Intelligence Vs. Instinct

Yesterday I started "This Is It: And Other Essays" by Alan Watts (I've read a few of his books, and every single one has gone in the Top Shelf Collection...very enlightening material.) One of the issues I have been contemplating for quite a while now is the matter of intellect vs instinct, and one of the essays in this book touches on just that, and threw me into a deep introspection that lasted until the wee hours of the morning. The thought occurred to me many months ago that if my intelligence (which gathers information through the 5 senses, organizes this information into categories and then attempts to predict the next sequence of events based on the patterns it has perceived) couldn't solve the monumental dilemas of existence, then maybe it was time to see what the other side could offer in terms of a solution or answer of any kind. Watts says that "the price of intelligence as we now know it is chronic anxiety, anxiety which appears to increase - oddly enough - to the very degree that human life is subjected to intelligent organization...but there are innumerable ways of dividing the world of experience into seperate facts and events...there is always the rankling doubt that important data may have been overlooked. There is therefore no complete assurance that an important decision is right." (pg 44) But if not intelligence...then what?

As humans with a tendency to impose order on chaos, our logical mind will perceive that to solve the problem of intelligence we must make a complete break away from it, and dive into the realm of instinct/irrationality. We will feel the urge to move from external factors (intelligence considers the 'outside' and brings it 'in' for further processing) to internal (instinct decides action based on emotion, and is thus a response to the 'outside' that is totally devoid of reason)

"We have difficulty in seeing the relativity or mutual interdependence of contraries. For this reason our revolts against the excesses of intelligence are always in danger of selling out to instinct." (pg 48)

It seems at this point that we have reached a conundrum. If we walk the road of intelligence,
then this seems to imply that everything is determined, everything is ordered and thus, predestined. Equally disturbing, however, is the path of instinct, which suggests that NOTHING is determined, and that the world is nothing but chaotic randomness. In other words, intelligence = lack of freedom, and instinct = lack of inherent purpose or meaning. I have been trying to make sense of this dichotomy for some time now.

"The anxiety which comes about through the conflict of intelligence with instinct, as man as the conscious will with nature both in and around him, does not seem to have any solution unless we can feel relationship, unless it is a matter of clear sensation that as determined beings we are free, and that as free beings we are determined...if we can feel this way, it will not appear that the use of the will and intelligence is a conflict with our natural environment and endowment" (pg 53)

The key, then, is not in seeing things seperately, but together. Not 'either/or', but 'both/and'. But this can't be experienced on the level of intelligence or on the level of instinct. We must merge and thus TRANSCEND to a third level in which all parts of the whole (the interdependence and connection of ALL things) can be EXPERIENCED simultaneously, without trying to impose any kind of order, pattern or judgement (i.e. of good/bad). Pure experience in the NOW.

"The mystical experience, or what I am now calling the experience of relationship...comes about from the insight that there is no proprietor, no inner controller. This becomes evident as soon as the consciousness which has felt itself to be the inner controller starts to examine itself, and finds out that it does not give itself the power of control." (pg 56)

When we stop identifying with our minds, when we stop thinking that we ARE our minds, we can realize that all we ARE is what we ARE in that very moment: in simply being. We are nothing and yet we are everything. This realization merges the polar opposites. All is perceived as one; good/bad. love/hate, rationality/irrationality, subjective/objective, personal/universal, intelligence/instinct.

It is the "task of intelligence to appreciate the inseperable relationships between the things so divided, and so to rediscover the universe as distinct from a mere multiverse. In doing so it will see its own limitations, see that intelligence alone is not enough - that it cannot operate, cannot be intelligence, without an approach to the world through instinctual feeling with its possibility of knowing relationship as you know when you drink it that water is cold." (pg 58)

The secret is finding the way to experiencing the merging of duality into the non-dual. We must come right back to the very point at which we began, and yet go beyond it simultaneously. When I first realized this schism within myself, I also realized the need to surpass the conflicting opposites somehow. Instead of choosing one or the other, the only 2 choices I thought I had at first, I chose neither, but I clearly saw the reality of both at the same time. Logic wasn't working, but then again, neither was emotion. "Good" didn't work, but neither did "bad". So I accepted both and the opposites merged. And I saw (but haven't yet fully experienced) the both/and nature of everything. I see the interdependence of variables that led me to this point. Naturally, I can thusly regret nothing, but can only sit in appreciation of everything that I have integrated so far into my own experience and personality.

In closing, intelligence = lack of freedom and instinct = lack of inherent purpose or meaning, when combined and fully accepted, transforms into a new equation which surpasses both at the same time.

INTELLIGENCE + INSTINCT = TRANSCENDANCE & TRANSFORMATION

...and this equation works no matter which dualities are merged...

Hope this was enlightening.