Intelligent And Intellectual – In Gita Verse 2.11 The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: While speaking learned words, you are mourning for what is not worthy of grief. Those who are wise lament neither for the living nor for the dead.
Krishna gives Arjuna distinction of borrowed knowledge and intelligence.
Mind is not your intelligence.
It may sound strange but this is the truth, that mind is not your intelligence. Mind can be intellectual, which is a very poor substitute for intelligence. Intellectuality is mechanical. You can become a great scholar, a great professor, a great philosopher – just playing with words which are all borrowed, arranging and rearranging thoughts, none of which are your own.
The intellect is absolutely bankrupt. It has nothing of its own, all is borrowed. And that’s the difference between intelligence and intellect. Intelligence has an eyesight of its own, a capacity to see into things, into problems.
Intelligence is your born quality.
What exactly is Intelligence…..
Intelligence is the inborn capacity to see, to perceive. Every child is born intelligent, then made stupid by the society. We educate him in stupidity. Sooner or later he graduates in stupidity. Intelligence is a natural phenomenon – just as breathing is, just as seeing is. Intelligence is the inner seeing; it is intuitive. It has nothing to do with intellect, remember. Never confuse intellect with intelligence, they are polar opposites. Intellect is of the head; it is taught by others, it is imposed on you. You have to cultivate it. It is borrowed, it is something foreign, it is not inborn.
But intelligence is inborn. It is your very being, your very nature. All animals are intelligent. They are not intellectuals, true, but they are all intelligent. Trees are intelligent, the whole existence is intelligent, and each child is born intelligent. Have you ever come across a child who is stupid? It is impossible! But to come across a grown-up person who is intelligent is very rare; something goes wrong in between.
Intelligence dies in imitating others. If you want to remain intelligent you will have to drop imitating. Intelligence commits suicide in copying, in becoming a carbon copy. The moment you start thinking how to be like that person you are falling from your intelligence, you are becoming stupid. The moment you compare yourself with somebody else you are losing your natural potential. Now you will never be happy, and you will never be clean, clear, transparent. You will lose your clarity, you will lose your vision. You will have borrowed eyes; but how can you see through somebody else’s eyes?
You need your own eyes, you need your own legs to walk, your own heart to beat. People are living a borrowed life, hence their life is paralyzed. This paralysis makes them look very stupid. A totally new kind of education is needed in the world. The person who is born to be a poet is proving himself stupid in mathematics and the person who could have been a great mathematician is just cramming history and feeling lost. Everything is topsy-turvy because education is not according to your nature. It does not pay any respect to the individual, it forces everybody into a certain pattern.
Maybe by accident the pattern fits a few people but the majority is lost and the majority lives in misery. The greatest misery in life is to feel oneself stupid, unworthy, unintelligent. And nobody is born unintelligent; nobody can be born unintelligent because we come from God. God is pure intelligence. We bring some flavor, some fragrance from God when we come into the world. But immediately the society jumps upon you, starts manipulating, teaching, changing, cutting, adding, and soon you have lost all shape, all form. Society wants you to be obedient, conformist, orthodox. This is how your intelligence is destroyed.
Also when we are stuck in the objective world our intelligence is destroyed. Right now Arjuna is stuck in the objective world and the words of knowledge, so Krishna reminds him by saying, “While speaking learned words, you are mourning for what is not worthy of grief. Those who are wise lament neither for the living nor for the dead.” – a person who is intelligent, will act as per the demand of the circumstances. What you are speaking is only borrowed knowledge, nothing else.
Tags: Intelligent And Intellectual
