Saturday, February 5, 2011

Intelligence & Ego

The supreme intelligence - ability to be aware of our own intelligence, which is supposed be a gift to human being, has become a curse. In fact, we converted this gift into a curse by means of our ego.

Any thing happen with in us or out of us must have been due to our inherence intelligence. Ego is also an entity with in us and hence it must be due to our own intelligence. In other words, the illusionary entity called ego, takes its position within our mind space due to our inherent intelligence. Hence there must be a purpose for this illusionary entity called ego.

Ego is the growth driver for technical advancement in any culture and it is also the driver for destruction in any culture. If we are enjoying the comfort and luxury of today, the prime driver is ego – individual ego as well as group/social ego. Here the term ‘we’ may indicate less than 50% of human population in this world, who are comfortable enough to get at least their food every day. And ego is the prime driver for remaining population of world still struggling for their basic necessities. It may not have much relevance that on whose ego is this prime driver. For the mass killings and wars across the world, ego was the prime driver and will be. Of course there are exceptions. There were (must have been) people in the past, who transcended ego and worked for humanity in particular and existence in general. And there will be such people. But they are exceptions and may we call them as human beings!

We have to have the ‘I’ sense to the extent required for our survival. With out that ‘I’ sense, we can never get our food. When the survival for an instant is met, probably due to the struggle for survival at that instant, the ‘I’ sense with the help of our intelligence seek security for survival in next instant. All the comfort we are enjoying our life today is the result of this continuous seeking of security with our intelligence, which involves ego also.

The problem also arises with this seeking. We used our intelligence to seek security and find (physical) security in our life. But we failed to transcend the habit of animals which take away the food the other animal had collected for it. On our seeking of our security, like in the case of survival, we try to grab the material earned for the security of fellow human being. In other words, on one side we used our intelligence to gain materialistic security for future which is a human feature; on the other side we are using intelligence to grab the security of others, which is still the animal behaviour. To make it more precious, on one side we evolved from animal to human being to gain security for materialistic life, on the other side still we use the animal instinct towards grabbing the secured of fellow human being. That is, the particular field of intelligence which is supposed to be used for survival we are using the same field of intelligence for security, which is a contradiction. That is, in a place where we are supposed to be with human intelligence, we are superimposing the animal intelligence which is becoming source of contradiction and hence the result of all destructions in humanity.
As indicated in earlier posting, we can be called as humans only when we use our intelligence to the fullest extent. But unfortunately, at certain part of life we are using our human intelligence and certain other part of life we use animal intelligence which still exist with in us, and probably required for survival at certain level. This indicates we are not yet completely evolved as human being. In the sense, we are not using our intelligence gifted to us to understand and use animal instincts only when it is required to use and be aware of our human intelligence at all times. We are in between animals and human being, but having the complete potential of human being, in the sense we use human and animal intelligence with out being aware of any of these intelligence even though we are capable of being aware of our own intelligence. Due to the unawareness of our intelligence, there is always a contradiction between the human and animal part of us and this conflict fuel our ego. Now this ego becomes the centre point of all our sufferings. In short, the basic ‘I’ sense required for our survival becomes our ego due to the conflicts between our human and animal intelligence, and become source of our suffering.

If we still allow the earth to live for few more thousands of years with all our contradictions and conflicts, there may be a possibility where we completely evolve as human being. At that point of evolution, the then human beings may have sufficient capability and capable of being aware of their own intelligence so that they may know where to use the human intelligence and where to use the animal intelligence. There may be no conflicts within human beings and hence may be no psychological suffering!

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