Intelligence Is One

Abstract

The article “Intelligence Understood as the Agent of Human Life” (published in this journal in 2025) offers a general vision of human intelligence. Three main aspects are highlighted. First, its five constitutive creative powers (CCP): interest in reality, semiotic communication, subsidiary symbiosis, inquiry, and freedom. Second, the two modes through which intelligence relates to reality: the egocentric intelligence of need—an intelligence that names and gives meaning to things relative to our needs and interests—and liberating intelligence, which provides immediate access to reality without the mediation of words, without a separate “I”, and beyond time. This is the intelligence of awareness and insight, grounded in human life itself. Third, the distinction between three dimensions of intelligence: the abstract-functional (concerned with the how), the sentient-axiological (concerned with the what), and the liberating (the source of human freedom). The harmony of these three dimensions is essential for the development of human wisdom. Intelligence develops through its exercise—by observing and learning from its own actions, particularly through the CCP—rather than by merely acquiring knowledge about it. This calls for awareness and cultivation by all, especially in education. This paper introduces the foundations of human intelligence, rooted in the intelligence of the universe as a whole, or universal intelligence. This intelligence is the agent of the creative freedom of reality, and its body is the universe itself—a universal web of interactions. Together, they form a foundational triad of human life. A clear awareness of this triad, made possible through liberating intelligence, can sustain harmony among human beings and between humanity and the universe, avoiding the illusion that we are separate entities or external observers. A warning is required: this absolute triad is not knowledge to be acquired or conceptualized, as such knowledge is always relative. Thinking is not the way to it. This awareness arises from the insight of a radically free intelligence—our access to the absolute, to the freedom of reality, and to the true power of human intelligence to bring happiness under all circumstances. This insight cannot be possessed like knowledge; it is renewed in each present moment, as life itself. We are not external observers describing the universe or constructing models relative to our interests; we are participants within it, responsible co-creators through our actions. Moreover, there is only one intelligence: the agent of all symbiotic intra-activity in the universe, manifesting in all its individual and collective forms. It is not a “thing,” but the way in which things intra-act. When healthy, the embodiments of universal intelligence function in subsidiarity as integral members of a coherent whole, coordinated by universal intelligence and minimizing unnecessary loss of energy. Human freedom is not mere free will, but participation in the creative freedom of reality—not the possession of individuals, nor a tool for domination and exploitation, as it has often become through knowledge over thousands of years. The belief in human supremacy has led us into a profound crisis. Given our power of destruction—arising from a divided and unhealthy intelligence—we urgently need this awareness of the creative potential of intelligence in all human beings, in order to heal this fragmentation and attain well-being for all.