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The Intellectual Center

BY PHILLIP WITTMEYER

The Negative Expression Center is the Intellectual Center. This Center, of course, involves mental activity. People who are strong in this Center respond to their environment by thinking about it. They want everything to make sense, and they do not rest their minds until it does. They are preeminently reasonable — they analyze theirs and everyone else's feelings and actions. The most basic function of this Center is to name and define everything, to make it distinct from everything else — so that it can be talked about or mentally processed. Reading, writing, and speaking are processed in this Center. People who are weak in this Center often have difficulty with verbal and mathematical matters. This may not be for lack of intelligence so much as it is that their brains are not structured to handle information in this way.

The Intellectual Center is where people have their verbal description of reality, because it has the vocabulary for everything. It also chatters to them all day long with its verbal "stream of consciousness" and "play by play" commentary. Consequently, most people locate their awareness in the Intellectual Center. This is incorrect. The seat of consciousness is not in any of the Centers, but is separate from all of them, a neutral observer of all inner and outer experiences.

The advantage of having a strong Intellectual Center is that it is good where the understanding and use of language is required, or where the manipulation of any kind of symbol is required, such as in mathematics. The disadvantage of this Center is that, like any Center, it is not always appropriate to use it. When responding to the emotions or the behavior of another person, it is best to deal with them on the emotional or behavioral level, not the intellectual. Surprisingly few Intellectually Centered people have noticed this. They will try to reason with a person who is having an emotional crisis, for instance. Another disadvantage of the Intellectual Center is that it is much slower than the other Centers in processing experience. Experiences often happen too fast for persons in this Center, so they review them in less hectic moments until they have it all figured out.

The Counterpart of the Intellectual Center is the Conceptual Center. The two are opposites of each other. The Intellectual Center processes data in a linear sequence. The Conceptual Center processes data all at once, as a coordinated pattern. One way to clarify the difference between these two is to say that the Intellectual Center processes in time, since time is obviously sequential — we do not experience it all at once. On the other hand, the Conceptual Center processes in space, since space obviously exists all at once. Words are processed in the Intellectual Center. Images from the eyes and other patterns are processed in the Conceptual Center.

Some readers may have noticed in this description of the two Expression Centers what is generally called "left brain" and "right brain" function. Neurologists have discovered that the two hemispheres of the cerebral cortex of the brain have somewhat different functions. The left hemisphere generally processes in a linear way, and is more involved in verbal and reasoning functions. The right hemisphere generally processes in a nonlinear way, and is more involved in holistic and patterning functions. It has been found that different people use or don't use these hemispheres to varying degrees. This is the same thing as the "strength" of the Center in the System. The two Intellectual Centers in the two hemispheres of the cerebral cortex store the information which provides our internal "simulation" or mental model of external reality. To the extent that either is weak or both are weak or the two are unequal, then the simulation will be distorted, and the person will have difficulty with actual reality.

Let it be noted that the strengths or weaknesses of a person's Expression Centers are somewhat of an indication of a person's "intelligence quotient" — IQ — but not an absolute indicator. A person can be weak in both Centers and still be bright. Or, a person can be strong in both and still be dull. The relative strengths of these two Centers does indicate how the person processes mental data — sequentially or holistically. A person with a strong Intellectual Center and weak Conceptual Center is typically good with languages but lousy in art. The opposite is typically true for a person with a weak Intellectual Center and a strong Conceptual Center. There are different kinds of intelligence and mental aptitudes. The strengths of these two Centers relative to the other Centers also indicates how much processing is done mentally, rather than emotionally, instinctively, or whatever.

A person who has a strong Intellectual Center enjoys games and puzzles that make him think: scrabble, crossword puzzles, chess, and so on. People in this Center are bored if they do not have something to process mentally. They need a lot of intellectual stimulation from the world. On the other hand, people who have a weak Intellectual Center have difficulty expressing themselves in words, and don't like things that require analysis. People who have strong Intellectual Centers but are weak in the other Centers are regarded as "eggheads" because they have lots of ideas but few emotions or actions.

The Positive Pole is +Thought. People strong in this Pole have busy minds. They are always thinking, always processing data in their heads. They simply have to understand everything rationally. They ponder and consider. They intellectualize and rationalize. They ruminate, cogitate, cerebrate, and contemplate. Sometimes they have difficulty shutting off their thoughts so that they can sleep at night.

The Negative Pole is -Reason. This word does not mean that people in this Pole need a reason for everything. It means they are overly logical. Analytic thought is known as deductive reasoning. People in this Pole are overly methodical in their logical formulations. When solving a problem, their mental processes work in an intellectually rigorous step-by-step sequence. Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame is a caricature of this Pole. Reasonableness is rarely a fault, but people in this Pole carry it to an extreme. They have a neurotic need to work out details to the nth degree.

Even though the Negative Pole of -Reason does not sound like something driven by fear, in the System it is: it is the fear of irrationality and ambiguity. The way to overcome this is to consider and apply the Positive Pole of the Complementary Center, +Integration. Instead of picking every little detail apart in an effort to eliminate ambiguity, step back mentally an get the big picture. It is often necessary to get the overview of the matter at hand before the details seem reasonable. Each of the tiny dots of color on a Seurat painting may not make sense when viewed up real close, but if you stand back and take in the entire scene at once, you see the meaning. People stuck in -Reason tend to get lost in the details and forget the +Integration which gives meaning to the details. Many problems are easier to solve by means of +Integration rather than -Reason.

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Phil Wittmeyer is a longtime Michael student and scholar of the teachings. He can be reached at: wittmeyer@hotmail.com