Movie Clips Love Montage: “Who are You?”

Intellect and Intuition

Suppose we say, “True intuition has nothing to do with the intellect.”  Is this true?  False?  Something in between?

The thought is both true and not true, depending on what we mean.  It is true in the sense that intuition is “above” the mind.  Certainly, intuition transcends the mind.  At the same time, there is a relationship.  Intuition must be expressed and embodied in the mind and heart on a personal level.  That which we are on intuitive levels must become incarnate. 

And here is the catch:  unless the mind is well trained, controlled, developed, focused, integrated with the rest of the personality, then the intuition will not be able to express itself or will do so in an inadequate or distorted form.  So, paradoxically, the mind and the harmonious integration of the personality as a whole are crucial to the unfoldment of intuition. 

Without paradox appreciation, a thinker tends to latch on to one end of any given idea or statement which degenerates into misleading dogma.  Every metaphysical axiom, as mentally apprehended and expressed, demonstrates paradox.  The essence of every formulation is in between yes and no, where the truth is the golden mean between two poles.  The faculty of seeing past divisions and contradictions to the underlying unity is a leap in perception, yet the failure to appreciate realistic divisions that are before our eyes is also ignorance—another paradox.

Romance

Naturally, the subtler aspects of “romance” have affinity with intuition, with love, enthusiasm, mystery, the heroic, the beautiful, artistic works, the musical; the transcendental poets in this sense were romantics.

On the Timelessness of Love

 

We can increase our understanding of a thing by comparing it to its opposite. The opposite of “timelessness” is “for a limited time.” What if we were to say to our partner, “I love you, but only for a limited time.” This offer may strike us as rather strange because it runs counter to a basic human intuition about love. The lover is far more apt to say with heart-felt enthusiasm, “My love for you will never die!” This pledge, when sincere, is not mere emotionalism, but has its roots in an intuitive sense of the spirit of love.

People may pledge, “love forever” today and change their mind tomorrow. But this does not alter the basic truth of the timeless quality of love. If the love was real in the first place, it simply means lost of contact with essential nature of it. Love continues to shine in the depths of our consciousness, even when we turn our backs on it and forget what we saw and what we are.

We loose touch with the spirit of love the minute we give it limits. We may hold back and say, “I will love you until I die,” the “til death do us part” of the conventional ceremony. But this limited pledge admits that our love is basically materialistic and centered mainly, if not completely, on the physical body and surface personality. It would be strange to hear lovers say, “We will love each other, but only until one of us (or both us) dies.” A deep sense of love isn’t compatible with such thoughts, because love brings with it the intuition about “forever.” It has a timeless quality that is part of the immediate experience of loving.

“Still seems it strange, that thou shouldst live forever?
Is it less strange, that thou shouldst live at all?
This is a miracle; and that no more.”

Edward Young

 

Art by FracFX

Song Writer’s Intuition

At first glance, it may seem that love is uncertain and ephemeral, and that relations born from it do not last. But it is not love that is ephemeral, but the form of it under particular limitations of karma. True love exists in consciousness; is essentially spiritual and above circumstance.  It is a faculty of the soul, and in fact the very nature of the deep self.   Its binding power, its ability to harmoniously unite persons in a given instance  may fail.  But love as soul power remains, even where the limitations of persons thwart  it.  Behind the uncertainty of persons, behind the complex weaving of karma, the certain of love as the power of consciousness, shines continually. 

The soul is immortal and its future is without limit.  That is why real love brings with it a true intuition of the infinite.  People pledge their love forever.   Lovers, songwriters, and poets of each generation repeat similar lyrics.   “I will love you till the end of time,” they say, “My love will never die.” The experience of love is instinctively linked to the feeling of “forever,” to a sense of moving beyond time.   People speak of “im­mortal love.” The reason is clear–the consciousness of love gives the true sense of being without limits.   If we look at the experience of love, we discover a most amazing thing–lovers pledge their love forever because a sense of “forever” is revealed by love.  It is the nature of the soul. The writer Nathaniel Hawthorn put this clearly:

“We are but shadows: we are not endowed with real life, and all that seems most real about us is but the thinnest substance of a dream–till the heart be touched.   That touch creates us–then we begin to be–thereby we are inheritors of eternity.”

 

Art by Cornelia Knopp

Worldly Reflections

Without intuitive light, we exist imprisoned in symbols, in forms, in surrounding things. But by light we pass through symbol to meaning by way of intuition. Or failing this we are caught in symbol, mistaking it for the real. To be caught is easy, because symbols are not entirely dark–there is borrowed light in them, a moonlight reality, mirror of the sun’s radiation. Without the sunlight of intuition, only glamour is visible, and we exist then in an eerie moonlight world, knowing only surface lights. While moonlight is from the surface, sunlight shines from an inner depth. So moonlight is borrowed but sunlight is fiery-original and an apt symbol of intuition. On the surface we live in a moonlight world of things, yet rightly seen each natural thing conjures for us the sunlight world.

True life expresses in a radiance that illuminates all surrounding things. Knowledge or consciousness may be conceived as the source of this interior radiance–it is the light of intuition or teaching from within. It is revelation of truth, the release of imprisoned splendor.

Intuitive Vistas

What is intuition? It may be thought of as a world or a universe of meanings. Colors, notes, and lights are the best physical analogy. Intuition sparkles in the mind and feelings with a beauty so intense as to be sharp, even painful.

Intuition has relatives. The meaning of love and unity overlap with that of intuition. The meaning of “illuminated mind” overlaps with intuition, but the usual meaning of “rational truth” and “love” are far from intuition. Probably, we must be able to really think before we can expect intuitive light. In the silence following thought, we can often see the most clearly.

Sometimes we may see in the silence following simple observation. Some intuitive fire can emerge spontaneously as the accompaniment of sight. But it is hard to say what hidden preparations lead to the moment of revelation.

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

— The Little Prince

The Scope and Limits of Intuition

 

Intuition can manifest in relation to persons. For instance, the eyes, the quality of the voice, and the way a person moves, express their inner nature. Intuition penetrates to the combined meaning of these expressions. As R. W. Emerson said, ”Wise men read very sharply all of your private history in your look and gait and behavior.”

We can also see ourselves by intuition. Spiritual intuition progressively reveals our own nature as well as the ambient one. This is logically correct because intuition is unification and embraces both the center and the periphery of everything.

There is no phenomena where intuition would fail to function, because intuition derives from the unified field of meaning that underlies all things. In this sense, intuition is unlimited. Yet in practice, intuition does function unevenly in us according to our temperament and affinities, and its precipitation in a given field is dependent on a period of mental or meditative focus in that field. For instance, if we are not born a scientist or do not deliberately develop ourselves along that line, we would not expect to be the vehicle for revelation of the mysteries of nature in the scientific sense.

The Door of Everything

Sound, light, color, and motion can be a portal to intuitive perception. So physical phenomena may trigger intuitive light. Everything is doorway. Everything and everyone is the symbol and gate of reality. Everything serves as window to the spiritual. Every point in space, rightly apprehended, is education, initiation. And though all things serve in this manner, yet the phenomena that triggers revelation is individual, according to temperament and affinity.

“The process of shifting levels from the letter to the inner meaning in the matter of spiritual attitudes can be clearly set forth by one single proposition. It consists in ‘seeing through’ the phenomenon. Every living phenomenon is, first and last, a symbol; for the essence of life is meaning. But every symbol which is the ultimate expression of a state of consciousness is in itself transparent for another deeper one, and so on into eternity; for all things in the sense-connection of life are inwardly connected, and their depths have their roots in God.”

— Hermann Keyserling