“Do you know that for sure?” – “No, but I intuitively feel…” We often use the word “intuition” to mean something vague, not supported by logic. However, intuition is older than logical thinking, and for millions of years man has relied solely on it. His very survival depended to a large extent on the degree of development of intuition. Today, intuition plays no less a role.
Most of what philosophy, art, scientific, or any discovery carries with it occurs on an intuitive level. To create a work of art (and also later to understand its meaning), to reach any discovery or invention, to create something new, to understand the meaning of any idea and any law in Nature, you need not only knowledge, not only the theory of philosophy, science or aesthetics. We need to feel and convey the SPIRIT, ESSENCE, and POWER of the idea that we are trying to understand or convey through any form. And this spirit cannot be adequately formulated or explained in words.
Intuition is the way through which our Soul and Heart communicate with our Consciousness: it goes far beyond logic and common sense. Human intuition uses not only visual images, but also symbols, metaphors, archetypes, it uses extraordinary ways and forms accumulated throughout the history of human development. Therefore, intuition is incomparably richer in its capabilities than all other, more ordinary and more familiar forms of cognition.
Logic is a limited tool of our Consciousness. It is only a tool of thinking, but not thinking itself. She processes information, but does not create new knowledge, she is responsible for the correctness of the transformation of judgments, but is not able to find out whether the premises themselves are true or false.
The paradox is that it is impossible to think completely logically, rationally. Hence, logic must be preceded by a certain ability to recognize the truth. This ability to recognize truth, which precedes logic and which does not use logic to find out the truth, was called intuition in ancient times. (The word “intuition” comes from the Latin intuition, “gazing intently.”)
Where reason takes consistent, logical steps, steadily but slowly approaching the goal, intuition acts quickly and even lightning-fast, like a flash. It does not require proof, it does not rely on reasoning. Intuitive thinking proceeds imperceptibly, “naturally,” and is not as tedious as logical thinking, which involves willpower.
Once a person trusts his intuition, he loses the thread of logical reasoning, plunges into the element of internal states, vague sensations and premonitions, images and symbols.
On the contrary, if a person works in a well-understood, logical mode, he loses access to his intuitive experience.
Thanks to intuition, a person instantly imagines a picture of reality as a whole. He anticipates or even clearly sees how events will unfold next (at least the main options) and what the event or drama, the essence of which is so poorly understood by its participants, leads to. But it will be much more difficult for him to convey, to put this picture into verbal form (at least without significant losses), and besides, to answer how he was able to understand what was happening (if not to consider the answer as a reference to life experience).
According to American psychotherapist Eric Bern, “intuition implies that we know about something without knowing how we found out about it.”
Psychologists have a poor understanding of how intuition works, and even worse, how to study it. The term “insight” is most often used — “insight”: the word comes from the English insight, “comprehension”, “insight”, “insight into the essence”. This term refers to the moment when a person suddenly has a new idea, comes up with a solution to a problem that he has been thinking about for a long time. Insight is also called an “aha reaction,” meaning the exclamations that we involuntarily emit if we suddenly begin to grasp the essence of a problematic situation and see a way out of it. The creative insight of Archimedes, who jumped out of the bathtub shouting “Eureka!” is a classic illustration of insight.
Therefore, many modern psychologists believe that the source of intuition lies in the Unconscious, or rather, in its well—established interaction with consciousness. Studies confirm this conclusion. When intuition manifests itself, it works with premonitions, archetypes, symbols. It is no coincidence that intuitive anticipations are often born in a dream, half-asleep or in daydreams.
A person with developed intuition is able to subtly capture subconscious information — for example, by intonation, facial expressions, gestures, and eye expressions, he is able to understand much of what his interlocutor does not want or cannot say openly. Almost all of this information does not fall into our field of attention and is not available to conscious control, but it does not disappear for us at all, forming a special, intuitive experience at the level of the unconscious. Intuitive experience develops against desire and will, it can neither be arbitrarily manifested nor repeated by a person, although it significantly affects the nature of our activities and behavior. Intuitive experience determines the direction in which thinking takes place.
Ancient philosophers, particularly Socrates and Plato, understood intuition and intuitive experience much more deeply. They perceived intuition as an integral human ability to holistically, holographically know the truth simultaneously in different aspects — Past, Present and Future, Life and Death, Evolution, Space and Time, Eternity, Visible and Invisible, Archetype and Form, Spiritual and Material. And the intuitive experience in their understanding is not only the “external” moments that fall into the subconscious, and not only the abstract “Unconscious” of a person, which modern psychologists talk about. This is the ability of “recognition”, “recollection”. We are talking about the experience of an Immortal Soul, which it has gathered over a long series of incarnations. The soul learns part of this experience, remembers it through flashes of intuition, “insights.” It is the ability to capture archetypal ideas, the ability to travel beyond the material world, into the world of ideas and live in it or in it for at least one short moment. This integral quality has not yet been fully developed in a person, but it can awaken and develop.
In 1926, the American researcher Graham Wallace proposed the later famous scheme of the creative thinking process. He developed it based on the self-observation data of prominent scientists, primarily the German physiologist, physicist and mathematician Hermann Helmholtz and the French mathematician Henri Poincare. Wallace identified four stages in this process.
The first stage is preparation. It involves gathering the necessary information about a problem, consciously searching for a solution, and thinking about it.
Philosophical experience says the same thing in other words: there needs to be a period when nothing works, when you think, make attempts, but they don’t lead to anything. It’s like banging your head against a wall.
The second stage is incubation. Harboring a problem. A period of apparent stagnation. In fact, there is deep unconscious work on the task, and at the level of consciousness a person may not think about it at all.
Philosophical approach: when planted, watered, don’t pull it out to see what happens. Let Nature do its thing.
The third stage is enlightenment. Inspiration, discovery, insight. It always comes unexpectedly, instantly, and is like a sudden leap. The decision at this moment is born in the form of a symbol, a thought-image that is difficult to describe in words.
The fourth stage is verification. The image is put into words, thoughts are arranged in a logical sequence, the discovery is scientifically substantiated.
The moment of insight, the birth of an idea, is the culmination of an intuitive creative process. And to this day, he remains elusive, mysterious, almost mystical. He will probably always be shrouded in mystery. If the secret of enlightenment could be solved and reproduced, then great discoveries would be made at will, according to instructions, to order. It would be easy to solve any life problems, gain new knowledge about the world, and comprehend deep truths — all that is usually given to people at great cost.
Although both psychologists and philosophers agree on the main point: the path leading to insight is generally known. You need to work hard and concentrate on a specific problem — comprehensively explore it, trying to get as much information as possible, reflect on it over and over again, passionately dreaming of finding a solution, but at the same time not clinging to your desire. Inner enlightenment is the result of prolonged unconscious work. You need to live with an idea (problem) for a while without finding a solution, and most likely, one day it will light up your consciousness like a lightning strike, and bring with it an extraordinary experience of understanding, clarity, takeoff, breakthrough, and happiness.
French mathematician Henri Poincare on the epiphany:
“What will surprise you first of all is the appearance of inner illumination, which is the result of long—term unconscious work; the role of this unconscious work in mathematical invention seems to me undeniable.
Often, when working on a difficult issue, nothing good happens the first time, then a more or less long rest period begins, and then they get back to work.
For the first half hour, things don’t move again, and then suddenly the right idea comes to mind.
One could say that conscious work has become more fruitful since it was interrupted, and rest has restored strength and freshness to the mind. But it is more likely to assume that this rest was filled with unconscious work and that the result of this work suddenly appeared… Sometimes… enlightenment, instead of occurring during a walk or a trip, occurs during conscious work, but completely independently of this work, which at most plays the role of a connecting mechanism, translating the results obtained during rest, but remaining unconscious, into a conscious form.
“These happy thoughts often invade your head so quietly that you don’t immediately notice their meaning, sometimes only chance will later indicate when and under what circumstances they came: a thought appears in your head, but you don’t know where it came from. But in other cases, a thought strikes us suddenly, without effort, as inspiration. As far as I can tell from personal experience, it is never born in a tired brain and never at a desk.
Each time, I had to turn my task over in every possible way, so that all its bends and plexuses lay firmly in my head and could be memorized again, without the help of writing. It is usually impossible to achieve this without prolonged work. Then, when the fatigue passed, it took an hour of complete bodily freshness and benevolent calm — and only then did good ideas come.
Often… they appeared in the morning when they woke up, as Gauss also noticed. They were especially willing to come… during the hours of leisurely climbing through the wooded mountains, on a sunny day. The slightest amount of alcohol seemed to scare them away.”
What does it take to awaken and develop intuition?
1. To raise consciousness. Do not get stuck for a long time in small, everyday issues and problems. Find time every day to raise your consciousness. Cut off unnecessary thoughts, emotions and twists.
2. Learn to “not think” at important moments. Intuition begins to work when logical thinking stops. Logic is needed, but everything has its time.
3. Remove stereotypical approaches. Rethink what you already know in a new way every time. To bring creativity into any action.
4. Don’t stay idle. Show effort and initiative. When any question arises, do everything to find the answer yourself.
Inventing a sewing machine in a dream
Inventor Elias Hove worked tirelessly for a long time, creating the first sewing machine, but nothing worked. One night, he had a nightmare: he was being chased by a gang of cannibals, they were almost upon him — he even saw the gleam of spearheads. Through all this horror, Hove suddenly noticed that there was a hole drilled in each tip, shaped like the eye of a sewing needle. And then he woke up, barely breathing from fear.
It was only later that Hove realized what the night vision was trying to tell him. In order for the sewing machine to work, it was only necessary to move the eye of the needle from its middle down to the tip. This was the solution he was looking for. So, thanks to a terrible dream that visited Hove, a sewing machine was born.
Disney and music
Walt Disney was a great lover of classical music. He claimed that at the very first sounds, pictures begin to appear in his mind. The animated film Fantasia, where classical music brings to life a phantasmagoria of colors and shapes, was an attempt to share this experience: Disney firmly believed that in this way music would evoke a greater response from people.
“There are moments in music that are difficult for people to understand until they see the images embodying it on the screen,” he said. “Only then will they be able to experience the full depth of the sound.”
The ability to ask questions
Einstein once remarked that if he was going to be killed and he had only one hour left to come up with a rescue plan, he would devote the first fifty-five minutes to correctly posing the question. “Five minutes is enough to find the answer,” Einstein said.
The Leonardo da Vinci Method
It is known from modern psychology that almost any stimulus — even completely meaningless Rorschach blots — causes a whole stream of associations that instantly connect the most sensitive areas of your consciousness. Leonardo da Vinci discovered this five centuries before Sigmund Freud. However, unlike Freud, Leonardo did not use free associations to identify any deep complexes. On the contrary, in this way the great Florentine during the Renaissance paved his own path to artistic and scientific insights.
“It’s not difficult… “Just stop along the way and look at the streaks on the wall, or the coals in the fire, or the clouds, or the dirt,” Leonardo wrote in his Notes… you can find absolutely amazing ideas there…”
Leonardo also drew inspiration from the sounds of bells, “in the ringing of which you can catch any name and any word that you can imagine.”
It is possible that practicing some of the methods may make you feel pretty stupid, but don’t worry about it. You’re in good company. Leonardo da Vinci also admitted that his “new way” would undoubtedly amuse cynics.
“This may seem ridiculous and ridiculous,” he wrote. “Nevertheless, it is very useful to inspire the mind to invent various inventions.”
About the benefits of a diary
In the 20s of our century, researcher Katerina Cox studied in detail the biographies of more than three hundred historical geniuses such as Sir Isaac Newton, Thomas Jefferson, Johann Sebastian Bach. Her exhaustive study of the surviving facts revealed striking coincidences in the behavior and habits of these outstanding people.
According to Cox, one of the signs of genius is the tendency to eloquently describe their feelings and thoughts in a diary, in poetry, in letters to friends and family. This tendency begins to manifest itself at an early age. Cox observed it not only among writers, but also among the military, politicians and scientists.
Confirmation of Cox’s words can be easily found by rummaging through the library. It is known that no more than one percent of humanity has a habit of describing their thoughts and feelings in diaries, treasured notebooks or books. But here’s the interesting thing: those who have achieved outstanding success in life, as a rule, fall into this one percent!
So which is true: is every scribbler a genius, or is every genius a scribbler? Why do outstanding minds start keeping diaries? Maybe they have a premonition of their future glory and want to leave a legacy to historians? Or is the passion for writing a byproduct of a hard-working mind? Or an overly inflated ego? Or maybe — and this is where I want to stop — this is the mechanism by which people who were not born geniuses subconsciously develop outstanding intelligence?
Real thoughts rarely come.
One day, a reporter asked Albert Einstein if he wrote down his great thoughts, and if he did, it was in a notebook, notebook, or special filing cabinet. Einstein looked at the reporter’s bulky notebook and said, “My dear, real thoughts so rarely come to mind that they are not difficult to remember!”
The physicist who didn’t know math
English inventor Michael Faraday was one of the most prominent scientific minds. His theory of electromagnetic fields and lines of force inspired Einstein. Nevertheless, Faraday’s method has puzzled and still puzzles those historians of science who are characterized by straightforwardness.
“Faraday… he was distinguished by his absolute mathematical innocence … — Isaac Asimov is surprised in The History of Physics. “He developed his theory of lines of force in a surprisingly uncomplicated way, imagining them as rubber bands.”
Scientists probably would not have known for a long time what to do with Faraday’s lines of force if James Clark Maxwell had not subsequently described them mathematically. Poor Faraday tried very hard to understand Maxwell’s constructions, but in the end he got completely confused and wrote Maxwell a letter in which he begged him to “translate the hieroglyphs into a human language that I myself could understand.”
Stay a child
One day, a truck got stuck under an overpass because the body was too high. The police and the traffic service tried to push him through, but nothing worked. Everyone made suggestions on how to rescue the truck. At first, they decided to remove some of the cargo, but this made the truck lighter, lifted on the springs and stuck even more tightly under the bridge. We tried using crowbars and wedges. We tried to increase the engine speed. In short, they did everything that is usually done in such cases, but it only got worse.
Suddenly, a six-year-old boy came up and offered to let some air out of the tires. The problem was immediately solved!
The police and road workers couldn’t free the truck because they knew too much, and all they knew about freeing stuck cars was, one way or another, the use of force. Most of our problems are only made worse by our “multi-consciousness.” And only when we manage to distract ourselves from the known solutions do we really begin to grasp the essence of the problem.
Where did Mozart get his music from?
Like many other geniuses, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart claimed that he wrote his musical compositions in his mind, perfecting each chord before taking up pen and paper. Mozart often surprised his contemporaries by demonstrating the ability to “write” music mixed with a game of billiards, or casually and carelessly sketching the overture to the opera “Don Juan” a few hours before its premiere. Mozart explained that in such cases he does not compose music at all, but simply writes down a ready-made passage from his head, as if dictated.
In a letter dated 1789, the brilliant composer said that, before capturing his creation on paper, he mentally looks at it as a whole, “like a dazzlingly beautiful statue.” Mozart did not play his works the way the orchestra played them, beat by beat — he covered everything with “one glance.” “I don’t listen to the parts sequentially in my imagination,” he wrote, “I hear them sounding at the same time. I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is!”
Opening of the benzene ring
After a day of working on a chemistry textbook, Friedrich August Kekule felt disappointed. “Everything is bad,” the chemist decided, “my soul is occupied with the wrong thing.” Kekule pulled an armchair closer to the fireplace and stared at the dancing flames. For quite a long time he thought about the benzene molecule, the structure of which continued to elude him. In the end, as he confessed later, he sank into a state of semi-sleep. What happened next went down in scientific folklore as the greatest moment—and the greatest miracle.
Starting to doze off, Kekule nodded off and suddenly saw some fantastic shapes among the flames. “I saw atoms rushing before my eyes,” the scientist recalled. “They moved in long rows, writhing like snakes.”
Suddenly, he caught a sudden movement. “What is it? One of the snakes grabbed its tail… and she whirled violently… I woke up like a flash of lightning.”
Kekule realized that his subconscious had given him the key to the shape of the benzene molecule. He spent the rest of the night working on the task. Shortly after this event, in 1865, he announced that the gasoline molecule consists of six carbon atoms. The combination of atoms surprisingly resembled a snake from a dream.
Point of view
In one of his lectures, David Gilbert said: “Everyone has a certain horizon for viewing problems. When it narrows and becomes infinitesimally small, it turns into a dot. Then the person says, “That’s my point of view.”
The Columbian Egg
When solving a problem, it is necessary first of all to establish the boundaries within which the solution must be kept. After these boundaries are supposedly established, template thinking proceeds to solve the problem within these boundaries. Often, however, the boundaries turn out to be imaginary, and the solution lies beyond them. Take, for example, the apocryphal story of the Columbian egg. In response to the jokes of friends who stated that the discovery of America was, in fact, not such a difficult task, since Columbus had only one thing to do — keep heading west all the time, he suggested that they put an egg on their ass. The friends got down to business, but despite all their efforts, the egg invariably fell on its side. Then Columbus took the egg, slightly flattened it at one end and set it down. Friends, of course, protested, believing that the egg should not be broken, thus setting limits to solving the problem, which actually did not exist. But they also considered it foolhardy to set a course to the west and stick to it throughout the voyage. Such an innovation in the art of navigation became possible only after Columbus proved that the fears of his opponents were unfounded.
Genius is the patience of thought focused in one direction. © I. Newton
If you don’t sin against reason, you can’t come to anything at all. © A. Einstein
Work, work, and understanding will come later. © J. Dalembert
The desire to understand everything to the very end first, and then work is a very common cause of failures.©A.B. Migdal
A true scientist is a dreamer, and those who are not are called practitioners.
© O. Balzac
I’ve known my results for a long time, but I just don’t know how I’m going to get to them. Gauss
There are four great obstacles to understanding the truth, namely: the example of a pathetic and unworthy authority, the constancy of habit, the opinion of an ignorant crowd, and the cover of one’s own ignorance with ostentatious wisdom. ©R. Bacon
Great opportunities come to everyone, but many don’t even know they’ve met them.©W. Channing
Elena Sikirich
