Intuition Is Simple: The Intellect Is Complex (with Nayaswami Krishnadas)
Sunday Service with Nayaswami Krishnadas and Nayaswami Mantradevi at Ananda Village, recorded September 18th 2022.
Developing intuition is essential on the path of Self-Realization. It is through intuitive perception that we can know God. In this Sunday Service Nayaswami Krishnadas answers the following questions:
- How can feeling and reason support our intuition?
- What are the pitfalls of reason in our quest for intuitive perception?
- What is the antidote to the downside of the intellect?
Nayaswami Krishnadas shares from the heart with relatable examples.
This week's reading is:
Intuition Is Simple: The Intellect Is Complex
(From Rays of the One Light - Weekly Commentaries on the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita by Swami Kriyananda)
Truth is one and eternal. Realize oneness with it in your deathless Self, within.
The following commentary is based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda.
In the Gospel of St. Mark, Chapter 10, we read a passage that Yogananda often quoted:
And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them.
But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.
Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.
It has often been noted that a critical attitude tends to paralyze creativity. Good critics, for example, seldom produce works of creative genius, though their creations may be intellectually clever. The intellect separates; it analyzes, then puts things together again piece by piece. Intellect lacks intuition’s flow, which descends smoothly, like a river, from the superconscious.
Paramhansa Yogananda described intuition as “the soul’s power of knowing God.” To receive the kingdom of God, Jesus was saying, one must do so with the openness and trust of a little child. Intellectuals may object to this statement, saying, “But there must also be discrimination. You wouldn’t want a person to be so open-minded that his brain falls out!” The truth is, however, that the intellect can be fooled, even when it does its best to discriminate wisely. Only intuition is capable of penetrating to the heart of a matter and knowing truth from falsehood. It was the clear understanding of a child, not the elaborately persuaded intellects of his elders, that enabled the child in Hans Christian Andersen’s story to cry out in surprise, “Why isn’t the Emperor wearing any clothes?”
Therefore it was that Sri Krishna said, in the ninth Chapter of the Bhagavad Gita:
To you, who are free from the carping spirit, I shall now reveal wisdom sublime. Grasping it with your mind, and perceiving it by intuitive realization, you shall escape the evils of delusion.
Thus, through Holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.
