Is there an inherent conflict between spirituality and intelligence? Are they perpetually at odds with each other? Must we choose to embrace either spirituality or rationality but never both at the same time?
Several years ago I would have said yes to these questions. But today I see that this conflict is nothing but an illusion. In fact, I think intelligence and spirituality ultimately follow the same path, and I don't mean this in the sense of trying to program your head with religious doctrine and then trying to convince you of it by manipulating the facts. I mean that by embracing your intellect to its fullest extent, you will eventually arrive at a sense of spirituality. You may not label it as such, but you will find yourself generating similar results to some of the most enlightened people around.
In terms of the question of intelligence vs. spirituality, the problem arises from the perceived sense of conflict between these two supposed opposites. This perception prevents us from trusting and following either side far enough. We'll only go so far down one side or the other before flipping back to the other side. We have our intellectual pursuits and our spiritual pursuits, and never the twain shall meet. They are both kept separate and compartmentalized. In the business world, our actions are governed by intelligence; we achieve the best results when we make the most intelligent decisions. But if we go home, meditate, and begin asking questions like, "What is the purpose of my life?" we have to load up a different set of rules. Now we've supposedly left the territory of the intellect and entered the spiritual realm. We try to interact intelligently with our outer world and spiritually with our inner world.
In terms of the question of intelligence vs. spirituality, the problem arises from the perceived sense of conflict between these two supposed opposites. This perception prevents us from trusting and following either side far enough. We'll only go so far down one side or the other before flipping back to the other side. We have our intellectual pursuits and our spiritual pursuits, and never the twain shall meet. They are both kept separate and compartmentalized. In the business world, our actions are governed by intelligence; we achieve the best results when we make the most intelligent decisions. But if we go home, meditate, and begin asking questions like, "What is the purpose of my life?" we have to load up a different set of rules. Now we've supposedly left the territory of the intellect and entered the spiritual realm. We try to interact intelligently with our outer world and spiritually with our inner world.
However, this perceived conflict is a fabricated one. If you were only to follow your intelligence or your spiritual beliefs far enough — really push them to the limits — you'd see they end up at the same place. The conflict is purely imaginary. It exists only in our thoughts.
Let me explain how this is possible and how this realization played out in my own life.
My upbringing fell squarely on the intellectual side. My mother was a college math professor, and my father an aerospace engineer. My family was fairly religious, but I never considered us to be spiritual. I was raised with a strong sense of religion – attending church every Sunday and going through 12 years of Catholic schooling made it hard to ignore – but for me there was no deeper spirituality behind these installed beliefs. Religion was just another school subject like mathematics or history. It was mostly about memorizing things, following complicated rules, and enduring sacraments like confession where I had to tell a stranger all of my sins and then do penance. By the time I was 17, this disconnect caused me to shed what little religion I had, so I became an atheist, much to the chagrin of my family. I think this decision made perfect sense. I was taught to be intelligent and to make rational choices, and I found my religious upbringing to be highly irrational. In my own way I probably thought I was correcting a logical error made by my parents, an impression which only grew stronger after experiencing their reaction to my decision, which as you can probably imagine left the realm of rationality far behind. I was happy to move out after graduating from high school. And aside from weddings and funerals (not my own in either case), I never set foot in a church again.
In college I double-majored in computer science and mathematics, two subjects where rationality reigned supreme. I tended to regard spiritual people as a bit wacko — to me they were wasting their time and not making worthwhile contributions to the world, aside from a few notable exceptions (but I had my doubts about those too). In my mind spiritual people were of a lower order of intelligence, ruled more by fleeting emotions than by intelligence and common sense. I generally regarded such people as dumb and inept; at best they were simply misguided. I devoted myself to a purely rational existence, shunning all things spiritual or religious.
Years later I began considering how my beliefs might be creating (rather than merely observing) my experience of reality. I learned the difference between empowering and disempowering beliefs. This came from being exposed to a wide range of personal development material in my early 20s. Thinkers such as Earl Nightingale, Napoleon Hill, Norman Vincent Peale, Brian Tracy, and Tony Robbins taught me that my own thoughts and attitudes would play a critical role in my results. If I believed I could achieve something, I was far more likely to be able to do it. If I defeated myself in my own thoughts, I would only hinder my own progress.
This concept resonated with my intellect. It wasn't hard for me to see the role that my own thoughts played in my results. I had already seen evidence of this, both in my life and in the lives of other people. I could see that by keeping a positive attitude and staying focused on what I wanted, I achieved better results than I did when I was pessimistic and worried. To me this was a common sense realization, but it was still a powerful breakthrough for me because I had not previously considered that my own attitude could play such a crucial role in my life. I also did not previously realize that I could change my attitude and thereby change my results. Around the age of 21, I thought to myself, "Wow... I'd better make sure I keep my attitude positive then. I'd better stay focused on what I want. Otherwise I'm just going to sabotage myself. And self-sabotage would not be very intelligent."
This concept gradually expanded beyond keeping a positive attitude as I continued to read more books on personal development. Tony Robbins' books (among many others) introduced me to the concept of empowering vs. disempowering beliefs. For example, if I believe that computers are too complicated and confusing, I'll avoid using one. If I hold the opposite belief, I'll embrace technology. The latter belief is more empowering because it gives me the option of using technology when it's effective to do so, but with the former belief I am left with fewer options. Being capable is a more intelligent choice than being incapable.
As I went through college I became increasingly curious about this notion of empowering vs. disempowering beliefs and especially how my own beliefs might be affecting my results, perhaps in ways I didn't even realize. There was no spirituality here. I was still an atheist at this point, and this was purely an intellectual matter. I was deeply interested in time management and productivity, and I began asking myself, "What if my current beliefs are not the most optimal ones I can have right now?"
As a computer programmer who saw rapid improvements in technology from age 10 when I learned to program in BASIC on an Apple II to age 21 when I programmed in C++ on a 486DX-50mhz PC, I thought of these concepts in terms of computer analogies. My physical brain was the computer hardware. My beliefs and attitude were the operating system (OS). And my thoughts (including those which directed my actions) were software programs. The software runs on top of the OS which runs on top of the hardware. How do you make a better computer? You can upgrade the hardware. While it would be great to upgrade my own brain, I didn't see too many viable options there other than diet and exercise. But what about upgrading the OS? I remember upgrading from MS-DOS 6 to Windows 3.1 at some point and noticing what a big difference it made. The computer hardware was still the same, but by upgrading the operating system, everything changed. I ran different software programs. I achieved different (arguably much better) results.
I thought to myself, "What if I could do an OS upgrade on my own brain? What would that look like?" This would require "upgrading" my personal beliefs and attitudes. It would mean reprogramming my most fundamental beliefs about reality. That would cause me to think different thoughts (i.e. run different programs), which would guarantee different results. The problem though was that it wasn't quite clear which changes would be upgrades and which would be downgrades or if this whole thing was even worthy of my attention. Would changing my beliefs even make a noticeable difference in my results? However, by following the computer analogy a bit further, I developed a suspicion that I might be sitting on top of a hidden intellectual goldmine.
What is the nature of a good OS upgrade? You gain new features. Your software runs faster. You're more productive. You can do more and better things in less time. So if I wanted to upgrade my brain's OS, these were the types of results to look for. Otherwise, I might be just wasting my time. I might even be risking a downgrade and get worse results (Windows Millennium Edition, cough cough).
Despite the risks, this realization sparked me to undertake a quest to explore other belief systems — a quest that continues to this day. I decided to consciously and deliberately recondition my own beliefs to see what effect different belief systems would have on my results. I began messing around with my own operating system. Externally this looked like a spiritual pursuit, and I've often referred to it as such, but really it was an intellectual pursuit. My goal was to optimize my own belief about reality – my personal operating system – such that I would be able to do more and better things in less time.
This was not a simple process. I've been at it since the early ‘90s and am still experimenting. The tricky part is that I can't really know what effect certain beliefs will have on my results until I try them. There is too much underlying complexity to be able to accurately predict everything in advance. I have to dive in and test it. For example, is a belief in God empowering or disempowering? If I believe in God, will it allow me to achieve more and better results in less time than if I'm an atheist? And if so, what kind of belief in God is the best?
