The Mystical Nature of Intuition
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Bob Woodward gave two must-watch interviews on November 7th, one to Sarah Ferguson of Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Bob Woodward said Donald Trump will be governed by his instincts during a second term as US president) and the other to Ari Melber of MSNBC (Danger’: Trump’s WH return risks bad instincts and war says icon Bob Woodward). These interviews appear to have generated quite an interest in the topic of instinct.
Instinct, intuition, hunch, and gut feel are all synonyms. They refer to knowing something without the benefit of the five senses and the rational mind. Intuition is also linked to the Sanskrit expression, Shruti, meaning revealed. A considerable amount of ancient Indian wisdom has come to us as Shruti.
Why Intuition is Important
Intuition is incredibly important to everyone but especially to leaders as they are often tasked to make split-second decisions at a moment’s notice.
How Intuition Can Be Measured
There are at least two methods for measuring intuition: (1) Muscle Testing from the field of kinesiology, and (2) Rudraksha Mala.
Muscle Testing. The late Dr. David R. Hawkins, MD developed a test that requires 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. See this video clip, Lada Lysniak Interviewing Dr. David R. Hawkins for a demonstration.
Dr. Hawkins authored several books including one with Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling.
Monte et al., used Hawkins’ muscle testing procedure but with a computer-assisted dynamometer-based system to apply the downward pressure to eliminate bias. The team conducted a muscle-test investigation with 87 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. The results of their investigation are depicted in Figure 1. Unfortunately, in their investigation, the subjects knew what the correct responses were (e. g., my name is … OR I am a US citizen). When testing for the intuitive capacity, the subjects would not know what the correct answers are.
(with Permission from Daniel A. Monti, MD)
(2) Rudraksha Mala. In ancient times, Rudraksha Mala (rosary made of the seeds of the Rudraksha tree) was thought to have been used by the wandering sages in the Himalayas to discern if water, fruits, etc., were safe to consume. That idea can be adapted to discern truth from falsehood. The adapted measurement device is a crystal pendulum hung with a chain and a glass bead attached at the other end as shown in Figure 2. These pendulums are commercially available for a low price for anyone who wishes to conduct these experiments.
Let us say, there are two small bottles, one contains drinking water and the other contains a colorless liquid such as vodka. To test a subject’s intuition, ask the subject to hold the pendulum with two fingers a couple of inches above one of the bottles and see what happens. The subject undergoing the test must not know which bottle contains what. For water, the pendulum is expected to rotate clockwise looking down, and for alcohol, the pendulum is expected to rotate counterclockwise also looking down. If the subject gets correct answers numerous times, then, the subject’s intuition would be deemed to be excellent, otherwise, it is not.
Hint, to get the correct answer, it is necessary to be open-minded, willing to think outside the box and not have a preconceived notion of what the correct answer is, otherwise the pendulum will give you the answer you have in mind.
How Intuition May Be Enhanced
My Guru, H. H. Gurumahan’s Universal Peace Foundation conducts a seven-day yoga program for children in the 6–14 years age group to enhance their intuitive faculty. The program goes by the name “Aha Dharana”, meaning “Inner Focus” in Tamil, and has graduated 350 children so far. At the end of seven days, the children are able to read, draw, write, identify colors, find hidden objects etc., blind-folded which means their intuitive faculty has shot up. The training program success rate is 80%. I have witnessed a demonstration of the program. The process is simple enough for the children to follow. See this video clip.
Also see this video clip where teenager Vanshi Chauhan is shown reading from a book the Sony Entertainment TV team provided, blind-folded on Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan’s hugely popular TV program, Kaun Banega Crorepati (India’s version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire).
Link of Intuition and Melatonin Levels. Gurumahan suggests that intuition is linked to Melatonin Levels. Melatonin levels peak during puberty and drop for the rest of our lives as depicted in Figure 3.
Intuition, Mindfulness and Emotional Excellence
In the demonstration session organized for my benefit, the parents of children have told me that they have seen a significant jump in the children’s emotional excellence as well. The children’s academic performance, emotional traits, interpersonal skills, etc., all improved. Gurumahan suggests that such children are less apt to fall prey to addiction during adulthood. Therefore, the intuition enhancement program should be conducted during childhood.
Nonetheless, I have a hunch that the program will bring about an improvement in mindfulness in adults as mindfulness is a step towards intuition, and perhaps an enhancement in emotional excellence even though they may not possess the intuitive faculty which would permit them to discern truth from falsehood. Mindfulness is important in all walks of life.
Importance of Emotional Excellence
Intuition and emotional excellence appear to be linked. We have seen numerous instances of a high levels of intuition as well as emotional excellence in Gurumahan.
Emotional excellence can be inferentially measured. We all have trillions of cells in our bodies. Each cell contains a nucleus that houses 46x,y (or 46x,x for females) chromosomes, cytoplasm, and a cell wall. If we break down the cells further, we will find that they are made up of atoms. Atoms have a nucleus which houses protons and neutrons and there are electrons that orbit them. Thus, they are vibrating all the time. Thus, our vibrational characteristics is our fundamental nature. Unfortunately, our five senses aren’t sufficiently sensitive to perceive these vibrations. For measurement purposes, they must be stimulated and amplified.
In one approach to measurement of our vibrational characteristics with a device which goes by the name Bio-Well, a harmless electrical current is applied to the ten fingers of the subject’s hands placed on the glass electrode of the device connected to the USB port of a computer, one at a time, and the resulting burst of photons are captured whose area and intensity are measured and analyzed with software. In the context of this article, the analysis produces three results: Pranic energy, stress and chakra alignment against the central vertical line. Each of these three parameters have a normal range. For example, energy should be in the range 50–70x10–3 J, Stress around 2.0 on a scale of 0 to 10, and chakra alignment > 90%. For a person with a high level of emotional excellence and who is reasonably healthy, pranic energy and stress levels are expected to be in normal range and chakra alignment of 95% or higher. See this video clip showing how the measurement is made.
The measurement is painless, noninvasive and takes only a few minutes. As an example, my parameters at the start of a yoga program in Bangalore in 2017 were: Pranic energy = 66.93 Jx10–3, Stress = 2.01 and chakra alignment = 90% and at the end of the third day, the parameters were Pranic Energy = 70.78x10–3J, stress = 1.98, and chakra alignment = 93%.
My research spanning more than a decade has discovered that a high level of emotional excellence is strongly linked to exemplary performance, creativity and innovativeness, interpersonal skills and less discord and violence. Combining these benefits with their link to intuition, emotional excellence would appear to emerge as a skillset worth cultivating.
Acknowledgments
This article is written with the blessings of H. H. Gurumahan, Founder, Universal Peace Foundation (www.universalpeacefoundation.org). Gurumahan has been going into three weeks of meditation with no food annually for world peace for the last thirty-three years.
About the Author
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Pradeep B. Deshpande is Professor Emeritus in and former Chairman of the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Louisville. He is also president of Six Sigma and Advanced Controls based in Louisville, Kentucky. He is an author of eight books and over one hundred fifty articles in reputed journals that include Proc. Royal Society–UK, Chemical Eng. Progress, Ind. Eng. Chem. Proc. Des Dev, Chem. Eng. Science, among several others, and is a recipient of several international awards. He is a Fellow of ISA. pradeep@sixsigmaquality.com.
