How to separate intuitive wisdom from wishful thinking

I appreciate letter-writer IMP of Chiang Mai’s observation that existence is a unity, all we have is one reality, and there is no separation. This is the view of Advaita Vedanta and other forms of monism. Enlightened people whose perception pierces to the heart of things may agree, but those of us who are unenlightened have to struggle with the diversity of the phenomenal world, where dualistic language is unavoidable.

Existence is an abstract concept. We might conceive of it as a unity; but if it is a unity, it manifests itself as diversity. Thus the famous passage 1.164.46 of the Rig Veda, which says, “That [Being] is one; sages call it by various names”, and the Taittiriya Upanishad 2.6.1, “He [the Supreme Soul] desired, ‘Let me be many, let me be born.”

Is intuition an infallible arbiter of truth? What we like to think of as intuition is often nothing more than imagination, which is fond of wishful thinking. Separating the intuitive wheat from the imaginative chaff is the problem, and one way to work on it is to use the intellect. I don’t believe many religions encourage us to use our brains, but (as Mahatma Gandhi said of Western civilisation) it would be a good idea. 

William Page