Pure Intuition and Developed Intuition
Meher Baba says that True Faith is grounded in Pure Intuition. In Meher Baba’s metaphysics, Pure intuition is not the same thing as Developed intuition, and for an Aspirant it is important to discern the difference.
Now, when it comes to Pure intuition, it is necessary to mention Imanuel Kant first. This is because it was Imanuel Kant who first introduced the concept of ‘Pure Intuition’ to western thought, and it was largely due to his influence that the word ‘intuition’ is in common usage today. So, let’s start by taking a closer look at what Kant meant by ‘pure intuition’ first.
For Kant there were two types of intuition: Pure intuition and Empirical intuition. Empirical Intuition is basically developed from life experiences. When an experienced auto mechanic has a ‘gut feel’ about where he thinks your problem is, it is his empirical intuition, that he had developed over ‘the years of experience’, that is pointing at your carburetor. Pure intuition, on the other hand, Kant called ‘pure’ because it was not derived from human experience, at all.
You see, Kant saw that there were certain Pure intuitions, such as our intuition of space and time, that had to ‘already be in place–in us’ as preconditions for us to even have coherent experiences. Unlike ‘Empirical Intuition’ that is gathered and distilled from life experiences, Pure intuition (Kant said) is (‘a priori’ or) prior to all experience. In Latin ‘a priori’ means “what comes first,” and Kant saw that without our ‘a priori’ pure intuition, we couldn’t even have sensible experiences. Perhaps a simple analogy might help us get basic idea:
In a nutshell, (for Kant) if Empirical intuition is gathered from the various experiences that happen on the ‘Screen of life’, Pure Intuition is what had to ‘already be there’ as part of the ‘Screen of life’ for the Screen to even work.
In other words, (for Kant) Pure intuition is an integral part of the Screen of life, while Empirical intuition comes from what happens on the Screen of life.
The basic idea here is simple: The core distinction between Pure Intuition and Empirical intuition, is that Pure Intuition comes from ‘within’, and Empirical Intuition comes from ‘without’.
About two centuries later, Meher Baba picks up on Kant’s conception of “Pure Intuition” and develops it even further. Or perhaps more aptly, I should say, he develops it all the way.
Like Kant, Meher Baba speaks of two types of intuition: Pure Intuition and Developed Intuition. We will start with Developed Intuition, because it is more intuitive to understand. When most people speak of intuition, what they mean by it is not ‘Pure Intuition’ but their ‘Developed Intuition’.
According to Meher Baba: “Developed intuition is consolidated and compressed understanding, distilled through a multitude of diverse experiences gathered in previous lives.” Our developed intuition is essentially the consolidation of all our ‘empirical intuitions’ gathered from previous lives. Like Kant’s ‘empirical intuition’, Meher Baba’s ‘developed intuition’ is also based on experiences. He says, the lessons learned through the experiences of one life “then become, for the next incarnation, an integral part of the intuitive makeup of active consciousness, without in any way involving detailed revival of the individual events of the previous incarnation.” Our developed intuition basically continues developing from one incarnation to the next based on our experiences provided for by the law of Karma.
Unlike Developed Intuition, however, Meher Baba’s Pure intuition is what was already latent inside the soul from the very beginning of creation. About Pure Intuition, and why it is that people so often mistaken it for Developed intuition, Meher baba says:
“This intuition may seem to have been the product of past experiences, thus adding to the equipment of the psyche; but it is more truly an unfoldment of what was already latent in the individualized soul. From this deeper point of view, the experiences of earthly life…. -as well as the reflective and consolidating processes they are subjected to in life after death …. are merely instrumental in gradually releasing to the surface the intuitive wisdom already latent in the soul from the very beginning of creation.”
This intuitive wisdom that was already latent in the soul (a priori) from the very beginning of creation is our Pure Intuition; which is also our Highest Intuition. He says:
“In fact, the longing to go back to the Source is present in each being from the very time that it gets separated from the Source by the veil of ignorance, but it is unconscious till the aspirant enters the Path.”* -gs 198
PURER THAN KANT’S PURE INTUITION
Turns out, much of what Kant thought were Pure Intuitions were developed during the soul’s long journey through the various kingdoms from mineral to animal. What Kant said was our spatiotemporal intuition developed gradually during this vast expanse of time. But once the soul reaches the human form the evolution of consciousness is complete. Meher Baba says:
“After a gradual evolution through the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms of the gross universe for a definite yet immeasurable period of millions, billions and {even} trillions of years, consciousness reaches perfection in man.”
This is why our sense of space and time feels so real, so perfect and flawless. Imagine what it would be like if a perfectly straight line didn’t look perfectly straight in your eyes, or if your sense of time couldn’t sense the hours and days go by with any regularity. Luckily by the time we reach the human stage, our spatiotemporal intuition as human beings has already been perfected. If this were not the case, the world we experience would have seemed a little “warped” and dreamy to us, which would have vastly reduced the sense of ‘realism’ that we experience.
Once consciousness thus ‘reaches perfection in man’, this is when our Developed Intuition as human beings begin to develop. Throughout our 8.4 million lives as human beings, our developed intuition develops something like this:
We make mistakes, we suffer the consequences; we think about it and learn our lesson; Or we do the right thing, we enjoy the consequences; we think about it and learn something; or we live a bad life, we end up in hell, we think about it and learn our lesson; or we live a good life, and go to heaven; we think about it and learn something.
Though experiences are the very ground for developed intuition, all along the way, what (actually) informs its development are nothing but rational processes functioning flawlessly in accordance with the laws of karma. Meher Baba says:
“In the successive incarnations of an individual soul, …there is an uninterrupted reign of the law of cause and effect through the persistence and operation of karma. The successive incarnations with all their particulars are closely and unfailingly determined by rational law, so that it becomes possible for the individual soul to mold its future through wise and intelligent action.”
Throughout all our previous human lives, the primary agent that informed the development of our developed intuition is the ceaseless operation of rational processes determined by (what Baba calls) rational law. Karmic Determinism, which is the uninterrupted reign of the law of cause and effect through the persistent operation of Karma, is precisely what informed our ability to be ‘wise and intelligent’ so to speak– which is our Developed intuition.
Our developed intuition is thus made up of almost nothing but rational processes. Basically, we are rational beings because the laws that govern over the heavens and the earth that we inhabit (back and forth) are always rational. Our ability to rationalize and do wise and intelligent action is basically what our developed intuition is. Unless it was interfered with by the Divine, in a nutshell, our developed intuition is nothing but our intelligence, dressed up as intuition. In other words, the developed intuition of that experienced auto mechanic IS basically his intelligence. It is his auto mechanical intelligence that he had developed over the years of experience.
Unlike Developed intuition, however, Pure intuition (as Meher Baba says) is transcendent understanding, ‘latent’ in the soul, and thus more fundamental and primary than the rational processes that governs the operation of Karma, through which our developed intuition is primarily informed.
And Meher Baba tells us that: True Faith must be grounded in Pure Intuition, and its transcendent understanding. He says:
“True faith grounded in pure intuition always remains an imperative that cannot be ultimately reduced to the conclusions of rational intellect. It is not derived from the limited intellect but is more fundamental and primary, with the result that it cannot be silenced by any intellectual acrobatics.”
Our lower developed intuition can be said to be reducible to the conclusions of the rational intellect, but our pure intuition is beyond reduction. Our pure intuition is transcendent, which means beyond the mind Yet, he also says that :
“This does not mean, however, that faith need at any stage be blind, in the sense that it is not allowed to be examined by critical intellect. True faith is a form of sight and not of blindness. It need not be afraid of the free functioning of critical reason.”
In other words, True faith is reasonable, but it is more than just reasonable. It can be illumined by reason, but it is not made up of reasons. He adds:
“The right of testing the Master with critical reasoning has always been conceded to the disciples.” since time immemorial. In fact, in his message to the youth, Meher Baba said:
The glow of love should allow itself to be illumined
by a free and unhampered play of reason.
This is because, as he says:
There is nothing irrational in true mysticism when it is, as it should be, a vision of Reality.
However! about the limits of the role of critical reason, Meher Baba says:
“it remains true that critical reason can touch and inform only those kinds of faith that are not based upon pure intuition.”
True Faith can be freely examined and even illumined by the free and unhampered play of reason, but it cannot be touched or informed by critical reason (in any way) and still remain true. The transcendent understanding of Pure Intuition must remain untouched by critical reason. By implication, this also means that our lower developed intuition cannot be the ground for true faith either; because our lower developed intuition is informed primarily by rational processes that are in accordance with the laws of karma. Ironically, as we will see, it is our lower developed intuition that thwarts our Pure Intuition from surfacing. Meher Baba says:
“In order to intuit the truth, consciousness has to be liberated from its ingrained and resistant inclinations. Intuition has been buried under the piecemeal lesson of the assailing experiences of the false. Learning is impressed from without, while intuition dawns from within. Learning thwarts intuition.
Therefore, the teaching of the mind by external impacts has to be counteracted by inner awakening. Then and only then can intuition, in its transcendent understanding, truly judge without yielding to the stupor of uncritical impressionability.”
SPARKS OF THE TRUTH, pp. 66-67, Dr. C. D. Deshmukh
As stated above: “Developed intuition (Meher Baba says) is consolidated and compressed understanding, distilled through a multitude of diverse experiences gathered in previous lives,”–and he also says that developed intuition is “absorbed by the mind.”
So the question then becomes:
Q: What are the piecemeal lessons of the assailing experiences of the false?
A: Our Developed Intuitions.
Q: What is that Learning that was impressed from without– through experiences? And not from within?
A: It is our Developed Intuition that is ‘learned’ and ‘impressed from external empirical experience.
Q: What are The teachings of the mind by external impacts?
A: Our Developed Intuition.
Q: What is The stupor of uncritical impressionability?
A: Our Developed Intuition.
The Tuition that thwarts intuition is none other than our lower developed intuition, which as we already saw, is primarily informed, or ‘formulated’ by what Meher Baba calls the logic of experience. On the other hand, pure intuition which comes from ‘within’ is nothing short of transcendent understanding (which is by definition ‘beyond the mind’), and therefore could not have come through or from the mind.
At the lower rungs of spiritual understanding, our lower developed intuition can tend to be at loggerheads with our latent pure intuition. For example, our lower developed intuition may have ‘learned’ to take this world rather seriously as something very real, as in physiologically real; while our Pure intuition latent in the soul, knew all along that this world is nothing but an illusion. Like this, our lower developed intuition can be seen to hold as true, false assumptions that are quite literally ‘perfect inversions’ of what our latent Pure intuition holds as true. While our developed intuition might insist that ‘we are in the universe’, it is our Pure intuition that will tells us that ‘it is more true that the Universe is within us’, as Meher Baba says in this statement:
“It is not so much that you are within the cosmos but that the cosmos is within you.”
Like this, the transcendent understanding of our ‘latent’ pure intuition can always be seen to coincide with the higher revealed truths. If our intuition happens to disagree with a revealed truth, that just means it was our lower developed intuition that was talking and not our pure intuition.
Fortunately, Meher Baba speaks of yet another category of intuition that can be said to reside somewhere in between our lower developed intuition, and our highest Pure Intuition. He calls this intermediary state Purified Intuition. Purified Intuition is basically what begins to emerge when our lower developed intuition starts to get reshaped and honed (or purified) through the assimilation of Divine revelation. And Meher Baba says that:
Sooner or later, however, the logic of experience gathered through several lives drives everyone to enter the path and seek the highest goal.
PURIFICATION OF INTUITION
So the question now becomes: Can our lower developed intuition be purified? If so, how is it done? Purified intuition is what emerges out of the fusion of head and heart, of intellect and love, through the assimilation of Divine Truths. Meher Baba says:
The Religion of Life is not fettered by mechanically repeated formulae of the unenlightened, purblind and limited intellect. {Instead} It is dynamically energized by the assimilation of Truth, grasped through lucid and unerring intuition, which never falters and never fails, because it has emerged out of the fusion of head and heart, intellect and love.
GLIMPSES OF THE GOD-MAN, vol. 6, p. 87, Bal Natu
Between Pure intuition, which is our Highest Intuition, and our Developed Intuition, which is our Lower Intuition, is an intuition that emerges out of the fusion of head and heart (the intellect and love) that Meher Baba refers to as Purified Intuition. Purified Intuition, in a nutshell, is developed intuition purified through the assimilation of revealed Truth. He says:
“True faith is grounded in the deeper experiences of the spirit and the unerring deliverances of purified intuition. When critical reason is implemented by a deep and living faith based on pure intuition, its functioning becomes creative, fruitful, and significant instead of barren, ineffective, and meaningless.”
Purification of intuition is what happens when we grasp the guiding principle behind the revealed Truth and assimilate it into both our minds and our hearts. The more Purified our Intuition becomes, the less faulty or erroneous our Faith becomes. And like this, the purification of our lower faulty developed intuition, through Spiritual understanding is what purifies our Faith, making it truer and truer, the more revealed truth we assimilate.
Also, when Meher Baba says: “It remains true that critical reason can touch and inform only those kinds of faith that are not based upon pure intuition.”
It is important to note here that Meher Baba refers to True Faith only in the singular, while False Faiths even have ‘kinds’. Whether Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Zoroastrian, or Meher Baba follower, ultimately there is only one True Faith, grounded in the selfsame Pure Intuition that was ‘latent’ within us all from the beginning. This fact becomes clear when we study the various Saints & Masters that Meher Baba mentions & verifies. Though they come from very different backgrounds, they all seem to converge “like beads on one string” into ‘the One True Faith’. There can be only One! True Faith since we are all guided by the exact same, unchanging & eternal “intuitive wisdom (or Pure intuition) that is latent in us ALL. …including even all the cockroaches!
Unlike our Pure Intuition, however, our lower developed Intuitions can be seen to vary from each other even drastically at times, especially at the lower rungs of spiritual understanding. Our unpurified lower developed Intuitions can lead to all kinds of “diverse, conflicting systems or world views.” Hardly any two Christians have the same world view, and Meher Baba followers, not surprisingly, are no different. This is in part because our developed intuitions can be developed for all kinds of things.
DIFFERENT KINDS OF DEVELOPED INTUITION(S)
Developed intuition(s) (in the plural) can be of all kinds. If you remain interested in a certain subject for a long enough period, over time, you will develop ‘a certain way of looking at it’ or ‘a certain way of beholding it’. This ‘way of beholding’ a subject of interest that develops over time, is your developed intuition about that subject; and such intuitions can be developed for all kinds of things. If you are interested in collecting coins, over time you will develop a deeper intuition about coins. If you get interested in gardening and begin to garden, you may develop all kinds of interesting intuitions about gardening. Over time you will begin to develop a ‘gut feel’ about gardening that gets better and better over the years. Until one day, your understanding (or developed intuition) about gardening might even reach a stage where it becomes “unerring, unfaltering, and unfailing.” You get the point.
WORLD-VIEW and Purified INTUITION
Unlike such developed intuition(s) (in the plural) that can be developed for a variety of things in the world, when both Kant and Meher Baba speak of Intuition in the singular, what is meant by it, is our general intuition about the world and life as a whole. Kant called this intuition “Weltanschauung”, which means “how we see the world” or “behold the world” or even more precisely “how we intuit the world” as a whole. Another term we can use for this comprehensive form of intuition is our active worldview. Our worldview is how we intuit the world. This Intuition is what constitutes the perceptual framework through which our active consciousness perceives the world — in real time.
This intuition, which we will call General Intuition, is the current state of our developed intuition about life and the universe. This intuition is not made up of our casual beliefs and opinions; instead, it is made up of our core convictions about life and the universe. It is the larger intuitive framework within which all our more particular ‘smaller’ developed intuitions are subsumed and nested in. When Meher Baba speaks of Purified Intuition (in the singular), he is talking about purifying this comprehensive form of Intuition.
General intuition is what begins to develop when a person becomes interested in the essential questions of life. The deeper he dives, the deeper his intuition develops, especially if, in his desperate search for answers, he happens to come upon “The teachings that have come to humanity through the Masters of wisdom.”
This is when his general intuition about the ‘whole enchilada’ can take a profoundly drastic turn, especially if he is able to develop unwavering faith in those ‘revealed truths’. As he deepens his study into these Divinely revealed truths his intuition about the ultimate nature of Reality starts to get reshaped and honed –or purified. As his spiritual understanding increases, his ‘penetration into the essence of all Being and significance’ deepens; and the released fragrance of that inner attainment is what purifies his general intuition of all its false assumptions, beliefs and values.
Allow me to explain this crucial point once again, but from a slightly different angle:
Everyone has at least some intuition about almost anything & everything in life. But at the very center of all these various intuitions that we might have about the various things in life, is a more comprehensive form of intuition (in the singular) that constitutes the very core of how we intuit the world, existence, and ourselves, as a whole. This intuition is our active ‘worldview’, or our General Intuition, through which our active consciousness beholds the world. All our perceptions are grounded in this intuitive make-up, and occur through it.
Any errors or falsehoods that may be nested in our intuitive make up, are the things that falsify our faith and keep it from being True. Thus, purifying our lower developed general intuition, by honing our spiritual understanding becomes the very first step any serious Aspirant must take. In other words, the effort to make one’s spiritual understanding, at least on an intellectual level, as errorless and flawless as possible is the very first step any serious Aspirant would have to undertake. In fact, Meher Baba says that precisely this activity is what marks the beginnings of spiritual life:
“The beginnings of spiritual life are marked and helped by general meditation, which, in its comprehensive scope, seeks to understand and assimilate the divine Truths of life and the universe. When the aspirant is interested in the wider problems of the ultimate nature of life and the universe and begins to think about them, he may be said to have launched himself upon such meditation.”
The Key to General Meditation according to Meher Baba is the:
Study of revealed Truth
“The more fruitful mode of general meditation consists in studying the revealed Truths concerning life and the universe. This mode of understanding and assimilating the divine Truths can start by hearing or reading expositions of the divine, which have their source in the Masters of wisdom. The discourses or the writings of the Avatar and the Perfect Masters, whether living or of the past, are suitable objects for this mode of general meditation, because the assimilation of divine Truths revealed through them enables the aspirant to bring his life into line with God’s purpose in the universe.”
Of course, for an Aspirant who is a Meher Baba follower, General Meditation would entail a comprehensive study & grasp of Meher Baba’s revealed Truths first; which will form the metaphysical foundation for his spiritual understanding. It is upon this metaphysical foundation that the revealed Truths of the other Avatars and Masters, with their respective hermeneutics (or schools of thought) can be appended – as coherently as possible. Comprehensive cohesion and synthesis of all the revealed truths given to us by all the Masters of Wisdom, while using Meher Baba’s metaphysics as the foundation, thus becomes the objective of the Aspirant in general meditation.
The upgrades to one’s spiritual understanding that become possible through the process of trying to harmonize Meher Baba’s metaphysics with that of a Master such as Upasni Maharaj, should not be underestimated by the Aspirant. The surprising insights that become possible in such efforts to harmonize Meher Baba’s teachings with the teachings of other Avatars and Masters, I believe is precisely why Meher Baba says General Meditation must be comprehensive in scope.
By comprehensively understanding and assimilating Divinely revealed Truths, accompanied (of course) by the fearless & free exercise of critical reason, we can hone our spiritual understanding and through it begin to purify our lower developed intuition of its many false assumptions. This is basically how we can transition our general intuition out of the lower rungs of developed intuition into the higher realms of Purified Intuition.
Contrary to popular belief, spiritual Introspection is not about feeling inward towards the spatial cavity around our chest area for strange and unusual feelings or energies, Spiritual introspection is rather about looking inward towards our general intuition, and critically examining it against a backdrop of all the ‘revealed divine Truths’ given to us by the Masters of wisdom. When Meher Baba says “My words are like atom bombs!” This is what he’s talking about. This careful honing process of one’s own Spiritual Understanding by meditating on the ‘revealed truths’, and assimilating them into one’s active world view, is known in Christian Mysticism as “contemplation”. And this is exactly what our Christian Saints saw as suitable for the purification of their own intuitive make-up. Meher Baba calls this process ‘general meditation’ and as we covered earlier, he says it marks the very beginnings of spiritual life. But, (he says) it must be “comprehensive in scope”, and the Aspirant must seek to understand and assimilate the divine Truths of life and the universe. Needless to say, this must require some ferocious thinking. He adds:
“The perception of spiritual truths requires not merely strenuous and furious thinking but clear thinking, and true clarity of thought.”
Meher Baba has said “My words are like Atom Bombs; but they have to be put into action.”
In between his ‘words’ and ‘putting them into action’, are two intermediary steps:
- Accurately understanding his words through critical thinking & intellectual discrimination.
- Assimilation of that understanding into one’s active worldview, or perceptual framework.
Once spiritual understanding is assimilated into our active world view, it has made its way into the heart. The results of critical thinking working against the backdrop of Divine revelation have now invaded and recaptured the heart, purifying it of all its false doctrines and dogmas, and replacing them with new ones to which the Aspirant has given adequate thought. In the same way sanity is a byproduct of sanitization, purified intuition is a byproduct of purification; Once sanitized of all the falsehoods that our naive credulity may have uncritically accepted, sanity can be restored, and our intuition purified.
“If the results of critical thought are to be spiritually fruitful, these results must again invade and recapture the heart so as to enlist its cooperative functioning. In other words, the ideas that have been accepted after critical examination must again be released into active life if they are to yield their full benefit.”
And, what follows naturally after that is action.
In conclusion I would like to go over a few poignant examples of how our lower developed intuition can be at loggerheads with our pure intuition. All you need are the revealed truths and a bit of critical thinking to discern the difference between the two intuitions. Basically, if your intuition tells you something that in principle disagrees with the revealed truth, then it is your lower developed intuition that could use some purification with the best sanitizer known to man — the revealed truths given to us by our Master and his fellow conspirators known as the Masters of Wisdom — taken as a whole. — comprehensively.
In conclusion, the great white pill of sanity referred to as ‘Comprehensive spiritual Understanding’ is what Meher Baba recommends as the “remedy of all remedies, for all of humanity’s ills.” — through purification of intuition.
{all quotes from Discourses 7th Ed, unless specified otherwise}
{All italic lines in BLUE are Meher Baba’s words}