Notwithstanding all the advances made by science over the last few centuries, which have seen our understanding of the universe change from the idea of a mechanical, ordered system in which humans stood triumphantly in the centre, into one where nothing is certain, all is flux, and humans, indeed our Solar System itself, are but miniscule aspects of a vast array of dancing particles. Perhaps the whole of existence is merely consciousness, perhaps part of some Meta-consciousness some might call Divinity. As for human consciousness – well, physicists consider now that the mind must be understood as part of a quantum system: in other words, the function of the mind operates along quantum principles, not through the usual physical laws, but we are still waiting to hear whether we can progress past the theory to the implications of this statement.
In the meantime, arguably, we know more about the workings of the universe than that of the mind. In our materialist, rational world, we find intuition extremely difficult to explain, let alone describe how it works – and yet we are use intuition to a greater or lesser degree. In some the faculty is so advanced we call it ‘psychic’.
My dictionary gives the standard definition of intuition: ‘immediate unreasoned perception; instinctive knowledge’. A second dictionary (published more recently) is more open-minded: ‘the power of the mind by which it immediately perceives the truth of things without reasoning or analysis: as truth so perceived, immediate knowledge in contrast with mediate.’
The standard dictionary’s take on psychic is ‘having occult powers; capable of telepathy, of seeing ghosts and spirits etc; of or studying occult phenomena.’ (The word occult as defined as: ‘pertaining to the psyche, soul, or mind; spiritual; beyond, or apparently beyond, the physical: sensitive to or in touch with that which has not yet been explained physically.’
20th Century man’s arrogant view that we knew almost everything, and what we didn’t know would soon fall into place, begins to look distinctly shaky as chaos theory, multi-dimensional maths, and quantum physics redefine our current view of reality. Mystics and artists have of course been saying much the same things as the quantum physicists for centuries. If we wonder about the origin of such revelations we would probably say they are creative and intuitive. We might add that they come from the wellspring, or the collective unconscious, or right brain, or some other term. But they have a different flavour to the normal rational consciousness, which calculates and cogitates, functions in the outsider world.
Researchers in the 1960-1980s found a distinct different in the way the two halves of the brain functioned. The left brain was found to work well in step-by-step arguments, logic, calculations, rational thinking, ‘objectivity’. The right brain sees things holistically, taking the problem as a whole. It tends to jump to conclusions – correctly, but often with little obvious evidence. In recent years more research has found people to be predominantly left- or right-brained. Most of us use both, often unconsciously. In problem solving, for example, we may think we are using our left brain to pull together various different facts. We weigh, and um and ah, and sleep on it. In the morning we wake up, knowing what we need to do. That’s intuition – obviously a right-brain function.
But still we know absolutely nothing about how this marvellous bunch of cells and grey matter works. Synapses, electric currents, hormones, chemicals, and somehow it metamorphoses into intuition and creativity, logic and amazing mental prowess. No wonder physicists think it’s a quantum function: in normal physical law consciousness probably can’t be explained at all. Let alone intuition!
So where does that leave us? Well, rather like walking, we just do it – i.e., use both sides of the brain. Intuition, when we come down to it, is just a matter of listening to a different voice – the one that says ‘move!’ when someone steps too close, or ‘no’, when we think about an unsuitable projected action; the one that wakes us up when we’ve forgotten to put the alarm on, or the one that warns us through a wordless ‘feeling’ that someone we meet is up to no good. Most of us hear the voice and ignore it. Our left brain discounts it for a number of reasons, all ostensibly good; but later, we may well regret ignoring what our intuition has been whispering. It is a very small voice, and easy to talk ourselves out of it.
What then when you get an intuitive tool, say a tarot pack, which can be used purely as a way to open the intuition? Well, our mind is the key. We see in images, dream in images, understand images. We may not understand the message consciously but we certainly get it unconsciously. Think of the dreams you’ve had which made no sense at the time. Often, in a few weeks’ time, we suddenly realise what the dream was about. Dreams are a symbolic language – something that I believe our earliest ancestors understood very well, but the key to which we have mislaid. The more we insist that existence is 3-dimensional, the less we understand. The tarot even has a card that tells us that we need to rethink everything we’ve been taught. If we ignore this wake-up call there’s an even more powerful punch to the psyche that the universe often delivers in the shape of the Tower – the lightning strike of divinity, which destroys our current reality. Intuitively, we can understand these images completely. The archetypes of the tarot speak to us in many different ways: through our eyes, our hearing, our bodies, and our senses.
In the next article I’ll explain a little more about the different sorts of intuition.
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