Assessment and Enhancement of Intuition
Abstract
Intuition is cognition without the need for the five senses and the rational mind. Everyone has a certain level of intuition, but the accuracy is generally too low to serve as a practical guide in decision-making. Yogic processes can enhance the level of intuition among children to a point certain tasks can be done blindfolded, proof positive that their intuition skills have shot up. However for this to occur, training has to be given at a young age because of the plausible link of intuition to melatonin levels which drop as we age.
Self-realized souls possess an abundance of intuition. They may be naturally gifted or they may have acquired it through meditation. Since a measurement device for the estimation of our intuitive capacity is available, progress can be audited. The ideas and concepts may find use in a variety of fields such as leadership development, pursuit of exemplary performance, creativity and innovativeness, and less discord and violence.
Key words: Intuition, perception, emotional excellence, internal excellence, leadership
Background
Wikidiff defines perception as the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information (https://wikidiff.com/perception/intuition) and a Google search for the term comes up with this definition: Perception is the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses. Intuition on the other hand, is immediate cognition without the use of conscious rational processes, and the author adds, without the need for the five senses. Self-awareness and perceptive skills are obviously important but, intuition is a cut above them both.
Relatedly, much has been written about the importance of self-awareness, intuition, and emotional intelligence in leadership. Peter Salovey and John Mayer first coined the term “emotional intelligence” in 1990. Daniel Goleman published the book, Emotional Intelligence in 1995. It sold 5 million copies and was on The New York Times best-seller list for a year-and-a-half.
In 1998, Harvard Business Review published what it said is one of its most enduring articles: “What Makes a Leader.” In this article, Goleman writes, “the most effective leaders are all alike in one crucial way: they all have a high degree of what has come to be known as emotional intelligence. It’s not that IQ and technical skills are irrelevant. They do matter, but . . . they are the entry-level requirements for executive positions. My research, along with other recent studies, clearly shows that emotional intelligence is the sine qua non of leadership. Without it, a person can have the best training in the world, an incisive, analytical mind, and an endless supply of smart ideas, but he still won’t make a great leader. (as cited in Ovans, 2015).
The terms emotional intelligence, emotional excellence, and internal excellence are synonymous. A scientific scrutiny of internal excellence has led to a scientific framework for external and internal excellence for a better and more peaceful world (Deshpande and Kowall, 2015).
Brokaw (2012) writes that self-awareness is a key to better leadership. Llopis (2013) identifies fifteen factors for successful leadership and states, when making difficult decisions at a moment’s notice, successful leaders heavily depend on gut feelings. According to Esimai (2018), self-awareness has been cited as the most important capability for leaders to develop. The executive president of Birla group of companies in India states that being self-aware not only makes a leader more authentic and trusted but it is also is a leader’s most difficult skill (as cited in Narayanan, 2019).
The foregoing discussion brings out the importance of enhancing the intuitive faculty, not just for leaders but for everyone else. We all have a certain level of intuition but the accuracy is generally too low to serve as a reliable guide for decision-making. It needs to be enhanced. The first step in a scientific pursuit to enhance our intuitive faculty is to identify a measurement device to estimate our intuitive capacity. The next step is a process with which to enhance our intuitive faculty. The before-and-after measurement of the intuitive capacity provides an assessment of the extent of improvement.
Measurement of Intuition
Perfect intuition translates into the capacity to discern truth from falsehood. David R. Hawkins (MD, Psychiatry), asserted that the human nervous system was capable of discerning truth from falsehood [1995, 2005]. He wrote the book, Orthomolecular Psychiatry with Nobel laureate, Linus R. Pauling. For the measurement, he used muscle testing, a test procedure used by the International College of Applied Kinesiology. This method requires two persons, a tester and a subject. The tester places two fingers of say his/her left hand on the wrist of the extended right hand of the subject so that it is at a right angle to the subject’s body. The tester rests his/her right hand on the left shoulder of the subject for balance. Then, the tester makes a declarative statement having correct and incorrect responses and tells the subject to resist as he quickly applies downward pressure on the wrist. Hawkins found that the subject resisted the downward force and the deltoid muscle remained strong if the declarative statement was correct but would go weak if the declarative statement was false. He and his research group recapitulated Thomas Edison’s search of 1,600 materials to arrive at Tungsten as the material for the filament of an incandescent bulb in less than ten minutes. He subjected the results of over four thousand calibrations to χ2 tests of hypothesis testing producing favorable p-values. While Hawkins himself had the capacity to discern truth from falsehood at 97% accuracy, not everyone would be able to achieve such results. This is because our intuitive skills are generally not as good.
Monte, Sinnott, Marchese, and Kunkel (1999) healthcare professionals affiliated with Philadelphia-area medical schools, refined the muscle testing procedure by adding a computer-assisted dynamometer to apply downward force to remove human bias. They conducted the investigation with 89 college students in a psychology class and reported that the correct and incorrect responses to declarative statements could be distinguished from the plots of applied force versus time. For congruent statements, the muscle remained strong, longer than it did for incongruent statements. Here too, the p-values were favorable. The results of their investigation are depicted in Figure 1.
Unfortunately, in this investigation the subjects knew what the correct responses were (e. g., my name is … OR I am a US citizen). The question is, “Can muscle testing with a dynamometer-based muscle-test provide correct responses within a prescribed error tolerance (say + 3%) even when the subjects have no knowledge of the answer”? The answer is, generally not. This is because intuitive skills of most people are inadequate.
Truth Meter. The dynamometer-based muscle testing requires considerable amount of resources and time. There is a simpler way to discern truth vs. falsehood and it is inspired by the wisdom of ancient seers. In ancient times, the seers would use the Rudraksha, a rosary with 108 beads — seeds of the Rudraksha tree) to discern whether the fruits and water in the mountains of the Himalayas were safe to consume. The measurement device used here is a crystal pendulum hung with a chain (see Figure 2). These pendulums are commercially available for a low price. A video clip of the demonstration experiments with the pendulum may be found on YouTube [Deshpande, 2010].
To discern truth from falsehood, hold the pendulum by the two fingers of your hand and make a declarative statement which has a true or false answer. The experimenter is not expected to know what the correct answer is. For false declarative statements, the pendulum is expected to move in a pendulum-like manner and rotate clockwise for correct responses. An interesting property of the truth meter is also revealed when it is used with life-supporting and life-detrimental foods and drinks. When held a couple of inches over foods and drinks, the pendulum is expected to rotate clockwise looking down for positive pranic foods, counterclockwise for negative pranic foods, and back-and-forth for neutral foods.
This method too suffers from the same issue that the muscle testing does, namely, it will not give correct answers at all times and for everyone. The missing link in both cases is the level of intuition of the subject. If the level of intuition is high, then the correct answer would be forthcoming but if it is inadequate, the answer will be incorrect much of the time. That said, the issue is an asset because the truth meter can be used to self-assess one’s intuitive capacity. Open-mindedness is essential for success.
How the Truth Meter Works. There are a set of neurons in our brain that go by the name, motor command neurons. These neurons control our motor function. They fire all the time. The twitch between the two fingers produced by the firing of these neurons is sufficient to induce motion of the pendulum.
With thoughts and intention, it is possible to produce any of the three types of motion, clockwise, counterclockwise, and neutral (back and forth). Thus, when thoughts interfere with the correct response, the pendulum will produce the wrong answer. With enhanced intuition, thoughts do not interfere with the answer and the correct answer ensues.
The author has tested the truth meter with many individuals including his guru, H. H. Gurumahan, a self-realized yogi, who obtained correct answers to five true/false questions in a row. Dr. Rebecca Martin, a friend of the author, too obtained five correct answers in a row on one occasion but she got all answers wrong on a second occasion. The author learned later that she had a stressful weekend as one of her relatives had passed away and she had traveled out of town for the funeral.
Enhancing Intuition
On the internet there is a famous remark attributed to Albert Einstein: “Intuition 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”. Actually, most have, but the yogis have preserved the knowhow for millennia.
The author’s guru, H. H. Gurumahan explains that intuitive powers are enhanced by activating the Agya Chakra (Mid brain), which is linked to the pineal gland that produces melatonin. The melatonin production reduces with age, and therefore, the training has to be given in childhood. The yogic training program is called Aha Dharana and it is of seven days.
In a recent demo session in India, fourteen children (seven boys, seven girls, aged 8–13), demonstrated their skills blindfolded: The tasks included: (1) identifying colors of plastic balls correctly, (2) reading matter presented to them, (3) Using crayons, coloring figures correctly, (4) writing in a ruled notebook, (5) riding a motor cycle, (6) Speed-reading, and (7) Finding hidden objects in the room, (8) Identifying their mother/father in the crowd. The entire session was videotaped and photographed. See this short video clip on the program.
There are several other significant benefits of the program: (1) Improved concentration, (2) Confidence, (3) Memory, (4) Academic performance, (5) Power of understanding, (6) Attitude towards parents, (6) Self-motivation, and (7) Reduced cell-phone and TV use. Parents and the children enthusiastically corroborated these benefits, one of the fathers telling the author that their younger son too will enroll in the program soon. These children are bound to be better leaders and better human beings in adulthood.
The author asked the parents to speculate, having seen the benefits in their own children, whether this training might keep them out of trouble with such things as illicit drugs and they said, yes. Gurumahan too concurred with this hypothesis. Independent of how many children stay away from illicit drugs in adulthood, the other benefits cited are significant enough.
Neither David R. Hawkins nor Gurumahan had participated in an Aha Dharana type program and yet both possess a high level of intuition. The author and the associates of Gurumahan at his Ashram have witnessed numerous examples of his high level of intuition and the experiments and publications of Hawkins are a testimony to his enhanced intuitive faculty. Meditation is the source of their enhanced intuitive faculty, and over time, aspirants too will begin to experience the benefits of meditative practices.
Intense meditative practices can produce massive firing of motor command neurons and a concomitant rapid motion of the pendulum. The author’s friend Sanjeev Aroskar in Pune provided a video clip that is available on YouTube under the name Aroskar Experiment (Aroskar, 2019). The viewer will notice that the hand holding the pendulum is not still and so a doubt may arise if the movement of the hand is primarily responsible for the high speed of rotation. Conduct the experiment for yourself and it will be clear that such is not the case.
Rising levels of intuition translates into higher levels of internal/emotional excellence. A scientific framework for external and internal excellence has a number of applications: Health and wellness (Deshpande, 2018), Creativity and Innovation (Deshpande, 2019), Pursuit of exemplary performance (Deshpande, 2019), Leadership (August 2019), Inspiring children to take up STEM (Deshpande (2019), and Peace (Deshpande, 2019). All of these ideas should be of interest to college students as they are the leaders of tomorrow.
To Conclude
A scientific approach to self-assessment and enhancement of intuition is presented. The ideas and concepts presented should be valuable as intuitive skills are now widely accepted to be valuable in leadership. The path forward to higher levels of intuition of children is Aha Dharana program that involves simple yogic exercises and meditation is the route to higher levels of intuition for adults. Since a truth meter to estimate our intuitive capacity is available, progress can be audited.
About H. H. Gurumahan and Universal Peace Foundation
Gurumahan is Founder of Universal Peace Foundation. He has been going into meditation for three weeks every year with no food for world peace for the past twenty-nine years. UPF provides food at no cost to two-hundred poor people daily in the nearby villages. UPF volunteers have been conducting yoga programs in eight correctional facilities in the state of Tamil Nadu. UPF North America volunteers have completed a yoga program in the correctional facilities in Omaha, Nebraska, for a year for both the prisoners and the officials. That contract has since been renewed.
In 2011, the Governor of Nebraska and the Mayor of Omaha, issued a proclamation lauding the efforts of Gurumahan and designating November 11, 2011 as Global Peace Day. Gurumahan is a recipient of the Ambassador for Peace Award from the Universal Peace Federation, Malaysia.
References
Aha Dharana Intuition Enhancement Program Video Clip (2019). Universal Peace Foundation, Thirumurthi Hills, TN, India. (https://youtu.be/lJQ48QMJNx0)
Aroskar, Sanjeev A. (2019, July 19). Aroskar Experiment. (https://youtu.be/vB3lScdKt_U).
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