The current development of AI has brought a new urgency to the inquiry into what is intelligence. While humanity has endowed this word with great significance as standing for the faculty of skillful gathering and application of knowledge, the historical record as well as our current world situation raise serious doubts as to whether intelligence is at all active in our lives. Rather, the panorama of widespread disorder and violence would seem to testify to a persistent failure of intelligence. Within the context of K’s teachings, intelligence is not confined to the operation of thought. While thought may have its own limited intelligence, intelligence goes beyond it. Thought is limited and intelligence is not. Thought functions in time and intelligence is the timeless flash of insight. Given the general condition of fragmentation, conflict and sorrow afflicting mankind since time immemorial, the awakening of intelligence remains an ever present and urgent task. This awakening involves self-knowledge, for it is in the understanding of the factors of limitation inherent in the operation of thought that intelligence, with its compassion, can be liberated and wholeness restored. This is what we propose to explore together over these five online meetings.

Program (Tentative):

1. Intelligence and the State of the World:
Humanity has placed a great deal of value on the notion of intelligence as the critical factor in the understanding and management of reality. While we may attribute all kinds of significant developments to the action of intelligence, as in the various branches of science, we are equally aware that humanity in general is not thereby free from the age-old blights of violence and suffering. On the contrary, there is a pervasive state of division and conflict at practically every level of relationship, which leads to such destructive outcomes as the environmental crisis and war. These global phenomena are an indication of our general ignorance and the need for intelligence.

2. Knowledge and the Intelligence of Thought:
Humanity has developed its capacity for knowledge and the intellect as a way to master the field of reality and the better to ensure its own progress and security. The importance of knowledge and thought in the understanding of reality and in the practical management of our lives cannot be denied. They are evidently two fundamental pillars of our survival. Knowledge and thought have their right place and within it they have their own intelligence. However, when they dominate our existence their inherently limited nature brings about division and conflict, which is the breakdown of intelligence. So what is the intelligence and right place of thought?

3. What is Intelligence?
While culturally we have tended to equate intelligence with the skillful use of thought, intelligence is clearly more than the operation of knowledge and thought. The word itself means to read between the lines, i.e. to perceive meaning where there is nothing written. In other words, intelligence is insight or insight is the action of intelligence. Insight is a creative act of perception that is its own complete action. Within the context of K’s teachings, insight is the only factor that can see through the illusory constructs of our conditioning and bring about a quality of creative freedom and wholeness in our existence. If that is so, then the awakening of this quality is therefore of the greatest importance.

4. The Awakening of Intelligence:
Intelligence seems to be a latent or dormant potential of humanity. At best, it operates in limited specialized fields which, being fragmented, add to the general disorder. Whereas intelligence is the capacity to perceive the whole. This is of paramount importance if we are to resolve the condition of fragmentation permeating human consciousness and relationships. The awakening of intelligence requires the development of a quality of penetrating self-awareness of the movement of thought and the conditioned content of consciousness. In other words, it implies self-knowledge and sensitivity and a passion to discover.

5. There is no Intelligence Without Compassion:
Intelligence is rather a cold word, applied to all kinds of dreadful institutions and mechanical devices. As such, it can easily become an instrument of oppression, exploitation and cruelty. It is then at the service of partial interests and objectives and a contributing factor to the pervasive fragmentation in the world. Intelligence in its deeper and true sense implies the insight into and freedom from these factors of violence and suffering. The awakening of intelligence goes inevitably with the awakening of compassion, which is passion for all and which emerges from the ending of suffering.

Javier Gómez Rodríguez comes originally from Spain. In his mid-teens he came across the work of Krishnamurti and was instantly struck by its wholeness and ‘ring of truth’. From 1975-1978 he was a student at Brockwood Park, the school K founded in England in 1969.

After briefly lecturing in Spanish at Texas A & M in the US, in 1990 he returned to Brockwood Park as a teacher. There he met up with K’s close collaborator David Bohm and actively engaged with him in the exploration of the latter’s dialogue proposal.

Javier spent two years (1993-95) as a resident scholar at the KFI headquarters in Vasanta Vihar in India. On his return to Spain, he conducted a K-inspired inquiry group, translated several K books into Spanish and became a trustee of the Fundación Krishnamurti Lationamericana, the K foundation responsible for disseminating his work in the Spanish-speaking world. He also joined Krishnamurti Link International (KLI), an informal group of former Brockwood staff members brought together by the German industrialist Friedrich Grohe, who was K’s close friend during the last 2-3 years of his life and a lifelong financial supporter of the K institutions worldwide.

In 2000 Javier moved to The Netherlands, where he has been residing ever since. He has been collaborating with the Dutch K committee and continues to be associated with KLI. He currently edits Friedrich’s Newsletter and is active in KLI’s international network of activities.

In 2016 Javier started giving a course offering a comprehensive introduction to K’s life and teachings (www.thebookofyourself.com).  The idea for this course stems from his sense that they are universal in nature and a potential avenue of significant insight and fundamental change.

Javier is currently working on compiling a book on K’s life and teachings based on his research for the course.