What is the difference between conscience and intelligence?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
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what is the difference between conscience and intelligence answer the two are related in the sense that both of them warn us against doing unbeneficial activities and guide us towards beneficial healthy activities that help us learn and grow at the same time intelligence is a part of our subtle body and in some ways it is also a part of our gross body so whereas conscience is a more innate feature conscience is often considered to be associated with the divine although it is not always associated with the divine but conscience is the innate sense of right and wrong whereas intelligence refers more to a capacity to rationally analyze by which one can arrive at a decision of what is right and wrong so we could say that conscience points us in the same direction as intelligence but sometimes conscience guides us in a way that we may not be able to always rationally analyze and evaluate and come to the conclusion so some people can have a great capacity to be intelligent that means based on their intelligence they understand this is good and this is bad and they act accordingly but but they may not have a strong conscience in the sense that they can talk and analyze why this is right and why that is wrong but they may not themselves intuitively get it or feel it this is right or this is wrong so conscience also taps the power of our emotions we could say when we have a strong conscience then when we do wrong we feel bad about it so somebody say for example with intelligence may be able to understand why meat-eating is bad but they themselves may not feel bad about eating meat we say meat-eating is bad for health it is bad for the animals but some people just have a innate compass by which no this is bad so conscience at least in its pure state refers to the innate compass that the soul has the innate sense of right and wrong whereas intelligence refers to our capacity to get our bearings through rational thought and evaluation so for example to conclude say when we are pure then it is not that we have to use our intelligence to resist sensuality or other such things it is that our we don’t have to intellectually remember that you know this is forbidden in the scripture or this has unwanted consequences and that’s why I shouldn’t do this no it’s just we just get it this I should not do so so we could say conscience and intelligence both point more or less in the same track if both are relatively pure but intelligence is more a faculty of analysis and inference whereas conscience refers to an innate sense of right and wrong thank you