Definition of Intuition

This immediate access to Truth is the ultimate destiny of all human beings, and it seems probable that some day the mind itself will lie as much below the threshold of consciousness as the instincts now do. We shall then function in the realm of the intuition and shall talk in terms of the intuition with as much facility as we now talk in terms of the mind, and endeavor to function as mental beings.

Father Maréchal, in Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics, defines the intuitive perception in these terms:

"Intuition - defined in a quite general manner - is the direct assimilation of a knowing faculty with its object. All knowledge is in some sort an assimilation; intuition is an immediate 'information,' without an objectively interposed intermediary; it is the only act by which the knowing faculty models itself, not on an abstract likeness of the object, but on the object itself; it is, if you will, the strict coincidence, the common line of contact of the knowing subject and the object."

Maréchal, Joseph, S. J., Studies in the Psychology of the Mystics, page 98.

One of the most notable and suggestive books on the subject of the intuition, and one which gears in amazingly with both the eastern and western positions, is entitled Instinct and Intuition, by Dr. Dibblee [163] of Oriel College, Oxford. In it, he gives us several interesting definitions of the intuition. He remarks that

"as sensation is to feeling, so intuition acts to thought, in presenting it with material,"

Dibblee, George Binney, Instinct and Intuition, page 85.

and he quotes Dr. Jung as saying that it is an extra-conscious mental process of which we are from time to time dimly aware. He also gives us Professor H. Wildon Carr's definition:

"Intuition is the apprehension by the mind of reality directly as it is and not under the form of a perception or conception, (nor as an idea or object of the reason), all of which by contrast are intellectual apprehension."

Carr, H. Wildon, Philosophy of Change, page 21.

The intuition, he tells us

"is interested in purely intangible results and, if it disregards time, it is also independent of feeling."

- Dibblee, George Binney, Instinct and Intuition, page 132.

In a particularly clear passage, he defines (perhaps unintentionally, for his theme is with other matters) the coordinated practical mystic or knower.

"...intuitive inspiration and instinctive energy are finally tamed and unified in the complete self, which ultimately forms one single personality."

- Dibblee, George Binney, Instinct and Intuition, page 130.

Here we have the mechanism guided and directed in its physical relations and reactions by the apparatus of the instincts, working through the senses, and the brain, and the soul in its turn, guiding and directing the mind through the intuition, and having its physical point of contact in the higher brain. This idea Dr. Dibblee sums up in the words:

"The point at which I have arrived is the definite acceptance of two distinct organs of intelligence in human beings, the thalamus, which is the seat of instinct, and the cerebral cortex, which is the seat of the allied faculties of intellect and intuition."

- Dibblee, George Binney, Instinct and Intuition, page 165.

This position is closely paralleled with that of the Oriental teaching, which posits the functioning coordinating center of the entire lower nature to be in the region of the pituitary body, and the point of contact of the higher Self and the intuition to be in the region of the pineal gland.

The situation is, therefore, as follows: The mind receives illumination from the soul, in the form of ideas thrown into it, or of intuitions which convey exact and direct knowledge, for the intuition is ever infallible. This process is in turn repeated by the active mind, which throws down into the receptive brain the intuitions and knowledge which the soul has transmitted. When this is carried forward automatically and accurately, we have the illumined man, the sage.

- Alice A. Bailey