Prajna: 12 Universal Wrong Conceptions: 9. Conscience and Intelligence
- Jan 27, 2025
- 7 min read
Updated: Dec 14, 2025
«Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.» ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "Manon, Ballerina".
Taxonomy of Existence
9. Conscience and Intelligence
The Intelligent Web of the Cosmos
The word intelligence has multiple meanings: the capacity to reason, solve problems, learn, and adapt; the ability to understand and make sense of information; or the power to act effectively in relation to truth and reality. In human terms, intelligence involves logic and analysis; in the cosmic sense, it expresses itself as order, balance, and coherence.
The Intelligence of the Universe can be seen in the organization of matter and energy, in universal laws such as gravity, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism, and in the emergence of complex systems like life. These patterns reveal an intrinsic logic in nature — a rational harmony that governs the unfolding of creation and destruction.
This order does not imply a human-like consciousness or purpose. It simply reflects that the cosmos is structured by principles that can be understood — an underlying unity, a coherence that coordinates everything from galaxies to subatomic particles. Intelligence, in this broader sense, is the dynamic harmony of truth expressed in the laws that sustain the universe.
Consciousness – The Fundamental Awareness
Every existing thing requires perception to be recognized as such. Without awareness, even the most luminous act of manifestation would remain unseen. As creation and destruction pulse throughout the universe, consciousness arises as their witness — the inner capacity through which the cosmos perceives itself.
Consciousness is the identification of the movement of something — whether material or immaterial. It can expand or contract; and it likely exists in everything that exists in the universe. Natural and emergent laws express this interaction — in perturbations, field effects, and distances that quantum particles and greater entities identify.
Panpsychism defines consciousness as a fundamental and ubiquitous property of reality. The notion of senso may be understood as the subjective experience that things possess, even at primitive levels. Thus, consciousness is not exclusive to humans but manifests in degrees throughout the universe, from elementary particles to living beings.
Fundamental “feeling”: Consciousness exists, in its simplest form, in all things — not only in complex brains.
Degrees of awareness: The way subjective experience manifests varies greatly — human consciousness is complex, but even an electron or a rock may have a rudimentary form of “feeling.”
Senso as subjective experience: Every entity has a minimal perspective or way of “being-in-the-world,” which forms the basis of subjective experience.
Through this lens, the universe is not dead matter but a living continuum of awareness in different grades of expression.
Intelligence – The Organizing Principle
Consciousness allows perception; intelligence organizes it. It is the universal capacity to establish relations, infer patterns, and respond coherently to reality. Every perception is already an act of intelligence — an interpretation of signals from being.
Ancient philosophies, from Vedanta to the Stoics, recognized this. The Logos, the Nous, the Tao, and the Brahman all refer to a universal Intelligence that sustains existence. Intelligence is not limited to human thought; it is the architecture of reality itself.
Atoms combine intelligently, cells organize intelligently, ecosystems adapt intelligently. Human intelligence is one of its most self-reflective forms — the universe learning to understand itself.
From Consciousness to Conscience
When consciousness turns its gaze upon itself, intelligence becomes moral awareness — conscience. While consciousness allows one to perceive, conscience allows one to discern. It distinguishes harmony from dissonance, unity from separation, right from wrong.
A being becomes truly intelligent not when it merely calculates, but when it perceives the ethical and existential consequences of its actions. In this sense, conscience is the ethical dimension of intelligence — its heart.
Across spiritual traditions, this insight reappears:
In Buddhism, Prajna is wisdom born of compassion.
In Christianity, the inner Christ symbolizes moral intelligence that forgives and enlightens.
In the Upanishads, the Ātman reflects the universal Brahman within the human soul.
All point to the same truth: Conscience is intelligence reflected in love.
The Spectrum of Conscience
Conscience is not static; it manifests in levels or gradations that vary according to one’s alertness, depth of self-awareness, and spiritual maturity. Across medicine, psychology, and philosophy, these levels have been described as a continuum of awareness, from dim to radiant, from mechanical habit to luminous realization.
1. Medical and psychological perspectives
From a physiological standpoint, consciousness can be assessed by responsiveness and alertness:
Full alertness corresponds to the normal waking state, where attention is clear and directed.
Drowsiness or daydreaming reflects a partial withdrawal of awareness, a dimming of the inner light.
Sleep and dream states move consciousness inward, into symbolic or subconscious domains.
Coma or unresponsiveness mark the deepest withdrawal from external perception, though traces of inner awareness may still persist.
These states show that consciousness oscillates naturally, like tides between waking and sleeping, expansion and contraction.
2. Philosophical and spiritual perspectives
Beyond physiology, traditions describe three primary levels of conscience:
Subconscious: The domain of instinct, memory, and reactive emotion. It is the repository of habits, fears, and desires that operate below deliberate thought.
Conscious: The analytical and moral plane, where thought and choice arise. Here the human being reflects, decides, and assumes responsibility.
Superconscious: The transcendent dimension, where awareness merges with its source. In this state, one perceives unity, compassion, and truth directly — beyond the dualities of mind.
These are not fixed compartments but fluid strata through which awareness moves. Each moment may oscillate between mechanical reaction and luminous presence.
On a practical continuum, the evolution of conscience can be visualized as a movement:
from victim thinking (identification with suffering and separation)
→ to self-awareness (recognition of causes and choice),
→ to alignment with reality (surrender to truth, letting go, and compassion).
Thus, conscience evolves from instinctual survival toward lucid, loving intelligence — the consciousness that sees all beings as facets of a single life (unum).
Science – The Organized Memory of Intelligence
Science is the organized accumulation of consciousness — structured and stored in memory — for the purpose of understanding and survival. Its goal is to discern, collect, and preserve intelligence: the recognition of natural and emergent laws that govern creation and destruction in Uno, and the identification of truths within ultimate reality.
Science seeks to reduce danger, prevent collective extinction, and promote the balanced continuity of life. It transforms the spontaneous awareness of intelligence into systematic understanding.
In this sense, science is conscience applied to matter and method — the discipline of learning how the universe functions, so that life may continue in harmony with it.
Wisdom – The Right Use of Knowledge
Wisdom is the recognition of truth with consciousness and the correct application of knowledge acquired through science. It is the union of understanding and conscience — knowing not only what is, but how to use it
rightly. Where science accumulates knowledge, wisdom selects and applies it in alignment with the greater good.
Thus, wisdom is not the end of knowledge but its purification through awareness. It represents the maturity of intelligence, the clarity of conscience, and the compassionate integration of both.
The Law of Harmony
When intelligence is guided by conscience and expressed through wisdom, it becomes creative and life-affirming. When separated from them, it becomes destructive — a tool of domination or division. Therefore, the ethical dimension of intelligence is not optional; it is the condition for evolution itself.
The moral law is not external; it is embedded in awareness. To act without conscience is to fall into automatic reaction — dissonance in the symphony of being. To act with clarity, compassion, and truth is to resonate with the order of the universe.
The wise have always defined knowledge not as mere information, but as right knowledge. The true sage is not one who knows more, but one who understands rightly and acts accordingly.
The Evolution of Understanding
Human civilization stands at a critical threshold. Technology extends intelligence outward, but conscience and wisdom must expand inward to balance it. Intelligence without conscience leads to self-destruction;
conscience guided by intelligence leads to harmony.
The future depends not on how much we know, but on how deeply we understand. To understand is to unite intellect and compassion, logic and empathy, science and spirituality. At the summit of this integration, all knowledge returns to love — the natural expression of universal intelligence.
Intelligence as the Reflection of Uno
At the highest level, Intelligence, Conscience, Science, and Wisdom converge into a single principle — the living reflection of Uno, the indivisible source of being. When the mind is clear and the heart is pure, intelligence seeks truth, conscience guides it ethically, science grounds it in reality, and wisdom applies it compassionately.
In this state, awareness recognizes itself as both observer and observed, creator and creation. This is the sacred equilibrium toward which evolution tends: a conscious universe awakening to its own intelligence. In the enlightened being, creation and destruction, knowledge and love, science and spirit dissolve into one luminous fact — that all is aware, and all awareness is One.
... same inner and outer expansion as ever
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