intelligence
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27195788.Increasing_Intuitional_Intelligence_How_the_Awareness_of_Instinctual_Gut_Feelings_Fosters_Human_Learning__Intuition__and_Longevity
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27219436-intuition-training
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28795279-unlimited-intuition-now
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28935.Intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29218003-intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29353584-unlimited-intuition-now
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32189903-l-intuition-philosophique
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4001688-color-intuition-kit
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/433328.Insights_and_Intuitions
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44095664-21-rituals-to-ignite-your-intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/541358.Igniting_Intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/668846.The_Essence_of_Intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/72638.The_Power_of_Intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/72643.Developing_Intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8289397-the-power-of-intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/97006.Intuition
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/989658.Ethical_Intuitionism
https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Intuition
Kheper - Intuition -- 15
Kheper - Intuition -- 40
http://malankazlev.com/kheper/topics/person/Intuition.html -- 0
http://malankazlev.com/kheper/topics/typology/Intuition.html -- 0
auromere - four-powers-of-intuition
auromere - how-to-develop-intuition
auromere - how-to-develop-intuition
auromere - four-powers-of-intuition
Integral World - The "Lesser of Two Evils" Fallacy And Wilber's Basic Moral Intuition, Joseph Dillard
Integral World - Six Dimensional Space/Time, Mathematical Intuitions Underlying the Integral Meta-Paradigm of Science Named 'Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry', Bill Torbert
Basic Moral Intuition: The Greatest Depth for the Greatest Span
selforum - meditative intuition
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2012/10/intuition.html
https://thoughtsandvisions-searle88.blogspot.com/2012/10/intuition-in-psychology.html
dedroidify.blogspot - intuition-is-still-alive
wiki.auroville - False_intuition
wiki.auroville - Intuition
Psychology Wiki - Intuition_(knowledge)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - intuitionism-ethics
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - intuitionism
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - intuitionistic-logic-development
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - intuition
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - logic-intuitionistic
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - type-theory-intuitionistic
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Advertising/SchickIntuition
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/FeminineIntuition
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExpositionIntuition
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Series/WinTuition
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Tropers/Intuition
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Intuition
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Intuitionism
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Intuitions
Bull ::: TV-14 | 1h | Comedy, Crime, Drama | TV Series (2016 ) Season 5 Returns Monday, March 15 -- Brilliant, brash, and charming, Dr. Bull is the ultimate puppet master as he combines psychology, human intuition, and high-tech data to learn what makes jurors, attorneys, witnesses, and the accused tick.
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_Intuition
https://dnd4.fandom.com/wiki/Combat_Intuition
https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Keen_Intuition
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Intuition
https://phansud.fandom.com/wiki/Intuition
https://reborn.fandom.com/wiki/Vongola_Hyper_Intuition
https://revengeabc.fandom.com/wiki/Intuition
https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Intuition_(audio_story)
Dorei-ku The Animation -- -- TNK, Zero-G -- 12 eps -- Manga -- Drama Psychological -- Dorei-ku The Animation Dorei-ku The Animation -- Eager to know why her best friend’s boyfriend dumped her for a man, the headstrong Eiya Arakawa suggests a meeting with them. Gathered together at a café, Yuuga Oota agrees to answer Eiya’s questions only if she can correctly ascertain the relationship of a couple sitting across from them, which she does on her first attempt. Amazed by her astounding intellect and intuition, he invites her to a private meeting where he introduces her to the concept of Slave Control Method, or SCM, a retainer-like device that has the ability to turn people into slaves. -- -- When two SCM users enter a duel, the devices exert a powerful influence on their brains. Once the duel is over, the SCM amplifies the loser’s sense of obligation and forces them to bend to the will of the winner. Wanting desperately to test his own abilities, Yuuga asks Eiya to act as his insurance in the event that he himself becomes a slave. Granted access to 10 million yen, Eiya’s job is to convince Yuuga’s would-be master to free him from his servitude. Though hesitant at first, Yuuga’s words resonate with her personal yearning for something more from her life, and she agrees to his request. However, when a mysterious organization begins rapidly accruing slaves, Eiya becomes entangled in a game far more dangerous than she ever could have imagined. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Sentai Filmworks -- 51,942 5.98
Mononoke -- -- Toei Animation -- 12 eps -- Original -- Mystery Historical Horror Demons Psychological Supernatural Fantasy Seinen -- Mononoke Mononoke -- The "Medicine Seller" is a deadly and mysterious master of the occult who travels across feudal Japan in search of malevolent spirits called "mononoke" to slay. When he locates one of these spirits, he cannot simply kill it; he must first learn its Form, its Truth, and its Reason in order to wield the mighty Exorcism Sword and fight against it. He must begin his strange exorcisms with intense psychological analysis and careful investigative work—an extremely dangerous step, as he must first confront and learn about the mononoke before he even has the means to defeat it. -- -- The Medicine Seller's journey leads him to an old-fashioned inn where Shino, a pregnant woman, has finally found a place to rest. The owner has reluctantly placed her in the last vacant room; however, as she settles in, it quickly becomes clear that the room is infested by a lethal band of mononoke, the Zashiki Warashi. With his hunter's intuition, the Medicine Seller begins his investigation to discover the Form, the Truth, and the Reason before the Zashiki Warashi can kill again. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Flatiron Film Company -- TV - Jul 13, 2007 -- 228,080 8.43
Mononoke -- -- Toei Animation -- 12 eps -- Original -- Mystery Historical Horror Demons Psychological Supernatural Fantasy Seinen -- Mononoke Mononoke -- The "Medicine Seller" is a deadly and mysterious master of the occult who travels across feudal Japan in search of malevolent spirits called "mononoke" to slay. When he locates one of these spirits, he cannot simply kill it; he must first learn its Form, its Truth, and its Reason in order to wield the mighty Exorcism Sword and fight against it. He must begin his strange exorcisms with intense psychological analysis and careful investigative work—an extremely dangerous step, as he must first confront and learn about the mononoke before he even has the means to defeat it. -- -- The Medicine Seller's journey leads him to an old-fashioned inn where Shino, a pregnant woman, has finally found a place to rest. The owner has reluctantly placed her in the last vacant room; however, as she settles in, it quickly becomes clear that the room is infested by a lethal band of mononoke, the Zashiki Warashi. With his hunter's intuition, the Medicine Seller begins his investigation to discover the Form, the Truth, and the Reason before the Zashiki Warashi can kill again. -- -- TV - Jul 13, 2007 -- 228,080 8.43
Nanbaka -- -- Satelight -- 13 eps -- Web manga -- Action Comedy Drama -- Nanbaka Nanbaka -- Nanba is the world's most formidable prison, built to incarcerate criminals who are too slippery to stay in ordinary confinement. The four inmates who occupy Cell 13 are particularly cunning on that behalf, having escaped every other prison with a perfect success rate. There is Juugo, a specialist in locks who has spent the majority of his life in prison; Uno, a gambler with great intuition; Nico, an otaku whose body reacts strangely to drugs; and Rock, a bruiser with a love for food. The daily shenanigans of the four prisoners always cause trouble for the building supervisor, Hajime Sugoroku, who desperately tries to prevent them from breaking out of Nanba. -- -- Nanbaka follows the comedic, sparkle-filled exploits of these prisoners and their guards. From three square meals a day to sports festivals, prison life in Nanba isn't actually that bad—and it is the closest these four have to a home. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 247,115 7.34
Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari Season 2 -- -- DR Movie, Kinema Citrus -- ? eps -- Light novel -- Action Adventure Drama Fantasy -- Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari Season 2 Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari Season 2 -- Second season of Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari. -- TV - Oct ??, 2021 -- 251,232 N/A -- -- Nanbaka -- -- Satelight -- 13 eps -- Web manga -- Action Comedy Drama -- Nanbaka Nanbaka -- Nanba is the world's most formidable prison, built to incarcerate criminals who are too slippery to stay in ordinary confinement. The four inmates who occupy Cell 13 are particularly cunning on that behalf, having escaped every other prison with a perfect success rate. There is Juugo, a specialist in locks who has spent the majority of his life in prison; Uno, a gambler with great intuition; Nico, an otaku whose body reacts strangely to drugs; and Rock, a bruiser with a love for food. The daily shenanigans of the four prisoners always cause trouble for the building supervisor, Hajime Sugoroku, who desperately tries to prevent them from breaking out of Nanba. -- -- Nanbaka follows the comedic, sparkle-filled exploits of these prisoners and their guards. From three square meals a day to sports festivals, prison life in Nanba isn't actually that bad—and it is the closest these four have to a home. -- -- -- Licensor: -- Funimation -- 247,115 7.34
Artificial intuition
Dangerous Intuition
Ethical intuitionism
Fatal Intuition
Following My Intuition
Intuition
Intuition (Amiga)
Intuition and decision-making
Intuition (Bergson)
Intuition (disambiguation)
Intuition (film)
Intuitionism
Intuitionistic logic
Intuitionistic type theory
Intuition (Jamie Foxx album)
Intuition (novel)
Logical intuition
Pre-intuitionism
Social intuitionism
Spread (intuitionism)
WinTuition
Woman's Intuition



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