Intuition is a Jump

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Q: Doesn’t intuition come to one through thought waves that are just like radio waves?

This, again, will be very difficult to explain. If intuition comes through some kind of waves, then sooner or later the intellect will be able to explain it.

Osho

It comes without any medium; that is the point. It comes without a vehicle! It travels without any vehicle, that is why it is a jump, that is why it is a leap. If some waves are there and it comes to you through those waves, then it is not a jump, it is not a leap.

It is a jump from one point to another point, with no interconnection between the two; that is why it is a jump. If I come to you step by step, it is not a jump; only if I come to you without any steps is it a jump. And a real jump is even deeper: it means that something exists on point A and then it exists on point B, and between the two there is no existence. That is a real jump.

Intuition is a jump. It is not something coming to you; that is a linguistic error. It is not something coming to you: it is something happening to you, not coming to you – something happening to you without any causality anywhere, without any source anywhere. This sudden happening means intuition. If it is not sudden, not completely discontinuous with what went before, then reason will discover the path. It will take time, but it can be done. If some X-rays, some waves or anything are carrying it to you, reason will be capable of knowing and understanding and controlling it. Then any day an instrument can be developed – just like radio or TV – in which intuitions can be received.

If intuition comes through rays or waves, then we can make an instrument to receive them… No instrument can pick up intuition because it is not a wave phenomenon. It is not a phenomenon at all; it is just a leap from nothing to being.

Intuition means just that. That is why reason denies it. Reason denies it because reason is incapable of encountering it; reason can only encounter phenomena that can be divided into cause and effect.

According to reason there are two realms of existence: the known and the unknown. And the unknown means that which is not yet known, but someday will be known. But religion says that there are three realms: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. By the unknowable religion means that which can never be known.

Intellect is involved with the known and the unknown, not with the unknowable, and intuition works with the unknowable, with that which cannot be known. It is not just a question of time before it will be known; “unknowability” is its intrinsic quality. It is not that your instruments are not fine enough or your logic not up to date or your mathematics primitive – that is not the question. The intrinsic quality of the unknowable is unknowability; it will always exist as the unknowable. This is the realm of intuition.

When something from the unknowable comes to be known, it is a jump. It is a jump! There is no interlink, there is no passage, there is no going from one point to another point. But it seems inconceivable, so when I say, “You can feel it, but you cannot understand it,” when I say such things, I know very well that I am uttering nonsense. Nonsense only means “that which cannot be understood by our senses.” And mind is a sense, the most subtle, and wisdom is a sense.

Intuition is possible because the unknowable is there. Science denies the existence of the divine because it says, “There is only one division: the known and the unknown. If there is any God, we will discover him through laboratory methods. If he exists, science will discover him.”

Religion, on the other hand, says, “Whatever you do, something in the very foundation of existence will remain unknowable – a mystery.” And if religion is not right then I think that science is going to destroy the whole meaning of life. If there is no mystery, the whole meaning of life is destroyed and the whole beauty is destroyed. The unknowable is the beauty, the meaning, the aspiration, the goal. Because of the unknowable, life means something. When everything is known, then everything is flat. You will be fed up, bored. The unknowable is the secret; it is life itself.

I will say this: that reason is an effort to know the unknown and intuition is the happening of the unknowable. To penetrate the unknowable is possible, but to explain it is not. The feeling is possible; the explanation is not.

The more you try to explain it the more closed you will become, so do not try. Let reason work in its own field, but remember continuously that there are deeper realms. There are deeper reasons which reason cannot understand, higher reasons that reason is incapable of conceiving.

Osho, Meditation: The Art of Ecstasy, Ch 13, Q 2

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