Yogi Bhajan Lecture: Intuition vs Thinking

Listen to this full video lecture by Yogi Bhajan given on May 23, 1989 in Rome, Italy or read these excerpts.

All knowledge is not to think, but to create a think tank, that’s called intuition. The purpose of study and every sadhana and everything is to be become intuitive. You have your perfect think tank in your computer to supplement and compliment you on the walk of life, so you can accomplish without time and space. Understood? Good.

Without intuition you have no defense; you have no horns, no hoofs, and no skin hard enough to protect you. You have nothing on your body to protect you. You have intellect to develop intuition through intelligence, so that you can always be conscious of the known and the unknown of the projection and the rejection, into the guidance of tomorrow with the strength of today, with the experience of yesterday. Simple as it is, that is a million dollar statement.

You can only pre-organize with intuition; you cannot do it with thinking. Thinking only will bring your past into today, and those who live in the past have no future. You want to go to the North Pole but if you walk towards the South Pole, you will have double distance to go. Nobody knows if you will make it or not. Pre-organize is to have intuition.

How can you pre-organize without intuition? What are you going to face? Intuitively you know what you are going to face, you are ready for it. Thinking is a waste of time: conflict, logic, argue, bring the feeling out, take the emotions out, see how you can cheat, how you can lie, how you can get by, how you can get over, how you can get under, how you can harpoon, how you can get it, how you can fish it out. The whole dirty game—it is garbage.

Doubt is a self-bout in which we hassle with our intelligence—doubt, doubt, doubt. Doubt is a self-bout in which we hassle between our intelligence and consciousness. When the intelligence will be with the ego, you have doubt. Change the intelligence to the consciousness and you shall be clear. Doubt is: may be/maybe not, should we/should we not, can I/can I not. Intuition and consciousness can tell you, can you/can you not, may be/may not be, is it/is it not. 

We get thousands of thoughts and we start thinking and life is lost. With intuition you feel it, sense it, experience what the other person is saying. But you don’t experience anything; you start thinking about what he is saying, what it means, how it can be, may be/may not be—because you have three minds: negative, positive, and neutral. 

Negative mind gives you the right of life; it will always tell you what is the danger in it. Whatever comes to you, the negative mind’s job is to tell you what the danger is. Then the positive mind’s job should be to tell you what is good in it, but normally the positive mind doesn’t do that because you don’t train it. So what the positive mind does is go into the record of the subconscious and reaffirm your doubt and your negativity. The neutral mind is supposed to tell you what to do, which you never touch. How can life be happy when it is totally based on negativity and negative confirmation; then you waste your time thinking about where is the problem. Problem is you are handling it. Don’t think, use intuition, develop it to sort it out and complete everything for you as it is coming.

If you want intuition to open you automatically, learn the law of obedience. The law of obedience is that you obey to use your strength to accomplish what you are expected to accomplish—that is obedience to life. That is obedience to self. Obedience does not mean to obey another man. Obedience means you obey your own self, your own integrity, your own dignity, your own potential, your own reality—and then serve it, make it, nurture it, make it happy. Then love it, be proud of it, be happy about it, dance about it, laugh about it, be joyful about it, and then you will excel, you will be experienced, you will be specialist, you will be trusted, you will have established goodwill, you will be intuitive.