If animals’ instincts come from the Supersoul, why are animals considered spiritually unintelligent?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Animals are not just going by instincts, they are driven, guided by the super-soul.
So, how do we understand this? The two are not necessarily contradictory. They can be complementary. So, how? Basically, at a functional level, we know that animals sometimes exhibit phenomenal intelligence.
Just like when birds are going to migrate because the season is changing. They can go thousands of miles. And then, during the journey, they go, they stay at another place and they may even die.
And their descendants, when they come back, they take the same journey back and the descendants come and make a nest on the same tree in which their ancestors lived. How do they know? So, these animals exhibit phenomenal intelligence. Birds, if they are migrating, how do they have a compass in their head by which they know in the vast sky where to go? It’s very bewildering.
So, basically, instincts are also intelligence. But it is programmed intelligence. Programmed intelligence means that it is not something which they consciously think about.
Like I said that we humans can trade the present for the future. Animals know how to do that sometimes. When they migrate, they go through that difficult journey of flying.
Or sometimes in cold seasons, before the cold seasons come, some animals burrow under the ground and they make holes for themselves where they can hibernate. But that is not something which they are consciously choosing to do. See, that’s what they do.
It’s not that when the frog is burrowing a hole in the ground for hibernation in winter, the frog is not thinking, I would like to enjoy a nice frog, but I have to do this. No, there is no conscious choice. When they have the urge to mate, they will mate.
When their biology drives them to dig a hole for future survival, they will do that. So, their actions may be intelligent. But there is no intelligent, no conscious, intelligent reflection for doing those actions.
So, now that’s one way of looking at it. So, now if we are comparing humans and animals, then the difference between humans and animals is animals also have instinctive intelligence, we could say. And that’s why they can do certain things which humans can’t.
But they don’t have that reflective intelligence to consciously reflect, consider one’s options and then choose a particular course of action. That’s what they don’t have. So, that’s one framework that we are trying to differentiate between humans and animals.
Now, another framework of looking at this is, what that nature’s IQ and similar books do is, that can we find some pointers towards the existence and benevolence of God in the working of nature. So, then we can say that animals have instincts and they have, let’s say, programmed intelligence. But where does it come from? Where does it come from means that if we consider biologically, now when we humans have a compass, the compass is made of magnetic material and aligns itself in the north-south direction and we use it.
Now, when the birds fly through the vast sky in a particular direction, their brain or their body doesn’t contain any magnetic substance. So, how do they get the intelligence to know which direction to fly? They found that if a bird has a nest in a particular place and it just captured the bird, blinded it and then take it 100 miles away and just free it. It will fly up into the sky, go round and round and round for a few times and then straight go back to its nest.
Even if it’s 100 miles away. If we are abducted and we are dropped off 100 miles away, we won’t know where to go. Unless we ask someone or we have GPS somewhere.
So now, if our human brains, biologically speaking now, if biologically speaking our human brains, which are undeniably far more developed and sophisticated than animal brains, they don’t have this capacity for navigation, which birds have. Then the question comes up, is the biology alone enough to explain the navigational ability? If our biology, if our brain chemistry, our brain structure is not enough, then how can the animal’s brain structure, which is far simpler and lesser than ours, be enough? So then we can say that their instinct is not coming simply by their biology. It is coming from some higher source.
And that is how we can understand or we can infer that it is the super soul who is guiding the wanderings of living beings. So it’s a different scale of frame of reference. So animals do have intelligence, but that is not conscious intelligence.
It’s not reflective intelligence by which they can exercise self-control. It is instinctive intelligence, which is what is required for their survival and their production. So isn’t the super soul giving the instincts to animals? Yes.
Right now I am speaking in the super soul ultimately. It is the super soul who is doing everything. But in our case, say I may feel angry with someone and if I want to yell, then the super soul can give me the intelligence to deliver the best speech that I will ever regret.
I can speak and the intelligence to yell and yell at someone can also come from the super soul. But if I want, I can say no, I am going to control myself, I will not get angry, I will not yell at someone. And then the intelligence to control oneself and speak in a measured way, that also comes from the super soul.
So in the case of human beings, see everything that everyone does, is ultimately without a super soul guiding, nothing would happen. But we human beings can choose between options. Now even if say the terrorists, they plan to blow up some buildings or kill some innocent people, to do that also requires intelligence.
Whoever planned to bring down the twin towers, that required a lot of intelligence. But that is destructive intelligence. So even their intelligence comes from Krishna, but they will get karma because they are not using their brain properly.
So all intelligence, whether it is instinctive intelligence or reflective intelligence, ultimately comes from the super soul. But we human beings have the capacity to choose how we use that intelligence. So thank you very much.