Swami The Good Life

And their beliefs rest on some absurd superstitions. Or mere assertions which bear no proof. And now they find it difficult to question their veracity.

Following this trend humanity has reached a perilous state. People must wake up. Realise the emergent need to develop, strengthen the intellect. The process of thinking should have started from an early age. Having failed to do so, at least start the process now. Develop the art of thinking. Follow it up with the study of the impeccable truths of life. Delve deep into the truths. Accept those that appeal to logic and reason. Apply them in practical living. Adopt this procedure all through life. It will enable you to build your intellect. Nobel laureate Albert Einstein has observed: Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.

Humans need a strong intellect to exercise the right choice of action in life. The world presents endless trials and tribulations. The human species alone is provided with an intellect to fight against and surmount mundane challenges. All other species, devoid of intellect, are helpless victims of the rigours of the external world. A powerful intellect helps humans overpower these onslaughts.

But the role of the human intellect does not end there. Far above its suzerainty in the world the intellect has the unique capacity to even transcend the world and reach the ultimate state of spiritual Enlightenment. No other creature save humans can conceive, much less achieves that exalted state. You must make good use of the intellect to attain this very purpose of human birth.

Unaware of the dire need to build the intellect, people entertain themselves with merely reading others’ periodicals and publications. They indulge in the mere length of study. Just poring over pages of literature apathetic towards the message therein or its deeper implications if any. Rare indeed are the ones who go into the depth of study. Thus little is assimilated, absorbed by the readers. People have been mere educated robots for generations. And have been traversing through life without knowing the meaning and purpose of it.

The world abounds in personalities with one-sided development. Intelligence and no intellect. An example of one such person suffering from this human imbalance is a renowned scientist. He is an alcoholic and his liver is damaged. He is extremely short-tempered and his blood pressure has shot up. And he is stressed, unable to face even the petty challenges of the world. Just reflect over his state. Analyse his personality carefully. He is a brilliant scientist with profound knowledge of his subject.

He has acquired abundant intelligence but never cared to develop his intellect. His intellect has always remained weak. It lacks the strength to handle the multifarious demands of the mind. His mind craves for alcohol. His intellect is not powerful enough to control the nagging desire. So too his mind raves in foul temper. His frail intellect is unable to control its ravings. And when his mind is humiliated, strained and stressed by the problems confronting it, his mere intelligence looks on helplessly.

On the contrary, there are luminaries possessing awesome intellects which hold their minds under perfect control. Some of them possess no academic qualification but academies are built around them.

It is time the world woke up to the urgent need to develop the intellect. Only then can we save ourselves from impeding self-destruction and evolve to spiritual perfection.

(Extracted from The Fall of the Human Intellect by Swami Parthasarathy.)