Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Because imagination is the doorway to the future, the seed of limitless possibilities waiting for us to discover.
Visualization meditation techniques not only clarify the mind but also nurture visualization and imagination—qualities today’s world craves more than ever.
But ‘more than intelligent’ does not stop there. It also means compassion, love, and the beautiful, essential qualities that turn an intelligent person into a truly great human being. With intelligence alone, people become ‘cold machines.’ An intellect without a heart can produce groundbreaking inventions, but can also bring immeasurable disasters. Intelligence without compassion can lead humanity astray.
Imagine a scientist willing to sacrifice all human values to conduct inhumane experiments—an intelligent mind lacking compassion. Intelligence without compassion produces only distorted wisdom.
The world goes through many stages. We have passed through a stage when “IQ intelligence” was highly valued in society. In job applications, education, and parenting, IQ was always “king.” Many wealthy and successful people actually possess quite “formidable” intelligence.
But look a little further: another kind of intelligence, artificial intelligence (AI), is developing increasingly and will replace humans in many fields.
Chess is a sport that relies heavily on IQ. Yet world history has witnessed super-grandmasters, the most outstanding players, one after another suffering “crushing defeats” against AI.
In 1997, chess king Garry Kasparov, who had dominated world chess for 20 years and was hailed as humanity’s greatest chess player of all time, was defeated by IBM’s DeepBlue supercomputer, astonishing the world.
Unlike Chinese chess or chess, Go is much harder, with an unpredictable number of possible moves and far more complex developing positions. For example, chess offers 20 choices on the first move: 8 pawns can move in 2 ways, and 2 knights can also move in 2 ways, giving 8 x 2 + 2 x 2 = 20. Go offers 361 (19 x 19). Science says the number of possible moves in Go exceeds the total number of atoms in the universe. Go therefore became the last “stronghold” of human intelligence in terms of IQ and board games. For many years, supercomputers could not defeat Go grandmasters, despite long having surpassed the “kings” of other board games.
In 2015, no AI could defeat Go masters. In 2016, an AI program called AlphaGo played Lee Se-dol, an 18-time world champion hailed as the greatest conqueror in Go. Everyone expected an easy victory for the representative of ‘humanity.’ But no: AlphaGo achieved a spectacular ‘overthrow,’ stunning the entire world.
From then on, computers always won.
In 2017, Lee Se-dol announced his retirement from professional Go competition.
In writing these lines, I do not intend to frighten anyone. Debates about AI are probably beyond this book's scope. Understand that AI is also a “tangible result” demonstrating the evolution of human consciousness. It is a “reflection” of intelligence within humanity's and the universe's unconscious, and it will continue evolving, just as the soul never stops evolving. What matters is not taking an extreme position on anything, including AI. Excessive “worship” of AI is unhelpful, as is excessive rejection. Be balanced.
However, we can see that “AI intelligence” is tending to replace “IQ intelligence.” Many “manual” jobs have been replaced by machines, such as factory workers' jobs. Soon, purely “intellectual” (IQ) professions, such as accounting and finance, may also be replaced en masse by AI. Business owners can invest in a “solution” that never makes mistakes, miscalculates, submits reports late, takes sick leave, leaves early to collect children, badmouths the company, betrays it by leaking highly confidential financial information, behaves unpredictably psychologically or physiologically, envies, resents, fights, flatters, or plays office politics—that is AI—instead of hiring a flesh-and-blood employee with changing moods and many psychological and even… physiological issues… The golden age of “AI assistants” has arrived through technology projects that “shocked” the world, such as ChatGPT. It will open a new “AI race,” giving this intelligence many more “quantum leaps” ahead.
If ‘intelligence’ means logical intelligence, IQ, which has occupied the ‘throne’ for many years, then the future belongs to emotional intelligence (EQ). Emotion is the only domain where machines have not yet surpassed humans. I say ‘not yet’ because they will eventually catch up. AI, or machines, can also have emotions or the ability to express them. Why? Because ‘emotion’ is actually a form of ‘matter’ (a type of ‘information’), something we truly understand through deep spiritual practice. In fact, we ourselves are ‘supercomputers.’ That is the nature of the ‘soul.’ On our evolutionary journey, we are ‘creating’ supercomputers, just as we once did.
But at this moment, that is the ‘stronghold’ where machines still cannot perform as well as humans or replace them at work. It is the emotional dimension: empathy, subtle sensitivity, the ability to express and cherish emotions, emotional intelligence… Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize and understand emotions, manage one’s own emotions, know how to work with oneself emotionally, express emotions appropriately, and build good relationships with others through empathy and compassion.
Meditation is “awareness.” It helps you recognize and understand your emotions. Many techniques taught in this book also help you work with emotions and transform negative ones after understanding them. You “train the mind,” making it more sensitive and empathetic. You can then “read” and feel others' emotions more quickly, sensitively, and accurately. You develop understanding of them. And only with understanding can there be love.
That is the foundation for behaving appropriately, building quality relationships and achieving lasting accomplishments in life.
(Day 18/21 of meditation to create inner peace)
