Intuition cannot be explained scientifically because the very phenomenon is unscientific and irrational. The very phenomenon of intuition is irrational. In language it looks okay to ask, "Can intuition be explained?" But it means, "Can intuition be reduced to intellect?" And intuition is something beyond the intellect, something not of the intellect, something coming from some place where intellect is totally unaware. So the intellect can feel it, but it cannot explain it.

The leap of intuition can be felt because there is a gap. Intuition can be felt by the intellect -- it can be noted that something has happened -- but it cannot be explained, because explanation needs causality. Explanation means to answer the question from where does it come, why does it come, what is the cause. And it comes from somewhere else, not from the intellect itself -- so there is no intellectual cause. There is no reason, no link, no continuity within the intellect.

Intuition is a different realm of happening that is not related to the intellect at all, although it can penetrate the intellect. It must be understood that a higher reality can penetrate a lower reality, but the lower cannot penetrate the higher. So intuition can penetrate intellect because it is higher, but intellect cannot penetrate intuition because it is lower.

It is just like your mind can penetrate your body, but your body cannot penetrate the mind. Your being can penetrate the mind, but the mind cannot penetrate the being. That is why, if you are going into the being, you have to separate yourself from body and mind both. They cannot penetrate a higher phenomenon.

As you go into a higher reality, the lower world of happenings has to be dropped. There is no explanation of the higher in the lower because the very terms of explanation don't exist there; they are meaningless. But the intellect can feel the gap, it can know the gap. It can come to feel that "something has happened that is beyond me." If even this much can be done, the intellect has done much.

But intellect can also reject what has happened. That is what is meant by having faith or not having faith. If you feel that what cannot be explained by the intellect does not exist, then you are a "non-believer." Then you will continue in this lower existence of the intellect, tethered to it. Then you disallow mystery, then you disallow intuition to speak to you.

This is what a rationalist is. The rationalist will not even see that something from the beyond has come. If you are rationally trained, you will not allow the higher; you will deny it, you will say, "It cannot be. It must be my imagination; it must be my dream. Unless I can prove it rationally, I will not accept it." A rational mind becomes closed, closed within the boundaries of reasoning, and intuition cannot penetrate.

But you can use the intellect without being closed. Then you can use reason as an instrument, and you remain open. You are receptive to the higher; if something comes, you are receptive. Then you can use your intellect as a help. It notes that "something has happened that is beyond me." It can help you to understand this gap.

Beyond that, intellect can be used for expression -- not for explanation, for expression. A buddha does not "explain" anything. He is expressive, but nonexplanatory. All the Upanishads are expressive without any explanations. They say, "This is such, this is so; this is what is happening. If you want, come in. Do not stand outside; no explanation is possible from the inside to the outside. So come in -- become an insider."

Even if you come inside, things will not be explained to you; you will come to know and feel them. Intellect can try to understand, but it is bound to be a failure. The higher cannot be reduced to the lower.

Intuition travels without any vehicle -- that is why it is a jump; that is why it is a leap. It is a jump from one point to another point, with no interconnection between the two. 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 that comes to you in steps. 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 were not sudden, not completely discontinuous with what went before, then reason would discover the path. It would take time, but it could be done. Reason would be capable of knowing and understanding and controlling it. Then any day an instrument could be developed, just like radio or TV, in which intuitions could be received.

If intuition came through rays or waves, then we could make an instrument to receive them. But 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's 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 will someday be known. But mysticism says that there are three realms: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. By the unknowable, the mystic 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 -- there is no link, 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.

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."

The mystic, on the other hand, says, "Whatever you do, something in the very foundation of existence will remain unknowable -- a mystery." And if the mystics are 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:

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, which reason is incapable of conceiving.