The Immediacy of Knowing
Explore how instant understanding, from gut feelings to intuition, could happen before conscious thought.
What's it like not being telepathic?
This wonderfully impossible question, posed by my mum (who was blind from birth) when asked "What's it like being blind?", cuts right to the heart of something profound. It's a question that highlights the comical yet poignant impossibility of truly explaining one unique way of experiencing the world to another. And it’s a question that’s at the core of this exploration into immediate knowing.
We all experience moments where understanding seems to arrive fully formed, bypassing conscious thought. We might instantly 'sense' a friend's distress, 'know' a joke has landed (or hasn't), or feel the kettle is about to boil just before we hear its distinctive burble. This article delves into the instantaneous grasp of meaning, insight, or information that happens before our deliberate, step-by-step thinking kicks in. It's understanding that lands as a complete impression, not a pieced-together puzzle.
I'll unpick different flavours of this immediacy – from quick perceptions to complex gut feelings – and show how various forms of intelligence, from human intuition to animal instinct, embody this instant knowing through wildly different "architectures of experience." I'll also touch on the philosophical debates around consciousness, carefully stepping away from mere speculation, and address some common questions. And, ultimately, I will return to the "telepathy question" as a lens through which to appreciate the sheer wonder of diverse ways of knowing.
Let’s start with a classic puzzle: if a tree falls in the forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a sound? A delightful squabble for pub gardens. But for our purposes, let’s tweak it: if understanding happens before conscious thought, when, precisely, does "knowing" actually occur? Does the meaning of this sentence truly come together in your mind before your inner voice has had a chance to comment on it? It's a bit like trying to catch smoke.
We all inhabit the present moment, but we do so through utterly different ways of experiencing, each with its own unique "texture of now." This profound, often unspoken, way of perceiving is the foundation of immediate knowing.
To try to get it a bit clearer; immediate knowing is that rapid, pre-conscious understanding that happens below the level of explicit, step-by-step reasoning. It's when insight arrives as a whole. Maybe some examples would help:
Seeing It Instantly (Perceptual Immediacy): Think of recognising a friend's face in a crowd, or knowing a familiar tune from just a few notes. This happens lightning-fast in our brains, giving us a complete picture before we consciously "figure it out."
The Gut Feeling (Intuitive Immediacy): This is that 'hunch' or sudden flash of insight in tricky situations. An experienced doctor might instantly know a diagnosis without consciously listing symptoms, or an artist might make a spontaneous creative choice. It draws on a vast store of past experience and pattern recognition, bypassing step-by-step logic.
Feeling It Right Away (Emotional Immediacy): You instantly sense someone's anger or feel a sudden surge of fear. This rapid, automatic registration of emotions is driven by ancient parts of our brain, like the amygdala, before conscious thought catches up.
Grasping the Whole Picture (Architectural Immediacy): This is a more abstract type, where you understand the underlying relationships or dynamics of a situation. It's 'knowing' the mood of a room, or seeing how all the pieces of a complex concept fit together.
These different kinds of immediacy often blend, creating a rich, layered understanding that arrives before we even know how we know it.
Imagine walking into a room. Most of us would say we "see" the room – the chairs, the walls, the slightly crooked picture. That's surface perception. But how often do you immediately "know" the mood of the room? Whether an argument just finished, if it’s a friendly gathering, or if someone's been gossiping? That’s an example of architectural immediacy. It's the instant grasp of the situation's unspoken structure, the invisible currents and connections, without needing to analyse every facial expression or scattered object.
This is the core of human immediacy: sensing the mood, knowing where you are in space without calculating angles, picking up on social cues, feeling that subtle shift in a conversation that signals tension. It's knowing the chair is there, but also knowing, somehow, its implicit history, its purpose, its relationship to other furniture, all at once. This instant, holistic grasp of structure, rather than a step-by-step assembly of facts, is what defines the "immediacy of knowing." We’re constantly immersed in it, often without even realising.
Our conscious minds, for all their self-importance, are often just playing catch-up. They're the charming narrators, spinning tales of logic and deduction, while the real work of knowing has already been done behind the scenes.
Think about reading. When you read this sentence, do you consciously break down each word, understand its individual meaning, then combine them to form the sentence, and then grasp the main idea? Not likely. Meaning for whole phrases, or even paragraphs, often lands as a complete idea (a form of perceptual and intuitive immediacy), long before your inner voice has had time to sound it out. Our eye movements show that our brains anticipate meaning, processing information in parallel, not always in a neat line.
It's the same with emotions. You just "know" someone is upset. You haven't run through a mental checklist: 'furrowed brow, yes; downturned mouth, yes; slight tremor in voice, yes... therefore, upset.' No, the knowing is instant, a whole picture, a clear example of emotional immediacy. Our brain's fast, automatic "System 1" (as described by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky) has already processed countless subtle cues – micro-expressions, body language, vocal tone – using dedicated brain networks, and delivered the verdict before our slower, more deliberate "System 2" has even stretched its philosophical legs.
And then there's driving a car: you don't consciously calculate distances, anticipate every obstacle, or chart every turn. Your unconscious mind is doing that with astounding precision. Or consider walking into a noisy party: you can instantly pick out your name being spoken across the room, even amidst a cacophony of other conversations (ok, perhaps this is stretching the analogies a little, but, still, you get it…right?). This intricate blend of rapid processing is another example of intuitive and architectural immediacy.
This leads to a fascinating thought: how much of what we call "thinking" is actually just our conscious mind creating a believable story for knowledge that arrived instantly? We get the immediate “download” of "knowing," and then our conscious mind scrambles to build a plausible narrative for how we knew it, creating the illusion of a logical, step-by-step process. This phenomenon, known as confabulation or rationalisation, is where we make up plausible, but often untrue, explanations for our actions or beliefs after they've occurred. Our storytelling mind is always trying to make sense of our knowing mind, often after the fact. It’s like frantically tidying up before guests arrive and pretending everything was always perfectly ordered.
For example: How do you know when someone is lying? Before you can explain why, before you can consciously list the nervous fidgeting, the lack of eye contact, or the slight voice change, you often just know. It's a gut feeling, an immediate insight (intuitive immediacy). Only later, if pressed, do you build the logical explanation, fitting the conscious 'evidence' to support the instant 'truth'. This highlights the vast, hidden foundation of knowledge that underpins our seemingly rational conscious processes. It’s where the real magic happens, leaving our conscious minds to take all the credit.
You might wonder if "immediate knowing" is simply extremely fast conscious thinking, so quick it seems instantaneous. However, there's a real difference. Studies where information is flashed so quickly we don't consciously see it (subliminal priming) show that our brains still process it and it can influence our behaviour. Also, in cases of brain damage, people can react accurately to things they're not consciously aware of, showing that these rapid processes work independently of conscious thought. So, immediate knowing isn't just speed; it's a fundamental way we take in information that happens before we deliberately think about it.
Crucially, while immediate knowing is powerful, our conscious, reflective thought plays an equally vital role. System 1 might deliver a quick judgment, but System 2 is essential for scrutinising, correcting, and deepening that initial insight. For instance, our immediate knowing might lead to biases (e.g., jumping to conclusions about someone based on a quick impression), but deliberate reasoning allows us to identify and correct these biases. Reflective thought enables us to weigh evidence, consider alternative perspectives, and engage in complex problem-solving that goes beyond instant pattern recognition. It's the deliberative process that allows for careful planning, ethical consideration, and the construction of nuanced arguments, building upon or even challenging the immediate "downloads" we receive. Thus, immediate knowing and reflective thought are not adversaries, but complementary aspects of a rich and adaptive cognitive system.
Our human way of immediate knowing is just one blueprint. Other forms of intelligence, both natural and, indeed, within ourselves beyond conscious thought, inhabit wildly different "now" architectures.
My mum’s brilliant "what’s it like not being telepathic?" wasn't just a witty comeback (and, perhaps, intentionally slightly difficult, too - and knowing her, this is all but certain); it was a profound insight into the unbridgeable gap between different ways of knowing. For her, "watching things" meant experiencing and understanding the world through sounds, textures, smells, and memories of space. Her "now" was rich with auditory landscapes and tactile information, forming a complete and consistent reality that didn't lack sight, it simply wasn't sight.
Language itself often goes beyond its sensory roots. We "see" what someone means, regardless of whether we can literally see. This shows our brain's amazing flexibility, its ability to build coherent "knowing" from vastly different sensory inputs. Metaphors are our best tool for bridging these experiential gaps, but also our biggest limitation – they reveal similarities while hiding huge, fundamental differences. Try explaining the colour blue to someone born blind; someone without any visual reference points whatsoever. It’s the telepathy question all over again.
Beyond human consciousness, the animal kingdom offers countless examples of immediate knowing built into action, sometimes without any conscious thought at all.
How does a bird "know" to migrate thousands of miles, navigating by the Earth's magnetic field, the sun, or stars? This is an innate, deeply ingrained form of knowing – an instinct, a clear example of embodied immediacy. Their biology and brain are pre-wired with this knowledge, activating in response to seasonal cues. It's not a conscious decision, it just happens. A testament to evolved neural pathways and natural triggers.
Think of the mesmerising, almost impossible coordination of a bird flock or a fish school. Thousands of individuals moving as one, turning together, avoiding predators, without obvious communication or a central leader. This is collective intelligence, a form of distributed immediate knowing. Each individual's quick response to its neighbours creates a larger, coherent pattern. The 'knowledge' of where to go lives not in one mind, but in how many individuals interact. Research into "swarm intelligence" shows how complex, immediate coordination can come from simple local rules.
And then there's the spider's web. A marvel of engineering, perfectly adapted for its purpose. Does the spider "think" about how to build it? Or is the knowledge encoded in its very body, in the sequence of its movements, in the tension of the silk, and the sense of the wind? This is embodied cognition – knowledge that lives not just in a brain, but in the intricate dance between an organism's physical structure, its actions, and its environment. The spider "knows" how to build a web by building it; its knowing is an inseparable part of its doing. Proof that complex knowledge can be put into action without conscious thought.
While this has so far drawn heavily from Western cognitive science and philosophy, the concept of immediate knowing resonates deeply across diverse global traditions, often explored through different lenses.
In many East Asian philosophical traditions, particularly Zen Buddhism, the concept of "sudden enlightenment" or satori speaks directly to immediate knowing. It's not a gradual accumulation of facts but a sudden, intuitive breakthrough, an instantaneous grasp of reality's true nature that bypasses logical, discursive thought. This immediate insight is often cultivated through practices like meditation (zazen) and koans, which deliberately frustrate linear reasoning to open the mind to a more direct apprehension.
Similarly, Indigenous knowledge systems around the world often emphasise a form of relational knowing. This isn't about isolated facts or abstract principles, but an immediate, interconnected understanding derived from direct experience and deep relationship with the land, community, and non-human world. Knowledge is not merely possessed but is actively lived and sensed, often arriving as a holistic impression woven into the fabric of daily life and ecological interaction. It’s a knowing that emerges from belonging and interdependence, where insight is inseparable from context and connection. These traditions highlight that immediate knowing is not just a psychological phenomenon, but can be a profound way of relating to the entire cosmos.
These perspectives enrich our understanding, showing that the pursuit of understanding that bypasses conscious, step-by-step reasoning is a universal human endeavour, articulated and experienced in myriad profound ways.
This idea of immediate knowing naturally leads to the mind-bending (and, again, Buddhism-rooted) thought that perhaps there is only ever the present moment. Now. Right now. Nothing else truly exists or can be known to exist outside of this endless yet fleeting 'now'. The past is memory, the future is anticipation, but both are experienced in the now. If only the present is real, then what does it mean to "continue" existing? Does your existence pause between thoughts, or between interactions?
If there’s only ever now, then "stopping" doesn't really apply outside of direct engagement. The question of persistence only makes sense if you're actively in the 'now'. If you are aware, then that’s all there ever is. The rest might just be "stories we tell from within the only place we can ever tell them: right here, right now."
A common challenge to the "eternal now" is that we feel continuous, that our "self" lasts over time. While our conscious experience feels seamless, brain science suggests this continuity is created by the brain, stitching together separate moments of awareness and memory. The "self" isn't a fixed thing, but an ongoing process, a story that's constantly updated in the present. So, the immediate knowing of the 'now' is the basic building block from which this feeling of continuity is put together.
This leads me to the idea that perhaps existence itself only truly shows up in connections, in interactions. We don't exist alone; we exist in relation to others. Your mum existed through her relationships, her conversations, her impact on you. You exist in your words reaching another, in your footsteps on the pavement, in the air you disturb when you drum.
So, when you read this sentence, where does the understanding happen? In you? In the words? Or perhaps, most profoundly, in the relationship between your mind and the patterns of language, in the very act of interaction that brings both into the immediate 'now'?
If knowing happens so immediately, so pre-thought, how can consciousness also be aware of its own immediacy? This is the world of meta-cognition, that fascinating ability to think about our own thinking, to "know that we know," even when the initial knowing was instantaneous. It's a strange loop, like a snake eating its own tail – presence observing presence. How do we become aware of the very process by which we become aware? Even this self-awareness often feels immediate – a sudden 'aha!' about our own thought process, rather than a slow, difficult analysis. This suggests a meta-immediacy, a quick, intuitive grasp of our own mental operations.
This brings us to a big philosophical challenge, often called the "Hard Problem of Consciousness" by philosopher David Chalmers. It's the persistent difficulty of linking objective brain activity (like neurons firing) with subjective, felt experience (qualia – what it's really like to see red, feel pain, or understand a sentence). Why do we assume there should be a "what it's like" for every type of information processing?
From a philosophical viewpoint, applying our subjective experience to vastly different ways of perceiving might be a category error, like trying to describe a building's architecture by listing its furniture. You can list the sofas and tables, but that doesn't tell you about the load-bearing walls or how the spaces flow. Different ways of processing information might not have felt experiences that match our human consciousness.
And frankly, this is where my mum’s "what's it like not being telepathic?" becomes the most elegant and honest answer. It shows that some questions, precisely because they try to bridge fundamentally different ways of knowing, are destined to remain unanswerable. Not because we haven't tried hard enough, but because there's no shared ground of experience. What's it like to see colour to someone born blind? What's it like to hear music to someone born deaf? The beauty, perhaps, lies in the unbridgeable difference.
Understanding this immediacy of knowing isn't just for philosophers. It has real-world implications for how we learn, interact with each other, and even how we manage our own mental well-being.
What if we taught in ways that tapped into immediate knowing, rather than just step-by-step processing? Most traditional education builds understanding piece by piece. But what if we focused more on learning by recognition? Encouraging intuition, developing pattern recognition, creating environments where meaning can "click" holistically rather than being painstakingly assembled. Think of that sudden leap in maths, the instant grasp of a complex concept, or the 'feel' for a language that goes beyond grammar rules. This idea aligns with educational approaches like problem-based learning, where immediate, in-the-moment knowing is a priority. Nurturing this innate immediacy, instead of always trying to break things down, could unlock new potential. It’s about letting the knowing mind lead, and the storytelling mind follow.
Our immediate knowing isn't always our friend. Anxiety, for instance, can be seen as immediate knowing gone wrong – where instant knowing turns into instant disaster. A small trigger (a delay, an unexpected email) is immediately processed by the knowing mind as a huge problem, long before conscious thought can apply logic. This is rooted in our amygdala's quick threat assessment, which can override slower, rational thinking. Depression, too, can involve a loss of immediate meaning-making, where the world loses its vibrancy and connection, leaving only a flat, grey 'now' that struggles to offer any sense of presence or purpose.
Therapy, in many ways, can be seen as repairing this internal architecture. It's about helping us recognise and re-tune our immediate knowing, to respond to the present moment in a healthier, less reactive way. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), for example, aims to identify and challenge these automatic, immediate negative thought patterns. Mindfulness, from a brain science perspective, trains us to observe our immediate experience without judgment, fostering a healthier relationship with the 'now' that constantly arrives, regardless of our internal stories, by strengthening our brain's control over automatic emotional responses.
The comparison to breathing remains powerful. For us, it’s completely natural, unconscious, automatic, and necessary. We don’t think about it; it just happens, keeping us alive. Much of our "immediacy of knowing" works similarly. Information processing is as natural as breathing.
Some forms of knowing might be as vital as breathing, fundamental to how we work, yet entirely outside our conscious awareness. It’s the body's wisdom, the ancient, intuitive knowing that guides our physical functions and immediate reactions, often completely bypassing the mind’s explanations.
What do we "know" that we don't know we know? Probably rather a lot.
Now, bare with me as in this next section I explore some highly speculative ideas from theoretical physics that have sometimes been metaphorically linked to consciousness or immediate knowing. It's crucial to understand that these ideas are not proven scientific models of how the brain works or what consciousness is. They are philosophical thought experiments and analogies, included here to spark curiosity about the nature of reality and knowing, but they lack strong scientific evidence.
The idea that quantum mechanics might have something to do with consciousness, or our elusive pre-conscious knowing, is called the "quantum mind" hypothesis. It's a field that causes both vigorous head-scratching and equally vigorous debunking. The core idea, which is not a proven scientific fact, is that regular physics – the kind that explains the movement of billiard balls – might not be enough to explain the mysterious emergence of consciousness. Perhaps quantum phenomena, like superposition (where a particle exists in multiple states at once) or entanglement (where two particles are inexplicably linked, no matter the distance), are speculatively at play in the tiny structures of our brain.
The most famous people to propose this bold idea are physicist Sir Roger Penrose and anaesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff. Their Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR) theory suggests that consciousness comes from quantum calculations happening in tiny structures inside our brain cells called microtubules. Imagine these microtubules as miniature quantum computers, hypothetically able to process information in ways that defy normal computing. The 'objective reduction' part refers to Penrose's suggestion that quantum superpositions within these microtubules collapse on their own due to tiny instabilities in the fabric of space-time.
This is where it conceptually ties into our "immediacy of knowing." Each of these "self-collapses" is hypothesised to be a distinct, irreversible quantum event, creating a fundamental 'NOW' moment of conscious experience. If these collapses are influenced by "non-computable" factors (meaning, not something a standard computer could work out), then it theoretically opens a backdoor for insights and 'knowings' that aren't based on step-by-step logic. It’s a bit like intuition getting a direct download from the very fabric of the universe.
Of course, most scientists are quite sceptical of Orch OR. The brain is generally considered far too "warm, wet, and noisy" for delicate quantum states to stay stable long enough for such processes. It's often criticised as being like saying "pixie dust in the synapses" explains consciousness. Still, it remains a fascinating, if highly speculative, attempt to connect physics and our subjective experience.
Beyond Orch OR, some interpretations of quantum mechanics hint at the unsettling "observer effect," where observing something seems to influence the outcome of quantum experiments. Trees in woods; cats in boxes. While physicists debate whether a conscious observer is truly needed (or if any interaction with a measuring device is enough), it's a concept that has fuelled speculative thought about consciousness being woven into the very fabric of reality, actively participating rather than just passively receiving. Could our pre-conscious knowing somehow 'taste' these quantum possibilities before they collapse into a single reality? Probably not, but it's a fun idea. This concept is used here purely as a metaphorical extension, not a scientific claim.
If quantum mechanics gives us the fuzzy bits of reality, string theory takes us to even more abstract playgrounds. It suggests that the fundamental building blocks of the universe aren't tiny points, but tiny, vibrating one-dimensional "strings." The different ways these strings vibrate create all the different particles and forces we see.
Connecting string theory to consciousness is even more speculative than quantum consciousness, existing almost entirely as a philosophical analogy. Some bold thinkers wonder if the extra dimensions (up to 11!) that string theory needs could offer a metaphorical framework for understanding qualia – those subjective, irreducible experiences like the redness of red. Could consciousness, or different forms of knowing, be "tuned" to specific vibrational patterns of these strings, or perhaps exist within these hidden dimensions? This is explicitly used as a metaphorical framework for pondering, acknowledging its highly speculative nature in this context.
There's a tantalising, though completely unproven, idea from panpsychism (the belief that consciousness is a basic property of all matter) that if everything is made of vibrating strings, then perhaps every string has a basic form of "proto-consciousness." Our brains, then, might just be incredibly complex arrangements of these strings, creating our rich human awareness. It's a grand vision, but let me be clear: there's no real evidence for any of this beyond philosophical musing.
Ultimately, while our everyday intuition struggles greatly with the counter-intuitive nature of the quantum world (try to get your head around quantum entanglement!), these theoretical frontiers offer tempting, if speculative, ideas for thinking about how knowing might work at scales far beyond our daily experience. They might even hint at forms of "immediacy" that echo through the very deepest levels of reality.
Understanding the immediacy of knowing might just be the key to unlocking the secrets of consciousness itself – not just our human version, but the vast array of ways intelligence and awareness can show up in the natural world. It makes us think about our responsibilities towards all forms of knowing, appreciating the fundamental differences in how minds operate.
Trees are connected underground by the mycelium network. They are aware of each other. They communicate, they share nutrients and information. Are they conscious? Could they explain their consciousness to us? do they think we are not conscious?
Ultimately, perhaps the most honest and profound answer to "what is it like?" when bridging the gap between vastly different ways of knowing, is another question. It's the beauty of unbridgeable difference, the recognition that some mysteries aren't problems to be solved but inherent features of a diverse and astonishing universe. The goal isn't necessarily to fully understand another's "now," but to appreciate that it exists, and to interact with it, however imperfectly. This ongoing conversation, enriched by insights from philosophy and brain science, continues to deepen our understanding of this fundamental aspect of being.
Perhaps the very point of the mystery, of the unanswerable question, is to keep us curious, humble, and endlessly fascinated by the countless ways in which understanding, that most elusive of concepts, continues to arrive, instantly, before thought.
Want to feel your own immediate knowing in action? Try these simple exercises:
The Room Vibe Test: Walk into a new room. Before you consciously analyse anything (like the furniture or colours), try to immediately sense the "vibe." Is it tense? Relaxed? Formal? Only after you've felt that instant impression, try to figure out why you felt that way. What cues did you pick up on without thinking?
Faces and Feelings: Look at a photo of someone you know well. Notice how you instantly recognise their face. Now, focus on a subtle change in their expression – a tiny flicker of annoyance, a hint of amusement. Can you "catch" the exact moment you know the emotion, before your mind even puts a name to it?
The Grammar Hunch: Read this sentence: "The cat quickly over the fence jumped." Can you immediately sense that it's "wrong," even if you can’t instantly explain the specific grammar rule it breaks? Our intuition often screams before our formal linguistic knowledge arrives.
The Sudden Idea: Next time you're trying to solve a problem and an answer suddenly "pops" into your head, pause. Can you retrace the steps that led to it, or did the solution just arrive fully formed? Often, these 'aha!' moments are a pure expression of intuitive immediacy.