Dear Gail:
The subject is “Intuition,” sometimes called Cognition.
This is extremely important for it means that the subject is the language in which the Absolute communicates with many of ITS subjects throughout the planes of the universes.
Remember, this is one of the most significant studies you can make, and it would do well for you to go beyond this letter in reading up on it, or making a practice of your own to find out about the other world through your intuition of psychic senses. The use of the intuition is not easy for it is only when one can set aside his physical senses and allow the inflow of the psychic senses can he then make contact with that which is beyond or the use of PSI. This is in a way hard to do, but once anyone catches the point it can be mastered. But there is another factor involved in the matter
— how far can one trust the psychic senses, and how much is he deluding himself in trusting them?
Cognition is the word I’ll use instead of intuition.
Cognition is the art or faculty of thinking or reflecting effortlessly. An idea or thought flashing into your mind — the power of knowing, or the knowledge received without recourse to inference or reasoning. When you have a flash of cognitive thought, or your inner senses speak without you realizing, a truth or direction for you to follow, it is best to listen and follow. You know it is truth. This is why those certain people who are followers of God can live so closely to IT and follow IT regardless; they know and recognize truth when it is spoken to them.
There is a word used for this art which you should know.
Intuitionism: Ethically it is the doctrine that moral values are
intuitively apprehended. In philosophy it means — the doctrine that there are self-evident truths intuitively known, which form the basis of human doctrine. Then it is described as the doctrine that the objects of perceptions are intuitively known to be real.
Inspiration is often used for the same resulting effects.
Other names are insight, perceptivity, instinct, association, apprehension, premonition, presentiment, clairvoyance, sixth sense, extrasensory perception, second sight, hunch, innate, and apperception. There are a half-hundred names used for the ability to gather the spiritual data through the inner senses. Poetry and music are said to be the closest to this faculty because they are written from the inner senses.
So much poetry is taken out of the reactive bank although today it is called great poetry. So much of the music is of the same nature, although it is the so-called great music of our times. All popular music and popular poetry are animalistic and have no place from out of the true cognitive arts. So few of the arts are written from the inner senses although they might be thought to have been done this way. I cannot in any way condone the greatness of poetry and music unless it is of the highest quality — taken straight from the heart of the Absolute.
The way to travel the road of cognition is by stilling the senses. One of the great Psalms, the 46th has a line, number 10, which goes like this: “Be still and know that I am God.”
This is the great technique of the art of knowingness. It is probably the most wonderful phrase in the Bible. It really is the whole Bible in a nutshell. The current of human thought is hurrying every individual along to its own ends, and it seems much easier to swim with it by accepting difficulties, by rehearsing grievances, by dwelling upon symptoms, than to draw resolutely away from these things, and contemplate
the Absolute, which is one way out of trouble, one way to make contact with the Absolute through the inner senses.
Therefore one must train himself to rise above this hurrying tide of error — for error is always hurried; to sweep one off his feet is its master strategy, and turning the back upon conditions, however bad they may seem, Be Still and Know that I am God, is the answer. This is not the action of doing nothing, but to be actively passive. It is to know that God is God. Such stillness is the reverse of laziness or inaction. The still dwelling upon the Absolute is the quietest but the most potent action of all. Of course to be afraid is to have more power in the evil than in the Lord! Remember this all the days of your life!
One of the best examples of writings which have come out of the inner senses today is that of Thomas Merton, in a book called The Seeds of Contemplation! This is a worthy study for anybody to see what he has gathered from the Voice of Silence as Madame Blavatsky, founder of Theosophy, calls that Voice of God. Her book by the same title is worth your time to look up and study. It is a small book and will be that which can give you much comfort in learning to make contact with the Absolute. One of the interesting points about intuitional dialogues with the Absolute is how much the listener is led into thinking that he is in contact with the Almighty.
So many times this isn’t true. His reactive bank may be whispering to him; an entity on the other side may be posing as the true voice, or one of the minor gods on the spiritual ladder might be speaking, or it could be a Master. If you know anything about the characteristics of the signs of the zodiac, you being a Cancer type, you can tell a great deal about who is talking to the individual from the inner self. For example, many times the dialogue will be exactly what is
expected from the reactive bank, in that it is repeating all the characteristics of the Cancer type traits. Now take for example, Joan of Arc, who heard voices direct her to take up the leadership of France, or George Fox, who founded Quakerism. These people, if I remember right, were born under the Aquarius or Pisces sign. Both are close to the religion type individual, and the reactive bank falling under the influence of the planets in the Zodiac sign (as the ones named above) will whisper or speak out loud to the individual — or at least he believes that he has heard a voice directing him what to do. One of the best examples of this type of voice speaking to the individual is in the preface to Saint Joan of Arc, by Bernard Shaw — that is one of his famous plays. Although I don’t care for George Bernard Shaw, this is a good study made of St. Joan and voices.
I’ve had the experience of having voices direct me what to do. In some cases they were correct in their direction, other times completely wrong. I cannot tell you whether they were true or not, but I believed they were — and that’s what counted with me. ’Tis said that schizophrenics have such experiences; however, I’m not in position to say that I’m one, or that they do — but the experience is actually so real that anyone experiencing it has no doubt. Anyway, I think it’s useful even for humor, as when George Fox was ordered to take off his hat while in the presence of Cromwell, dictator of England, replied by saying, “God told me not to take my hat off to anybody but Him!” And he got away with it!
Interesting point, eh?
More later.
Paul
78. Jivatma’s Journey