Intelligence

Intelligence is, in Martinus' cosmology, a faculty that enables a living being to analyse experience, acquire knowledge and create logically. Martinus identifies it as the fourth basic energy, whose function is to promote analysis and reasoning. He also describes intelligence as needing to develop together with feeling, so that knowledge can serve life and love rather than self-interest. ^[1] ^[2]

The faculty of analysis

Martinus distinguishes between directly sensing an experience and analysing it. Sight, hearing and feeling provide experiences, while intelligence makes it possible to examine their nature and draw conclusions from them. In this sense intelligence is a psychic or spiritual faculty, not another physical sense. It does not itself provide direct experience; it processes and clarifies what has been experienced. ^[3]

Through intelligence, the individual can become intellectually conscious of experience, gain knowledge and think logically. That knowledge also makes logical creation possible. In the language of Martinus' basic energies, this capacity is the characteristic function of the energy of intelligence. ^[4]

Intelligence and evolution

Martinus describes intelligence as an evolutionary faculty. In the early stages of terrestrial human existence, intelligence is primitive or latent, and feeling dominates. As intelligence develops, the individual becomes increasingly able to analyse life personally and becomes less dependent on religious suggestion and inherited belief. The movement is therefore from guidance by faith towards knowledge gained through learning and experience. ^[5]

This development expands the individual's mental horizon and mastery over material realities. Martinus also describes the modern human being as increasingly intelligent while still incompletely developed in humane feeling; intelligence can then be used to refine either humane or destructive impulses. ^[6] ^[7]

Intelligence is consequently not morally self-directing. When the new faculty first appears, the individual may use it primarily for personal advantage. Martinus connects this immature use of intelligence with the collective dark fate of terrestrial humanity, arguing that social harmony requires intelligence to be used for the benefit of humanity as a whole rather than for egoistic interests. ^[8]

Intelligence and feeling

For Martinus, intelligence and feeling are complementary. Refined feeling manifests as sympathy and a desire to help, while intelligence gives the ability to understand and regulate feeling. Feeling cannot become fully reliable love without this support. Without sufficient intelligence, sympathy may be guided by vague or uncertain motives and cause unintended harm. ^[9]

Martinus distinguishes between a “being of intelligence” and a “being of feeling”. Knowledge acquired through calculation, reading and teaching can produce theories, but intelligence alone cannot provide experience of the deepest eternal realities. Conversely, feeling alone may produce religious enthusiasm without a logically reliable understanding, and can lead to intolerance. Neither faculty in isolation is enough. ^[10]

The more complete ideal is the high-intellectual human being. This is not simply a person with academic knowledge or exceptional reasoning ability. It is a being whose sensitivity to other living beings is governed by an intelligence equally developed, so that thought and action are in harmony with the laws of life. Martinus associates the culmination of this balance with Universal love, and describes it as a condition in which harming another is experienced as harming oneself. ^[11]

Intelligence, science and religion

Intelligence is the basis of science in Martinus' account. Because it seeks knowledge that can be investigated and logically verified, its growth weakens reliance on assertions that cannot be intellectually justified. Martinus explains the resulting scepticism, materialism and atheism as a consequence of intelligence developing faster than the higher faculties needed to experience spiritual realities. ^[12] ^[13]

Martinus says that intelligence operating with the basic energies available to terrestrial humanity can acquire knowledge of created, temporal and spatial things, but cannot by itself establish the individual's eternal identity or resolve the eternal facts. ^[14]

Intelligence can also be insufficient for happiness when it is made into the sole guide of life. Martinus describes the philosophy “Every man for himself” as an expression of still feeble intelligence, and contrasts it with the road to happiness expressed as “Every man for his neighbour”. The resulting experiences can reveal the limits of knowledge that is not joined to a higher understanding of life. ^[15]

In the transition to a new form of religious understanding, intelligence is expected to unite with feeling. Martinus describes a field in which scientific knowledge and feeling begin to harmonise, giving rise to wisdom. Philosophical and spiritual research belong to this transitional stage. ^[16]

Intelligence energy and the higher faculties

Martinus calls intelligence energy the fourth basic energy. It penetrates the three preceding energies and promotes the living being's faculties for analysing and reasoning. The zone in which it culminates is therefore called the “kingdom of wisdom”. ^[17]

At the beginning of the intelligence body's functioning, intelligence energy can reorganise memory impressions into more useful combinations. Martinus says that this strengthens the faculty of recognition and changes it from mere premonition into foreknowledge. He presents the embryonic intelligence body as the instrument through which memories can be collected, grouped and transformed. ^[18]

Intelligence nevertheless has a distinct role from intuition. Intelligence works with memory material available in day-consciousness, whereas intuition can draw on memory material that has left day-conscious awareness. Martinus therefore describes intuition as having a wider range and perspective, and as an essential basis for genius in higher mental creation. ^[19]

In terrestrial human beings, intuition appears as very faint glimpses, especially among the most developed. For a spiritual researcher it may emerge as cosmic knowledge; for an artist it may appear as ready-made creative ideas. Martinus describes this development as a cooperation of feeling, intelligence and the embryonic body of intuition. ^[20] ^[21]

At the culmination of intelligence energy, reasoning is described as being in complete contact with reality. In the Eternal World Picture, this culmination is associated with the kingdom of wisdom, where intelligence is at its peak and creation is directed towards becoming a joy and blessing for living things. Martinus also links the culmination with intuition, memory and the control of selfish impulses: intelligence becomes fully constructive when unselfishness and love have become the dominant life-force. ^[22] ^[23]

Significance

Intelligence is thus a necessary faculty for analysis, science and logical action, but Martinus' account places its highest development in cooperation with feeling, intuition and love. Intelligence without feeling can intensify egoism and destruction, while feeling without intelligence can become illogical and fanatical. Its constructive purpose is to understand experience, regulate feeling and express love in practical conduct. ^[24] ^[25] ^[26]

References

[1] The Eternal World Picture 1, section 13.4

[2] Menneskehedens skæbne, section 1.40 (*)

[3] The Eternal World Picture 4, section 37.7

[4] The Eternal World Picture 1, section 13.4

[5] Livets Bog 1, section 143

[6] Den ideelle føde, section 1.2 (*)

[7] The Eternal World Picture 4, section 37.7

[8] Menneskehedens skæbne, section 1.37 (*)

[9] Menneskehedens skæbne, section 1.40 (*)

[10] Vejen til indvielse, section 2.2 (*)

[11] Vejen til indvielse, section 2.3 (*)

[12] Menneskehedens skæbne, section 1.3 (*)

[13] Bønnens mysterium, section 1.5 (*)

[14] The Eternal World Picture 1, section 13.4

[15] Bønnens mysterium, section 1.6 (*)

[16] Livets Bog 1, section 135

[17] Livets Bog 1, section 258

[18] Livets Bog 1, section 188

[19] Livets Bog 1, section 201

[20] Livets Bog 1, section 199

[21] Livets Bog 1, section 220

[22] Livets Bog 2, section 366

[23] The Eternal World Picture 3, section 30.6

[24] Menneskehedens skæbne, section 1.40 (*)

[25] Vejen til indvielse, section 2.2 (*)

[26] Livets Bog 2, section 366

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

[16]

[17]

[18]

[19]

[20]

[21]

[22]

[23]

[24]

[25]

[26]