Now and here
Being intelligent requires the effort to be yourself, which you are not used to. So you choose to react based on your past experiences.
Usually, we only react like programmed machines; we do not respond to situations. Someone insults you and you become angry even before becoming aware of what you are doing.
A beautiful story from the life of Buddha, an enlightened master from Bharat:
Once a person insulted Buddha openly. His disciple Ananda said, 'I was getting so angry with the person. Why did you keep quiet? At least I would have given him a piece of my mind.'
Buddha calmly replied, 'You surprise me. What he was saying was completely irrelevant and you know that. Then why are you getting angry? You are punishing yourself. It is foolishness. When somebody else has made the mistake, why are you suffering for it?'
Moving with time, flowing with life, becoming a fluid process instead of being a solid ego is called intelligence.
Operating with intelligence is the process of going back to the innocence you were born with. It is not a process of becoming. It is not attaining something new; it is discovering your very being. It is the true door to knowing you as you truly are.
When you are intellectual, you operate purely from the head, from logic.
A small story:
A man was working on his doctorate in philosophy. He was so involved in his studies and research, his wife thought he would forget her if he was not reminded of her once in a while. So one day, she casually mentioned to him, 'Honey, what is the one reason you love me so much?'
The man asked very seriously, 'When you say 'so much' are you referring to the depth, quality, quantity or mode of expression?'
When you are too caught in the head, you start thinking that your logic, your head, can understand the whole of life. You try to frame everything in this universe with your head.
Another small story:
Once, a student had freshly graduated in a course on plumbing. He went with his friends on a sight-seeing tour to Niagara Falls. He took a look at the huge Falls and said, 'I think I can fix it!'
Your knowledge gives you the false illusion of knowing everything that exists. It keeps you firmly rooted in the head.
When your intelligence awakens, you drop from the head to the heart, from logic to love. Then, you operate neither from pure intellect nor from pure sentimental love. You operate just from loving intelligence, and you automatically radiate compassion to all of those around you.
Understanding, not thinking
A small story:
Once, three wise men set out on a travel journey to the city with the hope that they would learn more about life. They entered a big city and were surprised to see a very tall building – a skyscraper – in the distance. They wondered what it might be.
They grouped and discussed what to do. They were afraid to go near and see for themselves, thinking it may have something dangerous in it. What if they did not know how to come out? So, they decided it was better to find out before they ventured inside.
They analyzed and came up with all the things it could possibly be, based on all their past experiences. Finally, they concluded it was something too big for human beings and it must belong to giants. So, it was not safe for them to be in this city of giants.
Very satisfied that they had gained this new knowledge, they picked up their bags and went back to their village!
So, you see there is not much you can understand from past knowledge. You cannot think about something in the mind and try to understand everything about it in that way. You need to see it, to experience it in order to fully understand.
One more thing: you can only think about what you have known, what you have experienced. Can you think about anything unknown? You may fantasize about what the unknown could be, but that is still based on what you have seen in the past.
With thinking, the energy of intelligence and truth is not there, so the answer will be based on your limited experience and it will always lead to further questions and doubts.
Not falling back on the answers rising from the past memory but functioning from your present consciousness is called understanding.
Thinking arises from the mind, which is actually one of the most marvelous mechanisms. But the problem arises when the mind becomes your master instead of a tool in your hands.
A small story:
There lived a king who had a very faithful servant. He was so loyal he had even risked his own life to save the life of the king on a couple of occasions.
On one such occasion, the king highly pleased with the servant asked him for anything he wanted. The servant humbly replied, 'I don't need anything, O King. You have given me everything I need.'
But the king insisted. Finally, the servant said, 'Ok. If you really want to give me something, please make me the king for one day.' The king was a bit uncomfortable but he had already promised and had to keep it up.
The morning of the day the servant became the king. He simply pointed to the king and ordered the royal guards, 'Kill him!' The king was shocked and asked the servant, 'Do you know what you are saying?' The servant calmly replied, 'I am the king today. I can do what I wish to.'
The king was killed and the servant remained king forever.
Understand: in this same way, when we give the power of attorney to our mind, it takes entire control over us.
Body Intelligence
How many of us realize the tremendous intelligence that our body possesses?
Take the example of our digestive system. The whole process of converting bread to blood is such a complex and delicate one – requiring fine intelligence to convert the different types of food into energy to run the body.
What is achieved through a few feet of coiled intestine would need a few miles, if it were an industry outside of the body!
The process of digestion starts from our mouth. We chew the food and the saliva we secrete starts the digestion. There are so many big and small body elements that perform amazing functions in the process. We swallow the food and it passes through the throat into the food pipe. Beautifully the food is blocked from going into the wind pipe instead of the food pipe – by the epiglottis. The food enters into the stomach, which is like an elastic bag and has a delicate and powerful digestive mechanism. Depending on the type of food taken in like carbohydrates, proteins or fats, the digestive mechanism varies.
The digestive fire in us, what we call jataraagni in Sanskrit, is related to the acid in the stomach. The stomach is such a delicate organ but it actually contains this powerful acid needed to digest the food we eat. The stomach itself is beautifully protected from this acid by a thick mucus layer around its wall which neutralizes the acid.
All the complex foods we eat take just a few hours to digest and get absorbed into our system. Imagine not even a single process has to be consciously thought about! It is managed automatically and so precisely – adapting itself so beautifully to accommodate all our diets.
After the stomach, the food passes into the small intestine where the majority of the digestion takes place. It is actually a long structure but so efficiently fitted in a small area with many folds which increases the surface area of absorption. Most of the nutrients get absorbed in the small intestine. The main function of the small intestine is absorption of nutrients. The complex products like carbohydrates and proteins are broken down into basic elements and absorbed. The nutrients that are absorbed are carried to the liver for further processing.
Then the food moves into the large intestine where mostly water absorption occurs. Then, the food that cannot be absorbed, like fiber for example, is mixed with other waste products from the body and thrown out as waste matter. This is just a basic explanation of digestion. But in the body it is such a complex, well-organized and adaptive mechanism.
The human body starts from a single cell which replicates and becomes about 250 different types of cells.
Imagine, one cell transforms into so many different specialized cells that form the complex parts of the body! Not only do these cells do their specialized job, their very maintenance needs millions of things to be done in a second. And all their activities have to be coordinated for the body to function as a single organism. It is the best example of distributed intelligence.
We have been taught that the center of our intelligence is in our brain. We think that we control the body through our brain. Science has all along been saying that the brain controls respiration, digestion, blood circulation, and all such activities of the body.
Now, cutting-edge research has given rise to a new field called epigenetics. One of the pioneers in this field, Dr. Bruce Lipton, an eminent biologist, has been doing research in the field of epigenetics for over ten years. In his book, The Biology of Belief, he states that our brain does not control our body. In fact, there is evidence of intelligence in every cell, even in the cell's membrane!
Recent research at Sandia National Laboratories, USA, supports cellular intelligence theory. Scientists there studied how cells responded to a harmful substance called an antigen that attacked the cells in the body. They concluded that even the cell membrane had a beautiful and complex structure to fight the antigen, and that the cell membrane was not as simple a structure as it was earlier believed.
Our body is not a simple centralized system of intelligence controlled by the brain. The human body is a highly evolved distributed system of intelligence beautifully and seamlessly orchestrated.