What is the greatest resource that you have as a human being? It’s not your knowledge, nor your experiences: no matter how many remarkable experiences you may have had. The most potent asset, the most important resource you have is your intelligence.
There is much, much more to your intelligence than is usually recognised.
As a human being you have a lot more intelligence than can be measured by IQ tests. There is more to your intelligence than being able to analyse and compute. There is more to your intelligence than being able to remember and predict.
All the remarkable cognitive intelligence that you have and regularly use is based on a deeper intelligence: the intelligence of the body. Your somatic intelligence is doing much more than keeping you alive, more than assessing hydration and temperature levels, more than continuously evaluating the oxygen to carbon-dioxide ratio in your blood. It is also providing all the information upon which the cognitive intelligence of your mind is taking account of actions you need and may need to take.
While for all of its perceived failings the intelligence of your mind might be the most obvious aspect of this intelligence that you are, and while the intelligence of your body so easily, so often and so damagingly overlooked, more significant, more potent, more fruitful by far is the intelligence of Consciousness itself.
That phrase “the intelligence of Consciousness” has not yet become a piece of misrepresented and misunderstood dogma. The intelligence of consciousness as a concept is barely recognised by anybody, despite the fact that their every thought, every action, every experience depends upon it completely. Of course your every experience, action and thought depends also on the intelligence of mind, and the intelligence of your body.
You may have been told and even believed that you’re stupid or at least that you’re not intelligent enough to understand Einstein, Spinoza, Samadhi or the subtleties of Consciousness. Nevertheless this is not true. You are neither stupid, nor lacking all the intelligence that you need to thrive and flourish as a human being, circumstances permitting.
So perhaps it’s to circumstances that we need at least briefly to look, as it is circumstance in all of their variety and differentness for each of us that have obscured the intelligence of Consciousness, and obscured where we actually are, where we have always been, where we’re always going to be, even as those circumstances continuously change. When you’re hungry and there’s some food, do you try to find out its origin, or do you eat ?Perhaps when you have satisfied your need to stay alive you might become curious about whether or not it really was organic. Likewise Consciousness. So, leaving aside the origin and even nature of consciousness, let’s enquire into the possibility of recognising the significance of its presence.
We could summarise one aspect as consciousness is all that you know, or consciousness is all that you experience. All doesn’t mean there’s nothing else or nothing other in an exclusive way. Sometimes you know the time, and sometimes you experience pain, but your experience of pain and your knowledge of time is an event in consciousness. Every knowing or not knowing, every remembering, every attempt to remember, every recognition of forgetfulness, every experience of every kind takes place in consciousness by virtue of its power, by virtue of its presence, by virtue of its intelligence.
The intelligence of the body is not quite the same in its functioning or nature as the intelligence of mind. You can learn to put the intelligence of your mind to all kinds of different uses. You can put the intelligence of your mind to the task of learning the capital cities of every country of the world. You can put the intelligence of your mind to learning to understand the nature of the relationship between space or location and time or speed. You can put the intelligence of your mind to learning the exact relationship between the past the present and the future. That last one is gonna take a lot of work. Not very many people have ever put their intelligence to that use, which is a great shame, for all of us.
The intelligence of your body however is a lot less malleable, a lot less forgiving. You can use the intelligence of your mind to manipulate. You can use the intelligence of your mind to nourish. Yet while you can manipulate or nourish the intelligence of your body, you don’t have the same creative opportunities with the intelligence of your body as you do with the intelligence of your mind.
They express themselves so differently and therefore when we use the phrase “the intelligence of the body” it’s important not to project onto our understanding of the word intelligence the characteristics and the possibilities that we know so well in relation to the intelligence of mind. Likewise it’s important when we hear the phrase “the intelligence of Consciousness” we don’t project qualities and the characteristics that we’ve become familiar with relative to the intelligence of mind or the intelligence of our body.
Nevertheless, what is the essence of intelligence? Without seeking to define it, I’d like to suggest that one way we can capture or glimpse the essence of intelligence is as the ability to know. Not what you know, but that you can know.
The knowing of your mind and the knowing of your body are radically different. Your body knows the temperature of the blood leaving your heart, its pressure and its speed. Your body knows the balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide passing through your brainstem. If it didn’t know these things you couldn’t breathe, you wouldn’t feel thirsty. This is not quite the same as knowing your name or knowing your address. It’s quite possible for you to forget your address. Olivia told me the other day that she sometimes forgets her name, which I totally get, as her name is for us rather than for her. Don’t worry if you sometimes forget your name. Your body, however, is never unable to evaluate the the balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide in your brainstem. At least until the moment you die, and if it does you will die pretty quick.
The intelligence of Consciousness is more elusive by far than the intelligence of your body. More elusive both in terms of awareness of it, and in terms of control. You can’t tell the intelligence of your body what to evaluate, what to analyse. That is deeply programmed into your DNA. You can’t tell the intelligence of Consciousness what to do either. Nor can you stop the intelligence of your body doing what it does except by killing it in part or as a whole. Likewise you can’t stop the intelligence of Consciousness from doing what it does either. Just as the intelligence of the body is doing what it does all the time, the intelligence of Consciousness is doing what it does all the time. Even when you’re asleep.
It’s important to understand that the word Consciousness here doesn’t refer to your limited conscious experience. Your limited conscious experience is certainly an expression of Consciousness. And your limited conscious experience, however significant and important it may seem to be to you and to the meaning of your life, is only a very small part of the significance of Consciousness. Most of that significance, most of that intelligence, takes place in the dark, below the threshold of direct experience.
The intelligence of mind, the intelligence of body, and the intelligence of Consciousness are always present. Yet, despite the fact that we are such an abundance of intelligence, we have succumbed to this habit of continuously suffering when nothing bad is actually happening to us. We are continuously feeling anxious when there is no danger on the horizon. We are continuously feeling ashamed, guilty, uncertain, contemptuous, hostile. These experiences, these feelings, are the intelligence of your mind running away with itself. The intelligence of your mind ungrounded. Grounded neither in the intelligence of your body, nor in the intelligence of Consciousness. Even though that is taking place by virtue of the generosity of both.
The question is, is there anything that we can do about this deeply destructive habit that we have to kick over the past with regret, resentment and guilt and to project anxiety, doubt and fear onto an imagined future?
Is there a book you can read? A seminar you can attend? A course you can sign up for? Or is the intelligence that you are enough to deal with its own challenges?
It is only to easy for a mind that is running away with itself to insist that only its intelligence can save the day. Whereas its intelligence has already lost the day in running away with itself away from the stability of the body and Consciousness. That’s not to say there is anything intrinsically limited or wrong with the intelligence of mind. This is just the power of socially induced and socially endorsed habit. So powerfully endorsed that any attempt to come out of that habit will be jumped upon by anybody that witnesses it.
I can remember quite well when the mother of my youngest child said to me, and she really meant it: “you and Ramesh are just the same, you only think that way so that you can do anything that you want”. As if there was something wrong with doing what you want. She's over that now, thankfully. Anyway, this is what I mean by social endorsement. People don’t want your lack of suffering to bring into focus their suffering. The intelligence of your mind has been well captured in this process, by guilt, shame and doubt, and its insistence on needing and being able to work it all out. Its insistence that you can think you way to happiness.
When, actually, all you can do really with those two words, thinking and happiness, is think about how you got to happiness afterwards. You can’t think your way to happiness. You have enough evidence for that by now.
When your thinking is fully grounded, when the intelligence of your mind is fully grounded, through the intelligence of your body and into the intelligence of Consciousness, it is another matter altogether. So, how does the intelligence of mind become grounded in the intelligence of the body, and how does the intelligence of mind become grounded in the intelligence of Consciousness?
It may well be that there are a number of possibilities for doing this. Amongst those possibilities some may ground the intelligence of the mind only in the intelligence of the body. Some ground the intelligence of mind in the intelligence of Consciousness. Be that as it may.
There is a very accessible mechanism for grounding the intelligence of mind in the intelligence of the body and into the intelligence of Consciousness. This mechanism is very simple. It’s a mechanism that is, or should be, at the heart of yoga posture practice, of Tai Chi, of Chi Kung, even if that is not recognised or enjoyed. What is more it can become the heart of your life. Just as it can be the core of a nourishing and liberating practice, it can become the heart of your life.
That mechanism is simply feeling sensations as deeply, intimately as possible. Feeling sensations so intimately, so deeply, so directly that your mind knows exactly what’s happening without having to think about it. Maybe you know this phenomenon of knowing without thinking? This is an expression of the intelligence of Consciousness expressing itself through the intelligence of mind directly.
This is only possible because the intelligence of mind has become able to do what it has become able to do, which it wasn’t able to do when you were five or two years, or one week old. When you were five or two or one week old the intelligence of Consciousness was no less presence than now, but the intelligence of your mind is much more sophisticated than it was then, and the intelligence of Consciousness uses that sophistication, so that you can know without thinking what is actually happening in your body. Also so that you can know without thinking what is actually happening as your body, which is a knowing more subtle and more profound by far. It requires a bit more sophistication in the intelligence of your mind for the intelligence of Consciousness to be able to express itself that clearly.
The key to the relationship between these three frequencies of the intelligence that you are, cognitive/mind, somatic/body, spiritual/Consciousness is your willingness to feel.
You don’t need to develop your ability to feel. Only your willingness to feel. We need to see if we can let go of what is preventing us from feeling deeply and clearly. What that is, is the thoughts that are relentlessly running through and as our minds. Many of them triggered by unresolved past experience. Mind running away with itself obscures our ability to feel, obscures the intelligence of the body, obscures the intelligence of Consciousness. It prevents the intelligence of consciousness from revealing what it can reveal to the intelligence of the mind.
Not least that you’re absolutely perfect just the way you are, and you always have been and you always will be. So you don’t have to worry about that. Nor about where you should be, what you should do, what you should say. These all become clear within the intelligent presence of Consciousness. You don’t need to worry about them. Worrying about them, obsessing about them are nothing other than ungrounded mind running away with itself. Running away from the intelligence of Consciousness.
The intelligence of your mind running away with itself can make things that really don’t matter matter. It can make you suffer for things that don’t even exist and never will. It gets carried away in its ability to imagine, speculate and fantasise, continually asking stupid questions that seem so pertinent, but aren’t really. They are just mind running away with itself.
Your mind can not think its way to happiness. True happiness is an expression of your spiritual nature, of the intelligent Presence of Consciousness. To be happy, as opposed to being excited or stimulated or gratified, you need to be in touch with your spiritual nature, with the intelligent Presence of Consciousness. This requires a quiet mind.
The easiest way to quiet your mind is by feeling sensations, any sensations. The more deeply and clearly you feel them the more quiet your mind will become, without any effort, without any struggle, without any need to control or curtail your mind. When feeling sensations becomes the norm for you, rather than spinning out on your thoughts, then the intelligence of Consciousness will become more freely, more fully available. It will be able to guide your actions, even guide your thinking.
The most powerful and important mechanism you have for using and being the intelligence that you are is feeling sensations. You can feel sensations when you’re walking along the road. You can feel sensations when you’re running for a bus. You can feel sensations when you’re washing up. You can feel sensations when you’re trying to park the car. This resource is almost always available. It is not available though, when your mind is running away with itself. Not until it realises it is running away with itself, and in that realisation remembers the significance of feeling sensations.
Feeling a sensation grounds the intelligence of mind in the body. If it does so deeply enough it lets go into the intelligence of Consciousness, it comes home and relaxes, letting go of its need to describe, explain and control. This is all a matter of habit. habits can be changed. Not by intention, but by experience. The more you feel sensations the easier it is to remember to. The more often you remember to, the easier it is to remember to. It is a virtuous circle within which your habits of attentiveness are transformed towards wholeness.
There is much, much more to your intelligence than is usually recognised.
As a human being you have a lot more intelligence than can be measured by IQ tests. There is more to your intelligence than being able to analyse and compute. There is more to your intelligence than being able to remember and predict.
All the remarkable cognitive intelligence that you have and regularly use is based on a deeper intelligence: the intelligence of the body. Your somatic intelligence is doing much more than keeping you alive, more than assessing hydration and temperature levels, more than continuously evaluating the oxygen to carbon-dioxide ratio in your blood. It is also providing all the information upon which the cognitive intelligence of your mind is taking account of actions you need and may need to take.
While for all of its perceived failings the intelligence of your mind might be the most obvious aspect of this intelligence that you are, and while the intelligence of your body so easily, so often and so damagingly overlooked, more significant, more potent, more fruitful by far is the intelligence of Consciousness itself.
That phrase “the intelligence of Consciousness” has not yet become a piece of misrepresented and misunderstood dogma. The intelligence of consciousness as a concept is barely recognised by anybody, despite the fact that their every thought, every action, every experience depends upon it completely. Of course your every experience, action and thought depends also on the intelligence of mind, and the intelligence of your body.
You may have been told and even believed that you’re stupid or at least that you’re not intelligent enough to understand Einstein, Spinoza, Samadhi or the subtleties of Consciousness. Nevertheless this is not true. You are neither stupid, nor lacking all the intelligence that you need to thrive and flourish as a human being, circumstances permitting.
So perhaps it’s to circumstances that we need at least briefly to look, as it is circumstance in all of their variety and differentness for each of us that have obscured the intelligence of Consciousness, and obscured where we actually are, where we have always been, where we’re always going to be, even as those circumstances continuously change. When you’re hungry and there’s some food, do you try to find out its origin, or do you eat ?Perhaps when you have satisfied your need to stay alive you might become curious about whether or not it really was organic. Likewise Consciousness. So, leaving aside the origin and even nature of consciousness, let’s enquire into the possibility of recognising the significance of its presence.
We could summarise one aspect as consciousness is all that you know, or consciousness is all that you experience. All doesn’t mean there’s nothing else or nothing other in an exclusive way. Sometimes you know the time, and sometimes you experience pain, but your experience of pain and your knowledge of time is an event in consciousness. Every knowing or not knowing, every remembering, every attempt to remember, every recognition of forgetfulness, every experience of every kind takes place in consciousness by virtue of its power, by virtue of its presence, by virtue of its intelligence.
The intelligence of the body is not quite the same in its functioning or nature as the intelligence of mind. You can learn to put the intelligence of your mind to all kinds of different uses. You can put the intelligence of your mind to the task of learning the capital cities of every country of the world. You can put the intelligence of your mind to learning to understand the nature of the relationship between space or location and time or speed. You can put the intelligence of your mind to learning the exact relationship between the past the present and the future. That last one is gonna take a lot of work. Not very many people have ever put their intelligence to that use, which is a great shame, for all of us.
The intelligence of your body however is a lot less malleable, a lot less forgiving. You can use the intelligence of your mind to manipulate. You can use the intelligence of your mind to nourish. Yet while you can manipulate or nourish the intelligence of your body, you don’t have the same creative opportunities with the intelligence of your body as you do with the intelligence of your mind.
They express themselves so differently and therefore when we use the phrase “the intelligence of the body” it’s important not to project onto our understanding of the word intelligence the characteristics and the possibilities that we know so well in relation to the intelligence of mind. Likewise it’s important when we hear the phrase “the intelligence of Consciousness” we don’t project qualities and the characteristics that we’ve become familiar with relative to the intelligence of mind or the intelligence of our body.
Nevertheless, what is the essence of intelligence? Without seeking to define it, I’d like to suggest that one way we can capture or glimpse the essence of intelligence is as the ability to know. Not what you know, but that you can know.
The knowing of your mind and the knowing of your body are radically different. Your body knows the temperature of the blood leaving your heart, its pressure and its speed. Your body knows the balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide passing through your brainstem. If it didn’t know these things you couldn’t breathe, you wouldn’t feel thirsty. This is not quite the same as knowing your name or knowing your address. It’s quite possible for you to forget your address. Olivia told me the other day that she sometimes forgets her name, which I totally get, as her name is for us rather than for her. Don’t worry if you sometimes forget your name. Your body, however, is never unable to evaluate the the balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide in your brainstem. At least until the moment you die, and if it does you will die pretty quick.
The intelligence of Consciousness is more elusive by far than the intelligence of your body. More elusive both in terms of awareness of it, and in terms of control. You can’t tell the intelligence of your body what to evaluate, what to analyse. That is deeply programmed into your DNA. You can’t tell the intelligence of Consciousness what to do either. Nor can you stop the intelligence of your body doing what it does except by killing it in part or as a whole. Likewise you can’t stop the intelligence of Consciousness from doing what it does either. Just as the intelligence of the body is doing what it does all the time, the intelligence of Consciousness is doing what it does all the time. Even when you’re asleep.
It’s important to understand that the word Consciousness here doesn’t refer to your limited conscious experience. Your limited conscious experience is certainly an expression of Consciousness. And your limited conscious experience, however significant and important it may seem to be to you and to the meaning of your life, is only a very small part of the significance of Consciousness. Most of that significance, most of that intelligence, takes place in the dark, below the threshold of direct experience.
The intelligence of mind, the intelligence of body, and the intelligence of Consciousness are always present. Yet, despite the fact that we are such an abundance of intelligence, we have succumbed to this habit of continuously suffering when nothing bad is actually happening to us. We are continuously feeling anxious when there is no danger on the horizon. We are continuously feeling ashamed, guilty, uncertain, contemptuous, hostile. These experiences, these feelings, are the intelligence of your mind running away with itself. The intelligence of your mind ungrounded. Grounded neither in the intelligence of your body, nor in the intelligence of Consciousness. Even though that is taking place by virtue of the generosity of both.
The question is, is there anything that we can do about this deeply destructive habit that we have to kick over the past with regret, resentment and guilt and to project anxiety, doubt and fear onto an imagined future?
Is there a book you can read? A seminar you can attend? A course you can sign up for? Or is the intelligence that you are enough to deal with its own challenges?
It is only to easy for a mind that is running away with itself to insist that only its intelligence can save the day. Whereas its intelligence has already lost the day in running away with itself away from the stability of the body and Consciousness. That’s not to say there is anything intrinsically limited or wrong with the intelligence of mind. This is just the power of socially induced and socially endorsed habit. So powerfully endorsed that any attempt to come out of that habit will be jumped upon by anybody that witnesses it.
I can remember quite well when the mother of my youngest child said to me, and she really meant it: “you and Ramesh are just the same, you only think that way so that you can do anything that you want”. As if there was something wrong with doing what you want. She's over that now, thankfully. Anyway, this is what I mean by social endorsement. People don’t want your lack of suffering to bring into focus their suffering. The intelligence of your mind has been well captured in this process, by guilt, shame and doubt, and its insistence on needing and being able to work it all out. Its insistence that you can think you way to happiness.
When, actually, all you can do really with those two words, thinking and happiness, is think about how you got to happiness afterwards. You can’t think your way to happiness. You have enough evidence for that by now.
When your thinking is fully grounded, when the intelligence of your mind is fully grounded, through the intelligence of your body and into the intelligence of Consciousness, it is another matter altogether. So, how does the intelligence of mind become grounded in the intelligence of the body, and how does the intelligence of mind become grounded in the intelligence of Consciousness?
It may well be that there are a number of possibilities for doing this. Amongst those possibilities some may ground the intelligence of the mind only in the intelligence of the body. Some ground the intelligence of mind in the intelligence of Consciousness. Be that as it may.
There is a very accessible mechanism for grounding the intelligence of mind in the intelligence of the body and into the intelligence of Consciousness. This mechanism is very simple. It’s a mechanism that is, or should be, at the heart of yoga posture practice, of Tai Chi, of Chi Kung, even if that is not recognised or enjoyed. What is more it can become the heart of your life. Just as it can be the core of a nourishing and liberating practice, it can become the heart of your life.
That mechanism is simply feeling sensations as deeply, intimately as possible. Feeling sensations so intimately, so deeply, so directly that your mind knows exactly what’s happening without having to think about it. Maybe you know this phenomenon of knowing without thinking? This is an expression of the intelligence of Consciousness expressing itself through the intelligence of mind directly.
This is only possible because the intelligence of mind has become able to do what it has become able to do, which it wasn’t able to do when you were five or two years, or one week old. When you were five or two or one week old the intelligence of Consciousness was no less presence than now, but the intelligence of your mind is much more sophisticated than it was then, and the intelligence of Consciousness uses that sophistication, so that you can know without thinking what is actually happening in your body. Also so that you can know without thinking what is actually happening as your body, which is a knowing more subtle and more profound by far. It requires a bit more sophistication in the intelligence of your mind for the intelligence of Consciousness to be able to express itself that clearly.
The key to the relationship between these three frequencies of the intelligence that you are, cognitive/mind, somatic/body, spiritual/Consciousness is your willingness to feel.
You don’t need to develop your ability to feel. Only your willingness to feel. We need to see if we can let go of what is preventing us from feeling deeply and clearly. What that is, is the thoughts that are relentlessly running through and as our minds. Many of them triggered by unresolved past experience. Mind running away with itself obscures our ability to feel, obscures the intelligence of the body, obscures the intelligence of Consciousness. It prevents the intelligence of consciousness from revealing what it can reveal to the intelligence of the mind.
Not least that you’re absolutely perfect just the way you are, and you always have been and you always will be. So you don’t have to worry about that. Nor about where you should be, what you should do, what you should say. These all become clear within the intelligent presence of Consciousness. You don’t need to worry about them. Worrying about them, obsessing about them are nothing other than ungrounded mind running away with itself. Running away from the intelligence of Consciousness.
The intelligence of your mind running away with itself can make things that really don’t matter matter. It can make you suffer for things that don’t even exist and never will. It gets carried away in its ability to imagine, speculate and fantasise, continually asking stupid questions that seem so pertinent, but aren’t really. They are just mind running away with itself.
Your mind can not think its way to happiness. True happiness is an expression of your spiritual nature, of the intelligent Presence of Consciousness. To be happy, as opposed to being excited or stimulated or gratified, you need to be in touch with your spiritual nature, with the intelligent Presence of Consciousness. This requires a quiet mind.
The easiest way to quiet your mind is by feeling sensations, any sensations. The more deeply and clearly you feel them the more quiet your mind will become, without any effort, without any struggle, without any need to control or curtail your mind. When feeling sensations becomes the norm for you, rather than spinning out on your thoughts, then the intelligence of Consciousness will become more freely, more fully available. It will be able to guide your actions, even guide your thinking.
The most powerful and important mechanism you have for using and being the intelligence that you are is feeling sensations. You can feel sensations when you’re walking along the road. You can feel sensations when you’re running for a bus. You can feel sensations when you’re washing up. You can feel sensations when you’re trying to park the car. This resource is almost always available. It is not available though, when your mind is running away with itself. Not until it realises it is running away with itself, and in that realisation remembers the significance of feeling sensations.
Feeling a sensation grounds the intelligence of mind in the body. If it does so deeply enough it lets go into the intelligence of Consciousness, it comes home and relaxes, letting go of its need to describe, explain and control. This is all a matter of habit. habits can be changed. Not by intention, but by experience. The more you feel sensations the easier it is to remember to. The more often you remember to, the easier it is to remember to. It is a virtuous circle within which your habits of attentiveness are transformed towards wholeness.