“The word intuition is derived from the Latin intueri—which has been translated “to look upon,” “to see within,” and “to consider and contemplate.” The dictionary definition is “the fact or faculty of knowing directly, without the use of the rational processes.” Notice that to know something in this context means to know something as it is. Thus, intuition, by definition is looking, seeing, knowing the real thing, and so intuition is always accurate. If a “hunch” turns out to be wrong, it was, by definition, not real intuition, not a knowing, but just a hunch. However, even true intuition, when it comes, can be misread, misunderstood, misinterpreted. Hence the confusion surrounding the word.” Glenda Taylor
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” Albert Einstein
“It is always with excitement that I wake up in the morning wondering what my intuition will toss up to me, like gifts from the sea. I work with it and rely on it. It’s my partner.” Jonas Salk, discoverer of the polio vaccine.
“There are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago. “ J Robert Oppenheimer
“Precognition (from the Latin præ-, “before,” + cognitio, “acquiring knowledge”) “apparent power to perceive things that are not present to the senses.” Dictionary Definition
“There are no logical paths to these (natural) laws, only intuition resting on sympathetic understanding of experience can reach them…The really valuable thing is intuition.” Albert Einstein
“Synchronicity reveals the meaningful connections between the subjective and objective world.” Carl G. Jung
Synchronicity…means a ‘meaningful coincidence’ of outer and inner events that are not themselves causally connected. The emphasis lies on the word ‘meaningful. “ Marie Louise von Franz,
“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards” The White Queen to Alice in Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll
“It was Isaac Newton’s intuition which was preeminently extra-ordinary. So happy in his conjectures that he seemed to know more than he could have possibly any hope of proving. The proofs were…dressed up afterwards; they were not the instrument of discovery.” John Maynard Keynes
“Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in the new information society precisely because there is so much data.” John Naisbitt
“An enlightened being is one who is in touch with his deepest unconscious, an unconscious which deserves to be considered sacred…(for) this final substrata opens mysteriously onto the world as it actually is.” Houston Smith
“The less there is of self the more there is of Self.” Meister Eckhart
The music of this opera was dictated to me by God; I was merely instrumental in putting it on paper and communicating it to the public.” Puccinni
“Sit down like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.” Biologist T. H. Huxley
“You have to decide to have the courage to look foolish.” Pioneer memory researcher Ewald Hering.
“If you are somewhere on the leading edge, you can’t explain everything. If you knew all about it, it wouldn’t be the leading edge.” Neurophysiologist Karl Pribram.
“When the great innovation appears, it will seem muddles and strange. It will be only half-understood by its discoverer and a mystery to everyone else. For any idea that does not appear bizarre at first, there is no hope. “ Physicist Niels Bohr.
“The universe is more like a great thought than a great machine.” Astronomer James Jeans
“The stuff of the universe is mindstuff.” Astronomer Arthur Eddington.
“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is – infinite. “ Blake
“I feel that these ideas are floating around in the air and they pick me to settle upon. The ideas come to me; I don’t produce them at will.” Joseph Heller
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. We will not solve the problems of the world from the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. More than anything else, this new century demands new thinking: We must change our materially based analyses of the world around us to include broader, more multidimensional perspectives.” Albert Einstein
“The characteristic feature of…synchronistic occurrences is meaningful coincidence, and as such I have defined the synchronistic principle. This principle suggests that there is an inter-connection or unity of causally unrelated events, and thus postulates a unitary aspect of being which can very well be described as the ‘unus mundus’ [one world]. “Albert Einstein
“When we’re interested in something, everything around us appears to refer to it (the mystics call these phenomena “signs,” the skeptics “coincidence,” and psychologists “concentrated focus,” although I’ve yet to find out what term historians should use).” Paulo Coelho
“By the favor of the Gods, I have since my childhood been attended by a semi-divine being whose voice from time to time dissuades me from some undertaking, but never directs me what I am to do.” Socrates, in Plato’s Theagetes.
“Since psyche and matter are contained in one and the same world, and moreover are in continuous contact with one another and ultimately rest on irreprehensible, transcendental factors, it is not only possible but fairly probable, even, that psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing. The synchronicity phenomena point, it seems to me, in this direction, for they show that the nonpsychic can behave like the psychic, and vice versa, without there being any causal connection between them. “ Carl Jung
“Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them.” Mozart
“There are three basic steps in training the mind for optimal development of intuition. The first step is quieting the mind…The second step is learning to focus attention, or concentrate on that aspect of reality that one chooses to contact at a particular time. The third step is the cultivation of a receptive, non-judgmental attitude that allows intuition to come into conscious awareness without interference. You cannot make intuition happen, but following the three steps outlined above prepares you to receive and acknowledge it when it does.” Frances E. Vaughn, from Awakening Intuition
A day without sunshine is like, night.
On the other hand, you have different fingers.
I just got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory.
42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
I feel like I’m diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
Honk if you love peace and quiet.
Remember, half the people you know are below average.
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets
the cheese in the trap.
I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.
Support bacteria. They’re the only culture some people have.
Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7 of your week.
A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.
Get a new car for your spouse. It’ll be a great trade!
Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.
Always try to be modest, and be proud of it!
If you think nobody cares, try missing a couple of payments.
How many of you believe in psycho-kinesis? Raise my hand…
OK, so what’s the speed of dark?
How do you tell when you’re out of invisible ink?
If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked
When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.
Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.
Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don’t have film.
If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
I used to have an open mind but my brains kept falling out.
I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.
Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?
Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what happened.
Meditations on Revisioning Myself; Ambiguities in the Language, by Glenda Taylor
Latin: Videre: To see
Some of its derivatives:
Visible: Can be seen with the eye or evident to the mind; on hand.
Vision: 1} Act or power to see with the eye
2} Something not seen with the eye, supernatural
3} Mental image, imaginative contemplation
4} ability to perceive something not actually visible
5} force or power of imagination
6} something (especially woman) of extraordinary beauty
Revise: To correct or improve, to change or amend
Revision: Act or process or work of revising
Envision: To imagine something not yet in existence; to picture it in the mind.
Visionary: 1} Seeing visions
2} Impractical ideas or schemes
3} not real, imaginary
4} not capable of being carried out, speculative, impractical
5} person who has impractical or fantastic ideas or schemes
From The Intuitive Edge, by Philip Goldberg
“…Ideological bias (against intuition) is reflected in our vocabulary; words that suggest truthfulness stem from the rational-empirical tradition. We use the world logical, even when the rules of logic have not been applied, to indicate that a statement seems correct. So highly regarded is reason that we use the word reasonable to refer to anything we consider appropriate—for example, ‘Twenty dollars is a reasonable price to pay for a theatre ticket.’ We also have the noun form of reason, which is what you are asked to provide in order to justify a proposition. People demand reasons; they seldom say, ‘Give me one good feeling why you think John is wrong’ or ‘What are your intuitions for claiming that jogging will cure insomnia?’
“ The word rational—which, strictly speaking, suggests the use of reason and logic—has come to be synonymous with sanity, while irrational connotes madness. Sensible and making sense, along with their antonym nonsense, link soundness and truth with the sense organs, as if adequate meaning came through those channels alone—the classic conviction of empiricism. Objective has come to imply fairness, honesty, and precision, suggesting that the only way to gain untainted knowledge is to remain detached and treat whatever you study as if it were a material object. As for the word scientific, that is the ultimate pedigree for any claim whatsoever.
“Fortunately, the language also contains some reservations about the rational-empirical ideal. Thanks to Freud, we have the word rationalize, the pejorative term referring to the way we justify bad guesses, mistakes, and neurotic behavior with faulty reasoning. We also use the term sense in an effort to legitimize knowledge that can’t be attributed to the customary five senses, as when we say “I sense danger in this room’ or ‘I have a sense of what that poem is about.’ But despite these few colloquial exceptions, we generally act as if sense perceptions and rational thought are the only ways to know anything. …
“And some people assume that the way to be more intuitive is to be less rational. However, it is not as simple as ‘getting in touch with your feelings’ or ‘trusting your intuition,’ as some self-help magazine articles have suggested. The theory in some circles seems to be ‘If it feels good, believe it,’ an admonition that threatens to do for thinking what ‘If it feels good, do it’ did for manners….
“There is a need for balance and recognition of the intricate, mutually enhancing relationship between intuition and rationality…In a healthy mind and a healthy society, all faculties should develop harmoniously, each supplementing the other’s strengths and shoring up its weaknesses.”
“We begin our lives listening to the many sounds surrounding us in the womb. When
we are dying, the last faculty to shut down is usually hearing. In between, there is
so much to see that we seldom take the time to cultivate the art of listening. Listening
uses other practices: attention, being present, openness. It is holy work, involving in
the inventive phrase of W.A. Mathieu, a Sufi musician, “making an altar out of our ears.”
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
“If there is any wisdom running through my life now, in my walking on this earth, it came from listening in the Great Silence to the stones, trees, space, the wild animals, to the pulse of all life as my heartbeat.” Vijali Hamilton
“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.” Karl A. Menniger
“For the ninety ninth percent of the time we’ve been on Earth, we were hunter and gatherers, our lives dependent on knowing the fine, small details of our world. Deep inside, we still have a longing to be reconnected with the nature that shaped our imagination, our language, our song and dance, our sense of the divine.” Janine M. Benyus
“Be in the NOW. This is your key to operation at this time. This is how you receive the information you need at any given moment. In the now you can ‘hear’ and ‘know’ what to do from the information received. It is not hard. It is not difficult to learn. You have all done it before. Try it now. Ask the universe a question and listen. This is the key – empty your mind and listen – stop being afraid – still your ego and truly listen. What does the still small voice say to you? This is your way to hear your information. Let the information come from your stilled heart and be interpreted by your brain. Then you can trust…” Amaterasu
“Attentive listening is never an easy task–it consumes psychic energy at a rate that tires and surprises me. But it is made easier when I am holding back my own authoritative impulses. When I suspend, for just a while, my inner chatter about what I am going to say next, I open room within myself to receive the external conversation.” Parker Palmer
“God speaks to us every day, only we don’t know how to listen.”Mohandas Gandhi
“The older I grow, the more I listen to people who don’t talk much.” Germain G. Glidden
“As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I’ll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.” John Muir
“All things and all people, so to speak, call on us with small or loud voices. They want us to listen. They want us to understand their intrinsic claims, their justice of being. But we can give it to them only through the love that listens.” Paul Tillich
“I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.” Larry King
“There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. This mysterious unity and integrity is wisdom, the mother of us all, “natura naturans.” There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fountain of action and joy. It rises up in wordless gentleness, and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being.” Thomas Merton
“Sainthood emerges when you can listen to someone’s tale of woe and not respond with a description of your own.” Andrew V. Mason
“When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world. Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. This is the I Am that is deeper than name and form.” Eckhart Tolle
“Many ‘active listening’ seminars are, in actuality, little more than a shallow theatrical exercise in appearing like you’re paying attention to another person. The requirements: Lean forward, make eye contact, nod, grunt, or murmur to demonstrate you’re awake and paying attention, and paraphrase something back every 30 seconds or so. As one executive I know wryly observed, many inhabitants of the local zoo could be trained to go through these motions, minus the paraphrasing.” Robert K. Cooper
“We inter-breath with the rain forests, we drink from the oceans. They are part of our own body.” Thich Nhat Hanh
“The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first; Be not discouraged – keep on – there are divine things, well envelop’d; I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.” Walt Whitman
“The purpose of life is undoubtedly to know oneself. We cannot do it unless we learn to identify ourselves with all that lives. The sum-total of that life is God.” Mahatma Gandhi
“And with listening, too, it seems to me, it is not the ear that hears, it is not the physical organ that performs the act of inner receptivity. It is the total person who hears. Sometimes the skin seems to be the best listener, as it prickles and thrills, say to a sound or a silence; or the fantasy, the imagination: how it bursts into inner pictures as it listens and then responds by pressing its language, its forms, into the listening clay. To be open to what we hear, to be open in what we say. . . .”
“The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside. Only they who listen can speak.” Dag Hammarskjold
“Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people, they can hear the truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you. “ Rachel Naomi Remen
“To be really aware you must be able to know simultaneously what is going on thousands of miles away today, what may have happened centuries ago, what will happen anywhere in the world decades from now, and what is occurring, has occurred, or will occur on other planes of existence. And you must still act as if you know nothing. You must just sit and talk with other people and play the part which Nature has assigned to you. “ Aghori Vimlananda
When asked what gift he wanted for his birthday, the yogi replied: “I wish no gifts, only presence.”
Creative Listening, by Wilferd A. Peterson:
One of the most important habits of a creative thinker is to be a good listener. Stand guard at the ear-gateway to your mind, heart, and spirit.
Listen to the good. Tune your ears to love, hope, and courage. Tune out gossip and resentment.
Listen to the beautiful. Listen to the music of the masters. Listen to the symphony of nature–the hum of the wind in the treetops, bird songs, thundering surf. . .
Listen critically. Mentally challenge assertions, ideas, and philosophies. Seek the truth with an open mind.
Listen with patience. Do not hurry the other person. Show them the courtesy of listening to what they have to say, no matter how much you may disagree. You may learn something.
Listen with your heart. Practice empathy when you listen. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes.
Listen for growth. Be an inquisitive listener. Ask questions. Everyone has something to say which will help you to grow.
Listen creatively. Listen for ideas or the germs of ideas. Listen for hints or clues that may spark creative projects.
Listen to yourself. Listen to your deepest yearnings, your highest aspirations, your noblest impulses. Listen to the better person within you.
Listen with depth. Be still and listen. Listen with the ear of intuition to the inspiration of the Infinite.
“One begins to know things by a different kind of experience, more direct, not depending on the external mind and the senses. It is not that the possibility of error disappears, for that cannot be so long as mind of any kind is one’s instrument for transcribing knowledge, but there is a new, vast, and deep way of experiencing, seeing, knowing, contacting things, and the confines of knowledge can be rolled back to an almost unmeasurable degree.” Sri Aurobindo
Philip Goldberg in The Intuitive Edge
“…First you know something, then you find words to convey that meaning, and sometimes there is no way to capture it adequately. A flustered TV character once said of a garbled statement, “you should have heard it before I said it.’ We might speculate that many intuitions appearing in a specific form, especially a verbal form, are actually adulterated versions of the original, and perhaps some depth of meaning or emotion has already been sacrificed.
“This is important to keep in mind; often when we have an intimation of intuition, or some faint feeling, we try to force it into a palpable structure, usually a verbal message, even though doing so might create distortions by filtering it through layers of other psychic content. Those faint feelings are actually a deeper, purer level of mind than verbal, visual, or kinetic modes. Part of cultivating intuition, therefore, might entail learning to tune into earlier developmental stages of the impulses…”
C. G. Jung on Intuition
“Basically, what we are doing is tapping into the Universal Mind…This is a situation where people go into another state of consciousness for just a very short period of time—a second or two. They go into the intuitive level where subjective time is greatly extended. So in a few seconds of objective time they can see the solutions to all their problems. They can understand them at their leisure and then come back—collapse back, so to speak—into objective reality.”
“…Too much effort generates resistance, and forced attempts at self-improvement are likely to be short-lived. Be prepared for disappointment if you think that the attainment of psychic powers will enable you to get anything you want and thus solve all your problems. Awakening intuition is not about ‘getting more’; it is about ‘being more’ who you really are. Thus, the first step in this process is learning to let yourself be…The key to amplifying your awareness of intuition is attention….A non-interfering alert awareness, maintained in the midst of the inner world of sensations, emotions, and ideas, is the key to expanding intuition. Ultimately intuitive knowing transcends distinctions between subject and object, knower and known…In order to be fully present in the moment, free to give full attention to whatever you are doing, it is necessary to disengage yourself from past experiences….Intuition on the emotional level can function fully only when you are aware of feelings, without judging them as good or bad, and without assuming that you have to act on them or do anything about them. There is no need to justify or rationalize a feeling. ” Itzhak Bentov.
“In studying the history of the human mind one is impressed again and again by the fact that the growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness, and that each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement. One could almost say that nothing is more hateful to man than to give up even a particle of his unconsciousness. Ask those who have tried to introduce a new idea!” Frances E. Vaughn, from Awakening Intuition
“I do believe in an everyday sort of magic — the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone.” Charles de Lint
“When you connect to the silence within you, that is when you can make sense of the disturbance going on around you.” Stephen Richards
“The problem is not finding melodies, it’s—when getting up in the morning—not stepping on them.” Bach
“The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition. “ Honore de Balzac
“I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God. “ C. G. Jung
“Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.” Jonas Salk
“The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.” Alan Alda
“It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover. “ Henri Poincare
“All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention. “ Rudolf Arnheim
“Intuition is reason in a hurry. “ Holbrook Jackson
“If anybody says he can think about quantum physics without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them. “ Niels Bohr
“Synchronistic events offer us perceptions that may be useful in our psychological and spiritual growth and may reveal to us, through intuitive knowledge, that our lives have meaning.” Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD
“Rational thought is drawn out over time; it takes place in a definable sequence of steps with a beginning, middle, and end. It is linear. It requires effort and deliberate intention. By contrast intuition is experienced as non-sequential. It is a single event as opposed to a series…” Philip Goldberg
“Intuition is the third of three stages of higher knowledge, coming after imagination and inspiration, and is characterized by a state of immediate and complete experience of, or even union with, the object of knowledge without loss of the subject’s individual ego. (my underscore) Rudolf Steiner
“Not my will but Thine, O Lord, be done in and through me. Let me ever be a channel of blessings, today, now, to those that I contact, in every way. Let my going in, mine comings out, be in accord with that Thou would have me do, and as the call come, ‘Here am I, send me—use me!” Edgar Cayce
“Ambition does to intuition what a weevil does to a granary.” Ram Dass
Richard Moss in The I that is We.
(The following was written in 1981; imagine how much more true it is today with the internet , cell phones, etc. GT)
“One way to understand what I mean by collectivization of mind is to look at the nature of human gathering as it occurs today. We come together in gigantic rituals of powerful intensity called athletic events, concerts and conferences. Through growing technology, our lives are becoming inexorably entwined in newer and more intricate permutations. Physically we are able to live in increasing proximity and density. We are resonating and vibrating in every more complex and dynamic pools of social interaction. The world in all its myriad processes, from the most horrible to the most wondrous, is reaching into our bedrooms, our kitchens, our stomachs and our hearts.
“Perhaps less obvious but even more fascinating to me is to contemplate how, through the media, we are tuning into the same input at the same time. Millions of minds are receiving the same signal and responding to the same input simultaneously. It is as if we are unconsciously fostering the same process that I attempt to catalyze in the groups…In this arbitrarily created context (the groups), in a manner that is uplifting instead of intimidating, we can begin to glimpse the nature of the sea we swim in all the time.
“Certainly we can become concerned over the quality of what is being purveyed over media and concerned over the effect that TV overuse may have on learning. We can feel afraid of the incursion into our narrow system of belief of the beliefs and needs and feelings of others. We can resent the way things are done and find infinite things to be afraid of and angry about. But perhaps we are measuring from old standards and from a narrow dimensional viewpoint. I have no doubt this kind of splintering is part of the process that leads to a potential for refinement. But it is also a boundary-making mechanism of the existing ego structure that holds us back from a deeper sense of a more unified and collective mind.
“Perhaps we ought to be looking at whether this simultaneous broadcast and reception of identical signals to millions of human beings, this ever-growing interpenetrating condition of life, is fostering greater collective sensitivity. Are people as result of this becoming more psychic—though with little awareness of the multidimensional transformation they are undergoing? Is there an increase in telepathy, in empathy, in the ability to share and respond to a common sense of subtle forces? Are we perhaps feeling and sensing each other more deeply and more of the time? …
“If we unconsciously defend our existing psychic structure as we try to evaluate what may actually be a transformational potential, the evaluation is bound to miss the deeper process. We require new criteria that simultaneously embrace the ego structure and the higher consciousness processes that arise as we begin to dissolve it. This means a sense of the refinement of consciousness in which the full spectrum of human potential is regarded with wisdom. This requires teaching/learning processes that provide direct experience of the multidimensional states. Only experience in these areas can take us out of hypothesis and speculation and into meaningful knowing. For this to happen safely we need the “Open Sesame” of the heart, the beginning exploration of unconditional levels of awareness.”
“When the real music comes to me—the music of the spheres, the music that surpasseth understanding—that has nothing to do with me ‘cause I’m just the channel. The only joy for me is for it to be given to me and transcribe it. Like a medium. Those moments are what I live for.” John Lennon
“ . . . The mind seeks knowledge as a handle on the cosmos from which it gains leverage for greater control and self-satisfaction, but synchronicity will not allow itself to be used so roughly. Like the flea (on the ‘iron bull’), we must eventually give up our effort to penetrate the impenetrable and surrender to a reality which we cannot master but to which we must submit. In the end, to be honest to our exploration or synchronicity we must ourselves surrender to it. This means to relax and allow the sometimes fickle tide of fate to take its natural course, to let it wash over and benignly carry us. We must sacrifice the urgent, petty agendas of the ego to a larger field or participation. We must learn humility and own humor, finding guidance in intuition and making logic a servant rather than master. Control is a personal experience, surrender is a transpersonal one. Through surrender we learn to move with the rhythms that flow through our existence and in so doing open ourselves to the wellsprings of life that are the gift of the divine Trickster.”
Dean Radin on Intuition
“A 2001 nationwide poll cited in the NSF’s [National Science Foundation] 2002 report asked the question, ‘Some people possess psychic powers or ESP. DO you strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree?’ This NSF-sponsored survey found that 60% of adult Americans agreed or strongly agreed with the statement. Earlier Gallup polls taken in 1990, 1996, and 2001 showed that these percentages have been increasing over time. These figures were presented in the context of demonstrating the deplorable state of science education in the United States.
“ This would indeed be discouraging, except that the report tiptoes around an interesting fact. When survey respondents were separated by education level, 46% with less than a high school education agreed that some people possess ESP, but a whopping 62% with high school or more education agreed. Among the ‘attentive public,’ those defined as ‘very interested’ in a topic, ‘very well informed’ about it, and regularly read a daily newspaper or relevant national magazine, a healthy majority of 59% agreed. Thus, the survey actually revealed that belief in ESP was not explainable as a matter of poor education.
“To check the NSF’s findings, I examined data collected by the National Opinions Research Center, which is affiliated with the University of Chicago. This Center, one of the oldest academic survey research groups in the United States, collects in its annual General Social Survey a wide range of questions used to form a snapshot of opinions in the United States. One of the questions asked over the years has been about psi. The specific question I was interested in asks: ‘How often have you felt as though you were in touch with someone when they were far away from you?’ The possible answers ranged from ‘never in my life’ to ‘often.’ I compared those answers to questions on education achievement, which ranged from 0 –20 years of formal education. The ignorance hypothesis predicts a negative relationship – the more education you have, the less you should believe in psi. The actual result, based on 3,880 survey responses, was not negative. In fact, it was significantly positive, with odds against chance of 80 to 1. This is not just the case in the United States. The same trend has been observed in Australia, France, and virtually every other country that has reported these surveys. This finding is even widely acknowledged by skeptics, who gnash their teeth about it.”
Ernest Holmes in Know Yourself
“There is a subtle element here—that of knowing the Truth and then letting It go. Then the Truth may demonstrate Itself. Perhaps this is one of the most difficult things to understand in spiritual work. Our thought is creative but we do not make it so, it was so before we realized it.
“We must come to feel that flowing through our word there is a Divine Reality in accord with a perfect Law. It is impossible to really erase this spiritual conviction. It is implanted by a Reality greater than the human mind. There is a Power which descends into and operates through the consciousness of the one sensing such Power. Real in Itself and being ever-present, It is as actual as we allow It to become. There is an Essence in the invisible world, the emanation of which is the passing of Beauty into the form of that which is beautiful, of Life into the form of that which lives, the passing of Spirit from an abstract into a concrete state. It is this Principle which we all seek to demonstrate.
“Conviction compels the attention of the intellect, then Reality floods it. It is the essence of Spirit which flows through the intellect, illuminating the mind and healing the body. The healing is automatic. The cause is invisible. The effect is tangible and real. The timeless passes into time, the formless into form, the uncreated into that which is created, the prayer into the performance, the treatment into its own demonstration.
“The originating Power descends into the consciousness which meditates upon It and receives It. The intellect abandons itself to the Divine Ideal. It is a feeling, a sense, an atmosphere. We do not have to energize this Power for It is the very Essence of all energy…”
Lawrence LeShan in Alternate Realities, the Search for the Full Human Being
“This is a strange and unexpected insight we have come to: that from time to time we are able to so shift our invention-discovery of reality that we behave quite differently and accomplish our goals in quite a different manner from our ordinary one. This particular new reality…has been known of for a very long time as human history goes, and has been widely studied and experimented with and its effects observed…
“…Ás with the other general classes and modes of being I am describing here, the clairvoyant modes are adapted to filling part of our human needs and where we do not use it with a full acceptance of its validity, that part of us remains undernourished and unfulfilled. It is our need for a sense, a knowledge, of our solid connectedness with the totality of whatever it is, a knowledge that we do not float unconnected in the cosmos but stand firm on the basic rock of the universe…
“…Certain feeling can only be strong and lasting in us when the part of our nature satisfied by the clairvoyant modes of being is fulfilled. These feelings include serenity, peace joy, feelings characteristic of the mystic who uses both sensory and clairvoyant modes, certainly not characteristic of the rest of us…
…The clairvoyant modes are adapted to fulfilling that part of us that needs meaning in our existence. It is only when we fulfill this part of us that we can serenely experience meaning in our lives and know that we are at home in the universe and that it is a good home for man.”