There are many who believe in an inner voice which, if we listen and heed, saves us from danger and peril. Many others believe that the decisions we make are based on insight without any real information that would push us in one direction or another. History leads us to the conclusion that many prominent figures made historical decisions based on intuition and insight.
A Russian newspaper stated that one of Britain’s most illustrious prime ministers, Winston Churchill, found himself in more than one situation where he heeded an inner voice. During World War II, Churchill was having lunch with three of his ministers when an air raid began. He hurried to the kitchen and ordered all who were there to go to the shelter. Minutes later a bomb fell on the kitchen.
In 1941 Churchill often checked the air defense batteries during London’s nighttime air raids. After one of his checks when he returned to his car, he got into the back seat instead of the front where he usually sat. A short time later as his chauffeur sped through the streets of London, a bomb exploded and hit the car’s front seat. If Churchill had been sitting there, he would have died. When his wife asked him about the incident, he told her, “Something stopped me from sitting in my usual place.”
The nineteenth-century American President Abraham Lincoln woke up once after dreaming that he had been walking to a place from which strange voices were coming. Those voices led him to a room in the White House where there was a coffin covered with an American flag. Lincoln asked about the identity of the dead person and the answer was: “It is the president. He’s been assassinated.” A few days later, Abraham Lincoln himself was assassinated.
Former President Ronald Reagan’s wife believed strongly in the powers of astrologists — to the extent that when she was an actress in Hollywood, she always took their advice. She took astrology classes in order to learn how to read the stars. She even consulted specialists when her husband became president. As the first lady, she had weekly phone conversations with astrologists in San Francisco. Presidential appointments were arranged according to what the astrologists told her. If what they said was negative, the president canceled the appointment and if positive, he kept it.