https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=WaxLJUl9nO0

All right, so Kevin Patterson says, given that intelligence and intellect dominate our competence hierarchies, what is the proper place for these faculties in the spiritual hierarchy? My guess is that it’s related to the bottom of reality under the mountain where metallurgy started. So that really depends what you mean. See, the word in intellect and intelligence is a word that has lost its meaning. So the word intellect or intelligence is definitely a word that is used by Christian mystics all the time. That’s what the word noose means. And so in Greek, we have this idea of the intellect, the noose, and the noose is the pure spiritual faculty. You could say, it is the faculty the person has to intuit reality directly, and it can lead, let’s say, if purified, then this intellect is capable of seeing the God, seeing the divine, the uncreated light, right, the glory of God. And so that is really what the intellect, ultimately that is what the intellect means in the Christian tradition. Now, what you probably mean by intellect is something like reason, or something like reasoning faculties. And so reasoning faculties is not the same as the intellect in the spiritual sense. The intellect is that which grasps directly. It doesn’t deliberate, right? Then lower down in terms of reason, that’s where there’s deliberation. That’s where there’s a for and against, that’s where there’s action, reaction, that’s where there’s example, counter example. All of these things happen in the world of reason. And the world of reason is the one that is used to make things, to apply the insights down into the world. It’s useful, but it’s not the same as the intellect. And so one of the ways, let’s say in terms of spiritual practice, which might surprise people, is that one of the ways to reach the intellect is actually to strip the reasonable part, is to strip, not to say that it’s bad, but because we rely so much on reason and on deliberation and on thinking and on all of this stuff, there is an aspect of spiritual practice which is to strip that away, right? So that you can attain the direct intuition. You can see God. And so that’s why, for example, like if you read the Hesychastic Fathers, you have to ignore your thoughts. You have to not be attached to your thoughts. As you’re praying, you have to let the thoughts, the logismoi, like these little thoughts, you just have to let them flow through and not grab onto them. And there are all these different practices which are meant to bring you into trans-rational, like a meta-rational, beyond the rational sphere. And like I said, it doesn’t mean that rationality is bad, but that because it’s so powerful, it can be an obstacle if you’re not careful and you can get attached to it and think that that’s all you are. So yeah, so hopefully that helps you.