Intelligence and Matter: Inessentiality, Dharma, and the Rulial Pluriverse

This paper explores the interrelationship between intelligence and matter through Indian metaphysical traditions (Sāṇkhya, Vedānta, Bhartṛhari), challenging Western dualism, essentialism, and Enlightenment rationalism. It proposes a non-dual, relational ontology centered on inessential intelligence: the understanding that intelligence arises not from fixed essences but as a relational, emergent dynamic within a reality characterized by non-self (anattā) and emptiness (śūnyatā). In this view, matter (prakṛti) is the dynamic expression of a foundational intelligence (puruṣa, understood as the unevolving potentiality of Parā), but manifests this potentiality as an adaptive, tensional process. Dharma is reinterpreted not as fixed duty but as ontological attunement to the cosmos’s rulial, affective intelligence, operating within a dynamic pluriverse—a plurality of entangled, emergent singularities where fixed ideals are untenable. This pluriversal framework, drawing parallels with Bhartṛhari’s Śabda-Brahman (especially madhyamā-vāk), pratītyasamutpāda, and contemporary physics, reveals reality’s recursive ontology and formative complexity. Consequently, traditional prediction is reframed as attuned inference, an ethically guided, participatory act guided by buddhi and informed by śāstra (inferential science of being), rather than detached observation aiming at control over non-existent certainties. Critiquing colonial misinterpretations and mechanistic worldviews, the essay advocates for an epistemology of participatory resonance and a post-ideal ethics, recognizing the inherent, yet inessential, intelligence of materiality within a co-dependently arising cosmos. It presents a holistic framework for understanding reality as an interconnected field of emergence, challenging empirical reductionism and essentialist assumptions.