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The Times Literary Supplement for March 17, 2017 has a review, by Brad Inwood, of Peter T. Struck’s book, Divination and Human Nature: A cognitive history of intuition in classical antiquity [Princeton University Press, $45].

Reviewer Inwood notes that “both psychology and epistemology [were once] sharply distinguished [but] are now being reunited in some of the most exciting empirical work in philosophy and cognitive science.” [Page 16]

And book author Struck, in his book, presents “a compelling account of the great Stoic Posidonius, who … in the context of a physical theory … emphasized the interconnectedness of the cosmos and all its parts, including the human mind.” [ibid]

“And … Struck offers a highly perceptive analysis of the Neoplatonic philosopher Iamblichus who took divination in a wholly new direction, tying it not to knowledge about the natural world we live in, but instead casting intuition as a special line of communication to the Divine, a transcendent world from which special truth can be funnelled [sic] down to specially gifted humans. [ibid. italics mine]

“Early theorists, even Plato, limited divination and related phenomena to knowledge about the mundane world, and even the sober Aristotle recognized that gifted dream-diviners had a way of getting at facts about the natural world that most people of normal mental talents could not access. It is reassuring, in an odd way, that on Aristotle’s theory such insight is made possible by the limited intelligence of the diviner: too much conscious rational analysis swamps the frail channels that open the diviner up to subtle causal influences from the world. Being able to sense truths in dreams is not a mark of god’s favour or a special kind of intelligence, but is in part a matter of lacking the normal mental strengths that the rest of us rely on.” [ibid, italics mine]

What this means, to me, is that those who have mental limitations, the uneducated and lower classes of human society, see and have access to things that those who are better educated (and in the higher classes of society) do not – because the “educated” have cluttered their minds with the complex and “irrelevant aspects” of their lives, while simple folk cut to the chase, as it were, seeing and accessing visions that lie outside the “normal world of economic or worldly pursuits.”

The peasantry, or proletariat, as I once called some UFO buffs, are simpletons, in a way, and, thus, have or get access to (or study) other realities that the rest of society doesn’t contend with.

This “gift” to the poor and impoverished elements in society produce UFO encounters or visions of divinity (Mary, the mother of Christ, or even God, itself, in a burning bush).

RR