One of the keys to the understanding of our true nature and of our ultimate destiny is the fact that the things of this world never measure up to the real range of our INTELLIGENCE. Our INTELLIGENCE is made for the Absolute, or it is nothing. Among all the INTELLIGENCEs of this world the human spirit alone is capable of objectivity, and this implies – or proves – that what confers on our INTELLIGENCE the power to accomplish to the full what it can accomplish, and what makes it wholly what it is, is the Absolute alone.* (* “Neither in the earth nor in the heavens is there room for ME (Allah) but in the heart of My believing servant there is room for ME” (hadith qudsi). Similarly Dante: “I perceive that our intellect is never satisfied, if the True does not enlighten it, outside which no truth is possible” (Paradiso III, 124-126).) (GTUFS: LightAW, Religio Perennis)
Intelligence is the perception of a reality, and a fortiori the perception of the Real as such. It is ipso facto discernment between the Real and the unreal – or the less real . . . Intelligence gives rise not only to discernment, but also – ipso facto – to the awareness of our superiority in relation to those who do not know how to discern; contrary to what many moralists think, this awareness is not in itself a fault, for we cannot help being aware of something that exists and is perceptible to us thanks to our INTELLIGENCE, precisely. It is not for nothing that objectivity is one of man’s privileges. But the same INTELLIGENCE that makes us aware of a superiority, also makes us aware of the relativity of this superiority and, more than this, it makes us aware of all our limitations. This means that an essential function of INTELLIGENCE is self-knowledge: hence the knowledge – positive or negative according to the aspects in view – of our own nature. To know God, the Real in itself, the supremely Intelligible, and then to know things in the light of this knowledge, and in consequence also to know ourselves: these are the dimensions of intrinsic and integral INTELLIGENCE, the only one worthy of the name, strictly speaking, since it alone is properly human. We have said that INTELLIGENCE produces, by its very essence, self-knowledge, with the virtues of humility and charity; but it may also produce, outside its essence or nature and as a consequence of a luciferian perversion, that vice of vices which is pride. Hence the ambiguity of the notion of “INTELLIGENCE” in religious moralities, along with the accentuation of a humility which is expressly extra-intellectual, and for that very reason ambiguous and dangerous in its turn, since “there is no right superior to that of the Truth.” (GTUFS: RootsHC, On Intelligence)
Intelligence is the perception of the real and not the “intellectualization” of the unreal. (GTUFS: HaveCenter, Universal Categories)
Man is INTELLIGENCE, and INTELLIGENCE is the transcending of forms and the realization of the invisible Essence; to say human INTELLIGENCE is to say absoluteness and transcendence. (GTUFS: TransfMan, Reflections on Ideological Sentimentalism)
Intelligence, by definition, must be disposed of in view of the knowable, which means at the same time that it must reflect the divine Intelligence, and it is for that reason that man is said to be “made in the image of God.” (GTUFS: DivineHuman, Transcendence is Not Contrary to Sense)
Intelligence (four functions): Objectivity, subjectivity, activity, passivity; in the mind, these are reason, intuition, imagination and memory. By “objectivity” we mean that knowledge is inspired by data which are exterior to it, and this is so in the case of reason; by “subjectivity” on the contrary, it must be understood that the knowledge in question operates through existential analogy, this is to say that it is inspired by data which the subject bears within himself: thus, we have no need of reasoning in order to observe the natural mechanism of another subjectivity, and this is the faculty of intuition. In “activity,” the INTELLIGENCE relives, recreates or combines the possibilities which are known to it, and this is the imagination; in “passivity,” the INTELLIGENCE registers and preserves the data which present themselves to it. (GTUFS: DivineHuman, Outline of a Spiritual Anthropology)
Intelligence (Shariite view): Intelligence can be the essence of a Path provided there is a contemplative mentality and a thinking that is fundamentally non-passional; an exoterism could not, as such, constitute this Path but can, as in the case of Islam, predispose to it by its fundamental perspective, its structure and its “climate.” From this strictly shariite point of view, INTELLIGENCE is reduced – for Islam – to responsibility; viewed thus, every responsible person is intelligent; in other words a responsible person is defined in relation to INTELLIGENCE and not in relation to freedom of the will alone. (GTUFS: UIslam, The Path)
Intelligence / Concretism: If INTELLIGENCE is the capacity to discern “substances” through “accidents” or independently of them, “concretism” can only be described as a kind of philosophical codifying of unINTELLIGENCE. (GTUFS: LogicT, Abuse of the Ideas of the Concrete and the Abstract)
Intelligence / Good Character: To the question of knowing whether it is better to have INTELLIGENCE or a good character, we reply: a good character. Why? Because, when this question is asked, one is never thinking of integral INTELLIGENCE, which essentially implies self-knowledge; conversely, a good character always implies an element of INTELLIGENCE, obviously on condition that the virtue be real and not compromised by an underlying pride, as is the case in the “zeal of bitterness.” Good character is open to the truth exactly as INTELLIGENCE faithful to its substance opens onto virtue; we could also say that moral perfection coincides with faith, and thus could not be a social perfectionism devoid of spiritual content. (GTUFS: RootsHC, On Intelligence)
Intelligence / Inwardness: Intelligence is to discern transcendent Reality; inwardness is to unite oneself with immanent Reality; the one does not go without the other. Discernment, by its nature, calls forth union; both elements imply virtue by way of consequence and even a priori. Discernment and union, we have said; analogously, we may distinguish between “comprehension” and “concentration,” the latter referring to the “heart” or to “life,” and the former to the “mind” or to “thought”; although there is also on the one hand a mental concentration, and on the other, and even before thought, a cardiac comprehension, namely intellection. (GTUFS: RootsHC, Pillars of Wisdom)
Intelligence / Virtue: In itself, INTELLIGENCE is “pious” because its very substance is pure discernment, and pure contemplation, of the Sovereign Good; a true INTELLIGENCE is inconceivable outside that already celestial quality that is the sense of the sacred; the love of God being the very essence of virtue. In a word, INTELLIGENCE, to the very extent that it is faithful to its nature and its vocation, produces or favors the moral qualities; conversely, virtue, with the same conditions, necessarily opens onto wholeness of mind, hence onto knowledge of the Real. (GTUFS: HaveCenter, Intelligence and Character)