Among the different species, we humans are uniquely gifted with advanced intelligence. By using this intelligence properly, we can perceive life’s spiritual dimension and approach the supreme spiritual reality, Krishna.
The Bhagavad-gita (07.17) underscores that among the different types of people who approach Krishna, such intellectual seekers are the best. As they are relatively free from self-centered material motivations, they can by practicing bhakti-yoga swiftly awaken pure love of Krishna, thereby eventually attaining eternal life with him. Gita wisdom compares people who are spiritually unaware to the dead, so their return to spiritual awareness is like a return from the dead. Our intelligence, by thus pointing towards eternality, can serve as a tool for our spiritual resurrection.
However, the same intelligence can be abused to defy Krishna and decry life’s spiritual dimension. The same Gita section talks earlier (07.15) about people who let illusion steal their knowledge and therefore don’t surrender to him. Such deluded people may even become bigoted against God. They misuse their intelligence to come up with false evidence, faulty reasoning and fallacious rhetoric to propagate godlessness and materialism. Thus, their intelligence becomes a tool for spiritual insurrection, for their rebellion against God.
Significantly, their insurrection far from harming God harms them – it indentures them to animalism. They find themselves having no purpose and pleasure in life beyond the pursuit of the bodily drives of eating, sleeping, mating and defending that animals live for. Their anti-theistic bravado notwithstanding, the life of intellectualized animalism keeps them languishing in unfulfilling and distressing material existence life after life – till they learn to redirect their intelligence towards Krishna instead of away from him.
For them and indeed for all humans, Gita wisdom stands ready to guide the human intelligence on the path to realizing and relishing life and love eternal.
The intelligent soul who offers himself with all his heart to the lotus feet of Lord Sri Krishna finds himself in an always expanding tsunami of divine Love. By the unlimited grace of Hrsikesa such a soul is smitten with love and sees the Lord dancing in every atom. To unveil this unmatched experience Srila Prabhupada, in the footsteps of Sukadeva Goswami, recommends using our intelligence for purification of the mind, following in the footsteps of the previous acharyas, and pleasing the Supreme Lord.