I am really surprised to see how so many intelligent people become so narrow-minded as they grow. So sure of the completeness of their narrow frame of life. Every intelligent person knows the Earth is not even a particle of dust on the cosmic scale, and we know so little about this cosmos. Then how can these intelligent people be so sure of what they do in their lives? Why would they not like to understand the meaning of life? Why would they believe the social narrative and spend the whole of their lives in pursuit of what this world considers happiness, while knowing very well that it’s a very minuscule part of reality?

That looks so stupid: spending our entire lives believing something we are not sure about. Like somebody living his entire life believing two people to be his parents and getting to know towards the end of his life that they are not. But intelligent people aren’t that stupid. Why would they do so? If they know that “what we know” is very minuscule compared to the whole domain of knowledge, why would they believe it to be the gospel truth and set their priorities accordingly? 

Probably, their intelligence tells them that no one in this world so far has been able to understand the meaning of life, and that’s why it’s a futile mission. After all, an intelligent mind is very good at calculations. It can work like a supercomputer to calculate what is most beneficial. The problem with intelligent people is that they can’t accept their stupidity, and that’s why it’s more convenient to make up a story about the meaning of life. Their intelligent brains can cook up stories around that meaning, glorify it, and make others believe it. That’s why we see these intelligent people so convinced of what they do, and why they can convince others too with their sound logic.

Someone may decide to live in the well because he can’t come out. He may develop thousands of logical arguments to convince others that living inside the well is great, and he can tell others how best to live inside the well. But the fact of the matter is that as soon as they encounter somebody who comes from outside the well and who has seen the sea, they are shocked. Their intelligence or stupidity, whatever we may call it, tries to convince them that he is a fraud. How can someone know better than them? They reject him outright. Many of Krishna’s contemporaries rejected him and his thought process. What intelligence fails to realise is that you may run the best of the analytics on the laptop, but, at the end of the day, the outcome will not be more intelligent than the sum total of the data available in the laptop. 

To be truly intelligent, the laptop needs to connect to the data lying on the internet. Once the laptop connects to the data available on the web, even a laptop with very basic features gets the power of AI. In the world of AI, internet speed is often more important than processing speed. Similarly, a human brain, not connected to the universe through awareness, is like that laptop disconnected from the web. It may be the most intelligent brain, yet it will be very limited. How would we feel seeing someone with a laptop with the latest features, disconnected from the internet? How would we feel seeing someone with strong intelligence, yet disconnected from awareness and living life confined to his belief systems, within a fixed framework of life, having set priorities and milestones based on his limited awareness? We will feel sad for such a person. But that person remains so sure of his intelligence, and that’s why intelligent people are more likely to waste their lives within the confines of the limited framework of their beliefs. They are quite intelligent to justify their stupidity. 

मूरख को समझावते, ग्यान गांठि का जाय।
कोयला होय न ऊजला, सौ मन साबुन लाय।।