Part III — Discourses

The illumination of the intellect

Right now the intellect is not illumined; it only cherishes a false feeling of superiority. If somebody does not have intellectual power or has not got a college diploma, an intellectual person will feel that it is beneath his dignity to mix with that person. But if the light of the soul enters into the intellect, then the intellect will have a feeling of oneness, like the heart. The person will see the whole world through the light of the soul instead of seeing only with his intellectual capacity.

An unillumined intellectual frequently falls victim to his own criticism. Very often he will doubt his own intellectual capacities. This moment intellectually he has grasped the whole truth; the next moment he is a beggar, searching here and there for just an iota of truth. Then again, he will suspect both his discoveries — the discovery that he has grasped the entire world with his intellectual strength, and the discovery that he has not grasped even an iota of truth. His third discovery will be tremendous self-doubt. He will say, “Was my first discovery right or wrong? My second discovery, was it right or wrong?” In this way he will contradict his own discoveries.

But when the heart accepts something, it lasts forever. If we love someone, if that love comes from the very depth of our heart, no matter what the person does, we shall love him. A mother’s real, spontaneous love for her child is like that. The child can do anything. He can criticise the mother, insult the mother, leave the house, do anything. But the mother’s heart will always remain inside the heart of the son, because the mother has established her oneness with the son’s heart.

In the spiritual life also, when we follow the path of the heart, once we learn to love God, that is enough. We shall love Him no matter what happens to us. Even if He does not fulfil even one desire of ours out of a million desires, we will not mind. We will just say, “It is up to Him to fulfil our desires or not.” But since we have accepted the spiritual life, we want to encourage our aspiration, not our desire. We are trying, we are aspiring to become good, God-loving and man-fulfilling. These are our goals. We want to love the world because we feel the Presence of God inside the world and inside everyone.

If we follow the path of the heart, there is a constant flow of love and oneness. If we follow the path of the mind, at one moment we will feel that we have achieved everything, and the next moment we will feel that we are veritable beggars; we have achieved nothing, nothing, nothing! In the heart we will never feel like that. In the heart we will feel all oneness. Even if our mind tells us that we have not achieved anything, but someone else has achieved much, our heart will make us feel that his achievement is ours since he is our brother. In the spiritual world, we came from the same Eternal Father, so why should there be any separation between us?

The spiritual heart embraces the whole world as its very own, but the unillumined intellect has to cut everything into pieces in order to see if there is any truth in it. And naturally, if we break the truth into infinitesimal pieces, we do not get the reality. But when this very mind is illumined by the light of the soul, it becomes vast, infinite. It sees the truth the way the truth has to be seen. In my path, the intellect definitely has a role to play, but the intellect has to be illumined. Unless and until the intellect is illumined by the light of the soul, it is very unsafe to follow the path of the mind.