The psychologist Carl Gustav Jung defined intuition as “perception via the unconscious”: using sense-perception only as a starting point, to bring forth ideas, images, possibilities, ways out of a blocked situation, by a process that is mostly unconscious.  I prefer the term subconscious, because unconscious sounds like someone has been hit over the head and lost consciousness. 

Sense perception:  Your brain is enclosed in a dark skull, there are no windows, – the only way it can receive and process information, is by what you tell it to believe, and of course through your senses, that feed it information – most of this is processed by the thalamus.  Most of the incoming information provided by the senses, is processed subconsciously.

People often deny or demean gut feelings as hocus pocus stuff.  Actually gut feelings are not just hunches, they are very real.  It is your body’s way of alerting you to a potentially dangerous situation. The brain regions for the early warning system (a gut feeling) is the locus ceruleus, situated in the brain stem, the most primitive part of the brain, atop the spine.  It responds to novelty and promotes a state of arousal and heightens your vigilance. It activates the sympathetic fight or flight nervous system.

So your senses alert your primitive brain, overriding the higher cognitive functions, sending messages via your vagus nerve between your gut or stomach and your brain –The gut is commanded by the enteric nervous system – your stomach has a brain!

Now a word on Brain waves – our normal awake conscious functioning occurs at a Beta brainwave level – at 16 – 20 hertz. Below that lies Alpha, the creative brain wave, at 8 – 13 hertz, Alpha is in charge of our heightened sensory experiences.

Below that lies Theta – at 3 – 8 hertz that dreamy state we experience just before we sink into the Delta deep sleep.  Theta is associated with that loving feeling of being one with others – which I described in a previous article as Theory of Mind – the compassion that psychologists have developed to “pick up” on the emotions of their clients and patients.  Below Theta lies Delta – below 3 hertz. 

Usually in Delta state the brain is in deep sleep mode, but you can train your brain to experience a delta state when you are awake. The Greek symbol DELTA, means change or transition – this is where you transcend your humanness and reach spirituality – you tune in to energy.

Energy is neither good or bad – quantum physics teaches us about electrons and positrons. We also know everything can be broken down into atoms, but I am not going into all of that now, I am not a quantum physicist – but even emotions have energy.  World renown psychiatrist, Sir Dr David Hawkins explained in his book Power vs Force in detail that emotions have measurable energy and can foster or negate actual cell life. So, if there has been a strong emotional expenditure at a place, the residue energy is still there. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.

And serial killers’ crime scenes are laden with strong emotions – both on the side of the killer and the victim. 

So when I sit a crime scene, my brain waves descend from Alpha to Theta to Delta, and I ‘pick up the energy vibration’ on a subconscious level – and then it takes time for it to translate into a more understandable ‘feeling’ in my mind.

Dr Justin James Kennedy in an article in Psychology Today discusses neuroception – how a heightened sense of intuition can influence decision making, problem solving and creativity. Neuroception was coined by Professor Stephen Porges of the University of North Carolina, and it refers to our ability to detect safety and danger cues in the environment without conscious awareness – it is also active within a social context – it allows us to read between the lines, pick up on unspoken emotions, sense the atmosphere in a room – or on a crime scene. Your intuition would warn you not to trust a stranger, even when your need for financial security – Maslow’s second tier – prompts you to believe his promise of employment –

Intuition and neuroception is what aided me on those crime scenes – getting into the mind of the killer – it’s scientific – nothing hocus pocus about it.

Featured image: The Charmer by John William Waterhouse (1911) (Public Domain)