Intelligence

When we start to look at the beginning of all things, we often speak of "The Void" as the "nothing" before "something" came into creation. In the Christian World this "nothing" is often addressed as the "Darkness" before the "Light" came into creation. I see this as the beginning of all intelligence.

Intelligence starts with comparing values. The simplest comparison may be "Black" or "Darkness" in relation to "White" or "Light". This is the most basic example of Duality. A Duality that we find reflected in the checkered floors of some old temples, churches and in the present day lodges of the Freemasons. In the present day computer all intelligence starts with the same basic comparison. A circuit switch is either "on" or "off". Based on this "Binary" code, we form characters, based on 8 Binary "Bits". We then called those 8 bits: One "Byte". In the last decades many of us became personally familiar with 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit and now 64-bit computers.

These computers cannot work without a memory. We talk about internal memory, external memory, buffered memory, and many more terms to store information for a (sometimes very) short, and (sometimes very) long time.

The speed of calculation is defined by an internal clock. This clock is the reference for each binary bit to switch on and off, together with billions of other bits, creating the user experience that now many humans have when they are watching a digital screen.

Those of us that have been using a digital photo-camera (or a mobile with such camera) know that more pixels (i.e. more bits of information per square inch) will result in more detailed pictures, adding to the beauty that such picture may represent.

The combined intensity of light from different "Light Emitting Diodes" (LED's) then projects images on our internal "image sensors" (eyes), which we then interpret with the programming that we have received during our childhood and adolescent lives.

Listening to an outstanding lecture, presented as a summary of the thougts of Jos van Noort about the works of Teilhard de Jardin, I was wonderfully inspired with the thought that a growing complexity, as in the above mentioned examples, leads to a growing knowledge and intelligence about the world as we know it. And we need all those billions of bits together to create a detailed picture of what we think we are seeing, based on what we believe to be true.

So what IS true? And what IS false?

Our personality is an interesting mix of memories, creating the filters and programs that we use to interpret the images that we receive on our "image sensors". But there is more than that. Our "hearing sensors", "smell sensors", "taste sensors" and even our skin and organs give us information about our surroundings. This complex input is then filtered out, often based on our assumptions about how we expect the world should be.

The memory and programming we carry with us as interpretation of our world is often called "the ego". In some spiritual traditions it is mentioned that we should "lose the ego". Or even "kill it". In my opinion these memories and programs are the fundamental instruments of incarnating the Source of our Being into the world we are born into.

“The false ego is only false until it is realized; then it is True.”
[Pir Vilayat Khan]