"Intuition" in Scientific American Mind

In the current (June/July 2007) edition of Scientific American Mind, there is an article called "The Powers and Perils of Intuition: Understanding the nature of our gut instincts," by David G. Myers. The author is a professor of psychology at Hope College and the author of 15 books, including one on intuition.
Since I have written often about how the human Essence is the source of our intuitive knowledge, I was most interested in reading this piece. A quick summary box says this:
"Fast Facts
"Intuition's Double Edge
"1. Cognitive science reveals a two-track human mind, featuring a deliberate, analytical "high road" and an automatic, intuitive "low road."
"2. Through life experience we gain intuitive expertise and we learn associations that surface as intuitive feelings.
"3. As studies of implicit prejudice and misplaced fears illustrate, unchecked gut feelings can lead us astray."

In the text, he quotes psychologist Daniel Kahneman's description of "Track ('System') 1 -- our behind-the-scenes, intuitive mind -- is fast, automatic, effortless, associative, implicit (not available to introspection) and often emotionally charged. Track 2 -- our familiar, conscious (explicit) mind -- is deliberate, sequential and rational, and it requires effort to employ."

Under "Intuition's Powers," he lists blindsight, the ability of persons blind because of damage to their visual cortex to be able to "know" when something enters their blind visual field. I have heard the lectures on this at consciousness conferences, where no one knew how it could be true. But I knew that the Essence of the blind individual is there to provide safety first, so the Essence could tell there was something that might be dangerous in that blind area. The person did not have an visual message as to what it was, just that something was there. This seemed to me to be a logical explanation, that the Essence can see without optic nerves and visual brain cortex, because that is what it does to protect the individual from harm.

Under "Intuition's Perils," he lists "intuitive prejudice" and "intuitive fears." These are emotional reactions which have been learned, often long ago, and trigger an avoidance response. In my thinking, this is NOT as aspect of Essence functioning, but part of the function of the Personality, a.k.a. emotional self or irrational soul. In the case of my now-grown son, when he was a little boy, sick in bed with the flu, he was fed a meal which included ripe whole tomatoes. When he put a tomato in his mouth, he vomited. Thereafter, he was convinced that he was "allergic" to tomatoes and refused to eat them. He could still eat tomato catsup on his hamburgers, however. But, to him, he was allergic to whole tomatoes. Such a reaction is easy enough to understand, as to his emotional Personality, the association between tomatoes and vomiting was a cause and effect relationship, a common mistake in logic.

So here I take issue with the author, for including "associative" and "emotionally charged" as characteristics of Track 1, Intuition. I can see his mistake, since he was not dealing with dissociative people, like I have. In integrated people, the Essence and Personality are closely bonded together, so it is often impossible to know, in laboratory tests, which "part" is doing which tasks. But when they are dissociated, as in MPD/DID, then the Essence (now an ISH) can be seen to have certain tasks to do for the total benefit of the patient. And no ISH is emotional, as the Essence CANNOT have or experience emotions such as fear or prejudice. They are all intellectual, and operate on knowledge and facts of the moment. They also know that tomatoes do not cause vomiting, so they are not involved in such associations and the fears resulting from such an unpleasant experience.

So I think we should expand on what these experimental psychologist are saying about the two parts of the mind. Yes, the Essence is automatic, quick, effortless and implicit. It is not associative or emotional. So where do those traits operate?

I would propose that they are traits of the other part of the mind, the Personality. But we have to be aware that there are many levels of conscious awareness of such traits of the Personality. Those we are ashamed of, such as prejudice and fear, are relegated to a very low degree of awareness, which has sometimes been called the "subconscious" or other similar words. I know that my MPD patients who had such feelings knew they had them and were not "unconscious" of them. But they were not about to admit them to me, as they feared my disapproval. So they kept quiet about them, which could lead me to mistakenly think they had no such awareness. But they did, and eventually they told me about them. So some traits are very high on the consciousness/awareness scale (those we can brag about) while others are very low on the same scale. Those of us schooled in Freudian terms might call them suppressed, I think, but the words are not as important as the understanding that they are there, and the person does not want others to know that.

But intuition, as a function of the Essence, is knowledge, not emotions, and it has no basis in experiential learning. You just "know it." And you are not emotional when you know it, as it is above emotions; it is just there.

At the start of the article, there are two examples of persons taking action based on their intuitions. One is considered "good" as it is about a woman who felt there was something wrong about a young man she met when his car broke down. She notified the police, who found his mother dead at home and arrested the son for murder. Fine, that was a good example of intuition which the woman properly paid attention to.

The other example is listed as a "peril" of intuition. This involved a pilot of a passenger plane who followed the intuition of the flight controller whose radar was not functioning at the moment. He hit a cargo plane and 71 people died in the collision. Now, I have talked to Charity, my spiritual mentor, about such plane crashes, and she has assured me that the passengers and crew were all due to die that day, as all their Life Plans were complete for this incarnation. Their Essences all knew that they would "cease to exist" today and had kept their assigned Personalities calmed down, while waiting for the crash to happen. They were all due to go into Thoughtspace, where the CIE would prepare them all for reincarnation. This is the view of the CIE. These Essences were coming "home" to be prepared for their next lifetimes.

From the point of view of the CIE, this was not a tragedy. Of course, from the human point of view, it was a tragedy. So the CIE do not consider this a hazard of intuition. They had set it up that way, so that the crash would occur on schedule, the CIE's schedule. Quite a different point of view.

So I bring this article to your attention. I also appreciate the fact that the Scientific American staff decided to start this magazine a year or so ago. It is also interesting that they say that "Many of the articles in this issue are adapted from articles originally appearing in Gehirn & Geist." I assume that is a German publication, and I have noted many articles written by European psychologists. So the ideas presented are not primarily American products.
Ralph Allison