Does experience give intelligence? || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)

Question: Doesn’t even intelligence require experiences from the past or does intelligence operate in a vacuum?

Shri Prashant: No, it does not. Obviously, it does not.

Let’s take this example. Even right now, we are using a particular language which is coming from the past. Right? But what is happening right now is beyond language. Every single word that we are using is coming from the dictionary, but what is happening right now is beyond the dictionary.

(Pointing at the camera placed in front of the speaker) Now let’s look at this camera. The same waves are falling on this camera, as are falling on your retina and your ears. In fact, it is gathering all the information more diligently than you ever can.

You are gathering something and leaving out something, but this camera is gathering everything, and all that comes from the past: sound, sight, all that is the product of the past.

This body is the product of the past, and all that it is recording is the body. All that it is hearing, is the words that are anyway mentioned in the dictionary, but there is something happening there, in ‘you’ which simply cannot happen here (pointing again at the camera). That is intelligence. It (the camera) keeps on getting what I say, it keeps on recording what I say, but it never gets anything.