Q&A: I Just Thought of You – Intuition Beyond Reason
I Just Thought of You – Intuition Beyond Reason
Question
Hello Rabbi Michael,
I’ve seen a number of times on the site that you argue that there is no such thing as “beyond reason”—and that intuition and any creative thought and the like are nothing but the product of the subconscious within us—if I understood correctly.
So how do you explain the common phenomenon that thousands of people claim (I’m one of them) that they thought of a person a second before he called, or other examples in different situations? [I once heard a tour guide (not religious or anything like that) who was stabbed by Arabs, and in her story on the radio she said that some time before the Arabs appeared she took a small pocketknife out of her bag that she had with her, and when the interviewer asked why, she answered: “I don’t know, maybe intuition…”]
You can say “coincidence”—but it seems more plausible to go with Rabbi Chaim’s approach, that when many questions appear, there is one underlying principle… and its name is intuition.
It may be that you answered this in the past—I didn’t find it, and if so, my apologies.
Thanks in advance
Answer
I didn’t say it’s the subconscious. It’s intuition. I’ve written this dozens and hundreds of times, and you’re presenting it as though there’s some alternative proposal here to mine. Amazing.
Intuition is the foundation of our thinking, and therefore it is not “beyond reason.”
What you’re describing regarding these encounters can also be intuition. Notice that you’re talking about cognition, not thought. You know something not through the senses. By the way, some of these events have completely logical explanations. For example, you heard something from him from a distance even before the encounter, and then the encounter happened, and so on.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t understand a word. I explained everything. The terminology of soul-levels doesn’t help the discussion here, or anywhere else. It only obscures things.
I don’t understand what’s unclear in my question—but from my brief acquaintance with you, the gap between us is probably big… not everyone is as talented as you—it’s probably beyond me…
Thanks anyway.
I didn’t fully grasp what you mean.
What does it mean to say “the foundation of thought”? How can a person think something that will happen a second from now? [Leaving aside the explanation at the end of your words, that I heard something from him earlier—let’s assume that didn’t happen.]
And it is through the senses, but spiritual senses that exist in the soul [I apologize if that’s not part of the lexicon here, but as far as I’m concerned it exists (maybe for you too, I don’t know)]—and if you want, and maybe this is what you mean, everything is included under “reason,” which also includes transmission that can’t be clearly explained.
Thanks for the quick and generally very efficient response on the site.