The Metaphysics of Sleep...

Locke, gave high but justified testimony when he declared that “the thoughts that come often unsought, and, as it were, drop into the mind, are commonly the most valuable of any we have.”

The intuition offers in a single emphatic flash that which the intellect may arrive at only as the last result of many long continued reflections and many different physical experiences.

Where reason cannot think out the right solution of a perplexity, intuition can step triumphantly forward with an immediate presentation of it.

Reasoning is self conscious, active and inquisitive whereas intuition is spontaneous, receptive and passive. An intuition need have no logical connection with former thinking.

Hence it may open up an entirely new horizon on that particular subject.

This we may now easily understand because we have already granted the mind a power to be active in its own mysterious way, which enables it to dispense with thinking and yet send up its results to the surface consciousness.

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The Wisdom of the Overself, Chapter V, The Metaphysics of Sleep, "The Source of Intuition and Inspiration." Paul Brunton