Intelligence is fully yours, and yet you cannot own it || Acharya Prashant (2015)
Question: Is it incorrect to refer to intelligence as my intelligence?
Speaker: In love if you do that, it’s wonderful. You are saying, “Is it incorrect to refer to intelligence as my intelligence?” If you are referring to intelligence as my intelligence in love, then it’s wonderful, but if you are referring to intelligence as my intelligence in possession, then it is not correct. Intelligence is one, manifests itself as different. You have all the right to call it my intelligence; it is surely yours, but not exclusively yours. It is surely yours, but not exclusively yours; it is like a father with thousand kids. Every kid has the right to say “My father”, but no kid has the right to lay ownership over the father. “Exclusively my father”. No, that won’t do.
In love you can say “My father” alright, but my father does not mean that he belongs to you, that you have possessed him. Your intelligence is very much yours, but not only yours. That is the reason, sometimes I advice not to use phrase ‘My intelligence’ because the kind of creatures we are, the moment we say ‘My intelligence’, what do we do?
Listener 1: Possession.
Listener 2: Create a boundary.
Speaker: Yes, we start possessing it; we create a boundary around it. The second part of the question is “Can we not have a simple aspiration of becoming a better human being rather than completely detaching ourselves from everything around us?” What do we mean by a better human being? What is meant by a better human being?
Listener 3: No skimming, straight. Love other as you love yourself.
Speaker: Right. And do you think that is anything different from detachment?
Listener 3: Detachment sounds a little scary.
Speaker: Yes it sounds a little scary, then your definition of a better human being is misplaced. You are saying “A better human being is one who loves other as he love himself” but you are saying “Detachment sound scary”. If you are saying better human being implies love, but detachment sounds scary, then surely your love is attachment. Within your own words, you are saying, “A better human being is one who knows love”, Right. At the same moment you are saying that “Detachment sounds scary” then surely your love is attachment.
Listener 3: Did not renunciation, to leave everything is renunciation?
Speaker: What do we mean by renunciation? What do we mean by renunciation?
Listener 3: Out of this, just completely out of it.
Speaker: Out of what?
Listener 3: Out of this worldly affairs.
Speaker: What kind of worldly affairs?
Listener 3: Whatever is going around in a day.
Speaker: You are holding a hot coal in your hand and your hand is burning, you drop the coal. You call it renunciation? This is renunciation – spontaneously getting rid of what is suffering.
Listener 3: But that coal was giving me warm, I needed it.
Speaker: (Sarcastically) Hold it. Keep holding it. This is the fundamental misconception that anything outside of you can give you warmth, and this is also what is atheism; that you need a coal to give you warmth.
You know what a God living man would say?
“The source of warmth is within me, I do not require to hold a coal and burn my hand.”
But this is what a faithless mind says – “That I will freeze to death, if I do not hold a burning coal in my hands.”
Listener 3: How did it come in my hand?
Speaker: It was given to you.
Listener 3: Isn’t it my own choice?
Speaker: Yes, of course, it was given to you when your apparatus had no clue as to what was happening to it. It was given to you by ignorant people, who themselves did not know what they were doing. Ignorance begets ignorance. It was given to you, it was given to you alright by others; but pay attention to your hands and see how they are burning. When you look at your own situation, you won’t hold the coal anymore; that is detachment.
Detachment does not mean that “I do not want this, I do not want that.” Detachment is just simple common sense. How can I keep holding that which is obviously a source of suffering? That is detachment.
Listener4: Sir, detachment can also be said as unpredictability.
Speaker: Do not say what it also can be ; look at what it directly is. We say it can be this, it can be that; first of all look at what it directly, obviously is; then look at all the associated meanings and synonyms and related stories. First of all go to the central point ‘What is detachment?’.
To be detached is to not to hold on to stupidity, that is the simple definition of detachment.
To be detached is to not to hold on to stupidity. That is a simple definition, nothing else. Now if that is a scary word, then what does it tell about our life? Detachment means I do not want to hold on to stupidity, and ‘I’ am saying “I find that scary”, then how is my life? Detachment does not mean that you are getting rid of the precious. The precious is already and always there with you, the source of warmth is there within you. Detachment means I am getting rid of the rubbish, realizing that the precious is always available; even if I want to I cannot get rid of it. To not to hold on to all that which anyway is a burden, which anyway is causing pain to me and to others, that is detachment, and that require Faith because the first step of detachment is, “The precious, the valuable is already and always there within me. So I can safely let go of the rest, the remainder.”
Why do you want to latch onto something? Because you think that’s valuable. Then you realize that whatever is valuable is not something that you get by clinging, not something that you get from others, not something that you get from here and there, you realize that, and then there is no point. See, detachment does not mean that I have to necessarily kick this away, throw that away and sue him or her away. Detachment only means that I am not clinging, I am not a parasite. Detachment does not mean that I won’t talk to you, detachment doesn’t mean that I can’t live with you, detachment only means that I am not exsiccated. Are you getting that? That my mind is not dominated by you.
Detachment doesn’t mean that “I have to go one thousand kilometers away from you.” In fact you can be a thousand kilometers away and yet be very attached. Detachment only means that you do not form a part of my self-worth. “I am with you, we have a loving relationship, wonderful, but I do not depend on you. Neither do I aspire that you depend on me. I do not depend on you, we are there side by side, but there is no dependency. I am complete in myself and out of my love I really wish that you too be complete in yourself.” – that is detachment. Please don’t have an image of detachment that detachment means that I will not look at your face. In fact, without detachment love is not possible. The moment there is attachment in love, that love becomes extremely poisonous. Detachment is extremely necessary for love, without detachment love becomes possessiveness, loves becomes dependencies, love becomes violence.
Detachment means that the mind knows it’s Real home, so it does not have to beg for other homes. Detachment means that the mind knows it’s Real lover, so it does not have to look for love here and there. Detachment means that the mind is dependent only on One, so it is not dependent on the thousands. That is detachment.
And that detachment, again I am repeating, does not mean that you have to have animosity towards thousands; that you need to be indifferent to them. No, no, no. Detachment is not about being indifferent to the world. In fact, a detached man is a loving man. In detachment, you come upon true love; only in detachment.
