Meditation: The Research of Liberating Intelligence

Two Levels of Intelligence

In several essays published in this journal, I have presented the two levels of the unique human intelligence. Firstly, the intelligence of need, centers on fulfilling humanity’s needs and interests and is crucial to economic processes. Secondly, a powerful but subtle and so often overlooked intelligence, which I call the intelligence of freedom, or liberating intelligence. This subtle but insightful intelligence, largely invisible and underappreciated, emerges more clearly, when the intelligence of need is completely Essay Article quiet. It can be felt in moments of silent appreciation for beauty, such as in nature—a flower, a sunset, or a starry night. The attention of the insight is so intense that there is no recording in memory as happens with the experiences of the intelligence of need, in which memory is central. It shows also in acts of unconditional love, which is the supreme energy of the collective intelligence that releases us from self-interest.

Some Misunderstandings of Meditation

In this short essay, I focus on meditation, which I understand as the research of liberating intelligence. It

shows us the way out of this trap by healing the intelligence of need from self-interest and the desire to dominate. Thus, the violence and suffering it causes can be brought to an end. It is important to note that research is not a method enslaving us, but the result of freedom itself. If not, we are simply doing a duty and inevitably become weighed down by the burden of it. I aim to share an understanding of what meditation is, rather than offer a set of instructions relating to the practice itself. Such a project would belong to the intelligence of need, not to liberating intelligence itself, which stands aside from time, free of any how to, or of any specific goal. As the poet, Antonio Machado says “Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.” Traveller, there is no road; you make your own path as you walk. Trying to turn meditation into a science is a misunderstanding of its inherent nature; it is another instance of the desire to capture and to dominate. As a general rule, we should avoid applying concepts such as time – appropriate within the scientific intelligence of need - to the much more fundamental and radical workings of the liberating intelligence.

While drugs can alleviate terrible suffering and even bring about healing in certain cases, they cannot replace the vital role of sustained meditation in our lives. For some, drugs are a tempting shortcut to escape from the limitations of the intelligence of need. This might be called pseudo-meditation or pseudo-mysticism. However, a mind that is craving experience is not free and so cannot find what is true and what is unconditional love. No matter how carefully planned and controlled it may be, such an impulse will nearly always be an expression of the ego’s will to have ‘an extraordinary experience’. This runs counter to the freedom at play in pure meditation, within which all desires are suspended. Drugs trap us economically and psychologically. You have to pay for them, first with your money, and then with the almost inevitable suffering that follows. The temporary release from pain or suffering that is granted by drugs will cause addiction. Freedom is surrendered and so, therefore, is the possibility of the true and enduring happiness that always accompanies real freedom. Sustained meditation as understood in this essay is the inherent dynamic of inquiry at the heart of this selfless liberating intelligence.

Meditation as the Way to Freedom

This silent inquiry is without an inquirer. This frees us from submission internally, to the ego, and externally, to forms of dominating power such as those generated by plutocracy or imperialism. These interior and exterior dynamics of submission or liberation are always inseparable. They are intra-dependent. In meditation the ego, together with the other models of reality created by the intelligence of need, are finally silenced, allowing real freedom and unconditional love to inform all our intra-actions. This genuinely peaceful revolution will cause the destructive empire of programmed intelligence to fall; the mutation we so urgently need.

Meditation is a Liberating and Creative Power of Intelligence

Understood as research, this creative power of intelligence’s meditation is in no way a private and individual affair. It involves all the powers of intelligence: unconditional love as an expression of the highest form of interest; deep listening that transforms communication into silent communion; symbiosis that turns into loving union; and inquiry that liberates us from every form of submission. This is all made possible through the unrestricted play of deep freedom.

Meditation, like freedom or silence, is neither an act of the will, nor an object of our knowledge. Like freedom itself, it is not subject to our control. Anything that blocks our access to the freedom of meditation – the dominance within us of a corrupted intelligence of need - must be inquired into and, through this inquiry, dispelled. Meditation is a liberating and creative power of intelligence so there is no why or how about it. Rather, it is itself the agent of any why and how about all things. It is a spontaneous, timeless, effortless, silent, observing inquiry into human life and nature. It is neither self-centred nor is it conflicted. There are no goals to achieve or any expectation of results. It is gratuitous, silent and joyful contemplation. It is pure living - simple but alert - in silent communion with everything.

Silent and Attentive Observation of the Live

Some might want to describe such a state as a dream or an illusion. The truth is, of course, that the real illusion is to live exclusively from a programmed and corrupted intelligence of need, completely unaware of what constitutes an authentic human life. The awareness, the clarity of consciousness we need, comes through the meditative, silent and attentive observation of the lives that we are living now. Without this awareness our lives – life itself – is heading for disaster.

Where Does Meditation Take Us?

The practice of meditation leads us to the discovery of who we are. It offers the immediate sense of our being the ineffable reality itself. We are the embodiments of its universal intelligence, agents of both its creative freedom and its unconditional love - the joyful love without a lover. When the ego, the overpowering sense of an ‘I’, is present, its conditioned nature prevents love from being unconditional. The ignorance of this truth brings about the perversion of our intelligence, the deep sickness of human culture, and the threat to human survival that now comes from all forms of dominating power.

Meditative research enables us to inquire into and fully appreciate the attachment we have to our own models of reality instead of living with blind acceptance. Our routines and ideas, our accumulated knowledge, our individual and collective ego-formations, no longer control and restrict us, but serve us. It is an essentially liberating inquiry that turns us from Homo sapiens to Homo quaerens, able to be at peace, free and creative in our daily life, facing all situations without fear, with full attention, flexibility and energy - the immense energy of unconditional love.

Seeing the truth of Everything as it is from Moment to Moment

Being fully aware - conscious of everything I am saying, everything I am doing in my relationships, in my environment, in all my activities, seeing the truth of everything as it is from moment to moment - is described by the great sage and teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti as characteristic of meditation. This is the always-beginning, never-ending, effortless and joyful research of liberating intelligence. It empties the mind of the burdens of the past, of all desires and fears, as well as the sorrow, anxiety and all the other traps that divisive, self- interested thought has put there. It reveals that the observer is the observed. It is the mutation from a self-interested, programmed intelligence - constantly in the process of becoming through experience, knowledge and patterns of thought - into a selfless, free, flexible, happy and creative intelligence, acting always here and now.

A Conscious Inquiry that Liberates Us from the Tyranny of the Ego

This attitude of full awareness, attention and inquiry, the hallmark of liberating intelligence, should be woven into our daily lives, operating in harmony with the intelligence of need (the two, in truth, being the workings of one undivided intelligence). It is not an occasional practice to be tuned into and out of. It happens as naturally as living itself once it is understood what meditation is: a conscious inquiry that liberates us from the tyranny of the ego working through the intelligence of need. The ego - individual or collective – is an entity created by thought and always ready to take over and corrupt the intelligence of need when liberating intelligence is not present.

When liberating intelligence is allowed to be fully and freely present it exposes and de-activates the ego’s attempts to remain in control. In this way the intelligence of need can work properly – and we are able to enjoy our lives. This roots us in reality, in truth, beauty, unconditional love and the joy of living. It makes us aware that we ourselves are agents of creative freedom; that it is up to us to set the pace, to acknowledge our responsibility for creating the world in which we live. What emerges, quite naturally and effortlessly, is clarity.

The Essence of Religious Life

The situation itself invites the right loving action, with no expectation of a specific outcome or reward. This is now the essence of religious life in a world dominated by a corrupted intelligence of need. The call is no longer to sacrifice but to achievable happiness as the freely won fruit of an authentic religious life – one that is not limited to elites but available to everyone. For humanity to survive, this is vital. I feel very responsible – as should all of my generation – for having been complicit with this enslavement by the intelligence of need. We have left our successors a world fraught with terrible dangers. According to statistics, young people around the world are losing confidence and trust in the world being left to them.

Meditation Has No Goals. It Is Done for its Own Sake

It must be emphasised that turning meditation into an act of will, following a ‘method’ or procedure in order to try and get something is a mistake. Using meditation as a tool to become more effective or to have new experiences, to be better and wiser loses its liberating essence. Meditation is frequently advertised as a way of coping with the stresses in our lives, ignoring the actual cause of stress: the society of domination and exploitation. Mindfulness has been appropriated and packaged by profit making companies or even, in the case of the US military, exploited to teach its soldiers how to remain mindful in combat. However, meditation as the quality of research inherent in liberating intelligence, has no goals. It is done for its own sake as the art of living. It is something to be discovered through the right exercise of the constitutive creative powers of intelligence (the CCP), especially through listening deeply (with no thought of ‘results’) to those in whom liberating intelligence has already awakened. Having expectations situates meditation in the field of the intelligence of need, even in the domain of the ego, instead of freedom: selfless, happy, liberating intelligence.

Meditation views everything with full attention, with a free and fresh mind characteristic of liberating intelligence’s solitude. Only non-divisive observation and self-observation based on liberating intelligence can give us the necessary insight into our world and into ourselves. This kind of observation, without reference to a divisive and conditioned observer, awakens axiological intelligence, making it sensitive, alert, attentive and creative, capable of creating the meaning and values that will guide us in every moment of our lives towards human wellbeing.

The Test of a Fully Awakened Liberating Intelligence

Becoming aware of unity within the plurality of existence is the fruit of meditation. Integrating meditation into daily life is the most basic requirement for a good life and - now - for survival. Saint Teresa of Ávila said, “God also walks among the cooking pots”. Harmonising the intelligence of need with liberating intelligence allows them to work simultaneously so that the divisive self dissolves into the unity of the real. The intelligence of need can then work at its fullest, for the wellbeing of all. This is the test of a fully awakened liberating intelligence.

To Live in Reality Rather than Simply in its Models

We can understand this silent inquiry of liberating intelligence as a form of research into the intelligence of need, one that results in their harmonious working together. In this way we come to understand, without judgement, our own models of reality, with their characteristic structure and highly nuanced ways of feeling and thinking. Our self- centredness is revealed to us, and we are liberated from any form of enslaving domination. I t is what all wisdom traditions and contemporary wisdom teachers ask of us: to ‘be born again’, in the words of the Gospel - to realise the minute-by-minute death to oneself and the resurrection to new life. This is what it is to live in reality rather than simply in its models. Above all, what is required is observant attention to our own reactions, to our desires and fears, to every kind of attachment that we might have. This will bring freedom and, with it, silence - a quiet and healthy mind.

The freedom to live in reality gives rise to right action in a life that is constantly renewed and no longer self-centred. This is what it is to be authentically free and - as a result - creative, truthful and happy. With liberating intelligence and the intelligence of need working in harmony, the ego is no longer in charge and thought ceases to be divisive and troublesome. It now works peacefully in the service of truth, mutual care, peace and joy. This is what lies at the core of creative democracies: a harmonious creative intelligence embodied throughout the whole of society.

Without the ‘I’, that image we use to constantly compare and to protect ourselves (unsuccessfully) from suffering, we are liberated, minute by minute, from our isolation and sorrow into healthy relationships. The art of deep listening, dialogue and mutual care – so central to social wellbeing - is made possible by meditation, the research in which liberating intelligence is always involved.

Loving Creativity through Meditation

Creative democracies’ moto could aptly be ‘Loving Creativity through Meditation’. Rather than simply creating art or techno-scientific knowledge with its products and services, it culminates in nothing less than a perpetually new and happy human life. Meditation is not about enclosing ourselves in little groups. On the contrary, it gives us the freedom and loving energy to act together in the world. In this radically transformed context, work is understood as the shared expression of creative freedom. As with life itself, creative democracies must continuously create and recreate themselves in the face of ever-new contingencies, unexpected challenges and threats – most of these coming from the attempt to manipulate life via techno-scientific innovations.

This vision of reality is eminently feasible and accessible for young people and all future generations. (It is explicitly not a romantic ideal, as the dominating impulse likes to describe everything that runs counter to its own interests.) Team sports already play an important role in many young people’s lives as a source of enjoyment and social connection. The ethos and culture of a healthy team can be extended to every area of life. Teamwork constitutes one of the truly great human powers at work in all creative democracies. It is the only power capable of producing the peaceful revolution we need to break away from an exploitative society corrupted by individualism and the desire to dominate.

New Economy that the Younger Generation is Being Called Upon to Create

Teamwork must be fully integrated into the new economy that the younger generation is being called upon to create. The present economy based on domination and exploitation maximizes the profit of rich nations, multinational corporations, and wealthy elites. It is made up of corporations that focus solely on investor profit at the expense of the common good. Ultimately, it is the investors who decide on and control economic policies in countries around the world. The resulting sense of powerlessness, frustration and despair among the majority of young people may be the turning point for much-needed change towards an economy based on subsidiary integral symbiosis. The new economy will involve a continuously renewing dynamic network of small and prosperous, sustainable companies and businesses. Current multinational corporations will be reengineered following the model of creative democracies with public banks and worker-owned firms, where success means human well-being. Wealth will no longer be the supreme dominant power. The new economy can only take off in a culture of intra-dependence based on our cultural creative intelligence. In particular we must learn to rely on, and champion mutual care, the core of subsidiary integral symbiosis which is itself a vital pillar supporting the transformational project of creative democracies.

Business activity must support the flourishing of creative liberating intelligence in the workplace. Among the countless benefits would be an increase in creative work and an improvement in the wellbeing of workers, whose levels of stress and occupational sickness continue to grow exponentially within our current decaying and dysfunctional model of the world.

New Enterprises as Creative Democracies

To emphasise and sum up the central point: new generations of inquirers (or Homo quaerens) must learn to shape whatever enterprises they undertake as creative democracies. There must be networks of teams devoted to the development of harmonious creative intelligence, the fundamental human power that will truly serve society’s needs and interests. This means that, among other things, production should be at the service of both creativity and mutual caring - not the other way round. Based on our true needs and interest, rather than imaginary or invented ones, this will be an effective new economy: sustainable, even austere, and not centred on production and consumerism. The rewards and gratification it offer naturally arise from the enjoyment of the creative process itself, just as it does for working artists. This is a necessary condition for the advancement of creative democracies and their success in humankind’s new enterprise.

New generations must be given the chance to grow up in freedom in order to imagine and create the new economy as well as making the essential changes our world needs. The bestowal of freedom is the bestowal of creativity and love, the greatest energy of intelligence, the only power to heal our ill culture. Only by living in freedom can we prevent digital dictatorship from killing human intelligence and with it the possibility of humanity’s fulfilment and lasting happiness.